"The spirits of the damned dwell over it; we never speak of that river."
"Is it a broad river?"
"Swift, and very broad."
"Do the damned ever cross it?"
"They are permitted, we know not why, to cross it now and again."
And in these answers he caught a new tone, as if his companions were
frightened, and were finding means to express their fear. When he said,
"With permission, they can do us no harm," he was answered, "They
harm us with light and a song." And again, "They harm us because they
remember and try to remind."
"Of what would they remind us?"
"Of the hour when we were as they."
As he questioned a whisper arose from the low-lying verges. The spirits
were crying to each other faintly. He heard, "It is coming; drive
it back over the river, shatter it, compel it to be old." And then
the darkness was cloven, and a star of pain broke in his soul. He
understood now; a torment greater than any was at hand.
"I was before choice," came the song. "I was before hardness and
softness were divided. I was in the days when truth was love. And I am."
All the plain was convulsed. But the invader could not be shattered.
When it pressed the air parted and the sand-pillars fell, and its path
was filled with senile weeping.
"I have been all men, but all men have forgotten me. I transfigured
the world for them until they preferred the world. They came to me as
children, afraid; I taught them, and they despised me. Childhood is a
dream about me, experience a slow forgetting: I govern the magic years
between them, and am."
"Why trouble us?" moaned the shades. "We could bear our torment, just
bear it, until there was light and a song. Go back again over the
river. This is Heaven, we were saying, that darkness is God; we could
praise them till you came. The book of our deeds is closed; why open
it? We were damned from our birth; leave it there. O supreme jester,
leave us. We have sinned, we know it, and this place is death and Hell."
"Death comes," the voice pealed, "and death is not a dream or a
forgetting. Death is real. But I, too, am real, and whom I will I save.
I see the scheme of things, and in it no place for me, the brain and
the body against me. Therefore I rend the scheme in two, and make a
place, and under countless names have harrowed Hell. Come." Then, in
tones of inexpressible sweetness, "Come to me all who remember. Come
out of your eternity into mine. It is easy, for I am still at your
eyes, waiting to look out of them; still in your hearts, waiting to
beat. The years that I dwelt with you seemed short, but they were
magical, and they outrun time."
The shades were silent. They could not remember.
"Who desires to remember? Desire is enough. There is no abiding home
for strength and beauty among men. The flower fades, the seas dry up in
the sun, the sun and all the stars fade as a flower. But the desire for
such things, that is eternal, that can abide, and he who desires me is
I."
Then Micky died a second death. This time he dissolved through terrible
pain, scorched by the glare, pierced by the voice. But as he died he
said, "I do desire," and immediately the invader vanished, and he
was standing alone on the sandy plain. It had been merely a dream.
But he was standing. How was that? Why had he not thought to stand
before? He had been unhappy in Hell, and all that he had to do was to
go elsewhere. He passed downwards, pained no longer by the mockery
of its cloud. The pillars brushed against him and fell, the nether
darkness went over his head. On he went till he came to the banks of
the infernal stream, and there he stumbled--stumbled over a piece of
wood, no vague substance, but a piece of wood that had once belonged
to a tree. At his impact it moved, and water gurgled against it. He
had embarked. Some one was rowing. He could see the blades of oars
moving towards him through the foam, but the rower was invisible in
cloud. As they neared mid-channel the boat went more slowly, for the
tide was ebbing, and Micky knew that once carried out he would be
lost eternally; there was no second hope of salvation. He could not
speak, but his heart beat time to the oars--one, two. Hell made her
last effort, and all that is evil in creation, all the distortions of
love and truth by which we are vexed, came surging down the estuary,
and the boat hung motionless. Micky heard the pant of breath through
the roaring, the crack of angelic muscles; then he heard a voice say,
"The point of it ..." and a weight fell off his body and he crossed
mid-stream.
It was a glorious evening. The boat had sped without prelude into
sunshine. The sky was cloudless, the earth gold, and gulls were riding
up and down on the furrowed waters. On the bank they had left were some
sand-dunes rising to majestic hills; on the bank in front was a farm,
full to the brim with fire.