CHAPTER XIV.
In consequence, as I suspected, of some private influence on the part of my famous friend, whose importance in this strange world seemed scarcely below that which he held in the other,—a marked contrast to my own lot, which had been thus far in utter reversal of every law and every fact of my earthly life,—a humble position was found for me, connected with the great institution of healing which he superintended; and here, for an indefinite time, I worked and served. I found myself of scarcely more social importance than, let us say, the janitor or steward in my old hospital at home. This circumstance, however galling, could no longer surprise me. I had become familiar enough with the economy of my new surroundings now thoroughly to understand that I was destitute of the attainments which gave men eminence in them. I was conscious that I had become an obscure person; nay, more than this, that I had barely brought with me the requisites for being tolerated at all in the community. It had begun to be evident to me that I was fortunate in obtaining any kind of admission to citizenship. This alone was an experience so novel to me that it was an occupation in itself, for a time, to adjust myself to it.
I now established myself with my boy in such a home as could be made for us, under the circumstances. It was far inferior to most of the homes which I observed about me; but the child lacked no necessary comfort, and the luxuries of a spiritual civilization I did not personally crave; they had a foreign air to me, as the customs of the Tuileries might have had to Pocahontas.
With dull gratitude for such plain possessions as now were granted to me, I set myself to my daily tasks, and to the care and rearing of my child.
Work I found an unqualified mercy. It even occurred to me to be thankful for it, and to desire to express what I felt about it to the unknown Fate or Force which was controlling my history. I had been all my life such a busy man that the vacuity of my first experience after dying had chafed me terribly. To be of no consequence; not to be in demand; not to be depended upon by a thousand people, and for a thousand things; not to dash somewhere upon important errands; not to feel that a minute was a treasure, and that mine were valued as hid treasures; not to know that my services were superior; to feel the canker of idleness eat upon me like one of the diseases which I had considered impossible to my organization; to observe the hours, which had hitherto been invisible, like rear forces pushing me to the front; to watch the crippled moments, which had always flown past me like mocking-birds; to know to the full the absence of movement in life; to feel deficiency of purpose like paralysis stiffen me; to have no hope of anything better, and not to know what worse might be before me,—such had been my first experience of the new life. It had done as much as this for me: it had fitted me for the humblest form of activity which my qualifications made possible; it had taught me the elements of gratitude for an improved condition, as suffering, when it vibrates to the intermission of relief, teaches cheerfulness to the sick.
An appreciable sense of gratification, which, if it could not be called pleasure, was at least a diminution of pain, came to me from the society of my friend, the distinguished man and powerful spirit who had so befriended me. I admit that I was glad to have a man to deal with; though I did not therefore feel the less a loyalty to my dear and faithful patient, whose services to me had been so true and tender. I missed her. I needed her counsel about the child. I would fain have spoken to her of many little matters. I watched for her, and wondered that she came no more to us. Although so new a comer, Mrs. Faith proved to be a person of position in the place; her name was well and honourably known about the neighbourhood; and I therefore easily learned that she was absent on a journey. It was understood that she had been called to her old home, where for some reason her husband and her child had need of her. It was her precious privilege to minister to them, I knew not how; it was left to me to imagine why. Bitterly I thought of Helen. Between herself and me the awful gates of death had shut; to pass them, though I would have died again for it,—to pass them, for one hour, for one moment, for love's sake, for grief's sake, or for shame's, or for pity's own,—I was forbidden.
I had confided the circumstances of my parting from my wife to no one of my new acquaintances. In the high order of character pervading these happy people, such a confession would have borne the proportions that a crime might in the world below. Bearing my secret in my own heart, I felt like a felon in this holier society. I cherished it guiltily and miserably, as solitary people do such things; it seemed to me like an ache which I should go on bearing for ever. I remembered how men on earth used to trifle with a phrase called endless punishment. What worse punishment were there, verily, than the consciousness of having done the sort of deed that I had? It seemed to me, as I brooded over it, one of the saddest in the universe. I became what I should once have readily called "morbid" over this thought. There seemed to me nothing in the nature of remorse itself which should, if let alone, ever come to a visible end. My longing for the forgiveness of my wife gnawed upon me.
Sometimes I tried to remind myself that I was as sure of her love and of her mercy as the sun was of rising beyond the linden that tapped the chamber window in my dear lost home; that her unfathomable tenderness, so far passing the tenderness of women, leaned out, as ready to take me back to itself as her white arms used to be to take me to her heart, when I came later than usual, after a hard day's work, tired and weather-beaten, into the house, hurrying and calling to her.
"Helen? Helen?"
But the anguish of the thought blotted the comfort out of it, till, for very longing for her, I would fain almost have forgotten her; and then I would pray never to forget her before I had forgotten, for I loved her so that I would rather think of her and suffer because of her than not to think of her at all. In all this memorable and unhappy period, my boy was the solace of my soul. I gave myself to the care of him lovingly, and as nearly as I can recollect I did not chafe against the narrow limits of my lot in that respect.
