 21 The Helpers of the Holy Souls I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul, such as it was, above the same eye of my soul, above my mind, the Lord's light unchangeable. Whoever knows the truth knows what that light is, and he that knows it knows eternity. Love knows it. From the Confessions of St. Augustine Book 7 The New Year was come, the Earth's sickness had lasted for nearly ten days, with fluctuations of hope, with sinkings and rallyings, as the silent battle for her life went on. Her mother's strength was poured out in this struggle, as if, in the travail of a new and more terrible birth, the snowy weather had left them, and a dark fog brooded all day in the streets. It invaded the house, adding to the difficulties of the nurses and to the misery of the sick child struggling for breath. Constance, whose weary mind was at the point in which any superstition seems more natural than reason itself, was almost prepared to see in this some new machination of the watcher, whose malignant love still sought to free her from the life-giving chains to which she clung. She was tired, sick at heart, desperately anxious. All that she cared for now was the saving of her child, living for her. Yet she doubted whether her vitality, though she gave it to the uttermost, would avail against the terrible strength of the watcher, who never tired, never wavered from his attack. She wanted to save that vitality, too, that she might devote it to Vera's service, to her education, her happiness, her career. Every atom of the child's body, every movement of her evil little mind, was precious to her. Both, she was determined, should reach such perfection as she was able to give. But life, whose resources, whose kindness she needed so greatly at this moment, seemed inclined to an increasing hardness and enmity even. It was not for nothing, as she saw, that she had made her home into the sanctuary of the Grail. Upon her every aspect of existence, it imposed its difficult interpretation, dominated the future no less than the present. The forces of the world were set angrily against it. It turned to them an implacable face, and demanded the same loyalty in its friends. It was a stern nurse, true to the tradition of chivalry. It inculcated the great and military virtues, valor, as well as love, crying, Sibusum grandium cresce et manducabis me, I am the food, grow thee and eat me. She was reminded of a cathedral of old France, visited in the happy days of her ignorance. There, as she remembered, in a porch that was the very picture book of faith, St. George and St. Martin stood sentinel on each side of the great entrance, as if to assure intending initiates of the ineffable that only by courage and charity could they attain to the mysteries within. As she sat in the foggy room, by Vera's bedside, watching the clock for the moment at which temperature should be taken and medicine given, she reviewed the difficulties, the problems, the changes which had flowed from its custody. Her friends were gone, all but Helen, in whom disclosure of the truth had but awakened a deeper sympathy, an almost envious love which enfolded mother and child together in its embrace. Her work, she knew, would go. Mr. John had not as yet taken action in the matter, but Miss Tyrell's frank and abrupt disclosure of her motherhood had shocked him. He could not decide upon the right way to take it. Her enforced absence during the child's illness had kept the matter in the foreground of his consciousness, and shown him, at the same time, the extent to which he relied upon her services. One may be sorry for Mr. John at this juncture. He disliked the sudden necessity for managing his own affairs, and naturally extended towards cause his general sensations of resentment. He wished very heartily that the subject had never been mentioned to him. Miss Tyrell's behaviour had been tactless. He hated decisions, and this indiscreet and unnecessary confession had thrust on him a forced option of singular difficulty. She was an excellent manager and very cheap, but Mr. John knew that the sums which are saved in salaries are often paid for heavily in reputation, and Constance was left in little doubt as to the course which he would finally adopt. With our large school and theological connection, he said, we are obliged to be so very particular. The water observed. You see, you see, a very foolish child, what is the use of being honest, of being true to the thing that you call life, when life itself is inimical? And the other creatures will not understand. Loneliness and poverty then. She saw clearly for her future. She did not flinch before them. She only wished that she had greater strength for their encounter, that some limit might be set to the dreadful and growing fatigue which dimmed her energies and narrowed her outlook upon life. Small things also conspired to hurt her, to pull at her powers of endurance. Not least amongst them had been Andrew's intolerable kindness. He had heard from Mrs. Reed of Vera's