Chapter 6

The old man made a comforting sort of little noise, half sympathetic and half deprecatory. "Yes, I know," said the old lady, "but I can't help thinking about him a great deal at this time of the year. I don't understand why he was taken away from us. He was always such a good boy--he would have been just like Charles, only handsomer--he was always handsomer and brighter; he had so much of your spirit! Not but what Charles has been the best of sons to us--I don't mean that--no one could be better or more easy to please! But Harry had a different way with him." Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away. "No," she added, "I won't fret about him. I daresay he is happier where he is--I am sure he is--and thinking of his mother too, my bonny boy, perhaps."

The old man got up, put his paper down, went across to the old lady, and gave her a kiss on the brow. "There, there," he said soothingly, "we may be sure it's all for the best;" and he stood looking down fondly at her. Amroth crossed the room and stood beside the pair, with a hand on the shoulder of each. I saw in an instant that there was an unmistakable likeness between the three; but the contrast of the marvellous brilliance and beauty of Amroth with the old, world-wearied, simple-minded couple was the most extraordinary thing to behold. "Yes, I feel better already," said the old lady, smiling; "it always does me good to say out what I am feeling, father; and then you are sure to understand."

The mist closed suddenly in upon the scene, and we were back in a moment in the garden with its porticoes, in the radiant, untroubled air. Amroth looked at me with a smile that was full, half of gaiety and half of tenderness. "There," he said, "what do you think of that? If all had gone well with me, as they say on earth, that is where I should be now, going down to the city with Charles. That is the prospect which to the dear old people seems so satisfactory compared with this! In that house I lay ill for some weeks, and from there my body was carried out. And they would have kept me there if they could--and I myself did not want to go. I was afraid. Oh, how I envied Charles going down to the city and coming back for tea, to read the magazines aloud or play backgammon. I am afraid I was not as nice as I should have been about all that--the evenings were certainly dull!"

"But what do you feel about it now?" I said. "Don't you feel sorry for the muddle and ignorance and pathos of it all? Can't something be done to show everybody what a ghastly mistake it is, to get so tied down to the earth and the things of earth?"

"A mistake?" said Amroth. "There is no such thing as a mistake. One cannot sorrow for their grief, any more than one can sorrow for the child who cries out in the tunnel and clasps his mother's hand. Don't you see that their grief and loss is the one beautiful thing in those lives, and all that it is doing for them, drawing them hither? Why, that is where we grow and become strong, in the hopeless suffering of love. I am glad and content that my own stay was made so brief. I wish it could be shortened for the three--and yet I do not, because they will gain so wonderfully by it. They are mounting fast; it is their very ignorance that teaches them. Not to know, not to perceive, but to be forced to believe in love, that is the point."

"Yes," I said, "I see that; but what about the lives that are broken and poisoned by grief, in a stupor of pain--or the souls that do not feel it at all, except as a passing shadow--what about them?"

"Oh," said Amroth lightly, "the sadder the dream the more blessed the awakening; and as for those who cannot feel--well, it will all come to them, as they grow older."

"Yes," I said, "it has done me good to see all this--it makes many things plain; but can you bear to leave them thus?"

"Leave them!" said Amroth. "Who knows but that I shall be sent to help them away, and carry them, as I carried you, to the crystal sea of peace? The darling mother, I shall be there at her awakening. They are old spirits, those two, old and wise; and there is a high place prepared for them."

"But what about Charles?" I said.

Amroth smiled. "Old Charles?" he said. "I must admit that he is not a very stirring figure at present. He is much immersed in his game of finance, and talks a great deal in his lighter moments about the commercial prospects of the Empire and the need of retaliatory tariffs. But he will outgrow all that! He is a very loyal soul, but not very adventurous just now. He would be sadly discomposed by an affection which came in between him and his figures. He would think he wanted a change--and he will have a thorough one, the good old fellow, one of these days. But he has a long journey before him."

"Well," I said, "there are some surprises here! I am afraid I am very youthful yet."

"Yes, dear child, you are very ingenuous," said Amroth, "and that is a great part of your charm. But we will find something for you to do before long! But here comes Charmides, to talk about the need of exquisite pulsations, and their symbolism--though I see a change in him too. And now I must go back to business. Take care of yourself, and I will be back to tea." And Amroth flashed away in a very cheerful mood.

