The Child of the Dawn

by Arthur Christopher Benson

There was another silence, and then the old lady put down her letter, and looked for a moment at a picture, representing a boy, a large photograph a good deal faded, which hung close to her—underneath it was a small vase of flowers on a bracket. She gave a little sigh as she did this, and the old man looked at her over the top of his paper. "Just think, father," she said, "that Harry would have been thirty-eight this very week!"

The old man made a comforting sort of little noise, half sympathetic and half deprecatory. "Yes, I know," said the old lady, "but I can't help thinking about him a great deal at this time of the year. I don't understand why he was taken away from us. He was always such a good boy—he would have been just like Charles, only handsomer—he was always handsomer and brighter; he had so much of your spirit! Not but what Charles has been the best of sons to us—I don't mean that—no one could be better or more easy to please! But Harry had a different way with him." Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away. "No," she added, "I won't fret about him. I daresay he is happier where he is—I am sure he is—and thinking of his mother too, my bonny boy, perhaps."

The old man got up, put his paper down, went across to the old lady, and gave her a kiss on the brow. "There, there," he said soothingly, "we may be sure it's all for the best;" and he stood looking down fondly at her. Amroth crossed the room and stood beside the pair, with a hand on the shoulder of each. I saw in an instant that there was an unmistakable likeness between the three; but the contrast of the marvellous brilliance and beauty of Amroth with the old, world-wearied, simple-minded couple was the most extraordinary thing to behold. "Yes, I feel better already," said the old lady, smiling; "it always does me good to say out what I am feeling, father; and then you are sure to understand."

The mist closed suddenly in upon the scene, and we were back in a moment in the garden with its porticoes, in the radiant, untroubled air. Amroth looked at me with a smile that was full, half of gaiety and half of tenderness. "There," he said, "what do you think of that? If all had gone well with me, as they say on earth, that is where I should be now, going down to the city with Charles. That is the prospect which to the dear old people seems so satisfactory compared with this! In that house I lay ill for some weeks, and from there my body was carried out. And they would have kept me there if they could—and I myself did not want to go. I was afraid. Oh, how I envied Charles going down to the city and coming back for tea, to read the magazines aloud or play backgammon. I am afraid I was not as nice as I should have been about all that—the evenings were certainly dull!"

"But what do you feel about it now?" I said. "Don't you feel sorry for the muddle and ignorance and pathos of it all? Can't something be done to show everybody what a ghastly mistake it is, to get so tied down to the earth and the things of earth?"

"A mistake?" said Amroth. "There is no such thing as a mistake. One cannot sorrow for their grief, any more than one can sorrow for the child who cries out in the tunnel and clasps his mother's hand. Don't you see that their grief and loss is the one beautiful thing in those lives, and all that it is doing for them, drawing them hither? Why, that is where we grow and become strong, in the hopeless suffering of love. I am glad and content that my own stay was made so brief. I wish it could be shortened for the three—and yet I do not, because they will gain so wonderfully by it. They are mounting fast; it is their very ignorance that teaches them. Not to know, not to perceive, but to be forced to believe in love, that is the point."

"Yes," I said, "I see that; but what about the lives that are broken and poisoned by grief, in a stupor of pain—or the souls that do not feel it at all, except as a passing shadow—what about them?"

"Oh," said Amroth lightly, "the sadder the dream the more blessed the awakening; and as for those who cannot feel—well, it will all come to them, as they grow older."

"Yes," I said, "it has done me good to see all this—it makes many things plain; but can you bear to leave them thus?"

"Leave them!" said Amroth. "Who knows but that I shall be sent to help them away, and carry them, as I carried you, to the crystal sea of peace? The darling mother, I shall be there at her awakening. They are old spirits, those two, old and wise; and there is a high place prepared for them."