sickness, and his persistent and extravagant gifts of invalid luxuries, which she dared not refuse, had at least made possible the child's ultimate recovery, that she should owe it to him. This longed-for and ruinous event was an irony which she found very hard to bear. As she sat by the bed, therefore, she considered all these matters, and peering into the dimness ahead of her wondered, what would be the outcome of the fight. She looked to it with zest, whatever it might be, for now her old love of life had received a stimulus which it had never known before. She was bound to the earth, bound to the chariot of the years, by the blessed link of sacrifice. Vera needed her, would monopolize in the future her time, her strength, her love. She was very glad. About two o'clock Helen came in. She now replaced Constance at Lamptons for a few hours every day and called at her lodgings at lunchtime to see whether anything was wanted for the child. She said, You are looking very white and seedy today, Conn. The strain is beginning to tell. How does you better go out and get some air? The fog is so thick this afternoon that chopping is at a standstill, so I need not go back just yet, but it is not dangerous, and after all, anything is better than a sick room atmosphere when one is feeling overtired. Constance answered gratefully, I should like to go for a little run, and there is a new prescription which must be made up this afternoon. She has the first dose at five. I might take it as I go and then call for it later on and bring it in. She felt a sudden longing for space and silence for some release from that inward struggle which was but exacerbated by the presence of the child. She put on her things quickly and fled onto the street, not trusting herself to look back at Vera's thin and wasted body flat on the mattress, the cropped head which tried feebly to raise itself, the heavy eyes which followed her as she moved towards the door. The child broke into a wailing cry when she saw herself about to be forsaken. Tanta, don't go. I want you. Once a sugar-pallow and a fairytale of giants wants to be fed with a little silver spoon. Helen said, darling, I'll tell you tales and feed you. I will get you everything you want. Tanta's going for a little walk, but I shall stay with you all this time. But Vera whimpered fretfully, you isn't Tanta. Once her, other people's is no good. Constance took with her that imperative cry, holding it tightly, savoring it, turning it in her mind. It warmed her towards existence, gave her new strength. She descended the stairs and went out into the roadway. The fog surged up before her, yellow and impenetrable. It wrapped all things in the soft folds of its mantle. At first she was blinded by it, but after a moment of careful staring she saw the high, dim cliff of a house against the tawny sky, and then a spectral cab that went slowly past her. The man drove with one hand, and with the other slapped his chest, for a little wind blew from the east and it was bitter cold. She walked a few steps towards her radiant haze, which shone very softly in the distance. Presently she discovered it to be the fish-shop at the corner which was lit with a bluish splendor by its great electric lamps. It seemed full of jeweled things, mackerel, like little peacocks of the sea, glittering upon the slab, and the triumphant rose-color of the mullet, and many little elfish silver creatures which caught and threw back the lovely broken light. The mysterious beauty of the world, all the strange shapes of it, the incredible exquisite detail ever apt to break on one's vision from such a corner as this, seized her and aroused in her a sudden agony of love. She perceived in herself a new and abnormal sensitiveness to this divine play of light and color, a wild desire to hold it tightly, a wild strange fear, lest it should be snatched away from her. But it could not be snatched away, this at any rate was hers. None could deprive her of it. The body and the heart might go hungry, but the eye could never be starved. How she loved the world, the adorableness of it, its intimacy came home to her after ten days of concentration on the battle with disease. Its dust and hers were of the same company. In loving it she loved her own people, her nearest kin. Then she remembered that after all she was but the foster sister of the pretty things she worshipped. She had been put to nurse, as it were, amongst them. But sometimes she would shed her dust and go away. The thought of death smote her with a sharp pain and left behind it a sickening sense of fear. Her life, even in the grayest days, had possessed that quality of organic completeness which prevents the idea of one's own death from being more than a polite assent to a proposition which is universally received. Now she knew not why, she thought of it as an actual, personal process, a strange circumstance, for in spite of hardship ahead of her, her zest for life had never been greater than at this hour. The watcher seized on