on my way, the sense of haste and restless impatience grew upon me, so
that I felt myself incapable of remaining long in a place, and my desire
grew stronger to hasten on and on; but when I entered the gates of the
city this longing vanished from my mind. There seemed some great festival
or public holiday going on there. The streets were full of
pleasure-parties, and in every open place (of which there were many) were
bands of dancers, and music playing; and the houses about were hung with
tapestries and embroideries and garlands of flowers. A load seemed to be
taken from my spirit when I saw all this,--for a whole population does
not rejoice in such a way without some cause. And to think that after
all I had found a place in which I might live and forget the misery and
pain which I had known, and all that was behind me, was delightful to my
soul. It seemed to me that all the dancers were beautiful and young,
their steps went gayly to the music, their faces were bright with smiles.
Here and there was a master of the feast, who arranged the dances and
guided the musicians, yet seemed to have a look and smile for new-comers
too. One of these came forwards to meet me, and received me with a
welcome, and showed me a vacant place at the table, on which were
beautiful fruits piled up in baskets, and all the provisions for a meal.
'You were expected, you perceive,' he said. A delightful sense of
well-being came into my mind. I sat down in the sweetness of ease after
fatigue, of refreshment after weariness, of pleasant sounds and sights
after the arid way. I said to myself that my past experiences had been a
mistake, that this was where I ought to have come from the first, that
life here would be happy, and that all intruding thoughts must soon
vanish and die away.
After I had rested, I strolled about, and entered fully into the
pleasures of the place. Wherever I went, through all the city, there was
nothing but brightness and pleasure, music playing, and flags waving, and
flowers and dancers and everything that was most gay. I asked several
people whom I met what was the cause of the rejoicing; but either they
were too much occupied with their own pleasures, or my question was lost
in the hum of merriment, the sound of the instruments and of the dancers'
feet. When I had seen as much as I desired of the pleasure out of doors,
I was taken by some to see the interiors of houses, which were all
decorated for this festival, whatever it was, lighted up with curious
varieties of lighting, in tints of different colors. 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 color, 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.
Sometime, 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 mean time 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 honor. 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 forever at a feast, to see forever the merrymakers
turn round and round, to hear in your ears forever 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 forever 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 labor, 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 labored, 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 succor 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 splendor 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--O 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.