Part 5

“I had not much room to think. I was taken from event to event, like a traveler. This matter that you speak of seemed out of place in every way at that time.”

Then I went on to say that my remissness was owing partly to a little real self-distrust, because I feared I was not the kind of believer to whom He would feel quickly drawn; that I felt afraid to propose such a preposterous thing as being brought into His presence; that I supposed, when He saw fit to reveal Himself to me, I should be summoned in some orderly way, suitable to this celestial community; that, in fact, though I had cherished this most sweet and solemn desire, I had not mentioned it before, not even to my own father who conducted me to this place.

“I have not spoken of it,” I said, “to any body but to you.”

The stranger’s face wore a remarkable expression when I said this, as if I had deeply gratified him; and there glittered from his entire form and features such brightness as well-nigh dazzled me. It was as if, where a lesser being would have spoken, or stirred, he shone. I felt as if I conversed with him by radiance, and that living light had become a vocabulary between us. I have elsewhere spoken of the quality of reflecting light as marked among the ordinary inhabitants of this new life; but in this case I was aware of a distinction, due, I thought, to the superior order of existence to which my friend belonged. He did not, like the others, reflect; he radiated glory. More and more, as we had converse together, this impressed, until it awed me. We remained together for a long time. People who met us, greeted the angel with marked reverence, and turned upon me glances of sympathetic delight; but no one interrupted us. We continued our walk into a more retired place, by the shore of a sea, and there we had deep communion.

My friend had inquired if I were still faint, and if I preferred to turn aside for food and rest; but when he asked me the question I was amazed to find that I no longer had the need of either. Such delight had I in his presence, such invigoration in his sympathy, that glorious recuperation had set in upon my earth-caused weariness. Such power had the soul upon the celestial body! Food for the first was force to the other.

It seemed to me that I had never known refreshment of either before; and that Heaven itself could contain no nutriment that would satisfy me after this upon which I fed in that high hour.

It is not possible for me to repeat the solemn words of that interview. We spoke of grave and sacred themes. He gave me great counsel and fine sympathy. He gave me affectionate rebuke and unfathomable resolve. We talked of those inner experiences which, on earth, the soul protects, like struggling flame, between itself and the sheltering hand of God. We spoke much of the Master, and of my poor hope that I might be permitted after I had been a long time in Heaven, to become worthy to see Him, though at the vast distance of my unworthiness. Of that unworthiness too, we spoke most earnestly; while we did so, the sense of it grew within me like a new soul; yet so divinely did my friend extend his tenderness to me, that I was strengthened far more than weakened by these finer perceptions of my unfitness, which he himself had aroused in me. The counsel that he gave me, Eternity could not divert out of my memory, and the comfort which I had from him I treasure to this hour. “Here,” I thought, “here, at last, I find reproof as gentle as sympathy, and sympathy as invigorating as reproof. Now, for the first time in all my life, I find myself truly understood. What could I not become if I possessed the friendship of such a being! How shall I develop myself so as to obtain it? How can I endure to be deprived of it? Is this too, like friendship on earth, a snatch, a compromise, a heart-ache, a mirror in which one looks only long enough to know that it is dashed away? Have I begun that old pain again, _here_?”

For I knew, as I sat in that solemn hour with my face to the sea and my soul with him, while sweeter than any song of all the waves of Heaven or earth to sea-lovers sounded his voice who did commune with me,--verily I knew, for then and forever, that earth had been a void to me because I had him not, and that Heaven could be no Heaven to me without him.

All which I had known of human love; all that I had missed; the dreams from which I had been startled; the hopes that had evaded me; the patience which comes from knowing that one may not even try not to be misunderstood; the struggle to keep a solitary heart sweet; the anticipation of desolate age which casts its shadow backward upon the dial of middle life; the paralysis of feeling which creeps on with its disuse; the distrust of one’s own atrophied faculties of loving; the sluggish wonder if one is ceasing to be lovable; the growing difficulty of explaining oneself even when it is necessary, because no one being more than any other cares for the explanation; the things which a lonely life converts into silence that cannot be broken, swept upon me like rapids, as, turning to look into his dazzling face, I said: “This--_all_ this he understands.”

But when, thus turning, I would have told him so, for there seemed to be no poor pride in Heaven, forbidding soul to tell the truth to soul,--when I turned, my friend had risen, and was departing from me, as swiftly and mysteriously as he came. I did not cry out to him to stay, for I felt ashamed; nor did I tell him how he had bereft me, for that seemed a childish folly. I think I only stood and looked at him.

“If there is any way of being worthy of your friendship,” I said below my breath, “I will have it, if I toil for half Eternity to get it.”

