II

I

He was standing in a wild, bare country. Something about it seemed

vaguely familiar: the land rose and fell in dull and weary undulations,

in a vast circle of dun ploughland and grey meadow, bounded by a dim

horizon without promise or hope, dreary as a prison wall. The infinite

melancholy of an autumn evening brooded heavily over all the world, and

the sky was hidden by livid clouds.

It all brought back to him some far-off memory, and yet he knew that he

gazed on that sad plain for the first time. There was a deep and heavy

silence over all; a silence unbroken by so much as the fluttering of a

leaf. The trees seemed of a strange shape, and strange were the stunted

thorns dotted about the broken field in which he stood. A little path at

his feet, bordered by the thorn bushes, wandered away to the left into

the dim twilight; it had about it some indefinable air of mystery, as if

it must lead one down into a mystic region where all earthly things are

forgotten and lost for ever.

He sat down beneath the bare, twisted boughs of a great tree and watched

the dreary land grow darker and yet darker; he wondered,

half-consciously, where he was and how he had come to that place,

remembering, faintly, tales of like adventure. A man passed by a

familiar wall one day, and opening a door before unnoticed, found

himself in a new world of unsurmised and marvellous experiences. Another

man shot an arrow farther than any of his friends and became the husband

of the fairy. Yet--this was not fairyland; these were rather the sad

fields and unhappy graves of the underworld than the abode of endless

pleasures and undying delights. And yet in all that he saw there was the

promise of great wonder.

Only one thing was clear to him. He knew that he was Ambrose, that he

had been driven from great and unspeakable joys into miserable exile and

banishment. He had come from a far, far place by a hidden way, and

darkness had closed about him, and bitter drink and deadly meat were

given him, and all gladness was hidden from him. This was all he could

remember; and now he was astray, he knew not how or why, in this wild,

sad land, and the night descended dark upon him.

Suddenly there was, as it were, a cry far away in the shadowy silence,

and the thorn bushes began to rustle before a shrilling wind that rose

as the night came down. At this summons the heavy clouds broke up and

dispersed, fleeting across the sky, and the pure heaven appeared with

the last rose flush of the sunset dying from it, and there shone the

silver light of the evening star. Ambrose's heart was drawn up to this

light as he gazed: he saw that the star grew greater and greater; it

advanced towards him through the air; its beams pierced to his soul as

if they were the sound of a silver trumpet. An ocean of white splendour

flowed over him: he dwelt within the star.

It was but for a moment; he was still sitting beneath the tree of the

twisted branches. But the sky was now clear and filled with a great

peace; the wind had fallen and a more happy light shone on the great

plain. Ambrose was thirsty, and then he saw that beside the tree there

was a well, half hidden by the arching roots that rose above it. The

water was still and shining, as though it were a mirror of black marble,

and marking the brim was a great stone on which were cut the letters:

"FONS VITAE IMMORTALIS."

He rose and, bending over the well, put down his lips to drink, and his

soul and body were filled as with a flood of joy. Now he knew that all

his days of exile he had borne with pain and grief a heavy, weary body.

There had been dolours in every limb and achings in every bone; his feet

had dragged upon the ground, slowly, wearily, as the feet of those who

go in chains. But dim, broken spectres, miserable shapes and crooked

images of the world had his eyes seen; for they were eyes bleared with

sickness, darkened by the approach of death. Now, indeed, he clearly

beheld the shining vision of things immortal. He drank great draughts of

the dark, glittering water, drinking, it seemed, the light of the

reflected stars; and he was filled with life. Every sinew, every muscle,

every particle of the deadly flesh shuddered and quickened in the

communion of that well-water. The nerves and veins rejoiced together;

all his being leapt with gladness, and as one finger touched another, as

he still bent over the well, a spasm of exquisite pleasure quivered and

thrilled through his body. His heart throbbed with bliss that was

unendurable; sense and intellect and soul and spirit were, as it were,

sublimed into one white flame of delight. And all the while it was known

to him that these were but the least of the least of the pleasures of

the kingdom, but the overrunnings and base tricklings of the great

supernal cup. He saw, without amazement, that, though the sun had set,

the sky now began to flush and redden as if with the northern light. It

was no longer the evening, no longer the time of the procession of the

dusky night. The darkness doubtless had passed away in mortal hours

while for an infinite moment he tasted immortal drink; and perhaps one

drop of that water was endless life. But now it was the preparation for

the day. He heard the words:

"_Dies venit, dies Tua

In qua reflorent omnia._"

