Chapter 14

I think that sometimes on earth the arrival of a first child is a very trying time for a wedded pair. The husband is apt to find his wife's love almost withdrawn from him, and to see her nourishing all kinds of jealousies and vague ambitions for her child. Paternity is apt to be a very bewildered and often rather dramatic emotion. But it was not so with us. The child seemed the very thing we had been needing without knowing it. It was a constant source of interest and delight; and in spite of Cynthia's attempts to keep it ignorant and even fatuous, it did develop a very charming intelligence, or rather, as I soon saw, began to perceive what it already knew. It soon overwhelmed us with questions, and used to patter about the garden with me, airing all sorts of delicious and absurd fancies. But, for all that, it did seem to make an end of the first utter closeness of our love. Cynthia after this seldom went far afield, and I ranged the hills and woods alone; but it was all absurdly and continuously happy, though I began to wonder how long it could last, and whether my faculties and energies, such as they were, could continue thus unused. And I had, too, in my mind that other scene which I had beheld, of how the boy was withdrawn from the two old people in the other valley. Was it always thus, I wondered? Was it so, that souls were drawn upwards in ceaseless pilgrimage, loving and passing on, and leaving in the hearts of those who stayed behind a longing unassuaged, which was presently to draw them onwards from the peace which they loved perhaps too well?

XXX

The serene life came all to an end very suddenly, and with no warning. One day I had been sitting with Cynthia, and the child was playing on the floor with some little things--stones, bits of sticks, nuts--which it had collected. It was a mysterious game too, accompanied with much impressive talk and gesticulations, much emphatic lecturing of recalcitrant pebbles, with interludes of unaccountable laughter. We had been watching the child, when Cynthia leaned across to me and said:

"There is something in your mind, dear, which I cannot quite see into. It has been there for a long time, and I have not liked to ask you about it. Won't you tell me what it is?"

"Yes, of course," I said; "I will tell you anything I can."

"It has nothing to do with me," said Cynthia, "nor with the child; it is about yourself, I think; and it is not altogether a happy thought."

"It is not unhappy," I said, "because I am very happy and very well-content. It is just this, I think. You know, don't you, how I was being employed, before I came back, God be praised, to find you? I was being trained, very carefully and elaborately trained, I won't say to help people, but to be of use in a way. Well, I have been wondering why all that was suspended and cut short, just when I seemed to be finishing my training. I have been much happier here than I ever was before, of course. Indeed I have been so happy that I have sometimes thought it almost wrong that any one should have so much to enjoy. But I am puzzled, because the other work seems thrown away. If you wonder whether I want to leave our life here and go back to the other, of course I do not; but I have felt idle, and like a boy turned down from a high class at school to a low one."

"That is not very complimentary to me!" said Cynthia, laughing. "Suppose we say a boy who has been working too hard for his health, and has been given a long holiday?"

"Yes," I said, "that is better. It is as if a clerk was told that he need not attend his office, but stay at home; and though it is pleasant enough, he feels as if he ought to be at his work, that he appreciates his home all the more when he can't sit reading the paper all the morning, and that he does not love his home less, but rather more, because he is away all the day."

"Yes," said Cynthia, "that is sensible enough; and I am amazed sometimes that you can be so good and patient about it all--so content to be so much with me and baby here; but I don't think it is quite--what shall I say?--quite healthy either!"

"Well," I said, "I have no wish to change; and here, I am glad to think, there is never any doubt about what one is meant to do."

And so the subject dropped.

How little I thought then that this was to be the end of the old scene, and that the curtain was to draw up so suddenly upon a new one.

But the following morning I had been wandering contentedly enough in the wood, watching the shafts of light strike in among the trees, upon the glittering fronds of the ferns, and thinking idly of all my strange experiences. I came home, and to my surprise, as I came to the door, I heard talk going on inside. I went hastily in, and saw that Cynthia was not alone. She was sitting, looking very grave and serious, and wonderfully beautiful--her beauty had grown and increased in a marvellous way of late. And there were two men, one sitting in a chair near her and regarding her with a look of love; it was Lucius; and I saw at a glance that he was strangely changed. He had the same spirited and mirthful look as of old, but there was something there which I had never seen before--the look of a man who had work of his own, and had learned something of the perplexity and suffering of responsibility. The other was Amroth, who was looking at the two with an air of irrepressible amusement. When I entered, Lucius rose, and Amroth said to me:

"Here I am again, you see, and wondering whether you can regain the pleasure you once were kind enough to take in my company?"

"What nonsense!" I said rather shamefacedly. "How often have I blushed in secret to think of that awful remark. But I was rather harried, you must admit."

Amroth came across to me and put his arm through mine.

