CHAPTER VIII
Next day I went to visit a painter, Adrian, and he took me to an inner studio where he kept some of his favourite works, and at last he stayed before a white curtain, soft as velvet and as pure as mountain mist, and drew it gently backward.
“This is my masterpiece,” said he, and stepped back smiling gravely.
I looked and saw a face unseen before that had haunted me all my life though till this day unknown.
He drew the curtain back long before I had had my fill of gazing at it.
“Silence is better than applause,” he said, and put his hand upon my arm and moved away.
“Who is it?” I asked at last.
“That is Purity, Vestasian’s wife, the Virgin Mother of the God in Man.”
“She is more beautiful than all in heaven.”
He stopped and looked at me and shook his head and smiled.
“Not more beautiful, a little different, that is all. A little tenderer, a little weaker, a little quieter, at times a little gayer, at others a little more afraid of pain, and that is all.”
I stayed with him all the morning, and in the afternoon went to see Philemon.
He dwelt on the other side of the river, and lived there very happily, and Sunbeam and Moonbeam, who often used to go to have tea with him, always came back with wonderful accounts of what they had seen and heard and done. This afternoon I found him busy preparing medicines and consulting every now and then a large book, which he had compiled himself from his own investigations. But for all that he was willing enough that I should join him, though he still continued his work at odd intervals. I sat in the large open window and looked down on the river. It was very bright and full of life down there. Pleasure barges and swift canoes glided up and down the water, others walked upon its shining ripples, and every now and then a form would rise from it and shake the dashing spray far off in every direction.
At last Philemon threw aside his work and joined me there.
“You were up late last night,” he said.
“Yes. I went with Virginius to the forest and he gave me an historical outline of the earth.”
“Did it interest you?”
“Very much. It accounts for a great deal which I did not understand before.”
He looked at me.
“I thought your experience was a large one,” he remarked.
“I used to think so myself,” I admitted, laughing. “But lately I have come to the conclusion I know very little of what I thought I knew, so have altered my opinion.”
“You have been in hell?”
“Undoubtedly. That was another surprise for me. It was so different from what I thought.”
“Are you quite sure you have never been there before?” he asked suddenly, and turned upon me a pair of eyes so scrutinising that, despite myself, I smiled.
“I’m sure of nothing, but I have no recollection of it.”
“I mean, you have never been there and found it as enjoyable as heaven.”
It was my turn now to return the stare.
“What do you mean?” I queried.
“I wish to know where you came from.”
“I am perfectly ignorant. If you wished me to find the way back to the place from whence I came I could not do so. I lived in a world at the other side of the magic mirror, and one day the mirror cracked and shivered from side to side and I alighted without premeditation on the earth, not even in my own habiliments but some which I borrowed for a masquerade. And being caught and taken seriously as a thief, and meeting with no intelligent person sharp enough to understand my case, I was branded forthwith and dispatched post haste to hell.”
“You are sure this world you spoke of was not given you by Vestasian?”
“Pardon me, I was not even king there.”
He laughed.
“Did you enjoy life?”
“Why, yes. It was surprising the amount of evil one could bring about in a day and yet be entirely innocent oneself.”
He looked at me.
“Ah! be careful, Genius. You are giving yourself away. That is Vestasian’s peculiarity. Were you at all well acquainted with Plucritus?”
“Why, yes. Before I was dropped willy-nilly in the little farm he and I were very friendly. He was such excellent company.”
“And Virginius—had you known him?”
“Yes, but I never understood him. He had a way of looking which was very puzzling, almost annoying. Moreover, he persisted in acting as if I had lived for ever, a phase of existence I do not remember at all.”
“And Vestasian?”
“I never saw him till I went to hell.”
“Never saw him?”
“Never.”
“But you are very like him.”
“I can account for that. I took to staring at him on a bridge at midnight; the likeness must have grown from that.”
“You are not speaking seriously.”
“Indeed I am.”
“Tell me of your father and mother.”
But I shook my head.
“Indeed, I would rather not. I am not at all fond of speaking of myself, though by a strange irony it never may appear so.”
