The Passion for Life

XXVII

VISION

And now I have come to that part of my experiences which I find difficult to relate. It is probable that if these lines are read by eyes other than my own, they will be disbelieved, yet I will set them down as I remember them. This is no easy matter, for I feel as though I were recalling the incidents which happened in a far-off dream rather than something which actually took place. And yet not altogether. What I am going to tell is very real to me, even although the reality is utterly different from what I ever experienced before. Even as I remember, I find myself thinking out of ordinary grooves, and my thoughts are of such a nature that I find no language sufficient to express them.

I was dead. I knew that my spirit, my essential self, had left my body, and that I was no longer a habitant of the world in which I had lived.

My first sensation, for I can find no better word to express my thought, was that of freedom, and with that sense of freedom came a consciousness of utter loneliness. I felt as the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge's immortal poem must have felt:

Alone on a wild, wide sea,

So lonely it was that God Himself,

Scarce seemèd there to be."

I felt no pain, no weariness, and I was free; but I was alone.

I do not know that I felt fear; no terror possessed me; I did not think of my past life with dread, neither did past scenes haunt me. My thought of the past was rather the thought of emptiness, of purposelessness, of vacancy; it seemed to me as though my life had been a great opportunity of which I had failed to avail myself.

I had a feeling, too, that it was very cold. I seemed to be floating in infinite space, through sunless air.

Kipling, I remember, in one of the most vivid poems he ever wrote, described a man who, when he died, was carried far away:

Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down, and drone and cease…

Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there For the naked stars gleamed overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare. But the wind that blows between the worlds had cut him like a knife…"

But the poet's imagination never saw in his vision an experience like mine. No winds blew between the worlds; there was no roar as of a rain-fed ford; all was silence. Not the silence of narrow spaces, not even the silence of night, when the ears of listeners are filled with noise made by silence; it was the silence of illimitable spaces, the silence of eternity.

I thought my spirit was mounting; at least that was the impression left upon me; I was going upward, not downward. But here words fail me again, because, as it seemed to me, there was no upward and no downward. More than that, there seemed to be a lack of standards whereby one could measure anything. There was no more time, and as a consequence there was no past, no present, no future. Everything, as I thought, was formless, meaningless.

I know I have failed to give a true idea of what I saw and felt. As a boy, I was for a short time fascinated by the study of astronomy, and I remember being made afraid by the thought of the distances between the worlds. Now all that was changed; I was floating, it appeared to me, between unnumbered worlds, but in a way they were near to me, so near that I could see what was happening on them.

How long I was alone I do not know, for, as I have said, time had no meaning. In a sense I felt as though I wandered through the silences for æons, although scenes flashed before me with the speed of light. My experiences make me think of the words of the old Hebrew poet:

when it is passed, and as a watch in the night."

I have said that the worlds I saw were near me, so near that I could see their inhabitants and watch their movements and activities. But even in this I convey a wrong impression, for while I had this sense of nearness, I had also the consciousness that they were separated by vast distances. It was just as though I had a glimpse of the Universe. There were millions of worlds around me, and all were inhabited; everywhere was life, life that expressed itself in thought and action. On every hand were sentient thinking beings who played their part and did their work in the world from which they drew their life.

A sense of unutterable awe possessed me. I was between the worlds. I could watch what was being done on those worlds, and I felt myself to be the merest speck in infinity.

As I have stated, the thought which possessed me was that I was utterly alone, and that while I suffered no pain, and while I had a consciousness of freedom which made me exultant, my loneliness was beyond all thought…

I felt a presence; at least that is the only word I can think of to express my thought. I had no consciousness of a person being near me, and yet that Something was all around me, an Intelligence, a Will, a Power. What it was I could not tell, but that Something answered the questions which came to me…

The one predominating thought or consciousness which flooded and overwhelmed everything was the consciousness of God. While I had been in the body, something hid from me the reality of God; now everything was God. I lived in God; everything was submerged in this one great Fact of Facts, and I wondered at my blindness when I was alive. And yet I was overwhelmed by what, for want of a better word, I call the immensity of everything. I remember asking myself how God could care for such a life as mine; how He could take an interest in the myriads of beings who inhabited the worlds; how He, Who controlled planets and suns, could care for the little lives of men. For I seemed so infinitely little; I was but a speck in infinite space, less to the Universe than the tiniest insect which crawled upon the face of the globe on which I had lived.

