With Colonel Singelsby was no such nightmare awakening as with Sandy
Graff; with him, were no such ugly visions and experiences; with him was
no squalor and discomfort. Yet he also opened his eyes upon a room so
like that upon which they had closed that at first he thought that he
was still in the world. There was the same soft bed, the same warmth of
ease and comfort, the same style of old-fashioned furniture. There were
the curtained windows, the pictures upon the wall, the bright warm fire
burning in the grate.
At first he saw all these things drowsily, as one does upon newly
awakening. With him, as with Sandy, it was only when his conscious life
had opened wide and clear enough to observe and to recognize who they
were that were gathered around him that with a keen, almost agonizing
thrill he realized where he was and what had befallen him. Upon one side
of his bed stood his son Hubert; upon the other side stood his brother
James. The one had died ten, the other nineteen years before. Of all
those who had gone from the world which he himself had just left, these
stood the nearest to him, and now, in his resurrection, his opening eyes
first saw these two. They and other relatives and friends helped him to
arise and dress, as Sandy had seen the poor wretches in the place in
which he had awakened raised from their beds and dressed by their
friends.
* * * * *
All Colonel Singelsby's teachings had told him that this was not so
different from the world he had left behind. Nevertheless, although he
was prepared somewhat for it, it was wonderful to him how alike the one
was to the other. The city, the streets, the people coming and going,
the stores, the parks, the great houses--all were just as they were in
the world of men. He had no difficulty in finding his way about the
streets. There, in comfortable houses of a better class, were many of
his friends; others were not to be found; some, he was told, had
ascended higher; others, he was also told, had descended lower.
Among other places, Colonel Singelsby found himself during the afternoon
in the house of one with whom he had been upon friendly, almost
intimate terms in times past in the world. Colonel Singelsby remembered
hearing that the good man had died a few months before he himself had
left the world. He wondered what had become of him, and then in a little
while he found himself in his old friend's house. It had been many years
since he had seen him. He remembered him as a benign, venerable old
gentleman, and he had been somewhat surprised to find that he was still
living in the town, instead of having ascended to a higher state.
The old gentleman still looked outwardly venerable, still outwardly
benign, but now there was under his outer seeming a somewhat of restless
querulousness, a something of uneasy discontent, that Colonel Singelsby
did not remember to have seen there before. They talked together about
many things, chiefly of those in the present state of existence in which
they found themselves. It was all very new and vivid upon Colonel
Singelsby's mind, but the reverend gentleman seemed constantly to forget
that he was in another world than that which he had left behind. It
seemed to be always with an effort that he brought himself to talk of
the world in which he lived as the world of spirits. The visit was
somehow unpleasant to Colonel Singelsby. He was impressed with a certain
air of intolerance exhibited by the other. His mind seemed to dwell more
upon the falsity of the old things than upon the truth of the new, and
he seemed to take a certain delight in showing how and in what everybody
but those of his own creed erred and fell short of the Divine intent,
and not the least disagreeable part of the talk to Colonel Singelsby was
that the other's words seemed to find a sort of echo in his own mind.
At last he proposed a walk, and the other, taking his hat and stick,
accompanied him for a little distance upon the way. The talk still clung
much to the same stem to which it had adhered all along.
"It is a very strange thing," said the reverend gentleman, "but a great
many people who have come to this town since I came hither have left it
again to ascend, as I have been told, to a higher state. I think there
must have been some mistake, for I cannot see how it is possible--and in
fact our teachings distinctly tell us that it is impossible--for one to
ascend to a higher state without having accepted the new truths of the
new order of things."
Colonel Singelsby did not make answer. He was not only growing tired of
the subject itself, but of his old friend as well.
They were at that moment crossing an angle of a small park shaded by
thin, spindly trees. As the Colonel looked up he saw three men and a
woman approaching along the same path and under the flickering shadows.
Two of the men walked a little in advance, the other walked with the
woman. There was something familiar about two of the group, and Colonel
Singelsby pointed at them with his finger.
"Who are they?" said he. "I am sure there is somebody I know."
The other adjusted his glasses and looked. "I do not know," said he,
"except that one of the men is a new-comer. We somehow grow to know who
are new-comers by the time we have lived here a little while."