“What may not appear so?”
The words caused us to look towards the door, and there, just within it, stood Vestasian—the subject of Philemon’s doubts and fears.
We were neither of us surprised. Vestasian never did surprise people because he surprised them so completely. And I for one was pleased to see him because he had always interested me, and because he was the only one for whom I had entertained any fear.
As I went to greet him I noticed again the sweetness of his face and the hardness; one seemed to cover the other like a mask. His was a face which some, to pride themselves on far-seeing, would say they could not trust, but then I don’t think he ever had any ambition to be trusted.
“You are pleased to see me, Genius,” he said, coming forward. “We did not take an affectionate leave of one another—it was rather too unexpected and too hasty. Who would have thought the last time I saw you you were bound that night for heaven?”
“No, indeed. I had expected perfect annihilation or a second phase of hell.”
He looked at me.
“You are looking much stronger than when I saw you last,” he observed.
“I find the society of heaven more congenial.”
Without answering he went to a sofa, the only thing of luxury in the room, and threw himself down among the cushions and clasped his hands above his head.
All this time Philemon had been watching him from the window. He had not risen from his seat there, but apparently had not objected to the interruption.
Vestasian lying there looked the very picture of luxurious ease. Beautiful he was without a doubt, the kind of beauty that grows on one the more one sees it.
“Which of us have you come to see?” asked Philemon at length, seeing the conversation had suddenly come to a standstill.
“Both of you. You have no objection, Philemon?”
“None. Why have you come?”
“I have come for no particular reason. Time was dragging on my hands, which is a new experience for me, or perhaps my wife is growing ill and longs for the edelweiss of heaven.”
“I never saw her after all,” I said.
“No. Philemon, why do you look at me with such a disagreeable minuteness?”
“I am trying to solve what relationship Genius bears to you.”
“You had best put it under a microscope.”
“Is it so small then?”
“Undoubtedly. What relationship should he bear to me? He has come from earth, a place I never visit.”
“I noticed such a strong likeness I imagined there must be some relationship.”
“A strong likeness,” cried Vestasian in a voice as hard and cold as his face had suddenly grown, and he gazed over at me probably to discover the resemblance.
“You need not think the distaste is all one-sided,” I observed. “You are the last person in the universe I have the least ambition to be like.”
“Then it gives me the greatest pleasure in the universe to believe in the resemblance. Why do you object to me? But rather let us change the conversation, it is personal and therefore unpleasant. Do you deal much in cocaine, Philemon?”
“No, I have no such thing in my laboratory.”
“Come, come, I have known you administer a dose.”
“Indeed not. I never give any strong medicine in more than one dose—and the effect is lasting. The effects of cocaine, as you know, pass away.”
Vestasian smiled.
“Yes. All too truly. But do you really mean to say you never give more than one dose of a strong medicine? Surely the effects cannot last for ever.”
“They last a pretty sure length anyway. That’s the difference, you know, between the real thing and a sham.”
“Plucritus is at home ill, suffering from a wound,” Vestasian went on, turning to me.
“Indeed. That will be a new experience for him,” I suggested.
“Oh, no. Not at all. He and Virginius, as a rule, manage to keep fairly even.”
“I should think as an invalid he would be rather unmanageable.”
“Not at all. Only, he has one peculiarity. When he is ill he will have no physician, however experienced and wise. He will have no one but Vestné to wait on him.”
“And is she a good nurse?”
“Oh! capital. Almost as good as I am.”
“Have you a gift that way?”
“Of course. With a wife as ailing as mine it is necessary I know something about such things.”
“Yet you are not clever enough to keep her alive.” I repented the words as soon as said, there was such a clumsy want of feeling about them.
He looked at me and passed his hand before his mouth.
“No, I am not clever enough for that,” he remarked quietly.
“Which way did you come?” Philemon asked.
“I came direct from hell and caught a glimpse of earth as I passed. You may be thankful you are out of it, Genius; those who dispatched you did the greatest kindness. I find earth depressing, I never wish to stay there.”
“If it depresses you, why do you not tear away the chain and the mist?”
He shook his head, then smiled.
