The Works of "Fiona Macleod", Volume IV. Sharp Elizabeth Amelia
and heavy drag I have so often, oh, so often been to you. For now death is at hand. But I have one thing I wish to ask you."
"Speak."
"Before my life was broken, there was one whom I loved. Every hope, every dream, every joy, every sorrow that I had came from this love. It was her death which broke my life – not only for the piteous loss and all it meant to me, but because death came with tragic heedlessness – for she was young, and strong, and beautiful. And before she died, she said we should meet again. I was never, and now am far the less worthy of her; and yet – and yet – oh, if only that great, beautiful love were all I had to doubt or fear, I should have no doubt or fear! But no – no – we shall never meet. How can we? Before to-morrow I shall be like that crushed dog, and not be: just as if I had never been!"
The blood rose, and sobs and tears made further words inaudible. But after a little the Body spoke again.
"But you, O Will, you and the Soul both resemble me. We are as flowers of the same colour, as clay of the same mould. It may be you shall meet her. Tell her that my last thought was of her: take her all my dreams and hopes – and say – and say – say – "
But here the Body sat up in the bed, ash-white, with parted lips and straining eyes.
"What? Quick, quick, dear Body – say? – "
"Say that I loved best that in her which I loved best in myself – the Soul. Tell her I have never wholly despaired. Ah, if only the Soul were here, I would not even now despair! Tell her I leave all to the Soul – and – and – love shall triumph – "
There was a rush of blood, a gurgling cry, and the Body sank back lifeless. In the very moment of death the eyes lightened with a wonderful radiance – it was as though the evening stars suddenly came through the dark.
The Will looked to see whence it came. The Soul stood beside him, white, wonderful, radiant.
"I have come," he said.
"For me?" said the Will, shaking as with an ague, yet in bitter irony.
"Yes, for you, and for the Body too."
"For the Body? – see, he is already clay. What word have you to say to that, to me who likewise am already perishing?
"This – do you remember what so brief a while ago we three as one wrote – wrote with my spirit, through your mind, and the Body's hand – these words: Love is more great than we conceive, and Death is the keeper of unknown redemptions?"
"Yes – yes – O Soul! I remember, I remember."
"It was true there: it is true here. Have I not ever told you that Love would save?"
With that the Soul moved over to the bedside, and kissed the Body.
"Farewell, fallen leaf. But the tree lives – and beyond the tree is the wind, the breath of the eternal."
"Look," he added, "our comrade is still asleep, though now no mortal skill could nourish the hidden spark"; and with that he stooped and kissed again the silent lips and the still brow and the pulseless heart, and suddenly a breath, an essence, came from the body, in form like itself, a phantom, yet endued with a motion of life.
As the faintest murmur in a shell we heard him whisper, Life! Life! Life! Then, as a blown vapour, he was one with us. A singular change came upon the clay which had once been so near and dear to us: a frozen whiteness that had not been there before, a stillness as of ancient marble.
The Will stood, appalled, with wild eyes. Some dreadful invisible power was upon him.
"Lost!" he cried; and now his voice, too, was faint as a murmur in a shell. But the Soul smiled.
Then the Will grew grey as a willow-leaf aslant in the wind; and as the shadow of a reed wavered in the wind; and as a reed's shadow is and is not, so was he suddenly no more.
But, in the miracle of a moment, the Soul appeared in the triple mystery of substance, and mind, and spirit. In full and joyous life the Will stood re-born, and now we three were one again.
I looked for the last time on that which had been our home. The lifeless thing lay, most terribly still and strange; yet with a dignity that came as a benediction, for this dead temple of life had yielded to a divine law, allied not to shadow and decay, but to the recurrent spring, to the eternal ebb and flow, to the infinite processional. It is we of the human clan only who are troubled by the vast waste and refuse of life. There is not any such waste, neither in the myriad spawn nor the myriad seed: a Spirit sows by the law we do not see, and reaps by a law we do not know.
Then I turned and went to the western window. I saw that the Inn stood upon the Hills of Dream, yet, when I looked within, I knew that I was again in my familiar home. Once more, beyond the fuchsia bushes, the sea sighed, as it felt the long shore with a continuous foamless wave. In the little room below, the lamp was lit; for the glow fell warmly upon the gravel path, shell-bordered, and upon the tufted mignonette, sea-pinks, and feathery southernwood. The sound of hushed voices rose.
And now the dawn is come, and I have written this record of what we, who are now indeed one, but far more truly and intimately than before, went out to seek. In another hour I shall go hence, a wayfarer again. I have a long road to travel, but am sustained by joy, and uplifted by a great hope. When, tired, I lay down the pen, and with it the last of mortal uses, it will be to face the glory of a new day. I have no fear. I shall not leave all I have loved, for I have that in me which binds me to this beautiful world, for another life at least, it may be for many lives. And that within me which dreamed and hoped shall now more gladly and wonderfully dream, and hope, and seek, and know, and see ever deeper and further into the mystery of beauty and truth. And that within me which knew, now knows. In the deepest sense there is no spiritual dream that is not true, no hope that shall for ever go famished, no tears that shall not be gathered into the brooding skies of compassion, to fall again in healing dews.
What the Body could not, nor ever could see, and what to the Will was a darkness, or at best a bewildering mist, is now clear. There are mysteries of which I cannot write; not from any occult secret, but because they are so simple and inevitable, that, like the mystery of day and night, or the change of the seasons, or life and death, they must be learned by each, in his own way, in his own hour. It is not out of their light that I see; it is by these stars that I set forth, where else I should be as a shadow upon a trackless waste.
But Love, I am come to realise, is the supreme deflecting force. Love "unloosens sins," unites failure, disintegrates the act; not by an inconceivable conflict with the immutable law of consequence, but by deflection. For the divine love follows the life, and turns and meets it at last, and in that meeting deflects: so that that which is mortal, evil, and what is of the mortal law, the act, sinks; and on the forehead of the divine law that which is alone inevitable survives and moves onward in the rhythm that is life. When we understand the mystery of Redemption, we shall understand what Love is. The expiatory is an unknown attribute in the Divine. Expiation is but the earthly burnt-offering of that in us that is mortal: Redemption, which is the spiritual absorption of the expiation due to others, and the measureless restitution in love of wrong humbly brought to the soul and consumed there – so that it issues a living force to meet and deflect – is the living witness in that of us which is immortal. Those who wrong us do indeed become our saviours. It is their expiation that we make ours: they must go free of us; and when they come again and discrown us, then in love we shall be at one and equal. So far, words may clothe thought; but, beyond, the soul knows there is no expiation. Except you redeem yourself, there is no God. Forgiveness is the dream of little children: beautiful because thus far we see and know, but no farther.
I see now what madness it was, as so often happened, to despise the body. But one mystery has become clear to me through this strange quest of ours – though when I say "I," or "our," I know not whether it is the Body or the Will or the Soul that speaks, till I remember that triune marriage at the deathbed, and know that while each is consciously each – the one with memory, the other with knowledge and hope, the third with wisdom and faith – we are yet one, as are the yellow and the white and the violet in the single flame in this candle beside me. And this mystery is, that the body was not built of life-warmed