XV

There were many things at that time that were full of mystery, things which I never came to understand. There was in particular a certain sort of people, whom one met occasionally, for whom I could never wholly account. They were unlike others in this fact, that they never appeared to belong to any particular place or community. They were both men and women, who seemed--I can express it in no other way--to be in the possession of a secret so great that it made everything else trivial and indifferent to them. Not that they were impatient or contemptuous--it was quite the other way; but to use a similitude, they were like good-natured, active, kindly elders at a children's party. They did not shun conversation, but if one talked with them, they used a kind of tender and gentle irony, which had something admiring and complimentary about it, which took away any sense of vexation or of baffled curiosity. It was simply as though their concern lay elsewhere; they joined in anything with a frank delight, not with any touch of condescension. They were even more kindly and affectionate than others, because they did not seem to have any small problems of their own, and could give their whole attention and thought to the person they were with. These inscrutable people puzzled me very much. I asked Amroth about them once.

"Who are these people," I said, "whom one sometimes meets, who are so far removed from all of us? What are they doing here?"

Amroth smiled. "So you have detected them!" he said. "You are quite right, and it does your observation credit. But you must find it out for yourself. I cannot explain, and if I could, you would not understand me yet."

"Then I am not mistaken," I said, "but I wish you would give me a hint--they seem to know something more worth knowing than all beside."

"Exactly," said Amroth. "You are very near the truth; it is staring you in the face; but it would spoil all if I told you. There is plenty about them in the old books you used to read--they have the secret of joy." And that is all that he would say.

It was on a solitary ramble one day, outside of the place of delight, that I came nearer to one of these people than I ever did at any other time. I had wandered off into a pleasant place of grassy glades with little thorn-thickets everywhere. I went up a small eminence, which commanded a view of the beautiful plain with its blue distance and the enamelled green foreground of close-grown coverts. There I sat for a long time lost in pleasant thought and wonder, when I saw a man drawing near, walking slowly and looking about him with a serene and delighted air. He passed not far from me, and observing me, waved a hand of welcome, came up the slope, and greeting me in a friendly and open manner, asked if he might sit with me for a little.

"This is a pleasant place," he said, "and you seem very agreeably occupied."

"Yes," I said, looking into his smiling face, "one has no engagements here, and no need of business to fill the time--but indeed I am not sure that I am busy enough." As I spoke I was regarding him with some curiosity. He was a man of mature age, with a strong, firm-featured face, healthy and sunburnt of aspect, and he was dressed, not as I was for ease and repose, but with the garments of a traveller. His hat, which was large and of some soft grey cloth, was pushed to his back, and hung there by a cord round his neck. His hair was a little grizzled, and lay close-curled to his head; in his strong and muscular hand he carried a stick. He smiled again at my words, and said:

"Oh, one need not trouble about being busy until the time comes; that is a feeling one inherits from the life of earth, and I am sure you have not left it long. You have a very fresh air about you, as if you had rested, and rested well."

"Yes, I have rested," I said; "but though I am content enough, there is something unquiet in me, I am afraid!"

"Ah!" he said, "there is that in all of us, and it would not be well with us if there were not. Will you tell me a little about yourself? That is one of the pleasures of this life here, that we have no need to be cautious, or to fear that we shall give ourselves away."

I told him my adventures, and he listened with serious attention.

"Ah, that is all very good," he said at last, "but you must not be in any hurry; it is a great thing that ideas should dawn upon us gradually--one gets the full truth of them so. It was the hurry of life which was so bewildering--the shocks, the surprises, the ugly reflections of one's conduct that one saw in other lives--the corners one had to turn. Things, indeed, come suddenly even here, but one is led up to them gently enough; allowed to enter the sea for oneself, not soused and ducked in it. You will need all the strength you can store up for what is before you, and I can see in your face that you are storing up strength--but the weariness is not quite gone out of your mind."

He was silent for a little, musing, till I said, "Will you not tell me some of your own adventures? I am sure from your look that you have them; and you are a pilgrim, it seems. Where are you bound?"

"Oh," he said lightly, "I am not one of the people who have adventures--just the journey and the talk beside the way."

"But," I said, "I have seen some others like you, and I am puzzled about it. You seem, if I may say so--I do not mean anything disrespectful or impertinent--to be like the gipsies whom one meets in quiet country places, with a secret knowledge of their own, a pride too great to be worth expressing, not anxious about life, not weary or dissatisfied, caring not for localities or possessions, but with a sort of eager pleasure in freedom and movement."

He laughed. "Yes," he said, "you are right! I am no doubt a sort of nomad, as you say, detached from life perhaps. I don't know that it is desirable; there is a great deal to be said for living in the same place and loving the same things. Most people are happier so, and learn what they have to learn in that manner."

