she said, "I can see clearly now. This is something like a real place, instead of mist and light. We can find people down here, no doubt; it looks inhabited out there." She pointed with her hand, and it seemed to me that I could see spires and towers and roofs, of a fine and airy architecture, at the end of a long horn of water which lay very blue among the woods of the plain. It puzzled me, because I had the sense that it was all unreal, and, indeed, I soon perceived that it was the girl"s own thought that in some way affected mine. "Quick, let us go,"
she said; "what are we waiting for?"
The descent was easy and gradual. We came down, following the path, over the hill-shoulders. A stream of clear water dripped among stones; it all brought back to me with an intense delight the recollection of long days spent among such hills in holiday times on earth, but all without regret; I only wished that an old and dear friend of mine, with whom I had often gone, might be with me. He had quitted life before me, and I knew somehow or hoped that I should before long see him; but I did not wish things to be otherwise; and, indeed, I had a strange interest in the fretful, silly, lovely girl with me, and in what lay before us. She prattled on, and seemed to be recovering her spirits and her confidence at the sights around us. If I could but find anything that would draw her out of her restless mood into the peace of the morning! She had a charm for me, though her impatience and desire for amus.e.m.e.nt seemed uninteresting enough; and I found myself talking to her as an elder brother might, with terms of familiar endearment, which she seemed to be grateful for. It was strange in a way, and yet it all appeared natural.
The more we drew away from the hills, the happier she became. "Ah," she said once, "we have got out of that hateful place, and now perhaps we may be more comfortable,"--and when we came down beside the stream to a grove of trees, and saw something which seemed like a road beneath us, she was delighted. "That"s more like it," she said, "and now we may find some real people perhaps,"--she turned to me with a smile--"though you are real enough too, and very kind to me; but I still have an idea that you are a clergyman, and are only waiting your time to draw a moral."
IX
Now before I go on to tell the tale of what happened to us in the valley there were two very curious things that I observed or began to observe.
The first was that I could not really see into the girl"s thought. I became aware that though I could see into the thought of Amroth as easily and directly as one can look into a clear sea-pool, with all its rounded pebbles and its swaying fringes of seaweed, there was in the girl"s mind a centre of thought to which I was not admitted, a fortress of personality into which I could not force my way. More than that. When she mistrusted or suspected me, there came a kind of cloud out from the central thought, as if a turbid stream were poured into the sea-pool, which obscured her thoughts from me, though when she came to know me and to trust me, as she did later, the cloud was gradually withdrawn; and I perceived that there must be a perfect sacrifice of will, an intention that the mind should lie open and unashamed before the thought of one"s friend and companion, before the vision can be complete. With Amroth I desired to conceal nothing, and he had no concealment from me.
But with the girl it was different. There was something in her heart that she hid from me, and by no effort could I penetrate it; and I saw then that there is something at the centre of the soul which is our very own, and into which G.o.d Himself cannot even look, unless we desire that He should look; and even if we desire that He should look into our souls, if there is any timidity or shame or shrinking about us, we cannot open our souls to Him. I must speak about this later, when the great and wonderful day came to me, when I beheld G.o.d and was beheld by Him. But now, though when the girl trusted me I could see much of her thought, the inmost cell of it was still hidden from me.
And then, too, I perceived another strange thing; that the landscape in which we walked was very plain to me, but that she did not see the same things that I saw. With me, the landscape was such as I had loved most in my last experience of life; it was a land to me like the English hill-country which I loved the best; little fields of pasture mostly, with hedgerow ashes and sycamores, and here and there a clear stream of water running by the wood-ends. There were buildings, too, low white-walled farms, roughly slated, much-weathered, with evidences of homely life, byre and barn and granary, all about them. These sloping fields ran up into high moorlands and little grey crags, with the trees and thickets growing in the rock fronts. I could not think that people lived in these houses and practised agriculture, though I saw with surprise and pleasure that there were animals about, horses and sheep grazing, and dogs that frisked in and out. I had always believed and hoped that animals had their share in the inheritance of light, and now I thought that this was a proof that it was indeed so, though I could not be sure of it, because I realised that it might be but the thoughts of my mind taking shape, for, as I say, I was gradually aware that the girl did not see what I saw. To her it was a different scene, of some southern country, because she seemed to see vineyards, and high-walled lanes, hill-crests crowded with houses and crowned with churches, such as one sees at a distance in the Campagna, where the plain breaks into chestnut-clad hills. But this difference of sight did not make me feel that the scene was in any degree unreal; it was the idea of the landscape which we loved, its pretty a.s.sociations and familiar features, and the mind did the rest, translating it all into a vision of scenes which had given us joy on earth, just as we do in dreams when we are in the body, when the sleeping mind creates sights which give us pleasure, and yet we have no knowledge that we are ourselves creating them. So we walked together, until I perceived that we were drawing near to the town which we had discerned.
