“Mother, one couch next to Lona is empty: I know I am unworthy, but may I not sleep this night in your chamber with my dead? Will you not pardon both my cowardice and my self-confidence, and take me in? I give me up. I am sick of myself, and would fain sleep the sleep!”
“The couch next to Lona is the one already prepared for you,” she answered; “but something waits to be done ere you sleep.”
“I am ready,” I replied.
“How do you know you can do it?” she asked with a smile.
“Because you require it,” I answered. “What is it?”
She turned to Adam:
“Is he forgiven, husband?”
“From my heart.”
“Then tell him what he has to do.”
Adam turned to his daughter.
“Give me that hand, Mara, my child.”
She held it out to him in her lap. He took it tenderly.
“Let us go to the cottage,” he said to me; “there I will instruct you.”
As we went, again arose a sudden stormful blast, mingled with a great flapping on the roof, but it died away as before in a deep moan.
When the door of the death-chamber was closed behind us, Adam seated himself, and I stood before him.
“You will remember,” he said, “how, after leaving my daughter’s house, you came to a dry rock, bearing the marks of an ancient cataract; you climbed that rock, and found a sandy desert: go to that rock now, and from its summit walk deep into the desert. But go not many steps ere you lie down, and listen with your head on the sand. If you hear the murmur of water beneath, go a little farther, and listen again. If you still hear the sound, you are in the right direction. Every few yards you must stop, lie down, and hearken. If, listening thus, at any time you hear no sound of water, you are out of the way, and must hearken in every direction until you hear it again. Keeping with the sound, and careful not to retrace your steps, you will soon hear it louder, and the growing sound will lead you to where it is loudest: that is the spot you seek. There dig with the spade I will give you, and dig until you come to moisture: in it lay the hand, cover it to the level of the desert, and come home.—But give good heed, and carry the hand with care. Never lay it down, in what place of seeming safety soever; let nothing touch it; stop nor turn aside for any attempt to bar your way; never look behind you; speak to no one, answer no one, walk straight on.—It is yet dark, and the morning is far distant, but you must set out at once.”
He gave me the hand, and brought me a spade.
“This is my gardening spade,” he said; “with it I have brought many a lovely thing to the sun.”
I took it, and went out into the night.
It was very cold, and pitch-dark. To fall would be a dread thing, and the way I had to go was a difficult one even in the broad sunlight! But I had not set myself the task, and the minute I started I learned that I was left to no chance: a pale light broke from the ground at every step, and showed me where next to set my foot. Through the heather and the low rocks I walked without once even stumbling. I found the bad burrow quite still; not a wave arose, not a head appeared as I crossed it.
A moon came, and herself showed me the easy way: toward morning I was almost over the dry channels of the first branch of the river-bed, and not far, I judged, from Mara’s cottage.
The moon was very low, and the sun not yet up, when I saw before me in the path, here narrowed by rocks, a figure covered from head to foot as with a veil of moonlit mist. I kept on my way as if I saw nothing. The figure threw aside its veil.
“Have you forgotten me already?” said the princess—or what seemed she.
I neither hesitated nor answered; I walked straight on.
“You meant then to leave me in that horrible sepulchre! Do you not yet understand that where I please to be, there I am? Take my hand: I am alive as you!”
I was on the point of saying, “Give me your left hand,” but bethought myself, held my peace, and steadily advanced.
“Give me my hand,” she suddenly shrieked, “or I will tear you in pieces: you are mine!”
She flung herself upon me. I shuddered, but did not falter. Nothing touched me, and I saw her no more.
With measured tread along the path, filling it for some distance, came a body of armed men. I walked through them—nor know whether they gave way to me, or were bodiless things. But they turned and followed me; I heard and felt their march at my very heels; but I cast no look behind, and the sound of their steps and the clash of their armour died away.
A little farther on, the moon being now close to the horizon and the way in deep shadow, I descried, seated where the path was so narrow that I could not pass her, a woman with muffled face.
“Ah,” she said, “you are come at last! I have waited here for you an hour or more! You have done well! Your trial is over. My father sent me to meet you that you might have a little rest on the way. Give me your charge, and lay your head in my lap; I will take good care of both until the sun is well risen. I am not bitterness always, neither to all men!”
Her words were terrible with temptation, for I was very weary. And what more likely to be true! If I were, through slavish obedience to the letter of the command and lack of pure insight, to trample under my feet the very person of the Lady of Sorrow! My heart grew faint at the thought, then beat as if it would burst my bosom.
Nevertheless my will hardened itself against my heart, and my step did not falter. I took my tongue between my teeth lest I should unawares answer, and kept on my way. If Adam had sent her, he could not complain that I would not heed her! Nor would the Lady of Sorrow love me the less that even she had not been able to turn me aside!