But even as the thought came to me came also the answer: because God was infinite in thought, in love, in power, so His Being enveloped all; that because He governed the infinitely Great, so He cared for the tiniest speck of life He had created…

I saw the world from which I had come; I was able to locate my own country. Europe stretched out before me like a plain, and there I saw the nations at war. At first the war appeared only like the struggle of ants upon their little hills, and it seemed of no more importance as to which army should conquer the other than if they had been so many insects at war.

"How little we must be to God!" I thought. "On earth we regarded the European War as something beyond all thought, all comprehension, yet seen from here it is less than a struggle of gnats. What does it matter to God whether England or Germany wins in what we call the Great World Struggle?" But even as the thought flashed through my spirit came the answer that God did care; that because we were the breath of His life we had a destiny to fulfil, a work to do; that the energies of God were on the side of those who sought to express His will.

It was all infinitely beyond me; I could not understand, and yet I had the consciousness that God watched the struggle of the creatures He had made, and that He was on the side of those who, perhaps unknown to themselves, were moving towards His own purposes. As I watched, the world seemed to become nearer to me, and such was my power of vision that I was able to visualize all the struggle and all the deadly warfare from Russia to France. I heard the boom of guns, I saw the flash of bayonets, I could plainly see the men in their trenches and could hear them talking with each other. I saw shells flying from the mouths of the guns, I watched their passage through the air. I beheld them as they fell, and I saw the stain on the battle-fields. I realized everything as I had never realized it before. I saw men in their death agony, I heard their groans, their shrieks of pain. I saw thousands of torn, mangled bodies, bodies which a moment before were full of life and vigor.

Then, as it seemed to me, I beheld the agony of the world. I saw blighted homes, broken lives, bleeding, broken hearts.

"O God!" I cried out, "let me not see! I cannot bear it!"

For death was horrible to me, and life a mockery. How could God care when He allowed these young lives, so full of hope and promise, to perish in a moment?

Then out of all the mad carnage and above the din and horror of war came a voice that filled my being and rang through the worlds:

"Fear not them who can kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul."

I saw that the great tragedy of the world was not the tragedy caused by war, but the tragedy of men killing their souls even while their bodies lived; that the death of those on the battle-fields was as nothing compared to the death of those who seemed to live and yet who were dead, because they had sacrificed truth and honor and love, and that death was impossible while honor and truth and love lived.

Then I looked again, and behold, the heavens were full of the spirits of those who had offered their all on the altar of duty, and that for them there was no death. I saw that instruments of war had no power to touch the real life of these men; that each had a Divine Spark of life, and that that life was still under the overshadowing wing of the Eternal love…

Ages appeared to pass; how long I knew not, cared not, for time had no meaning. I saw that the Eternal Love and the Eternal Life, which was everywhere, was bringing out of all that at first seemed a meaningless chaos an infinite order; that even the War of the World in which men lost their lives by thousands and hundreds of thousands, in which unholy passions seemed to prevail, and in which Death stalked triumphant: I say I saw evolving out of all this, confused and contradictory as it all appeared, a higher life and a higher thought – a movement towards the Eternal Will and towards the Eternal Purpose which was behind everything.

I know I have badly expressed all this, because I find no words wherewith to make clear that which came to me; for in truth thought was lost in consciousness, and language fails to express that consciousness. I only know that I saw order coming out of chaos, light out of darkness, love out of hatred, divinity out of bestiality, life out of death.

For life and love were all.

I did not see God – that is, I was not able to visualize His Presence. I did not talk with God as a man talketh with his friend, and yet my whole being seemed to be filled with His Light and Love and Peace. I felt that I was breathing God, because God was all; that nothing was outside His Care, that nothing was too small for His Love. I wondered at my doubts and at my absence of faith, for God was everywhere, in everything; in all purposes, plans, desires. I was conscious that He was shaping and directing and controlling all the thoughts of men, and that everything was moving towards His Eternal Purposes.