And now we became aware of people going to and fro. Sometimes they stopped and looked upon us with smiles, and even greetings; and sometimes they went past absorbed in thought.
Houses appeared, both small wayside abodes and larger mansions with sheltered gardens. What it all meant I hardly knew; but just as we have perfectly decided tastes on earth as to what sort of a house we like and why we like it, whether we prefer high, bright rooms, or rooms low and with subdued light, so in that other country the mind creates what it desires.
Presently the houses grew thicker, and soon we were in a street--the town to my eyes was like the little towns one sees in the Cotswold country, of a beautiful golden stone, with deep plinths and cornices, with older and simpler buildings interspersed. My companion became strangely excited, glancing this way and that. And presently, as if we were certainly expected, there came up to us a kindly and grave person, who welcomed us formally to the place, and said a few courteous words about his pleasure that we should have chosen to visit it.
I do not know how it was, but I did not wholly trust our host. His mind was hidden from me; and indeed I began to have a sense, not of evil, indeed, or of oppression, but a feeling that it was not the place appointed for me, but only where my business was to lie for a season. A group of people came up to us and welcomed my companion with great cheerfulness, and she was soon absorbed in talk.
X
Now before I come to tell this next part of my story, there are several things which seem in want of explanation. I speak of people as looking old and young, and of there being relations between them such as fatherly and motherly, son-like and lover-like. It bewildered me at first, but I came to guess at the truth. It would seem that in the further world spirits do preserve for a long time the characteristics of the age at which they last left the earth; but I saw no very young children anywhere at first, though I came afterwards to know what befell them. It seemed to me that, in the first place I visited, the only spirits I saw were of those who had been able to make a deliberate choice of how they would live in the world and which kind of desires they would serve; it is very hard to say when this choice takes place in the world below, but I came to believe that, early or late, there does come a time when there is an opening out of two paths before each human soul, and when it realises that a choice must be made. Sometimes this is made early in life; but sometimes a soul drifts on, guileless in a sense, though its life may be evil and purposeless, not looking backwards or forwards, but simply acting as its nature bids it act. What it is that decides the awakening of the will I hardly know; it is all a secret growth, I think; but the older that the spirit is, in the sense of spiritual experience, the earlier in mortal life that choice is made; and this is only another proof of one of the things which Amroth showed me, that it is, after all, imagination which really makes the difference between souls, and not intellect or shrewdness or energy; all the real things of life--sympathy, the power of entering into fine relations, however simple they may be, with others, loyalty, patience, devotion, goodness--seem to grow out of this power of imagination; and the reason why the souls of whom I am going to speak were so content to dwell where they were, was simply that they had no imagination beyond, but dwelt happily among the delights which upon earth are represented by sound and colour and scent and comeliness and comfort. This was a perpetual surprise to me, because I saw in these fine creatures such a faculty of delicate perception, that I could not help believing again and again that their emotions were as deep and varied too; but I found little by little, that they were all bent, not on loving, and therefore on giving themselves away to what they loved, but in gathering in perceptions and sensations, and finding their delight in them; and I realised that what lies at the root of the artistic nature is its deep and vital indifference to anything except what can directly give it delight, and that these souls, for all their amazing subtlety and discrimination, had very little hold on life at all, except on its outer details and superficial harmonies; and that they were all very young in experience, and like shallow waters, easily troubled and easily appeased; and that therefore they were being dealt with like children, and allowed full scope for all their little sensitive fancies, until the time should come for them to go further yet. Of course they were one degree older than the people who in the world had been really immersed in what may be called solid interests and serious pursuits--science, politics, organisation, warfare, commerce--all these spirits were very youthful indeed, and they were, I suppose, in some very childish nursery of G.o.d.
