I had no particular remembrance of sins, no faith or love or hope;
nothing but a sense of extreme _naturalness_, if I may express it so.
It seemed as if I had known all this all along, as a stone thrown into
the air would, if it had consciousness, realize the inevitability of
its curve as it neared the earth. I was to die; well, that was the
corollary of having lived!
“Well, this inevitable movement inward went on, as it seemed to me,
very swiftly. Each instant that I applied my consciousness it seemed to
me as if I had gone a great way since the previous instant; the only
thing that astonished me was the distance there was to travel. It was
a sensation--how shall I express it?--a sensation of sinking swiftly
into an inner depth of which I had not guessed the extent. I wondered
in a complacent, half-curious kind of way as to what exactly would be
the end, how things would be visualized when I passed finally from the
body, and such things as I pictured, I pictured, of course, in terms
of time and space. I--I thought my essential self, whatever that was,
would at a certain moment pass a certain line and emerge on the other
side; and the things would be rather as they had been on earth, thinner
... spiritual. I should see faces, perhaps; forms, places, ... all
in a kind of delicate light.... What really happened was a complete
surprise.”
Mr. Bosanquet paused, and in a meditative kind of way winked several
times at the fire. He showed no emotion. He seemed to me merely to be
recalling the best phrases to use.
“Well,” he said, “I have told this story before, and each time before
telling it I have thought that I had got the point and could really
describe what happened, and each time I have been disappointed.... Of
course it must be so. There are simply no words or illustrations. I
must do the best I can.
“Well, this process went on, and after a while I perceived plainly
that my senses were fading. I believe I opened my eyes; so I was told
afterwards--opened them wide; but, at any rate, I saw nothing this
time except blurred lines and colors, rather like the reverse side of
a carpet. They were rather bewildering; but they soon went, leaving
nothing but a streaked grayness that darkened rapidly.
“I could no longer move my hands, or, in fact, recall to myself by
feeling any material thing at all. I seemed to have lost relations
with my body. Neither could I move my lips or tongue; taste had gone.
I don’t think I had ever understood before how taste depends on the
will and the movement of the tongue--much more so than any of the other
senses, which are, more or less, passive.
“And then quite suddenly I perceived that hearing had ceased also.
There had been no drumming in my ears, as I had half expected; I think
there had been at some time previously a clear singing of one high
note, which had rather bothered me; and I suppose that it was then that
hearing had gone, but I did not notice it till I thought about it.
“And then there was one more thing more strange than all.... I began
to perceive that my will was not myself.
“Most of us are accustomed to think that it is. It is so closely
united with that which is the very self that we usually identify them.
Sometimes we are even more foolish, and identify our emotions with
ourselves, and think that our moods are our character. The fact is, of
course, that the intellect is the most superficial of our faculties;
there are simply scores of things that we cannot understand in the
least, but of which for all that we are as certain as of our own
existence. Next to that comes the emotion: it is certainly nearer to us
than intellect, though not much; and thirdly comes the will.
“Now the will is quite close to us; it is that through which we
consciously act after having heard the reasons for or against action
alleged by the other faculties. But the will is, after all, a faculty
of self--not self itself.
“I began to see this from the way it was laboring, like an exhausted
engine; it still throbbed and moved; it turned this way and that,
directing the all but dead faculties outside to move in this or that
direction--to think or to perceive. But I began to see clearly now
that the real self was something altogether apart, existing simply in
another mode. There, that is the point--_in another mode_....
“Now, in this matter I feel hopeless. I simply cannot express what I
knew, and know, to be the central fact of our existence. I can say
no more than that. Self, that which lies far behind everything else,
exists in as different a mode from all else, as--as the inner meaning
of a phrase of music is apart from the existence of a dog walking up
the street. There is simply no common term which can be applied to them
both.
“Well, I perceived my will to be laboring, very slowly and clumsily,
and I perceived that it would not be able to move much longer. (You
must understand that this ‘perceiving’ as I call it was not the act of
my intellect; it was simply a deep intuitive knowledge dwelling in that
which I call Self.)