Just ere I reached the phantom, she pulled the covering from her face: great indeed was her loveliness, but those were not Mara’s eyes! no lie could truly or for long imitate them! I advanced as if the thing were not there, and my foot found empty room.
I had almost reached the other side when a Shadow—I think it was The Shadow, barred my way. He seemed to have a helmet upon his head, but as I drew closer I perceived it was the head itself I saw—so distorted as to bear but a doubtful resemblance to the human. A cold wind smote me, dank and sickening—repulsive as the air of a charnel-house; firmness forsook my joints, and my limbs trembled as if they would drop in a helpless heap. I seemed to pass through him, but I think now that he passed through me: for a moment I was as one of the damned. Then a soft wind like the first breath of a new-born spring greeted me, and before me arose the dawn.
My way now led me past the door of Mara’s cottage. It stood wide open, and upon the table I saw a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. In or around the cottage was neither howl nor wail.
I came to the precipice that testified to the vanished river. I climbed its worn face, and went on into the desert. There at last, after much listening to and fro, I determined the spot where the hidden water was loudest, hung Lilith’s hand about my neck, and began to dig. It was a long labour, for I had to make a large hole because of the looseness of the sand; but at length I threw up a damp spadeful. I flung the sexton-tool on the verge, and laid down the hand. A little water was already oozing from under its fingers. I sprang out, and made haste to fill the grave. Then, utterly fatigued, I dropped beside it, and fell asleep.
When I woke, the ground was moist about me, and my track to the grave was growing a quicksand. In its ancient course the river was swelling, and had begun to shove at its burden. Soon it would be roaring down the precipice, and, divided in its fall, rushing with one branch to resubmerge the orchard valley, with the other to drown perhaps the monster horde, and between them to isle the Evil Wood. I set out at once on my return to those who sent me.
When I came to the precipice, I took my way betwixt the branches, for I would pass again by the cottage of Mara, lest she should have returned: I longed to see her once more ere I went to sleep; and now I knew where to cross the channels, even if the river should have overtaken me and filled them. But when I reached it, the door stood open still; the bread and the water were still on the table; and deep silence was within and around it. I stopped and called aloud at the door, but no voice replied, and I went my way.
A little farther, I came where sat a grayheaded man on the sand, weeping.
“What ails you, sir?” I asked. “Are you forsaken?”
“I weep,” he answered, “because they will not let me die. I have been to the house of death, and its mistress, notwithstanding my years, refuses me. Intercede for me, sir, if you know her, I pray you.”
“Nay, sir,” I replied, “that I cannot; for she refuses none whom it is lawful for her to receive.”
“How know you this of her? You have never sought death! you are much too young to desire it!”
“I fear your words may indicate that, were you young again, neither would you desire it.”
“Indeed, young sir, I would not! and certain I am that you cannot.”
“I may not be old enough to desire to die, but I am young enough to desire to live indeed! Therefore I go now to learn if she will at length take me in. You wish to die because you do not care to live: she will not open her door to you, for no one can die who does not long to live.”
“It ill becomes your youth to mock a friendless old man. Pray, cease your riddles!”
“Did not then the Mother tell you something of the same sort?”
“In truth I believe she did; but I gave little heed to her excuses.”
“Ah, then, sir,” I rejoined, “it is but too plain you have not yet learned to die, and I am heartily grieved for you. Such had I too been but for the Lady of Sorrow. I am indeed young, but I have wept many tears; pardon me, therefore, if I presume to offer counsel:—Go to the Lady of Sorrow, and ‘take with both hands’ * what she will give you. Yonder lies her cottage. She is not in it now, but her door stands open, and there is bread and water on her table. Go in; sit down; eat of the bread; drink of the water; and wait there until she appear. Then ask counsel of her, for she is true, and her wisdom is great.”
He fell to weeping afresh, and I left him weeping. What I said, I fear he did not heed. But Mara would find him!
The sun was down, and the moon unrisen, when I reached the abode of the monsters, but it was still as a stone till I passed over. Then I heard a noise of many waters, and a great cry behind me, but I did not turn my head.
Ere I reached the house of death, the cold was bitter and the darkness dense; and the cold and the darkness were one, and entered into my bones together. But the candle of Eve, shining from the window, guided me, and kept both frost and murk from my heart.
The door stood open, and the cottage lay empty. I sat down disconsolate.
And as I sat, there grew in me such a sense of loneliness as never yet in my wanderings had I felt. Thousands were near me, not one was with me! True, it was I who was dead, not they; but, whether by their life or by my death, we were divided! They were alive, but I was not dead enough even to know them alive: doubt WOULD come. They were, at best, far from me, and helpers I had none to lay me beside them!
