“Do you remember, Muriel,” he resumed, “the description in the last chapter of the Revelations of St. John, of the heavenly city where there is no night, nor sun, nor moon, but the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof? And without, you remember, the Evangelist says is the horrible abode of the wicked. You remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” she answered, gazing into his abstracted and sorrowing face.
“When I was a boy,” he continued, “I used to have a dream, unspeakably awful, derived, I think from my reading of that part of the Revelations. In my dream, I was in heaven—a strangely beautiful dim land, filled with a still, mystic glory. I cannot tell you the ineffable hush that pervaded the happy region, and there I wandered tranced in an indescribable tranquil ecstasy. But in this dream, which I frequently had, I always came to a spot which seemed the confines of the place. The glory of the region ran to a point there, in a shape like the apex of a triangle, and on either side a railing of rich fretted gold separated it from the region beyond. Suddenly, as I stood, a dreadful perception of the outer region would overwhelm me. I saw a horrid realm of black and grisly twilight, strangely mixed with black darkness—I heard the savage baying of dogs, the confused jargon of unhuman blasphemies and demon laughter, and the hideous faces of devils gnashed at me through the golden pales. It is impossible to tell you the ghastly affright that suddenly struck through my ecstasy when this came to me, nor can I say how fearfully it was intensified by the contrast between the ecstatic stillness and glory of the place, and the hideous and discordant sights and sounds beyond. I always awoke in horror, drenched with perspiration, and afraid to be alone in the darkness.”
“What a dreadful dream?” she murmured, shivering slightly, and clinging a little closer to him.
“Yes,” he responded, his voice low, and his white face frigidly fixed on vacancy. “Yes. It was like a spiritual symbol. And now it has come to me.”
His countenance suddenly grew livid and convulsed with writhing anguish, and dark circles started out around his tear-filled eyes.
“It has come to me,” he gasped, tremulously, shaken with strong agony. “I have wandered to the confines of my happy heaven of love, and through the glory and the stillness, and through my sacred ecstasy, the grisly land of slavery strikes upon me, with its jargonic blasphemies and revelries of hate, the gnashing of its devils, and the baying of the dogs that hunt men. It has come to me. The dream of my boyhood was its true symbol. A dreadful dream of reality, and I wake from it in despair and agony and horror.”
His low voice shuddered into silence, and convulsed through all his frame, he tore himself from her, and covered his face with his hands. Sad as she had never been before, she turned away and stood in her wonted attitude, her clasped hands drooping before her, and her head bent upon her bosom. Squatting on his stool in the corner of the room, the horrified Tugmutton glared at them, with his white eyes bulging from his blobber face under his great shocks of wool, like some lubber imp of darkness risen to work them bane.
In a few moments Harrington’s hands fell heavily from his face, and agile as lightning, Muriel flashed into his arms, and clung to him, with a smile brilliant and tender as the morning on her impassioned features.