this hard thought and forced it again and again upon her mind, saying to her, Sometimes in the battle it happens that foolhardy warriors are killed, then they must forsake this lovely world and all the excitement of the dream. He did not frighten her. It was so obviously implicit in the very scheme of things that she should live. She came to the cash chemists, gave in her prescription, and then turned to continue her walk. But the fog had thickened, had closed about her, brown and heavy. The effort that she made, the driving of her weary limbs and quest of air, seemed but a foolish travail, when this was all the air to be obtained, she hesitated. She might wait in the shop for the preparation of her medicine, and then go home. But the atmosphere of drugs, the odd and aromatic smells, were at the moment hardly her taste. In spite of smarting eyes and difficult breath, she walked a little way vaguely, then a thicker wave of fog settled upon the streets, and she decided that it were better to turn backwards after all. The possibility of losing her way had suddenly occurred to her, and the awful consequences for the sick child who waited for the medicines at home. She turned, as she supposed, completely round, began with assurance to retrace her steps. But in a moment her foot felt the curb. She came with a jolt into the gutter-way and was on the roughly macadamized surface of the road, possessed by the absurd but fear-inducing sense of being irretrievably lost. The soft silence of the fog was all about her, and converted the narrow street into a limitless desert. She walked on. All her idea of direction had vanished, and it was only after a period which seemed very long that she felt another curb-stone rising against her foot, and was upon the pavement again. She edged from the roadway slowly, carefully, till she came with sensations of shock on the wall of a house. When she had crept by it for a little way, an edgeless and colorless figure appeared in the midst. Another woman, who also, it seemed, was hugging the friendly wall. They proceeded side by side for a short time, and presently the wall was broken by a door. The woman stopped there, rang a bell, and said to Constance, There will not be many here today. Perhaps because Miss Tyrell did not answer her, she added, We are not really very late. The door opened a little way of itself, and stood ajar. The lady pushed it wide open, entered, and held it that her companion might pass. Because she was lost and very tired, because of the thickness of the fog and her longing for some place of refuge, where she might at least be still, Constance went in. She was blinded and stifled, wanted breathing space. The other woman proceeded her, and she followed up a flight of stairs and then threw another door. Behind it she found, as she had vaguely expected, a small and perfumed chapel. The fog, shrouding the electric lamps, filled it with a hazy, golden light. Upon the simple altar were twelve candles, twelve misty flames like globes of dim fire, a few ladies knelt at the chairs in the center aisle. No priest was present, but in the plain choir stalls which lined the little nave, there were perhaps a dozen women. They looked somewhat like Quakeruses of the old school, before chocolate brought smartness in its train. Somewhat like respectable French women of the bourgeoisie, brought from the recesses of a Somnolent provincial town. They wore black, woolen dresses, with little capes fastened upon the breast, and large, old-fashioned bonnets which covered the hair and were tied beneath the chin, surrounding the face with an upstanding black ruche. Incurably humble and demure, she judged them full of kindness, but without initiative. As she seated herself upon a chair near the door, one of these quaint and gentle persons, evidently prosecuting some ritual, already begun, cried in a thin, pure voice, with a wailing cadence, hardly of this world, Ae ye me he domine, and the other voices responded in their far-off accents of selfless and delicate lamentation, which, even in its grief, still remembered the language of hope. When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord, and he heard me. What a strange statement, made with an air of utter conviction, by these sequestered and unearthly women living, unsuspected, behind walls which fringed a busy London street. Were they, she wondered, speaking for themselves? And what was the intention of the ceremony on which he had chanced? At the ending of the Psalm, the note changed. The high, clear voice, which had chanted the antiphon, cried suddenly and fervently, requiem eternam dona aeis domine, and its companion voices answered, et lux perpetua luce ad aeis. Then another Psalm, and another, and always the end of each that same bitter and imploring cry. She began to understand it. She had come upon one of those places, scattered through Christendom, where the ritual of the dead is ceaselessly performed. The church, by these delegates of hers, was doing what she could do