I was alone in an instant, and in terrible pain--pain not in any part of
me, but all around and within me. A cold wind of a piercing bitterness
seemed to blow upon me; but with it came a sense of immense energy and
strength, so that the pain became suddenly delightful, like the
stretching of a stiffened limb. I cannot put the pain into exact words.
It was not attended by any horror; it seemed a sense of infinite grief
and loss and loneliness, a deep yearning to be delivered and made free.
I felt suddenly as though everything I loved had gone from me,
irretrievably gone and lost. I looked round me, and I could discern
through a mist the bases of some black and sinister rocks, that towered
up intolerably above me; in between them were channels full of stones
and drifted snow. Anything more stupendous than those black-ribbed
crags, those toppling precipices, I had never seen. The wind howled
among them, and sometimes there was a noise of rocks cast down. I knew
in some obscure way that my path lay there, and my heart absolutely
failed me. Instead of going straight to the rocks, I began to creep
along the base to see whether I could find some easier track. Suddenly
the voice of Amroth said, rather sharply, in my ear, "Don't be silly!"
This homely direction, so peremptorily made, had an instantaneous
effect. If he had said, "Be not faithless," or anything in the copybook
manner, I should have sat down and resigned myself to solemn despair.
But now I felt a fool and a coward as well.
So I addressed myself, like a dog who hears the crack of a whip, to the
rocks.
It would be tedious to relate how I clambered and stumbled and agonised.
There did not seem to me the slightest use in making the attempt, or the
smallest hope of reaching the top, or the least expectation of finding
anything worth finding. I hated everything I had ever seen or known;
recollections of old lives and of the quiet garden I had left came upon
me with a sort of mental nausea. This was very different from the
amiable and easy-going treatment I had expected. Yet I did struggle on,
with a hideous faintness and weariness--but would it never stop? It
seemed like years to me, my hands frozen and wetted by snow and dripping
water, my feet bruised and wounded by sharp stones, my garments
strangely torn and rent, with stains of blood showing through in places.
Still the hideous business continued, but progress was never quite
impossible. At one place I found the rocks wholly impassable, and
choosing the broader of two ledges which ran left and right, I worked
out along the cliff, only to find that the ledge ran into the
precipices, and I had to retrace my steps, if the shuffling motions I
made could be so called. Then I took the harder of the two, which
zigzagged backwards and forwards across the rocks. At one place I saw a
thing which moved me very strangely. This was a heap of bones, green,
slimy, and ill-smelling, with some tattered rags of cloth about them,
which lay in a heap beneath a precipice. The thought that a man could
fall and be killed in such a place moved me with a fresh misery. What
that meant I could not tell. Were we not away from such things as
mouldering flesh and broken bones? It seemed not; and I climbed madly
away from them. Quite suddenly I came to the top, a bleak platform of
rock, where I fell prostrate on my face and groaned.
"Yes, that was an ugly business," said the voice of Amroth beside me,
"but you got through it fairly well. How do you feel?"
"I call it a perfect outrage," I said. "What is the meaning of this
hateful business?"
"The meaning?" said Amroth; "never mind about the meaning. The point is
that you are here!"
"Oh," I said, "I have had a horrible time. All my sense of security is
gone from me. Is one indeed liable to this kind of interruption,
Amroth?"
"Of course," said Amroth, "there must be some tests; but you will be
better very soon. It is all over for the present, I may tell you, and
you will soon be able to enjoy it. There is no terror in past
suffering--it is the purest joy."
"Yes, I used to say so and think so," I said, closing my eyes. "But this
was different--it was horrible! And the time it lasted, and the despair
of it! It seems to have soaked into my whole life and poisoned it."
Amroth said nothing for a minute, but watched me closely.
Presently I went on. "And tell me one thing. There was a ghastly thing I
saw, some mouldering bones on a ledge. Can people indeed fall and die
there?"