But what first bewildered me was the finding of the earthly proportions of things so strangely reversed, the serious matters of life so utterly set aside, and so much made of the things which many people take no sort of trouble about, as companionships and affections, which are so often turned into a matter of mere propinquity and circ.u.mstance. But of this I shall have to speak later in its place.
Now it is difficult to describe the time I spent in the land of delight, because it was all so unlike the life of the world, and yet was so strangely like it. There was work going on there, I found, but the nature of it I could not discern, because that was kept hidden from me.
Men and women excused themselves from our company, saying they must return to their work; but most of the time was spent in leisurely converse about things which I confess from the first did not interest me. There was much wit and laughter, and there were constant games and a.s.semblies and amus.e.m.e.nts. There were feasts of delicious things, music, dramas. There were books read and discussed; it was just like a very cultivated and civilised society. But what struck me about the people there was that it was all very restless and highly-strung, a perpetual tasting of pleasures, which somehow never pleased. There were two people there who interested me most. One was a very handsome and courteous man, who seemed to desire my company, and spoke more freely than the rest; the other a young man, who was very much occupied with the girl, my companion, and made a great friendship with her. The elder of the two, for I must give them names, shall be called Charmides, which seems to correspond with his stately charm, and the younger may be known as Lucius.
I sat one day with Charmides, listening to a great concert of stringed and wind instruments, in a portico which gave on a large sheltered garden. He was much absorbed in the music, which was now of a brisk and measured beauty, and now of a sweet seriousness which had a very luxurious effect upon my mind. "It is wonderful to me," said Charmides, as the last movement drew to a close of liquid melody, "that these sounds should pa.s.s into the heart like wine, heightening and uplifting the thought--there is nothing so beautiful as the discrimination of mood with which it affects one, weighing one delicate phrase against another, and finding all so perfect."
"Yes," I said, "I can understand that; but I must confess that there seems to me something wanting in the melodies of this place. The music which I loved in the old days was the music which spoke to the soul of something further yet and unattainable; but here the music seems to have attained its end, and to have fulfilled its own desire."
"Yes," said Charmides, "I know that you feel that; your mind is very clear to me, up to a certain point; and I have sometimes wondered why you spend your time here, because you are not one of us, as your friend Cynthia is."
I glanced, as he spoke, to where Cynthia sat on a great carved settle among cushions, side by side with Lucius, whispering to him with a smile.
"No," I said, "I do not think I have found my place yet, but I am here, I think, for a purpose, and I do not know what that purpose is."
"Well," he said, "I have sometimes wondered myself. I feel that you may have something to tell me, some message for me. I thought that when I first saw you; but I cannot quite perceive what is in your mind, and I see that you do not wholly know what is in mine. I have been here for a long time, and I have a sense that I do not get on, do not move; and yet I have lived in extreme joy and contentment, except that I dread to return to life, as I know I must return. I have lived often, and always in joy--but in life there are constantly things to endure, little things which just ruffle the serenity of soul which I desire, and which I may fairly say I here enjoy. I have loved beauty, and not intemperately; and there have been other people--men and women--whom I have loved, in a sense; but the love of them has always seemed a sort of interruption to the life I desired, something disordered and strained, which hurt me, and kept me away from the peace I desired--from the fine weighing of sounds and colours, and the pleasure of beautiful forms and lines; and I dread to return to life, because one cannot avoid love and sorrow, and mean troubles, which waste the spirit in vain."
"Yes," I said, "I can understand what you feel very well, because I too have known what it is to desire to live in peace and beauty, not to be disturbed or fretted; but the reason, I think, why it is dangerous, is not because life becomes too _easy_. That is not the danger at all--life is never easy, whatever it is! But the danger is that it grows too solemn! One is apt to become like a priest, always celebrating holy mysteries, always in a vision, with no time for laughter, and disputing, and quarrelling, and being silly and playing. It is the poor body again that is amiss. It is like the camel, poor thing; it groans and weeps, but it goes on. One cannot live wholly in a vision; and life does not become more simple so, but more complicated, for one"s time and energy are spent in avoiding the sordid and the tiresome things which one cannot and must not avoid. I remember, in an illness which I had, when I was depressed and fanciful, a homely old doctor said to me, "Don"t be too careful of yourself: don"t think you can"t bear this and that--go out to dinner--eat and drink rather too much!" It seemed to be coa.r.s.e advice, but it was wise."