They were uttered within his heart, and he saw that all was being made

ready for a great festival. Over everything there was a hush of

expectation; and as he gazed he knew that he was no longer in that weary

land of dun ploughland and grey meadow, of the wild, bare trees and

strange stunted thorn bushes. He was on a hillside, lying on the verge

of a great wood; beneath, in the valley, a brook sang faintly under the

leaves of the silvery willows; and beyond, far in the east, a vast wall

of rounded mountain rose serene towards the sky. All about him was the

green world of the leaves: odours of the summer night, deep in the

mystic heart of the wood, odours of many flowers, and the cool breath

rising from the singing stream mingled in his nostrils. The world

whitened to the dawn, and then, as the light grew clear, the rose

clouds blossomed in the sky and, answering, the earth seemed to glitter

with rose-red sparks and glints of flame. All the east became as a

garden of roses, red flowers of living light shone over the mountain,

and as the beams of the sun lit up the circle of the earth a bird's song

began from a tree within the wood. Then were heard the modulations of a

final and exultant ecstasy, the chant of liberation, a magistral _In

Exitu_; there was the melody of rejoicing trills, of unwearied, glad

reiterations of choirs ever aspiring, prophesying the coming of the

great feast, singing the eternal antiphon.

As the song aspired into the heights, so there aspired suddenly before

him the walls and pinnacles of a great church set upon a high hill. It

was far off, and yet as though it were close at hand he saw all the

delicate and wonderful imagery cut in its stones. The great door in the

west was a miracle: every flower and leaf, every reed and fern, were

clustered in the work of the capitals, and in the round arch above

moulding within moulding showed all the beasts that God has made. He saw

the rose-window, a maze of fretted tracery, the high lancets of the fair

hall, the marvellous buttresses, set like angels about this holy house,

whose pinnacles were as a place of many springing trees. And high above

the vast, far-lifted vault of the roof rose up the spire, golden in the

light. The bells were ringing for the feast; he heard from within the

walls the roll and swell and triumph of the organ:

_O pius o bonus o placidus sonus hymnus eorum._

He knew not how he had taken his place in this great procession, how,

surrounded by ministrants in white, he too bore his part in endless

litanies. He knew not through what strange land they passed in their

fervent, admirable order, following their banners and their symbols that

glanced on high before them. But that land stood ever, it seemed, in a

clear, still air, crowned with golden sunlight; and so there were those

who bore great torches of wax, strangely and beautifully adorned with

golden and vermilion ornaments. The delicate flame of these tapers

burned steadily in the still sunlight, and the glittering silver censers

as they rose and fell tossed a pale cloud into the air. They delayed,

now and again, by wayside shrines, giving thanks for unutterable

compassions, and, advancing anew, the blessed company surged onward,

moving to its unknown goal in the far blue mountains that rose beyond

the plain. There were faces and shapes of awful beauty about him; he saw

those in whose eyes were the undying lamps of heaven, about whose heads

the golden hair was as an aureole; and there were they that above the

girded vesture of white wore dyed garments, and as they advanced around

their feet there was the likeness of dim flames.

The great white array had vanished and he was alone. He was tracking a

secret path that wound in and out through the thickets of a great

forest. By solitary pools of still water, by great oaks, worlds of green

leaves, by fountains and streams of water, by the bubbling, mossy

sources of the brooks he followed this hidden way, now climbing and now

descending, but still mounting upward, still passing, as he knew,

farther and farther from all the habitations of men. Through the green

boughs now he saw the shining sea-water; he saw the land of the old

saints, all the divisions of the land that men had given to them for

God; he saw their churches, and it seemed as if he could hear, very

faintly, the noise of the ringing of their holy bells. Then, at last,

when he had crossed the Old Road, and had gone by the Lightning-struck

Land and the Fisherman's Well, he found, between the forest and the

mountain, a very ancient and little chapel; and now he heard the bell of

the saint ringing clearly and so sweetly that it was as it were the

singing of the angels. Within it was very dark and there was silence. He

knelt and saw scarcely that the chapel was divided into two parts by a

screen that rose up to the round roof. There was a glinting of shapes

as if golden figures were painted on this screen, and through the

joinings of its beams there streamed out thin needles of white splendour

as if within there was a light greater than that of the sun at noonday.

And the flesh began to tremble, for all the place was filled with the

odours of Paradise, and he heard the ringing of the Holy Bell and the

voices of the choir that out-sang the Fairy Birds of Rhiannon, crying

and proclaiming:

"_Glory and praise to the Conqueror of Death: to the Fountain

of Life Unending._"

Nine times they sang this anthem, and then the whole place was filled

with blinding light. For a door in the screen had been opened, and there

came forth an old man, all in shining white, on whose head was a gold

crown. Before him went one who rang the bell; on each side there were

young men with torches; and in his hands he bore the _Mystery of

Mysteries_ wrapped about in veils of gold and of all colours, so that it

might not be discerned; and so he passed before the screen, and the

light of heaven burst forth from that which he held. Then he entered in

again by a door that was on the other side, and the Holy Things were

hidden.

And Ambrose heard from within an awful voice and the words:

_Woe and great sorrow are on him, for he hath looked unworthily

into the Tremendous Mysteries, and on the Secret Glory which is

hidden from the Holy Angels._