In the light of what I saw, pain and wrong and misery were being overruled by the Eternal Love, so that even they were speeding men towards the greater, fuller life, and that in the march of untold ages Life and Love were everything.

A sense of triumph, of exultation filled me, bore me up as if on the wings of eagles. I saw everything from a new perspective. I realized as I never realized before the meaning of the words of the Apostle:

"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and Eternal weight of glory."

I saw that all things – all wrong, all pain, all darkness, everything which made life dark and terrible – were only for a moment, and that they were overruled by the Eternal God, so that those who suffered them merged through the ages into Eternal Love and Eternal Light.

How long I was in this state I do not know, for, as I have said, time had no meaning to me. All life's standards seemed to melt away. I only knew that I was, that I felt, that I was filled with an overwhelming joy, because I knew that darkness would end in Eternal Light, that pain would end in Infinite Peace.

Then slowly everything began to fade away; the worlds by which I was surrounded ceased to be. I lost the power, of visualizing; my thoughts became dim and indistinct. Presently all became darkness save for one speck of light. Sometimes that speck of light became very small; sometimes it grew larger, but it was always there, and I was conscious of an unspeakable peace.

XXVIII

THE NEW LIFE

The first thing I can remember after coming to consciousness was the feeling that strangers were around me. I could not see them, but I knew they were there. I remember trying to open my eyes, but I could see nothing; I heard whispered voices, however.

"Is he dead?"

"I am not quite sure. No, he's not dead, his pulse still beats!"

"Will he live, do you think?"

"Difficult to say. He came out of it all right, but his vitality is very low."

"Was the operation severe?"

"Yes, very severe; it is a miracle that he has lived as long as he has. I must go by the Riviera express to-morrow morning, but I will call about eight o'clock."

"Have you any further orders to give?"

"No, you can only do what I have told you. His life hangs on a thread; he may live, but I doubt it."

I listened in a detached kind of way, scarcely realizing what I heard; I was perfectly indifferent, too. It had nothing to do with me, and even if it had, I did not care. Then darkness came upon me again and I no longer saw the bright speck shining.

After that I had quickly fleeting moments of consciousness; things around me became real for a moment and then passed away. Doubtless I was in a semi-comatose condition; sometimes I imagined I heard fragments of conversation, but I can remember nothing definite.

After that followed a time of intense weariness. I felt as though I were too weak even to lie down; I could not move my limbs, and the weight of my own body on the bed seemed to weary me, but I was not sufficiently conscious to realize the full extent of my weariness. I have a vague remembrance of being fed; I call to mind a woman standing by my bedside holding something to my mouth; but as I reflect now these things seem only phantoms of the mind.

After a time I became conscious of intense pain, and I have a recollection of being able to move my limbs, and I remember hearing a voice saying:

"He is stronger anyhow, but I never saw a man so utterly exhausted."

A long space of time, how long I do not know, but it seemed to me interminable. Day appeared to follow day and week to follow week, and yet I have no distinct remembrance. In recalling it all, I am like a man trying to remember a far-off dream.

Suddenly I became awake. I was fully conscious that I was living; I could outline the room in which I lay, I could see the sunlight streaming in at the window, I could hear the birds singing. I was very weak, but I was alive; I was able to think, too, able to connect thought with thought, although my memory was dim. Incidents of my life passed before me like shadows; I saw them only in part, but I did see them.

The room was strange to me. This was not my little bedroom by the sea; the apartment was bigger than the whole of my cottage. The ceiling was high, and the window through which the sun shone was large. I did not care so much where I was; all the same, I was curious.

"What has happened to me, I wonder?" I asked myself, "and why am I here?"

I could see no one in the room, and all was silent save for the singing of the birds and the humming of the insects. I had a vague consciousness that the feeling of summer was in the air, and a delicious kind of restfulness possessed me. I was no longer too tired to lie down, rather I felt the luxury of being in bed. I suffered no pain either, although at my side, where I remembered suffering exquisite agony, was a kind of tingling sensation which I associated with a wound in the act of healing.