"Yes," said Charmides, "it was wise; but it is difficult to feel it so at the time. I wonder! I think perhaps I have made the mistake of being too fastidious. But it seemed so fine a goal that one had in sight, to chasten and temper all one"s thoughts to what was beautiful--to judge and distinguish, to choose the right tones and harmonies, to be always rejecting and refining. It had its sorrows, of course. How often in the old days one came in contact with some gracious and beautiful personality, and flung oneself into close relations; and then one began to see this and that flaw. There were lapses in tact, petulances, littlenesses; one"s friend did not rightly use his beautiful mind; he was jealous, suspicious, trivial, petty; it ended in disillusionment.
Instead of taking him as a pa.s.senger on one"s vessel, and determining to live at peace, to overlook, to accommodate, one began to watch for an opportunity of putting him down courteously at some stopping-place; and instead of being grateful for his friendship, one was vexed with him for disappointing one. We must speak more of these things. I seem to feel the want of something commoner and broader in my thoughts; but in this place it is hard to change."
"Will you forgive me then," I said, "if I ask you plainly what this place is? It seems very strange to me, and yet I think I have been here before."
Charmides looked at me with a smile. "It has been called," he said, "by many ugly names, and men have been unreasonably afraid of it. It is the place of satisfied desire, and, as you see, it is a comfortable place enough. The theologians in their coa.r.s.e way call it h.e.l.l, though that is a word which is forbidden here; it is indeed a sort of treason to use the word, because of its unfortunate a.s.sociation--and you can see with your own eyes that I have done wrong even to speak of it."
I looked round, and saw indeed that a visible tremor had fallen on the groups about us; it was as though a cold cloud, full of hail and darkness, had floated over a sunny sky. People were hurrying out of the garden, and some were regarding us askance and with frowns of disapproval. In a moment or two we were left alone.
"I have been indiscreet," said Charmides, "but I feel somehow in a rebellious mood; and indeed it has long seemed absurd to me that you should be unaware of the fact, and so obviously guileless! But I will speak no more of this to-day. People come and go here very strangely, and I have sometimes wondered if it would not soon be time for me to go; but it would be idle to pretend that I have not been happy here."
XI
What Charmides had told me filled me with great astonishment; it seemed to me strange that I had not perceived the truth before. It made me feel that I had somehow been wasting time. I was tempted to call Amroth to my side, but I remembered what he had said, and I determined to resist the impulse. I half expected to find that our strange talk, and the very obvious disapproval of our words, had made some difference to me. But it was not the case. I found myself treated with the same smiling welcome as before, and indeed with an added kind of gentleness, such as older people give to a child who has been confronted with some hard fact of life, such as a sorrow or an illness. This in a way disconcerted me; for in the moment when I had perceived the truth, there had come over me the feeling that I ought in some way to bestir myself to preach, to warn, to advise. But the idea of finding any sort of fault with these contented, leisurely, interested people, seemed to me absurd, and so I continued as before, half enjoying the life about me, and half bored by it. It seemed so ludicrous in any way to pity the inhabitants of the place, and yet I dimly saw that none of them could possibly continue there. But I soon saw that there was no question of advice, because I had nothing to advise. To ask them to be discontented, to suffer, to inquire, seemed as absurd as to ask a man riding comfortably in a carriage to get out and walk; and yet I felt that it was just that which they needed. But one effect the incident had; it somehow seemed to draw me more to Cynthia. There followed a time of very close companionship with her. She sought me out, she began to confide in me, chattering about her happiness and her delight in her surroundings, as a child might chatter, and half chiding me, in a tender and pretty way, for not being more at ease in the place. "You always seem to me," she said, "as if you were only staying here, while I feel as if I could live here for ever. Of course you are very kind and patient about it all, but you are not at home--and I don"t care a bit about your disapproval now." She talked to me much about Lucius, who seemed to have a great attraction for her. "He is all right," she said. "There is no nonsense about him,--we understand each other; I don"t get tired of him, and we like the same things. I seem to know exactly what he feels about everything; and that is one of the comforts of this place, that no one asks questions or makes mischief; one can do just as one likes all the time.