“Then I suddenly became aware that it was important for my will to
fall in the right direction; I understood that this would make--well,
the whole difference to me.... I knew that this would be my last
conscious act....
“You ask me how I knew what was the right direction. Well, I must go
slowly here....”
He paused for a moment, then he went on very slowly, picking his words.
“I began, I think I may say, to be clearly and vividly conscious of two
_centres_; there was Self, and there was Another. This Other was at
present completely hidden from me; I was only aware of it as one may
be aware of the presence of a huge personality behind an impenetrable
curtain. But I perceived that this Other was the only important
thing....
“Well, my will was reeling; there was no discomfort, no fear, or pain,
or anxiety, and I--whatever that is--watched it as a man may watch a
top in its last swift twistings on its side. I had still some control
over it; I knew that it was my will; it still was linked to me in a
way.... Then I put out my energy (remember, there was no conscious
perception of anything; nothing but a perfectly blind instinct) and
tried to wrench that rolling thing round to a position of rest--ah! how
shall I put it?--a position of rest pointing toward this other centre.
“And as I made that effort I lost touch with it. I have no idea whether
I succeeded, and at the same instant, if I may call it so, something
happened.”
Mr. Bosanquet leaned back and sighed.
“Every word is wrong,” he said; “you understand that, do you not?”
I nodded two or three times. I kept my eyes on his face. He glanced
round at the other two. Then he went on, shifting his attitude a little.
“Well, this something--I suppose I could give half a dozen
illustrations, but none of them would be adequate. Let me give you two
or three.
“When a man falls in love suddenly his whole centre changes. Up to
that point he has probably referred everything to himself--considered
things from his own point. When he falls in love the whole thing is
shifted; he becomes a part of the circumference--perhaps even the whole
circumference; some one else becomes the centre. For example, things he
hears and sees are referred in future instantly to this other person;
he ceases to be acquisitive; his entire life, if it is really love, is
pulled sideways; he does not desire to get, but to give. That is why it
is the noblest thing in the world.
“Secondly, imagine that you had lived all your life in a certain house,
and had got to know every detail of it perfectly; you had walked about
in the garden, too, and looked through the railings, and thought you
knew pretty fairly what the country was like. Then one morning, after
you had got up and dressed, you went to your bedroom door, opened it,
and went out, and that very instant found yourself not in the passage,
but on the top of a high mountain with a strange country visible for
miles all round, and no house or human being near you.
“Thirdly (and this perhaps is the best illustration after all), imagine
that you were looking at a picture, and had become absorbed in it, and
then without any warning at all the picture suddenly became a chord
of music which you heard, and which you recognized to be identical
with the picture--not merely analogous to it, but the actual picture
translated, transubstantiated, and transaccidentated into sound.
“Now, those are the three illustrations I generally use in telling this
story; there are others, but I think these are the best.
“Well, it was like that; but you must please to remember that these are
only like charcoal sketches of something which is color rather than
shape. But briefly, those are the nearest similitudes I can think of.
“First, although I remained the same, I became aware that I simply
was not the centre of what I experienced. It was not I who primarily
existed at all. There was Something--I call it Something, because the
word Person simply bears no resemblance to the Personality of this
Other Existence; at least, no more than a resemblance, because this
Other Personality was as different from and as far above our own as the
personality of a philosopher is different from the corresponding thing
in a pebble. I became aware--at least, this was what I told myself
afterwards--I became aware of real Existence for the first time in my
experience. I myself then became merely a speck in a circumference,
yet--and this is why I spoke of love--I also became aware that while
I had not lost my individuality, yet this Other Being was the only
thing that mattered at all, and, further--well, I may as well say it
outright, that in the very depth of this Existence was Human Nature;
yes, Human Nature. I knew it instantly. I never before had had the
faintest idea of what the Incarnation really meant.
“Secondly, the whole of everything was different--as startlingly
different as the change of my second illustration. I had expected to
find a kind of continuation. There was, in one sense, no continuation
at all; nothing in the least like what experience had led me to expect.
