The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
She remained not there long, because there were many who sought that
place that they might be the first to see if one beloved was among the
travellers by that terrible way, and to welcome the brother or sister who
was the most dear to them of all the children of the Father. But it was
thus that she learned the last lesson of all that is in heaven and that
is in earth, and in the heights above and in the depths below, which the
great angels desire to look into, and all the princes and powers. And it
is this: that there is that which is beyond hope yet not beyond love; and
that hope may fail and be no longer possible, but love cannot fail,--for
hope is of men, but love is the Lord; and there is but one thing which to
Him is not possible, which is to forget; and that even when the Father
has hidden His face and help is forbidden, yet there goes He secretly and
cannot forbear.
But if there were any deep more profound, and to which access was not,
either from the dark mountains or by any other way, the Pilgrim was not
taught, nor ever found any knowledge, either among the angels who know
all things, or among her brothers who were the children of men.
III.
THE LAND OF DARKNESS.
I found myself standing on my feet, with the tingling sensation of having
come down rapidly upon the ground from a height. There was a similar
feeling in my head, as of the whirling and sickening sensation of passing
downwards through the air, like the description Dante gives of his
descent upon Geryon. My mind, curiously enough, was sufficiently
disengaged to think of that, or at least to allow swift passage for the
recollection through my thoughts. All the aching of wonder, doubt, and
fear which I had been conscious of a little while before was gone. There
was no distinct interval between the one condition and the other, nor in
my fall (as I supposed it must have been) had I any consciousness of
change. There was the whirling of the air, resisting my passage, yet
giving way under me in giddy circles, and then the sharp shock of once
more feeling under my feet something solid, which struck, yet sustained.
After a little while the giddiness above and the tingling below passed
away, and I felt able to look about me and discern where I was. But not
all at once; the things immediately about me impressed me first, then the
general aspect of the new place.
First of all the light, which was lurid, as if a thunder-storm were
coming on. I looked up involuntarily to see if it had begun to rain; but
there was nothing of the kind, though what I saw above me was a lowering
canopy of cloud, dark, threatening, with a faint reddish tint diffused
upon the vaporous darkness. It was, however, quite sufficiently clear to
see everything, and there was a good deal to see. I was in a street of
what seemed a great and very populous place. There were shops on either
side, full apparently of all sorts of costly wares. There was a continual
current of passengers up and down on both sides of the way, and in the
middle of the street carriages of every description, humble and splendid.
The noise was great and ceaseless; the traffic continual. Some of the
shops were most brilliantly lighted, attracting one's eyes in the sombre
light outside, which, however, had just enough of day in it to make these
spots of illumination look sickly. Most of the places thus distinguished
were apparently bright with the electric or some other scientific light;
and delicate machines of every description, brought to the greatest
perfection, were in some windows, as were also many fine productions of
art, but mingled with the gaudiest and coarsest in a way which struck me
with astonishment. I was also much surprised by the fact that the
traffic, which was never stilled for a moment, seemed to have no sort of
regulation. Some carriages dashed along, upsetting the smaller vehicles
in their way, without the least restraint or order, either, as it seemed,
from their own good sense or from the laws and customs of the place. When
an accident happened, there was a great shouting, and sometimes a furious
encounter; but nobody seemed to interfere. This was the first impression
made upon me. The passengers on the pavement were equally regardless. I
was myself pushed out of the way, first to one side, then to another,
hustled when I paused for a moment, trodden upon and driven about. I
retreated soon to the doorway of a shop, from whence with a little more
safety I could see what was going on. The noise made my head ring. It
seemed to me that I could not hear myself think. If this were to go on
forever, I said to myself, I should soon go mad.
'Oh, no,' said some one behind me, 'not at all. You will get used to it;
you will be glad of it. One does not want to hear one's thoughts; most of
them are not worth hearing.'
I turned round and saw it was the master of the shop, who had come to the
door on seeing me. He had the usual smile of a man who hoped to sell his
wares; but to my horror and astonishment, by some process which I could
not understand, I saw that he was saying to himself, 'What a d----d fool!
here's another of those cursed wretches, d---- him!' all with the same
smile. I started back, and answered him as hotly, 'What do you mean by
calling me a d----d fool? fool yourself, and all the rest of it. Is this
the way you receive strangers here?'
