* * * * *
I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before. If I have not
already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and
brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now. Suffice it that
once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the
ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist. Once more I heard
those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that
solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed
in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one
Spirit from which I could not hope to escape. I felt the slight crawling
of my flesh on my bones as I listened.
But there was now a difference. On the former occasion, to hear again
those last horrible words of his, "_You shall very soon know I know who
you are if_..." had been the signal for the total unnerving of me and for
that uncontrollable cry, "_Don't you then want me to write it_?" But now
I intended to write it if I could. In order that I might tell him so I
was now seeking him out, in what heights or depths I knew not, at what
peril to myself I cared not. I cared not, since I now felt that I could
not continue to live unless I pressed to the uttermost attempt. And I
must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour
Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre
and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was
sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.
It may seem strange--whether it does so or not will depend on the kind
of man you yourself are--that as long as I was content to recognise this
immanence of Andriaovsky's enlarged and liberated spirit, _and not to
dispute with it_, I found nothing but mildness and benignity in my
hazardous experience. More, I felt that, in that clear region to which
in my intensified state of consciousness I was lifted, I was able to move
(I must trust you to understand the word aright) without restraint, nay,
with an amplitude and freedom of movement past setting down, as long as
I was satisfied to possess my soul in quiescence. The state itself was
inimical neither to my safety nor to my sanity. I was conscious of it
as a transposition into another register of the scale of life. And, as
in this life we move in ignorance and safety only by accepting the
hair-balance of stupendous forces, so now I felt that my safety depended
on my observation of the conditions that governed that region of light
and clarity and Law.
Of clarity and Law; save in the terms of the great abstractions I may not
speak of it. And that is well-nigh equal to saying that I may not speak
of it at all. The hand that would have written of it lay (I never for one
moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some
spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would
have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both
dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted
me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into
some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of my birth
disqualified me.
For beauty and serenity, austerity and benignity and peace, were the
conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed
and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than
that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth
alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was
already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for
all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were
permitted no farther than the threshold....
And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was
there. I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place,
to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself. I had not been
summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden. There was a moment in which
I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed
from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the
shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading. At the
sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it
stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky's calm face, priest and
Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a
phrase. I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to
do so...
Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.
It was not local. It was no more to be located than the other immanences
of which I have spoken. It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and
with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and
black.
And I knew that the shock came _of my own resistance_, and that it would
cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.
I did cease. Instantly the pain passed. But as when a knife is plucked
from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud....
For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction. Then, as with
earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the
memory of it softened a little. Blunderingly and only half consciously, I
cast about to collect my dispersed force.
For--already I was conscious of it--there still remained one claim that
even in thought I had not advanced. I would, were I permitted, still
write that "Life," but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge
that in writing it I justified myself. So I might but write it, I would
embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a
pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name
should not appear. For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write
it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied....
_"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!"_ I
groaned....
A moment later I had again striven to do so. So do we all, when we
think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our
state exists. And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we
visited....
And I knew now what that anguish was. It was the twining of body from
spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body
are the pangs of that severance. With that terrible sword of impersonal
Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again. With
its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault. Only
on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and
its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the "everywhere"
where I was...
"_Oh, not for Love? Not even for Love?_" broke the agonised question from
me....
The next moment I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist.
Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more
than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields
on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering
sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last
look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing at the table.
Had I, then, prevailed? Had Pain so purged me that I was permitted to
finish my task? And had my tortured cry, "Oh, not even for Love?"
been heard?