It was completely abrupt.
“Thirdly, in another sense, what I found was not only the consequence
of what had preceded, it was not simply the result, but it was
identical with what had preceded. It was the picture becoming
sound--the essence of my previous life was here in other terms. It
simply was. The whole thing was complete. You may call this Judgment;
well, that will do; but it was a Judgment in which there was no
question of concurrence or protest. It was inevitably true.
“Let me take even one more illustration.
“Once I went with my brother into a glass-house in autumn. He smelled a
certain flower, and then rather excitedly asked me to smell it. I shut
my eyes and smelled it. Practically instantly the whole thing became
sound and sight. I saw the terrace at home in summer, and heard the
bees. I looked up.
“‘Well?’ he said.
“‘The terrace in summer,’ I said.
“‘Exactly.’
“Well, it was like that. There was no question about it.
“Now, I have taken some time to tell this; but I must make it clear
that there was absolutely no time in the experience--no sense of
progression. It was not merely that I was absorbed, but that time had
no existence. This is how I knew it.
“Simultaneously with all this I heard one noise; and immediately time
began--I began to consider. Presently I heard another noise, then
another, like a great drum being beaten. Then the noises went, and
there was absolute silence of which I was aware; and others came in--a
rustling, a footstep, the sound of words. I was entirely absorbed in
these. I heard the sound of water, a door opening, the ticking of a
clock. I was conscious of no consideration about these things, and no
sensation of any kind; it was as if my brain had become one ear which
heard. This went on--well, I may say it was ten seconds or ten years.
Time meant nothing to me. I only know even now that it existed because
one thing followed another. I did not reflect at all.
“At last, after this had gone on, it was as if a new note had struck;
another sense began to move, the sense of sight. I first became aware
of darkness, then came a glimmer, with a sensation of flickering. Then
touch. I became aware of a constraint somewhere in the universe; it
was a long time before I knew that I myself was feeling it. I did not
perceive sensation; I was it.
“Well, these waxed and waxed; then my will stirred; and I became aware
that I could choose, that I could acquiesce or resent. Then emotion,
and I found myself disliking certain sensations. Then I began to wonder
and question again, and ask myself why and what----”
Mr. Bosanquet broke off abruptly.
“Well, I needn’t go on. To put it in a word, I was coming back to
ordinary life. Half an hour after the doctor had said that I was dead,
and about three minutes after the nurse had finished with me--just as
she was looking at me, in fact, before going out of the room--I made a
sound with my lips. The rest happened as you would expect; there was
nothing interesting in that.
“But this is the point I want to make clear. Those noises I heard like
a drum followed by the silence were without doubt the sounds my own
body made in dying.
“It was at that point that I died; and the next sounds that I began to
hear were the noises the nurse made in washing me and laying me out.
There is no question about that. I asked about all the details minutely.
“But the thing that seemed to me so strange at first was the fact that
I had died ‘before’ that, as we say. That complete change of the mode
of existence undoubtedly marked death, and the particular instant of
death must have been that at which I became aware of the change, and of
the severance of my will from myself.
“But I understood it presently. The explanation, I think, must be this.
“There is always a certain space of time between an incident happening
and our perception of it--infinitesimally small if we are observing
it, but yet it is there. Well, when I made that final effort of will I
died, but dying had begun before that. I had only regarded dying from
the purely internal side; it took in my soul the form of severance from
my will. At that same instant, since we must speak in terms of time, I
was in the spiritual mode of existence, where there is simply no time
but which includes all time and all one’s previous experience; and in
practically the same ‘instant’ I was back again, and experiencing the
physical phenomena of dying. The drum-note was either my throat or
heart, I suppose; the silence that followed was the body’s perception
of death worked out in terms of time.
“We may say, then, this, impossible as it sounds--that death had taken
place at a given moment in time; that that inner real self behind
the will which I have spoken of simultaneously experienced severance
from the body, and was immediately in its own mode of existence,
which, although reckoned as time, was an instant; was, in fact, simply
eternity with its inevitable consequences. But after eternity had been
experienced--since I suppose again I must say ‘after’--it ceased to be
experienced; and all this was enacted in time. Then----”
Mr. Bosanquet sat up, smiling suddenly.
