Part 2 (1/2)

The little Pilgrim shrank into a crevice of the rock, and uncovering her eyes, gazed into the darkness; and because her nature was soft and timid there came into her mind a momentary fear. Her heart flew to the Father's footstool, and cried out to Him, not any question or prayer, but only 'Father, Father!' and this made her stand erect, and strengthened her eyes, so that the gloom even of h.e.l.l could no more make her afraid. Her guide stood beside with a steadfast countenance, which was grave, yet full of a solemn light. And then all at once he lifted up his voice, which was sonorous and sweet like the sound of an organ, and uttered a shout so great and resounding that it seemed to come back in echoes from every hollow and hill. What he said the little Pilgrim could not understand; but when the echoes had died away and silence followed, something came up through the gloom,--a sound that was far, far away, and faint in the long distance; a voice that sounded no more than an echo.

When he who had called out heard it, he turned to the little Pilgrim with eyes that were liquid with love and pity; 'Listen,' he said, 'there is some one on the way.'

'Can we help them?' cried the little Pilgrim; her heart bounded forward like a bird. She had no fear. The darkness and the horrible way seemed as nothing to her. She stretched out her arms as if she would have seized the traveller and dragged him up into the light.

He who was by her side shook his head, but with a smile. 'We can but wait,' he said. 'It is forbidden that any one should help; for this is too terrible and strange to be touched even by the hands of angels. It is like nothing that you know.'

'I have been taught many things,' said the little Pilgrim, humbly. 'I have been taken back to the dear earth, where I saw the judgment-seat, and the pleaders who spoke, and the man who was the judge, and how each is judge for himself.'

'You have seen the place of hope,' said her guide, 'where the Father is and the Son, and where no man is left to his own ways. But there is another country, where there is no voice either from G.o.d or from good spirits, and where those who have refused are left to do as seems good in their own eyes.'

'I have read,' said the little Pilgrim, with a sob, 'of one who went from city to city and found no rest.'

Her guide bowed his head very gravely in a.s.sent. 'They go from place to place,' he said, 'if haply they might find one in which it is possible to live. Whether it is order or whether it is license, it is according to their own will. They try all things, ever looking for something which the soul may endure. And new cities are founded from time to time, and a new endeavor ever and ever to live, only to live. For even when happiness fails and content, and work is vanity and effort is naught, it is something if a man can but endure to live.'

The little Pilgrim looked at him with wistful eyes, for what he said was beyond her understanding. 'For us,' she said, 'life is nothing but joy.

Oh, brother, is there then condemnation?'

'It is no condemnation; it is what they have chosen,--it is to follow their own way. There is no longer any one to interfere. The pleaders are all silent; there is no voice in the heart. The Father hinders them not, nor helps them, but leaves them.' He s.h.i.+vered as if with cold; and the little Pilgrim felt that there breathed from the depths of darkness at their feet an icy wind which touched her hands and feet and chilled her heart. She s.h.i.+vered too, and drew close to the rock for shelter, and gazed at the awful cliffs rising out of the gloom, and the paths that disappeared at her feet, leading down, down into that abyss; and her heart failed within her to think that below there were souls that suffered, and that the Father and the Son were not there. He, the All-loving, the All-present,--how could it be that He was not there?

'It is a mystery,' said the man who was her guide, and who answered to her thought. 'When I set my foot upon this blessed land I knew that there, even there, He is. But in that country His face is hidden, and even to name His name is anguish,--for then only do men understand what has befallen them, who can say that name no more.'

'That is death indeed,' she cried; and the wind came up silent with a wild breath that was more awful than the shriek of a storm; for it was like the stifled utterances of all those miserable ones who have no voice to call upon G.o.d, and know not where He is nor how to p.r.o.nounce His name.

