CHAPTER IX. I REPENT
I laid the manuscript down, consoled to find that my father had had apeep into that mysterious world, and that he knew Mr. Raven.
Then I remembered that I had never heard the cause or any circumstanceof my father's death, and began to believe that he must at last havefollowed Mr. Raven, and not come back; whereupon I speedily grew ashamedof my flight. What wondrous facts might I not by this time have gatheredconcerning life and death, and wide regions beyond ordinary perception!Assuredly the Ravens were good people, and a night in their house wouldnowise have hurt me! They were doubtless strange, but it was facultyin which the one was peculiar, and beauty in which the other wasmarvellous! And I had not believed in them! had treated them as unworthyof my confidence, as harbouring a design against me! The more I thoughtof my behaviour to them, the more disgusted I became with myself. Whyshould I have feared such dead? To share their holy rest was an honourof which I had proved myself unworthy! What harm could that sleepingking, that lady with the wound in her palm, have done me? I fell alonging after the sweet and stately stillness of their two countenances,and wept. Weeping I threw myself on a couch, and suddenly fell asleep.
As suddenly I woke, feeling as if some one had called me. The house wasstill as an empty church. A blackbird was singing on the lawn. I said tomyself, "I will go and tell them I am ashamed, and will do whateverthey would have me do!" I rose, and went straight up the stairs to thegarret.
The wooden chamber was just as when first I saw it, the mirror dimlyreflecting everything before it. It was nearly noon, and the sun wouldbe a little higher than when first I came: I must raise the hood alittle, and adjust the mirrors accordingly! If I had but been in time tosee Mr. Raven do it!
I pulled the chains, and let the light fall on the first mirror.I turned then to the other: there were the shapes of the formervision--distinguishable indeed, but tremulous like a landscape in apool ruffled by "a small pipling wind!" I touched the glass; it wasimpermeable.
Suspecting polarisation as the thing required, I shifted and shifted themirrors, changing their relation, until at last, in a great degree, sofar as I was concerned, by chance, things came right between them, andI saw the mountains blue and steady and clear. I stepped forward, and myfeet were among the heather.
All I knew of the way to the cottage was that we had gone through apine-forest. I passed through many thickets and several small fir-woods,continually fancying afresh that I recognised something of the country;but I had come upon no forest, and now the sun was near the horizon,and the air had begun to grow chill with the coming winter, when, to mydelight, I saw a little black object coming toward me: it was indeed theraven!
I hastened to meet him.
"I beg your pardon, sir, for my rudeness last night," I said. "Will youtake me with you now? I heartily confess I do not deserve it."
"Ah!" he returned, and looked up. Then, after a brief pause, "My wifedoes not expect you to-night," he said. "She regrets that we at allencouraged your staying last week."
"Take me to her that I may tell her how sorry I am," I begged humbly.
"It is of no use," he answered. "Your night was not come then, or youwould not have left us. It is not come now, and I cannot show you theway. The dead were rejoicing under their daisies--they all lie among theroots of the flowers of heaven--at the thought of your delight when thewinter should be past, and the morning with its birds come: ere youleft them, they shivered in their beds. When the spring of the universearrives,--but that cannot be for ages yet! how many, I do not know--anddo not care to know."
"Tell me one thing, I beg of you, Mr. Raven: is my father with you? Haveyou seen him since he left the world?"
"Yes; he is with us, fast asleep. That was he you saw with his arm onthe coverlet, his hand half closed."
"Why did you not tell me? That I should have been so near him, and notknow!"
"And turn your back on him!" corrected the raven.
"I would have lain down at once had I known!"
"I doubt it. Had you been ready to lie down, you would have knownhim!--Old Sir Up'ard," he went on, "and your twice great-grandfather,both are up and away long ago. Your great-grandfather has been with usfor many a year; I think he will soon begin to stir. You saw him lastnight, though of course you did not know him."
"Why OF COURSE?"
"Because he is so much nearer waking than you. No one who will not sleepcan ever wake."
