Part 5

He stood still for a moment and turned and looked at me. His eyes seemed to melt my soul. A great cloud passed over them, as in the pleasant earth a cloud will sweep across the moon; and then the light came out and looked at me again. For neither did he know. Where he was going all might end in despair and double and double pain. But if it were possible that at the end there should be found that for which he longed, upon which his heart was set! He said with a faltering voice--‘Among all whom I have questioned and seen there was but one who found the way. But if one has found it, so may I. If you will not come, yet let me go.’

‘They will tear you limb from limb--they will burn you in the endless fires,’ I said. But what is it to be torn limb from limb, or burned with fire? There came upon his face a smile, and in my heart even I laughed to scorn what I had said.

‘If I were dragged every nerve apart, and every thought turned into a fiery dart--and that is so,’ he said; ‘yet will I go, if but, perhaps, I may see Love at the end.’

‘There is no love!’ I cried again, with a sharp and bitter cry; and the echo seemed to come back and back from every side, No love! no love! till the man who was my friend faltered and stumbled like a drunken man; but afterwards he recovered strength and resumed his way.

And thus once more we went on. On the right hand was that city, growing ever clearer, with noble towers rising up to the sky, and battlements and lofty roofs, and behind a yellow clearness, as of a golden sunset. My heart drew me there; it sprang up in my breast and sang in my ears, Come, and Come. Myself invited me to this new place as to a home. The others were wretched, but this will be happy: delights and pleasures will be there. And before us the way grew dark with storms, and there grew visible among the mists a black line of mountains, perpendicular cliffs, and awful precipices, which seemed to bar the way. I turned from that line of gloomy heights, and gazed along the path to where the towers stood up against the sky. And presently my hand dropped by my side, that had been held in my companion’s hand; and I saw him no more.

I went on to the city of the evening light. Ever and ever, as I proceeded on my way, the sense of haste and restless impatience grew upon me, so that I felt myself incapable of remaining long in a place, and my desire grew stronger to hasten on and on; but when I entered the gates of the city this longing vanished from my mind. There seemed some great festival or public holiday going on there. The streets were full of pleasure-parties, and in every open place (of which there were many) were bands of dancers, and music playing; and the houses about were hung with tapestries and embroideries and garlands of flowers. A load seemed to be taken from my spirit when I saw all this--for a whole population does not rejoice in such a way without some cause. And to think that, after all I had found a place in which I might live and forget the misery and pain which I had known, and all that was behind me, was delightful to my soul. It seemed to me that all the dancers were beautiful and young, their steps went gaily to the music, their faces were bright with smiles. Here and there was a master of the feast, who arranged the dances and guided the musicians, yet seemed to have a look and smile for new-comers too. One of these came forward to meet me, and received me with a welcome, and showed me a vacant place at a table, on which were beautiful fruits piled up in baskets, and all the provisions for a meal. ‘You were expected, you perceive,’ he said. A delightful sense of well-being came into my mind. I sat down in the sweetness of ease after fatigue, of refreshment after weariness, of pleasant sounds and sights after the arid way. I said to myself that my past experiences had been a mistake, that this was where I ought to have come from the first, that life here would be happy, and that all intruding thoughts must soon vanish and die away.

After I had rested, I strolled about, and entered fully into the pleasures of the place. Wherever I went, through all the city, there was nothing but brightness and pleasure, music playing, and flags waving, and flowers and dancers and everything that was most gay. I asked several people whom I met what was the cause of the rejoicing; but either they were too much occupied with their own pleasures, or my question was lost in the hum of merriment, the sound of the instruments and of the dancers’ feet. When I had seen as much as I desired of the pleasure out of doors, I was taken by some to see the interiors of houses, which were all decorated for this festival, whatever it was--lighted up with curious varieties of lighting, in tints of different colours. The doors and windows were all open, and whosoever would could come in from the dance or from the laden tables, and sit down where they pleased and rest, always with a pleasant view out upon the streets, so that they should lose nothing of the spectacle. And the dresses, both of women and men, were beautiful in form and colour, made in the finest fabrics, and affording delightful combinations to the eye. The pleasure which I took in all I saw and heard was enhanced by the surprise of it, and by the aspect of the places from which I had come, where there was no regard to beauty nor anything lovely or bright. Before my arrival here I had come in my thoughts to the conclusion that life had no brightness in these regions, and that whatever occupation or study there might be, pleasure had ended and was over, and everything that had been sweet in the former life. I changed that opinion with a sense of relief, which was more warm even than the pleasure of the present moment; for having made one such mistake, how could I tell that there were not more discoveries awaiting me, that life might not prove more endurable, might not rise to something grander and more powerful? The old prejudices, the old foregone conclusion of earth that this was a world of punishment, had warped my vision and my thoughts. With so many added faculties of being, incapable of fatigue as we were, incapable of death, recovering from every wound or accident as I had myself done, and with no foolish restraint as to what we should or should not do, why might not we rise in this land to strength unexampled, to the highest powers? I rejoiced that I had dropped my companion’s hand, that I had not followed him in his mad quest. Some time, I said to myself, I would make a pilgrimage to the foot of those gloomy mountains, and bring him back, all racked and tortured as he was, and show him the pleasant place which he had missed.

