It is difficult to describe the strange emotions with which the
departure of Amroth filled me. I think that, when I first entered the
heavenly country, the strongest feeling I experienced was the sense of
security--the thought that the earthly life was over and done with, and
that there remained the rest and tranquillity of heaven. What I cannot
even now understand is this. I am dimly aware that I have lived a great
series of lives, in each of which I have had to exist blindly, not
knowing that my life was not bounded and terminated by death, and only
darkly guessing and hoping, in passionate glimpses, that there might be
a permanent life of the soul behind the life of the body. And yet, at
first, on entering the heavenly country, I did not remember having
entered it before; it was not familiar to me, nor did I at first recall
in memory that I had been there before. The earthly life seems to
obliterate for a time even the heavenly memory. But the departure of
Amroth swept away once and for all the sense of security. One felt of
the earthly life, indeed, as a busy man may think of a troublesome visit
he has to pay, which breaks across the normal current of his life, while
he anticipates with pleasure his return to the usual activities of home
across the interval of social distraction, which he does not exactly
desire, but yet is glad that it should intervene, if only for the
heightened sense of delight with which he will resume his real life. I
had been happy in heaven, though with periods of discontent and moments
of dismay. But I no longer desired a dreamful ease; I only wished
passionately to be employed. And now I saw that I must resign all
expectation of that. As so often happens, both on earth and in heaven, I
had found something of which I was not in search, while the work which I
had estimated so highly, and prepared myself so ardently for, had never
been given to me to do at all.
But for the moment I had but one single thought. I was to see Cynthia
again, and I might then expect my own summons to return to life. What
surprised me, on looking back at my present sojourn, was the extreme
apparent fortuitousness of it. It had not been seemingly organised or
laid out on any plan; and yet it had shown me this, that my own
intentions and desires counted for nothing. I had meant to work, and I
had been mostly idle; I had intended to study psychology, and I had
found love. How much wiser and deeper it had all been than anything
which I had designed!
Even now I was uncertain how to find Cynthia. But recollecting that
Amroth had warned me that I had gained new powers which I might
exercise, I set myself to use them. I concentrated myself upon the
thought of Cynthia; and in a moment, just as the hand of a man in a
dark room, feeling for some familiar object, encounters and closes upon
the thing he is seeking, I seemed to touch and embrace the thought of
Cynthia. I directed myself thither. The breeze fanned my hair, and as I
opened my eyes I saw that I was in an unfamiliar place--not the forest
where I had left Cynthia, but in a terraced garden, under a great hill,
wooded to the peak. Stone steps ran up through the terraces, the topmost
of which was crowned by a long irregular building, very quaintly
designed. I went up the steps, and, looking about me, caught sight of
two figures seated on a wooden seat at a little distance from me,
overlooking the valley. One of these was Cynthia. The other was a young
and beautiful woman; the two were talking earnestly together. Suddenly
Cynthia turned and saw me, and rising quickly, came to me and caught me
in her arms.
"I was sure you were somewhere near me, dearest," she said; "I dreamed
of you last night, and you have been in my thoughts all day."
My darling was in some way altered. She looked older, wiser, and calmer,
but she was in my eyes even more beautiful. The other girl, who had
looked at us in surprise for a moment, rose too and came shyly forwards.
Cynthia caught her hand, and presented her to me, adding, "And now you
must leave us alone for a little, if you will forgive me for asking it,
for we have much to ask and to say."
The girl smiled and went off, looking back at us, I thought,
half-enviously.
We went and sat down on the seat, and Cynthia said:
"Something has happened to you, dear one, I see, since I saw you
last--something great and glorious."
"Yes," I said, "you are right; I have seen the beginning and the end;
and I have not yet learned to understand it. But I am the same, Cynthia,
and yours utterly. We will speak of this later. Tell me first what has
happened to you, and what this place is. I will not waste time in
talking; I want to hear you talk and to see you talk. How often have I
longed for that!"
Cynthia took my hand in both of her own, and then unfolded to me her
story. She had lived long in the forest, alone with the child, and then
the day had come when the desire to go farther had arisen in his mind,
and he had left her, and she had felt strangely desolate, till she too
had been summoned.
"And this place--how can I describe it?" she said. "It is a home for
spirits who have desired love on earth, and who yet, from some accident
of circumstance, have never found one to love them with any intimacy of
passion. How strange it is to think," she went on, "that I, just by the
inheritance of beauty, was surrounded with love and the wrong sort of
love, so that I never learned to love rightly and truly; while so many,
just from some lack of beauty, some homeliness or ungainliness of
feature or carriage, missed the one kind of love that would have
sustained and fed them--have never been held in a lover's arms, or held
a child of their own against their heart. And so," she went on smiling,
"many of them lavished their tenderness upon animals or crafty servants
or selfish relations; and grew old and fanciful and petulant before
their time. It seems a sad waste of life that! Because so many of them
are spirits that could have loved finely and devotedly all the time. But
here," she said, "they unlearn their caprices, and live a life by
strict rule--and they go out hence to have the care of children, or to
tend broken lives into tranquillity--and some of them, nay most of them,
find heavenly lovers of their own. They are odd, fractious people at
first, curiously concerned about health and occupation and one can often
do nothing but listen to their complaints. But they find their way out
in time, and one can help them a little, as soon as they begin to
desire to hear something of other lives but their own. They have to
learn to turn love outwards instead of inwards; just as I," she added
laughing, "had to turn my own love inwards instead of outwards."
Then I told Cynthia what I could tell of my own experiences, and she
heard them with astonishment. Then I said:
"What surprises me about it, is that I seem somehow to have been given
more than I can hold. I have a very shallow and trivial nature, like a
stream that sparkles pleasantly enough over a pebbly bottom, but in
which no boat or man can swim. I have always been absorbed in the
observation of details and in the outside of things. I spent so much
energy in watching the faces and gestures and utterances and tricks of
those about me that I never had the leisure to look into their hearts.
And now these great depths have opened before me, and I feel more
childish and feeble than ever, like a frail glass which holds a most
precious liquor, and gains brightness and glory from the hues of the
wine it holds, but is not like the gem, compact of colour and radiance."
Cynthia laughed at me.
"At all events, you have not forgotten how to make metaphors," she said.
"No," said I, "that is part of the mischief, that I see the likenesses
of things and not their essences." At which she laughed again more
softly, and rested her cheek on my shoulder.
Then I told her of the departure of Amroth.
"That is wonderful," she said.
And then I told her of my own approaching departure, at which she grew
sad for a moment. Then she said, "But come, let us not waste time in
forebodings. Will you come with me into the house to see the likenesses
of things, or shall we have an hour alone together, and try to look into
essences?"