'Yes,' he said with the same smile, 'this is the way; and I only describe
you as you are, as you will soon see. Will you walk in and look over my
shop? Perhaps you will find something to suit you if you are just setting
up, as I suppose.'
I looked at him closely, but this time I could not see that he was
saying anything beyond what was expressed by his lips: and I followed
him into the shop, principally because it was quieter than the street,
and without any intention of buying,--for what should I buy in a strange
place where I had no settled habitation, and which probably I was only
passing through?
'I will look at your things,' I said, in a way which I believe I had, of
perhaps undue pretension. I had never been over-rich, or of very elevated
station; but I was believed by my friends (or enemies) to have an
inclination to make myself out something more important than I was. 'I
will look at your things, and possibly I may find something that may suit
me; but with all the _ateliers_ of Paris and London to draw from, it is
scarcely to be expected that in a place like this--'
Here I stopped to draw my breath, with a good deal of confusion; for I
was unwilling to let him see that I did not know where I was.
'A place like this,' said the shop-keeper, with a little laugh which
seemed to me full of mockery, 'will supply you better, you will find,
than--any other place. At least you will find it the only place
practicable,' he added. 'I perceive you are a stranger here.'
'Well, I may allow myself to be so, more or less. I have not had time to
form much acquaintance with--the place; what--do you call the place?--its
formal name, I mean,' I said with a great desire to keep up the air of
superior information. Except for the first moment, I had not experienced
that strange power of looking into the man below the surface which had
frightened me. Now there occurred another gleam of insight, which gave me
once more a sensation of alarm. I seemed to see a light of hatred and
contempt below his smile; and I felt that he was not in the least taken
in by the air which I assumed.
'The name of the place,' he said, 'is not a pretty one. I hear the
gentlemen who come to my shop say that it is not to be named to ears
polite; and I am sure your ears are very polite.' He said this with the
most offensive laugh, and I turned upon him and answered him, without
mincing matters, with a plainness of speech which startled myself, but
did not seem to move him, for he only laughed again. 'Are you not
afraid,' I said, 'that I will leave your shop and never enter it more?'
'Oh, it helps to pass the time,' he said; and without any further comment
began to show me very elaborate and fine articles of furniture. I had
always been attracted to this sort of thing, and had longed to buy such
articles for my house when I had one, but never had it in my power. Now I
had no house, nor any means of paying so far as I knew, but I felt quite
at my ease about buying, and inquired into the prices with the greatest
composure.
'They are just the sort of thing I want. I will take these, I think; but
you must set them aside for me, for I do not at the present moment
exactly know--'
'You mean you have got no rooms to put them in,' said the master of the
shop. 'You must get a house directly, that's all. If you're only up to
it, it is easy enough. Look about until you find something you like, and
then--take possession.'
'Take possession'--I was so much surprised that I stared at him
with mingled indignation and surprise--'of what belongs to another
man?' I said.
I was not conscious of anything ridiculous in my look. I was indignant,
which is not a state of mind in which there is any absurdity; but the
shop-keeper suddenly burst into a storm of laughter. He laughed till he
seemed almost to fall into convulsions, with a harsh mirth which reminded
me of the old image of the crackling of thorns, and had neither amusement
nor warmth in it; and presently this was echoed all around, and looking
up, I saw grinning faces full of derision bent upon me from every side,
from the stairs which led to the upper part of the house and from the
depths of the shop behind,--faces with pens behind their ears, faces in
workmen's caps, all distended from ear to ear, with a sneer and a mock
and a rage of laughter which nearly sent me mad. I hurled I don't know
what imprecations at them as I rushed out, stopping my ears in a paroxysm
of fury and mortification. My mind was so distracted by this occurrence
that I rushed without knowing it upon some one who was passing, and threw
him down with the violence of my exit; upon which I was set on by a party
of half a dozen ruffians, apparently his companions, who would, I
thought, kill me, but who only flung me, wounded, bleeding, and feeling
as if every bone in my body had been broken, down on the pavement, when
they went away, laughing too.
