The place was propitious, a deserted shelter for cattle with a few benches in it, and facing the east.
For a while at least all our thoughts were absorbed in the marvelous atmospheric—if I might so term it—mutations taking place in the sky around us or above us. It almost seemed that we had left the earth, and had become part and participants in some vast celestial panorama; as if, under the magic of some incalculable influence and REVELATION, we were entering on the sublimities of Heaven.
The horizon lights as the sun toiled upward were clearly seen. There was first against the earth-rim a high wall of grey-blue clouds, their precipitous heights crowned with parapets, and these last glowing with gold. Later, and above the slowly dissolving cloud walls there developed reefs of separated islets, faintly roseate, moored off from a blue-grey shore, over which rose cloud dunes, themselves also acknowledging the coming of the day with faintest blushes, and then below the reefs taking the places of the parapeted walls, a pearly sky. And then, an almost instantaneous splendor of multiplied iridescences in the Ghost-Cloud before us, either a physical refraction or some supernatural addition, obliterated the sunrise, and flung far and wide its intolerable brilliancies. We sank to our knees in a trance of adoration. How long we remained kneeling I cannot say. From time to time I raised my eyes; Gabrielle never moved. The colored scintillations were inscrutably piercing and varied; the whole celestial radiance was shot through and through with the compounded glories of thousands and thousands of rainbows. And then it faded, faded, the lights dropping out in broken fashion, now here, now there, until all was gone, and the uncovered sun lifted its round orb above the hills, and spread its native light over the earth, and the familiarity of that same earth itself was all resumed. The MANIFESTATION had vanished.
When I looked around me, the country-side there was bare of people. Perhaps they had fled; perhaps that portion of the land had not been visited. We had walked now about four and a half miles, and, gazing ahead, I saw the hills littered with prostrate figures—the motionless thousands of soldiers along the lines of the trenches! We had reached the PARALYSIS, that now held the armies of a continent in its awful chancery. And—God be Praised—this was the END.
Some distance behind the shed where we had taken our rest was a farm house, and, though not a sign of life distinguished it, it offered the only visible opportunity for securing nourishment, and of that both Gabrielle and I felt the need. The walk had been long, and the excitement, the fierce turmoil and agitation of our thoughts and the dazed exhaustion of our senses demanded succor. We quickly walked back to it and entered the open door that led into its small chambers. It was deserted. I called aloud, but there was no answer, and opening door after door, mounted the steps to the attic, and studying from that elevation the neighborhood, I could see no one. We seemed to have reached a point which was far away from the crowds we had at first encountered. Had some resistless panic driven them back? OR—had the Paralysis seized them, and thrown them everywhere to the ground and, thus inert, they lay in the distances, undiscovered, undiscoverable? The wonder had been realized by myself over our apparent immunity from the dread coercion of this omnipresent stupor. How was that to be explained? Ah—how was anything to be explained? At least—if explanations must be sought—I thought it was the preserving graces of Gabrielle that lifted from us the covenanted affliction.
When I returned to the diminutive kitchen filled with the utensils of domestic use, with its unmade fire, where had been gathered the sticks and peat for its sustention, and with the pantries stocked with the humble provisions of the poor peasantry, I was overcome with a savage resentment. To what end, conceived of under the most accommodating suffrages of Faith and Religion, could all this wretchedness, the starved desolation of a country-side, serve? Nay, the utter subversion of a nation upon whose bent shoulders now would weigh the insufferable and unredeemable burden of an incalculable debt—a nation, too, groaning aloud with the wounds of bereavement, of sorrows, that a life-time would never heal. Oh! how desolating, how harsh and unrelenting it seemed—the blackness of a huge despair overtaxed me. I sank to the table with outspread arms, and burst into sobs of utter, direful misery. I felt the caress of Gabrielle, I heard her sweet comforting voice, I felt her tender lips press my cheeks—her very breath seemed the incense of an offering to God. And would my SISTER be added to the necessary sacrifices? The thought stung me into madness. My old revolt and rebellion, that which had momentarily defied the purposes of the Most High when Blanchette died, arose again, revengeful, blaspheming, sharply irreconcilable. And then, even then, an inexpressible mystery blessed me.
I lost consciousness—consciousness to earth—but I entered the gates of a dreamland, blessed with prophecy. I was in flight, rapid flight, and my way surmounted the mountain heights, and yet to my eyes nothing was hid upon the earth. It was too this same Europe. I swept over the cities of France, over the sunlit loveliness of its country, now far off into the bordering areas of Belgium, and again over the dike-seamed, flat-lands of Holland, and then with a monstrous swing that clove the air with the mighty speed of thought, I looked down upon the fair provinces of Germany, of Austria, of Italy—it even seemed that for an instant I stood upon the endless plains of Russia, and even surveyed the minarets of Constantinople, and everywhere in all of that measureless domain there was PEACE. Over the fresh verdure of England I returned, and ever and again renewed my flight, as if the gracious beauty of the smiling lands, creased with scouring trains, their rivers brimful of traffic, prosperous with teaming markets, and gay with merry life, was too sweet and bountiful a picture not to be rehearsed to satiety. I saw the flags of all the countries waving in their cities, but above them all too I thought I saw another flag that waved with them, and this second flag was everywhere the same—it was the Flag of BROTHERHOOD, and it meant the consolidation of the nations in a Brotherhood of States. I heard the music of the songs of the people, ascending from the homes of the whole continent, and the sound of bells ringing in the churches, and the hum of an incessant industry, and the murmur, like the unceasing murmur of the ocean, of the sons of men at their daily tasks, and the instantaneous realization came to me, that at length Europe had put aside its soldiery, its mighty guns, the hideous ingenuity of its death factories, the useless edifices of its Class Mummeries and Families, and all of the venomous pride of Title, and Europe had turned its beseeching eyes to the future, unlearning the barbarity of its past, and working and planning and divining the things that would bring upon the Earth Peace, Good-Will to Men. And then it seemed to me that as I wondered and laughed in the depthless joy of this realization, that a voice like the Voice of God, filled the empyrean wherein I sailed, and it said:
"FOR THIS END CAME I INTO THE WORLD."