for these immigrant sons and daughters who had gone out into a new world. She was afraid for them, knowing that they shared her imperfection. She yearned toward them, pitiful, longing to help them, if she could. Requiem eternam dona aeis. A whole generation of mourners, joined as it seemed in this impassioned prayer, give them rest. They shall have it. We, the living, will work for it, rest and light, more light. We have lit these little candles to mitigate their dimness, if we can. All the things which we have not ourselves can never get, never enjoy, these we ask for them. Our own deprivation we can endure, but help the poor dead, the lonely dead. Give them the calm illumination which we long for and always miss. We cry in their name, for we are one with them. Soon we shall be with them. They are here too. They implore us as we speak. We send our hearts before us, and our ineffectual wills over the brink which we too shall presently pass. We rush ahead of our experience, unite ourselves to those already there. We ask nothing for ourselves. We only assert our right to ask for them, to use our bodies for the bodiless, our voices for the silent, our tears for those who cannot even weep. Behind the veil of misty light, Constance seemed to divine them, the poor and helpless dead, waiting so anxiously upon the supplications of their friends. In the fog, where bodies became as phantoms and every standard of reality was at fault, it was easy to believe in them, to feel, all about one, caught perhaps in the fog of personality, the mighty, wistful company of souls, called by the familiar rights to lean out from their country into this. She discerned their very gentle prayer for help. She too was impelled to ask for them light and a clear horizon, a release from the strained ears, the strained eyes, from the ignorance and helplessness which constitute the condition of the lost. Then she thought of the sick child at home, hovering itself upon the edge of this multitude. Should Vera die, could she ask these things for that elfish, cruel creature, that little heap of appetites and habits which her own starved appetites had brought to birth? What was Vera, once her active little body had been cast away, an incomplete thing, for whom the lesson of the flesh remained unlearned? In this quiet chapel, where the chanting of psalms had now given place to soft recited prayers, Constance regained the clear vision which had forsaken her during the preceding busy days. From this spiritual place she looked temperately out upon life. She saw her battles with the watcher tending to its crisis. Because something of the atmosphere of infinity was caught between those walls, he had gained in strength. He rose and dominated her. She felt her own increasing weakness, saw that he was her master, and trembled for the little child whom she would save. There could be, it was clear, no amicable termination of this contest, no final living side by side, all three of them, she, Vera, and the subjugated lodger within. He would not tolerate that. And then she saw something else, a new and terrible solution which had not occurred to her before. The watcher must be expelled from the dream, compelled to relinquish his hold on material things. This was the one way to be rid of his influence, the sole solution by which Vera's safety was assured. If he stayed he would have his will of the child push her remorselessly from life. His hatred of her intrusive personality was the compliment of that blind and narrow love which he lavished on his friend. Her mother's strength could not avail against him, but that mother might yet win a more splendid victory if she would. She might go and drag him with her from the field. So tightly was he enmeshed within her being that only thus could he depart. She saw it now in this place of light. Her very soul and body must be torn asunder if she would extricate him from the fetters of the dust. There was no longer room in life for her and Vera. One or the other of them must perish. This cruel truth grew and filled her consciousness. Gradually all other truths, hopes, plans, melted before it, leaving it in possession of her mind. But she did not want to die. She wished she longed to live for her daughter's sake, to offer, if she might, reparation for the coldness of past years. She had schemed it all. Her care, her tenderness, her courage, begun already to taste its joy. She was going to concentrate herself on Vera, Vera who, without her guardianship, was helpless, a nameless child cast upon the world. Could such an act of abandonment as this deliberate death be called her duty? Could this be the solution towards which she was being pressed? She exclaimed within her mind, I cannot bear it! What a choice! To forsake her? Or else to let her die? Where could she go? Who would take her? How cruel! How inexorable they are! You see, said the Watcher, you see your sacrifice would be a useless one, and even if it were not, would you indeed give your very life for this? Go from