WE WERE SLOWLY climbing the steep, the Blessed Damozel and I. Her hand clasped mine in familiar touch. Her words of welcome had been sweet to my soul, for in saying them, through the depth of sorrow in her eyes there had shone the purest light of love.
“You... love me!” I had said, surprised into speech.
“I have loved you,” she had murmured, “all your life upon the earth.”
“Then I will fear no evil,” I had answered, reassured, and clung to her outstretched hand.
As we went I pointed to the crystal heights on which the glory lay.
“I know them. I have read of them. They are the ‘hills of God.’ Are we going there?”
She lifted a reverent gaze to the far-off peaks.
“These are the ‘hills of Holiness,’” she answered, and with averted gaze pursued her way.
The old faint fear crept coldly round my heart, and my gaze went fearfully forward. Visions of Paradise were slowly melting away from me. In their place the Dies Irae began to repeat itself in my brain.
That Day of Wrath! that dreadful day!...
What was before me?... What awaited me?...
Half-way up the slope a murmur behind made me turn curiously. A little company was just emerging from the mist-filled valley, and following in our steps. My guide looked behind.
“Shall we wait for them?” she asked, and drew me aside into the shade of a grove of trees.
Before long they were nearing us. A little woman led by the hand by a fair guide somewhat like my own, but of a very different type of beauty. The flowing hair was dark, the figure fuller, and there was a very marked difference in her expression. It was of one that triumphed, and in her large dark eyes a light of victory shone. A little company followed them. A widow with streaming eyes, leading by the hand a boy and girl; a maiden, pale-faced and worn; a hard-featured woman, speaking volubly to a deaf audience, but with tears in her eyes.
“Who is she?” I asked, my gaze going back to the small central figure.
“A little maiden lady of seventy years, who left the world this morning. No, she does not look her years. It is the ‘ youth of the soul’ that is on her face — immortal youth.”
“And those who are with her, are they all dead? They somehow look different.”
“No; these are the forms of those who have loved her, and whose souls are longing after her so powerfully, that, unknown to themselves, they are here with her, testifying unconsciously to her love and sweet charity while among them.”
“Did... did no one come with me?” I asked, shamed, I knew not why, before the question was well framed.
“She had seventy years of life, you only twenty-five,” my friend answered, very sorrowfully. Her love would evidently fain cover a multitude of sins.
At this moment the group stopped almost opposite to us. The little face had the beauty of a child rather than that of an old woman.
“She has possessed her soul in innocency,” I said, involuntarily. “But what does it all mean? I suppose she was kind to those people, but..
“Keep your gaze fixed steadily upon her, and you will one by one see the different scenes of her life stand out in clear relief. I see them now, and as she moves up to higher planes, they will stand out in bolder and still bolder relief to every eye.”
I steadied my gaze, and this is what I saw: —
I saw her as a girl seated at a piano, painfully imparting the most elementary knowledge of its use to a perplexed girl as old as herself.
“The girl has to win her bread by teaching. She is trying to fit her for the battle. She has no money. She is giving time... and love.”
The scene had melted away.
Round her was a little house of mean appearance. She was “on household cares intent.” A fretful woman was extended on a sofa, speaking in querulous tones.
I looked to my guide.
“The sick woman is a worn - out music-teacher, homeless, sick. She is no relative, not even a friend, has but the claim of weakness and want. The little maiden lady had very small means. She argued with herself that the only way by which she could help her was to do without any service herself, and to use the cost of service in housing and clothing this poor woman. Like Dr Johnson’s dependants, the music-mistress too often used her opportunities to grumble at her benefactress. But she is worshipping her to-day.”
The woman of voluble speech was indeed on her knees before the little lady. I could hear her murmured thanks, and the troubled protest in response.
When I looked again, she was in other surroundings. The young widow and the boy and girl, whose figures were now fading into the mist, were clustered round her, younger and poorer.
“When the querulous old music-mistress died,” spoke my guide, “the little lady vowed that she would still share her home with the homeless. Out of the crowd came this young widow, penniless, with a boy and girl to rear. These are the mourners whose true sorrow follows her. The widow’s gratitude was not confined to words. Look at the home she made for her.”
I saw a bright and happy household, holding the head in loving reverence, and she growing old among them.
“Now,” said my guide, bringing me back to the present, “she will have her reward.”
At this moment her guide stopped, her face wreathed with smiles, took a crown she had been carefully carrying, and stooping over her with infinite tenderness, placed it on her brows.
She turned her face towards me, alight with soft surprise, and I saw plainly written in letters of gold: —
“I was a stranger, and ye took me in.”
Then they passed away, to where sweet strains of music called. We were alone, I with the tears gathered thick in my eyes.
“And I,” looking round in bewilderment— “I have loved none, helped none, except through others; denied myself for none. What of me?... Ah! God will for Christ’s sake forgive me. I died trusting in Him.”
“God will for Christ’s sake forgive you,” said my sweet Damozel, solemnly, “but...”
“But what? Sweet Damozel, answer me,” for my guide was pursuing her way with sorrowful mien.
“Yet one thing thou lackest,”... she quoted.
“‘One thing thou lackest,’” I repeated after her. “‘Sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor.’ But that,... we were told that was not meant literally.”
“Its ‘spirit’ giveth life.”
“Its ‘Spirit’!”...
“Its spirit is Love, and Love is Everlasting Life.”
I was deeply bewildered.
“But” — a strange fear beginning to gather round my heart— “the pains of hell, they at least were an invention of narrow-minded men, of whom Calvin was the chief: not even for the wicked do they exist!”