In the meantime the music and the dance went on. But it began to surprise me a little that there was no pause, that the festival continued without intermission. I went up to one of those who seemed the masters of ceremony, directing what was going on. He was an old man, with a flowing robe of brocade, and a chain and badge which denoted his office. He stood with a smile upon his lips, beating time with his hand to the music, watching the figure of the dance.

‘I can get no one to tell me,’ I said, ‘what the occasion of all this rejoicing is.’

‘It is for your coming,’ he replied, without hesitation, with a smile and a bow.

For the moment a wonderful elation came over me. ‘For my coming!’ But then I paused and shook my head. ‘There are others coming besides me. See! they arrive every moment.’

‘It is for their coming too,’ he said, with another smile and a still deeper bow; ‘but you are the first as you are the chief.’

This was what I could not understand; but it was pleasant to hear, and I made no further objection. ‘And how long will it go on?’ I said.

‘So long as it pleases you,’ said the old courtier.

How he smiled! His smile did not please me. He saw this, and distracted my attention. ‘Look at this dance,’ he said; ‘how beautiful are those round young limbs! Look how the dress conceals yet shows the form and beautiful movements! It was invented in your honour. All that is lovely is for you. Choose where you will, all is yours. We live only for this: all is for you.’ While he spoke, the dancers came nearer and nearer till they circled us round, and danced and made their pretty obeisances, and sang: ‘All is yours; all is for you:’ then breaking their lines floated away in other circles and processions and endless groups, singing and laughing till it seemed to ring from every side, ‘Everything is yours; all is for you.’

I accepted this flattery I know not why: for I soon became aware that I was no more than others, and that the same words were said to every new-comer. Yet my heart was elated, and I threw myself into all that was set before me. But there was always in my mind an expectation that presently the music and the dancing would cease, and the tables be withdrawn, and a pause come. At one of the feasts I was placed by the side of a lady very fair and richly dressed, but with a look of great weariness in her eyes. She turned her beautiful face to me, not with any show of pleasure, and there was something like compassion in her look. She said, ‘You are very tired,’ as she made room for me by her side.

‘Yes,’ I said, though with surprise, for I had not yet acknowledged that even to myself. ‘There is so much to enjoy. We have need of a little rest.’

‘Of rest,’ said she, shaking her head, ‘this is not the place for rest.’

‘Yet pleasure requires it,’ I said, ‘as much as----’ I was about to say pain; but why should one speak of pain in a place given up to pleasure? She smiled faintly and shook her head again. All her movements were languid and faint; her eyelids drooped over her eyes. Yet, when I turned to her, she made an effort to smile. ‘I think you are also tired,’ I said.

At this she roused herself a little. ‘We must not say so: nor do I say so. Pleasure is very exacting. It demands more of you than anything else. One must be always ready----’

‘For what?’

‘To give enjoyment, and to receive it.’ There was an effort in her voice to rise to this sentiment, but it fell back into weariness again.

‘I hope you receive as well as give,’ I said.

The lady turned her eyes to me with a look which I cannot forget, and life seemed once more to be roused within her. But not the life of pleasure: her eyes were full of loathing, and fatigue, and disgust, and despair. ‘Are you so new to this place,’ she said, ‘and have not learned even yet what is the height of all misery and all weariness: what is worse than pain and trouble, more dreadful than the lawless streets and the burning mines, and the torture of the great hall and the misery of the lazar-house----’

‘Oh, lady,’ I said, ‘have you been there?’

She answered me with her eyes alone; there was no need of more. ‘But pleasure is more terrible than all,’ she said; and I knew in my heart that what she said was true.

