BEYOND THE GATES.

BY
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,
AUTHOR OF “THE GATES AJAR,” “THE STORY OF AVIS,” ETC., ETC.
Nineteenth Thousand.

BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.
1884.

Copyright, 1883,
By ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.

TO MY BROTHER,
STUART,
WHO PASSED BEYOND, AUGUST 29, 1883.

[Chapter I., ] [II., ] [III., ] [IV., ] [V., ] [VI., ] [VII., ] [VIII., ] [IX., ] [X., ] [XI., ] [XII., ] [XIII., ] [XIV., ] [XV. ]

NOTE.

It should be said, that, at the time of the departure of him to whose memory this little book is consecrated, the work was already in press; and that these pages owe more to his criticism than can be acknowledged here.

E. S. P.

Gloucester, Massachusetts,
September, 1883.

BEYOND THE GATES.

I.

I had been ill for several weeks with what they called brain fever. The events which I am about to relate happened on the fifteenth day of my illness.

Before beginning to tell my story, it may not be out of place to say a few words about myself, in order to clarify to the imagination of the reader points which would otherwise involve numerous explanatory digressions, more than commonly misplaced in a tale dealing with the materials of this.

I am a woman forty years of age. My father was a clergyman; he had been many years dead. I was living, at the time I refer to, in my mother’s house in a factory town in Massachusetts. The town need not be more particularly mentioned, nor genuine family names given, for obvious reasons. I was the oldest of four children; one of my sisters was married, one was at home with us, and there was a boy at college.

I was an unmarried, but not an unhappy woman. I had reached a very busy, and sometimes I hoped a not altogether valueless, middle age. I had used life and loved it. Beyond the idle impulse of a weary moment, which signifies no more than the reflex action of a mental muscle, and which I had been in the habit of rating accordingly, I had never wished to die. I was well, vigorous, and active. I was not of a dependent or a despondent temperament.

I am not writing an autobiography, and these things, not of importance in themselves, require only the briefest allusion. They will serve to explain the general cast of my life, which in turn may define the features of my story.

There are two kinds of solitary: he who is drawn by the inward, and he who chooses the outward life. To this latter class I had belonged. Circumstances, which it is not necessary to detail here, had thrust me into the one as a means of self-preservation from the other, while I was yet quite young.

I had been occupied more largely with the experiences of other people than with my own. I had been in the habit of being depended upon. It had been my great good fortune to be able to spend a part of my time among the sick, the miserable, and the poor. It had been, perhaps, my better chance to be obliged to balance the emotional perils of such occupations by those of a different character. My business was that of a school-teacher, but I had traveled somewhat; I had served as a nurse during the latter years of the war; in the Sanitary Commission; upon the Freedmen’s Bureau; as an officer in a Woman’s Prison, and had done a little work for the State Bureau of Labor among the factory operatives of our own town. I had therefore, it will be seen, been spared the deterioration of a monotonous existence. At the time I was taken ill I was managing a private school, rather large for the corps of assistants which I could command, and had overworked. I had been at home, thus employed, with my mother who needed me, for two years.

It may not be unsuitable, before proceeding with my narrative, to say that I had been a believer in the truths of the Christian religion; not, however, a devotee. I had not the ecstatic temperament, and was not known among my friends for any higher order of piety than that which is implied in trying to do one’s duty for Christ’s sake, and saying little about it or Him,—less than I wish I had sometimes. It was natural to me to speak in other ways than by words; that does not prove that it was best. I had read a little, like all thinking people with any intellectual margin to their lives, of the religious controversies of the day, and had not been without my share of pressure from the fashionable reluctance to believe. Possibly this had affected a temperament not too much inclined towards the supernatural, but it had never conquered my faith, which I think had grown to be dearer to me because I had not kept it without a fight for it. It certainly had become, for this reason, of greater practical value. It certainly had become, for this and every reason, the most valuable thing I had, or hoped to have. I believed in God and immortality, and in the history of Jesus Christ. I respected and practiced prayer, but chiefly decided what I ought to do next minute. I loved life and lived it. I neither feared death nor thought much about it.

When I had been ill a fortnight, it occurred to me that I was very sick, but not that I could possibly die. I suffered a good deal at first; after that much less. There was great misery for lack of sleep, and intolerable restlessness. The worst, however, was the continuity of care. Those who have borne heavy responsibilities for any length of time will understand me. The incessant burden pressed on: now a pupil had fallen into some disgraceful escapade; now the investments of my mother’s, of which I had the charge, had failed on the dividends; then I had no remittance for the boy at college; then my sister, in a heart-breaking emergency, confided to me a peril against which I could not lift a finger; the Governor held me responsible for the typhoid among the prisoners; I added eternal columns of statistics for the Charity Boards, and found forever a mistake in each report; a dying soldier called to me in piercing tones for a cup of water; the black girl to whom I read the Gospel of John, drowned her baby; I ran six looms in the mill for the mother of six children till her seventh should be born; I staked the salvation of my soul upon answering the argument of Strauss to the satisfaction of an unbelieving friend, and lost my wager; I heard my classes in Logic, and was unable to repeat anything but the “Walrus and the Carpenter,” for the “Barbara Celarent.” Suddenly, one day, in the thick of this brain-battle, I slipped upon a pause, in which I distinctly heard a low voice say,

“But Thine eternal thoughts move on,
Thine undisturbed affairs.”

It was my mother’s voice. I perceived then that she sat at my bedside in the red easy-chair, repeating hymns, poor soul! in the hope of calming me.

I put out my hand and patted her arm, but it did not occur to me to speak till I saw that there were masses of pansies and some mignonette upon the table, and I asked who sent them, and she told me the school-girls had kept them fresh there every day since I was taken ill. I felt some pleasure that they should take the trouble to select the flowers I preferred. Then I asked her where the jelly came from, and the grapes, and about other trifles that I saw, such as accumulate in any sick-room. Then she gave me the names of different friends and neighbors who had been so good as to remember me. Chiefly I was touched by the sight of a straggly magenta geranium which I noticed growing in a pot by the window, and which a poor woman from the mills had brought the day before. I asked my mother if there were any letters, and she said, many, but that I must not hear them read; she spoke of some from the prison. The door-bell often rang softly, and I asked why it was muffled, and who called. Alice had come in, and said something in an undertone to mother about the Grand Army and resolutions and sympathy; and she used the names of different people I had almost forgotten, and this confused me. They stopped talking, and I became at once very ill again.

The next point which I recall is turning to see that the doctor was in the room. I was in great suffering, and he gave me a few spoonfuls of something which he said would secure sleep. I desired to ask him what it was, as I objected to narcotics, and preferred to bear whatever was before me with the eyes of my mind open, but as soon as I tried to speak I forgot what I wished to say.

I do not know how long it was before the truth approached me, but it was towards evening of that day, the fifteenth, as I say, of my illness, that I said aloud:

“Mother, Tom is in the room. Why has Tom come home?”

Tom was my little brother at college. He came towards the bed as I spoke. He had his hat in his hand, and he put it up before his eyes.

“Mother!” I repeated louder than before. “Why have you sent for Tom?”

But Mother did not answer me. She leaned over me. I saw her looking down. She had the look that she had when my father died; though I was so young when that happened, I had never forgotten my mother’s look; and I had never seen it since, from that day until this hour.

“Mother! am I so sick as that? Mother!”

“Oh, my dear!” cried Mother. “Oh my dear, my dear!” ...

So after that I understood. I was greatly startled that they should feel me to be dangerously ill; but I was not alarmed.

“It is nonsense,” I said, after I had thought about it a little while. “Dr. Shadow was always a croaker. I have no idea of dying! I have nursed too many sicker people than I am. I don’t intend to die! I am able to sit up now, if I want to. Let me try.”

“I’ll hold you,” said Tom, softly enough. This pleased me. He lifted all the pillows, and held me straight out upon his mighty arms. Tom was a great athlete—took the prizes at the gymnasium. No weaker man could have supported me for fifteen minutes in the strained position by which he found that he could give me comfort and so gratify my whim. Tom held me a long time; I think it must have been an hour; but I began to suffer again, and could not judge of time. I wondered how that big boy got such infinite tenderness into those iron muscles. I felt a great respect for human flesh and bone and blood, and for the power and preciousness of the living human body. It seemed much more real to me, then, than the spirit. It seemed an absurdity that any one should suppose that I was in danger of being done with life. I said:—

“I’m going to live, Tom! Tell Mother I have no idea of dying. I prefer to live.”

Tom nodded; he did not speak; I felt a hot dash of tears on my face, which surprised me; I had not seen Tom cry since he lost the football match when he was eleven years old.

They gave me something more out of the spoon, again, I think, at that moment, and I felt better. I said to Tom:—

“You see!” and bade them send Mother to lie down, and asked Alice to make her beef-tea, and to be sure and make it as we did in the army. I do not remember saying anything more after this. I certainly did not suffer any more. I felt quiet and assured. Nothing farther troubled me. The room became so still that I thought they must all have gone away, and left me with the nurse, and that she, finding me so well, had herself fallen asleep. This rested me—to feel that I was no longer causing them pain—more than anything could have done; and I began to think the best thing I could do would be to take a nap myself.