"Yes," I said, "that is true and beautiful--the same old house, the same trees and pastures, the stream and the water-plants that hide it, the blue hills beyond the nearer wood--the dear familiar things; but even so the road which passes through the fields, over the bridge, up the covert-side ... it leads somewhere, and the heart on sunny days leaps up to follow it! Talking with you here, I feel a hunger for something wider and more free; your voice has the sound of the wind, with the secret knowledge of strange hill-tops and solitary seas! Sometimes the heart settles down upon what it knows and loves, but sometimes it reaches out to all the love and beauty hidden in the world, and in the waters beyond the world, and would embrace it all if it could. The faces one sees as one passes through unfamiliar cities or villages, how one longs to talk, to question, to ask what gave them the look they wear.... And you, if I may say it, seem to have passed beyond the need of wanting or desiring anything ... but I must not talk thus to a stranger; you must forgive me."

"Forgive you?" said the stranger; "that is only an earthly phrase--the old terror of indiscretion and caution. What are we here for but to get acquainted with one another--to let our inmost thoughts talk together? In the world we are bounded by time and space, and we have the terror of each other's glances and exteriors to contend with. We make friends on earth in spite of our limitations; but in heaven we get to know each other's hearts; and that blessing goes back with us to the dim fields and narrow houses of the earth. I see plainly enough that you are not perfectly happy; but one can only win content through discontent. Where you are now, you are not in accord with the souls about you. Never mind that! There are beautiful spirits within reach of your hand and heart; a little clouded by mistaking the quality of joy, no doubt, but great and everlasting for all that. You must try to draw near to them, and find spirits to love. Do you not remember in the days of earth how one felt sometimes in an unfamiliar place--among a gathering of strangers--at church perhaps, or at some school which one visited, where one saw the young faces, which showed so clearly, before the world had stamped itself in frowns and heaviness upon them, the quality of the soul within? Don't you remember the feeling at such times of how many there were in the world whom one might love, if one had leisure and opportunity and energy? Well, there is no need to resist that, or to deplore it here; one may go where one's will inclines one, and speak as one's heart tells one to speak. I think you are perhaps too conscious of waiting for something. Your task lies ahead of you, but the work of love can begin at once and anywhere."

"Yes," I said, "I feel that now and here. Will you not tell me something of yourself in return? I cannot read your mind clearly--it is occupied with something I cannot grasp--what is your work in heaven?"

"Oh," he said lightly, "that is easy enough, and yet you would not understand it. I have been led through the shadow of fear, and I have passed out on the other side. And my duty is to release others from fear, as far as I can. It is the darkest shadow of all, because it dwells in the unknown. Pain, without it, is no suffering at all; indeed pain is almost a pleasure, when one knows what it is doing for one. But fear is the doubt whether pain or suffering are really helping us; and just as memory never has any touch of fear about it, so hope may likewise have done with fear."

"But how did you learn this?" I said.

"Only by fearing to the uttermost," he replied. "The power--it is not courage, because that only defies fear--cannot be given one; it must be painfully won. You remember the blessing of the pure in heart, that they shall see God? There would be little hope in that promise for the soul that knew itself to be impure, if it were not for the other side of it--that the vision of God, which is the most terrible of all things, can give purity to the most sin-stained soul. In that vision, all desire and all fear have an end, because there is nothing left either to desire or to dread. That vision we may delay or hasten. We may delay it, if we allow our prudence, or our shame, or our comfort, to get in the way: we may hasten it, if we cast ourselves at every moment of our pilgrimage upon the mercy and the love of God. His one desire is that we should be satisfied; and if He seems to put obstacles in our way, to keep us waiting, to permit us to be miserable, that is only that we may learn to cast ourselves into love and service--which is the one way to His heart. But now I must be going, for I have said all that you can bear. Will you remember this--not to reserve yourself, not to think others unworthy or hostile, but to cast your love and trust freely and lavishly, everywhere and anywhere? We must gather nothing, hold on to nothing, just give ourselves away at every moment, flowing like the stream into every channel that is open, withholding nothing, retaining nothing. I see," he added, "very great and beautiful things ahead of you, and very sad and painful things as well. But you are close to the light, and it is breaking all about you with a splendour which you cannot guess."

He rose up, he took my hand in his own and laid the other on my brow, and I felt his heart go out to mine and gather me to him, as a child is gathered to a father's arms. And then he went silently and lightly upon his way.

XVI

The time moved on quietly enough in the land of delight. I made acquaintance with quite a number of the soft-voiced contented folk. Sometimes it interested me to see the change coming upon one or another, a wonder or a desire that made them sit withdrawn and abstracted, and breaking with a sort of effort out of the dreamful mood. Then they would leave us, sometimes quite suddenly, sometimes with courteous adieus. New-comers, too, kept arriving, to be made pleasantly at home. I found myself seeing more of Cynthia. She was much with Lucius, and they seemed as gay as ever, but I saw that she was sometimes puzzled. She said to me one day as we sat together, "I wish you would tell me what this is all about? I do not want to change it, and I am very happy, but isn't it all rather pointless? I believe you have some secret you are keeping from me." She was sitting close beside me, like a child, resting her head on my arm, and she took my hand in both of hers.