"Dear me!" cried Colonel Singelsby, stopping abruptly, "I know that man.
I did not know that he had come here too. I wonder where they are
going?"
"I think," said the reverend gentleman, dryly--"I think that this is
one of those cases of which I just spoke to you. I judge from the
general appearance of the party that they are about to ascend, as they
call it here, to a higher state."
"That is impossible!" said Colonel Singelsby. "That man is a poor
wretched creature whom I have helped with charity again and again, it
cannot be that he is to go to a higher state, for he is not fit for it.
If he is to be taken anywhere, it must be to punishment."
The other shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, he had seen such
cases too often during his sojourn to be deceived.
The little party had now come close to the two, and Colonel Singelsby
stepped forward with all his old-time frank kindness of manner. "Why,
Sandy," said he, "I did not know that you also had come here."
"Yes, sir," said Sandy; "I died the same night you did."
"Dear me!" said the Colonel, "that is very singular, very singular
indeed! Where are you going now, Sandy?"
"I don't know," said Sandy; "these gentlemen here are taking me
somewhere, I don't know where. This is my wife," said he. "Don't you
remember her, sir?"
"Oh yes," said the Colonel, with his most pleasant air, "I remember her
very well, but of course I am not so much surprised to see her here as I
am to see you. But have you no idea where you are going?" he continued.
"No," said Sandy; "but perhaps these gentlemen can tell you." And he
looked inquiringly at his escort, who stood calmly listening to what was
said.
* * * * *
_So far, the Parable, as I had read it, progressed onward with some
coherence and concatenation, a coherence and concatenation growing
perhaps more disjointed as it advanced. Now it began to be broken with
interjectory sentences, and just here was one, the tenor of which I
could not altogether understand, but have since comprehended more or
less clearly. I cannot give its exact words, but only its general form._
_"O wretched man," it said, "how pitiful are thy vain efforts and
strivings to keep back by thine own strength that fiery flood of hell
which grows and increases to overwhelm thy soul! If the inflowing of
good which Jehovah vouchsafes is infinite, only less infinite is the
outflowing of that which thou callest evil and wickedness. How, then,
canst thou hope to stand against it and to conquer? How canst thou hope
to keep back that raging torrent of fire and of flame with the crumbling
unbaked bricks of thine own soul's making? Poor fool! Thou mayst
endeavor, thou mayst strive, thou mayst build thy wall of defence higher
and higher, fearing God, and living a life of virtue, but by-and-by thou
wilt reach the end, and then wilt find thou canst build no higher! Then
how vain shall have been thy life of resistance! First that flood shall
trickle over the edge of thy defence; then it shall run a stream the
breadth of a man's hand; then it shall gush forth a torrent; then,
bursting over and through and around, it shall sweep away all that thou
hast so laboriously built up, and shall rush, howling, roaring, raging,
and burning through thy soul with ten thousand times the fury and
violence that it would have done if thou hadst not striven to keep it
back, if thou hadst not resisted and fought against it. For bear this in
mind: Christ said he came not to call the good to repentance, but the
evil, and if thou art full of thine own, how then canst thou hope to
receive of a God that asketh not for sacrifice, but for love?"_
_Hence again the story resumed._
* * * * *
Colonel Singelsby had not before noticed the two men who were with
Sandy, now he observed them more closely. They were tall, middle-aged
men, with serious, placid, unemotional faces. Each carried a long white
staff, the end of which rested upon the ground. There was about them
something somehow different from anything Colonel Singelsby had ever
seen before. They were most quiet, courteous men, but there was that in
their personal appearance that was singularly unpleasant to Colonel
Singelsby. Why, he could not tell, for they were evidently gentlemen,
and, from their bearing, men of influence. He turned to Sandy again.
"How has it been with you since you have been here?" said he.
"It has been very hard with me," said Sandy, patiently; "very hard
indeed; but I hope and believe now that the worst is over, and that
by-and-by I shall be happy, and not have any more trouble."
"I trust so, indeed," said the Colonel; "but do not hope for too much,
Sandy. Even the best men coming to this world are not likely to be rid
of their troubles at once, and it is not to be hoped for that you, after
your ill-spent life, should find your lot easier than theirs."
