by Lucas Malet
Produced by Delphine Lettau, David Clarke, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/AmericanLibraries.)
The Gateless Barrier
By LUCAS MALET
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1900
_Copyright, 1900_, by DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
_Preface_
"What is the book?"
"According to the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters ofthe title, we call it _Mu-Mon-Kwan_, which means 'The Gateless Barrier.'It is one of the books especially studied by the Zen sect, or the sectof Dhyana. A peculiarity of some of the Dhyana texts--this (story) beinga good example--is that they are not explanatory. They only suggest.Questions are put, but the student must think out the answers forhimself. He must _think_ them out but not write them. You know thatDhyana represents human effort to reach, through meditation, zones ofthought beyond the range of verbal expression; and any thought narrowedinto utterance loses all Dhyana quality.... Well, this story is supposedto be true; but it is used only for a Dhyana question...."
LAFCADIO HEARN.
"_Exotics and Retrospectives," pages 83, 84._
_The Gateless Barrier_
I
Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad wooden hand-rail of thebulwarks. The water hissed away from the side. Immediately below it waslaced by shifting patterns of white foam, and stained pale green,violet, and amber, by the light shining out through the rounds of theport-poles. Further away it showed blue black, but for a glistening onthe hither side of the vast ridge and furrow. The smoke from the funnelsstreamed afar, and was upturned by a following wind. The great shipswung in the trough, and then lifted--as a horse lifts at a fence--whilethe seas slid away from under her keel. As she lifted, her masts rakedthe blue-black night sky, and the stars danced in the rigging.
This was the first time since his marriage, nearly two years before,that Laurence found himself alone and altogether his own master. Hismarriage was a notable success--every one said so, and he himself hadnever doubted the fact so far. Yet this solitary voyage, this temporaryreturn to bachelorhood, possessed compensations. He reproached himself,as in duty bound, for being sensible of those compensations. He excusedhimself to himself. He gave reasons. Doubtless his present sense offreedom and content took its rise not in his enforced absence fromVirginia, from her bright continuous talk, her innumerable and perfectlyconstructed dresses, her perpetual and skilful activities; but in hisescape from the highly artificial and materialised society in which shelived and moved and had her being. Laurence had certainly no ostensiblecause of complaint against that society. Its members had recited hisverses, given a charming performance of his little comedy--in theinterests of a deserving charity--quoted his opinions on literature andpolitics, and waxed enthusiastic over his strokes at golf and his styleat rackets and polo. He had, in fact, been the spoilt child of two NewYork winters and two Newport summers. No Englishman, he was repeatedlyassured, had ever been so popular among the "smart set" of the greatrepublic. It had petted and _feted_ him, and finally given him one ofits fairest daughters to wife. And for all this Laurence Rivers wassincerely grateful. His vanity was most agreeably flattered. His naturallove both of pleasing and of pleasure was well satisfied. Yet--such isthe perversity of human nature--the very completeness of his successtended to lessen the worth of it. He even questioned, at moments,whether that success did not offer the measure of surrounding immaturityof taste and judgment, rather than of the greatness of his personaltalent and merit. He was haunted by the conviction that he had never yetgiven his best, the highest and strongest of his nature, either inthought, or art, or adventure, or even--perhaps--he feared it--in love.The demand had been for a thoroughly presentable and immediatelymarketable article; and the Best is usually far from marketable, oftenbut doubtfully presentable either. It followed that Laurence had, almostof necessity, kept the best of himself to himself--kept it to himself soeffectually that he had come uncommonly near forgetting its existencealtogether, and letting it perish for lack of air and exercise.
Now leaning his arms upon the hand-rail of the bulwarks, while the starsdanced in the rigging, and the great ship ploughed her way eastwardacross the mighty ridge and furrow of the Atlantic, gratified vanityceased to obtain in him. His thoughts travelled back to periods of hiscareer at once more obscure and more ambitious--to the few vitalraptures, the few fine failures, the few illuminating aspirations whichhe had known. The bottom dropped out of the social side of things, so tospeak. He looked below superficial appearances into the heart of it all.Life put off its cheap frippery of fancy dress, Death its cunninglydevised concealments and evasions. Backed by the immensities of sea andsky, both stood before him naked and unashamed, in all their primitiveand eternal vigour, their uncompromising actuality, their inviolablemystery; while, with a sudden and searching apprehension of the profoundimport of the question, Rivers asked himself--
"What shall it profit a man--what in good truth--if he gain the wholeworld and lose his own soul?"