With this conviction quietly in mind I turned over, with my face towards the wall, to go to sleep. I grew calmer, and yet more calm, as I lay there. There was a cross of Swiss carving on the wall, hanging over a picture of my father. Leonardo’s Christ—the one from the drawing for the Last Supper, that we all know—hung above both these. Owing to my position, I could not see the other pictures in the room, which was large, and filled with little things, the gifts of those who had been kind to me in a life of many busy years. Only these three objects—the cross, the Christ, and my father—came within range of my eyes as the power of sleep advanced. The room was darkened, as it had been since I became so ill, so that I was not sure whether it were night or day. The clock was striking. I think it struck two; and I perceived the odor of the mignonette. I think it was the last thing I noticed before going to sleep, and I remembered, as I did so, the theories which gave to the sense of smell greater significance than any of the rest; and remembered to have read that it was either the last or the first to give way in the dying. (I could not recall, in my confused condition, which.) I thought of this with pleased and idle interest; but did not associate the thought with the alarm felt by my friends about my condition.

I could have slept but a short time when I woke, feeling much easier. The cross, the Christ, and the picture of my father looked at me calmly from the wall on which the sick-lamp cast a steady, soft light. Then I remembered that it was night, of course, and felt chagrined that I could have been confused on this point.

The room seemed close to me, and I turned over to ask for more air.

As I did so, I saw some one sitting in the cushioned window-seat by the open window—the eastern window. No one had occupied this seat, on account of the draught and chill, since my illness. As I looked steadily, I saw that the person who sat there was my father.

His face was turned away, but his figure and the contour of his noble head were not to be mistaken. Although I was a mere girl when he died, I felt no hesitation about this. I knew at once, and beyond all doubt, that it was he. I experienced pleasure, but little, if any, surprise.

As I lay there looking at him, he turned and regarded me. His deep eyes glowed with a soft, calm light; but yet, I know not why, they expressed more love than I had ever seen in them before. He used to love us nervously and passionately. He had now the look of one whose whole nature is saturated with rest, and to whom the fitfulness, distrust, or distress of intense feeling acting upon a super-sensitive organization, were impossible. As he looked towards me, he smiled. He had one of the sweetest smiles that ever illuminated a mortal face.

“Why, Father!” I said aloud. He nodded encouragingly, but did not speak.

“Father?” I repeated, “Father, is this you?” He laughed a little, softly, putting up one hand and tossing his hair off from his forehead—an old way of his.

“What are you here for?” I asked again. “Did Mother send for you, too?”

When I had said this, I felt confused and troubled; for though I did not remember that he was dead—I mean I did not put the thought in any such form to myself, or use that word or any of its synonyms—yet I remembered that he had been absent from our family circle for a good while, and that if Mother had sent for him because I had a brain fever, it would have been for some reason not according to her habit.

“It is strange,” I said. “It isn’t like her. I don’t understand the thing at all.”

Now, as I continued to look at the corner of the room where my father was sitting, I saw that he had risen from the cushioned window-seat, and taken a step or two towards me. He stopped, however, and stood quite still, and looked at me most lovingly and longingly; and then it was that he held out his arms to me.

“Oh,” cried I, “I wish I could come! But you don’t know how sick I am. I have not walked a step for over two weeks.”

He did not speak even yet, but still held out his arms with that look of unutterably restful love. I felt the elemental tie between parent and child draw me. It seemed to me as if I had reached the foundation of all human feeling; as if I had gone down—how shall I say it?—below the depths of all other love. I had always known I loved him, but not like that. I was greatly moved.

“But you don’t understand me,” I repeated with some agitation. “I can’t walk.” I thought it very strange that he did not, in consideration of my feebleness, come to me.

Then for the first time he spoke.

“Come,” he said gently. His voice sounded quite natural; I only noticed that he spoke under his breath, as if not to awake the nurse, or any person who was in the room.

At this, I moved, and sat up on the edge of my bed; although I did so easily enough, I lost courage at that point. It seemed impossible to go farther. I felt a little chilly, and remembered, too, that I was not dressed. A warm white woolen wrapper of my own, and my slippers, were within reach, by the head of the bed; Alice wore them when she watched with me. I put these things on, and then paused, expecting to be overcome with exhaustion after the effort. To my surprise, I did not feel tired at all. I believe, rather, I felt a little stronger. As I put the clothes on, I noticed the magenta geranium across the room. These, I think, were the only things which attracted my attention.

“Come here to me,” repeated Father; he spoke more decidedly, this time with a touch of authority. I remembered hearing him speak just so when Tom was learning to walk; he began by saying, “Come, sonny boy!” but when the baby played the coward, he said, “My son, come here!”

As if I had been a baby, I obeyed. I put my feet to the floor, and found that I stood strongly. I experienced a slight giddiness for a moment, but when this passed, my head felt clearer than before. I walked steadily out into the middle of the room. Each step was firmer than the other. As I advanced, he came to meet me. My heart throbbed. I thought I should have fallen, not from weakness, but from joy.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said encouragingly; “that is right. You are doing finely. Only a few steps more. There!”

It was done. I had crossed the distance which separated us, and my dear Father, after all those years, took me, as he used to do, into his arms....

He was the first to speak, and he said:—

“You poor little girl!—But it is over now.”

“Yes, it is over now,” I answered. I thought he referred to the difficult walk across the room, and to my long illness, now so happily at an end. He smiled and patted me on the cheek, but made no other answer.

“I must tell Mother that you are here,” I said presently. I had not looked behind me or about me. Since the first sight of my father sitting in the window, I had not observed any other person, and could not have told who was in the room.

“Not yet,” my father said. “We may not speak to her at present. I think we had better go.”

I lifted my face to say, “Go where?” but my lips did not form the question. It was just as it used to be when he came from the study and held out his hand, and said “Come,” and I went anywhere with him, neither asking, nor caring, so long as it was with him; and then he used to play or walk with me, and I forgot the whole world besides. I put my hand in his without a question, and we moved towards the door.

“I suppose you had better go this way,” he said, with a slight hesitation, as we passed out and across the hall.

“Any way you like best,” I said joyfully. He smiled, and still keeping my hand, led me down the stairs. As we went down, I heard the little Swiss clock, above in my room, strike the half hour after two.

I noticed everything in the hall as we descended; it was as if my vision, as well as the muscles of motion, grew stronger with each moment. I saw the stair-carpeting with its faded Brussels pattern, once rich, and remembered counting the red roses on it the night I went up with the fever on me; reeling and half delirious, wondering how I could possibly afford to be sick. I saw the hat-tree with Tom’s coat, and Alice’s blue Shetland shawl across the old hair-cloth sofa. As we opened the door, I saw the muffled bell. I stood for a moment upon the threshold of my old home, not afraid but perplexed.

My father seemed to understand my thoughts perfectly, though I had not spoken, and he paused for my reluctant mood. I thought of all the years I had spent there. I thought of my childhood and girlhood; of the tempestuous periods of life which that quiet roof had hidden; of the calms upon which it had brooded. I thought of sorrows that I had forgotten, and those which I had prayed in vain to forget. I thought of temptations and of mistakes and of sins, from which I had fled back asking these four walls to shelter me. I thought of the comfort and blessedness that I had never failed to find in the old house. I shrank from leaving it. It seemed like leaving my body.

When the door had been opened, the night air rushed in. I could see the stars, and knew, rather than felt, that it was cold. As we stood waiting, an icicle dropped from the eaves, and fell, breaking into a dozen diamond flashes at our feet. Beyond, it was dark.

“It seems to me a great exposure,” I said reluctantly, “to be taken out into a winter night,—at such an hour, too! I have been so very sick.”

“Are you cold?” asked my father gently. After some thought I said:—

“No, sir.”

For I was not cold. For the first time I wondered why.

“Are you tired?”

No, I was not tired.

“Are you afraid?”

“A little, I think, sir.”

“Would you like to go back, Molly, and rest awhile?”

“If you please, Papa.”

The old baby-word came instinctively in answer to the baby-name. He led me like a child, and like a child I submitted. It was like him to be so thoughtful of my weakness. My dear father was always one of those rare men who think of little things largely, and so bring, especially into the lives of women, the daily comfort which makes the infinite preciousness of life.

We went into the parlor and sat down. It was warm there and pleasant. The furnace was well on, and embers still in the grate. The lamps were not lighted, yet the room was not dark. I enjoyed being down there again after all those weeks up-stairs, and was happy in looking at the familiar things, the afghan on the sofa, and the magazines on the table, uncut because of my illness; Mother’s work-basket, and Alice’s music folded away.

“It was always a dear old room,” said Father, seating himself in his own chair, which we had kept for twenty years in its old place. He put his head back, and gazed peacefully about.

When I felt rested, and better, I asked him if we should start now.

“Just as you please,” he said quietly. “There is no hurry. We are never hurried.”

“If we have anything to do,” I said, “I had rather do it now I think.”

“Very well,” said Father, “that is like you.” He rose and held out his hand again. I took it once more, and once more we went out to the threshold of our old home. This time I felt more confidence, but when the night air swept in, I could not help shrinking a little in spite of myself, and showing the agitation which overtook me.