"Perhaps it was only a phantom," said Amroth, "put there like the
sights in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, the fire that was fed secretly with
oil, and the robin with his mouth full of spiders, as an encouragement
for wayfarers!"
"But that," I said, "would be too horrible for anything--to turn the
terrors of death into a sort of conjuring trick--a dramatic
entertainment, to make one's flesh creep! Why, that was the misery of
some of the religion taught us in old days, that it seemed often only
dramatic--a scene without cause or motive, just displayed to show us the
anger or the mercy of God, so that one had the miserable sense that much
of it was a spectacular affair, that He Himself did not really suffer or
feel indignation, but thought it well to feign emotions, like a
schoolmaster to impress his pupils.--and that people too were not
punished for their own sakes, to help them, but just to startle or
convince others."
"Yes," said Amroth, "I was only jesting, and I see that my jests were
out of place. Of course what you saw was real--there are no pretences
here. Men and women do indeed suffer a kind of death--the second
death--in these places, and have to begin again; but that is only for a
certain sort of self-confident and sin-soaked person, whose will needs
to be roughly broken. There are certain perverse sins of the spirit
which need a spiritual death, as the sins of the body need a bodily
death. Only thus can one be born again."
"Well," I said, "I am amazed--but now what am I to do? I am fit for
nothing, and I shall be fit for nothing hereafter."
"If you talk like this," said Amroth, "you will only drive me away.
There are certain things that it is better not to confess to one's
dearest friend, not even to God. One must just be silent about them, try
to forget them, hope they can never happen again. I tell you, you will
soon be all right; and if you are not you will have to see a physician.
But you had better not do that unless you are obliged."
This made me feel ashamed of myself, and the shame took off my thoughts
from what I had endured; but I could do nothing but lie aching and
panting on the rocks for a long time, while Amroth sat beside me in
silence.
"Are you vexed?" I said after a long pause.
"No, no, not vexed," said Amroth, "but I am not sure whether I have not
made a mistake. It was I who urged that you might go forward, and I
confess I am disappointed at the result. You are softer than I thought."
"Indeed I am not," I said. "I will go down the rocks and come up again,
if that will satisfy you."
"Come, that is a little better," said Amroth, "and I will tell you now
that you did well--better indeed at the time than I expected. You did
the thing in very good time, as we used to say."
By this time I felt very drowsy, and suddenly dropped off into a
sleep--such a deep and dreamless sleep, to descend into which was like
flinging oneself into a river-pool by a bubbling weir on a hot and dusty
day of summer.
I awoke suddenly with a pressure on my arm, and, waking up with a sense
of renewed freshness, I saw Amroth looking at me anxiously. "Do not
say anything," he said. "Can you manage to hobble a few steps? If you
cannot, I will get some help, and we shall be all right--but there may
be an unpleasant encounter, and it is best avoided." I scrambled to my
feet, and Amroth helped me a little higher up the rocks, looking
carefully into the mist as he did so. Close behind us was a steep rock
with ledges. Amroth flung himself upon them, with an agile scramble or
two. Then he held his hand down, lying on the top; I took it, and,
stiffened as I was, I contrived to get up beside him. "That is right,"
he said in a whisper. "Now lie here quietly, don't speak a word, and
just watch."
I lay, with a sense of something evil about. Presently I heard the sound
of voices in the mist to the left of us; and in an instant there loomed
out of the mist the form of a man, who was immediately followed by three
others. They were different from all the other spirits I had yet
seen--tall, lean, dark men, very spare and strong. They looked carefully
about them, mostly glancing down the cliff, and sometimes conferred
together. They were dressed in close-fitting dark clothes, which seemed
as if made out of some kind of skin or untanned leather, and their whole
air was sinister and terrifying. They passed quite close beneath us, so
that I saw the bald head of one of them, who carried a sort of hook in
his hands.