"I forgive you," he said, "and I will admit that I was very provoking; but things were in a mess, and, besides, it was very inconvenient for me to be called away at that moment from my job!"

But Lucius came up to me and said:

"I have come to apologise to you. My behaviour was hideous and horrible. I won't make any excuses, and I don't suppose you can ever forget what I did. I was utterly and entirely in the wrong."

"Thank you, Lucius," I said. "But please say no more about it. My own behaviour on that occasion was infamous too. And really we need not go back on all that. The whole affair has become quite an agreeable reminiscence. It is a pleasure, when it is all over, to have been thoroughly and wholesomely shown up, and to discover that one has been a pompous and priggish ass. And you and Amroth between you did me that blessed turn. I am not quite sure which of you I hated most. But I may say one thing, and that is that I am heartily glad to see you have left the land of delight."

"It was a tedious place really," said Lucius, "but one felt bound in honour to make the best of it. But indeed after that day it was horrible. And I wearied for a sight of Cynthia! But you seem to have done very well for yourselves here. May I venture to say frankly how well she is looking, and you too? But I am not going to interrupt you. I have got my billet, I am thankful to say. It is not a very exalted one, but it is better than I deserve; and I shall try to make up for wasted time."

"Hear, hear!" said Amroth; "a very creditable sentiment, to be sure!"

Lucius smiled and blushed. Then he said:

"I never was much of a hand at expressing myself correctly; but you know what I mean. Don't take the wind out of my sails!"

And then Amroth turned to me, and said suddenly:

"And now I have something else to tell you, and not wholly good news; so I will just say it at once, without beating about the bush. You are to come with us too."

Cynthia looked up suddenly with a glance of pale inquiry. Amroth took her hand.

"No, dear child," he said, "you are not to accompany him. You must stay here awhile, until the child is grown. But don't look like that! There is no such thing as separation here, or anywhere. Don't make it harder for us all. It is unpleasant of course; but, good heavens, what would become of us all if it were not for that! How dull we should be without suffering!"

"Yes, yes," said Cynthia, "I know--and I will say nothing against it. But--" and she burst into tears.

"Come, come," said Amroth cheerfully, "we must not go back to the old days, and behave as if there were partings and funerals. I will give you five minutes alone to say good-bye. Lucius, we must start," and, turning to me, he said, "Meet us in five minutes by the oak-tree in the road."

They went out, Lucius kissing Cynthia's hand in silence.

Cynthia came up to me and put her arms round my neck and her cheek to mine. We sobbed, I fear, like two children.

"Don't forget me, dearest," she said.

"My darling, what a word!" I said.

"Oh, how happy we have been together!" she said.

"Yes, and shall be happier still," I said.

And then with more words and signs of love, too sacred even to be written down, we parted. It was over. I looked back once, and saw my darling gather the child to her heart, and look up once more at me. Then I closed the door; something seemed to surge up in my heart and overwhelm me; and then the ring on my finger sent a sharp pang through my whole frame, which recalled me to myself. And I say it with all the strength of my spirit, I saw how joyful a thing it was to suffer and grieve. I came down to the oak. The two were waiting in silence, and Lucius seemed to be in tears. Amroth put his arm through mine.

"Come, brother," he said, "that was a bad business; I won't pretend otherwise; but these things had better come swiftly."

"Yes," said Lucius, "but it is a cruel affair, and I can't say otherwise. Why cannot God leave us alone?"

"Lucius," said Amroth very gravely, "here you may say and think as you will--and the thoughts of the heart are best uttered. But one must not blaspheme."

"No, no," said Lucius, "I was wrong. I ought not to have spoken so. And indeed I know in my heart that somehow, far off, it is well. But I was thinking," he said, turning to me, and grasping my hand in both of his own, "not of you, but of Cynthia. I am glad with all my heart that you took her from me, and have made her happy. But what miserable creatures we all are; and how much more miserable we should be if we were not miserable!"

And then we started. It was a dreary hour that, full of deep and gnawing pain. I pictured to myself Cynthia at every moment, what she was doing and thinking; how swiftly the good days had flown; how perfectly happy I had been; and so my wretched silent reverie went on.

"I must say," said Amroth at length, breaking a dismal silence, "that this is very tedious. Can't you take some interest? I have very disagreeable things to do, but that is no reason why I should be bored as well!" And he then set himself to talk with much zest of all my old friends and companions, telling me how each was faring. Charmides, it seemed, had become a very accomplished architect and designer; Philip was a teacher at the College. And he went on until, in spite of my heaviness, I felt the whole of life beginning to widen and vibrate all about me, and a sense almost of shame creeping into my mind that I had become so oblivious of all the other friendships and relations I had formed. I forced myself to talk and to ask questions, and found myself walking more briskly. It was not very long before we parted with Lucius. He was left at the doors of a great barrack-like like building, and Amroth told me he was to be employed as an officer, very much in the same way as the young man who was sent to conduct me away from the trial; and I felt what a good officer Lucius would make--smart, prompt, polite, and not in the least sentimental.