“Father!” I cried, “Father! where are we going?”

My father turned at this, and looked at me solemnly. His face seemed to shine and glow. He looked from what I felt was a great height. He said:—

“Are you really afraid, Mary, to go anywhere with me?”

“No, no!” I protested in a passion of regret and trust, “my dear father! I would go any where in earth or Heaven with you!”

“Then come,” he said softly.

I clasped both hands, interlocking them through his arm, and we shut the door and went down the steps together and out into the winter dawn.

II.

It was neither dark nor day; and as we stepped into the village streets the confused light trembled about us delicately. The stars were still shining. Snow was on the ground; and I think it had freshly fallen in the night, for I noticed that the way before us lay quite white and untrodden. I looked back over my shoulders as my father closed the gate, which he did without noise. I meant to take a gaze at the old house, from which, with a thrill at the heart, I began to feel that I was parting under strange and solemn conditions. But when I glanced up the path which we had taken, my attention was directed altogether from the house, and from the slight sadness of the thought I had about it.

The circumstance which arrested me was this. Neither my father’s foot nor mine had left any print upon the walk. From the front door to the street, the fine fair snow lay unbroken; it stirred, and rose in restless flakes like winged creatures under the gentle wind, flew a little way, and fell again, covering the surface of the long white path with a foam so light, it seemed as if thought itself could not have passed upon it without impression. I can hardly say why I did not call my father’s attention to this fact.

As we walked down the road the dawn began to deepen. The stars paled slowly. The intense blue-black and purple of the night sky gave way to the warm grays that precede sunrise in our climate. I saw that the gold and the rose were coming. It promised to be a mild morning, warmer than for several days. The deadly chill was out of the air. The snow yielded on the outlines of the drifts, and relaxed as one looked at it, as snow does before melting, and the icicles had an air of expectation, as if they hastened to surrender to the annunciation of a warm and impatient winter’s day.

“It is going to thaw,” I said aloud.

“It seems so to you,” replied my father, vaguely.

“But at least it is very pleasant,” I insisted.

“I’m glad you find it so,” he said; “I should have been disappointed if it had struck you as cold, or—gloomy—in any way.”

It was still so early that all the village was asleep. The blinds and curtains of the houses were drawn and the doors yet locked. None of our neighbors were astir, nor were there any signs of traffic yet in the little shops. The great factory-bell, which woke the operatives at half-past four, had rung, but this was the only evidence as yet of human life or motion. It did not occur to me, till afterwards, to wonder at the inconsistency between the hour struck by my own Swiss clock and the factory time.

I was more interested in another matter which just then presented itself to me.

The village, as I say, was still asleep. Once I heard the distant hoofs of a horse sent clattering after the doctor, and ridden by a messenger from a household in mortal need. Up to this time we two had seemed to be the only watchers in all the world.

Now, as I turned to see if I could discover whose horse it was and so who was in emergency, I observed suddenly that the sidewalk was full of people. I say full of people; I mean that there was a group behind us; a few, also, before us; some, too, were crossing the street. They conversed together standing at the corners, or walked in twos, as father and I were doing; or strolled, some of them alone. Some of them seemed to have immediate business and to be in haste; others sauntered as he who has no occupation. Some talked and gesticulated earnestly, or laughed loudly. Others went with a thoughtful manner, speaking not at all.

As I watched them I began to recognize here and there, a man, or a woman;—there were more men than women among them, and there were no children.

A few of these people, I soon saw, were old neighbors of ours; some I had known when I was a child, and had forgotten till this moment. Several of them bowed to us as we passed along. One man stopped and waited for us, and spoke to Father, who shook hands with him; intimating, however, pleasantly enough, that he was in haste, and must be excused for passing on.

“Yes, yes, I see,” said the man with a glance at me. I then distinctly saw this person’s face, and knew him beyond a doubt, for an old neighbor, a certain Mr. Snarl, a miserly, sanctimonious man—I had never liked him.

“Father!” I stopped short. “Father, that man is dead. He has been dead for twenty years!”

Now, at this, I began to tremble; yet not from fear, I think; from amazement, rather, and the great confusion which I felt.

“And there”—I pointed to a pale young man who had been thrown from his carriage (it was said because he was in no condition to drive)—“there is Bobby Bend. He died last winter.”

“Well,” said Father quietly, “and what then?”

“And over there—why, certainly that is Mrs. Mersey!”

I had known Mrs. Mersey for a lovely woman. She died of a fever contracted in the care of a poor, neglected creature. I saw her at this moment across and far down the street, coming from a house where there was trouble. She came with a swift, elastic motion, unlike that of any of the others who were about us; the difference was marked, and yet one which I should have found it at that time impossible to describe. Perhaps I might have said that she hovered above rather than touched the earth; but this would not have defined the distinction. As I looked after her she disappeared; in what direction I could not tell.

“So they are dead people,” I said, with a sort of triumph; almost as if I had dared my father to deny it. He smiled.

“Father, I begin to be perplexed. I have heard of these hallucinations, of course, and read the authenticated stories, but I never supposed I could be a subject of such illusions. It must be because I have been so sick.”

“Partly because you have been so sick—yes,” said Father drawing down the corners of his mouth, in that way he had when he was amused. I went on to tell him that it seemed natural to see him, but that I was surprised to meet those others who had left us, and that I did not find it altogether agreeable.

“Are you afraid?” he asked me, as he had before. No, I could not say that I was afraid.

“Then hasten on,” he said in a different tone, “our business is not with them, at present. See! we have already left them behind.”

And, indeed, when I glanced back, I saw that we had. We, too, were now traveling alone together, and at a much faster speed, towards the outskirts of the town. We were moving eastward. Before us the splendid day was coming up. The sky was unfolding, shade above shade, paler at the edge, and glowing at the heart, like the petals of a great rose.

The snow was melting on the moors towards which we bent our steps; the water stood here and there in pools, and glistened. A little winter bird—some chickadee or wood-pecker—was bathing in one of these pools; his tiny brown body glowed in the brightness, flashing to and fro. He chirped and twittered and seemed bursting with joy. As we approached the moors, the stalks of the sumachs, the mulberries, the golden-rod, and asters, all the wayside weeds and the brown things that we never know and never love till winter, rose beautiful from the snow; the icicles melted and dripped from them; the dead-gold-colored leaves of the low oaks rustled; at a distance we heard the sweet sough from a grove of pines; behind us the morning bells of the village broke into bubbles of cheerful sound. As we walked on together I felt myself become stronger at every step; my heart grew light.

“It is a good world,” I cried, “it is a good world!”

“So it is,” said my father heartily, “and yet—my dear daughter”—He hesitated; so long that I looked into his face earnestly, and then I saw that a strange gravity had settled upon it. It was not like any look that I had ever seen there before.

“I have better things to show you,” he said gently.

“I do not understand you, sir.”

“We have only begun our journey, Mary; and—if you do not understand—but I thought you would have done so by this time—I wonder if she is going to be frightened after all!”

We were now well out upon the moors, alone together, on the side of the hill. The town looked far behind us and insignificant. The earth dwindled and the sky grew, as we looked from one to the other. It seemed to me that I had never before noticed how small a portion of our range of vision is filled by the surface of earth, and what occupies it; and how immense the proportion of the heavens. As we stood there, it seemed to overwhelm us.

“Rise,” said my father in a voice of solemn authority, “rise quickly!”

I struggled at his words, for he seemed to slip from me, and I feared to lose him. I struggled and struck out into the air; I felt a wild excitement, like one plunged into a deep sea, and desperately swimming, as animals do, and a few men, from blind instinct, having never learned. My father spoke encouragingly, and with tenderness. He never once let go my hand. I felt myself, beyond all doubt, soaring—slowly and weakly—but surely ascending above the solid ground.

“See! there is nothing to fear,” he said from time to time. I did not answer. My heart beat fast. I exerted all my strength and took a stronger stroke. I felt that I gained upon myself. I closed my eyes, looking neither above nor below.

Suddenly, as gently as the opening of a water lily, and yet as swiftly as the cleaving of the lightning, there came to me a thought which made my brain whirl, and I cried aloud:

“Father, am I DEAD?” My hands slipped—I grew dizzy—wavered—and fluttered. I was sure that I should fall. At that instant I was caught with the iron of tenderness and held, like a very young child, in my father’s arms. He said nothing, only patted me on the cheek, as we ascended, he seeing, and I blind; he strength, and I weakness; he who knew all, and I who knew nothing, silently with the rising sun athwart the rose-lit air.

I was awed, more than there are words to say; but I felt no more fear than I used to do when he carried me on his shoulder up the garden walk, after it grew dark, when I was tired out with play.

III.

I use the words “ascension” and “arising” in the superficial sense of earthly imagery. Of course, carefully speaking, there can be no up or down to the motion of beings detached from a revolving globe, and set adrift in space. I thought of this in the first moment, with the keenness which distinguishes between knowledge and experience. I knew when our journey came to an end, by the gradual cessation of our rapid motion; but at first I did not incline to investigate beyond this fact. Whether I was only tired, or giddy, or whether a little of what we used to call faintness overcame me, I can hardly say. If this were so, it was rather a spiritual than a physical disability; it was a faintness of the soul. Now I found this more energetic than the bodily sensations I had known. I scarcely sought to wrestle against it, but lay quite still, where we had come to a halt.