He had been summoned to England by the illness of an uncle whose estatesand considerable wealth he would inherit. That illness had beenpronounced incurable; but the approaching death of this near relationmade small demand upon his intimate feelings. A decent seriousness ofthought and speech, concerning the impending event, were all that couldreasonably be required of him; for the elder Mr. Rivers was both moroseand eccentric, and had given his nephew a handsome allowance on theexpress understanding that he saw as little of him as possible. Adeclared misogynist, he had received the announcement of Laurence'sproposed marriage with an exasperating mixture of contempt and approval.
"I am sincerely sorry for you," he had written on this occasion. "Themore so that you appear to labour under the impression that the step youhave in contemplation is calculated to secure your happiness. This, youmust pardon my remarking, is obviously absurd. I grant that you areunder a moral obligation to perpetuate our family and secure thesuccession to our estates in the direct line. I cannot, therefore, butbe glad that you should adopt the recognised means to attain the aboveends. I should, however, respect both your motives and your intelligencemore highly had you done this in a rational and scientific spirit,without indulgence in sentimental illusions which every sane student ofhuman history has long since perceived to be as pernicious to the moral,as they are enervating to the mental health. I could say much worthy ofyour attention upon this point; but, in your present condition ofemotional inebriation, it would be a waste of energy on my part,--Imight add, a throwing of pearls before swine. Still, justice, my dearLaurence, compels me to own that, even so, I must ever consider myselfin a measure your debtor, since the fact of your existence, yourremarkably sound physical condition, your normal and slightlyunintelligent outlook on life, have combined to relieve me of the odiousnecessity of sacrificing my time and my personal liberty to theinterests of our family, by entering into those domestic relations,which you appear to regard with as much thoughtless complacency as Iwith reasoned repulsion and distrust."
This being the attitude of the elder Mr. Rivers's mind, it followed thatwhen, by his request, Mr. Wormald, the family solicitor, summoned hisnephew and heir to attend his deathbed, the young man's wife was notincluded in that gloomy invitation. And this Laurence could not by anymeans honestly regret. Virginia at a disadvantage was an idea almostinconceivable. Yet so immediate and concrete a being would not, he felt,shade quite gracefully into the mortuary landscape. She would not suitit, neither would it suit her. For she was almost
amazingly in harmonywith her modern, mundane environment; and, save in the way of costlymourning costumes, it seemed incredible that death should have anydominion over her. It struck him, moreover, that if he gauged theposition aright, Virginia, notwithstanding her many charms and muchcleverness, would have to take a back seat in his eccentric uncle'sestablishment. And Virginia in a back seat was again an idea almostinconceivable. So he said--
"It's an awful nuisance to have to leave you like this, but this isgoing to be a pretty dismal bit of business anyhow. I'd much better justworry through it alone. You'll join me later when it's all over, and weare free to take possession and knock the place in shape. Stoke Riversis really rather delightful, though it is not very large. There used tobe some good pictures and books and things in it I remember. I believemy uncle is a virtuoso in his way, though he is such a cross-grained oldchap. You'll enjoy the place, at all events for a few months every year,I think, Virginia. And you can have all your own people over in turn,you know; and show them how the savage English do it in their savagelittle island. You'll make the neighbourhood sit up, I fancy. It'll beamusing."
But as Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad hand-rail of thebulwarks, in the chill of the March night, while the water hissed awayfrom the side, and the engines drummed and pounded, and the bows of thegreat ship lifted against the far, blue-black horizon, he began towonder whether he had not been somewhat over hasty in proposing chronicinvasion of Stoke Rivers by all Virginia's smart friends in turn. Theywere well-bred, hospitable, amusing, very much up-to-date. He owed themthanks for a most uncommonly good time. But they seemed a trifle thin, atrifle superficial and ephemeral just now, in face of the immensities ofocean and sky, and of the ancient mysteries of Life and Death.