“It is useless; I am boring you.”
I roused myself to answer with an energy I had not expected.
“No; please----”
“Well, in one sentence: Then I died.”
* * * * *
He leaned back with an air of finality.
“But--but one question,” I protested, “you spoke of Judgment. Was the
result happiness or unhappiness?”
He shook his head, smiling.
X
_Father Macclesfield’s Tale_
Monsignor Maxwell announced next day at dinner that he had already
arranged for the evening’s entertainment. A priest whose acquaintance
he had made on the Palatine was leaving for England the next morning,
and it was our only chance, therefore, of hearing his story. That
he had a story had come to the Canon’s knowledge in the course of a
conversation on the previous afternoon.
“He told me the outline of it,” he said; “I think it very remarkable.
But I had a great deal of difficulty in persuading him to repeat it
to the company this evening. However, he promised at last. I trust,
gentlemen, you do not think I have presumed in begging him to do so.”
* * * * *
Father Macclesfield arrived at supper.
He was a little, unimposing, dry man, with a hooked nose and gray
hair. He was rather silent at supper, but there was no trace of shyness
in his manner as he took his seat upstairs, and without glancing round
once began in an even and dispassionate voice:
“I once knew a Catholic girl that married an old Protestant three times
her own age. I entreated her not to do so, but it was useless. And
when the disillusionment came she used to write to me piteous letters,
telling me that her husband had in reality no religion at all. He was a
convinced infidel, and scouted even the idea of the soul’s immortality.
“After two years of married life the old man died. He was about sixty
years old, but very hale and hearty till the end.
“Well, when he took to his bed the wife sent for me, and I had half a
dozen interviews with him, but it was useless. He told me plainly that
he wanted to believe--in fact, he said that the thought of annihilation
was intolerable to him. If he had had a child he would not have hated
death so much; if his flesh and blood in any manner survived him he
could have fancied that he had a sort of vicarious life left; but as it
was, there was no kith or kin of his alive, and he could not bear that.”
Father Macclesfield sniffed cynically and folded his hands.
“I may say that his deathbed was extremely unpleasant. He was a coarse
old fellow, with plenty of strength in him, and he used to make remarks
about the churchyard and--and, in fact, the worms, that used to send
his poor child of a wife half fainting out of the room. He had lived an
immoral life, too, I gathered.
“Just at the last it was--well, disgusting. He had no consideration.
God knows why she married him! The agony was a very long one; he caught
at the curtains round the bed, calling out, and all his words were
about death and the dark. It seemed to me that he caught hold of the
curtains as if to hold himself into this world. And at the very end he
raised himself clean up in bed and stared horribly out of the window
that was open just opposite.
“I must tell you that straight away beneath the window lay a long
walk between sheets of dead leaves with laurels on either side and
the branches meeting overhead, so that it was very dark there even
in summer, and at the end of the walk away from the house was the
churchyard gate.”
Father Macclesfield paused and blew his nose. Then he went on, still
without looking at us.
“Well, the old man died, and he was carried along this laurel path and
buried.
“His wife was in such a state that I simply dared not go away. She was
frightened to death; and, indeed, the whole affair of her husband’s
dying was horrible. But she would not leave the house. She had a fancy
that it would be cruel to him. She used to go down twice a day to pray
at the grave; but she never went along the laurel walk. She would go
round by the garden and in at a lower gate and come back the same way,
or by the upper garden.
“This went on for three or four days. The man had died on a Saturday
and was buried on Monday; it was in July, and he had died about eight
o’clock.
“I made up my mind to go on the Saturday after the funeral. My curate
had managed alone very well for a few days, but I did not like to leave
him for a second Sunday.
“Then on the Friday at lunch--her sister had come down, by the way, and
was still in the house--on the Friday the widow said something about
never daring to sleep in the room where the old man had died. I told
her it was nonsense, and so on; but you must remember she was in a
dreadful state of nerves, and she persisted. So I said I would sleep in
the room myself. I had no patience with such ideas then.