Never before had I known, or truly imagined desolation! In vain I took myself to task, saying the solitude was but a seeming: I was awake, and they slept—that was all! it was only that they lay so still and did not speak! they were with me now, and soon, soon I should be with them!
I dropped Adam’s old spade, and the dull sound of its fall on the clay floor seemed reverberated from the chamber beyond: a childish terror seized me; I sat and stared at the coffin-door.—But father Adam, mother Eve, sister Mara would soon come to me, and then—welcome the cold world and the white neighbours! I forgot my fears, lived a little, and loved my dead.
Something did move in the chamber of the dead! There came from it what was LIKE a dim, far-off sound, yet was not what I knew as sound. My soul sprang into my ears. Was it a mere thrill of the dead air, too slight to be heard, but quivering in every spiritual sense? I KNEW without hearing, without feeling it!
The something was coming! it drew nearer! In the bosom of my desertion awoke an infant hope. The noiseless thrill reached the coffin-door—became sound, and smote on my ear.
The door began to move—with a low, soft creaking of its hinges. It was opening! I ceased to listen, and stared expectant.
It opened a little way, and a face came into the opening. It was Lona’s. Its eyes were closed, but the face itself was upon me, and seemed to see me. It was white as Eve’s, white as Mara’s, but did not shine like their faces. She spoke, and her voice was like a sleepy night-wind in the grass.
“Are you coming, king?” it said. “I cannot rest until you are with me, gliding down the river to the great sea, and the beautiful dream-land. The sleepiness is full of lovely things: come and see them.”
“Ah, my darling!” I cried. “Had I but known!—I thought you were dead!”
She lay on my bosom—cold as ice frozen to marble. She threw her arms, so white, feebly about me, and sighed—
“Carry me back to my bed, king. I want to sleep.”
I bore her to the death-chamber, holding her tight lest she should dissolve out of my arms. Unaware that I saw, I carried her straight to her couch.
“Lay me down,” she said, “and cover me from the warm air; it hurts—a little. Your bed is there, next to mine. I shall see you when I wake.”
She was already asleep. I threw myself on my couch—blessed as never was man on the eve of his wedding.
“Come, sweet cold,” I said, “and still my heart speedily.”
But there came instead a glimmer of light in the chamber, and I saw the face of Adam approaching. He had not the candle, yet I saw him. At the side of Lona’s couch, he looked down on her with a questioning smile, and then greeted me across it.
“We have been to the top of the hill to hear the waters on their way,” he said. “They will be in the den of the monsters to-night.—But why did you not await our return?”
“My child could not sleep,” I answered.
“She is fast asleep!” he rejoined.
“Yes, now!” I said; “but she was awake when I laid her down.”
“She was asleep all the time!” he insisted. “She was perhaps dreaming about you—and came to you?”
“She did.”
“And did you not see that her eyes were closed?”
“Now I think of it, I did.”
“If you had looked ere you laid her down, you would have seen her asleep on the couch.”
“That would have been terrible!”
“You would only have found that she was no longer in your arms.”
“That would have been worse!”
“It is, perhaps, to think of; but to see it would not have troubled you.”
“Dear father,” I said, “how is it that I am not sleepy? I thought I should go to sleep like the Little Ones the moment I laid my head down!”
“Your hour is not quite come. You must have food ere you sleep.”
“Ah, I ought not to have lain down without your leave, for I cannot sleep without your help! I will get up at once!”
But I found my own weight more than I could move.
“There is no need: we will serve you here,” he answered. “—You do not feel cold, do you?”
“Not too cold to lie still, but perhaps too cold to eat!”
He came to the side of my couch, bent over me, and breathed on my heart. At once I was warm.
As he left me, I heard a voice, and knew it was the Mother’s. She was singing, and her song was sweet and soft and low, and I thought she sat by my bed in the dark; but ere it ceased, her song soared aloft, and seemed to come from the throat of a woman-angel, high above all the region of larks, higher than man had ever yet lifted up his heart. I heard every word she sang, but could keep only this:—
“Many a wrong, and its curing song;Many a road, and many an inn;Room to roam, but only one homeFor all the world to win!”
and I thought I had heard the song before.
Then the three came to my couch together, bringing me bread and wine, and I sat up to partake of it. Adam stood on one side of me, Eve and Mara on the other.
“You are good indeed, father Adam, mother Eve, sister Mara,” I said, “to receive me! In my soul I am ashamed and sorry!”
“We knew you would come again!” answered Eve.
“How could you know it?” I returned.
“Because here was I, born to look after my brothers and sisters!” answered Mara with a smile.
“Every creature must one night yield himself and lie down,” answered Adam: “he was made for liberty, and must not be left a slave!”