life in order that she may live in poverty and imperfection, move to and fro, add to the ugliness of things? How gross a folly! You who love it all so much? To go forever from the dream? She answered him meekly, pleading with him, for now he had heard his mercy, and she was not ashamed to sue him for her life. You see, she said, the past to which you have brought me, is this love? Will you not have patience yet a little? Wait! Give me time! Do not kill me! Do not force me in this action! I do not want to go! He answered, I will not wait, for I see the future. I see that since you will not yield, it is best that you should die. If you live, there cannot be a happy outcome, only eternal effort and wasted sacrifice. That too may make one happy, she said. You do not understand. I do not understand your wild illusions. They weary me. I want to go away. I can no longer bear this squalid corner, these perverse sufferings and unworthy loves, to love the cup and the reality behind it. That were comprehensible. It is indeed your destiny, your only joy, but to this, it seems, you hardly can attain. Therefore, if you would live, let go, that I may extricate you from your ugly tangles. Then we will wander freely through the dream, and look for beauty, happiness, and life. She steeled herself against him, and he sadly, conscious of the alienation of his friend, said, Ah, let me go. I loved you, and I longed to help you. But I cannot make you happy, because you resist. Therefore you must die and release me, for I am very weary of this confused and hopeless world. There had been an interval of silence in the chapel, when the vespers of the dead came to an end. Suddenly it was broken, as it appeared by a litany of some kind. Constance was still deep in the fear and amazement, which her discovery had induced, hoarding, as it were, her courage for the awful hour which she discerned ahead. Hence the opening phrases went past her very softly, without attaining to her consciousness. But presently she woke from her dream, called forth by the high and urgent voice which led these poignant ceremonies. She heard it cry with a strange accent of authority, a certainty that its invocation could not be in vain. All ye orders of blessed spirits—and the congregation took it up, finishing the phrase—pray for the faithful departed. They had gone, it seemed, beyond the limit of their first petition. The supplication of divine omnipotence was over. Now they extended their appeal, humanized it, claimed the help of the triumphant dead in caring for their poorer kin. St. Gregory, St. Augustine, St. Ignatius cried the appellant voice, and the eager chorus followed with its supreme demand. Pray for the faithful departed! None were excused from this duty. One after another the torchbearers of the faith were claimed, petitioned, and with so assured an accent that Constance almost expected a quiet presence to answer from behind the radiant mist. It went on, that roll-call of the happy dead, and with each name the reiterated imperative, united cry for help. They called them down into this little chapel, claimed their kinship, insistent on the necessity of their suffrages, expectant of their brotherly aid. They were reminded of their humanity, these elect and shining spirits, snatched from the study, the brothel, the battlefield, the court. You, these intense and amazing women seem to say, you even more than we should work, should plead for them. You have achieved, you have entered the light, you are there. We do our best, but we are so far away. We lack your transcendent opportunity. Therefore we remind you of your fraternal obligations, all ye holy doctors, popes, and confessors. Pray for the faithfully departed! The woman who knelt alone, struggling with her terror and astonishment, trying so hard to acquiesce in the sacrifice which she must make, was inexplicably consoled by this intimate colloquy, this assurance of the reality, the friendliness of the populations who awaited her beyond the veil. It was but another aspect of that world of the dead which the water had divined amongst the messed Moorland Hills, whose friendship she had pressed on her then. How peaceful, she thought, was the lot of this army resting thus in the ever renewed memory of the race. Here, the fretting duties of the dust accomplished, was perfect unity, the social link, the unhindered love. It seemed as though death alone could convey the fullness of life. Constance felt herself to be initiated into a mighty society, held, welcomed, and sheltered by it. Her terror passed away. She turned on the watcher. You, she said to him, have nothing to do with this. I am not afraid now. All is well. I see that it does not matter where one is in it, living or dead, this side of the other, of the veil. You said that to me once. I give it to you, again. But Vera must stay, because she has not finished, is not ready to go out of the dream. He was astonished, a little crestfallen. Do you mean, he said, that you were glad to go, as Martin