Micky was still in bed. He was aware of so much through long melancholy
dreams. But when he opened his mouth to laugh, it filled with dust.
Choosing to open his eyes, he found that he had swollen enormously, and
lay sunk in the sand of an illimitable plain. As he expected, he had no
occasion greatly to modify his ideals; infinity had merely taken the
place of his bedroom and of London. Nothing moved on its surface except
a few sand-pillars, which would sometimes merge into each other as
though confabulating, and then fall with a slight hiss. Save for these,
there was no motion, no noise, nor could he feel any wind.
How long had he lain here? Perhaps for years, long before death
perhaps, while his body seemed to be walking among men. Life is so
short and trivial, that who knows whether we arrive for it entirely,
whether more than a fraction of the soul is aroused to put on flesh?
The bud and the blossom perish in a moment, the husk endures, and may
not the soul be a husk? It seemed to Micky that he had lain in the
dust for ever, suffering and sneering, and that the essence of all
things, the primal power that lies behind the stars, is senility. Age,
toothless, dropsical age; ungenerous to age and to youth; born before
all ages, and outlasting them; the universe as old age.
The place degraded while it tortured. It was vast, yet ignoble. It
sloped downward into darkness and upward into cloud, but into what
darkness, what clouds! No tragic splendour glorified them. When he
looked at them he understood why he was so unhappy, for they were
looking at him, sneering at him while he sneered. Their dirtiness was
more ancient than the hues of day and night, their irony more profound;
he was part of their jest, even as youth was part of his, and slowly he
realized that he was, and had for some years been, in Hell.
All around him lay other figures, huge and fungous. It was as if
the plain had festered. Some of them could sit up, others scarcely
protruded from the sand, and he knew that they had made the same
mistake in life as himself, though he did not know yet what the mistake
had been; probably some little slip, easily avoided had one but been
told.
Speech was permissible. Presently a voice said, "Is not ours a heavenly
sky? Is it not beautiful?"
"Most beautiful," answered Micky, and found each word a stab of pain.
Then he knew that one of the sins here punished was appreciation;
he was suffering for all the praise that he had given to the bad
and mediocre upon earth; when he had praised out of idleness, or to
please people, or to encourage people; for all the praise that had
not been winged with passion. He repeated "Most beautiful," and the
sky quivered, for he was entering into fuller torments now. One ray
of happiness survived: his wife could not be in this place. She had
not sinned with the people of the plain, and could not suffer their
distortion. Her view of life had proved right after all; and, in his
utter misery, this comforted him. Janet should again be his religion,
and as eternity dragged forward and returned upon itself and dragged
forward she would show him that old age, if rightly managed, can be
beautiful; that experience, if rightly received, can lead the soul of
man to bliss. Then he turned to his neighbour, who was continuing his
hymn of praise.
"I could lie here for ever," he was saying. "When I think of my
restlessness during life--that is to say, during what men miscall life,
for it is death really--this is life--when I think of my restlessness
on earth, I am overcome by so much goodness and mercy, I could lie here
for ever."
"And will you?" asked Micky.
"Ah, that is the crowning blessing--I shall, and so will you."
Here a pillar of sand passed between them. It was long before they
could speak or see. Then Micky took up the song, chafed by the
particles that were working into his soul.
"I, too, regret my wasted hours," he said, "especially the hours of my
youth. I regret all the time I spent in the sun. In later years I did
repent, and that is why I am admitted here where there is no sun; yes,
and no wind and none of the stars that drove me almost mad at night
once. It would be appalling, would it not, to see Orion again, the
central star of whose sword is not a star but a nebula, the golden seed
of worlds to be. How I dreaded the autumn on earth when Orion rises,
for he recalled adventure and my youth. It was appalling. How thankful
I am to see him no more."
"Ah, but it was worse," cried the other, "to look high leftward from
Orion and see the Twins. Castor and Pollux were brothers, one human,
the other divine; and Castor died. But Pollux went down to Hell that he
might be with him."
"Yes; that is so. Pollux went into Hell."
"Then the gods had pity on both, and raised them aloft to be stars whom
sailors worship, and all who love and are young. Zeus was their father,
Helen their sister, who brought the Greeks against Troy. I dreaded them
more than Orion."
They were silent, watching their own sky. It approved. They had been
cultivated men on earth, and these are capable of the nicer torments
hereafter. Their memories will strike exquisite images to enhance
their pain. "I will speak no more," said Micky to himself. "I will be
silent through eternity." But the darkness prised open his lips, and
immediately he was speaking.
"Tell me more about this abode of bliss," he asked. "Are there grades
in it? Are there ranks in our heaven?"
"There are two heavens," the other replied, "the heaven of the hard and
of the soft. We here lie in the heaven of the soft. It is a sufficient
arrangement, for all men grow either hard or soft as they grow old."
As he spoke the clouds lifted, and, looking up the slope of the
plain, Micky saw that in the distance it was bounded by mountains of
stone, and he knew, without being told, that among those mountains
Janet lay, rigid, and that he should never see her. She had not been
saved. The darkness would mock her, too, for ever. With him lay the
sentimentalists, the conciliators, the peace-makers, the humanists,
and all who have trusted the warmer vision; with his wife were the
reformers and ascetics and all sword-like souls. By different paths
they had come to Hell, and Micky now saw what the bustle of life
conceals: that the years are bound either to liquefy a man or to
stiffen him, and that Love and Truth, who seem to contend for our souls
like angels, hold each the seeds of our decay.
"It is, indeed, a sufficient arrangement," he said; "both sufficient
and simple. But answer one question more that my bliss may be
perfected; in which of these two heavens are the young?"