“Why did you bring me here for this?”
“To hear the bitterest cry of all. Do you wonder at the blackness of the Cloud now? It contains such mental agony and human pain. It’s the great curse, you know, that the world calls a blessing, and says can save it from the power of hell. Reckoned from the world’s storehouse that cramped Figure was a marvellous fool. He had brains enough to have won a kingdom, and He’d learnt no more from His early trade than to make use of two rough planks of wood.”
Then, as it had come, the pained vision melted away. But afterwards you never looked at the dark cloud without seeming to see the red drops flowing from it into the stifling groves below.
“That is the Baptism and the Cup He speaks of,” said the Spirit. “It is the Reservoir of the Gurgling Streams.”
“But is He suffering all the time?”
“No. No. It is the Reflection from the Forest. That Cross overhangs the Central part, where He of His own Free will fell down among the leaves, in Silence and in Desolation. The learned Jews shook their sides with laughing when He fell, but rather strangely He rose again the third day.”
“And the blood that flows, is it not real?”
“Oh, yes! very real,” replied the Spirit, smiling. “Having felt it I thought you would have known. It’s pain, you know. Just in the same way that the sun attracts the moisture from the earth and lets it drop again, so that cloud attracts the red-dyed dew and drops it every evening.
“Now we will walk on a little and turn our backs upon the forest and the cloud. Our moon is growing brighter. Every night after that wild cry has died away it rounds to fulness, and the stars, gaining brilliancy in the tingling air, glance and gleam with uncommon witchery. This is my natural home, Deborah; I love it, love it, with a wild, fierce love. I had rather hear that cry and laugh than any charm of music. I had rather see those scenes of agony and the world’s scenes of joy than any rose-bowered garden on the earth. Then when I sicken of both I turn to the moorland and the hill, the cold quietness that reckons naught of either pain or pleasure. I wander here on the ridge of hills and in the shadows of caves, and then with a sudden whimsical change of feeling I turn to social life again, and receive the courtesies of pretty women and the respect of men.”
There was a long silence—not broken for a long time—till Deborah said, “Why are you so silent?”