I did not think, when I was alive, that there could be anything so delightful as all this ahead of me."
"Do you never think--?" I began, but she put her hand to my lips, like a child, to stop me, and said, "No, I never think, and I never mean to think, of all the old hateful things. I never wilfully did any harm; I only liked the people who liked me, and gave them all they asked--and now I know that I did right, though in old days serious people used to try to frighten me. G.o.d is very good to me," she went on, smiling, "to allow me to be happy in my own way."
While we talked thus, sitting on a seat that overlooked the great city--I had never seen it look so stately and beautiful, so full of all that the heart could desire--Lucius himself drew near to us, smiling, and seated himself the other side of Cynthia. "Now is not this heavenly?" she said; "to be with the two people I like best--for you are a faithful old thing, you know--and not to be afraid of anything disagreeable or tiresome happening--not to have to explain or make excuses, what could be better?"
"Yes," said Lucius, "it is happy enough," and he smiled at me in a friendly way. "The pleasantest point is that one can _wait_ in this charming place. In the old days, one was afraid of a hundred things--money, weather, illness, criticism. One had to make love in a hurry, because one missed the beautiful hour; and then there was the horror of growing old. But now if Cynthia chooses to amuse herself with other people, what do I care? She comes back as delightful as ever, and it is only so much more to be amused about. One is not even afraid of being lazy, and as for those ugly twinges of what one called conscience--which were only a sort of rheumatism after all--that is all gone too; and the delight of finding that one was right after all, and that there were really no such things as consequences!"
I became aware, as Lucius spoke thus, in all his careless beauty, of a vague trouble of soul. I seemed to foresee a kind of conflict between myself and him. He felt it too, I was aware; for he drew Cynthia to him, and said something to her; and presently they went off laughing, like a pair of children, waving a farewell to me. I experienced a sense of desolation, knowing in my mind that all was not well, and yet feeling so powerless to contend with happiness so strong and wide.
XII
Presently I wandered off alone, and went out of the city with a sudden impulse. I thought I would go in the opposite direction to that by which I had entered it. I could see the great hills down which Cynthia and I had made our way in the dawn; but I had never gone in the further direction, where there stretched what seemed to be a great forest. The whole place lay bathed in a calm light, all unutterably beautiful. I wandered long by streams and wood-ends, every corner that I turned revealing new prospects of delight. I came at last to the edge of the forest, the mouths of little open glades running up into it, with fern and thorn-thickets. There were deer here browsing about the dingles, which let me come close to them and touch them, raising their heads from the gra.s.s, and regarding me with gentle and fearless eyes. Birds sang softly among the boughs, and even fluttered to my shoulder, as if pleased to be noticed. So this was what was called on earth the place of torment, a place into which it seemed as if nothing of sorrow or pain could ever intrude!
Just on the edge of the wood stood a little cottage, surrounded by a quiet garden, bees humming about the flowers, the scents of which came with a homely sweetness on the air. But here I saw something which I did not at first understand. This was a group of three people, a man and a woman and a boy of about seventeen, beside the cottage porch. They had a rustic air about them, and the same sort of leisurely look that all the people of the land wore. They were all three beautiful, with a simple and appropriate kind of beauty, such as comes of a contented sojourn in the open air. But I became in a moment aware that there was a disturbing element among them. The two elders seemed to be trying to persuade the boy, who listened smilingly enough, but half turned away from them, as though he were going away on some errand of which they did not approve.
They greeted me, as I drew near, with the same cordiality as one received everywhere, and the man said, "Perhaps you can help us, sir, for we are in a trouble?" The woman joined with a murmur in the request, and I said I would gladly do what I could; while I spoke, the boy watched me earnestly, and something drew me to him, because I saw a look that seemed to tell me that he was, like myself, a stranger in the place. Then the man said, "We have lived here together very happily a long time, we three--I do not know how we came together, but so it was; and we have been more at ease than words can tell, after hard lives in the other world; and now this lad here, who has been our delight, says that he must go elsewhere and cannot stay with us; and we would persuade him if we could; and perhaps you, sir, who no doubt know what lies beyond the fields and woods that we see, can satisfy him that it is better to remain."
