WHEN I AWOKE, the shadows of night were indeed around me. Straining my gaze into their depths, I could distinguish blacker shadows of massive buildings rising higher and higher on every hand; buildings on buildings, dark, gloomy, with endless passages winding in and out among them — passages narrow, foul, and overshadowed with such darkness as lay on my very soul; for surely it was not the darkness of Nature alone that brooded over that ghostly city.
From a height I looked down on it with ever-quickening gaze. Could these be human beings that crowded storey after storey of the towering masses of stone, and swarmed in swaying multitudes in every darkened passage? They did indeed seem to take shape to my curious gaze. Figures of old and young, sickly infants, and tottering old women, men and women of all ages, mixed in a motley crowd; and ever and anon, to my shrinking ear, from the whole came up a confused wailing of many voices, sounding, it seemed to me, every note of pain, from the feeble wail of infancy to that of torture unendurable, while loud - mouthed curses, that made my very flesh creep for fear, mingled from time to time with the sounds.
It is, I think, Jean Paul Richter who has recorded his belief that of all Hells the Hell of sound is the worst; and I knew then, as I had never known before, what he meant. It was no long time till, after listening to cry after cry, I put my hands to my ears in the vain endeavour to escape from it all. But no device of earth availed here. There was no closing of the ears. The increasing wail waxed ever louder and more bitter; I even grew to distinguish a horrible laughter mingling itself with it, till, when at last a terror-filled shriek rang and rang through the darkened air, I could bear it no longer. I threw myself on my knees and added my cry to theirs.
“God in Heaven, what have they done, to be so tormented?” I cried. “Is there no mercy in heaven or earth to help them?”
A voice, stern, resolute, sounded in my ear. It bade me rise; and looking up, I found by my side one of terrible aspect, awful in a majesty that made me cower before him.
“Who art thou?” I did not dare to ask, but he had read and answered my thought.
“I am the Avenging Angel,” he answered.
“To these poor people,” I said, with an indignant thrill.
“Of these poor people,” he answered.
And although I knew not what he meant, I shrank before him.
“You are... their...”
But even as I spoke, another of those terror - laden shrieks rent the air and startled me out of all self-control.
“What does it mean?” I sobbed, in almost equal terror.
“It means that cruelty is rampant, and there is none to check it; that lust is unbridled, and the innocent flee before it; that avarice stalks unheeded throughout the land, leaving famine and desolation behind. Look and learn.”
They were words my Blessed Damozel had used; but they were repeated now with a sternness of tone that made me tremble as before a judge. No compassion shone in the eyes of the Avenging Angel as he bent them on me.
I turned my gaze where he directed, and found that by some strange means he had contrived to throw a strong light down on a pair of figures in the far depth of the valley — a pair clasped in each other’s arms; a husband and wife. The woman was wan and worn to a shadow; the man scarcely better.
“Avarice has been on their track for years,” said my guide. “She is slowly dying, but she has possessed her soul in patience. She will be at rest to-night.”
“But why are they here at all? What sin did they commit?”
There was no answer. The thoughts of the Avenging Angel were far from me.
“To-morrow at dawn I shall set her free, and she shall sleep till then. But... ‘woe to him by whom the offence cometh.’”
Why should all the graciousness pass from his face when he turned to me? Why should I have to shrink again into the attitude of a culprit? I did not dare to ask the question I was longing to have answered. Did death reign here as in the world? for no such possibility had entered my imagination. But questioning was lost sight of in a new terror.
A cry as of a hunted animal rent the air and startled me into a new agony of fear.
“What?... what is that?”
For answer the strange light fell with lurid gleam on a fleeing maiden of tender years and a monster in human shape pursuing.
My heart stood still, then leapt with sudden horror.
“O God, he gains on her!... Stop him!... You are an angel! Oh...”
My shrieks were mingling with the maiden’s as I fell on my face to shut out the hideous horror.
It was long before I raised streaming eyes to my companion.
“You could have helped, you would not move.”
“I am her Avenger,” he answered, grimly.
“You will hurl her destroyer to the lowest hell,” I said.
“Nay, not him alone.”
“On whom will vengeance fall?” I asked, eagerly.
“These are the hidden things of God,” he answered, solemnly. “Each goeth to his own place.”
Each to his own place, and I was here. What had such scenes as those I was witnessing to do with me?...
Even as we spoke a great hum of angry voices was coming again within hearing, swelling as it rose and rose, ever nearer, and bringing with it a new horror before which my spirit quailed. Was there to be no rest for me through all this weary night? I shrank before the ever-growing tumult: children crying, women shrilly calling, men cursing.