was? You who cannot see the light? She answered, yes. I believe I am. Glad to make a good departure, a death that is worthwhile. They shan't be ashamed of me if I can help it, the people on the other side. She was very tired now. She could dispute with him no longer. She only wished to sleep. The litany continued, and she listened to it idly, till suddenly, from out its rhythmic supplication came one startling in its supreme assurance, which obliterated the walls of the chapel, the very ramparts of the world, and said about those who could make it the splendors of a house not built with hands. That thou wouldst be pleased to admit them to the contemplation of thy adorable beauty, we beseech thee to hear us. These captives of time and space, from the very deeps of their prison, offered this selfless prayer for those who had passed from their sight. She rose on the wings of it, she for whom that prison door stood open. She asked it for herself, and for the watcher, for all the spirits of the living and the dead. This was what she wanted, what all men wanted. This was the link still lacking to unify the scattered actions of her life. But one must, as she saw it, share in that beauty, contribute to it as the one condition of true sight. Did the watcher, she wondered, see it? Had he done so? It had surely purified his love, satisfied his thirst for reality, stilled his unrest. Others had the vision, in some measure. It was here in the world for those who had learned to see. She remembered Martin, remembered the sacred thing to which she had given an unwilling garden ship, remembered Helen, sanctified by a foolish agony which she did not understand. Then, turning on herself, she asked, suddenly, passionately, the one question of the awakened soul. How can I serve it? What can I give? The inner inhabitant was ready to reply to her, but she knew the only answer before she heard its voice. As she went out from the chapel, hushed, shaken, and bewildered, this stood by its entrance one of the demure and black-gowned sisters of the choir. She looked at Miss Tyrell with friendliness, as if divining in her some quality appropriate to the rites. Constance said, What is this place? Who are you? The woman answered, in the sweet and nervous accents of the cloister. Madam, we are called the helpers of the holy souls. Chapter 22 How They Went Home And at the end of woe, suddenly our eyes shall be opened, and in clearness of light our sight shall be full. Julian of Norwish. Revelations of divine love. It did not surprise either Helen, the doctor, or the landlady that Constance's illness should follow so close upon the convalescence of the child. She had not spared herself, her devotion had even verged upon foolishness, including as it did an indulgence of the patient's caprices, an attention to her mere happiness, which no student of modern therapeutics could approve. During these last, permitted days of her physical existence, she was ceaselessly obsessed by the desolating consciousness of awakened spirit that she could never, under any circumstances, love enough. In the life to which she went, as she conceived of it, love would be effortless, a joy. It would spring, and she with it, to its source. In the life which she must leave, it had been a high and splendid duty, difficult, full of enticements for the courageous soul. But she had neglected that transcendent opportunity, been blind to its romance, and her act of reparation did nothing to assuage her remorse. Hence she devoted herself feverishly, whilst she could, to the satisfaction of Vera's smallest fancies, waiting on her, playing with her, never absent from her room. For this she relinquished, as she knew, her final chances of communion with the adorable world from which she went. It meant something to an impassioned lover of beauty to forego her last opportunity of seeing the spare trees. In their dress of whorefrost, the misty glory of the river, when the light begins to fade, the miracle of Oxford Street, at the moment in which its lamps flash splendid in the dusk. These familiar and exquisite sights, always friendly to her weary eyes, were going. Her very eyes were going, all her senses, time and dimension, shape and color, sound and space. There were moments when she could not bear it. When she cried out in agony against her fate, to die in furnished loggings, is not pleasant, even to the amateur of death. Her regrets were made the more tormenting by the fact that she here suffered, in their extremist form, all those squalors and discomforts which are incident to our departure from the dust. The watcher, in the midst of his own eagerness to be gone, was very sorry for his friend. He anticipated for her no happy future. Her spiritual blindness, as he saw it, would be as great a drawback to the enjoyment of eternity as his own supernatural prejudices had been to the comprehension of time. She would exist, as he knew, in the real, forever and ever. What could she do there, this creature who had not even been able to