'Ah,' said he, 'if we could have known what death was! We had believed in death in the time of all great illusions, in the time of the gentle life, in the day of hope. But in the land of darkness there are no illusions; and every man knows that though he should fling himself into the furnace of the gold, or be cut to pieces by the knives, or trampled under the dancers' feet, yet that it will be but a little more pain, and that death is not, nor any escape that way.'

'Oh, brother!' she cried, 'you have been there!'

He turned and looked upon her; and she read as in a book things which tongue of man cannot say,--the anguish and the rapture, the unforgotten pang of the lost, the joy of one who has been delivered after hope was gone.

'I have been there; and now I stand in the light, and have seen the face of the Lord, and can speak His blessed name.' And with that he burst forth into a great melodious cry, which was not like that which he had sent into the dark depths below, but mounted up like the sounding of silver trumpets and all joyful music, giving a voice to the sweet air and the fresh winds which blew about the hills of G.o.d. But the words he said were not comprehensible to his companion, for they were in the sweet tongue which is between the Father and His child, and known to none but to them alone. Yet only to hear the sound was enough to transport all who listened, and to make them know what joy is and peace. The little Pilgrim wept for happiness to hear her brother's voice; but in the midst of it her ear was caught by another sound,--a faint cry which tingled up from the darkness like a note of a m.u.f.fled bell,--and she turned from the joy and the light, and flung out her arms and her little voice towards him who was stumbling upon the dark mountains. And 'Come,' she cried, 'come, come!' forgetting all things save that one was there in the darkness, while here was light and peace.

'It is nearer,' said her guide, hearing, even in the midst of his triumph song, that faint and distant cry; and he took her hand and drew her back, for she was upon the edge of the precipice, gazing into the black depths, which revealed nothing save the needles of the awful rocks and sheer descents below. 'The moment will come,' he said, 'when we can help; but it is not yet.'

Her heart was in the depths with him who was coming, whom she knew not save that he was coming, toiling upwards towards the light; and it seemed to her that she could not contain herself, nor wait till he should appear, nor draw back from the edge, where she might hold out her hands to him and save him some single step, if no more. But presently her heart returned to her brother who stood by her side, and who was delivered, and with whom it was meet that all should rejoice, since he had fought and conquered, and reached the land of light. 'Oh,' she said, 'it is long to wait while he is still upon these dark mountains. Tell me how it came to you to find the way.'

He turned to her with a smile, though his ear too was intent, and his heart fixed upon the traveller in the darkness, and began to tell her his tale to beguile the time of waiting, and to hold within bounds the pity that filled her heart. He told her that he was one of many who came from the pleasant earth together, out of many countries and tongues; and how they had gone here and there each man to a different city; and how they had crossed each other's paths coming and going, yet never found rest for their feet; and how there was a little relief in every change, and one sought that which another left; and how they wandered round and round over all the vast and endless plain, until at length in revolt from every other way, they had chosen a spot upon the slope of a hill, and built there a new city, if perhaps something better might be found there; and how it had been built with towers and high walls, and great gates to shut it in, so that no stranger should find entrance; and how every house was a palace, with statues of marble, and pillars so precious with beautiful work, and arches so lofty and so fair that they were better than had they been made of gold,--yet gold was not wanting, nor diamond stones that shone like stars, and everything more beautiful and stately than heart could conceive.

'And while we built and labored,' he said, 'our hearts were a little appeased. And it was called the city of Art, and all was perfect in it, so that nothing had ever been seen to compare with it for beauty; and we walked upon the battlements and looked over the plain and viewed the dwellers there, who were not as we. And we went on to fill every room and every hall with carved work in stone and beaten gold, and pictures and woven tissues that were like the sun-gleams and the rainbows of the pleasant earth. And crowds came around envying us and seeking to enter; but we closed our gates and drove them away. And it was said among us that life would now become as of old, and everything would go well with us as in the happy days.'

The little Pilgrim looked up into his face, and for pity of his pain (though it was past) almost wished that _that_ could have come true.

'But when the work was done,' he said, and for a moment no more.