“We have given humanity a free will, which is gift enough of its kind. If they wish to tear away the chain and grope through the mist to the light, all well and good, but we will raise neither hand nor foot to help them. Because, after all, if heaven is worth winning it is worth fighting for and struggling for. We have little sympathy with those who would walk in in respectable dignity and comfort. Man, by a perfect irony, has been born to walk upright, but if he arrives at heaven it is generally by crawling on all fours.”
“You do not grudge them heaven, then, if they attain it?”
“Not at all. Though we often maintain the contest to the last hour. Look at Philemon here. On the earth he was a little shoemaker who died in consumption. He had a nagging wife and two children to support. I think if I remember rightly he was only in bed three days before he died, and the smell of leather is not pleasant. Now that is what I call a hero, for he never complained, and was so humble as to imagine himself no better than those around him; indeed, if anything, he imagined himself inferior by his lack of physical strength.”
Philemon took this sketch of himself as unconcernedly as if he had been an outsider.
“And what has become of her—his wife?” I asked, grieving that he should have been thus long a spiritual bachelor.
“Well, you see, she was put there as a thorn in the flesh to aggravate and hinder him. There was a time when she did do so, but he got the better of it, though not of her. She had no real soul, you see; the cells were empty—it was a sham one. A little structure of nature that the flesh had grown over, and which a narrow intellect, or rather understanding, had killed at the birth.”
“What became of her?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t bad enough for hell, I think. Oh, no. She died out.”
The most curious part about this discovery was to see Philemon sitting there listening with a face extremely serious, but not sad.
“You do not grieve for the loss of your wife?” said I.
Here Vestasian laughed outright.
“Oh, no. He was not among the converted nor those who came to the Lord. At least, he is not now, whatever he may have been then. You see, no one in heaven grieves over the loss of sham souls. They are the coarse, low, cramped natures that never probably show it on the outside, that are put into the world to act as stumbling-blocks to others. It is only on the earth that sentimental grief and prayer are attached to them. They are all so wishful to make converts and draw sinners to Christ. Why it would be hard to say. They forget that people like Mary Magdalene, whom they are so fond of quoting, went to him of herself and needed no external urging. No. Neither in heaven nor hell do we grieve over the loss of sham souls; they are simply useful in their effects on other people.”
“Then surely they should not be tolerated.”
Vestasian smiled.
“Your schools are conducted on a wrong principle, as are so many of your homes. Your punishments are not strong enough, your prisons are too full. But if I talk thus I will help to drive the cloud away, which will almost make of me a traitor.”
“Not it,” cried Philemon, laughing. “You put it there between you, but it sticks by the law of gravity, which has not yet learned to smile without becoming irreverent.”
“I suppose then you would teach pure morality and leave out religion,” I said.
“It would be best,” Philemon declared.
“Ssh! Ssh! Don’t rouse the clergy,” Vestasian exclaimed.
“Why not? I could say the project came from hell.”
“Certainly.”
Passage omitted
“You see,” said Philemon, after a pause, “faith springs from true morality, but it does not spring up with it. If a man is moral simply because he is religious he is but a weakling, needing a crutch to lean against. He should be moral out of respect for his brother man, a pure feeling to lead a clean life, because it is right, without hope of reward or glamour of future glorification. And as long as the Church tries to force the two into the same channel it is but a failure, whatever it may appear on the outside.”
“Well, of course,” affirmed Vestasian, indulgently. “But what can you expect on the earth? They muddle things so. For one thing, they are always trying to confound flesh and the spirit, pretty much as they confound their religion and morality. But flesh is flesh, and spirit will be spirit, if they howl and pray over it from now till Domesday. What could be more amusing than to listen to the man who says grace at meal-times? He returns thanks to my side of the Godhead for giving him the fruits of our little serfdom, earth. He knows the world and all upon it belongs to us; the Bible tells him so if he will read it, and the Catechism too. But though he reads he’s stubborn and won’t understand. He returns thanks for his food, whereas we don’t care a jot whether its well cooked or ill. Now, if he would simply take it with contentment and enjoyment, and be ready for poorer fare next day if it came his way, he’d show some sense. And if by saying grace he thinks he pleases such as Virginius and the rest, how far from the mark is he! They are as callous about his appetite as we ourselves, and only drop an unavailing tear when he eats or drinks too much.
