The Child of the Dawn Part 16

"Yes," said Amroth, "and you will see her; but you will not be long after me, brother; comfort yourself with that!"

We walked a little farther across the moorland, talking softly at intervals, till suddenly I discerned a solitary figure which was approaching us swiftly.

"Ah," said Amroth, "my time has indeed come. I am summoned."

He waved his hand to the man, who came up quickly and even breathlessly, and handed Amroth a sealed paper. Amroth tore it open, read it smilingly, gave a nod to the officer, saying "Many thanks." The officer saluted him; he was a brisk young man, with a fresh air; and he then, without a word, turned from us and went over the moorland.

"Come," said Amroth, "let us descend. You can do this for yourself now; you do not need my help." He took my hand, and a mist enveloped us.

Suddenly the mist broke up and streamed away. I looked round me in curiosity.

We were standing in a very mean street of brick-built houses, with slated roofs; over the roofs we could see a spire, and the chimneys of mills, spouting smoke. The houses had tiny smoke-dried gardens in front of them. At the end of the street was an ugly, ill-tended field, on which much rubbish lay. There were some dirty children playing about, and a few women, with shawls over their heads, were standing together watching a house opposite. The window of an upper room was open, and out of it came cries and moans.

"It's going very badly with her," said one of the women, "poor soul; but the doctor will be here soon. She was about this morning too. I had a word with her, and she was feeling very bad. I said she ought to be in bed, but she said she had her work to do first."

The women glanced at the window with a hushed sort of sympathy. A young woman, evidently soon to become a mother, looked pale and apprehensive.

"Will she get through?" she said timidly.

"Oh, don't you fear, Sarah," said one of the women, kindly enough. "She will be all right. Bless you, I've been through it five times myself, and I am none the worse. And when it's over she'll be as comfortable as never was. It seems worth it then."

A man suddenly turned the corner of the street; he was dressed in a shabby overcoat with a bowler hat, and he carried a bag in his hand. He came past us. He looked a busy, overtried man, but he had a good-humoured air. He nodded pleasantly to the women. One said:

"You are wanted badly in there, doctor."

"Yes," he said cheerfully, "I am making all the haste I can. Where's John?"

"Oh, he's at work," said the woman. "He didn't expect it to-day. But he's better out of the way: he 'd be no good; he'd only be interfering and grumbling; but I'll come across with you, and when it's over, I'll just run down and tell him."

"That's right," said the doctor, "come along--the nurse will be round in a minute; and I can make things easy meantime."

Strange to say, it had hardly dawned upon me what was happening. I turned to Amroth, who stood there smiling, but a little pale, his arm in mine; fresh and upright, with his slim and graceful limbs, his bright curled hair, a strange contrast to the slatternly women and the heavily-built doctor.

"So this," he said, "is where I am to spend a few years; my new father is a hardworking man, I believe, perhaps a little given to drink but kind enough; and I daresay some of these children are my brothers and sisters. A score of years or more to spend here, no doubt! Well, it might be worse. You will think of me while you can, and if you have the time, you may pay me a visit, though I don't suppose I shall recognise you."

"It seems rather dreadful to me," said I, "I must confess! Who would have thought that I should have forgotten my visions so soon? Amroth, dear, I can't bear this--that you should suffer such a change."

"Sentiment again, brother," said Amroth. "To me it is curious and interesting, even exciting. Well, good-bye; my time is just up, I think."

The doctor had gone into the house, and the cries died away. A moment after a woman in the dress of a nurse came quickly along the street, knocked, opened the door, and went in. I could see into the room, a poorly furnished one. A girl sat nursing a baby by the fire, and looked very much frightened. A little boy played in the corner. A woman was bustling about, making some preparations for a meal.

"Let me do you the honours of my new establishment," said Amroth with a smile. "No, dear man, don't go with me any farther. We will part here, and when we meet again we shall have some new stories to tell. Bless you." He took his hand from my arm, caught up my hand, kissed it, said, "There, that is for you," and disappeared smiling into the house.

A moment later there came the cry of a new-born child from the window above. The doctor came out and went down the street; one of the women joined him and walked with him. A few minutes later she returned with a young and st.u.r.dy workman, looking rather anxious.

"It's all right," I heard her say, "it's a fine boy, and Annie is doing well--she'll be about again soon enough."

They disappeared into the house, and I turned away.

x.x.xV

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 pa.s.sionate 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 antic.i.p.ates 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 pa.s.sionately 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 circ.u.mstance, have never found one to love them with any intimacy of pa.s.sion. 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 gla.s.s 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?"

I caught her by the hand.

"No," I said, "I care no more about the machinery of these inst.i.tutions. I am the pilgrim of love, and not the student of organisations. If you may quit your task, and leave your ladies to regretful memories of their lap-dogs, let us go out together for a little, and say what we can--for I am sure that my time is approaching."