When they got to the place where my climb had ended, they stopped and
examined the stones carefully: one of them clambered a few feet down the
cliff. Then he came back and seemed to make a brief report, after which
they appeared undecided what to do; they even looked up at the rock
where we lay; but while they did this, another man, very similar, came
hurriedly out of the mist, said something to the group, and they all
disappeared very quickly into the darkness the same way they had come.
Then there was a silence. I should have spoken, but Amroth put a finger
on his lips. Presently there came a sound of falling stones, and after
that there broke out among the rocks below a horrible crying, as of a
man in sore straits and instant fear. Amroth jumped quickly to his feet.
"This will not do," he said. "Stay here for me." And then leaping down
the rock, he disappeared, shouting words of help--"Hold on--I am
coming."
He came back some little time afterwards, and I saw that he was not
alone. He had with him an old stumbling man, evidently in the last
extremity of terror and pain, with beads of sweat on his brow and blood
running down from his hands. He seemed dazed and bewildered. And Amroth
too looked ruffled and almost weary, as I had never seen him look. I
came down the rock to meet them. But Amroth said, "Wait here for me; it
has been a troublesome business, and I must go and bestow this poor
creature in a place of safety--I will return." He led the old man away
among the rocks, and I waited a long time, wondering very heavily what
it was that I had seen.
When Amroth came back to the rock he was fresh and smiling again: he
swung himself up, and sat by me, with his hands clasped round his knees.
Then he looked at me, and said, "I daresay you are surprised? You did
not expect to see such terrors and dangers here? And it is a great
mystery."
"You must be kind," I said, "and explain to me what has happened."
"Well," said Amroth, "there is a large gang of men who infest this
place, who have got up here by their agility, and can go no further,
who make it their business to prevent all they can from coming up. I
confess that it is the hardest thing of all to understand why it is
allowed; but if you expect all to be plain sailing up here, you are
mistaken. One needs to be wary and strong. They do much harm here, and
will continue to do it."
"What would have happened if they had found us here?" I said.
"Nothing very much," said Amroth; "a good deal of talk no doubt, and
some blows perhaps. But it was well I was with you, because I could have
summoned help. They are not as strong as they look either--it is mostly
fear that aids them."
"Well, but _who_ are they?" I said.
"They are the most troublesome crew of all," said Amroth, "and come
nearest to the old idea of fiends--they are indeed the origin of that
notion. To speak plainly, they are men who have lived virtuous lives,
and have done cruel things from good motives. There are some kings and
statesmen among them, but they are mostly priests and schoolmasters,
I imagine--people with high ideals, of course! But they are not
replenished so fast as they used to be, I think. Their difficulty is
that they can never see that they are wrong. Their notion is that this
is a bad place to come to, and that people are better left in ignorance
and bliss, obedient and submissive. A good many of them have given up
the old rough methods, and hang about the base of the cliff, dissuading
souls from climbing: they do the most harm of all, because if one does
turn back here, it is long before one may make a new attempt. But enough
of this," he added; "it makes me sick to think of them--the old fellow
you saw with me had an awful fright--he was nearly done as it was! But I
see you are feeling stronger, and I think we had better be going. One
does not stay here by choice, though the place has a beauty of its own.
And now you will have an easier time for awhile."
We descended from our rock, and Amroth led the way, through a long
cleft, with rocks, very rough and black, on either side, and fallen
fragments under foot. It was steep at first; but soon the rocks grew
lower; and we came out presently on to a great desolate plain, with
stones lying thickly about, among a coarse kind of grass. At each step I
seemed to grow stronger, and walked more lightly, and in the thin fine
air my horrors left me, though I still had a dumb sense of suffering
which, strange to say, I found it almost pleasant to resist. And so we
walked for a time in friendly silence, Amroth occasionally indicating
the way. The hill began to slope downwards very slowly, and the wind to
subside. The mist drew off little by little, till at last I saw ahead of
us a great bare-looking fortress with high walls and little windows, and
a great blank tower over all.