I wish to say here, that if you ask me where this was, I must answer that I do not know. I must say distinctly that, though after the act of dying I departed from the surface of the earth, and reached the confines of a different locality, I cannot yet instruct another where this place may be.

My impression that it was not a vast distance (measured, I mean, by an astronomical scale) from our globe, is a strong one, which, however, I cannot satisfactorily defend. There seemed to be flowers about me; I wondered what they were, but lay with my face hidden in my arm, not caring yet to look about. I thought of that old-fashioned allegory called “The Distant Hills,” where the good girl, when she died, sank upon a bed of violets; but the bad girl slipped upon rolling stones beneath a tottering ruin. This trifling memory occupied me for some moments; yet it had so great significance to me, that I recall it, even now, with pungent gratitude.

“I shall remember what I have read.” This was my first thought in the new state to which I had come. Minna was the name of the girl in the allegory. The illustrations were very poor, but had that uncanny fascination which haunts allegorical pictures—often the more powerful because of their rudeness.

As I lay there, still not caring, or even not daring to look up, the fact that I was crushing flowers beneath me became more apparent; a delicate perfume arose and surrounded me; it was like and yet unlike any that I had ever known; its familiarity entranced, its novelty allured me. Suddenly I perceived what it was—

“Mignonette!”

I laughed at my own dullness in detecting it, and could not help wondering whether it were accident or design that had given me for my first experience in the new life, the gratification of a little personal taste like this. For a few moments I yielded to the pure and exquisite perfume, which stole into my whole nature, or it seemed to me so then. Afterwards I learned how little I knew of my “whole nature” at that time.

Presently I took courage, and lifted my head. I hardly know what I expected to see. Visions of the Golden City in the Apocalypse had flitted before me. I thought of the River of Death in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” of the last scene in the “Voyage of Life,” of Theremin’s “Awakening,” of several famous books and pictures which I had read or seen, describing what we call Heaven. These works of the human imagination—stored away perhaps in the frontal lobes of the brain, as scientists used to tell us—had influenced my anticipations more than I could have believed possible till that moment.

I was indeed in a beautiful place; but it did not look, in any respect, as I had expected. No; I think not in any respect. Many things which happened to me later, I can describe more vividly than I can this first impression. In one way it was a complex, in another, a marvelously simple one. Chiefly, I think I had a consciousness of safety—infinite safety. All my soul drew a long breath—“Nothing more can happen to me!” Yet, at the same time, I felt that I was at the outset of all experience. It was as if my heart cried aloud, “Where shall I begin?”

I looked about and abroad. My father stood at a little distance from me, conversing with some friends. I did not know them. They had great brightness and beauty of appearance. So, also, had he. He had altered perceptibly since he met me in the lower world, and seemed to glow and become absorbent of light from some source yet unseen. This struck me forcibly in all the people whom I saw—there were many of them, going to and fro busily—that they were receptive and reflecting beings. They differed greatly in the degree in which they gave this impression; but all gave it. Some were quite pale, though pure in color; others glowed and shone. Yet when I say color, I use an earthly word, which does not express my meaning. It was more the atmosphere or penumbra, in which each moved, that I refer to, perhaps, than the tint of their bodies. They had bodies, very like such as I was used to. I saw that I myself was not, or so it appeared, greatly changed. I had form and dress, and I moved at will, and experienced sensations of pleasure and, above all, of magnificent health. For a while I was absorbed, without investigating details, in the mere sense of physical ease and power. I did not wish to speak, or to be spoken to, nor even to stir and exercise my splendid strength. It was more than enough to feel it, after all those weeks of pain. I lay back again upon the mignonette; as I did so, I noticed that the flowers where my form had pressed them were not bruised; they had sprung erect again; they had not wilted, nor even hung their heads as if they were hurt—I lay back upon, and deep within, the mignonette, and, drowned in the delicate odor, gazed about me.

Yes; I was truly in a wonderful place. It was in the country (as we should say below), though I saw signs of large centres of life, outlines of distant architecture far away. There were hills, and vast distances, and vistas of hill tints in the atmosphere. There were forests of great depth. There was an expanse of shining water. There were fields of fine extent and color, undulating like green seas. The sun was high—if it were the sun. At least there was great brilliance about me. Flowers must have been abundant, for the air was alive with perfumes.

When I have said this, I seem to have said little or nothing. Certain it is that these first impressions came to me in broad masses, like the sweep of a large brush or blender upon canvas. Of details I received few, for a long time. I was overcome with a sense of Nature—freedom—health—beauty, as if—how shall I say it?—as if for the first time I understood what generic terms meant; as if I had entered into the secret of all abstract glory; as if what we had known as philosophical or as poetical phrases were now become attainable facts, each possessing that individual existence in which dreamers upon earth dare to believe, and of which no doubter can be taught.

I am afraid I do not express this with anything like the simplicity with which I felt it; and to describe it with anything resembling the power would be impossible.

I felt my smallness and ignorance in view of the wonders which lay before me. “I shall have time enough to study them,” I thought, but the thought itself thrilled me throughout, and proved far more of an excitant than a sedative. I rose slowly, and stood trembling among the mignonette. I shielded my eyes with my hand, not from any glare or dazzle or strain, but only from the presence and the pressure of beauty, and so stood looking off. As I did so, certain words came to mind with the haunting voice of a broken quotation:

“Neither have entered into the heart of man”—
“The things which God hath prepared”—

It was a relief to me to see my father coming towards me at that moment, for I had, perhaps, undergone as much keen emotion as one well bears, compressed into a short space of time. He met me smiling.

“And how is it, Mary?”

“My first Bible verse has just occurred to me, Father—the first religious thought I’ve had in Heaven yet!” I tried to speak lightly, feeling too deeply for endurance. I repeated the words to him, for he asked me what they were which had come to me.

“That is a pleasant experience,” he said quietly. “It differs with us all. I have seen people enter in a transport of haste to see the Lord Himself—noticing nothing, forgetting everything. I have seen others come in a transport of terror—so afraid they were of Him.”

“And I had scarcely thought about seeing Him till now!” I felt ashamed of this. But my father comforted me by a look.

“Each comes to his own by his own,” he said. “The nature is never forced. Here we unfold like a leaf, a flower. He expects nothing of us but to be natural.”

This seemed to me a deep saying; and the more I thought of it the deeper it seemed. I said so as we walked, separate still from the others, through the beautiful weather. The change from a New England winter to the climate in which I found myself was, in itself, not the least of the great effects and delights which I experienced that first day.

If nothing were expected of us but to be natural, it was the more necessary that it should be natural to be right.

I felt the full force of this conviction as it had never been possible to feel it in the other state of being, where I was under restraint. The meaning of liberty broke upon me like a sunburst. Freedom was in and of itself the highest law. Had I thought that death was to mean release from personal obedience? Lo, death itself was but the elevation of moral claims, from lower to higher. I perceived how all demands of the larger upon the lesser self must be increased in the condition to which I had arrived. I felt overpowered for the moment with the intensity of these claims. It seemed to me that I had never really known before, what obligation meant. Conduct was now the least of difficulties. For impulse, which lay behind conduct, for all force which wrought out fact in me, I had become accountable.

“As nearly as I can make it out, Father,” I said, “henceforth I shall be responsible for my nature.”

“Something like that; not altogether.”

“The force of circumstance and heredity,”—I began, using the old earthly patois. “Of course I’m not to be called to account for what I start with here, any more than I was for what I started with there. That would be neither science nor philosophy.”

“We are neither unscientific nor unphilosophical, you will find,” said my father, patiently.

“I am very dull, sir. Be patient with me. What I am trying to say, I believe, is that I shall feel the deepest mortification if I do not find it natural to do right. This feeling is so keen, that to be wrong must be the most unnatural thing in the world. There is certainly a great difference from what it used to be; I cannot explain it. Already I am ashamed of the smallness of my thoughts when I first looked about in this place. Already I cannot understand why I did not spring like a fountain to the Highest, to the Best. But then, Father, I never was a devotee, you know.”

When I had uttered these words I felt a recoil from myself, and sense of discord. I was making excuses for myself. That used to be a fault of the past life. One did not do it here. It was as if I had committed some grave social indecorum. I felt myself blushing. My father noticed my embarrassment, and called my attention to a brook by which we were walking, beginning to talk of its peculiar translucence and rhythm, and other little novelties, thus kindly diverting me from my distress, and teaching me how we were spared everything we could be in heaven, even in trifles like this. I was not so much as permitted to bear the edge of my regret, without the velvet of tenderness interposing to blunt the smart. It used to be thought among us below that one must be allowed to suffer from error, to learn. It seemed to be found here, that one learned by being saved from suffering. I wondered how it would be in the case of a really grave wrong which I might be so miserable as to commit; and if I should ever be so unfortunate as to discover by personal experience.