“I can believe in no hell,” I went on passionately, finding my guide slow to answer, “for with it there could be no heaven. I for one,” daringly, being deeply imbued with the latest sentiments I had listened to on earth—” I could not be happy in the highest heaven if I knew there was one poor soul imprisoned in a hell.”
I thought for a moment that my Blessed Damozel was breathing a prayer for me, so sad was the expression of her uplifted eyes, and slowly but surely the terrors of the Unknown began to encompass me about.
The air was growing colder, purer, more difficult of breath, and an excessive light was blinding me. We had reached the level.
It was, as I had seen from afar, an amphitheatre encircled by high hills; at first it seemed to be closed in entirely, but on looking closer and with straining gaze, I saw openings to right and to left.
With a flash of memory, words that had been familiar to me from childhood repeated themselves in my brain.
“And He set the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left.”
“Where... do they lead?” I asked, with a strange sinking of the heart.
“To God,” answered my guide, solemnly.
Oh, Day of Wrath!... Oh, Dreadful Day!... rhymed on in my brain.
“Come!” said my guide; and, with a terror growing ever greater at my heart, I followed to where, as I gazed on the two parting roads, there, out of the light a shape slowly formed itself, terrible in its beauty to any erring child of earth, for its beauty was the beauty of Holiness.
I fell prostrate at its feet. I closed my eyes in the dust. All my complacency fell from me as a garment; all the fair colouring with which I had clothed myself in imagination, melted like a breath before that pure presence. Petty self-deceivings, multiplied self-excusings, they were as if they had never been.
I had but one cry: —
“God have mercy upon me, —
Christ have mercy upon me.”
Through the silence, and as if it were afar off, I heard the voice of my Blessed Damozel pleading for me.
“Lord, have pity upon her. She has sinned in ignorance.”
... “God have mercy upon me”
“She is yet of tender years. Only a third of the days allotted to man upon the earth have been granted to her.”
... “Christ have mercy upon me” Strangely enough, although I lay prostrate as before, I could as plainly see my pleader and my Judge as if I had been standing upright before them; and although I did not once open my lips, a voice that yet seemed mine took up speech against me, almost without my will.
“Mea culpa! mea culpa!”...
“She brings none with her, it is true, but she lived in a charmed circle. Great wealth of this world’s goods were bequeathed to her. She has known no poverty.”
... “God have mercy upon me.”
“She has known no sorrow.”
... “Christ have mercy upon me.”
“And,” she went on, with pleading earnestness, “she has known no love.” Then I knew, from the light on my sweet guide’s face, that this last plea had somehow brought amelioration of my sentence.
“Come!” she whispered low, and I kissed the hem of her garment as she gently raised me.
“Where... are you leading me?” I asked in a new humility, when we had gone some distance. “But I know,”... for she was slow to answer. “To Outer Darkness.”
She stopped short, and wound her arms round my neck.
“It is indeed Outer Darkness,” she answered, and made my spirit to fail with her word. “But, my love, you go on a quest that will end in victory,... on a high and holy quest.”
“What quest?” raising weary eyes.
“The quest after Love.”
“Ah! you said I had never known that. I thought I had.”
“It is one thing to love, another to be loved. On earth we too often crave for the second, and so miss the first. Yet the first is of God; the second of self.”
“And when I find Love, shall I be safe?” sorrowfully enough.
Her eyes were very sad. “When you have ceased to ask after safety, you may come within reach of Love.”
“Alas! you talk in riddles.”
“Till the riddle is solved, you will not see God, for... ‘God is Love.’” I was sorely bewildered, and grievously faint at heart.
“Wherever I go, will you go with me?” I asked, clinging to her in a loneliness that was growing and growing in me.
“You will come back to me,” she answered, her eyes filling slowly with tears as she bent over me. “From the day that you were born, I have had you in my care. Now I may keep you but a very little longer. Ah! I am sad exceedingly for you, for I too have trodden every step of the way. I, like you, came hither trusting in the Christ, but with the very first lessons of the ‘Religion of Love’ unlearned; and only when you have conquered, shall I be free to live the wider life that lies beyond.”
“There is a wider life beyond?”
“Yes!” the joy of all the ages future shining in her eyes, till she was transfigured to a beauty that thrilled me through and through, “a wider life beyond and beyond, and for ever beyond. We shall share it together.”
“I shall never be like you!” I cried, in despair.
“My love, you will one day awake in His likeness,... so shall I,... and we shall be satisfied.”
But now and for me that Outer Darkness beckoned. Already I imagined that shadows were falling around us.
She read my thought.
“I shall wait for you at Dawn,” she whispered.
“Have I then only one long night of horror and of pain before me?” I asked, with conscious relief.
“We count no time here. A night is as a thousand years; a thousand years as a night.”
“You mean that Life is so intense, time is lost sight of.”
“Yes.”
“Why have you changed the word in the passage? why night instead of day?”
“There is no day where you go,” she answered. “It is always night there.”
I began to tremble exceedingly.
“But you will watch for me at Dawn?” in accents that were now piteous entreaty. “You will not fail me?”
“I shall watch with open arms for you at Dawn,” she answered, and therewith fell on my neck and kissed me, mingling her tears with mine.
I thought I heard a sob, but it might have been my own sobbing breath, for my fears had overcome me, and I lay like a child in her arms, holding her fast.
As in a dream I felt the arms loosening slowly from round me, and then my own tenderly unclasped. I seemed to cling with all my might.
“Oh, Blessed Damozel!” I cried, “have pity!... Stay!”...
But it was of no avail. She was gone. I was alone, and swooning for fear and grief.