Now, though these words were scarcely articulate, I think he heard them, and turning, with a smile which will haunt my dreams and stir my deeds as long as I shall live, he laid his hand upon my head, and blessed me--but what he said I shall tell no man--and so departed from me, and I was left upon the shore alone, fallen, I think, in a kind of sleep or swoon.

When I awoke, I was greatly calmed and strengthened, but disinclined, at first, to move. I had the reaction from what I knew was the intensest experience of my life, and it took time to adjust my feelings to my thoughts.

A young girl came up while I sat there upon the sands, and employed herself in gathering certain marvelous weeds that the sea had tossed up. These weeds fed upon the air, as they had upon the water, remaining fresh upon the girl’s garments, which she decorated with them. She did not address me, but strolled up and down silently. Presently, feeling moved by the assurance of congeniality that one detects so much more quickly in Heaven than on earth, I said to the young girl:--

“Can you tell me the name of the angel--you must have met him--who has but just left me, and with whom I have been conversing?”

“Do you then truly not know?” she asked, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking off in the direction my friend had taken; then back again, with a fine, compassionate surprise at me.

“Indeed I know not.”

“That was the Master who spoke with you.”

“What did you _say_?”

“That was our Lord Himself.”

VIII.

After the experience related in the last chapter, I remained for some time in solitude. Speech seemed incoherence, and effort impossible. I needed a pause to adapt myself to my awe and my happiness; upon neither of which will it be necessary for me to dwell. Yet I think I may be understood if I say that from this hour I found that what we call Heaven had truly begun for me. Now indeed for the first time I may say that I believed without wonder in the life everlasting; since now, for the first time, I had a reason sufficient for the continuance of existence. A force like the cohesion of atoms held me to eternal hope. Brighter than the dawn of friendship upon a heart bereft, more solemn than the sunrise of love itself upon a life that had thought itself unloved, stole on the power of the Presence to which I had been admitted in so surprising, and yet, after all, how natural a way! Henceforth the knowledge that this experience might be renewed for me at any turn of thought or act, would illuminate joy itself, so that “it should have no need of the sun to lighten it.” I recalled these words, as one recalls a familiar quotation repeated for the first time on some foreign locality of which it is descriptive. Now I knew what he meant, who wrote: “The Lamb is the Light thereof.”

* * * * *

When I came to myself, I observed the young girl who had before addressed me still strolling on the shore. She beckoned, and I went to her, with a new meekness in my heart. What will He have me to do? If, by the lips of this young thing, He choose to instruct me, let me glory in the humility with which I will be a learner!

All things seemed to be so exquisitely ordered for us in this new life, all flowed so naturally, like one sound-wave into another, with ease so apparent, yet under law so superb, that already I was certain Heaven contained no accidents, and no trivialities; as it did no shocks or revolutions.

“If you like,” said the young girl, “we will cross the sea.”

“But how?” I asked, for I saw no boat.

“Can you not, then, walk upon the water yet?” she answered. “Many of us do, as He did once below. But we no longer call such things miracles. They are natural powers. Yet it is an art to use them. One has to learn it, as we did swimming, or such things, in the old times.”

“I have only been here a short time,” I said, half amused at the little celestial “airs” my young friend wore so sweetly. “I know but little yet. Can you teach me how to walk on water?”

“It would take so much time,” said the young girl, “that I think we should not wait for that. We go on to the next duty, now. You had better learn, I think, from somebody wiser than I. I will take you over another way.”

A great and beautiful shell, not unlike a nautilus, was floating near us, on the incoming tide, and my companion motioned to me to step into this. I obeyed her, laughing, but without any hesitation. “Neither shall there be any more death,” I thought as I glanced over the rose-tinted edges of the frail thing into the water, deeper than any I had ever seen, but unclouded, so that I looked to the bottom of the sea. The girl herself stepped out upon the waves with a practiced air, and lightly drawing the great shell with one hand, bore me after her, as one bears a sledge upon ice. As we came into mid-water we began to meet others, some walking, as she did, some rowing or drifting like myself. Upon the opposite shore uprose the outlines of a more thickly settled community than any I had yet seen.

Watching this with interest that deepened as we approached the shore, I selfishly or uncourteously forgot to converse with my companion, who did not disturb my silence until we landed. As she gave me her hand, she said in a quick, direct tone:

“Well, Miss Mary, I see that you do not know me, after all.”

I felt, as I had already done once or twice before, a certain social embarrassment (which in itself instructed me, as perpetuating one of the minor emotions of life below that I had hardly expected to renew) before my lovely guide, as I shook my head, struggling with the phantasmal memories evoked by her words. No, I did not know her.

“I am Marie Sauvée. I _hope_ you remember.”

She said these words in French. The change of language served instantly to recall the long train of impressions stored away, who knew how or where, about the name and memory of this girl.