“Then again there is the marriage service, and the baptismal service, and all the rest, except the burial service. Forever trying to put the spirit first and the flesh second, and gradually to draw a pretty tight slip o’er them both, with spirit uppermost so that the flesh is comfortably hidden underneath. All this for respectability, which is the devil’s sham ermine cloak, as civilisation is his sham gold crown.”
“Yes, but you know if the world loses respectability it takes on the other thing,” Philemon remarked.
“I know. Thereby testifying to its own depravity. Now for my part, the people on earth I most admire are those who have lost respectability and found something truer and deeper.”
“Vestasian,” said Philemon, “you must cease, or you will be becoming, as you said—a traitor.”
He threw his head back on the pillow.
“I am excusable. When I am in heaven I feel for the time as those in heaven. And after all, it is not my fault that the earth is as it is. I came almost to the level of neutrality but was bound to take a side, and got pushed by an unforeseen event to the apex.”
“Tell me further of Philemon,” said I.
“What of him? There is nothing further to tell, except that he has done his little toward keeping others out of heaven.”
“How so?”
“Well, the people who patronised him and had their shoes charitably repaired at his little shed naturally would not care to associate with him here any more than on the earth. They would say he smelled of leather and begged to be excused. They might join the elements with his wife, or come to the exclusive cells of hell. But to get there one needs a rather higher order of character. It isn’t every duffer who gets to us any more than to heaven.”
“I agree with you.”
“You see,” he went on dreamily, his voice having sunk to a sweet monotone, “every man worth calling a man, or woman for that matter, has his little back parlour. Some call it their conscience. It’s a little empty dark place at first with no real light in it, for the backyard wall is very high. And after a time furniture begins to appear in it. An armchair grows—a kind of dentist arrangement, which brings no comfort when he sits in it. And then a table, which holds just the little things he doesn’t want to see. The carpet is nothing but a worn-out mat that shews strange stains upon the floor. And then there is the cupboard. He keeps the door shut if he can. The shelves are so dusty, the smell so musty, the skeleton so real. And the fire is a very funny fire. In winter the flames are icy cold and freeze the marrow of his bones, and in summer the fire is still there, raging hot and strong. It’s a very shabby little back parlour, even though it is built in the centre of a king’s palace. And the owner isn’t fond of going into it—because there’s nothing there of which he can be proud. Moreover, he can never take anyone in with him, not even his wife—there’s only room for one. Besides, if he could get his wife in it wouldn’t be a back parlour any longer. It would be a little homely kitchen—the sweetest of all things. Besides, she has her little back parlour too, and perhaps all her time is spent in trying to sweep away the cobwebs that will not go. And all through life the little parlour remains, and as much as possible they keep out of it and try to think it isn’t there. And then one of two things will happen. One day he will go into this little cell and pat all in order and dust it to the best of his poor ability, and then he will sit down and wait, and the pure light will shine and the back parlour will become a shadow—a memory of the past instead of a reality. Or otherwise he will go there and find, alas! that the door is closed upon him and he cannot get out. And no light has entered, nor ever will enter, as far as he can see. He won’t know where he is. He’ll imagine it’s a long dream of endless night, for after awhile he will forget where the door is and lose the power to want to get out. And he will have nothing to look at but the cupboard and the table—nothing to feel but the fire, nothing to rest on but the chair. And then in the long, long end, when it’s all over, he’ll come back on the earth if his soul has been bargained for. And if he was a prince before he may now be a beggar; and if a beggar formerly, now a prince. Nature will give his flesh the Hapsburg lip or Bourbon nose—it will not alter his soul. And then the next battle begins with different flesh in other surroundings, and he stands his chance again. And some people are not conscious of any back parlours, and they are those curious people born with the sham soul. And many who would like to be without the little shabby chamber are all too conscious that it’s there.”
