The Child of the Dawn

  I

  Certainly the last few moments of my former material, worn-out life, asI must still call it, were made horrible enough for me. I came to, afterthe operation, in a deadly sickness and ghastly confusion of thought. Iwas just dimly conscious of the trim, bare room, the white bed, a figureor two, but everything else was swallowed up in the pain, which filledall my senses at once. Yet surely, I thought, it is all somethingoutside me? ... my brain began to wander, and the pain became a thing.It was a tower of stone, high and blank, with a little sinister windowhigh up, from which something was every now and then waved above thehouse-roofs.... The tower was gone in a moment, and there was a heappiled up on the floor of a great room with open beams--a granary,perhaps. The heap was of curved sharp steel things like sickles:something moved and muttered underneath it, and blood ran out on thefloor. Then I was instantly myself, and the pain was with me again; andthen there fell on me a sense of faintness, so that the cold sweat-dropsran suddenly out on my brow. There came a smell of drugs, sharp andpungent, on the air. I heard a door open softly, and a voice said, "Heis sinking fast--they must be sent for at once." Then there were morepeople in the room, people whom I thought I had known once, long ago;but I was buried and crushed under the pain, like the thing beneath theheap of sickles. There swept over me a dreadful fear; and I could seethat the fear was reflected in the faces above me; but now they werestrangely distorted and elongated, so that I could have laughed, if onlyI had had the time; but I had to move the weight off me, which wascrushing me. Then a roaring sound began to come and go upon the air,louder and louder, faster and faster; the strange pungent scent cameagain; and then I was thrust down under the weight, monstrous,insupportable; further and further down; and there came a sharp brightstreak, like a blade severing the strands of a rope drawn taut andtense; another and another; one was left, and the blade drew near....

  I fell suddenly out of the sound and scent and pain into the mostincredible and blessed peace and silence. It would have been like asleep, but I was still perfectly conscious, with a sense of unutterableand blissful fatigue; a picture passed before me, of a calm sea, of vastdepth and clearness. There were cliffs at a little distance, greatheadlands and rocky spires. I seemed to myself to have left them, tohave come down through them, to have embarked. There was a pale lighteverywhere, flushed with rose-colour, like the light of a summer dawn;and I felt as I had once felt as a child, awakened early in the littleold house among the orchards, on a spring morning; I had risen from mybed, and leaning out of my window, filled with a delightful wonder,I had seen the cool morning quicken into light among the dewyapple-blossoms. That was what I felt like, as I lay upon the movingtide, glad to rest, not wondering or hoping, not fearing or expectinganything--just there, and at peace.

  There seemed to be no time in that other blessed morning, no need todo anything. The cliffs, I did not know how, faded from me, and theboundless sea was about me on every side; but I cannot describe thetimelessness of it. There are no human words for it all, yet I mustspeak of it in terms of time and space, because both time and spacewere there, though I was not bound by them.

  And here first I will say a few words about the manner of speech I shalluse. It is very hard to make clear, but I think I can explain it in animage. I once walked alone, on a perfect summer day, on the South Downs.The great smooth shoulders of the hills lay left and right, and, infront of me, the rich tufted grass ran suddenly down to the plain, whichstretched out before me like a map. I saw the fields and woods, theminute tiled hamlet-roofs, the white roads, on which crawled tiny carts.A shepherd, far below, drove his flock along a little deep-cut laneamong high hedges. The sounds of earth came faintly and sweetly up,obscure sounds of which I could not tell the origin; but the tinkling ofsheep-bells was the clearest, and the barking of the shepherd-dog. Myown dog sat beside me, watching my face, impatient to be gone. But atthe barking he pricked up his ears, put his head on one side, andwondered, I saw, where that companionable sound came from. What he madeof the scene I do not know; the sight of the fruitful earth, the homesof men, the fields and waters, filled me with an inexpressible emotion,a wide-flung hope, a sense of the immensity and intricacy of life. Butto my dog it meant nothing at all, though he saw just what I did. To himit was nothing but a great excavation in the earth, patched and streakedwith green. It was not then the scene itself that I loved; that was onlya symbol of emotions and ideas within me. It touched the spring of ahost of beautiful thoughts; but the beauty and the sweetness were thecontribution of my own heart and mind.

  Now in the new world in which I found myself, I approached the thoughtsof beauty and loveliness direct, without any intervening symbols at all.The emotions which beautiful things had aroused in me upon earth wereall there, in the new life, but not confused or blurred, as they hadbeen in the old life, by the intruding symbols of ugly, painful, evilthings. That was all gone like a mist. I could not think an evil or anugly thought.

  For a period it was so with me. For a long time--I will use the wordsof earth henceforth without any explanation--I abode in the same calm,untroubled peace, partly in memory of the old days, partly in the newvisions. My senses seemed all blended in one sense; it was not sight orhearing or touch--it was but an instant apprehension of the essence ofthings. All that time I was absolutely alone, though I had a sense ofbeing watched and tended in a sort of helpless and happy infancy. It wasalways the quiet sea, and the dawning light. I lived over the scenes ofthe old life in a vague, blissful memory. For the joy of the new lifewas that all that had befallen me had a strange and perfectsignificance. I had lived like other men. I had rejoiced, toiled,schemed, suffered, sinned. But it was all one now. I saw that eachinfluence had somehow been shaping and moulding me. The evil I had done,was it indeed evil? It had been the flowering of a root of bitterness,the impact of material forces and influences. Had I ever desired it?Not in my spirit, I now felt. Sin had brought me shame and sorrow, andthey had done their work. Repentance, contrition--ugly words! I laughedsoftly at the thought of how different it all was from what I haddreamed. I was as the lost sheep found, as the wayward son taken home;and should I spoil my joy with recalling what was past and done with forever? Forgiveness was not a process, then, a thing to be sued for and tobe withheld; it was all involved in the glad return to the breast of God.

  What was the mystery, then? The things that I had wrought, ignoble,cruel, base, mean, selfish--had I ever willed to do them? It seemedimpossible, incredible. Were those grievous things still growing,seeding, flowering in other lives left behind? Had they invaded,corrupted, hurt other poor wills and lives? I could think of them nolonger, any more than I could think of the wrongs done to myself. Thosehad not hurt me either. Perhaps I had still to suffer, but I could notthink of that. I was too much overwhelmed with joy. The whole thingseemed so infinitely little and far away. So for a time I floated on themoving crystal of the translucent sea, over the glimmering deeps, thedawn above me, the scenes of the old life growing and shaping themselvesand fading without any will of my own, nothing within or without me butineffable peace and perfect joy.