CHAPTER XLIII. THE DREAMS THAT CAME
I grew aware of existence, aware also of the profound, the infinitecold. I was intensely blessed--more blessed, I know, than my heart,imagining, can now recall. I could not think of warmth with the leastsuggestion of pleasure. I knew that I had enjoyed it, but could notremember how. The cold had soothed every care, dissolved every pain,comforted every sorrow. COMFORTED? Nay; sorrow was swallowed up in thelife drawing nigh to restore every good and lovely thing a hundredfold!I lay at peace, full of the quietest expectation, breathing the dampodours of Earth's bountiful bosom, aware of the souls of primroses,daisies and snowdrops, patiently waiting in it for the Spring.
How convey the delight of that frozen, yet conscious sleep! I had nomore to stand up! had only to lie stretched out and still! How cold Iwas, words cannot tell; yet I grew colder and colder--and welcomed thecold yet more and more. I grew continuously less conscious of myself,continuously more conscious of bliss, unimaginable yet felt. I hadneither made it nor prayed for it: it was mine in virtue of existence!and existence was mine in virtue of a Will that dwelt in mine.
Then the dreams began to arrive--and came crowding.--I lay naked on asnowy peak. The white mist heaved below me like a billowy sea. The coldmoon was in the air with me, and above the moon and me the colder sky,in which the moon and I dwelt. I was Adam, waiting for God to breatheinto my nostrils the breath of life.--I was not Adam, but a child inthe bosom of a mother white with a radiant whiteness. I was a youth ona white horse, leaping from cloud to cloud of a blue heaven, hastingcalmly to some blessed goal. For centuries I dreamed--or was itchiliads? or only one long night?--But why ask? for time had nothing todo with me; I was in the land of thought--farther in, higher up than theseven dimensions, the ten senses: I think I was where I am--in the heartof God.--I dreamed away dim cycles in the centre of a melting glacier,the spectral moon drawing nearer and nearer, the wind and the welterof a torrent growing in my ears. I lay and heard them: the wind andthe water and the moon sang a peaceful waiting for a redemption drawingnigh. I dreamed cycles, I say, but, for aught I knew or can tell, theywere the solemn, aeonian march of a second, pregnant with eternity.
Then, of a sudden, but not once troubling my conscious bliss, all thewrongs I had ever done, from far beyond my earthly memory down to thepresent moment, were with me. Fully in every wrong lived the consciousI, confessing, abjuring, lamenting the dead, making atonement with eachperson I had injured, hurt, or offended. Every human soul to which I hadcaused a troubled thought, was now grown unspeakably dear to me, and Ihumbled myself before it, agonising to cast from between us the clingingoffence. I wept at the feet of the mother whose commands I had slighted;with bitter shame I confessed to my father that I had told him two lies,and long forgotten them: now for long had remembered them, and kept themin memory to crush at last at his feet. I was the eager slave of allwhom I had thus or anyhow wronged. Countless services I devised torender them! For this one I would build such a house as had never grownfrom the ground! for that one I would train such horses as had never yetbeen seen in any world! For a third I would make such a garden as hadnever bloomed, haunted with still pools, and alive with running waters!I would write songs to make their hearts swell, and tales to makethem glow! I would turn the forces of the world into such channels ofinvention as to make them laugh with the joy of wonder! Love possessedme! Love was my life! Love was to me, as to him that made me, all inall!
Suddenly I found myself in a solid blackness, upon which the ghost oflight that dwells in the caverns of the eyes could not cast one fanciedglimmer. But my heart, which feared nothing and hoped infinitely, wasfull of peace. I lay imagining what the light would be when it came,and what new creation it would bring with it--when, suddenly, withoutconscious volition, I sat up and stared about me.
The moon was looking in at the lowest, horizontal, crypt-like windowsof the death-chamber, her long light slanting, I thought, acrossthe fallen, but still ripening sheaves of the harvest of the greathusbandman.--But no; that harvest was gone! Gathered in, or swept awayby chaotic storm, not a sacred sheaf was there! My dead were gone! I wasalone!--In desolation dread lay depths yet deeper than I had hithertoknown!--Had there never been any ripening dead? Had I but dreamed themand their loveliness? Why then these walls? why the empty couches? No;they were all up! they were all abroad in the new eternal day, and hadforgotten me! They had left me behind, and alone! Tenfold more terriblewas the tomb its inhabitants away! The quiet ones had made me quiet withtheir presence--had pervaded my mind with their blissful peace; now Ihad no friend, and my lovers were far from me! A moment I sat and staredhorror-stricken. I had been alone with the moon on a mountain top in thesky; now I was alone with her in a huge cenotaph: she too was staringabout, seeking her dead with ghastly gaze! I sprang to my feet, andstaggered from the fearful place.