So we went on together rather gloomily; and then Amroth let me look for a little deep into his heart; and I saw that it was filled with a kind of noble pity for me in my suffering; but behind the pity lay that blissful certainty which made Amroth so light-hearted, that it was just so, through suffering, that one became wise; and he could no more think of it as irksome or sad than a jolly undergraduate thinks of the training for a race or the rowing in the race as painful, but takes it all with a kind of high-hearted zest, and finds even the nervousness an exciting thing, life lived at high pressure in a crowded hour.

XXXI

And thus we came ourselves to a new place, though I took but little note of all we passed, for my mind was bent inward upon itself and upon Cynthia. The place was a great solid stone building, in many courts, with fine tree-shaded fields all about; a school, it seemed to me, with boys and girls going in and out, playing games together. Amroth told me that children were bestowed here who had been of naturally fine and frank dispositions, but who had lived their life on earth under foul and cramped conditions, by which they had been fretted rather than tainted. It seemed a very happy and busy place. Amroth took me into a great room that seemed a sort of library or common-room. There was no one there, and I was glad to sit and rest; when suddenly the door opened, and a man came in with outstretched hands and a smile of welcome. I looked up, and it was none but the oldest and dearest friend of my last life, who had died before me. He had been a teacher, a man of the simplest and most guileless life, whose whole energy and delight was given to teaching and loving the young. The surprising thing about him had always been that he could meet one, after a long silence or a suspension of intercourse, as simply and easily as if one had but left him the day before; and it was just the same here. There was no effusiveness of greeting--we just fell at once into the old familiar talk.

"You are just the same," I said to him, looking at the burly figure, the big, almost clumsy, head, and the irradiating smile. His great charm had always been an entire unworldliness and absence of ambition.

He smiled at this and said:

"Yes, I am afraid I am too easy-going." He had never cared to talk about himself, and now he said, "Well, yes, I go along in my old prosy way. It is just like the old schooldays, with half the difficulties gone. Of course the children are not always good, but that makes it the more amusing; and one can see much more easily what they are thinking of and dreaming about."

I found myself telling him my adventures, which he heard with the same quiet attention and I was sure that he would never forget a single point--he never forgot anything in the old days.

"Yes," he said at the end, "that's a wonderful story. You always had the trouble of the adventures, and I had the fun of hearing them."

He asked me what I was now going to do, and I said that I had not the least idea.

"Oh, that will be all right," he said.

It was all so comfortable and simple, so obvious indeed, that I laughed to think of the bitter and miserable reveries I had indulged in when he was taken from me, and when the stay of my life seemed gone. The whole incident seemed to give me back a touch of the serenity which I had lost, and I saw how beautifully this joy of meeting had been planned for me, when I wanted it most. Presently he said that he must go off for a lesson, and asked me to come with him and see the children. We went into a big class-room, where some boys and girls were assembling. Here he was exactly the same as ever; no sentiment, but just a kind of bluff paternal kindness. The lesson was most informal--a good deal of questioning and answering; it was a biographical lecture, but devoted, I saw, in a simple way, to tracing the development of the hero's character. "What made him do that?" was a constant question. The answers were most ingenious and extraordinarily lively; but the order was perfect. At the end he called up two or three children who had shown some impatience or jealousy in the lesson, and said a few half-humorous words to them, with an air of affectionate interest.

"They are jolly little creatures," he said when they had all gone out.

"Yes," I said, with a sigh, "I do indeed envy you. I wish I could be set to something of the kind."

"Oh, no, you don't," he said; "this is too simple for you! You want something more artistic and more psychological. This would bore you to extinction."

We walked all round the place, saw the games going on, and were presently joined by Amroth, who seemed to be on terms of old acquaintanceship with my friend. I was surprised at this, and he said:

"Why, yes, Amroth had the pleasure of bringing me here too. Things are done here in groups, you know; and Amroth knows all about our lot. It is very well organised, much better than one perceives at first. You remember how you and I drifted to school together, and the set of boys we found ourselves with--my word, what young ruffians some of us were! Well, of course all that had been planned, though we did not know it."

"What!" said I; "the evil as well as the good?"

The two looked at each other and smiled.