I saw a woman come to the head of my bed; she wore a nurse's uniform, and had a placid, kindly face.

"Who are you, and where am I?"

I know I spoke the words, but I did not recognize my voice at all; it seemed far away, like a whispering among breezes.

The woman said something, I know, but what, I could not tell. I imagine the effect was soothing, for immediately afterwards I found myself going to sleep.

Again I was conscious, more vividly conscious than before. The outlines of the room were the same, and I was able to recognize some of the furniture which I had previously seen. I remembered, too, lifting my hand from the counterpane and noting how thin and white it was.

The door of the room opened and a man entered. I saw at a glance that it was Simpson, and I looked at him through my half-closed eyes. He came to my bedside and looked steadily at me, then he placed his hand gently on my forehead; his touch was as soft as that of a woman.

"Simpson," I said, and this time I was able to recognize my voice. "Is that you, Simpson?"

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir."

His old-time formula acted on me like a tonic; it made me want to laugh. Yes, I really was alive then, and Simpson was with me; but what was the meaning of this strange room?

"Simpson," I said, "am I really alive?"

"Yes, sir; thank God, sir."

I thought I saw the tears gather in his eyes, and I am sure I saw his lips tremble.

"Have I been ill, Simpson?"

"Yes, sir, very ill, but I believe we have beaten them, sir."

"Beaten who?" I asked.

But this time he did not answer. The woman came in again bearing something in her hand. There was a whispered consultation between them, and then I remember drinking something, after which I went to sleep again.

When I again awoke I felt sure it was morning. I had no reason for believing this, but I had no doubt about it; the air was morning air, the sounds were morning sounds. The birds were chirping in the trees, the cattle were lowing in the meadows, the poultry were cackling in a yard near by, a thousand whispering voices everywhere told me that I had awakened to the dawn of a new day. I moved in my bed; yes, I had strength enough for that, and the movement caused me no pain. In an instant I heard footsteps, and Simpson again came to my side.

"Can I do anything for you, sir? How are you to-day?"

"I feel like a man reborn, Simpson," I said. And it was true. A life was surging in my veins which I never remembered before; I felt as though my whole being had been made clean and all my powers renewed. I was unutterably weak, but I felt all a child's health and joy.

"Tell me what this means, Simpson," I said; "this is not my room, not my bed."

"No, sir, but I am your man, sir," and his voice was husky.

"Yes, I am glad you are with me, Simpson. It is good to wake up and find you here."

"I hope I shall never have to leave you, sir," and I saw him wipe away his tears.

"Tell me about it, Simpson – tell me where I am and what has happened to me."

"I am forbidden to talk, sir; the doctor won't allow me. You see – "

"What doctor?" I interrupted.

"Dr. Rhomboid, sir."

"Dr. Rhomboid? Dr. Rhomboid?" The name was familiar to me.

"Where am I, Simpson?"

"You are at Trecarrel, sir; Miss Lethbridge insisted on – "

"Miss Lethbridge! Miss Lethbridge!" Then like a flash the veil dropped from my memory. I called to mind the struggle on the beach, the hand-to-hand fight, the plot which I had determined to expose.

"Miss Lethbridge insisted on my being brought here, did she, Simpson?"

"Yes, sir; you see, sir, that man Liddicoat struck you with something heavy. I – I – but there, I mustn't tell you."

"Yes, you must, Simpson; I insist upon knowing everything. I remember all that happened now: I was leaning against the rock waiting, when the dog barked, and the man Liddicoat sprang upon me. I struggled with him for a long time, and then suddenly everything became dark."

"Yes, sir, after they had finished – "

"Finished what?" I asked.

"I can't tell you now, sir; but Miss Lethbridge insisted on your being brought here. And really, sir, the road is easier here than it is to our house, and I gave in."

"But how did Miss Lethbridge get there?"

"I don't know, sir. I expect she will be telling you herself as soon as you are strong enough. Then I insisted upon sending for Dr. Rhomboid, and, sir, as Providence would have it, he was staying at the Tolgarrick Manor Hotel. The Squire had heard of it, sir; that was why, as soon as you were brought here…"