I picked myself up from the edge of the causeway, aching and sore from
head to foot, scarcely able to move, yet conscious that if I did not get
myself out of the way, one or other of the vehicles which were dashing
along would run over me. It would be impossible to describe the miserable
sensations, both of body and mind, with which I dragged myself across the
crowded pavement, not without curses and even kicks from the passers-by,
and avoiding the shop from which I still heard those shrieks of devilish
laughter, gathered myself up in the shelter of a little projection of a
wall, where I was for the moment safe. The pain which I felt was as
nothing to the sense of humiliation, the mortification, the rage with
which I was possessed. There is nothing in existence more dreadful than
rage which is impotent, which cannot punish or avenge, which has to
restrain itself and put up with insults showered upon it. I had never
known before what that helpless, hideous exasperation was; and I was
humiliated beyond description, brought down--I, whose inclination it was
to make more of myself than was justifiable--to the aspect of a miserable
ruffian beaten in a brawl, soiled, covered with mud and dust, my clothes
torn, my face bruised and disfigured,--all this within half an hour or
there about of my arrival in a strange place where nobody knew me or
could do me justice! I kept looking out feverishly for some one with an
air of authority to whom I could appeal. Sooner or later somebody must go
by, who, seeing me in such a plight, must inquire how it came about, must
help me and vindicate me. I sat there for I cannot tell how long,
expecting every moment that were it but a policeman, somebody would
notice and help me; but no one came. Crowds seemed to sweep by without a
pause,--all hurrying, restless; some with anxious faces, as if any delay
would be mortal; some in noisy groups intercepting the passage of the
others. Sometimes one would pause to point me out to his comrades with a
shout of derision at my miserable plight, or if by a change of posture I
got outside the protection of my wall, would kick me back with a coarse
injunction to keep out of the way. No one was sorry for me; not a look of
compassion, not a word of inquiry was wasted upon me; no representative
of authority appeared. I saw a dozen quarrels while I lay there, cries of
the weak, and triumphant shouts of the strong; but that was all.
I was drawn after a while from the fierce and burning sense of my own
grievances by a querulous voice quite close to me. 'This is my corner,'
it said. 'I've sat here for years, and I have a right to it. And here you
come, you big ruffian, because you know I haven't got the strength to
push you away.'
'Who are you?' I said, turning round horror-stricken; for close beside me
was a miserable man, apparently in the last stage of disease. He was pale
as death, yet eaten up with sores. His body was agitated by a nervous
trembling. He seemed to shuffle along on hands and feet, as though the
ordinary mode of locomotion was impossible to him, and yet was in
possession of all his limbs. Pain was written in his face. I drew away to
leave him room, with mingled pity and horror that this poor wretch should
be the partner of the only shelter I could find within so short a time of
my arrival. I who--It was horrible, shameful, humiliating; and yet the
suffering in his wretched face was so evident that I could not but feel a
pang of pity too. 'I have nowhere to go,' I said. 'I am--a stranger. I
have been badly used, and nobody seems to care.'
'No,' he said, 'nobody cares; don't you look for that. Why should they?
Why, you look as if you were sorry for _me!_ What a joke!' he murmured
to himself,--'what a joke! Sorry for some one else! What a fool the
fellow must be!'
'You look,' I said, 'as if you were suffering horribly; and you say you
have come here for years.'
'Suffering! I should think I was,' said the sick man; 'but what is that
to you? Yes; I've been here for years,--oh, years! that means
nothing,--for longer than can be counted. Suffering is not the word. It's
torture; it's agony! But who cares? Take your leg out of my way.'
I drew myself out of his way from a sort of habit, though against my
will, and asked, from habit too, 'Are you never any better than now?'
He looked at me more closely, and an air of astonishment came over his
face. 'What d'ye want here,' he said, 'pitying a man? That's something
new here. No; I'm not always so bad, if you want to know. I get better,
and then I go and do what makes me bad again, and that's how it will go
on; and I choose it to be so, and you needn't bring any of your d----d
pity here.'
'I may ask, at least, why aren't you looked after? Why don't you get into
some hospital?' I said.
'Hospital!' cried the sick man, and then he too burst out into that
furious laugh, the most awful sound I ever had heard. Some of the
passers-by stopped to hear what the joke was, and surrounded me with once
more a circle of mockers.