"That is not a very real distinction," said Amroth. "Of course the poor bodies got in the way, as always; there was some fizzing and some precipitation, as they say in chemistry. But you each of you gave and received just what you were meant to give and receive; though these are complicated matters, like the higher mathematics; and we must not talk of them to-day. If one can escape the being shocked at things and yet be untainted by them, and, on the other hand, if one can avoid pomposity and yet learn self-respect, that is enough. But you are tired to-day, and I want you just to rest and be refreshed."

Presently Amroth asked me if I should like to stay there awhile, and I most willingly consented.

"You want something to do," he said, "and you shall have some light employment."

That same day, before Amroth left me, I had a curious talk with him.

I said to him: "Let me ask you one question. I had always had a sort of hope that when I came to the land of spirits, I should have a chance of seeing and hearing something of some of the great souls of earth. I had dimly imagined a sort of reception, where one could wander about and listen to the talk of the men one had admired and longed to see--Plato, let me say, and Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Shelley--some of the immortals. But I don't seem to have seen anything of them--only just ordinary and simple people."

Amroth laughed.

"You do say the most extraordinarily ingenuous things," he said. "In the first place, of course, we have quite a different scale of values here. People do not take rank by their accomplishments, but by their power of loving. Many of the great men of earth--and this is particularly the case with writers and artists--are absolutely nothing here. They had, it is true, a fine and delicate brain, on which they played with great skill; but half the artists of the world are great as artists, simply because they do not care. They perceive and they express; but they would not have the heart to do it at all, if they really cared. Some of them, no doubt, were men of great hearts, and they have their place and work. But to claim to see all the highest spirits together is as absurd as if you called on a doctor in London at eleven o'clock and expected to meet all the great physicians at his house, intent on general conversation. Some of the great people, indeed, you have met, and they were very simple persons on earth. The greatest person you have hitherto seen was a butler on earth--the master of your College. And if it does not shock your aristocratic susceptibilities too much, the President of this place kept a small shop in a country village. But one of the teachers here was actually a marquis in the world! Does that uplift you? He teaches the little girls how to play cricket, and he is a very good dancer. Perhaps you would like to be introduced to him?"

"Don't treat me as a child," I said, rather pettishly.

"No, no," said Amroth, "it isn't that. But you are one of those impressible people; and they always find it harder to disentangle themselves from the old ideas."

I spent a long and happy time in the school. I was given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. Imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. They were not angelic children at all, neither meek nor mild. But they were generous and affectionate, and it was easy to evoke these feelings. The one thing absent from the whole place was any touch of sentimentality, which arises from natural affections suppressed into a giggling kind of secrecy. They expressed affection loudly and frankly, just as they expressed indignation and annoyance. All the while I kept Cynthia in my heart; she was ever before me in a thousand sweet postures and with innumerable glances. But I saw much of my sturdy and wholesome-minded old friend; and the sore pain of parting faded away out of my heart, and left me with nothing but the purest and deepest love, which helped me in all I did or said, and made me patient and tender-hearted. And thus the period sped not unhappily away, though I had my times of agony and despair.

XXXII

I became aware at this time, very gradually and even solemnly, that some crisis of my life was approaching. How the monition came to me I hardly know; I felt like a man wandering in the dark, with eyes strained and hands outstretched, who is dimly aware of some great object, tree or haystack or house, looming up ahead of him, which he cannot directly see, but of which he is yet conscious by the vibration of some sixth sense. The wonder came by degrees to overshadow my thoughts with a sense of expectant awe, and to permeate all the urgent concerns of my life with its shadowy presence. Even the thought of Cynthia, who indeed was always in my mind, became obscured with the dimness of this obscure anticipation.

One day Amroth stood beside me as I worked; he was very grave and serious, but with a joyful kind of courage about him. I pushed my books and papers away, and rose to greet him, saying half-unconsciously, and just putting my thought into words:

"So it has come!"

"Yes," said Amroth, "it has come! I have known it for some little time, and my thought has mingled with yours. I tell you frankly that I did not quite expect it; but one never knows here. You must come with me at once. You are to see the last mystery; and though I am glad for your sake that it is come, yet I tremble for you, because it is unlike any other experience; and one can never be the same again."

I felt myself oppressed by a sudden terror of darkness, but, half to reassure myself, I answered lightly:

"But it does not seem to have affected you, Amroth! You are always light-hearted and cheerful, and not overshadowed by any dark or gloomy thoughts."

"Yes, yes," said Amroth hurriedly. "It is easy enough, when it is once over. Nothing that is behind one matters; but this is a thing that one cannot jest about. Of course there is nothing to fear; but to be brought face to face with the greatest thing in the world is not a light matter. Let me say this. I am to be with you all through; and my only word to you is that you must do exactly what I tell you, and at once, without any doubting or flinching. Then all will be well! But we must not delay. Come at once, and keep your mind perfectly quiet."