This train of thought went on while I was examining the brook. It had brilliant colors in the shallows, where certain strange agates formed pebbles of great beauty. There were also shells. A brook with shells enchanted me. I gathered some of them; they had opaline tints, and some were transparent as spun glass; they glittered in the hand, and did not dull when out of the water, like the shells we were used to. The shadows of strange trees hung across the tiny brown current, and unfamiliar birds flashed like tossed jewels overhead, through the branches and against the wonderful color of the sky. The birds were singing. One among them had a marvelous note. I listened to it for some time before I discovered that this bird was singing a Te Deum. How I knew that it was a Te Deum I cannot say. The others were more like earthly birds, except for the thrilling sweetness of their notes—and I could not see this one, for she seemed to be hidden from sight upon her nest. I observed that the bird upon the nest sang here as well as that upon the bough; and that I understood her: “Te Deum laudamus—laudamus” as distinctly as if I had been listening to a human voice.

When I had comprehended this, and stood entranced to listen, I began to catch the same melody in the murmur of the water, and perceived, to my astonishment, that the two, the brook and the bird, carried parts of the harmony of a solemn and majestic mass. Apparently these were but portions of the whole, but all which it was permitted me to hear. My father explained to me that it was not every natural beauty which had the power to join in such surpassing chorals; these were selected, for reasons which he did not attempt to specify. I surmised that they were some of the simplest of the wonders of this mythical world, which were entrusted to new-comers, as being first within the range of their capacities. I was enraptured with what I heard. The light throbbed about me. The sweet harmony rang on. I bathed my face in the musical water—it was as if I absorbed the sound at the pores of my skin. Dimly I received a hint of the possible existence of a sense or senses of which I had never heard.

What wonders were to come! What knowledge, what marvel, what stimulation and satisfaction! And I had but just begun! I was overwhelmed with this thought, and looked about; I knew not which way to turn; I had not what to say. Where was the first step? What was the next delight? The fire of discovery kindled in my veins. Let us hasten, that we may investigate Heaven!

“Shall we go on?” asked Father, regarding me earnestly.

“Yes, yes!” I cried, “let us go on. Let us see more—learn all. What a world have I come to! Let us begin at the beginning, and go to the end of it! Come quickly!”

I caught his hand, and we started on my eager mood. I felt almost a superabundance of vitality, and sprang along; there was everlasting health within my bounding arteries; there was eternal vigor in my firm muscle and sinews. How shall I express, to one who has never experienced it, the consciousness of life that can never die?

I could have leaped, flown, or danced like a child. I knew not how to walk sedately, like others whom I saw about us, who looked at me smiling, as older people look at the young on earth. “I, too, have felt thus—and thus.” I wanted to exercise the power of my arms and limbs. I longed to test the triumphant poise of my nerve. My brain grew clearer and clearer, while for the gladness in my heart there is not any earthly word. As I bounded on, I looked more curiously at the construction of the body in which I found myself. It was, and yet it was not, like that which I had worn on earth. I seemed to have slipped out of one garment into another. Perhaps it was nearer the truth to say that it was like casting off an outer for an inner dress. There were nervous and arterial and other systems, it seemed, to which I had been accustomed. I cannot explain wherein they differed, as they surely did, and did enormously, from their representatives below. If I say that I felt as if I had got into the soul of a body, shall I be understood? It was as if I had been encased, one body within the other, to use a small earthly comparison, like the ivory figures which curious Chinese carvers cut within temple windows. I was constantly surprised at this. I do not know what I had expected, but assuredly nothing like the fact. Vague visions of gaseous or meteoric angelic forms have their place in the imaginations of most of us below; we picture our future selves as a kind of nebulosity. When I felt the spiritual flesh, when I used the strange muscle, when I heard the new heart-beat of my heavenly identity, I remembered certain words, with a sting of mortification that I had known them all my life, and paid so cool a heed to them: “There is a terrestrial body, and there is a celestial body.” The glory of the terrestrial was one. Behold, the glory of the celestial was another. St. Paul had set this tremendous assertion revolving in the sky of the human mind, like a star which we had not brought into our astronomy.

It was not a hint or a hope that he gave; it was the affirmation of a man who presumed to know. In common with most of his readers, I had received his statement with a poor incredulity or cold disregard. Nothing in the whole range of what we used to call the Bible, had been more explicit than those words; neither metaphor, nor allegory, nor parable befogged them; they were as clear cut as the dictum of Descartes. I recalled them with confusion, as I bounded over the elastic and wondrously-tinted grass.

Never before, at least, had I known what the color of green should be; resembling, while differing from that called by the name on earth—a development of a color, a blossom from a bud, a marvel from a commonplace. Thus the sweet and common clothing which God had given to our familiar earth, transfigured, wrapped again the hills and fields of Heaven. And oh, what else? what next? I turned to my father to ask him in which direction we were going; at this moment an arrest of the whole current of feeling checked me like a great dam.

Up to this point I had gone dizzily on; I had experienced the thousand diversions of a traveler in a foreign land; and, like such a traveler, I had become oblivious of that which I had left. The terrible incapacity of the human mind to retain more than one class of strong impressions at once, was temporarily increased by the strain of this, the greatest of all human experiences. The new had expelled the old. In an intense revulsion of feeling, too strong for expression, I turned my back on the beautiful landscape. All Heaven was before me, but dear, daily love was behind.

“Father,” I said, choking, “I never forgot them before in all my life. Take me home! Let me go at once. I am not fit to be alive if Heaven itself can lead me to neglect my mother.”

IV.

In my distress I turned and would have fled, which way I knew not. I was swept up like a weed on a surge of self-reproach and longing. What was eternal life if she had found out that I was dead? What were the splendors of Paradise, if she missed me? It was made evident to me that my father was gratified at the turn my impulses had taken, but he intimated that it might not be possible to follow them, and that this was a matter which must be investigated before acting. This surprised me, and I inquired of him eagerly—yet, I think not passionately, not angrily, as I should once have done at the thwarting of such a wish as that—what he meant by the doubt he raised.

“It is not always permitted,” he said gravely. “We cannot return when we would. We go upon these errands when it is Willed. I will go and learn what the Will may be for you touching this matter. Stay here and wait for me.”

Before I could speak, he had departed swiftly, with the great and glad motion of those who go upon sure business in this happy place; as if he himself, at least, obeyed unseen directions, and obeyed them with his whole being. To me, so lately from a lower life, and still so choked with its errors, this loving obedience of the soul to a great central Force which I felt on every hand, but comprehended not, as yet, affected me like the discovery of a truth in science. It was as if I had found a new law of gravitation, to be mastered only by infinite attention. I fell to thinking more quietly after my father had left me alone. There came a subsidence to my tempestuous impulse, which astonished myself. I felt myself drawn and shaped, even like a wave by the tide, by something mightier far than my own wish. But there was this about the state of feeling into which I had come: that which controlled me was not only greater, it was dearer than my desire. Already a calmness conquered my storm. Already my heart awaited, without outburst or out-thrust, the expression of that other desire which should decide my fate in this most precious matter. All the old rebellion was gone, even as the protest of a woman goes on earth before the progress of a mighty love. I no longer argued and explained. I did not require or insist. Was it possible that I did not even doubt? The mysterious, celestial law of gravitation grappled me. I could no more presume to understand it than I could withstand it.

I had not been what is called a submissive person. All my life, obedience had torn me in twain. Below, it had cost me all I had to give, to cultivate what believers called trust in God.

I had indeed tried, in a desperate and faulty fashion, but I had often been bitterly ashamed at the best result which I could achieve, feeling that I scarcely deserved to count myself among His children, or to call myself by the Name which represented the absolute obedience of the strongest nature that human history had known. Always, under all, I had doubted whether I accepted God’s will because I wanted to, so much as because I had to. This fear had given me much pain, but being of an active temperament, far, perhaps too far, removed from mysticism, I had gone on to the next fight, or the next duty, without settling my difficulties; and so like others of my sort, battled along through life, as best or as worst I might. I had always hurried more than I had grown. To be sure, I was not altogether to blame for this, since circumstances had driven me fast, and I had yielded to them not always for my own sake; but clearly, it may be as much of a misfortune to be too busy, as to be idle; and one whose subtlest effects are latest perceived. I could now understand it to be reasonable, that if I had taken more time on earth to cultivate myself for the conditions of Heaven, I might have had a different experience at the outset of this life, in which one was never in a hurry.

My father returned from his somewhat protracted absence, while I was thinking of these things thus quietly. My calmer mood went out to meet his face, from which I saw at once what was the result of his errand, and so a gentle process prepared me for my disappointment when he said that it was not Willed that I should go to her at this immediate time. He advised me to rest awhile before taking the journey, and to seek this rest at once. No reasons were given for this command; yet strangely, I felt it to be the most reasonable thing in the world.

No; blessedly no! I did not argue, or protest, I did not dash out my wild wish, I did not ask or answer anything—how wonderful!

Had I needed proof any longer that I was dead and in Heaven, this marvelous adjustment of my will to that other would in itself have told me what and where I was.

I cannot say that this process took place without effort. I found a certain magnificent effort in it, like that involved in the free use of my muscles; but it took place without pain. I did indeed ask,—

“Will it be long?”

“Not long.”