There is no record of time in that place. I could not count it by days or nights: but soon after this it happened to me that the dances and the music became no more than a dizzy maze of sound and sight, which made my brain whirl round and round; and I too loathed what was spread on the table, and the soft couches, and the garlands, and the fluttering flags and ornaments. To sit for ever at a feast, to see for ever the merry-makers turn round and round, to hear in your ears for ever the whirl of the music, the laughter, the cries of pleasure! There were some who went on and on, and never seemed to tire; but to me the endless round came at last to be a torture from which I could not escape. Finally, I could distinguish nothing--neither what I heard nor what I saw: and only a consciousness of something intolerable buzzed and echoed in my brain. I longed for the quiet of the place I had left; I longed for the noise in the streets, and the hubbub and tumult of my first experiences. Anything, anything rather than this! I said to myself; and still the dancers turned, the music sounded, the bystanders smiled, and everything went on and on. My eyes grew weary with seeing, and my ears with hearing. To watch the new-comers rush in, all pleased and eager, to see the eyes of the others glaze with weariness, wrought upon my strained nerves. I could not think, I could not rest, I could not endure. Music for ever and ever--a whirl, a rush of music, always going on and on; and ever that maze of movement, till the eyes were feverish and the mouth parched; ever that mist of faces, now one gleaming out of the chaos, now another, some like the faces of angels, some miserable, weary, strained with smiling, with the monotony, and the endless, aimless, never-changing round. I heard myself calling to them to be still--to be still! to pause a moment. I felt myself stumble and turn round in the giddiness and horror of that movement without repose. And finally, I fell under the feet of the crowd, and felt the whirl go over and over me, and beat upon my brain, until I was pushed and thrust out of the way lest I should stop the measure. There I lay, sick, satiate, for I know not how long; loathing everything around me, ready to give all I had (but what had I to give?) for one moment of silence. But always the music went on, and the dancers danced, and the people feasted, and the songs and the voices echoed up to the skies.

How at last I stumbled forth I cannot tell. Desperation must have moved me, and that impatience which, after every hope and disappointment, comes back and back, the one sensation that never fails. I dragged myself at last by intervals, like a sick dog, outside the revels, still hearing them, which was torture to me, even when at last I got beyond the crowd. It was something to lie still upon the ground, though without power to move, and sick beyond all thought, loathing myself and all that I had been and seen. For I had not even the sense that I had been wronged to keep me up, but only a nausea and horror of movement, a giddiness and whirl of every sense. I lay like a log upon the ground.

When I recovered my faculties a little, it was to find myself once more in the great vacant plain which surrounded that accursed home of pleasure--a great and desolate waste upon which I could see no track, which my heart fainted to look at, which no longer roused any hope in me, as if it might lead to another beginning, or any place in which yet at the last it might be possible to live. As I lay in that horrible giddiness and faintness, I loathed life and this continuance which brought me through one misery after another, and forbade me to die. Oh that death would come--death which is silent and still, which makes no movement and hears no sound! that I might end and be no more! Oh that I could go back even to the stillness of that chamber which I had not been able to endure! Oh that I could return--return! to what? to other miseries and other pain, which looked less because they were past. But I knew now that return was impossible until I had circled all the dreadful round; and already I felt again the burning of that desire that pricked and drove me on--not back, for that was impossible. Little by little I had learned to understand, each step printed upon my brain as with red-hot irons: not back, but on, and on. To greater anguish, yes; but on: to fuller despair, to experiences more terrible: but on, and on, and on. I arose again, for this was my fate. I could not pause even for all the teachings of despair.

The waste stretched far as eyes could see. It was wild and terrible, with neither vegetation nor sign of life. Here and there were heaps of ruin, which had been villages and cities; but nothing was in them save reptiles and crawling poisonous life, and traps for the unwary wanderer. How often I stumbled and fell among these ashes and dust-heaps of the past--through what dread moments I lay, with cold and slimy things leaving their trace upon my flesh--the horrors which seized me, so that I beat my head against a stone,--why should I tell? These were nought; they touched not the soul. They were but accidents of the way.

At length, when body and soul were low and worn out with misery and weariness, I came to another place, where all was so different from the last, that the sight gave me a momentary solace. It was full of furnaces and clanking machinery and endless work. The whole air round was aglow with the fury of the fires, and men went and came like demons in the flames, with red-hot melting metal, pouring it into moulds and beating it on anvils. In the huge workshops in the background there was a perpetual whir of machinery--of wheels turning and turning, and pistons beating, and all the din of labour, which for a time renewed the anguish of my brain, yet also soothed it; for there was meaning in the beatings and the whirlings. And a hope rose within me that with all the forces that were here, some revolution might be possible--something that would change the features of this place and overturn the worlds. I went from workshop to workshop, and examined all that was being done and understood--for I had known a little upon the earth, and my old knowledge came back, and to learn so much more filled me with new life. The master of all was one who never rested, nor seemed to feel weariness, nor pain, nor pleasure. He had everything in his hand. All who were there were his workmen, or his assistants, or his servants. No one shared with him in his councils. He was more than a prince among them--he was as a god. And the things he planned and made, and at which in armies and legions his workmen toiled and laboured, were like living things. They were made of steel and iron, but they moved like the brains and nerves of men. They went where he directed them, and did what he commanded, and moved at a touch. And though he talked little, when he saw how I followed all that he did, he was a little moved towards me, and spoke and explained to me the conceptions that were in his mind, one rising out of another, like the leaf out of the stem and the flower out of the bud. For nothing pleased him that he did, and necessity was upon him to go on and on.