The cottage was empty. I ran out into the night.
No moon was there! Even as I left the chamber, a cloudy rampart hadrisen and covered her. But a broad shimmer came from far over the heath,mingled with a ghostly murmuring music, as if the moon were raininga light that plashed as it fell. I ran stumbling across the moor, andfound a lovely lake, margined with reeds and rushes: the moon behindthe cloud was gazing upon the monsters' den, full of clearest, brightestwater, and very still.--But the musical murmur went on, filling thequiet air, and drawing me after it.
I walked round the border of the little mere, and climbed the range ofhills. What a sight rose to my eyes! The whole expanse where, with hot,aching feet, I had crossed and recrossed the deep-scored channels andravines of the dry river-bed, was alive with streams, with torrents,with still pools--"a river deep and wide"! How the moon flashed on thewater! how the water answered the moon with flashes of its own--whiteflashes breaking everywhere from its rock-encountered flow! And a greatjubilant song arose from its bosom, the song of new-born liberty. Istood a moment gazing, and my heart also began to exult: my life was notall a failure! I had helped to set this river free!--My dead were notlost! I had but to go after and find them! I would follow and followuntil I came whither they had gone! Our meeting might be thousands ofyears away, but at last--AT LAST I should hold them! Wherefore else didthe floods clap their hands?
I hurried down the hill: my pilgrimage was begun! In what direction toturn my steps I knew not, but I must go and go till I found my livingdead! A torrent ran swift and wide at the foot of the range: I rushedin, it laid no hold upon me; I waded through it. The next I sprangacross; the third I swam; the next I waded again.
I stopped to gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash andflow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music. Every now andthen some incipient air would seem about to draw itself clear of thedulcet confusion, only to merge again in the consorted roar. At momentsthe world of waters would invade as if to overwhelm me--not with theforce of its seaward rush, or the shouting of its liberated throng, butwith the greatness of the silence wandering into sound.
As I stood lost in delight, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned,and saw a man in the prime of strength, beautiful as if fresh from theheart of the glad creator, young like him who cannot grow old. I looked:it was Adam. He stood large and grand, clothed in a white robe, with themoon in his hair.
"Father," I cried, "where is she? Where are the dead? Is the greatresurrection come and gone? The terror of my loneliness was upon me;I could not sleep without my dead; I ran from the desolatechamber.--Whither shall I go to find them?"
"You mistake, my son," he answered, in a voice whose very breath wasconsolation. "You are still in the chamber of death, still upon yourcouch, asleep and dreaming, with the dead around you."
"Alas! when I but dream how am I to know it? The dream best dreamed isthe likest to the waking truth!"
"When you are quite dead, you will dream no false dream. The soul thatis true can generate nothing that is not true, neither can the falseenter it."
"But, sir," I faltered, "how am I to distinguish betwixt the true and
the false where both alike seem real?"
"Do you not understand?" he returned, with a smile that might have slainall the sorrows of all his children. "You CANNOT perfectly distinguishbetween the true and the false while you are not yet quite dead; neitherindeed will you when you are quite dead--that is, quite alive, for thenthe false will never present itself. At this moment, believe me, you areon your bed in the house of death."
"I am trying hard to believe you, father. I do indeed believe you,although I can neither see nor feel the truth of what you say."
"You are not to blame that you cannot. And because even in a dream youbelieve me, I will help you.--Put forth your left hand open, and closeit gently: it will clasp the hand of your Lona, who lies asleep whereyou lie dreaming you are awake."
I put forth my hand: it closed on the hand of Lona, firm and soft anddeathless.
"But, father," I cried, "she is warm!"
"Your hand is as warm to hers. Cold is a thing unknown in our country.Neither she nor you are yet in the fields of home, but each to each isalive and warm and healthful."
Then my heart was glad. But immediately supervened a sharp-stingingdoubt.
"Father," I said, "forgive me, but how am I to know surely that thisalso is not a part of the lovely dream in which I am now walking withthyself?"
"Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth. Some would willinglybelieve life but a phantasm, if only it might for ever afford them aworld of pleasant dreams: thou art not of such! Be content for a whilenot to know surely. The hour will come, and that ere long, when, beingtrue, thou shalt behold the very truth, and doubt will be for ever dead.Scarce, then, wilt thou be able to recall the features of the phantom.Thou wilt then know that which thou canst not now dream. Thou hastnot yet looked the Truth in the face, hast as yet at best but seen himthrough a cloud. That which thou seest not, and never didst see savein a glass darkly--that which, indeed, never can be known save by itsinnate splendour shining straight into pure eyes--that thou canst notbut doubt, and art blameless in doubting until thou seest it face toface, when thou wilt no longer be able to doubt it. But to him who hasonce seen even a shadow only of the truth, and, even but hoping he hasseen it when it is present no longer, tries to obey it--to him the realvision, the Truth himself, will come, and depart no more, but abide withhim for ever."
