The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

The sound is snatched away. Only its resonance remains, and sharp and piercing streams the air it leaves to silence. In that intensity with new eyes he looks back; and now into this quick, this nucleus of life within him that is made capable of pain transcending human pain, receives each vision that his new eyes reveal. In agony receives them, writhing at their torture. Who had been happy? They that had sacrificed! Happy till when? Till he came! Happy in what? In selflessness, in selflessness.... Who had been happy? That uncouth vagabond that in their every moment together had tended him, cared for him, protected him. O blind, that, mired in self, never till now had realised his strong devotion! In shame, in horror, in grief's abandonment, he cries aloud his uncouth name: "Puddlebox! Puddlebox! For me! O God, for me!" Writhing, he hears his jolly voice: "O ye tired strangers of the Lord: bless ye the Lord." Hears his jolly voice: "Down, loony, down!" ... That was on the wagon, receiving blows that he might escape! ... Hears his jolly voice: "You think too much about yourself, boy, and therefore I name you spooked." ... O blind, O blind that all his life had thought too much about himself, and only of himself—thought only of how to win his own happiness, realised never till now that happiness was in making others happy, and nowhere else, and nowhere else! ... Hears his jolly voice: "Wherefore whatsoever comes against me, boy—heat, cold; storm, shine; hunger, fullness; pain, joy—cause for praise I find in them all and therefore sing: 'O ye world of the Lord; bless ye the Lord.'" ... O blind, blind, that many weeks lived with that creed and never till now realised its meaning.... Hears his jolly voice: "I like you, boy." ... Hears his jolly voice: "Why, what to the devil is the sense of it, boy?"—but doing it, following it, for him! ... O blind, O blind! ... Hears his jolly voice: "I'm to you now, boy! I'm to you, boy. Why, that's my loony!" ... Hears his jolly voice: "Wedge in, boy! Wedge in! Swim! Why, I'd swim that rotten far with my hands tied, and I challenge you or any man—" ... Sees him swing off his hands, and drop, and go, and drown, and die.... O blind, blind, blind!

Deep swings the night about him; deep sounds the murmuring sea. "Kill me! Kill me!" he groans. "O vile, O worst, O foulest thing, let me betake myself to hell, if any hell be vile enough to hold me!"

There answers him: "Not so. Not yet. Look back. Look back. Hold up thy soul, new from its slime of self, self, self, and look along the way that thou hast come. Hold up thy soul and look!"

He is searching, he is searching in the days at Pendra. He is wondering, he is wondering. Is there some secret of happiness in life that he has missed? O blind, O purblind in the face of God! Day and night, by countless love, by endless devotion, the secret had been thrust before him. Blind! Of self alone he had thought. The last, the uttermost sacrifice had been presented him. Blind! Enmired, enmeshed in self, it had shown him nothing, left him still whimpering, still wondering, still seeking, still pitying his fate. Who had been happy? Essie! Essie! Happy till when? Till he came! Happy in what? In selflessness! Blind! O blindness black beyond belief, now that with new eyes he sees it. Puddlebox had shown him. Essie not alone had shown him but had told him. On that day of the depth of his misery at the Tower House School, when she had helped and advised him by telling of her way with her own Sunday-school boys: "You jus' try it," she had said. "I mean to say, whatever's the good of anybody if they don't try to make everybody else happy, is there? You jus' try." He had tried. He had made the boys happy. Himself he had touched happiness in theirs. O blind, O blind! She had given the very secret of happiness into his hands, and he had used it and proved it and yet, so chained in self, had never recognised it, but had pressed on for further proof. On past her "Aren't you quiet, though, sometimes? I don't mind, dear." On past her "Oh, won't I keep you quiet just when you're working!" On to her piteous cry: "Oh, didn't I think you loved me truly!" On, on, voracious in his blindness as vampire in its lust, on, on, demanding yet another life until she says: "Well, both of us, dear, what's the sense to it?" Until she lies there, broken, that he might live. Until she lies here unconscious and only, under God, to wake to die.

"Kill me! Kill me!" he groans. "Let me find hell, if any hell is vile enough to hold me. Let me not live but to create hell here on earth for all who come about me. O ye world of the Lord: bless ye the Lord." He had crushed out that praise. "Let's have a laugh!" He had crushed out that laughter.

Kill himself. That was left. That was all. Ah, if he had but killed himself when, on that night countless ages of changed identity ago, he had thrown himself into the river! Who had been saved had he not lived? What of delight had he not robbed the world had he not trailed across it? Who had been saved? Old Puddlebox—old Puddlebox had been alive, jovial, genial, praising. Essie—Essie had been alive, laughing, loving, streaming her sunshine. Who would have missed him? None, none, for there was none in all his life he had brought happiness.

Was there none, indeed? What is this sudden apprehension as of some new dismay that checks and holds him? What new revelation of his depths has that question unlocked, unloosed upon him? What change, what agony is here? What bursts within his heart? What seems to struggle in the air to reach him? What sweeps across that quick, that nucleus of life, that core, that essence, that as deep waters takes his breath and holds him trembling where till now in torture he has writhed?

"Matey! Matey!"

"Captain! Captain!"

Ah, tumult inexpressible as of bursting floods rushing in mist and spray from bondage; ah, surging of immensity of thoughts, of visions. Missed him had he died? There was one, there was one had lost a little happiness had he died when he had tried to die. "Captain! Captain!"