“It will be late, I fear, ere all have lain down!” I said.
“There is no early or late here,” he rejoined. “For him the true time then first begins who lays himself down. Men are not coming home fast; women are coming faster. A desert, wide and dreary, parts him who lies down to die from him who lies down to live. The former may well make haste, but here is no haste.”
“To our eyes,” said Eve, “you were coming all the time: we knew Mara would find you, and you must come!”
“How long is it since my father lay down?” I asked.
“I have told you that years are of no consequence in this house,” answered Adam; “we do not heed them. Your father will wake when his morning comes. Your mother, next to whom you are lying,——”
“Ah, then, it IS my mother!” I exclaimed.
“Yes—she with the wounded hand,” he assented; “—she will be up and away long ere your morning is ripe.”
“I am sorry.”
“Rather be glad.”
“It must be a sight for God Himself to see such a woman come awake!”
“It is indeed a sight for God, a sight that makes her Maker glad! He sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied!—Look at her once more, and sleep.”
He let the rays of his candle fall on her beautiful face.
“She looks much younger!” I said.
“She IS much younger,” he replied. “Even Lilith already begins to look younger!”
I lay down, blissfully drowsy.
“But when you see your mother again,” he continued, “you will not at first know her. She will go on steadily growing younger until she reaches the perfection of her womanhood—a splendour beyond foresight. Then she will open her eyes, behold on one side her husband, on the other her son—and rise and leave them to go to a father and a brother more to her than they.”
I heard as one in a dream. I was very cold, but already the cold caused me no suffering. I felt them put on me the white garment of the dead. Then I forgot everything. The night about me was pale with sleeping faces, but I was asleep also, nor knew that I slept.
I grew aware of existence, aware also of the profound, the infinite cold. I was intensely blessed—more blessed, I know, than my heart, imagining, can now recall. I could not think of warmth with the least suggestion of pleasure. I knew that I had enjoyed it, but could not remember how. The cold had soothed every care, dissolved every pain, comforted every sorrow. COMFORTED? Nay; sorrow was swallowed up in the life drawing nigh to restore every good and lovely thing a hundredfold! I lay at peace, full of the quietest expectation, breathing the damp odours of Earth’s bountiful bosom, aware of the souls of primroses, daisies and snowdrops, patiently waiting in it for the Spring.
How convey the delight of that frozen, yet conscious sleep! I had no more to stand up! had only to lie stretched out and still! How cold I was, words cannot tell; yet I grew colder and colder—and welcomed the cold yet more and more. I grew continuously less conscious of myself, continuously more conscious of bliss, unimaginable yet felt. I had neither made it nor prayed for it: it was mine in virtue of existence! and existence was mine in virtue of a Will that dwelt in mine.
Then the dreams began to arrive—and came crowding.—I lay naked on a snowy peak. The white mist heaved below me like a billowy sea. The cold moon was in the air with me, and above the moon and me the colder sky, in which the moon and I dwelt. I was Adam, waiting for God to breathe into my nostrils the breath of life.—I was not Adam, but a child in the bosom of a mother white with a radiant whiteness. I was a youth on a white horse, leaping from cloud to cloud of a blue heaven, hasting calmly to some blessed goal. For centuries I dreamed—or was it chiliads? or only one long night?—But why ask? for time had nothing to do with me; I was in the land of thought—farther in, higher up than the seven dimensions, the ten senses: I think I was where I am—in the heart of God.—I dreamed away dim cycles in the centre of a melting glacier, the spectral moon drawing nearer and nearer, the wind and the welter of a torrent growing in my ears. I lay and heard them: the wind and the water and the moon sang a peaceful waiting for a redemption drawing nigh. I dreamed cycles, I say, but, for aught I knew or can tell, they were the solemn, æonian march of a second, pregnant with eternity.
Then, of a sudden, but not once troubling my conscious bliss, all the wrongs I had ever done, from far beyond my earthly memory down to the present moment, were with me. Fully in every wrong lived the conscious I, confessing, abjuring, lamenting the dead, making atonement with each person I had injured, hurt, or offended. Every human soul to which I had caused a troubled thought, was now grown unspeakably dear to me, and I humbled myself before it, agonising to cast from between us the clinging offence. I wept at the feet of the mother whose commands I had slighted; with bitter shame I confessed to my father that I had told him two lies, and long forgotten them: now for long had remembered them, and kept them in memory to crush at last at his feet. I was the eager slave of all whom I had thus or anyhow wronged. Countless services I devised to render them! For this one I would build such a house as had never grown from the ground! for that one I would train such horses as had never yet been seen in any world! For a third I would make such a garden as had never bloomed, haunted with still pools, and alive with running waters! I would write songs to make their hearts swell, and tales to make them glow! I would turn the forces of the world into such channels of invention as to make them laugh with the joy of wonder! Love possessed me! Love was my life! Love was to me, as to him that made me, all in all!