‘They are like living things,’ I said--‘they do your bidding whatever you command them. They are like another and a stronger race of men.’

‘Men!’ he said, ‘what are men? the most contemptible of all things that are made--creatures who will undo in a moment what it has taken millions of years, and all the skill and all the strength of generations to do. These are better than men. They cannot think or feel. They cannot stop but at my bidding, or begin unless I will. Had men been made so, we should be masters of the world.’

‘Had men been made so, you would never have been--for what could genius have done or thought?--you would have been a machine like all the rest.’

‘And better so!’ he said, and turned away; for at that moment, watching keenly as he spoke the action of a delicate combination of movements, all made and balanced to a hair’s-breadth, there had come to him suddenly the idea of something which made it a hundredfold more strong and terrible. For they were terrible these things that lived yet did not live, which were his slaves, and moved at his will. When he had done this, he looked at me, and a smile came upon his mouth: but his eyes smiled not, nor ever changed from the set look they wore. And the words he spoke were familiar words, not his, but out of the old life. ‘What a piece of work is a man!’ he said; ‘how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?’ His mind had followed another strain of thought, which to me was bewildering, so that I did not know how to reply. I answered like a child, upon his last word.

‘We are dust no more,’ I cried, for pride was in my heart--pride of him and his wonderful strength, and his thoughts which created strength, and all the marvels he did--‘those things which hindered are removed. Go on, go on--you want but another step. What is to prevent that you should not shake the universe, and overturn this doom, and break all our bonds? There is enough here to explode this gray fiction of a firmament, and to rend those precipices and to dissolve that waste--as at the time when the primeval seas dried up, and those infernal mountains rose.’

He laughed and the echoes caught the sound and gave it back as if they mocked it. ‘There is enough to rend us all into shreds,’ he said, ‘and shake, as you say, both heaven and earth, and these plains and those hills.’

‘Then why,’ I cried in my haste, with a dreadful hope piercing through my soul--‘why do you create and perfect, but never employ? When we had armies on the earth we used them. You have more than armies. You have force beyond the thoughts of man: but all without use as yet.’

‘All,’ he cried, ‘for no use! All in vain!--in vain!’

‘O master!’ I said, ‘great, and more great, in time to come. Why?--why?’

He took me by the arm and drew me close.

‘Have you strength,’ he said, ‘to bear it if I tell you why?’

I knew what he was about to say. I felt it in the quivering of my veins, and my heart that bounded as if it would escape from my breast. But I would not quail from what he did not shrink to utter. I could speak no word, but I looked him in the face and waited--for that which was more terrible than all.

He held me by the arm, as if he would hold me up when the shock of anguish came. ‘They are in vain,’ he said, ‘in vain--because God rules over all.’

His arm was strong; but I fell at his feet like a dead man.

How miserable is that image, and how unfit to use! Death is still and cool and sweet. There is nothing in it that pierces like a sword, that burns like fire, that rends and tears like the turning wheels. O life, O pain, O terrible name of God, in which is all succour and all torment! What are pangs and tortures to that, which ever increases in its awful power, and has no limit, nor any alleviation, but whenever it is spoken penetrates through and through the miserable soul? O God, whom once I called my Father! O Thou who gavest me being, against whom I have fought, whom I fight to the end, shall there never be anything but anguish in the sound of Thy great name?

When I returned to such command of myself as one can have who has been transfixed by that sword of fire, the master stood by me still. He had not fallen like me, but his face was drawn with anguish and sorrow like the face of my friend who had been with me in the lazar-house, who had disappeared on the dark mountains. And as I looked at him, terror seized hold upon me, and a desire to flee and save myself, that I might not be drawn after him by the longing that was in his eyes.

The master gave me his hand to help me to rise, and it trembled, but not like mine.

‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘have not we enough to bear? Is it for hatred, is it for vengeance, that you speak that name!’

‘O friend,’ he said, ‘neither for hatred nor revenge. It is like a fire in my veins: if one could find Him again----!’

‘You, who are as a god--who can make and destroy--you, who could shake His throne!’

He put up his hand. ‘I who am His creature, even here--and still His child, though I am so far, so far----’ He caught my hand in his, and pointed with the other trembling. ‘Look! your eyes are more clear than mine, for they are not anxious like mine. Can you see anything upon the way?’