In the slow weeks that followed my Grandmother's death I never came
face to face with my own sorrow. My brain told me the sorrow was there,
but my will, reinforced by a numbness that possessed my spirit, forbade
my facing or feeling it. Never did I dare to summon the vision. It was
mockery. It had been a mockery all through.
But the soul lives on, leaves death behind, is the same for ever: can
we not be together still, Robbie on the other side of death, Mary on
this? The notion came fearfully at first, then boldlier. Dare I try to
discover? Does God permit us to love across the grave?--Even so, in my
innermost heart, I knew that a love which could bridge the gulf would
still be a love not quite completed, since not completed and perfected
between us both together here on earth.--Could I then bring him back to
life? Instinct intimated and Prayer confirmed. On Christmas Night, now
two or three weeks ahead, I would seek him just as before. Till then I
must possess my soul in emptiness.
The literal loneliness of the dead house helped to hush my spirit.
There were still some years of the lease of Number Eight to run; I
decided for the present to live on there, absolutely alone. With
Grandmother's and Aunt Jael's income--all of which save a small
legacy to Aunt Martha from the former came to me--added to the little
fortune that Great-Uncle John had left me, I was now a young woman of
independent means. How different was realization from anticipation.
Money could buy me everything, save the only thing in heaven or earth
I wanted. Independence liberated me to roam throughout the world, and
I remained desolate in this mournful forbidding house, the slave of my
sick heart's memories and desires. Sister Briggs continued to come in
for the mornings, to help me with the housework and in the kitchen. I
had no plans, and, if Christmas failed me, no hopes. I was in a kind of
spiritual stupor; I was but half alive. I had nothing to live for, and
no hope to seek from death. Death, and then some other existence: but
always life--always a Me.
There was, however, at moments, a certain mystical freedom of spirit in
this cloistral utter loneliness. After about half-past one, when she
had washed up the dinner things, I knew that I was rid of Sister Briggs
until the morrow, and I could fill the desolate house with myself. I
would wander from empty room to empty room, sit for half-an-hour here,
half-an-hour there, pray, read, talk to myself, meditate, most often do
nothing at all.
Aunt Jael's front parlour I still shunned, except when the blinds were
up and in the broadest daylight, for Benamuckee's eyes could still
move, his face still leer. A heathen image, which men in savage forests
have worshipped and sacrificed to, can never be quite inanimate wood or
stone. The Devil is alive in his likenesses on earth.
The sound of my own voice in the silent echoing rooms brought me time
after time to the verge of the old Expectation. I would shout, cry
aloud; till the mystery of self was almost discovered, and I ceased
praying to God. He was too near.
One day the noise of shouts and supplications brought the next-door
neighbour--that same clergyman who that far-off vinous day had been
drawn by Aunt Jael's agonies--knocking at the door.
"Er--excuse me. Is any one ill? I fancied I heard cries--"
"Thank you. I am not ill. I am crying to God. Thank you all the same.
Good-morning."
The healing power of the Church of England as by law established stops
short at saner souls than mine. He skedaddled with Pilate gesture down
the garden path. He had flushed when I used the word God.
Thus in prayer and madness and reading of the Word I panned out the
weeks till Christmas. Once or twice I sought to recover the ancient
Rapture of the Lord's Presence. But at the approaching moment a voice
always intervened: The Great Happiness is coming back to you, but _in
some other way_. He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is Love.
No man hath seen God at any time. But when perfect love for another
human soul shall be perfected in you, then God, more rapturously than
at Jordan, will enter your soul, and dwell within you for ever.
What other way? It could only be Christmas.
Christmas came, announced by the calendar but by no other outward sign,
unless it was that Sister Briggs left before instead of after dinner.
The silence was stranger, more complete than ever. Through all the
afternoon and evening I read, to prevent myself hoping. As I turned
over pages of print, staring uncomprehendingly, one question absorbed
all my being: I did not consciously think of it, for it was myself,
all of myself, and the brain cannot think of the soul: _Can love then
bridge the grave?_
Suddenly, late in the afternoon, as dusk was turning to darkness, an
insane notion stormed my brain, which woke at once to feverish activity.
I had only Aunt Martha's word for it. Her information came certainly
from Uncle Simeon, Uncle Simeon was a liar, a cur, a cruel scoundrel.
He had invented that Robbie was dead, had lied to Aunt Martha, knowing
that she would convey the lie to me, knowing how it would afflict me.
Robbie was alive, alive! Why had it not struck me before? My heart
fainted with hope. I prayed God that he would make me unconscious till
midnight, for I did not know how I could live through those waiting
hours.
Live somehow I did. There was even time for Doubt to raise his
unwearying head. He was dead after all: what reason had Uncle Simeon
had to lie, who could never have really divined what Robbie was to me?
And if he were dead, Oh Christ, was it possible he could come to me?
After supper I went upstairs to bed. There was a bright moon. I pulled
the curtains wide from the window that the room might be filled with
moonlight as the Torribridge room eleven years before.
I sat up in bed and prayed God passionately to be merciful, to deal
with me lovingly: to send me Robbie, whether from this world or the
next.
Imperceptibly, in the luminous silence, the spiritual sluggishness of
the latter days disappeared; physical being fell from me like a cloak;
my mind became clear and radiant, my heart breathless with hope. Faith
possessed me, and as I prayed, I waited.
There was a soft tread in the room: I knew whose, should know it at
the end of Eternity. There was no terror in me this time, no dreadful
thought that it might be Uncle Simeon. Nor was there any soul's
illusion, as in the hundred other times the need of my heart and the
power of my imagination had created his presence. For the little white
nightgowned figure standing at the door was there, _in plain reality_,
as he had been at the Torribridge door eleven years before.
And now, in this moment when the actual physical presence I had for
ever prayed and longed for was achieved, the whole structure of my love
collapsed. A disappointment too sudden, too infinite to bear, filled my
heart, from which the life seemed to be ebbing away. I understood the
difference between the child I had loved on the Torribridge night, and
the vision I had built with my love. One was dead and returned to earth
for a moment, the other had never lived except in my heart. I was a
woman, this was a little boy.
At the supernatural fact of his resurrection for this night I never
stopped to marvel: only at my own folly in not having paused to think
that the physical shape of Robbie returning to earth must needs be
the physical shape in which he had left it. I was a woman, this was a
little boy.
The vision had been real, but it was not Robbie. My heart still loved
the darling of its dreams, but my darling was not Robbie.
"I cannot come nearer, Mary," he said softly, and at the sound of his
remembered voice my pulse beat faster, and life flowed back into my
heart, and my child's love in its first simplicity, without the added
passion of the years, came back to me again. "I have returned for a
moment only. Do not grieve because God did not let me grow to be a man
on earth below. I loved you that happy once, and I love you still. Do
not think, dear, that because I had gone to Heaven, all the times you
have called for me since, and when I have come to you, have not been
true. Each time you have called I have answered you in Heaven. Each
time my spirit has been with you. But God never meant me for this
world: He never meant me to be His this-world's love for you. Your
happiness is coming."
"When, Robbie? How?"
"Very soon. You will see. You will be very happy."
"Come nearer, and kiss me Good-bye."
"No, Mary; you are a living woman, and I am a little boy whose life was
long ago. _He_ will kiss you."
I watched the white form dissolve in the moonlight. I knew the room was
empty. The crystal clearness of my heart was suddenly dimmed. The cloak
of physical existence once more enveloped my soul. I was back in the
world.