"I know, sir," said Sandy, "and I am very sorry."
There was a meek acceptance of the Colonel's dictum that grated somehow
unpleasantly upon the Colonel's ears. He would rather that Sandy had
made some protest against that dictum. He approached half a step and
looked more keenly at the other, and then for the first time he saw that
some great, some radical, some tremendous change had happened. The man
before him was no doubt Sandy Graff, but all that was low-browed, evil,
foul, was gone, as though it had been washed away, and in its place was
a translucent, patient meekness, almost like--There was something so
terribly vital in that change that Colonel Singelsby shuddered before
it. He looked and looked, and then he passed the back of his hand across
his eyes. "All this is very unreal," said he, turning to his friend the
minister. "It is like a dream. I begin to feel as though nothing was
real. Surely it is not possible that magic changes can go on, and yet I
cannot understand all these things in the least."
For answer, the reverend gentleman shrugged his shoulders almost sourly.
"Gentlemen," said Colonel Singelsby, turning abruptly upon Sandy's
escort, "let me ask you is this a certain man whom I used to know as
Sandy Graff?"
One of the men nodded his head.
"And will you tell me," said he, "another thing? Will you kindly tell me
where you are taking him?"
"We are about to take him," said the man, looking steadily at the
Colonel as he answered--"we are about to take him to the outskirts of
the First Kingdom."
At the answer Colonel Singelsby actually fell back a pace in his
amazement. It was almost as though a blow had fallen upon him. "The
outskirts of the First Kingdom?" said he. "Did I understand you? The
outskirts of the First Kingdom? Surely there is some mistake here! It is
not possible that this man, who died only yesterday, filthy and polluted
with iniquity, stinking in the nostrils of God with ten thousand
indulged and gratified lusts--it is not possible that you intend taking
him to that land, passing by me, who all my life have lived to my best
endeavors in love to God and my neighbor?"
It was the voice of his minister that broke the answer. "Yes, they do,"
said he, sharply; "that is just what they do mean. They do mean to take
him, and they do mean to leave us, for such is the law in this dreadful
place. We, the children of light, are nothing, and they, the fuel of
hell, are everything. Have I not been telling you so?"
Colonel Singelsby had almost forgotten the presence of his acquaintance.
He felt very angry at his interference, and somehow he could no longer
govern his anger as he used to do. He turned upon him and fixed him with
a frown, and then he observed for the first time that a little crowd had
begun gathering, and now stood looking on, some curious and unsmiling,
some grinning. The Colonel drew himself to his height, and looked
haughtily about him. They who grinned began laughing. And now, at last,
it was come Colonel Singelsby's turn to feel as Sandy Graff had felt--as
though all that was happening to him was happening in some hideous
nightmare dream. As in a dream, the balancing weights of reasoning and
morality began to melt before the heat of that which burned within; as
in a dream, the uncurbed inner motives began to strive furiously. Then a
sudden fierce anger, quite like the savage irrational anger of an ugly
dream, flamed up quickly and fiercely. He opened his lips as though to
vent his rage, but for an instant his tottering reason regained a
momentary poise. Checking himself with an effort ten thousand times
greater than that he would have used in his former state and in the
world, he bowed his head upon his breast and stood for a little while
with fingers interlocked, clinching his trembling hands together. So he
stood for a while, brooding, until at last Sandy and his escort made a
motion as if to pass by. Then he spoke again.
"Stop a bit!" said he, looking up--"stop a bit!" His voice was hoarse
and constrained, and he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but
straight at that one of the men to whom he had spoken before. "Sir,"
said he, and then clearing his husky voice--"sir," again, "I have
learned a lesson--the greatest lesson of my life! I have looked into my
heart, and I have seen--I have seen myself--God help me,
gentlemen!--I--maybe I am no better than this man."
The crowd, which had been increasing, as crowds do, began to jeer at the
words, for, like most crowds, it was of a nether sort, and enjoyed the
unusual sight of the gentleman and the aristocrat abasing and
humiliating himself before the reformed drunkard.