“That is kind in Him!” I remember saying, as we moved away. For now, I found that I thought first rather of what He gave than of what He denied. It seemed to me that I had acquired a new instinct. My being was larger by the acquisition of a fresh power. I felt a little as I used to do below, when I had conquered a new language.

I had met, and by his loving mercy I had mastered, my first trial in the eternal life. This was to be remembered. It was like the shifting of a plate upon a camera.

More wearied than I had thought by the effort, I was glad to sink down beneath the trees in a nook my father showed me, and yield to the drowsiness that stole upon me after the great excitement of the day. It was not yet dark, but I was indeed tired. A singular subsidence, not like our twilight, but still reminding one of it, had fallen upon the vivid color of the air. No one was passing; the spot was secluded; my father bade me farewell for the present, saying that he should return again; and I was left alone.

The grass was softer than eider of the lower world; and lighter than snow-flakes, the leaves that fell from low-hanging boughs about me. Distantly, I heard moving water; and more near, sleepy birds. More distant yet, I caught, and lost, and caught again, fragments of orchestral music. I felt infinite security. I had the blessedness of weariness that knew it could not miss of sleep. Dreams stole upon me with motion and touch so exquisite that I thought: “Sleep itself is a new joy; what we had below was only a hint of the real thing,” as I sank into deep and deeper rest.

Do not think that I forgot my love and longing to be elsewhere. I think the wish to see her and to comfort her grew clearer every moment. But stronger still, like a comrade marching beside it, I felt the pacing of that great desire which had become dearer than my own.

V.

When I waked, I was still alone. There seemed to have been showers, for the leaves and grass about me were wet; yet I felt no chill or dampness, or any kind of injury from this fact. Rather I had a certain refreshment, as if my sleeping senses had drunk of the peace and power of the dew that flashed far and near about me. The intense excitement under which I had labored since coming to this place was calmed. All the fevers of feeling were laid. I could not have said whether there had been what below we called night, or how the passage of time had marked itself; I only knew that I had experienced the recuperation of night, and that I sprang to the next duty or delight of existence with the vigor of recurring day.

As I rose from the grass, I noticed a four-leaved clover, and remembering the pretty little superstition we used to have about it, I plucked it, and held it to my face, and so learned that the rain-drop in this new land had perfume; an exquisite scent; as if into the essence of brown earth and spicy roots, and aromatic green things, such as summer rain distills with us from out a fresh-washed world, there were mingled an inconceivable odor drawn out of the heart of the sky. Metaphysicians used to tell us that no man ever imagined a new perfume, even in his dreams. I could see that they were right, for anything like the perfume of clover after a rain in Heaven, had never entered into my sense or soul before. I saved the clover “for good luck,” as I used to do.

Overhead there was a marvel. There seemed to have been clouds—their passing and breaking, and flitting—and now, behold the heavens themselves, bared of all their storm-drapery, had drawn across their dazzling forms a veil of glory. From what, for want of better knowledge, I still called East to West, and North to South, one supernal prism swept. The whole canopy of the sky was a rainbow.

It is impossible to describe this sight in any earthly tongue, to any dwellers of the earth. I stood beneath it, as a drop stands beneath the ocean. For a time I could only feel the surge of beauty—mere beauty—roll above me. Then, I think, as the dew had fallen from the leaf, so I sunk upon my knees. I prayed because it was natural to pray, and felt God in my soul as the prism feels the primary color, while I thanked Him that I was immortally alive. It had never been like this before, to pray; nay, prayer itself was now one of the discoveries of Heaven. It throbbed through me like the beat of a new heart. It seemed to me that He must be very near me. Almost it was, as if He and I were alone together in the Universe. For the first time, the passionate wish to be taken into His very visible presence,—that intense desire which I had heard of, as overpowering so many of the newly dead,—began to take possession of me. But I put it aside, since it was not permitted, and a consciousness of my unfitness came to me, that made the wish itself seem a kind of mistake. I think this feeling was not unlike what we called below a sense of sin. I did not give it that name at that time. It had come to me so naturally and gradually, that there was no strain or pain about it. Yet when I had it, I could no longer conceive of being without it. It seemed to me that I was a stronger and wiser woman for it. A certain gentleness and humility different from what I had been used to, in my life of activity, wherein so many depended on me, and on the decided faculties of my nature, accompanied the growing sense of personal unworthiness with which I entered on the blessedness of everlasting life.

I watched the rainbow of the sky till it had begun to fade—an event in itself an exquisite wonder, for each tint of the prism flashed out and ran in lightning across the heavens before falling to its place in the primary color, till at last the whole spectacle was resolved into the three elements, the red, the yellow, and the blue; which themselves moved on and away, like a conqueror dismissing a pageant.

When this gorgeous scene had ended, I was surprised to find that though dead and in Heaven, I was hungry. I gathered fruits which grew near, of strange form and flavor, but delicious to the taste past anything I had ever eaten, and I drank of the brook where the shells were, feeling greatly invigorated thereby. I was beginning to wonder where my father was, when I saw him coming towards me. He greeted me with his old good-morning kiss, laying his hand upon my head in a benediction that filled my soul.

As we moved on together, I asked him if he remembered how we used to say below:

“What a heavenly day!”

Many people seemed to be passing on the road which we had chosen, but as we walked on they grew fewer.

“There are those who wish to speak with you,” he said with a slight hesitation, “but all things can wait here; we learn to wait ourselves. You are to go to your mother now.”

“And not with you?” I asked, having a certain fear of the mystery of my undertaking. He shook his head with a look more nearly like disappointment than anything I had seen upon his face in this new life; explaining to me, however, with cheerful acquiescence, that it was not Willed that he should join me on my journey.

“Tell her that I come shortly,” he added, “and that I come alone. She will understand. And have no fear; you have much to learn, but it will come syllable by syllable.”

Now swiftly, at the instant while he spoke with me, I found myself alone and in a mountainous region, from which a great outlook was before me. I saw the kingdoms of heaven and the glory of them, spread out before me like a map. A mist of the colors of amethyst and emerald interfused, enwrapped the outlines of the landscape. All details grew blurred and beautiful like a dream at which one snatches vainly in the morning. Off, and beyond, the infinite ether throbbed. Yonder, like a speck upon a sunbeam, swam the tiny globe which we called earth. Stars and suns flashed and faded, revolving and waiting in their places. Surely it was growing dark, for they sprang out like mighty light-houses upon the grayness of the void.

The splendors of the Southern cross streamed far into the strange light, neither of night nor day, not of twilight or dawn, which surrounded me.

Colored suns, of which astronomers had indeed taught us, poured undreamed-of light upon unknown planets. I passed worlds whose luminaries gave them scarlet, green, and purple days. “These too,” I thought, “I shall one day visit.” I flashed through currents of awful color, and measures of awful night. I felt more than I perceived, and wondered more than I feared. It was some moments before I realized, by these few astronomical details, that I was adrift, alone upon the mystery and mightiness of Space.

Of this strange and solitary journey, I can speak so imperfectly, that it were better almost to leave it out of my narrative. Yet, when I remember how I have sometimes heard those still upon earth conceive, with the great fear and ignorance inseparable from earth-trained imagination, of such transits of the soul from point to point in ether, I should be glad to express at least the incomplete impressions which I received from this experience.

The strongest of these, and the sweetest, was the sense of safety—and still the sense of safety; unassailable, everlasting; blessed beyond the thought of an insecure life to compass. To be dead was to be dead to danger, dead to fear. To be dead was to be alive to a sense of assured good chance that nothing in the universe could shake.

So I felt no dread, believe me, though much awe and amazement, as I took my first journey from Heaven to earth. I have elsewhere said that the distance, by astronomical calculation, was in itself perhaps not enormous. I had an impression that I was crossing a great sphere or penumbra, belonging to the earth itself, and having a certain relation to it, like the soul to the body of a man.

Was Heaven located within or upon this world-soul? The question occurred to me, but up to this time, I am still unable to answer it. The transit itself was swift and subtle as a thought. Indeed, it seemed to me that thought itself might have been my vehicle of conveyance; or perhaps I should say, feeling. My love and longing took me up like pollen taken by the wind. As I approached the spot where my dear ones dwelt and sorrowed for me, desire and speed both increased by a mighty momentum.

Now I did not find this journey as difficult as that other, when I had departed, a freshly-freed soul, from earth to Heaven. I learned that I was now subject to other natural laws. A celestial gravitation controlled the celestial body, as that of the earth had compelled the other. I was upborne in space by this new and mysterious influence. Yet there was no dispute between it and the other law, the eternal law of love, which drew me down. Between soul and body, in the heavenly existence, there could be no more conflict than between light and an ether wave.

I do not say that I performed this journey without effort or intelligence. The little knowledge I ever had was taxed in view of the grandeurs and the mysteries around me. Shall I be believed if I say that I recalled all the astronomy and geography that my life as a teacher had left still somewhat freshly imprinted on the memory? that the facts of physics recurred to me, even in that inroad of feeling? and that I guided myself to the Massachusetts town as I would have found it upon a globe at school? Already I learned that no acquisition of one life is lost in the next. Already I thanked God for everything I knew, only wishing, with the passion of ignorance newly revealed to itself by the dawn of wisdom, that my poor human acquirements had ever truly deserved the high name of study, or stored my thought with its eternal results.

