I
Certainly the last few moments of my former material, worn-out life, as
I must still call it, were made horrible enough for me. I came to, after
the operation, in a deadly sickness and ghastly confusion of thought. I
was just dimly conscious of the trim, bare room, the white bed, a figure
or two, but everything else was swallowed up in the pain, which filled
all my senses at once. Yet surely, I thought, it is all something
outside me? ... my brain began to wander, and the pain became a thing.
It was a tower of stone, high and blank, with a little sinister window
high up, from which something was every now and then waved above the
house-roofs.... The tower was gone in a moment, and there was a heap
piled up on the floor of a great room with open beams--a granary,
perhaps. The heap was of curved sharp steel things like sickles:
something moved and muttered underneath it, and blood ran out on the
floor. Then I was instantly myself, and the pain was with me again; and
then there fell on me a sense of faintness, so that the cold sweat-drops
ran suddenly out on my brow. There came a smell of drugs, sharp and
pungent, on the air. I heard a door open softly, and a voice said, "He
is sinking fast--they must be sent for at once." Then there were more
people in the room, people whom I thought I had known once, long ago;
but I was buried and crushed under the pain, like the thing beneath the
heap of sickles. There swept over me a dreadful fear; and I could see
that the fear was reflected in the faces above me; but now they were
strangely distorted and elongated, so that I could have laughed, if only
I had had the time; but I had to move the weight off me, which was
crushing me. Then a roaring sound began to come and go upon the air,
louder and louder, faster and faster; the strange pungent scent came
again; and then I was thrust down under the weight, monstrous,
insupportable; further and further down; and there came a sharp bright
streak, like a blade severing the strands of a rope drawn taut and
tense; another and another; one was left, and the blade drew near....
I fell suddenly out of the sound and scent and pain into the most
incredible and blessed peace and silence. It would have been like a
sleep, but I was still perfectly conscious, with a sense of unutterable
and blissful fatigue; a picture passed before me, of a calm sea, of vast
depth and clearness. There were cliffs at a little distance, great
headlands and rocky spires. I seemed to myself to have left them, to
have come down through them, to have embarked. There was a pale light
everywhere, flushed with rose-colour, like the light of a summer dawn;
and I felt as I had once felt as a child, awakened early in the little
old house among the orchards, on a spring morning; I had risen from my
bed, and leaning out of my window, filled with a delightful wonder,
I had seen the cool morning quicken into light among the dewy
apple-blossoms. That was what I felt like, as I lay upon the moving
tide, glad to rest, not wondering or hoping, not fearing or expecting
anything--just there, and at peace.
There seemed to be no time in that other blessed morning, no need to
do anything. The cliffs, I did not know how, faded from me, and the
boundless sea was about me on every side; but I cannot describe the
timelessness of it. There are no human words for it all, yet I must
speak of it in terms of time and space, because both time and space
were there, though I was not bound by them.
And here first I will say a few words about the manner of speech I shall
use. It is very hard to make clear, but I think I can explain it in an
image. I once walked alone, on a perfect summer day, on the South Downs.
The great smooth shoulders of the hills lay left and right, and, in
front of me, the rich tufted grass ran suddenly down to the plain, which
stretched out before me like a map. I saw the fields and woods, the
minute tiled hamlet-roofs, the white roads, on which crawled tiny carts.
A shepherd, far below, drove his flock along a little deep-cut lane
among high hedges. The sounds of earth came faintly and sweetly up,
obscure sounds of which I could not tell the origin; but the tinkling of
sheep-bells was the clearest, and the barking of the shepherd-dog. My
own dog sat beside me, watching my face, impatient to be gone. But at
the barking he pricked up his ears, put his head on one side, and
wondered, I saw, where that companionable sound came from. What he made
of the scene I do not know; the sight of the fruitful earth, the homes
of men, the fields and waters, filled me with an inexpressible emotion,
a wide-flung hope, a sense of the immensity and intricacy of life. But
to my dog it meant nothing at all, though he saw just what I did. To him
it was nothing but a great excavation in the earth, patched and streaked
with green. It was not then the scene itself that I loved; that was only
a symbol of emotions and ideas within me. It touched the spring of a
host of beautiful thoughts; but the beauty and the sweetness were the
contribution of my own heart and mind.
Now in the new world in which I found myself, I approached the thoughts
of beauty and loveliness direct, without any intervening symbols at all.
The emotions which beautiful things had aroused in me upon earth were
all there, in the new life, but not confused or blurred, as they had
been in the old life, by the intruding symbols of ugly, painful, evil
things. That was all gone like a mist. I could not think an evil or an
ugly thought.
For a period it was so with me. For a long time--I will use the words
of earth henceforth without any explanation--I abode in the same calm,
untroubled peace, partly in memory of the old days, partly in the new
visions. My senses seemed all blended in one sense; it was not sight or
hearing or touch--it was but an instant apprehension of the essence of
things. All that time I was absolutely alone, though I had a sense of
being watched and tended in a sort of helpless and happy infancy. It was
always the quiet sea, and the dawning light. I lived over the scenes of
the old life in a vague, blissful memory. For the joy of the new life
was that all that had befallen me had a strange and perfect
significance. I had lived like other men. I had rejoiced, toiled,
schemed, suffered, sinned. But it was all one now. I saw that each
influence had somehow been shaping and moulding me. The evil I had done,
was it indeed evil? It had been the flowering of a root of bitterness,
the impact of material forces and influences. Had I ever desired it?
Not in my spirit, I now felt. Sin had brought me shame and sorrow, and
they had done their work. Repentance, contrition--ugly words! I laughed
softly at the thought of how different it all was from what I had
dreamed. I was as the lost sheep found, as the wayward son taken home;
and should I spoil my joy with recalling what was past and done with for
ever? Forgiveness was not a process, then, a thing to be sued for and to
be withheld; it was all involved in the glad return to the breast of God.
What was the mystery, then? The things that I had wrought, ignoble,
cruel, base, mean, selfish--had I ever willed to do them? It seemed
impossible, incredible. Were those grievous things still growing,
seeding, flowering in other lives left behind? Had they invaded,
corrupted, hurt other poor wills and lives? I could think of them no
longer, any more than I could think of the wrongs done to myself. Those
had not hurt me either. Perhaps I had still to suffer, but I could not
think of that. I was too much overwhelmed with joy. The whole thing
seemed so infinitely little and far away. So for a time I floated on the
moving crystal of the translucent sea, over the glimmering deeps, the
dawn above me, the scenes of the old life growing and shaping themselves
and fading without any will of my own, nothing within or without me but
ineffable peace and perfect joy.