“Of course she said all sorts of things, but I had my way and my things
were moved in on Friday evening.
“I went to my new room about a quarter before eight to put on my
cassock for dinner. The room was very much as it had been--rather dark
because of the trees at the end of the walk outside. There was the
four-poster there with the damask curtains, the table and chairs, the
cupboard where his clothes were kept, and so on.
“When I went to put my cassock on I went to the window to look out. To
the right and left were the gardens, with the sunlight just off them,
but still very bright and gay with the geraniums, and exactly opposite
was the laurel walk, like a long, green shady tunnel, dividing the
upper and lower lawns.
“I could see straight down it to the churchyard gate, which was about a
hundred yards away, I suppose. There were limes overhead and laurels,
as I said, on each side.
“Well, I saw some one coming up the walk, but it seemed to me at first
that he was drunk. He staggered several times as I watched--I suppose
he would be fifty yards away--and once I saw him catch hold of one of
the trees and cling to it as if he were afraid of falling. Then he left
it and came on again slowly, going from side to side, with his hands
out. He seemed desperately keen to get to the house.
“I could see his dress, and it astonished me that a man dressed so
should be drunk, for he was quite plainly a gentleman. He wore a white
top hat and a gray cutaway coat and gray trousers, and I could make out
his white spats.
“Then it struck me he might be ill, and I looked harder than ever,
wondering whether I ought to go down.
“When he was about twenty yards away he lifted his face, and it struck
me as very odd, but it seemed to me he was extraordinarily like the old
man we had buried on Monday; but it was darkish where he was, and the
next moment he dropped his face, threw up his hands, and fell flat on
his back.
“Well, of course I was startled at that, and I leaned out of the window
and called out something. He was moving his hands, I could see, as if
he were in convulsions, and I could hear the dry leaves rustling.
“Well, then I turned and ran out and downstairs.”
Father Macclesfield stopped a moment.
“Gentlemen,” he said abruptly, “when I got there there was not a sign
of the old man. I could see that the leaves had been disturbed, but
that was all.”
There was an odd silence in the room as he paused, but before any of us
had time to speak he went on.
“Of course, I did not say a word of what I had seen. We dined as usual.
I smoked for an hour or so by myself after prayers and then I went up
to bed. I cannot say I was perfectly comfortable, for I was not, but
neither was I frightened.
“When I got to my room I lit all my candles and then went to a big
cupboard I had noticed and pulled out some of the drawers. In the
bottom of the third drawer I found a gray cutaway coat and gray
trousers; I found several pairs of white spats in the top drawer and a
white hat on the shelf above. That is the first incident.”
“Did you sleep there, Father?” said a voice softly.
“I did,” said the priest; “there was no reason why I should not. I did
not fall asleep for two or three hours, but I was not disturbed in any
way and came to breakfast as usual.
“Well, I thought about it all a bit, and finally I sent a wire to my
curate telling him I was detained. I did not like to leave the house
just then.”
Father Macclesfield settled himself again in his chair and went on in
the same dry, uninterested voice.
“On Sunday we drove over to the Catholic church, six miles off, and I
said mass. Nothing more happened till the Monday evening.
“That evening I went to the window again about a quarter before eight,
as I had done both on the Saturday and Sunday. Everything was perfectly
quiet till I heard the churchyard gate unlatch and I saw a man come
through.
“But I saw almost at once that it was not the same man I had seen
before; it looked to me like a keeper, for he had a gun across his
arm; then I saw him hold the gate open an instant, and a dog came
through and began to trot up the path toward the house with his master
following.
“When the dog was about fifty yards away he stopped dead and pointed.
“I saw the keeper throw his gun forward and come up softly, and as he
came the dog began to slink backward. I watched very closely, clean
forgetting why I was there, and the next instant something--it was too
shadowy under the trees to see exactly what it was--but something about
the size of a hare burst out of the laurels and made straight up the
path, dodging from side to side, but coming like the wind.