And so thought the man who, blindly seeking but to prevail, had put death's conquering sceptre in his hands. For the one moment of his guilty gaze he saw with clear eyes, freed from madness—as people are free from worldly thoughts that take their look upon the dead. But the moment passed, and his madness descended upon him once more, like the cloud of a whirlwind. It swept him to his feet, and drove him blightingly before it—anywhere away from the scene of that awful fall and cry. Before, he might have killed himself, but now, with the horror of death before his eyes, and ringing in his ears, he dared not die. Over gate and by hedgerow, through field and fence; beating and battling a mad passage for his flight against the armed hosts of standing corn; pitching blindly over stooks in the stubble; turning and doubling; falling headlong and regaining his feet with terrified fighting-fists, as though in conflict with unseen adversaries, so his madness drove him, like a leaf before the breeze.
CHAPTER XL
Out of the dark womb of Eternity—and with all the penalties and discomforts incidental to birth—Maurice Ethelbert Wynne was born again.
With pangs, with anguishes, with flashes of light, and alternating darkness; with terrible struggles to lay hold of this elusive state called life, that seemed floating somewhere about and above him, if he only could secure it, he drew shuddering breath of consciousness at last upon his little six-foot couch, and saw, through tremulous eyelids that were yet powerless to open themselves, a multitude of round things shining.
They were so many, and their light so marvelously great, that he went off through pain into darkness forthwith, and abode there for a space. Thence, after awhile, he commenced to struggle inwardly again for the life he had once laid hold of, and groping, found it; and looked through his impotent lashes once more, and at once the multitude of round things shining fell in, and hurt him, and a second time he let life go quite quietly, and relapsed into his darkness. But the taste for life, once awakened, cannot be so inanimately surrendered. Cost what cost in pain, lips will keep returning periodically to the cup—each time with further strength of fortitude for pain—till in the end hands are strong to grasp and retain, and life, sipped at first, is gulped with eager mouthfuls. And so, slowly but surely, the Spawer returned again and again to his multitude of hurting things, and looked upon them diligently, and patiently learned their shape, and studied them, and knew them in the end for moons. Vague, shadowy remembrances of a former life, or premonitory forecasts of the life he was now about to live, floated—not in his mind, for he had as yet no concentrated point of consciousness that could be called a mind—but, dispersed and uncollected, all about the dark void of his being. Names that he did not know for names flitted hauntingly about him, like bats—names that, as though he were a mere baby, he had not the strength or the capacity to utter, but that he somehow recognised and knew. One name, in particular, came to him in his dusky sojourn, and abode with him; a blessed, dove-like messenger of a name, whose presence was peace. When it departed from him he was troubled, and sought for it, as a blind kitten seeks after the breast. When he found it again he was content with his darkness; quite content to lie and be conscious that he was alive.
Then, to names succeeded shapeless dreams; after-shadowings or forecastings, as the case might be, snatched by violence from Eternity, and bringing him pain. Shadowy figures in conflict he seemed to see; men running; men pursuing; men wrestling; men falling—not men, as men are, but men as his infant mind conceived them, dark and formless and blurred; men like trees walking, whose movements disturbed him painfully; men crying; men screaming. When they screamed, instinctively he sought the shelter of darkness once more, for he could not bear the sound of that scream. It frightened him from life. Yet after awhile, he would be back at the moons again, nibbling at them industriously with his intelligence, like a mouse at cheese. They were moons now, he knew quite well. He did not know them as such by name, but he understood the substance of the things seen, and thus feeding on them and deriving nourishment, his consciousness thrived. One by one it diffused itself through the darkened channels and subways of his being. It reached his ears, and he heard a great buzzing, and a roaring and a beating—as though all his brain were being churned within him. It reached his limbs, and his being strove to stir them, and after many trials succeeded insignificantly, whereupon, with his lips he groaned. Centuries thus, it seemed, he floated, a mere helpless log upon the tide of existence, clutching at things he could not hold, bumping against consciousness for moments at a time, and being drifted off again into the dark; in reality it was scarcely minutes. Then, of a sudden, something icy cold and wet fell with a rude slap over his face.
The shock roused him, and the coldness contracted spasmodically the relaxed tissues of his thinking. All his brain, diffused hitherto vastly throughout space, seemed to shrink up at that Arctic contact, like metal in a mould, and occupy the narrow limits of his head, throbbing painfully at the restriction imposed upon it. Thought, in this cramped environment, became agonisingly congested. His head was a sort of Black Hole of Calcutta, in which thought seethed for outlet. Where one idea before had attenuated itself throughout the centuries, now centuries of thinking were compressed insufferably within the space of one moment. Life, that had been unoccupied, teemed all at once with the fever of activity. A hundred incidents seemed in progress within him at one and the same instant. His lips were useless to him for speaking, but from somewhere in his throat came a voice that poured out from him unceasingly, as though it were a tap, accompanying with narrative the course of events. Still, though all the forces of life and thought were humming at high pressure inside him, was he powerless to burst the fetters of his body. Like an iron man he lay, with his one arm extended, and his one arm bent, and his chin thrown upward, and his legs stretching from him to their limp extremities—miles and miles and miles away. Over and over again in mind he got the victory over this unresponsive flesh, and rose with it, and looked about him at the encompassing multitude of moons; and over and over again his mind returned dejectedly to its recumbent habitation, and knew itself deluded. The desire for movement was become a nightmare. All his being wrought in motionless agony to wake up his dead limbs to life, as his soul had been wakened. The horror of this inactivity grew upon him and focussed itself to a great, loud, liberative cry that should cut his bonds like a knife and loose him from this awful lethargy. But though the cry was within him, all prepared, his lips could not utter it. He was lead-weighted; feet, hands, legs, eyelids—not a member to help him.
And then the cold wetness fell upon his face and forehead a second time, and with a terrible spasm of anguish he pushed his cry. All heaven seemed to ring with it in his tortured imagination; he could not have conceived that the bulk of his effort had been wasted mentally before it reached his lips, and that the residue of physical impulse would scarcely have sufficed to deflate a kitten's lungs. Just another cry or two like this, thought he, as he rested from the exertion of it, and he would burst forth from his bondage and be free.
And again, with titanic intention, and the merest inappreciable flattening of his diaphragm, he launched his pitiable mew.
And this time it suddenly seemed to him that he had awakened some external sympathy on his behalf; that other forces were being brought to bear upon him from without—how, or whence, or why, he knew not. Voices—or his mental equivalent for voices—seemed disturbing the atmosphere of his being; besieging him, trying to lay hold upon his voice and give him a ladder to outer life. The moons too, as he stared at them through his eyelashes, appeared moving about in agitated disorder this way and that above the high wall of blackness that fronted him. Then, something detached itself from the wall-top, and slid downward with a rattle. He was here! He was here! Did n't they see him? In went his stomach feebly again, and he ejected his agonised sigh. And while desperately he sought to aid the outer assistance, and proclaim his dire need—of a sudden his attitude changed. The moons swam backward overhead, the black wall rose above his sight. What his paralysed limbs had failed to accomplish of themselves, was being accomplished for them. Arms were under his neck, hands were beating his cheeks, voices were calling upon him.