“Marie Sauvée! _You_--HERE!” I exclaimed in her own tongue.

At the name, now, the whole story, like the bright side of a dark-lantern, flashed. It was a tale of sorrow and shame, as sad, perhaps, as any that it had been my lot to meet. So far as I had ever known, the little French girl, thrown in my way while I was serving in barracks at Washington, had baffled every effort I had made to win her affection or her confidence, and had gone out of my life as the thistle-down flies on the wind. She had cost me many of those precious drops of the soul’s blood which all such endeavor drains; and in the laboratory of memory I had labelled them, “Worse than Wasted,” and sadly wondered if I should do the same again for such another need, at just such hopeless expenditure, and had reminded myself that it was not good spiritual economy, and said that I would never repeat the experience, and known all the while that I should.

Now here, a spirit saved, shining as the air of Heaven, “without spot or any such thing”--here, wiser in heavenly lore than I, longer with Him than I, nearer to Him than I, dearer to Him, perhaps, than I--_here_ was Marie Sauvée.

“I do not know how to apologize,” I said, struggling with my emotion, “for the way in which I spoke to you just now. Why should you not be here? Why, indeed? Why am I here? Why”--

“Dear Miss Mary,” cried the girl, interrupting me passionately, “but for you it might never have been as it is. Or never for ages--I cannot say. I might have been a ghost, bound yet to the hated ghost of the old life. It was your doing, at the first--down there--all those years ago. Miss Mary, you were the first person I ever loved. You didn’t know it. I had no idea of telling you. But I did, I loved you. After you went away, I loved you; ever since then, I loved you. I said, I will be fit to love her before I die. And then I said, I will go where she is going, for I shall never get at her anywhere else. And when I entered this place--for I had no friend or relative here that I knew, to meet me--I was more frightened than it is possible for any one like you to understand, and wondered what place there could be for one like me in all this country, and how I could ever get accustomed to their ways, and whether I should shock and grieve them--you _can’t_ understand _that_; I dreaded it so, I was afraid I should swear after I got to Heaven; I was afraid I might say some evil word, and shame them all, and shame myself more than I could ever get over. I knew I wasn’t educated for any such society. I knew there wasn’t anything in me that would be at home here, but just”--

“But just what, Marie?” I asked, with a humility deeper than I could have expressed.

“But just my love for you, Miss Mary. That was all. I had nothing to come to Heaven on, but loving you and meaning to be a better girl because I loved you. That was truly all.”

“That is impossible!” I said quickly. “Your love for me never brought you here of itself alone. You are mistaken about this. It is neither Christianity nor philosophy.”

“There is no mistake,” persisted the girl, with gentle obstinacy, smiling delightedly at my dogmatism, “I came here because I loved you. Do you not see? In loving you, I loved--for the first time in my life I loved--goodness. I really did. And when I got to this place, I found out that goodness was the same as God. And I had been getting the love of God into my heart, all that time, in that strange way, and never knew how it was with me, until--Oh, Miss Mary, who do you think it was, WHO, that met me within an hour after I died?”

“It was our Master,” she added in an awe-struck, yet rapturous whisper, that thrilled me through. “It was He Himself. He was the first, for I had nobody, as I told you, belonging to me in this holy place, to care for a wretch like me.--_He_ was the first to meet _me_! And it was He who taught me everything I had to learn. It was He who made me feel acquainted and at home. It was He who took me on from love of you, to love of Him, as you put one foot after another in learning to walk after you have had a terrible sickness. And it was _He_ who never reminded me--never once reminded me--of the sinful creature I had been. Never, by one word or look, from that hour to this day, has He let me feel ashamed in Heaven. That is what _He_ is!” cried the girl, turning upon me, in a little sudden, sharp way she used to have; her face and form were so transfigured before me, as she spoke, that it seemed as if she quivered with excess of light, and were about to break away and diffuse herself upon the radiant air, like song, or happy speech, or melting color.

“Die for Him!” she said after a passionate silence. “If I could die everlastingly and everlastingly and everlastingly, to give Him any pleasure, or to save Him any pain-- But then, that’s nothing,” she added, “I love Him. That is all that means.--And I’ve only got to live everlastingly instead. That is the way He has treated me--_me_!”

IX.

The shore upon which we had landed was thickly populated, as I have said. Through a sweep of surpassingly beautiful suburbs, we approached the streets of a town. It is hard to say why I should have been surprised at finding in this place the signs of human traffic, philanthropy, art, and study--what otherwise I expected, who can say? My impressions, as Marie Sauvée led me through the city, had the confusion of sudden pleasure. The width and shining cleanliness of the streets, the beauty and glittering material of the houses, the frequent presence of libraries, museums, public gardens, signs of attention to the wants of animals, and places of shelter for travelers such as I had never seen in the most advanced and benevolent of cities below,--these were the points that struck me most forcibly.