"No," I said, "I am keeping nothing from you, pretty child! I could not explain to you what is in my mind, and it would spoil your pleasure if I could. It is all right, and you will see in good time."

"I hate to be put off like that," she said. "You are not really interested in me; and you do not trust me; you do not care about the things I care about, and if you are so superior, you ought to explain to me why."

"Well," I said, "I will try to explain. Do you ever remember having been very happy in a place, and having been obliged to leave it, always hoping to return; and then when you did return, finding that, though nothing was changed, you were yourself changed, and could not, even if you would, have taken up the old life again?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, musing, "I remember that sort of thing happening once, about a house where I stayed as a child. It seemed so stupid and dull when I went back that I wondered how I could ever have really liked it."

"Well," I said, "it is the same sort of thing here. I am only here for a time, and though I do not know where I am going or when, I think I shall not be here much longer."

At this Cynthia did what she had never done before--she kissed me. Then she said, "Don't speak of such disagreeable things. I could not get on without you. You are so convenient, like a comfortable old arm-chair."

"What a compliment!" I said. "But you see that you don't like my explanation. Why trouble about it? You have plenty of time. Is Lucius like an arm-chair, too?"

"No," she said, "he is exciting, like a new necklace--and Charmides, he is exciting too, in a way, but rather too fine for me, like a ball-dress!"

"Yes," I said, "I noticed that your own taste in dress is different of late. This is a much simpler thing than what you came in."

"Oh, yes," she said, "it doesn't seem worth while to dress up now. I have made my friends, and I suppose I am getting lazy."

We said little more, but she did not seem inclined to leave me, and was more with me for a time. I actually heard her tell Lucius once that she was tired, at which he laughed, not very pleasantly, and went away.

But my own summons came to me so unexpectedly that I had but little time to make my farewell.

I was sitting once in a garden-close watching a curious act proceeding, which I did not quite understand. It looked like a religious ceremony; a man in embroidered robes was being conducted by some boys in white dresses through the long cloister, carrying something carefully wrapped up in his arms, and I heard what sounded like an antique hymn of a fine stiff melody, rapidly sung.

There had been nothing quite like this before, and I suddenly became aware that Amroth was beside me, and that he had a look of anger in his face. "You had better not look at this," he said to me; "it might not be very helpful, as they say."

"Am I to come with you?" I said. "That is well--but I should like to say a word to one or two of my friends here."

"No, not a word!" said Amroth quickly. He looked at me with a curious look, in which he seemed to be measuring my strength and courage. "Yes, that will do!" he added. "Come at once--don't be surprised--it will be different from what you expect."

He took me by the arm, and we hurried from the place; one or two of the people who stood by looked at us in lazy wonder. We walked in silence down a long alley, to a great gate that I had often passed in my strolls. It was a barred iron gate, of a very stately air, with high stone gateposts. I had never been able to find my outward way to this, and there was a view from it of enchanting beauty, blue distant woods and rolling slopes. Amroth came quickly to the gate, seemed to unlock it, and held it open for me to pass. "One word," he said with his most beautiful smile, his eyes flashing and kindling with some secret emotion, "whatever happens, do not be _afraid_! There is nothing whatever to fear, only be prepared and wait." He motioned me through, and I heard him close the gate behind me.

XVII

I was alone in an instant, and in terrible pain--pain not in any part of me, but all around and within me. A cold wind of a piercing bitterness seemed to blow upon me; but with it came a sense of immense energy and strength, so that the pain became suddenly delightful, like the stretching of a stiffened limb. I cannot put the pain into exact words. It was not attended by any horror; it seemed a sense of infinite grief and loss and loneliness, a deep yearning to be delivered and made free. I felt suddenly as though everything I loved had gone from me, irretrievably gone and lost. I looked round me, and I could discern through a mist the bases of some black and sinister rocks, that towered up intolerably above me; in between them were channels full of stones and drifted snow. Anything more stupendous than those black-ribbed crags, those toppling precipices, I had never seen. The wind howled among them, and sometimes there was a noise of rocks cast down. I knew in some obscure way that my path lay there, and my heart absolutely failed me. Instead of going straight to the rocks, I began to creep along the base to see whether I could find some easier track. Suddenly the voice of Amroth said, rather sharply, in my ear, "Don't be silly!" This homely direction, so peremptorily made, had an instantaneous effect. If he had said, "Be not faithless," or anything in the copybook manner, I should have sat down and resigned myself to solemn despair. But now I felt a fool and a coward as well.

So I addressed myself, like a dog who hears the crack of a whip, to the rocks.