Suddenly I found myself in a solid blackness, upon which the ghost of light that dwells in the caverns of the eyes could not cast one fancied glimmer. But my heart, which feared nothing and hoped infinitely, was full of peace. I lay imagining what the light would be when it came, and what new creation it would bring with it—when, suddenly, without conscious volition, I sat up and stared about me.
The moon was looking in at the lowest, horizontal, crypt-like windows of the death-chamber, her long light slanting, I thought, across the fallen, but still ripening sheaves of the harvest of the great husbandman.—But no; that harvest was gone! Gathered in, or swept away by chaotic storm, not a sacred sheaf was there! My dead were gone! I was alone!—In desolation dread lay depths yet deeper than I had hitherto known!—Had there never been any ripening dead? Had I but dreamed them and their loveliness? Why then these walls? why the empty couches? No; they were all up! they were all abroad in the new eternal day, and had forgotten me! They had left me behind, and alone! Tenfold more terrible was the tomb its inhabitants away! The quiet ones had made me quiet with their presence—had pervaded my mind with their blissful peace; now I had no friend, and my lovers were far from me! A moment I sat and stared horror-stricken. I had been alone with the moon on a mountain top in the sky; now I was alone with her in a huge cenotaph: she too was staring about, seeking her dead with ghastly gaze! I sprang to my feet, and staggered from the fearful place.
The cottage was empty. I ran out into the night.
No moon was there! Even as I left the chamber, a cloudy rampart had risen and covered her. But a broad shimmer came from far over the heath, mingled with a ghostly murmuring music, as if the moon were raining a light that plashed as it fell. I ran stumbling across the moor, and found a lovely lake, margined with reeds and rushes: the moon behind the cloud was gazing upon the monsters’ den, full of clearest, brightest water, and very still.—But the musical murmur went on, filling the quiet air, and drawing me after it.
I walked round the border of the little mere, and climbed the range of hills. What a sight rose to my eyes! The whole expanse where, with hot, aching feet, I had crossed and recrossed the deep-scored channels and ravines of the dry river-bed, was alive with streams, with torrents, with still pools—“a river deep and wide”! How the moon flashed on the water! how the water answered the moon with flashes of its own—white flashes breaking everywhere from its rock-encountered flow! And a great jubilant song arose from its bosom, the song of new-born liberty. I stood a moment gazing, and my heart also began to exult: my life was not all a failure! I had helped to set this river free!—My dead were not lost! I had but to go after and find them! I would follow and follow until I came whither they had gone! Our meeting might be thousands of years away, but at last—AT LAST I should hold them! Wherefore else did the floods clap their hands?
I hurried down the hill: my pilgrimage was begun! In what direction to turn my steps I knew not, but I must go and go till I found my living dead! A torrent ran swift and wide at the foot of the range: I rushed in, it laid no hold upon me; I waded through it. The next I sprang across; the third I swam; the next I waded again.
I stopped to gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash and flow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music. Every now and then some incipient air would seem about to draw itself clear of the dulcet confusion, only to merge again in the consorted roar. At moments the world of waters would invade as if to overwhelm me—not with the force of its seaward rush, or the shouting of its liberated throng, but with the greatness of the silence wandering into sound.
As I stood lost in delight, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned, and saw a man in the prime of strength, beautiful as if fresh from the heart of the glad creator, young like him who cannot grow old. I looked: it was Adam. He stood large and grand, clothed in a white robe, with the moon in his hair.
“Father,” I cried, “where is she? Where are the dead? Is the great resurrection come and gone? The terror of my loneliness was upon me; I could not sleep without my dead; I ran from the desolate chamber.—Whither shall I go to find them?”
“You mistake, my son,” he answered, in a voice whose very breath was consolation. “You are still in the chamber of death, still upon your couch, asleep and dreaming, with the dead around you.”
“Alas! when I but dream how am I to know it? The dream best dreamed is the likest to the waking truth!”
“When you are quite dead, you will dream no false dream. The soul that is true can generate nothing that is not true, neither can the false enter it.”
“But, sir,” I faltered, “how am I to distinguish betwixt the true and the false where both alike seem real?”
“Do you not understand?” he returned, with a smile that might have slain all the sorrows of all his children. “You CANNOT perfectly distinguish between the true and the false while you are not yet quite dead; neither indeed will you when you are quite dead—that is, quite alive, for then the false will never present itself. At this moment, believe me, you are on your bed in the house of death.”
“I am trying hard to believe you, father. I do indeed believe you, although I can neither see nor feel the truth of what you say.”