"I do not at all understand you!"
"You turned away, and would not understand!" I held my peace.--But if Idid not say something, he would go!
"And my grandfather--is he also with you?" I asked.
"No; he is still in the Evil Wood, fighting the dead."
"Where is the Evil Wood, that I may find him?"
"You will not find him; but you will hardly miss the wood. It is theplace where those who will not sleep, wake up at night, to kill theirdead and bury them."
"I cannot understand you!"
"Naturally not. Neither do I understand you; I can read neither yourheart nor your face. When my wife and I do not understand our children,it is because there is not enough of them to be understood. God alonecan understand foolishness."
"Then," I said, feeling naked and very worthless, "will you be so goodas show me the nearest way home? There are more ways than one, I know,for I have gone by two already."
"There are indeed many ways."
"Tell me, please, how to recognise the nearest."
"I cannot," answered the raven; "you and I use the same words withdifferent meanings. We are often unable to tell people what they NEED toknow, because they WANT to know something else, and would therefore onlymisunderstand what we said. Home is ever so far away in the palm of yourhand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will getthere; you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is notat home, has to go home. You thought you were at home where I found you:if that had been your home, you could not have left it. Nobody can leavehome. And nobody ever was or ever will be at home without having gonethere."
"Enigma treading on enigma!" I exclaimed. "I did not come here to beasked riddles."
"No; but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed youare yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seemriddles because you are not true."
"Worse and worse!" I cried.
"And you MUST answer the riddles!" he continued. "They will go on askingthemselves until you understand yourself. The universe is a riddletrying to get out, and you are holding your door hard against it."
"Will you not in pity tell me what I am to do--where I must go?"
"How should I tell YOUR to-do, or the way to it?"
"If I am not to go home, at least direct me to some of my kind."
"I do not know of any. The beings most like you are in that direction."
He pointed with his beak. I could see nothing but the setting sun, whichblinded me.
"Well," I said bitterly, "I cannot help feeling hardly treated--takenfrom my home, abandoned in a strange world, and refused instruction asto where I am to go or what I am to do!"
"You forget," said the raven, "that, when I brought you and you declinedmy hospitality, you reached what you call home in safety: now you arecome of yourself! Good night."
He turned and walked slowly away, with his beak toward the ground. Istood dazed. It was true I had come of myself, but had I not come withintent of atonement? My heart was sore, and in my brain was neitherquest nor purpose, hope nor desire. I gazed after the raven, and wouldhave followed him, but felt it useless.
All at once he pounced on a spot, throwing the whole weight of his bodyon his bill, and for some moments dug vigorously. Then with a flutter ofhis wings he threw back his head, and something shot from his bill, casthigh in the air. That moment the sun set, and the air at once grew verydusk, but the something opened into a soft radiance, and came pulsingtoward me like a fire-fly, but with a much larger and a yellower lig
ht.It flew over my head. I turned and followed it.
Here I interrupt my narrative to remark that it involves a constantstruggle to say what cannot be said with even an approach to precision,the things recorded being, in their nature and in that of the creaturesconcerned in them, so inexpressibly different from any possible eventsof this economy, that I can present them only by giving, in the formsand language of life in this world, the modes in which they affectedme--not the things themselves, but the feelings they woke in me. Eventhis much, however, I do with a continuous and abiding sense offailure, finding it impossible to present more than one phase of amultitudinously complicated significance, or one concentric sphere of agraduated embodiment. A single thing would sometimes seem to be and meanmany things, with an uncertain identity at the heart of them, which keptconstantly altering their look. I am indeed often driven to set downwhat I know to be but a clumsy and doubtful representation of the merefeeling aimed at, none of the communicating media of this world beingfit to convey it, in its peculiar strangeness, with even an approachto clearness or certainty. Even to one who knew the region better thanmyself, I should have no assurance of transmitting the reality ofmy experience in it. While without a doubt, for instance, that I wasactually regarding a scene of activity, I might be, at the same moment,in my consciousness aware that I was perusing a metaphysical argument.