VI.

As I approached the scene of my former life, I met many people. I had struck a realm of spirits who at first perplexed me. They did not look happy, and seemed possessed by great unrest. I observed that, though they fluttered and moved impatiently, none rose far above the surface of the earth. Most of them were employed in one way or another upon it. Some bought and sold; some eat and drank; others occupied themselves in coarse pleasures, from which one could but turn away the eyes. There were those who were busied in more refined ways:—students with eyes fastened to dusty volumes; virtuosos who hung about a picture, a statue, a tapestry, that had enslaved them; one musical creature I saw, who ought to have been of exquisite organization, judging from his hands—he played perpetually upon an instrument that he could not tune; women, I saw too, who robed and disrobed without a glint of pleasure in their faded faces.

There were ruder souls than any of these—but one sought for them in the dens of the earth; their dead hands still were red with stains of blood, and in their dead hearts reigned the remnants of hideous passions.

Of all these appearances, which I still found it natural to call phenomena as I should once have done, it will be remembered that I received the temporary and imperfect impression of a person passing swiftly through a crowd, so that I do not wish my account to be accepted for anything more trustworthy than it is.

While I was wondering greatly what it meant, some one joined and spoke to me familiarly, and, turning, I saw it to be that old neighbor, Mrs. Mersey, to whom I have alluded, who, like myself, seemed to be bent upon an errand, and to be but a visitor upon the earth. She was a most lovely spirit, as she had always been, and I grasped her hand cordially while we swept on rapidly together to our journey’s end.

“Do tell me,” I whispered, as soon as I could draw her near enough, “who all these people are, and what it means. I fear to guess. And yet indeed they seem like the dead who cannot get away.”

“Alas,” she sighed, “you have said it. They loved nothing, they lived for nothing, they believed in nothing, they cultivated themselves for nothing but the earth. They simply lack the spiritual momentum to get away from it. It is as much the working of a natural law as the progress of a fever. Many of my duties have been among such as these. I know them well. They need time and tact in treatment, and oh, the greatest patience! At first it discouraged me, but I am learning the enthusiasm of my work.”

“These, then,” I said, “were those I saw in that first hour, when my father led me out of the house, and through the street. I saw you among them, Mrs. Mersey, but I knew even then that you were not of them. But surely they do not stay forever prisoners of the earth? Surely such a blot on the face of spiritual life cannot but fade away? I am a new-comer. I am still quite ignorant, you see. But I do not understand, any more than I did before, how that could be.”

“They have their choice,” she answered vaguely. But when I saw the high solemnity of her aspect, I feared to press my questions. I could not, however, or I did not forbear saying:—

“At least you must have already persuaded many to sever themselves from such a condition as this?”

“Already some, I hope,” she replied evasively, as she moved away. She always had remarkably fine manners, of which death had by no means deprived her. I admired her graciousness and dignity as she passed from my side to that of one we met, who, in a dejected voice, called her by her name, and intimated that he wished to speak with her. He was a pale and restless youth, and I thought, but was not sure, for we separated so quickly, that it was the little fellow I spoke of, Bobby Bend. I looked back, after I had advanced some distance on my way, and saw the two together, conversing earnestly. While I was still watching them, it seemed to me, though I cannot be positive upon this point, that they had changed their course, and were quietly ascending, she leading, he following, above the dismal sphere in which she found the lad, and that his heavy, awkward, downward motions became freer, struggling upward, as I gazed.

I had now come to the location of my old home, and, as I passed through the familiar village streets, I saw that night was coming on. I met many whom I knew, both of those called dead and living. The former recognized me, but the latter saw me not. No one detained me, however, for I felt in haste which I could not conceal.

With high-beating heart, I approached the dear old house. No one was astir. As I turned the handle of the door, a soft, sickening touch crawled around my wrist; recoiling, I found that I was entwisted in a piece of crape that the wind had blown against me.

I went in softly; but I might have spared myself the pains. No one heard me, though the heavy door creaked, I thought, as emphatically as it always had—loudest when we were out latest, and longest when we shut it quickest. I went into the parlor and stood, for a moment, uncertain what to do.

Alice was there, and my married sister Jane, with her husband and little boy. They sat about the fire, conversing sadly. Alice’s pretty eyes were disfigured with crying. They spoke constantly of me. Alice was relating to Jane and her family the particulars of my illness. I was touched to hear her call me “patient and sweet;”—none the less because she had often told me I was the most impatient member of the family.

No one had observed my entrance. Of course I was prepared for this, but I cannot tell why I should have felt it, as I certainly did. A low bamboo chair, cushioned with green crétonne, stood by the table. I had a fancy for this chair, and, pleased that they had left it unoccupied, advanced and took it, in the old way. It was with something almost like a shock, that I found myself unnoticed in the very centre of their group.

While I sat there, Jane moved to fix the fire, and, in returning, made as if she would take the bamboo chair.

“Oh, don’t!” said Alice, sobbing freshly. Jane’s own tears sprang, and she turned away.

“It seems to me,” said my brother-in-law, looking about with the patient grimace of a business man compelled to waste time at a funeral, “that there has a cold draught come into this room from somewhere. Nobody has left the front door open, I hope? I’ll go and see.”

He went, glad of the excuse to stir about, poor fellow, and I presume he took a comfortable smoke outside.

The little boy started after his father, but was bidden back, and crawled up into the chair where I was sitting. I took the child upon my lap, and let him stay. No one removed him, he grew so quiet, and he was soon asleep in my arm. This pleased me; but I could not be contented long, so I kissed the boy and put him down. He cried bitterly, and ran to his mother for comfort.

While they were occupied with him, I stole away. I thought I knew where Mother would be, and was ashamed of myself at the reluctance I certainly had to enter my own room, under these exciting circumstances.

Conquering this timidity, as unwomanly and unworthy, I went up and opened the familiar door. I had begun to learn that neither sound nor sight followed my motions now, so that I was not surprised at attracting no attention from the lonely occupant of the room. I closed the door—from long habit I still made an effort to turn the latch softly—and resolutely examined what I saw.

My mother was there, as I had expected. The room was cold—there was no fire,—and she had on her heavy blanket shawl. The gas was lighted, and one of my red candles, but both burned dimly. The poor woman’s magenta geranium had frozen. My mother sat in the red easy-chair, which, being a huge, old-fashioned thing, surrounded and shielded her from the draught. My clothes, and medicines, and all the little signs of sickness had been removed. The room was swept, and orderly. Above the bed, the pictures and the carved cross looked down.

Below them, calm as sleep, and cold as frost, and terrible as silence, lay that which had been I.

She did not shrink. She was sitting close beside it. She gazed at it with the tenderness which death itself could not affright. Mother was not crying. She did not look as if she had shed tears for a long time. But her wanness and the drawn lines about her mouth were hard to see. Her aged hands trembled as she cut the locks of hair from the neck of the dead. She was growing to be an old woman. And I—her first-born—I had been her staff of life, and on me she had thought to lean in her widowed age. She seemed to me to have grown feeble fast in the time since I had left her.

All my soul rushed to my lips, and I cried out—it seemed that either the dead or the living must hear that cry—

“Mother! Oh, my dear mother!”

But deaf as life, she sat before me. She had just cut off the lock of hair she wanted; as I spoke, the curling ends of it twined around her fingers; I tried to snatch it away, thinking thus to arrest her attention.

The lock of hair trembled, turned, and clung the closer to the living hand. She pressed it to her lips with the passion of desolation.

“But, Mother,” I cried once more, “I am here.” I flung my arms about her and kissed her again and again. I called and entreated her by every dear name that household love had taught us. I besought her to turn, to see, to hear, to believe, to be comforted. I told her how blest was I, how bountiful was death.

“I am alive,” I said. “I am alive! I see you, I touch you, hear you, love you, hold you!” I tried argument and severity; I tried tenderness and ridicule.

She turned at this: it seemed to me that she regarded me. She stretched her arms out; her aged hands groped to and fro as if she felt for something and found it not; she shook her head, her dim eyes gazed blankly into mine. She sighed patiently, and rose as if to leave the room, but hesitated,—covered the face of the dead body—caressed it once or twice as if it had been a living infant—and then, taking up her Bible, which had been upon the chair beside her, dropped upon her knees, and holding the book against her sunken cheek, abandoned herself to silent prayer.

This was more than I could bear just then, and, thinking to collect myself by a few moments’ solitude, I left her. But as I stood in the dark hall, uncertain and unquiet, I noticed a long, narrow line of light at my feet, and, following it confusedly, found that it came from the crack in the closed, but unlatched door of another well-remembered room. I pushed the door open hurriedly and closed it behind me.

My brother sat in this room alone. His fire was blazing cheerfully and, flashing, revealed the deer’s-head from the Adirondacks, the stuffed rose-curlew from Florida, the gull’s wing from Cape Ann, the gun and rifle and bamboo fish-pole, the class photographs over the mantel, the feminine features on porcelain in velvet frames, all the little trappings with which I was familiar. Tom had been trying to study, but his Homer lay pushed away, with crumpled leaves, upon the table. Buried in his lexicon—one strong elbow intervening—down, like a hero thrown, the boy’s face had gone.