“You are not to blame that you cannot. And because even in a dream you believe me, I will help you.—Put forth your left hand open, and close it gently: it will clasp the hand of your Lona, who lies asleep where you lie dreaming you are awake.”
I put forth my hand: it closed on the hand of Lona, firm and soft and deathless.
“But, father,” I cried, “she is warm!”
“Your hand is as warm to hers. Cold is a thing unknown in our country. Neither she nor you are yet in the fields of home, but each to each is alive and warm and healthful.”
Then my heart was glad. But immediately supervened a sharp-stinging doubt.
“Father,” I said, “forgive me, but how am I to know surely that this also is not a part of the lovely dream in which I am now walking with thyself?”
“Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willingly believe life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them a world of pleasant dreams: thou art not of such! Be content for a while not to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, being true, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be for ever dead. Scarce, then, wilt thou be able to recall the features of the phantom. Thou wilt then know that which thou canst not now dream. Thou hast not yet looked the Truth in the face, hast as yet at best but seen him through a cloud. That which thou seest not, and never didst see save in a glass darkly—that which, indeed, never can be known save by its innate splendour shining straight into pure eyes—that thou canst not but doubt, and art blameless in doubting until thou seest it face to face, when thou wilt no longer be able to doubt it. But to him who has once seen even a shadow only of the truth, and, even but hoping he has seen it when it is present no longer, tries to obey it—to him the real vision, the Truth himself, will come, and depart no more, but abide with him for ever.”
“I think I see, father,” I said; “I think I understand.”
“Then remember, and recall. Trials yet await thee, heavy, of a nature thou knowest not now. Remember the things thou hast seen. Truly thou knowest not those things, but thou knowest what they have seemed, what they have meant to thee! Remember also the things thou shalt yet see. Truth is all in all; and the truth of things lies, at once hid and revealed, in their seeming.”
“How can that be, father?” I said, and raised my eyes with the question; for I had been listening with downbent head, aware of nothing but the voice of Adam.
He was gone; in my ears was nought but the sounding silence of the swift-flowing waters. I stretched forth my hands to find him, but no answering touch met their seeking. I was alone—alone in the land of dreams! To myself I seemed wide awake, but I believed I was in a dream, because he had told me so.
Even in a dream, however, the dreamer must do something! he cannot sit down and refuse to stir until the dream grow weary of him and depart: I took up my wandering, and went on.
Many channels I crossed, and came to a wider space of rock; there, dreaming I was weary, I laid myself down, and longed to be awake.
I was about to rise and resume my journey, when I discovered that I lay beside a pit in the rock, whose mouth was like that of a grave. It was deep and dark; I could see no bottom.
Now in the dreams of my childhood I had found that a fall invariably woke me, and would, therefore, when desiring to discontinue a dream, seek some eminence whence to cast myself down that I might wake: with one glance at the peaceful heavens, and one at the rushing waters, I rolled myself over the edge of the pit.
For a moment consciousness left me. When it returned, I stood in the garret of my own house, in the little wooden chamber of the cowl and the mirror.
Unspeakable despair, hopelessness blank and dreary, invaded me with the knowledge: between me and my Lona lay an abyss impassable! stretched a distance no chain could measure! Space and Time and Mode of Being, as with walls of adamant unscalable, impenetrable, shut me in from that gulf! True, it might yet be in my power to pass again through the door of light, and journey back to the chamber of the dead; and if so, I was parted from that chamber only by a wide heath, and by the pale, starry night betwixt me and the sun, which alone could open for me the mirror-door, and was now far away on the other side of the world! but an immeasurably wider gulf sank between us in this—that she was asleep and I was awake! that I was no longer worthy to share with her that sleep, and could no longer hope to awake from it with her! For truly I was much to blame: I had fled from my dream! The dream was not of my making, any more than was my life: I ought to have seen it to the end! and in fleeing from it, I had left the holy sleep itself behind me!—I would go back to Adam, tell him the truth, and bow to his decree!
I crept to my chamber, threw myself on my bed, and passed a dreamless night.
I rose, and listlessly sought the library. On the way I met no one; the house seemed dead. I sat down with a book to await the noontide: not a sentence could I understand! The mutilated manuscript offered itself from the masked door: the sight of it sickened me; what to me was the princess with her devilry!
I rose and looked out of a window. It was a brilliant morning. With a great rush the fountain shot high, and fell roaring back. The sun sat in its feathery top. Not a bird sang, not a creature was to be seen. Raven nor librarian came near me. The world was dead about me. I took another book, sat down again, and went on waiting.
Noon was near. I went up the stairs to the dumb, shadowy roof. I closed behind me the door into the wooden chamber, and turned to open the door out of a dreary world.