The next thing, which in a different mood might have been the first that impressed me was the remarkable expression of the faces that I met or passed. No thoughtful person can have failed to observe, in any throng, the preponderant look of unrest and dissatisfaction in the human eye. Nothing, to a fine vision, so emphasizes the isolation of being, as the faces of people in a crowd. In this new community to which I had been brought, that old effect was replaced by a delightful change. I perceived, indeed, great intentness of purpose here, as in all thickly-settled regions; the countenances that passed me indicated close conservation of social force and economy of intellectual energy; these were people trained by attrition with many influences, and balanced with the conflict of various interests. But these were men and women, busy without hurry, efficacious without waste; they had ambition without unscrupulousness, power without tyranny, success without vanity, care without anxiety, effort without exhaustion,--hope, fear, toil, uncertainty it seemed, elation it was sure--but a repose that it was impossible to call by any other name than divine, controlled their movements, which were like the pendulum of a golden clock whose works are out of sight. I watched these people with delight. Great numbers of them seemed to be students, thronging what we should call below colleges, seminaries, or schools of art, or music, or science. The proportion of persons pursuing some form of intellectual acquisition struck me as large. My little guide, to whom I mentioned this, assented to the fact, pointing out to me a certain institution we had passed, at which she herself was, she said, something like a primary scholar, and from which she had been given a holiday to meet me as she did, and conduct me through the journey that had been appointed for me on that day. I inquired of her what her studies might be like; but she told me that she was hardly wise enough as yet to explain to me what I could learn for myself when I had been longer in this place, and when my leisure came for investigating its attractions at my own will.

“I am uncommonly ignorant, you know,” said Marie Sauvée humbly, “I have everything to learn. There is book knowledge and thought knowledge and soul knowledge, and I have not any of these. I was as much of what you used to call a heathen, as any Fiji-Islander you gave your missionaries to. I have so much to learn, that I am not sent yet upon other business such as I should like.”

Upon my asking Marie Sauvée what business this might be, she hesitated. “I have become ambitious in Heaven,” she answered slowly. “I shall never be content till I am fit to be sent to the worst woman that can be found--no matter which side of death--I don’t care in what world--I want to be sent to one that nobody else will touch; I think I might know how to save her. It is a tremendous ambition!” she repeated. “Preposterous for the greatest angel there is here! And yet I--_I_ mean to do it.”

I was led on in this way by Marie Sauvée, through and out of the city into the western suburbs; we had approached from the east, and had walked a long distance. There did not occur to me, I think, till we had made the circuit of the beautiful town, one thing, which, when I did observe it, struck me as, on the whole, the most impressive that I had noticed. “I have not seen,” I said, stopping suddenly, “I have not seen a poor person in all this city.”

“Nor an aged one, have you?” asked Marie Sauvée, smiling.

“Now that I think of it,--no. Nor a sick one. Not a beggar. Not a cripple. Not a mourner. Not--and yet what have we here? This building, by which you are leading me, bears a device above the door, the last I should ever have expected to find _here_.”

It was an imposing building, of a certain translucent material that had the massiveness of marble, with the delicacy of thin agate illuminated from within. The rear of this building gave upon the open country, with a background of hills, and the vision of the sea which I had crossed. People strolled about the grounds, which had more than the magnificence of Oriental gardens. Music came from the building, and the saunterers, whom I saw, seemed nevertheless not to be idlers, but persons busily employed in various ways--I should have said, under the close direction of others who guided them. The inscription above the door of this building was a word, in a tongue unknown to me, meaning “Hospital,” as I was told.

“They are the sick at heart,” said Marie Sauvée, in answer to my look of perplexity, “who are healed there. And they are the sick of soul; those who were most unready for the new life; they whose spiritual being was diseased through inaction, _they_ are the invalids of Heaven. There they are put under treatment, and slowly cured. With some, it takes long. I was there myself when I first came, for a little; it will be a most interesting place for you to visit, by-and-by.”

I inquired who were the physicians of this celestial sanitarium.

“They who unite the natural love of healing to the highest spiritual development.”

“By no means, then, necessarily they who were skilled in the treatment of diseases on earth?” I asked, laughing.

“Such are oftener among the patients,” said Marie Sauvée sadly. To me, so lately from the earth, and our low earthly way of finding amusement in facts of this nature, this girl’s gravity was a rebuke. I thanked her for it, and we passed by the hospital--which I secretly made up my mind to investigate at another time--and so out into the wider country, more sparsely settled, but it seemed to me more beautiful than that we had left behind.

“There,” I said, at length, “is to my taste the loveliest spot we have seen yet. That is the most homelike of all these homes.”