Beyond the Gates

by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

What occupied the ex-hod-carriers and cooks?

Where were all the songs of all the poets? In the eternal accumulation of knowledge, what proportion sifted through the strainers of spiritual criticism? What were the standards of spiritual criticism? What became of those creations of the human intellect which had acquired immortality? Were there instances where these figments of fancy had achieved an eternal existence lost by their own creators? Might not one of the possible mysteries of our new state of existence be the fact of a world peopled by the great creatures of our imagination known to us below? And might not one of our pleasures consist in visiting such a world? Was it incredible that Helen, and Lancelot, and Sigfried, and Juliet, and Faust, and Dinah Morris, and the Lady of Shalott, and Don Quixote, and Colonel Newcome, and Sam Weller, and Uncle Tom, and Hester Prynne and Jean Valjean existed? could be approached by way of holiday, as one used to take up the drama or the fiction, on a leisure hour, down below?

Already, though so short a time had I been in the upper life, my imagination was overwhelmed with the sense of its possibilities. They seemed to overlap one another like the molecules of gold in a ring, without visible juncture or practical end. I was ready for the inconceivable itself. In how many worlds should I experience myself? How many lives should I live? Did eternal existence mean eternal variety of growth, suspension, renewal? Might youth and maturity succeed each other exquisitely? Might individual life reproduce itself from seed, to flower, to fruit, like a plant, through the cycles? Would childhood or age be a matter of personal choice? Would the affectional or the intellectual temperaments at will succeed each other? Might one try the domestic or the public career in different existences? Try the bliss of love in one age, the culture of solitude in another? Be oneself yet be all selves? Experience all glories, all discipline, all knowledge, all hope? Know the ecstasy of assured union with the one creature chosen out of time and Eternity to complement the soul? And yet forever pursue the unattainable with the rapture and the reverence of newly-awakened and still ungratified feeling?

Ah me! was it possible to feel desolate even in Heaven?

I think it may be, because I had been much occupied with thoughts like these; or it may be that, since my dear mother’s coming, I had been, naturally, thrown more by myself in my desire to leave those two uninterrupted in their first reunion—but I must admit that I had lonely moments, when I realized that Heaven had yet failed to provide me with a home of my own, and that the most loving filial position could not satisfy the nature of a mature man or woman in any world. I must admit that I began to be again subject to retrospects and sadnesses which had been well brushed away from my heart since my advent to this place. I must admit that in experiencing the immortality of being, I found that I experienced no less the immortality of love.

Had I to meet that old conflict here? I never asked for everlasting life. Will He impose it, and not free me from that? God forgive me! Have I evil in my heart still? Can one sin in Heaven? Nay, be merciful, be merciful! I will be patient. I will have trust. But the old nerves are not dead. The old ache has survived the grave.

Why was this permitted, if without a cure? Why had death no power to call decay upon that for which eternal life seemed to have provided no health? It had seemed to me, so far as I could observe the heavenly society, that only the fortunate affections of preëxistence survived. The unhappy, as well as the imperfect, were outlived and replaced. Mysteries had presented themselves here, which I was not yet wise enough to clear up. I saw, however, that a great ideal was one thing which never died. The attempt to realize it often involved effects which seemed hardly less than miraculous.

But for myself, events had brought no solution of the problems of my past; and with the tenacity of a constant nature I was unable to see any for the future.

I mused one evening, alone with these long thoughts. I was strolling upon a wide, bright field. Behind me lay the city, glittering and glad. Beyond, I saw the little sea which I had crossed. The familiar outline of the hills uprose behind. All Heaven seemed heavenly. I heard distant merry voices and music. Listening closely, I found that the Wedding March that had stirred so many human heart-beats was perfectly performed somewhere across the water, and that the wind bore the sounds towards me. I then remembered to have heard it said that Mendelssohn was himself a guest of some distinguished person in an adjacent town, and that certain music of his was to be given for the entertainment of a group of people who had been deaf-mutes in the lower life.

As the immortal power of the old music filled the air, I stayed my steps to listen. The better to do this, I covered my eyes with my hands, and so stood blindfold and alone in the midst of the wide field.