I left the chamber with a heart of stone. Do what I might, all was fruitless. I pulled the chains; adjusted and re-adjusted the hood; arranged and re-arranged the mirrors; no result followed. I waited and waited to give the vision time; it would not come; the mirror stood blank; nothing lay in its dim old depth but the mirror opposite and my haggard face.
I went back to the library. There the books were hateful to me—for I had once loved them.
That night I lay awake from down-lying to uprising, and the next day renewed my endeavours with the mystic door. But all was yet in vain. How the hours went I cannot think. No one came nigh me; not a sound from the house below entered my ears. Not once did I feel weary—only desolate, drearily desolate.
I passed a second sleepless night. In the morning I went for the last time to the chamber in the roof, and for the last time sought an open door: there was none. My heart died within me. I had lost my Lona!
Was she anywhere? had she ever been, save in the mouldering cells of my brain? “I must die one day,” I thought, “and then, straight from my death-bed, I will set out to find her! If she is not, I will go to the Father and say—‘Even thou canst not help me: let me cease, I pray thee!’”
The fourth night I seemed to fall asleep, and that night woke indeed. I opened my eyes and knew, although all was dark around me, that I lay in the house of death, and that every moment since there I fell asleep I had been dreaming, and now first was awake. “At last!” I said to my heart, and it leaped for joy. I turned my eyes; Lona stood by my couch, waiting for me! I had never lost her!—only for a little time lost the sight of her! Truly I needed not have lamented her so sorely!
It was dark, as I say, but I saw her: SHE was not dark! Her eyes shone with the radiance of the Mother’s, and the same light issued from her face—nor from her face only, for her death-dress, filled with the light of her body now tenfold awake in the power of its resurrection, was white as snow and glistering. She fell asleep a girl; she awoke a woman, ripe with the loveliness of the life essential. I folded her in my arms, and knew that I lived indeed.
“I woke first!” she said, with a wondering smile.
“You did, my love, and woke me!”
“I only looked at you and waited,” she answered.
The candle came floating toward us through the dark, and in a few moments Adam and Eve and Mara were with us. They greeted us with a quiet good-morning and a smile: they were used to such wakings!
“I hope you have had a pleasant darkness!” said the Mother.
“Not very,” I answered, “but the waking from it is heavenly.”
“It is but begun,” she rejoined; “you are hardly yet awake!”
“He is at least clothed-upon with Death, which is the radiant garment of Life,” said Adam.
He embraced Lona his child, put an arm around me, looked a moment or two inquiringly at the princess, and patted the head of the leopardess.
“I think we shall meet you two again before long,” he said, looking first at Lona, then at me.
“Have we to die again?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, with a smile like the Mother’s; “you have died into life, and will die no more; you have only to keep dead. Once dying as we die here, all the dying is over. Now you have only to live, and that you must, with all your blessed might. The more you live, the stronger you become to live.”
“But shall I not grow weary with living so strong?” I said. “What if I cease to live with all my might?”
“It needs but the will, and the strength is there!” said the Mother. “Pure life has no weakness to grow weary withal. THE Life keeps generating ours.—Those who will not die, die many times, die constantly, keep dying deeper, never have done dying; here all is upwardness and love and gladness.”
She ceased with a smile and a look that seemed to say, “We are mother and son; we understand each other! Between us no farewell is possible.”
Mara kissed me on the forehead, and said, gayly,
“I told you, brother, all would be well!—When next you would comfort, say, ‘What will be well, is even now well.’”
She gave a little sigh, and I thought it meant, “But they will not believe you!”
“—You know me now!” she ended, with a smile like her mother’s.
“I know you!” I answered: “you are the voice that cried in the wilderness before ever the Baptist came! you are the shepherd whose wolves hunt the wandering sheep home ere the shadow rise and the night grow dark!”
“My work will one day be over,” she said, “and then I shall be glad with the gladness of the great shepherd who sent me.”
“All the night long the morning is at hand,” said Adam.
“What is that flapping of wings I hear?” I asked.
“The Shadow is hovering,” replied Adam: “there is one here whom he counts his own! But ours once, never more can she be his!”
I turned to look on the faces of my father and mother, and kiss them ere we went: their couches were empty save of the Little Ones who had with love’s boldness appropriated their hospitality! For an instant that awful dream of desolation overshadowed me, and I turned aside.
“What is it, my heart?” said Lona.
“Their empty places frightened me,” I answered.
“They are up and away long ago,” said Adam. “They kissed you ere they went, and whispered, ‘Come soon.’”
“And I neither to feel nor hear them!” I murmured.
“How could you—far away in your dreary old house! You thought the dreadful place had you once more! Now go and find them.—Your parents, my child,” he added, turning to Lona, “must come and find you!”