contrive her own comfort in the dream? To know, this for him was still the great matter. He perceived in Constance a deep ignorance of the conditions on which she must be cast. He would yet have offered her a place for repentance had she desired it. For now he was almost soft-hearted where this one woman was concerned. But she was intent on his departure, and even in the darkest hours she did not flinch. She struggled to expel him from her spirit, longing to be herself, to be at peace, to regain the sole possession of her senses before she laid them finally away. He, too, fought with her against the clinging fetters of the flesh, eager for home, anxious to be gone from a lodging where he did not any longer feel at ease. The battle tore at her body, wracked it, with a fever which no medicines could still. She lay, hour after hour, alone in the dreary room. She gazed vacantly at the faded pictures, counted the drab daisies upon the slate-colored wall. Time was marked only by the perfunctory visits of the landlady who looked in to bring useless and unpalatable nourishment, and see whether there was anything required. Once every day Vera came to her, and this was the moment towards which she lived. When Constance sickened, Mrs. Reed had removed the child to her own lodging, delighted to have again the whole custody of a living thing that she could tend. She had said to Miss Tyrell during the first days of her illness, you must not worry about Vera whilst you are laid up. She is quite safe with me, and I am so pleased to be able to take care of her. I don't know when I have enjoyed anything so much. It makes such a difference, beginning the day by dressing her and ending it with putting her to bed. Having her little clothes to mend and her feeding to consider, you cannot think what that all means when one has been living alone with nothing to arrange for but oneself. Would you like it always? Always, answered Helen. Sometimes I feel that I must keep her, must have something to serve. I cannot bear to think about the moment when I shall have to let you have her back again. Perhaps that moment will not come. Helen looked at her nervously. Oh, no! No! She said, you are quite mistaken. You are very weak just now, and it makes you depressed. But the doctor said today that he is sure there are no complications. As soon as your temperature drops, you will have nothing to do but get well. And if I don't? Then, oh, then, I hope she would be mine, said Mrs. Reed. Fear and excitement strove together in her voice. And, of course, it won't happen. It is observed to think of it. But if it ever did, I should do my best for her, my very best, and I wouldn't steal her from you. I should always remember that she was really yours. She should never be allowed to forget you. I promise that. It was a promise which carried little conviction. Helen spoiled the little girl who already began to turn to her, pleased by her new and undisciplined life, and resenting with her customary violence the quietness and restraint which were imposed during her morning visits to Constance's room. Fear had the animal's instinctive hatred of the sick, and could hardly be persuaded to submit to her mother's feeble embrace. That mother, therefore, saw herself in the act of withdrawing from a world which did not seem to need her any more. She was going very quickly, helped there too by the watcher, who wished that her earthly pain at least might end. She had cast him from her mind, he no longer governed her vision, but he could not leave her because he loved. Mrs. Reed had looked in at lunchtime, and found her sleeping. She thought the omen a good one, and crept quietly away, for the day was fine, and she wished to take Vera for a little walk. She arranged the bedside table, placing milk and medicine within reach, and warned the landlady that Miss Tyrell was best left undisturbed, unless she rang her bell. One Constance awoke, the afternoon was waning, and her room was gray and dim, being filled with a wintry twilight, which made this place of departure seem one already, with the colorless dimension of the dead. She looked about her, rather puzzled. The place seemed strange. It was so very large and shadowy, and she so small. Smaller than her body, she thought. In some subtle way she was changed. Yet she could not capture, analyze her new condition. Things were becoming queer, very queer indeed. She did not put it any more definitely than that. She was not frightened, but she was annoyed to discover that her mind was too weak to grasp the strange experience to which plainly she had come, the last of her adventures, perhaps. Opposite to her bed was the little cupboard in which she had locked the shrine of the cup. She wished that she could reach it, unlock the door, and look within. Somehow, she fancied, that might explain things, give her something to rest upon, something that would not display the confusing qualities which now invested all visible objects of thought. She stared at the cupboard, very