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?’
The waste lay wild before us, dark with a faintly-rising cloud, for
darkness and cloud and the gloom of death attended upon that name. I
thought, in his great genius and splendour of intellect, he had gone
mad, as sometimes may be. ‘There is nothing,’ I said, and scorn came
into my soul; but even as I spoke I saw--I cannot tell what I saw--a
moving spot of milky whiteness in that dark and miserable
wilderness,--no bigger than a man’s hand, no bigger than a flower.
‘There is something,’ I said unwillingly; ‘it has no shape nor form. It
is a gossamer-web upon some bush, or a butterfly blown on the wind.’
‘There are neither butterflies nor gossamers here.’
‘Look for yourself then!’ I cried, flinging his hand from me. I was
angry with a rage which had no cause. I turned from him, though I loved
him, with a desire to kill him in my heart; and hurriedly took the
other way. The waste was wild: but rather that than to see the man who
might have shaken earth and hell thus turning, turning to madness and
the awful journey. For I knew what in his heart he thought, and I knew
that it was so. It was something from that other sphere--can I tell you
what? a child perhaps--oh, thought that wrings the heart! for do you
know what manner of thing a child is? There are none in the land of
darkness. I turned my back upon the place where that whiteness was. On,
on, across the waste! On to the cities of the night! On, far away from
maddening thought, from hope that is torment, and from the awful Name!
The above narrative, though it is necessary to a full understanding
of the experiences of the Little Pilgrim in the Unseen, does not
belong to her personal story in any way, but is drawn from the
Archives in the Heavenly City where all the records of the human
race are laid up.
II
THE LITTLE PILGRIM
IN THE SEEN AND UNSEEN
The little Pilgrim, whose story has been told in another place, and who
had arrived but lately on the other side, among those who know trouble
and sorrow no more, was one whose heart was always full of pity for the
suffering. And after the first rapture of her arrival, and of the
blessed work which had been given to her to do, and all the wonderful
things she had learned of the new life, there returned to her in the
midst of her happiness so many questions and longing thoughts that They
were touched by them who have the care of the younger brethren, the
simple ones of heaven. These questions did not disturb her peace or joy,
for she knew that which is so often veiled on earth, that all is
accomplished by the will of the Father, and that nothing can happen but
according to His appointment and under His care. And she was also aware
that the end is as the beginning to Him who knows all, and that nothing
is lost that is in His hand. But though she would herself have willingly
borne the sufferings of earth ten times over for the sake of all that
was now hers, yet it pierced her soul to think of those who were
struggling in darkness, and whose hearts were stifled within them by all
the bitterness of the mortal life. Sometimes she would be ready to cry
out with wonder that the Lord did not hasten His steps and go down again
upon the earth to make all plain; or how the Father himself could
restrain His power and did not send down ten legions of angels to make
all that was wrong right, and turn all that was mournful into joy.
‘It is but for a little time,’ said her companions. ‘When we have
reached this place we remember no more the anguish.’--‘But to them in
their trouble it does not seem a little time,’ the Pilgrim said. And in
her heart there rose a great longing. Oh that He would send me! that I
might tell my brethren--not like the poor man in the land of darkness,
of the gloom and misery of that distant place, but, a happier message,
of the light and brightness of this, and how soon all pain would be
over. She would not put this into a prayer, for she knew that to refuse
a prayer is pain to the Father, if in His great glory any pain can be.
And then she reasoned with herself and said, ‘What can I tell them,
except that all will soon be well? and this they know, for our Lord has
said it: but I am like them, and I do not understand.’
One fair morning while she turned over these thoughts in her mind there
suddenly came towards her one whom she knew as a sage, of the number of
those who know many mysteries and search into the deep things of the
Father. For a moment she wondered if perhaps he came to reprove her for
too many questionings, and rose up and advanced a little towards him
with folded hands and a thankful heart, to receive the reproof if it
should be so--for whether it were praise, or whether it were blame, it
was from the Father, and a great honour and happiness to receive. But as
he came towards her he smiled and bade her not to fear. ‘I am come,’ he
said, ‘to tell you some things you long to know, and to show you some
things that are hidden to most. Little sister, you are not to be charged
with any mission----’
‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘oh no. I was not so presuming----’
‘It is not presuming to wish to carry comfort to any soul; but it is
permitted to me to open up to you, so far as I may, some of the secrets.
The secrets of the Father are all beautiful, but there is sorrow in them
as well as joy; and Pain, you know, is one of the great angels at the
door.’
‘Is his name Pain? and I took him for Consolation!’ the little Pilgrim
said.
‘He is not Consolation: he is the schoolmaster whose face is often
stern. But I did not come to tell you of him whom you know: I am going
to take you--back,’ the wise man said.
‘Back!’ She knew what this meant, and a great pleasure, yet mingled with
fear, came into her mind. She hesitated and looked at him, and did not
know how to accept, though she longed to do so, for at the same time she
was afraid. He smiled when he saw the alarm in her face.
‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that you are to go this journey on your own
charges? Had you insisted, as some do, to go at all hazards, you might
indeed have feared; and even now I cannot promise that you will not feel
the thorns of the earth as you pass: but you will be cared for, so that
no harm can come.’
‘Ah,’ she said wistfully, ‘it is not for harm----’ and could say
nothing more.
He laid his hand upon her arm and he said, ‘Do not fear; though they see
you not, it is yet sweet, for a moment, to be there--and as you pass, it
brings thoughts of you to their minds.’
For these two understood each other and knew that to see and yet not be
seen is only a pleasure for those who are most like the Father, and can
love without thought of love in return.
When he touched her it seemed to the little Pilgrim suddenly that
everything changed round her, and that she was no longer in her own
place but walking along a weary length of road. It was narrow and
rough, and the skies were dim. And as she went on by the side of her
guide she saw houses and gardens which were to her like the houses that
children build, and the little gardens in which they sow seeds and plant
flowers, and take them up again to see if they are growing. She turned
to the Sage, saying, ‘What are----?’ and then stopped and gazed again,
and burst out into something that was between laughing and tears. ‘For
it is home,’ she cried, ‘and I did not know it! dear home.’ Her heart
was remorseful, as if she had wounded the little diminished place.
‘This is what happens with those who have been living in the king’s
palaces,’ he said, with a smile.