“Oh, I cannot bear more!... The night is hideous with sound. A moment, I pray you, of rest. Shut out the sounds from my ears but for one brief moment. Let me dream, were it only for a moment, that I am again back in my old home, all barbarous sounds shut out.... I am a weak and tenderly reared girl.... Such sights and sounds as I have seen and heard to - night, I have never even dreamt of. What,... what is happening now?... Ah, spare me! No more light, I pray. But, my God, what is that?...”
“Cruelty rampant: the victims are at its mercy.”
“Is there none to help? none to answer to such cries?”
“The few help; the many disregard.
But the Lord will avenge,” solemnly, “and I am His servant.”
He was awful as he spoke, for the valley rang with execrations, strange oaths, piteous weeping.
I went back to my pleading.
“A moment of respite, I pray you,... I am sick at heart.”...
What was happening? A strange light was spreading far and wide in a large semicircle, leaving the valley below in deeper gloom than before. The night was become light about us. I gazed as one in a dream at fair gardens stretching down gentle slopes, at stately mansions, at delicate women and strong-limbed men, strolling through softly carpeted rooms or lounging on low settees. Children like to little angels played merrily, and soft laughter welled out to us.
As I looked, recognition slowly came to me. I had got my prayer.
“It is what I left behind!” I cried, in rapture. “Ah, how good it was!”
For a brief moment I gazed, forgetting all the horrors I had gone through. Alas! it was only for a moment. My guide touched me on the shoulder.
“How good it was!” I repeated, ere I responded.
His face was sterner than before as he looked down on me. Slowly raising his hand with an ominous gesture, he pointed to the deep Valley of Shadow I had for the moment been allowed to forget.
“And what of them?” he asked.
I followed his gaze. I was growing truly bewildered.
“What!... Do they lie so near?”
“So near that although those in the Valley cannot climb to those who ‘dwell at ease,’ yet those dwellers at ease can go to the weary and tormented and save them if they will.”
“If they will!” I cried, indignantly. “Who would rest if they could help that struggling multitude?”...
... A curious thing was happening. Slowly the mists enshrouding the Valley were rolling away before my eyes, and as they lifted themselves, the place was assuming a strangely familiar shape. Were not these the towers and fastnesses of my own town rising out of the crowd? Was that streak of grey not the river with its bridges, that separated the old town from the new? Could it be? Was that Valley of wicked strife and dire poverty and cruel disease indeed the picturesque valley in the midst of my childhood’s home? Was this the Valley of Shadow unspeakable I had been contemplating?
It was night. The gas - lit streets were swarming with a swaying multitude, the crowded houses still poured forth their inmates.... They were recognisable for such men and women and children as I had grown up among. At this moment the old town clock I had known from a child tolled out the hour. I counted the strokes mechanically.
“Twelve o’clock!... Midnight!” I said, without thinking.
“Midnight!” repeated my guide, as the last stroke died away. “It is now the ‘Day of Rest.’”
Oh! hideous mockery.
“And that is...”
“The town where you and they were born.”
“And these are...”
“Your sisters... and brothers.”
“It has been a morbid dream,” I cried. “I have had a nightmare.”
But almost before I had dared to uplift my voice, the mists fell as before on all around. I was standing alone with my guide on the mountain-side. Below us stretched the darkened Valley like a Lake of Gloom in the heart of the pretty town: worse than all, that wail of all the weary, that cry of all the suffering, was filling again the void.
“Where are the watchmen?” I asked, with a tone of earth in my voice, which my guide must have recognised.
“In the fray,” answered my guide, “adding to it, saving some, too late for others. They perhaps are least likely to think your dream morbid.”
And, indeed, with that weary, weary wail in my ears, it was difficult to repeat my words.
“My God, it is too awful!” I cried in despair, for sight was now being added to sound; and when I would fain have closed both eyes and ears, it was to find as before that no such escape was possible. “It is too awful! It is hell indeed!”
And so saying, I sank to earth.
“No happiness was possible for you in Heaven, while one poor spirit lay in Hell,” gibed a mocking voice in my ear.
Without looking up, I knew that my stern guide was gone, and that his place had been taken by an imp of darkness, who was grinning at my discomfiture.
“Beautiful dreamer of fair sentiments!” reviled another voice. “Imaginative sympathy is so fine a thing. And so easy.”...
“Learn what this meaneth,” spoke one solemnly in passing; “‘I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.’”...
... “‘And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,... and have not Love,’” quoted another sorrowfully, “‘it profiteth me nothing.’”...