We had listened to the musical rhythm of his voice throughout, and I for one had felt its truth, and Philemon was more deeply moved than I.
“Vestasian,” he said, “why do you come here to tell us such things? You have almost made me feel myself on earth again.”
But Vestasian rose, laughing.
“It’s a queer knack I have of getting low-spirited at times—it is natural to me—and is never more than a passing whim—no weakness, as in mortals. Come with me to see Jesus.”
Two pages of MS. omitted
Then for some distance we walked on in silence.
The sun was setting behind the high peaked hills with a glorious speaking silence. I had never seen such purple clouds—such red and pink and gold embodied in a sky. They cast their reflection on the spot we walked on and dyed Vestasian’s garments and my own. It was the stilly point of eve, and none but ourselves walked toward the great gates that bound the city. And suddenly he stopped, and turning, looked at me.
“The sun is setting. Nature’s wearying repetition never wearies. Would by the Godhead that encircles us that I were never weary too. I have lived the long hard life that fills eternity, and to me there comes a never-ending circle of unavailing pain. I have stood it time on time and never wearied, and because I have not murmured they have imagined I bore well with it and cared not, felt not. What! Can anyone have the life nerves torn from him and have no pain nor feeling in the process? I have loved to that strong ecstasy to which only spirits come—and that love has filled my being. And then when life should be begun and our true nuptials celebrated, gradually the unseen shadow has crept in and dragged the vital strength away—inch by inch. For what am I without this lovely spirit that twines and intermingles with my own? What am I, or what shall be? Without her I am nothing—inanimate laws and intellect and beauty intermingled without the quickening grace to make a perfect whole. I cannot bear to see her die. It sickens me even to the death to let her go. While she is there my whole heart lives in her; when gone its throbs beat on a hardened bark that has no softness such as it had when she was there to charm away the pain. At times it comes to me to offer the great sacrifice—to give up all and let her go for ever—to transform myself to Nature’s laws and passing beauty—even to be part of such sunsets as you see o’er there against the hills. Then comes the whole absorbing passion. I cannot let her go—I will not—and the ensuing weakness. For as the dark hour deepens she must pass torn from my side as never flesh and blood were torn from mortal. They never know the depth of half my love, and think because I only realise the half I only feel it. Ah! Genius, you will recognise my weakness—born from a jest which has enveloped me.”
In silence he led me on towards the gate.
There outside, on the wild, glorious moorland, sat a figure robed in white.
Seeing us she rose and came toward us.
This was the shadowy, heavenly beauty I had dreamt of. A face more perfect I had never seen, nor eyes more sweet and star-like, nor lips more sweetly parted in that tender smile, half mirth, half pathos. Round her slight waist a belt of shimmering jewels shone, and one great jewel at her breast. The straying pink of roses played upon her cheek and faded into white, shaded by eyes so deeply and so softly blue that one forgot their colour in their depths and longed to live in them. Her smooth brow was shaded by soft hair, each in itself a tendril of pure gold having the red glint out of it; but faintly here and there, to make a perfect colouring.
I could no longer doubt her.
On my knees I took her hands within my own and kissed them, and tears fell from my eyes, the first in all my life.
But then she drew me up to her and kissed me, even as a mother kisses some lost, erring child, and held me in her arms, and laughed with tears in her own eyes, and looked at me with such a long, last look that ever afterwards I marvelled not at this great grief.
And then she turned to him and took his hand in hers and drew him to me. He took both my hands within his own and looked into my eyes as she had done, and kissed my lips and turned away.
And then together, she pressed close to him, and his all-seeming powerful arm clasped round her, they sailed away together into space.
And I stood still without the gate and watched them.
In the distance they looked like one bright, glorious spirit, moving, brilliantly white. But as they neared the earth, which they must pass, the whiteness turned to brilliant red.
He gave one glance across towards the planet, scarce lasting out the instant, but she raised her head and looked above his shoulder eagerly, to catch the passing sight. And her fair, fragile face shone there, looking wistfully, till they had neared the gates of hell.
And then I turned and remembered they had passed in silence. I had never heard her speak.
And the sun set.
THE END
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