'Hospitals! perhaps you would like a whole Red Cross Society, with
ambulances and all arranged?' cried one. 'Or the _Misericordia_!' shouted
another. I sprang up to my feet, crying, 'Why not?' with an impulse of
rage which gave me strength. Was I never to meet with anything but this
fiendish laughter? 'There's some authority, I suppose,' I cried in my
fury. 'It is not the rabble that is the only master here, I hope.' But
nobody took the least trouble to hear what I had to say for myself. The
last speaker struck me on the mouth, and called me an accursed fool for
talking of what I did not understand; and finally they all swept on and
passed away.
I had been, as I thought, severely injured when I dragged myself into
that corner to save myself from the crowd; but I sprang up now as if
nothing had happened to me. My wounds had disappeared; my bruises were
gone. I was as I had been when I dropped, giddy and amazed, upon the
same pavement, how long--an hour?--before? It might have been an hour,
it might have been a year, I cannot tell. The light was the same as
ever, the thunderous atmosphere unchanged. Day, if it was day, had
made no progress; night, if it was evening, had come no nearer,--all
was the same.
As I went on again presently, with a vexed and angry spirit, regarding on
every side around me the endless surging of the crowd, and feeling a
loneliness, a sense of total abandonment and solitude, which I cannot
describe, there came up to me a man of remarkable appearance. That he was
a person of importance, of great knowledge and information, could not be
doubted. He was very pale, and of a worn but commanding aspect. The lines
of his face were deeply drawn; his eyes were sunk under high arched
brows, from which they looked out as from caves, full of a fiery
impatient light. His thin lips were never quite without a smile; but it
was not a smile in which any pleasure was. He walked slowly, not
hurrying, like most of the passengers. He had a reflective look, as if
pondering many things. He came up to me suddenly, without introduction or
preliminary, and took me by the arm. 'What object had you in talking of
these antiquated institutions?' he said. And I saw in his mind the gleam
of the thought, which seemed to be the first with all, that I was a fool,
and that it was the natural thing to wish me harm, just as in the earth
above it was the natural thing, professed at least, to wish well,--to
say, Good-morning, good-day, by habit and without thought. In this
strange country the stranger was received with a curse, and it woke an
answer not unlike the hasty 'Curse you, then, also!' which seemed to come
without any will of mine through my mind. But this provoked only a smile
from my new friend. He took no notice. He was disposed to examine me, to
find some amusement perhaps--how could I tell?--in what I might say.
'What antiquated things?'
'Are you still so slow of understanding? What were they--hospitals? The
pretences of a world that can still deceive itself. Did you expect to
find them here?'
'I expected to find--how should I know?' I said, bewildered--'some
shelter for a poor wretch where he could be cared for, not to be left
there to die in the street. Expected! I never thought. I took it for
granted--'
'To die in the street!' he cried with a smile and a shrug of his
shoulders. 'You'll learn better by and by. And if he did die in the
street, what then? What is that to you?'
'To me!' I turned and looked at him, amazed; but he had somehow shut his
soul, so that I could see nothing but the deep eyes in their caves, and
the smile upon the close-shut mouth. 'No more to me than to any one. I
only spoke for humanity's sake, as--a fellow-creature.'
My new acquaintance gave way to a silent laugh within himself, which was
not so offensive as the loud laugh of the crowd, but yet was more
exasperating than words can say. 'You think that matters? But it does not
hurt you that he should he in pain. It would do you no good if he were to
get well. Why should you trouble yourself one way or the other? Let him
die--if he can--That makes no difference to you or me.'
'I must be dull indeed,' I cried,--'slow of understanding, as you say.
This is going back to the ideas of times beyond knowledge--before
Christianity--' As soon as I had said this I felt somehow--I could not
tell how--as if my voice jarred, as if something false and unnatural was
in what I said. My companion gave my arm a twist as if with a shock of
surprise, then laughed in his inward way again.
'We don't think much of that here, nor of your modern pretences in
general. The only thing that touches you and me is what hurts or helps
ourselves. To be sure, it all comes to the same thing,--for I suppose it
annoys you to see that wretch writhing; it hurts your more delicate,
highly-cultivated consciousness.'
'It has nothing to do with my consciousness,' I cried angrily; 'it is a
shame to let a fellow-creature suffer if we can prevent it.'