'Oh, brother! when the work was done?' 'You do not know what it is,' he said, 'to be ten times more powerful and strong, to want no rest, to have fire in your veins, to have the craving in your heart above everything that is known to man. When the work was done, we glared upon each other with hungry eyes, and each man wished to thrust forth his neighbor and possess all to himself. And then we ceased to take pleasure in it, notwithstanding that it was beautiful; and there were some who would have beaten down the walls and built them anew; and some would have torn up the silver and gold, and tossed out the fair statues and the adornments in scorn and rage to the meaner mult.i.tudes below. And we who were the workers began to contend one against another to satisfy the gnawings of the rage that was in our hearts. For we had deceived ourselves, thinking once more that all would be well; while all the time nothing was changed, and we were but as the miserable ones that rushed from place to place.'

Though all this wretchedness was over and past, it was so terrible to think of that he paused and was silent awhile. And the little Pilgrim put her hand upon his arm in her great pity, to soothe him, and almost forgot that there was another traveller not yet delivered upon the way.

But suddenly at that moment there came up through the depths the sound of a fall, as if the rocks had crashed from a hundred peaks, yet all m.u.f.fled by the great distance, and echoing all around in faint echoes, and rumblings as in the bosom of the earth; and mingled with them were far-off cries, so faint and distant that human ears could not have heard them, like the cries of lost children, or creatures wavering and straying in the midst of the boundless night. This time she who was watching upon the edge of the gloom would have flung herself forward altogether into it, had not her companion again restrained her. 'One has stumbled upon the mountains; but listen, listen, little sister, for the voices are many,' he said. 'It is not one who comes, but many; and though he falls he will rise again.' And once more he shouted aloud, bending down against the rocks, so that they caught his voice; and the sweet air from the skies came behind him in a great gust like a summer storm, and carried it into all the echoing hollows of the hills. And the little Pilgrim knew that he shouted to all who came to take courage and not to fear. And this time there rose upwards many faint and wavering sounds that did not stir the air, but made it tingle with a vibration of the great distance and the unknown depths; and then again all was still. They stood for a time intent upon the great silence and darkness which swept up all sight and sound, and then the little Pilgrim once more turned her eyes towards her companion, and he began again his wonderful tale.

'He who had been the first to found the city, and who was the most wise of any, though the rage was in him like all the rest, and the disappointment and the anguish, yet would not yield. And he called upon us for another trial, to make a picture which should be the greatest that ever was painted; and each one of us, small or great, who had been of that art in the dear life, took share in the rivalry and the emulation, so that on every side there was a fury and a rush, each man with his band of supporters about him struggling and swearing that his was the best.

Not that they loved the work or the beauty of the work, but to keep down the gnawing in their hearts, and to have something for which they could still fight and storm, and for a little forget.'

'I was one who had been among the highest.' He spoke not with pride, but in a low and deep voice which went to the heart of the listener, and brought the tears to her eyes. It was not like that of the painter in the heavenly city, who rejoiced and was glad in his work, though he was but as a humble workman, serving those who were more great. But this man had the sorrow of greatness in him, and the wonder of those who can do much, to find how little they can do. 'My veins,' he said, 'were filled with fire, and my heart with the rage of a great desire to be first, as I had been first in the days of the gentle life. And I made my plan to be greater than all the rest, to paint a vast picture like the world, filled with all the glories of life. In a moment I had conceived what I should do, for my strength was as that of a hundred men; and none of us could rest or breathe till it was accomplished, but flung ourselves upon this new thing as upon water in the desert. Oh, my little sister, how can I tell you; what words can show forth this wonderful thing? I stood before my great canvas with all those who were of my faction pressing upon me, noting every touch I made, shouting, and saying, ”He will win! he will win!” when lo! there came a mystery and a wonder into that place. I had arranged men and women before me according to all the devices of art, to serve as my models, that nature might be in my picture, and life; but when I looked I saw them not, for between them and me had come a Face.'