It occurred to me sometimes that I should once have called this a humble service to be the visible boundary of a man's life. To what had all those old attainments come? Command of science? Developed skill? Public power? Extended fame? All those forms of personality which go with intellectual position and the use of it? Verily, I was brought to lowly tasks; we left them to women in the world below. But really, I think this troubled me less than it might have done; perhaps less than it should have done. I accepted the strange reversal of my fate as one accepts any turn of affairs which, he is convinced, is better than he might have expected. It had begun to be evident to me that it was better than I had deserved. If I am exceptional in being forced to admit that this consciousness was a novelty in my experience, the admission is none the less necessary for that. I had been in the habit of considering myself rather a good fellow, as a man with no vices in particular is apt to. I had possessed no standards of life below which my own fell to an embarrassing point. The situation to which I was now brought, was not unlike that of one who finds himself in a land where there are new and delicate instruments for indicating the state of the weather. I was aware, and knew that my neighbours were, of fluctuations in the moral atmosphere which had never before come under my attention. The whole subtle and tremendous force of public sentiment now bore upon me to make me uneasy before achievements with which I had hitherto been complacent. It had inconceivable effects to live in a community where spiritual character formed the sole scale of social position.
I, who had been always socially distinguished, found myself now exposed to incessant mortifications, such as spring from the fact that one is of no consequence.
I should say, however, that I felt this much less for myself than for my child; indeed, that it was because of Boy that I first felt the fact at all, or brooded over it after I had begun to feel it.
The little fellow developed rapidly, much faster than children of his age do in the human life; he ceased to be a baby, and was a little boy while I was yet wondering what I should do with him when he had outgrown his infancy. His intellect, his character, his physique, lifted themselves with a kind of luxuriance of growth, such as plants show in tropical countries; he blossomed as a thing does which has every advantage and no hindrance; nature moved magnificently to her ends in him; it was a delight to watch such vigorous processes; he was a rich, unthwarted little creature. With all a father's heart and a physician's sensibility, I was proud of him.
I was proud of him, alas! until I began to perceive that, as matters were working, the boy was morally certain to be ashamed of me. This was a hard discovery; and it went hard with me after I had made it. But nothing could reduce the poignancy of the inquiry with which I had first gathered him to my heart, in the solitudes where he had found me lurking: If I were a spiritual outcast, what would become of Boy?
As the child waxed in knowledge and in strength questions like these dropped from his lips so frequently that they distressed me:—
"Papa, what is God?"
"Papa, who is worship?"
"Tell me how boys pray."
"Is it a kind of game?"
"What is Christ, papa? Is it people's Mother? What is it for?"
My friend, the eminent surgeon, left me much to myself in these perplexities; regarding my natural reserve, and trusting, I thought, to nature, or to some Power beyond nature, to assist me. But on one occasion, happening to be present when the child interrogated me in this manner, he bent a piercing gaze upon me.
"Why do you not answer the child, Esmerald Thorne?" he asked me in a voice of authority.
"Alas," I said, "I have no answer. I know nothing of these matters. They have been so foreign to my temperament, that—I"—
But here I faltered. I felt ashamed of my excuse, and of myself for offering it.
"It is a trying position for a man to be put in," I ventured to add, putting an arm about my boy; "naturally, I wish my child to develop in accordance with the social and educational system of the place."
"Naturally, I should suppose," replied he, dryly. He offered me no further suggestion on the subject and with some severity of manner moved to leave me. Now it happened to be the vesper hour in the hospital, and my visitor was going to his patients, the "sick of soul," with whom he was wont to join in the evening chant which, at a certain hour, daily arose from every roof in the wide city, and waxed mightily to the sides. It was music of a high order, and I always enjoyed it; no person of any musical taste could have done otherwise.
"Listen!" said my friend, as he turned to depart from me. I had only to glance at his rapt and noble countenance to perceive the high acoustic laws which separated his sensibility to the vesper from my own. To him it was religious expression. To me it was classical music.
While I was thus thinking, from the great wards of the Home of Healing the prayer went up. The sinful, the sorely stricken, the ungodly, the ignorant of heavenly mercy, all the diseased of spirit who were gathered there in search of the soul's health, sang together: not as the morning-stars which shouted for joy, but like living hearts that cried for purity; yea, like hearts that so desired it, they would have broken for it, and blessed God.
"God is a Spirit. God is a Spirit. We would worship Him. We would worship Him in spirit. Yea, in spirit. And in truth."
My little boy was playing in the garden, decking himself with the strange and beautiful flowers which luxuriated in the spot. I remember that he had tall white lilies and scarlet passion flowers, or something like them, held above one shoulder, and floating like a banner in the bright, white air. He was absorbed in his sport, and had the sweet intentness of expression between the eyes that his mother used to wear. When the vesper anthems sounded out, the child stopped, and turned his nobly moulded head toward the unseen singers. A puzzled and afterward a saddened look clouded his countenance; he listened for a moment, and then walked slowly to me, trailing the white and scarlet flowers in the grass behind him as he came.