'Why shouldn't he suffer?' said my companion. We passed as he spoke some
other squalid, wretched creatures shuffling among the crowd, whom he
kicked with his foot, calling forth a yell of pain and curses. This he
regarded with a supreme contemptuous calm which stupefied me. Nor did any
of the passers-by show the slightest inclination to take the part of the
sufferers. They laughed, or shouted out a gibe, or what was still more
wonderful, went on with a complete unaffected indifference, as if all
this was natural. I tried to disengage my arm in horror and dismay, but
he held me fast with a pressure that hurt me. 'That's the question,' he
said. 'What have we to do with it? Your fictitious consciousness makes it
painful to you. To me, on the contrary, who take the view of nature, it
is a pleasurable feeling. It enhances the amount of ease, whatever that
may be, which I enjoy. I am in no pain. That brute who is'--and he
flicked with a stick he carried the uncovered wound of a wretch upon the
roadside--'makes me more satisfied with my condition. Ah! you think it
is I who am the brute? You will change your mind by and by.'
'Never!' I cried, wrenching my arm from his with an effort, 'if I should
live a hundred years.'
'A hundred years,--a drop in the bucket!' he said with his silent laugh.
'You will live forever, and you will come to my view; and we shall meet
in the course of ages, from time to time, to compare notes. I would say
good-by after the old fashion, but you are but newly arrived, and I will
not treat you so badly as that.' With which he parted from me, waving his
hand, with his everlasting horrible smile.
'Good-by!' I said to myself, 'good-by! why should it be treating me badly
to say good-by--'
I was startled by a buffet on the mouth. 'Take that!' cried some one,
'to teach you how to wish the worst of tortures to people who have done
you no harm.'
'What have I said? I meant no harm; I repeated only what is the commonest
civility, the merest good manners.'
'You wished,' said the man who had struck me,--'I won't repeat the words:
to me, for it was I only that heard them, the awful company that hurts
most, that sets everything before us, both past and to come, and cuts
like a sword and burns like fire. I'll say it to yourself, and see how it
feels. God be with you! There! it is said, and we all must bear it,
thanks, you fool and accursed, to you.'
And then there came a pause over all the place, an awful
stillness,--hundreds of men and women standing clutching with desperate
movements at their hearts as if to tear them out, moving their heads as
if to dash them against the wall, wringing their hands, with a look upon
all their convulsed faces which I can never forget. They all turned to
me, cursing me with those horrible eyes of anguish. And everything was
still; the noise all stopped for a moment, the air all silent, with a
silence that could be felt. And then suddenly out of the crowd there came
a great piercing cry; and everything began again exactly as before.
While this pause occurred, and while I stood wondering, bewildered,
understanding nothing, there came over me a darkness, a blackness, a
sense of misery such as never in all my life--though I have known
troubles enough--I had felt before. All that had happened to me
throughout my existence seemed to rise pale and terrible in a hundred
scenes before me,--all momentary, intense, as if each was the present
moment. And in each of these scenes I saw what I had never seen before. I
saw where I had taken the wrong instead of the right step, in what
wantonness, with what self-will it had been done; how God (I shuddered at
the name) had spoken and called me, and even entreated, and I had
withstood and refused. All the evil I had done came back, and spread
itself out before my eyes; and I loathed it, yet knew that I had chosen
it, and that it would be with me forever. I saw it all in the twinkling
of an eye, in a moment, while I stood there, and all men with me, in the
horror of awful thought. Then it ceased as it had come, instantaneously,
and the noise and the laughter, and the quarrels and cries, and all the
commotion of this new bewildering place, in a moment began again. I had
seen no one while this strange paroxysm lasted. When it disappeared, I
came to myself, emerging as from a dream, and looked into the face of the
man whose words, not careless like mine, had brought it upon us. Our eyes
met, and his were surrounded by curves and lines of anguish which were
terrible to see.
'Well,' he said with a short laugh, which was forced and harsh, 'how do
you like it? that is what happens when--If it came often, who could
endure it?' He was not like the rest. There was no sneer upon his face,
no gibe at my simplicity. Even now, when all had recovered, he was still
quivering with something that looked like a nobler pain. His face was
very grave, the lines deeply drawn in it; and he seemed to be seeking no
amusement or distraction, nor to take any part in the noise and tumult
which was going on around.