At the sound of that ugly jeering laugh Colonel Singelsby quivered as
though under the cut of a lancet, but he never removed his eyes from the
man to whom he spoke. For a moment or two he bit his nether lip in his
effort for self-control, and then repeated, in a louder and perhaps
harsher voice, "I am no better than this man!" He paused for a moment,
and the crowd ceased its jeering to hear what he had to say. "I ask only
this," he said, "that you will take me where you are taking him, and
that I may enjoy such happiness as he is about to enjoy."
Instantly a great roar of laughter went up from the crowd, which had now
gathered to some twenty or thirty souls. The man to whom Colonel
Singelsby had spoken shook his head calmly and impassively.
"It cannot be," said he.
Colonel Singelsby turned white to the very lips, his eyes blazed, and
his breath came thick and heavily. His nostrils twitched spasmodically,
but still, with a supreme effort--a struggle so terrible that few men
happily may ever know it or experience it--he once more controlled the
words that sprang to his lips and struggled for utterance. He swallowed
and swallowed convulsively. "Sir," said he at last, in a voice so
hoarse, so horribly constrained, that it seemed almost to rend him as it
forced utterance--"sir, surely I am mistaken in what I understand; it is
little I ask you, and surely not unjust. Yesterday this man was a vile,
debauched drunkard; surely that does not make him fitter for heaven!
Yesterday I was a God-fearing, law-abiding man, surely that does not
make me unfit! I am not unfit, am I?"
"You are not yet fit for heaven," answered the man, with impassive
calmness. And again, for the third time, the crowd roared with evil
laughter.
Within Colonel Singelsby's soul that fiery flood was now lashing
dreadfully close to the summit of its barriers. His face was as livid as
death, and his hands were clinched till the nails cut into his palm.
"Let me understand for once and for all, for I confess I cannot
understand all this. You say he is to go, and that I am not to go! Is
it, then, God's will and God's justice that because this man for twenty
years has led a life of besotted sin and indulgence, and because I for
sixty years have feared God and loved my neighbor, that he is to be
chosen and I am to be left?"
The man did not reply in words, but in the steady look of his unwinking
eyes the other read his answer.
"Then," gasped Colonel Singelsby, and as he spoke he shook his clinched
and trembling fist against the still, blue sky overhead--"then, if that
be God's justice, may it be damned, for I want none of it."
Then came the end, swiftly, completely. For the fourth time the crowd
laughed, and at the sound those floodgates so laboriously built up
during a lifetime of abstinence were suddenly burst asunder and fell
crashing, and a burning flood of hell's own rage and madness rushed
roaring and thundering into his depicted, empty soul, flaming, blazing,
consuming like straws every precept of righteousness, every fear of God,
and Colonel Edward Singelsby, the one-time Christian gentleman, the
one-time upright son of grace, the one-time man of law and God, was
transformed instantly and terribly into--what? Was it a livid devil from
hell? He cursed the jeering crowd, and at the sound of his own curses a
blindness fell upon him, and he neither knew what he said nor what he
did. His good old friend, who had accompanied him so far and until now
had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some
thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume
them all, he elbowed himself out of the crowd and hurried away. As for
the wretched madman, in his raging fury, it was not the men who had
forbidden him heaven whom he strove to rend and tear limb from limb, but
poor, innocent, harmless Sandy Graff. The crowd swayed and jostled this
way and that, and as madness begets madness, the curses that fell from
one pair of lips found an echo in curses that leaped from others. Sandy
shrunk back appalled before the hell-blast that breathed upon him, and
he felt his wife clutch him closer. Only two of those that were there
stood unmoved; they were the two men who acted as Sandy's escort. As the
tide of madness seemed to swell higher, they calmly stepped forward and
crossed their staves before their charge. There was something in their
action full of significance for those who knew. Instantly the crowd
melted away like snow under a blast of fire. Had there not been two men
present more merciful than the rest, it is hard to say what terrible
thing might not have happened to Colonel Edward Singelsby--deaf and dumb
and blind to everything but his own rage. These two clutched him by the
arms and dragged him back.
"God, man!" they cried, "what are you doing? Do you not see they are
angels?"