"Father, teach me how to sing! The other children do. I'm the only little boy I know that can't sing that nice song. Teach me it!" he demanded.
"Alas, my son!" I answered, "how can I teach you that which I myself know not?"
"I thought boys' fathers knew everything," objected the child, bending his brows severely on me.
A certain constraint, a something not unlike distrust, a subtle barrier which one could not define, but which one felt the more uncomfortably for this very reason, after this incident, seemed to arise in the child's consciousness between himself and me. As docile, as dutiful, as beautiful as ever, as loving and as lovable, yet the little fellow would at times withdraw from me and stand off; as if he looked on at me, and criticised me, and kept his criticism to himself. Verily the child was growing. He had become a separate soul. In a world of souls, what was mine—miserable, ignorant, half-developed, wholly unfit—what was mine to do with his? How was I to foster him?
When I came face to face with the problem of Boy's general education, this question pressed upon me bitterly. Looking abroad upon the people and their principles of life, the more I studied them, the more did I stand perplexed before them. I was in the centre of a vast Theocracy. Plainly, our community was but one of who knew how many?—governed by an unseen Being, upon laws of which I knew nothing. The service of this invisible Monarch vied only with the universal affection for Him. So far as I could understand the spiritual life at all, it seemed to be the highest possible development and expression of love. What these people did that was noble, pure, and fine, they did, not because they must, but because they would. They believed because they chose. They were devout because they wished to be. They were unselfish and true, and what below we should have called "unworldly," because it was the most natural thing in the world. They seemed so happy, they had such content in life, that I could have envied them from my soul.
How, now, was I to compass this national kind of happiness for my son? Misery I could bear; I was sick and sore with it, but I was used to it. My child must never suffer. Passed beyond the old system of suffering, why should he? Joy was his birthright in this blessed place.
How was I, being at discord from it, to bring my child into harmony with it? I was at odds, to start on, with the whole system of education. The letters, art, science, industry, of the country were of a sort that I knew not. They were consecrated to ends with which I was unfamiliar. They were pursued in a spirit incomprehensible to me. They were dedicated to the interests of a Being, Himself a stranger to me. Proficiency, superiority, were rated on a scale quite out of my experience. To be distinguished was to possess high spiritual traits. Deep at the root of every public custom, of every private deed, there hid the seed of one universal emotion,—the love of a living soul for the Being who had created it.
I, who knew not of this feeling, I, who was as a savage among this intelligence, who was no more than an object of charity at the hands of this community,—what had I to offer to my son?
A father's personal position? Loving influence? Power to push the little fellow to the front? A chance to endow him with every social opportunity, every educational privilege, such as it is a father's pride to enrich his child wherewith?
Nay, verily. An obscure man ignorant of the learning of the land, destitute of its wealth, unacquainted among its magnates, and without a share in its public interests—nothing was I; nothing had I; nothing could I hope to do, or be, for which my motherless boy should live to bless his father's name. Stung by such thoughts as these, which rankled the more in me the longer I cherished them, I betook myself to brooding and to solitary strolling in quiet places, where I could ponder on my situation undisturbed.
I was in great intellectual and spiritual stress, less for myself than for the child; not more for him, than because of his mother. What would Helen say?
How would she hold me to account for him? How should I meet her—if I ever saw her face again—to own myself scarcely other than a pauper in this spiritual kingdom; our child an untaught, unimportant little fellow, of no more consequence in this place than the gamins of the street before her door?
In these cold and solitary experiences which many a man has known before me, and many more will follow after me, the soul is like a skater, separated from his fellows upon a field of ice. Every movement that he makes seems to be bearing him farther from the society and the sympathy of his kind. Too benumbed, perhaps, to turn, he glides on, helpless as an ice-boat before the wind. Conscious of his mistake, of his danger, and knowing not how to retract the one or avoid the other, his helpless motions, seemingly guided by idleness, by madness, or by folly, lead him to the last place whither he would have led himself,—the weak spot in the ice.
Suddenly, he falls crashing, and sinks. Then lo! as he goes under, crying out that he is lost because no man is with him, hands are down-stretched, swimmers plunge, the crowd gathers, and it seems the whole world stoops to save him. The sympathy of his kind wanted nothing but a chance to reach him.
I cannot tell; no man can tell such things; I cannot explain how I came to do it, or even why I came to do it. But it was on this wise with me. Being alone one evening in a forest, at twilight, taking counsel with myself and pondering upon the mystery from which I could not gather light, these words came into my heart; and when I had cherished them in my heart for a certain time, I uttered them aloud:
"Thou great God! If there be a God. Reveal Thyself unto my immortal soul! If I have a soul immortal."