hard. Presently she found herself going towards it quite easily, then as if she were looking through some glassy substance, and in the very act of looking penetrated that on which she gazed, she found herself in the presence of the grail. She had forgotten everything else was not strong enough to attend to her body any longer. The teasing question of life and death, of the conditions of the transit, passed away. She did not think of asking herself on which side of that veil she existed because the veil had disappeared. She and the chalice faced one another, but not the cup of cloudy glass which she had known. It had taken on the splendours of reality, and she smiled for she looked perfection in the face. It shone close to her, yet unceasable. It shone through the whole world, a lens which focused and poured out upon the piteous fear of effort, the benediction of the uncreated light, humble yet omnipotent, desirous and elusive. She wondered when she had obtained those words. They came back to her now, suddenly comprehended. There were all that remained within her mind. Her eyes were opened on eternity, easily, naturally, since they were shot forever on the illusions of the earth. She perceived reality at her door, ever near her, patient and unsleeping, awaiting the recognition of its child. She saw it, but not alone. Even in the act of departure she must, it seemed, carry out the redemptive duties of her race, as Dante, gazing into the eyes of Beatrice, there saw reflected the light of divine. So the watcher, gazing into the soul of his friend at this crucial moment of transcendent victory and earthly loss, was permitted to see the transfigured spirit. The inmost inhabitant, where it sat like a mater dolorosa, holding upon its knees the slain self by whose death it was redeemed. It seemed to him now a very holy thing, and full of wonder. He did not know that its sacrifice was commonplace enough. There was no one to tell him that. Judged by the stupendous standards of humanity, any other action had been a sin, that Constance's passion took no heroic rank amongst the sublime adventures of the dust. In the human aspect of her death, in its determined quixotry, its profound and unrewarded love, he recognized, astonished, the key to all the mazes of the dream. Out of this agony there was reflected for him a ray of that divine personality, which he, the ignorant and impersonal investigator of things, had little suspected to be the energizing light in which alone it was possible to see God. In that light eternity was remade for him, the awful boredom of the infinite, its incomprehensibility, had passed away. He no longer noticed that he did not understand, for the desire to know was gone. He looked again, detached from the dream, on the busy tangle of organic things, on a world founded on illusions supported by the considerations of matter, growth, and sex. But now he saw no paradox, no confusion, only as it were a furnace once, now and then, the will drew forth a perfect spirit made for its own delight. He heard now the voice of that love in which all subsists, crying through eternity with a sad voice and urgent to its many errant sons. And the most faithful of all answers to this appeal did not come from the infinity, which is its home, but was dragged and distilled from the turmoil of life, from the midst of that sacrificial torment which he had so bitterly and ignorantly regretted for her whom he had learned to call his friend. There, in the healing of division, he saw a perfect union attained. He, who had now all knowledge, saw himself outstripped by those who had a very little love, and saw also in the satisfaction of his own lust of curiosity, an end which even the meanest human soul had hardly held consistently through life. But he had loved her a little. He had followed her faithfully. He had done for her his mistaken best. Now he abased himself before her, before the spirit of a tired and broken outcast whom even earth had held to be impure. Her poor and weary body had fallen asleep, and from between the lips of it her soul came out as gladly as a little bird from its cage. It was the soul which he had watched and loved as it struggled to burn in the difficult air of the earth, but had hindered because he never understood. Now it shone very brightly without flickering, having sloughed off the tedious apparatus of the flesh. It shut up, a penetrating flame of love, straight to that heart of being which all creation eternally desires. And he, who had torn so violently from out its prison the white soul of her whose life he dared to judge, took with it his last lesson and his release. He was initiated into heaven and stood there beside her, humbled, glorified, redeemed by that humanity into whose august secrets he had tried to look. The dream was over. It faded before the splendours of the real. He rose from his sleep, wide eyed to see the sacred spirit of man brought forth from a column of dust. End of Chapter 22 End of The Column of Dust by Evelyn Underhill