"I think I see, father," I said; "I think I understand."
"Then remember, and recall. Trials yet await thee, heavy, of a naturethou knowest not now. Remember the things thou hast seen. Truly thouknowest not those things, but thou knowest what they have seemed, whatthey have meant to thee! Remember also the things thou shalt yet see.Truth is all in all; and the truth of things lies, at once hid andrevealed, in their seeming."
"How can that be, father?" I said, and raised my eyes with the question;for I had been listening with downbent head, aware of nothing but thevoice of Adam.
He was gone; in my ears was nought but the sounding silence of theswift-flowing waters. I stretched forth my hands to find him, but noanswering touch met their seeking. I was alone--alone in the land ofdreams! To myself I seemed wide awake, but I believed I was in a dream,because he had told me so.
Even in a dream, however, the dreamer must do something! he cannot sitdown and refuse to stir until the dream grow weary of him and depart: Itook up my wandering, and went on.
Many channels I crossed, and came to a wider space of rock; there,dreaming I was weary, I laid myself down, and longed to be awake.
I was about to rise and resume my journey, when I discovered that I laybeside a pit in the rock, whose mouth was like that of a grave. It wasdeep and dark; I could see no bottom.
Now in the dreams of my childhood I had found that a fall invariablywoke me, and would, therefore, when desiring to discontinue a dream,seek some eminence whence to cast myself down that I might wake: withone glance at the peaceful heavens, and one at the rushing waters, Irolled myself over the edge of the pit.
For a moment consciousness left me. When it returned, I stood in thegarret of my own house, in the little wooden chamber of the cowl and themirror.
Unspeakable despair, hopelessness blank and dreary, invaded me with theknowledge: between me and my Lona lay an abyss impassable! stretched adistance no chain could measure! Space and Time and Mode of Being, aswith walls of adamant unscalable, impenetrable, shut me in from thatgulf! True, it might yet be in my power to pass again through the doorof light, and journey back to the chamber of the dead; and if so, I wasparted from that chamber only by a wide heath, and by the pale,starry night betwixt me and the sun, which alone could open for me themirror-door, and was now far away on the other side of the world! but animmeasurably wider gulf sank between us in this--that she was asleep andI was awake! that I was no longer worthy to share with her that sleep,and could no longer hope to awake from it with her! For truly I was muchto blame: I had fled from my dream! The dream was not of my making,any more than was my life: I ought to have seen it to the end! and infleeing from it, I had left the holy sleep itself behind me!--I would goback to Adam, tell him the truth, and bow to his decree!
I crept to my chamber, threw myself on my bed, and passed a dreamlessnight.
I rose, and listlessly sought the library. On the way I met no one; thehouse seemed dead. I sat down with a book to await the noontide: nota sentence could I understand! The mutilated manuscript offered itselffrom the masked door: the sight of it sickened me; what to me was theprincess with her devilry!
I rose and looked out of a window. It was a brilliant morning. With agreat rush the fountain shot high, and fell roaring back. The sun sat inits feathery top. Not a bird sang, not a creature was to be seen. Ravennor librarian came near me. The world was dead about me. I took anotherbook, sat down again, and went on waiting.
Noon was near. I went up the stairs to the dumb, shadowy roof. I closedbehind me the door into the wooden chamber, and turned to open the doorout of a dreary world.
I left the chamber with a heart of stone. Do what I might, all wasfruitless. I pulled the chains; adjusted and re-adjusted the hood;arranged and re-arranged the mirrors; no result followed. I waited andwaited to give the vision time; it would not come; the mirror stoodblank; nothing lay in its dim old depth but the mirror opposite and myhaggard face.
I went back to the library. There the books were hateful to me--for Ihad once loved them.
That night I lay awake from down-lying to uprising, and the next dayrenewed my endeavours with the mystic door. But all was yet in vain. Howthe hours went I cannot think. No one came nigh me; not a sound from thehouse below entered my ears. Not once did I feel weary--only desolate,drearily desolate.
I passed a second sleepless night. In the morning I went for the lasttime to the chamber in the roof, and for the last time sought an opendoor: there was none. My heart died within me. I had lost my Lona!
Was she anywhere? had she ever been, save in the mouldering cells ofmy brain? "I must die one day," I thought, "and then, straight from mydeath-bed, I will set out to find her! If she is not, I will go tothe Father and say--'Even thou canst not help me: let me cease, I praythee!'"