“Tom,” I said quietly—I always spoke quietly to Tom, who had a constitutional fear of what he called “emotions”—“Tom, you’d better be studying your Greek. I’d much rather see you. Come, I’ll help you.”

He did not move, poor fellow, and as I came nearer, I saw, to my heart-break, that our Tom was crying. Sobs shook his huge frame, and down between the iron fingers, toughened by base-ball matches, tears had streamed upon the pages of the Odyssey.

“Tom, Tom, old fellow, don’t!” I cried, and, hungry as love, I took the boy. I got upon the arm of the smoking chair, as I used to, and so had my hands about his neck, and my cheek upon his curly hair, and would have soothed him. Indeed, he did grow calm, and calmer, as if he yielded to my touch; and presently he lifted his wet face, and looked about the room, half ashamed, half defiant, as if to ask who saw that.

“Come, Tom,” I tried again. “It really isn’t so bad as you think. And there is Mother catching cold in that room. Go and get her away from the body. It is no place for her. She’ll get sick. Nobody can manage her as well as you.”

As if he heard me, he arose. As if he knew me, he looked for the flashing of an instant into my eyes.

“I don’t see how a girl of her sense can be dead,” said the boy aloud. He stretched his arms once above his head, and out into the bright, empty room, and I heard him groan in a way that wrung my heart. I went impulsively to him, and as his arms closed, they closed about me strongly. He stood for a moment quite still. I could feel the nervous strain subsiding all over his big soul and body.

“Hush,” I whispered. “I’m no more dead than you are.”

If he heard, what he felt, God knows. I speak of a mystery. No optical illusion, no tactual hallucination could hold the boy who took all the medals at the gymnasium. The hearty, healthy fellow could receive no abnormal sign from the love and longing of the dead. Only spirit unto spirit could attempt that strange out-reaching. Spirit unto spirit, was it done? Still, I relate a mystery, and what shall I say? His professor in the class-room of metaphysics would teach him next week that grief owns the law of the rhythm of motion; and that at the oscillation of the pendulum the excitement of anguish shall subside into apathy which mourners alike treat as a disloyalty to the dead, and court as a nervous relief to the living.

Be this as it may, the boy grew suddenly calm, and even cheerful, and followed me at once. I led him directly to his mother, and left them for a time alone together.

After this my own calm, because my own confidence, increased. My dreary sense of helplessness before the suffering of those I loved, gave place to the consciousness of power to reach them. I detected this power in myself in an undeveloped form, and realized that it might require exercise and culture, like all other powers, if I would make valuable use of it. I could already regard the cultivation of the faculty which would enable love to defy death, and spirit to conquer matter, as likely to be one of the occupations of a full life.

I went out into the fresh air for a time to think these thoughts through by myself, undisturbed by the sight of grief that I could not remove; and strolled up and down the village streets in the frosty night.

When I returned to the house they had all separated for the night, sadly seeking sleep in view of the events of the morrow, when, as I had already inferred, the funeral would take place.

I spent the night among them, chiefly with my mother and Tom, passing unnoticed from room to room, and comforting them in such ways as I found possible. The boy had locked his door, but after a few trials I found myself able to pass the medium of this resisting matter, and to enter and depart according to my will. Tom finished his lesson in the Odyssey, and I sat by and helped him when I could. This I found possible in simple ways, which I may explain farther at another time. We had often studied together, and his mind the more readily, therefore, responded to the influence of my own. He was soon well asleep, and I was free to give all my attention to my poor mother. Of those long and solemn hours, what shall I say? I thought she would never, never rest. I held her in these arms the live-long night. With these hands I caressed and calmed her. With these lips I kissed her. With this breath I warmed her cold brow and fingers. With all my soul and body I willed that I would comfort her, and I believe, thank God, I did. At dawn she slept peacefully; she slept late, and rose refreshed. I remained closely by her throughout the day.

They did their best, let me say, to provide me with a Christian funeral, partly in accordance with some wishes I had expressed in writing, partly from the impulse of their own good sense. Not a curtain was drawn to darken the house of death. The blessed winter sunshine flowed in like the current of a broad stream, through low, wide windows. No ghastly “funeral flowers” filled the room; there was only a cluster of red pinks upon the coffin, and the air was sweet but not heavy with the carnation perfume that they knew I loved. My dead body and face they had covered with a deep red pall, just shaded off the black, as dark as darkness could be, and yet be redness. Not a bell was tolled. Not a tear—at least, I mean, by those nearest me—not a tear was shed. As the body was carried from the house, the voices of unseen singers lifted the German funeral chant:—

“Go forth! go on, with solemn song,
Short is the way; the rest is long!”

At the grave they sang:—

“Softly now the light of day,”

since my mother had asked for one of the old hymns; and besides the usual Scriptural Burial Service, a friend, who was dear to me, read Mrs. Browning’s “Sleep.”

It was all as I would have had it, and I looked on peacefully. If I could have spoken I would have said: “You have buried me cheerfully, as Christians ought, as a Christian ought to be.”

I was greatly touched, I must admit, at the grief of some of the poor, plain people who followed my body on its final journey to the village church-yard. The woman who sent the magenta geranium refused to be comforted, and there were one or two young girls whom I had been so fortunate as to assist in difficulties, who, I think, did truly mourn. Some of my boys from the Grand Army were there, too,—some, I mean, whom it had been my privilege to care for in the hospitals in the old war days. They came in uniform, and held their caps before their eyes. It did please me to see them there.

When the brief service at the grave was over, I would have gone home with my mother, feeling that she needed me more than ever; but as I turned to do so, I was approached by a spirit whose presence I had not observed. It proved to be my father. He detained me, explaining that I should remain where I was, feeling no fear, but making no protest, till the Will governing my next movement might be made known to me. So I bade my mother good-by, and Tom, as well as I could in the surprise and confusion, and watched them all as they went away. She, as she walked, seemed to those about her to be leaning only upon her son. But I beheld my father tenderly hastening close beside her, while he supported her with the arm which had never failed her yet, in all their loving lives. Therefore I could let her go, without distress.

The funeral procession departed slowly; the grave was filled; one of the mill-girls came back and threw in some arbor vitæ and a flower or two,—the sexton hurried her, and both went away. It grew dusk, dark. I and my body were left alone together.

Of that solemn watch, it is not for me to chatter to any other soul. Memories overswept me, which only we two could share. Hopes possessed me which it were not possible to explain to another organization. Regret, resolve, awe, and joy, every high human emotion excepting fear, battled about us. While I knelt there in the windless night, I heard chanting from a long distance, but yet distinct to the dead, that is to the living ear. As I listened, the sound deepened, approaching, and a group of singing spirits swept by in the starlit air, poised like birds, or thoughts, above me:

“It is sown a natural—it is raised a spiritual body.”

“Death! where is thy sting?—Grave!—thy victory?”

“Believing in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

I tried my voice, and joined, for I could no longer help it, in the thrilling chorus. It was the first time since I died, that I had felt myself invited or inclined to share the occupations of others, in the life I had entered. Kneeling there, in the happy night, by my own grave, I lifted all my soul and sense into the immortal words, now for the first time comprehensible to me:

“I believe, I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”

It was not long thereafter that I received the summons to return. I should have been glad to go home once more, but was able to check my own preference without wilful protest, or an aching heart. The conviction that all was well with my darlings and myself, for life and for death, had now become an intense yet simple thing, like consciousness itself.

I went as, and where I was bidden, joyfully.

VII.

Upon reëntering the wonderful place which I had begun to call Heaven, and to which I still give that name, though not, I must say, with perfect assurance that the word is properly applied to that phase of the life of which I am the yet most ignorant recorder, I found myself more weary than I had been at any time since my change came. I was looking about, uncertain where to go, feeling, for the first time, rather homeless in this new country, when I was approached by a stranger, who inquired of me what I sought:

“Rest,” I said promptly.

“A familiar quest,” observed the stranger, smiling.

“You are right, sir. It is a thing I have been seeking for forty years.”

“And never found?”

“Never found.”

“I will assist you,” he said gently, “that is, if you wish it. What will you have first?”

“Sleep, I think, first, then food. I have been through exciting scenes. I have a touch—a faint one—of what below we called exhaustion. Yet now I am conscious in advance of the rest which is sure to come. Already I feel it, like the ebbing of the wave that goes to form the flow of the next. How blessed to know that one can’t be ill!”

“How do you know that?” asked my companion.

“On the whole, I don’t know that I do,” I answered, with embarrassment, “I suppose it is a remnant of one’s old religious teaching: ‘The inhabitant shall not say I am sick.’ Surely there were such words.”

“And you trusted them?” asked the stranger.

“The Bible was a hard book to accept,” I said quickly, “I would not have you overestimate my faith. I tried to believe that it was God’s message. I think I did believe it. But the reason was clear to me. I could not get past that if I wished to.”

“What, then, was the reason,” inquired my friend, solemnly, “why you trusted the message called the Word of God, as received by the believing among His children on earth?”