The hour of our departure was at hand. Lona went to the couch of the mother who had slain her, and kissed her tenderly—then laid herself in her father’s arms.
“That kiss will draw her homeward, my Lona!” said Adam.
“Who were her parents?” asked Lona.
“My father,” answered Adam, “is her father also.”
She turned and laid her hand in mine.
I kneeled and humbly thanked the three for helping me to die. Lona knelt beside me, and they all breathed upon us.
“Hark! I hear the sun,” said Adam.
I listened: he was coming with the rush as of a thousand times ten thousand far-off wings, with the roar of a molten and flaming world millions upon millions of miles away. His approach was a crescendo chord of a hundred harmonies.
The three looked at each other and smiled, and that smile went floating heavenward a three-petaled flower, the family’s morning thanksgiving. From their mouths and their faces it spread over their bodies and shone through their garments. Ere I could say, “Lo, they change!” Adam and Eve stood before me the angels of the resurrection, and Mara was the Magdalene with them at the sepulchre. The countenance of Adam was like lightning, and Eve held a napkin that flung flakes of splendour about the place.
A wind began to moan in pulsing gusts.
“You hear his wings now!” said Adam; and I knew he did not mean the wings of the morning.
“It is the great Shadow stirring to depart,” he went on. “Wretched creature, he has himself within him, and cannot rest!”
“But is there not in him something deeper yet?” I asked.
“Without a substance,” he answered, “a shadow cannot be—yea, or without a light behind the substance!”
He listened for a moment, then called out, with a glad smile, “Hark to the golden cock! Silent and motionless for millions of years has he stood on the clock of the universe; now at last he is flapping his wings! now will he begin to crow! and at intervals will men hear him until the dawn of the day eternal.”
I listened. Far away—as in the heart of an æonian silence, I heard the clear jubilant outcry of the golden throat. It hurled defiance at death and the dark; sang infinite hope, and coming calm. It was the “expectation of the creature” finding at last a voice; the cry of a chaos that would be a kingdom!
Then I heard a great flapping.
“The black bat is flown!” said Mara.
“Amen, golden cock, bird of God!” cried Adam, and the words rang through the house of silence, and went up into the airy regions.
At his AMEN—like doves arising on wings of silver from among the potsherds, up sprang the Little Ones to their knees on their beds, calling aloud,
“Crow! crow again, golden cock!”—as if they had both seen and heard him in their dreams.
Then each turned and looked at the sleeping bedfellow, gazed a moment with loving eyes, kissed the silent companion of the night, and sprang from the couch. The Little Ones who had lain down beside my father and mother gazed blank and sad for a moment at their empty places, then slid slowly to the floor. There they fell each into the other’s arms, as if then first, each by the other’s eyes, assured they were alive and awake. Suddenly spying Lona, they came running, radiant with bliss, to embrace her. Odu, catching sight of the leopardess on the feet of the princess, bounded to her next, and throwing an arm over the great sleeping head, fondled and kissed it.
“Wake up, wake up, darling!” he cried; “it is time to wake!”
The leopardess did not move.
“She has slept herself cold!” he said to Mara, with an upcast look of appealing consternation.
“She is waiting for the princess to wake, my child,” said Mara.
Odu looked at the princess, and saw beside her, still asleep, two of his companions. He flew at them.
“Wake up! wake up!” he cried, and pushed and pulled, now this one, now that.
But soon he began to look troubled, and turned to me with misty eyes.
“They will not wake!” he said. “And why are they so cold?”
“They too are waiting for the princess,” I answered.
He stretched across, and laid his hand on her face.
“She is cold too! What is it?” he cried—and looked round in wondering dismay.
Adam went to him.
“Her wake is not ripe yet,” he said: “she is busy forgetting. When she has forgotten enough to remember enough, then she will soon be ripe, and wake.”
“And remember?”
“Yes—but not too much at once though.”
“But the golden cock has crown!” argued the child, and fell again upon his companions.
“Peter! Peter! Crispy!” he cried. “Wake up, Peter! wake up, Crispy! We are all awake but you two! The gold cock has crown SO loud! The sun is awake and coming! Oh, why WON’T you wake?”
But Peter would not wake, neither would Crispy, and Odu wept outright at last.
“Let them sleep, darling!” said Adam. “You would not like the princess to wake and find nobody? They are quite happy. So is the leopardess.”
He was comforted, and wiped his eyes as if he had been all his life used to weeping and wiping, though now first he had tears wherewith to weep—soon to be wiped altogether away.
We followed Eve to the cottage. There she offered us neither bread nor wine, but stood radiantly desiring our departure. So, with never a word of farewell, we went out. The horse and the elephants were at the door, waiting for us. We were too happy to mount them, and they followed us.