They dragged him back to a bench that stood near, and there held him,
whilst he still beat the air with his fist and cried out hoarse curses,
and even as they so held him, two other men came--two men dark, silent,
sinister--and led him away.
Then the other and his wife and his two escorts passed by and out of the
gate of the town, and away towards the mountain that stood still and
blue in the distance.
* * * * *
_So far I read, and then I could bear to read no more, but placed my
hand upon the open page of the book. "What is this dreadful thing?" I
cried. "Is, then, a man punished for truth and justice and virtue and
righteousness? Is it, then, true that the evil are rewarded, and that
the good are punished so dreadfully?"_
_Then the man who held the book spoke again. "Take away thy hand and
read," said he._
_Then I took away my hand, and read as he bade me, and found these
words:_
_"How can God fill with His own that which is already filled by man?
First it must be emptied before it may be filled with the true good of
righteousness and truth, of humility and love, of peace and joy. O thou
foolish one who judgest but from the appearance of things, how long will
it be before thou canst understand that while some may be baptized with
water to cleanliness and repentance, others are baptized with living
fire to everlasting life, and that they alone are the children of God?"_
_Then again I read these words:_
_"Woe to thee, thou who deniest the laws of God and man! Woe to thee,
thou who walkest in the darkness of the shadow of sin and evil! But ten
thousand times woe to thee, thou who pilest Pelion of self-good upon
Ossa of self-truth, not that thou mayst scale therefrom the gate of
Heaven, but that thou mayst hide thyself beneath from the eye of the
Living God! By-and-by His Day shall come! His Terrible Lightning shall
flash from the East to the West! His Dreadful Flaming Thunder-bolt shall
fall, riving thy secret fastnesses to atoms, and leaving thee, poor
worm, writhing in the dazzling effulgence of His Light, and shrivelling
beneath the consuming flame of His Loving-kindness!"_
_Then the leaf was turned, and there before me lay the answer to that
first question, "What shall a man do that he may gain the kingdom of
Heaven?" There stood the words, plain and clear. But I did not dare to
read them, but turning, left that place, shutting the door to behind
me._
_Never have I found that door or entered that room again, but by-and-by
I know that I shall find them both once more, and shall then and there
read the answer that forever stands written in that book, for it still
lies open at the very page, and he upon whose knees it rests is
Israfeel, the Angel of Death._
* * * * *
But what of the sequel? Is there a sequel? Are we, then, to suffer
ourselves to do evil for the sake of shunning pain in the other world? I
trow not! He who sets his foot to climb must never look backward and
downward. He who suffers most must reach the highest. There must be
another part of the story which lies darkly and dimly behind the letter.
One can see, faintly and dimly but nevertheless clearly, what the poor
man was to enjoy--the poor man who from without appeared to be so evil,
and yet within was not really evil. One can see a vision faint and dim
of a simple little house cooled by the dewy shade of green trees forever
in foliage; one can see pleasant meadows and gardens forever green,
stretching away to the banks of a smooth-flowing river in whose level
bosom rests a mirrored image of that which lies beyond its farther
bank--a great town with glistering walls and gleaming spires reaching
tower above tower and height above height into the blazing blue, the
awful serenity of a heavenly sky. One can know that toward that town the
poor man who had sinned and repented would in the evenings gaze and
wonder until his soul, now ploughed clean for new seed, might learn the
laws that would make it indeed an inhabitant of that place. It is a
serene and beautiful vision, but not different from that which all may
see, and enjoy even, in part, in this world.
But how was it with that other man--with that good man who had never
sinned until his earthly body was stripped away that he might sin and
fall in the spirit--sin and fall to a depth so profound that even one
furtive look into that awful abysm makes the minds of common men to reel
and stagger? When that God-sent blast of fire should have burned out the
selfhood that clung to the very vitals of his soul, what then? Who is
there that with unwinking eyes may gaze into the effulgent brilliancy of
the perfect angelhood? He who sweats drops of salt in his life's inner
struggles shall, maybe, eat good bread in the dew of it, but he who
sweats drops of blood in agony shall, when his labor is done, sit him,
maybe, at the King's table, and feast upon the Flesh of Life and the
very Wine of Truth.
Was it so with that man who never sinned until all his hell was let
loose at once upon him?