While he spoke, the other two had drawn near to me, and the eyes of the woman dwelt upon the boy with a look of intent love, while the boy looked in my face anxiously and inquiringly. I could see, I found, very deep into his heart, and I saw in him a need for further experience, and a desire to go further on; and I knew at once that this could only be satisfied in one way, and that something would grow out of it both for himself and for his companions. So I said, as smilingly as I could, "I do not indeed know much of the ways of this place, but this I know, that we must go where we are sent, that no harm can befall us, and that we are never far away from those whom we love. I myself have lately been sent to visit this strange land; it seems only yesterday since I left the mountains yonder, and yet I have seen an abundance of strange and beautiful things; we must remember that here there is no sickness or misfortune or growing old; and there is no reason, as there often seemed to be on earth, why we should fight against separation and departure. No one can, I think, be hindered here from going where he is bound. So I believe that you will let the boy go joyfully and willingly, for I am sure of this, that his journey holds not only great things for himself, but even greater things for both of you in the future. So be content and let him depart."
At this the woman said, "Yes, that is right, the stranger is right, and we must hinder the child no longer. No harm can come of it, but only good; perhaps he will return, or we may follow him, when the day comes for that."
I saw that the old man was not wholly satisfied with this. He shook his head and looked sadly on the boy; and then for a time we sat and talked of many things. One thing that the old man said surprised me very greatly. He seemed to have lived many lives, and always lives of labour; he had grown, I gathered from his simple talk, to have a great love of the earth, the lives of flocks and herds, and of all the plants that grew out of the earth or flourished in it. I had thought before, in a foolish way, that all this might be put away from the spirit, in the land where there was no need of such things; but I saw now that there was a claim for labour, and a love of common things, which did not belong only to the body, but was a real desire of the spirit. He spoke of the pleasures of tending cattle, of cutting f.a.gots in the forest woodland among the copses, of ploughing and sowing, with the breath of the earth about one; till I saw that the toil of the world, which I had dimly thought of as a thing which no one would do if they were not obliged, was a real instinct of the spirit, and had its counterpart beyond the body. I had supposed indeed that in a region where all troublous accidents of matter were over and done with, and where there was no need of bodily sustenance, there could be nothing which resembled the old weary toil of the body; but now I saw gladly that this was not so, and that the primal needs of the spirit outlast the visible world. Though my own life had been spent mostly among books and things of the mind, I knew well the joys of the countryside, the blossoming of the orchard-close, the high-piled granary, the brightly-painted waggon loaded with hay, the creaking of the cider-press, the lowing of cattle in the stall, the stamping of horses in the stable, the mud-stained implements hanging in the high-roofed, cobwebbed barn. I had never known why I loved these things so well, and had invented many fancies to explain it; but now I saw that it was the natural delight in work and increase; and that the love which surrounded all these things was the sign that they were real indeed, and that in no part of life could they be put away. And then there came on me a sort of gentle laughter at the thought of how much of the religion of the world spent itself on bidding the heart turn away from vanities, and lose itself in dreams of wonders and doctrines, and what were called higher and holier things than barns and byres and sheep-pens. Yet the truth had been staring me in the face all the time, if only I could have seen it; that the sense of constraint and unreality that fell upon one in religious matters, when some curious and intricate matter was confusedly expounded, was perfectly natural and wholesome; and that the real life of man lay in the things to which one returned, on work-a-day mornings, with such relief--the acts of life, the work of homestead, library, barrack, office, and cla.s.s-room, the sight and sound of humanity, the smiles and glances and unconsidered words.
When we had sat together for a time, the boy made haste to depart. We three went with him to the edge of the wood, where a road pa.s.sed up among the oaks. The three embraced and kissed and said many loving words; and then to ease the anxieties of the two, I said that I would myself set the boy forward on his way, and see him well bestowed. They thanked me, and we went together into the wood, the two lovingly waving and beckoning, and the boy stepping blithely by my side.