_ WHAT I have told you so far concerns a growth chiefly of my inner life
that was almost a new birth. My outer life, of event and action, was
sufficiently described in those monthly letters you had from me
during the ten years, broken by three periods of long-leave at home,
I spent in that sinister and afflicted land. This record, however,
deals principally with the essential facts of my life, the inner; the
outer events and actions are of importance only in so far as they
interpret these, since that which a man feels and thinks alone is
real, and thought and feeling, of course, precede all action.
I have told you of the Thrill, of its genesis and development; and I
chose an obvious and rather banal instance, first of all to make
myself quite clear, and, secondly, because the majority were of so
delicate a nature as to render their description extremely difficult.
The point is that the emotion was, for me, a new one. I may honestly
describe it as a birth.
I must now tell you that it first stirred in me some five years after
I left England, and that during those years I had felt nothing but
what most other men feel out here. Whether its sudden birth was due
to the violent country, or to some process of gradual preparation
that had been going forward in me secretly all that time, I cannot
tell. No proof, at any rate, offered itself of either. It came
suddenly. I do know, however, that from its first occurrence it has
strengthened and developed until it has now become a dominating
influence of a distinctly personal kind.
My character has been affected, perhaps improved. You have mentioned
on several occasions that you noted in my letters a new tenderness, a
new kindness towards my fellow-creatures, less of criticism and more
of sympathy, a new love; the "birth of my poetic sense" you also
spoke of once; and I myself have long been aware of a thousand fresh
impulses towards charity and tolerance that had, hitherto, at any
rate, lain inactive in my being.
I need not flatter myself complacently, yet a change there is, and it
may be an improvement. Whether big or small, however, I am sure of
one tiling: I ascribe it entirely to this sharper and more extended
sensitiveness to Beauty, this new and exquisite receptiveness that
has established itself as a motive-power in my life. I have changed
the poet's line, using prose of course: There is beauty everywhere
and therefore joy.
And I will explain briefly, too, how it is that this copybook maxim is
now for me a practical reality. For at first, with my growing
perception, I was distressed at what seemed to me the lavish waste,
the reckless, spendthrift beauty, not in nature merely but in human
nature, that passed unrecognized and unacknowledged. The loss seemed
so extravagant. Not only that a million flowers waste their sweetness
on the desert air, but that such prodigal stores of human love and
tenderness remain unemployed, their rich harvest all
ungathered--because, misdirected and misunderstood, they find no
receptacle into which they may discharge.
It has now come to me, though only by & slow and almost imperceptible
advance, that these stores of apparently unremunerative beauty, this
harvest so thickly sown about the world, unused, ungathered--prepare
yourself, please, for an imaginative leap--ore used, are gathered,
are employed. By Whom?
I can only answer: By some one who is pleased; and probably by many
such. How, why, and wherefore--I catch your crowd of questions in
advance--we need not seek exactly to discover, although the answer
of no uncertain kind, I hear within the stillness of a heart that has
learned to beat to a deeper, sweeter rhythm than before.
Those who loved beauty and lived it in their lives, follow that same
ideal with increasing power and passion afterwards--and for ever.
The shutter of black iron we call Death hides the truth with terror
and resentment; but what if that shutter were, after all,
transparent?
A glorious dream, I hear you cry. Now listen to my answer. It is, for
me, a definite assurance and belief, because--I know.
Long before you have reached this point you will, I know, have reached
also the conclusion (with a sigh) that I am embarked upon some
commonplace experience of ghostly return, or, at least, of posthumous
communication. Perhaps I wrong you here, but in any case I would at
once correct the inference, if it has been drawn. You remember our
adventures with the seance-mongers years ago? . . . I have not changed
my view so far as their evidential value is concerned. Be sure of
that.
The dead, I am of opinion, do not return; for, while individuals may
claim startling experiences that seem to them of an authentic and
convincing kind, there has been no instance that can persuade us
all--in the sense that thunderstorm convinces us all. Such individual
experiences I have always likened to the auto-suggestion of those few
who believe the advertisements of the hair-restorers--you will forgive
the unpoetic simile for the sake of its exactitude--as against the
verdict of the world that a genuine discovery of such a remedy would
leave no single doubter in Europe or America, nor even in the London
Clubs! Yet each time I read the cunning article (I have less hair
than when I ran away from Sandhurst that exciting July night and met
you in the Strand!), and look upon the picture of the man, John Henry
Smith, "before and after using," I admit the birth of an unreasonable
belief that there may be something in it after all.
Of such indubitable proof, however, there is, alas, as yet no sign.
And so with the other matter--the dead do not "return." My story,
therefore, be comforted, has no individual instance to record. It
may, on the other hand, be held to involve a thread of what might be
called--at a stretch --posthumous communication, yet a thread so
tenuous that the question of personal direction behind it need hardly
be considered at all. For let me confess at once that, the habit of
the "thrill" once established, I was not long in asking myself point
blank this definite question: Dared I trace its origin to my own
unfruitful experience of some years before?--and, discovering no
shred of evidence, I found this positive answer: Honestly I could
not.
That "somebody was pleased" each time Beauty offered a wisdom I
accepted, became an unanswerable conviction I could not argue about;
but that the guidance--waking a responsive emotion in myself of
love--was referable to any particular name I could not, by any
stretch of desire or imagination, bring myself to believe.
Marion, I must emphasise, had been gone from me five years at least
before the new emotion gave the smallest hint of its new birth; and
my feeling, once the first keen shame and remorse subsided--I confess
to the dishonouring truth--was one of looking back upon a painful
problem that had found an unexpected solution. It was chiefly relief,
although a sad relief, I felt. . . . And with the absorbing work of the
next following years (I took up my appointment within six months of
her death) her memory, already swiftly fading, entered an oblivion
whence rarely, and at long intervals only, it emerged at all. In the
ordinary meaning of the phrase, I had forgotten her. You will see,
therefore, that there was no desire in me to revive an unhappy
memory, least of all to establish any fancied communication with one
before whose generous love I had felt myself dishonoured, if not
actually disgraced. Even the remorse and regret had long since failed
to disturb my peace of mind, causing me no anxiety, much less pain.
Sic transit was the epitaph, if any. Acute sensation I had none at
all. This, then, plainly argues against the slightest predisposition
on my part to imagine that the loving guidance so strangely given
owned a personal origin I could recognize. That it involved a
"personal emotion" is quite another matter.
The more remarkable, therefore, is the statement truth now compels me
to confess to you--namely, that this origin is recognizable, and that
I have traced in part the name it owns to. My next sentence you
divine already; you at once suspect the name I mean. I hear you say
to yourself with a smile--"So, after all. . . !"
Please, wait a moment, and listen closely now; for, in reply to your
suspicion, I can give neither full affirmation or full denial. Yet an
answer of a certain kind is ready: I have stated my firm conviction
that the dead do not return; I do not modify it one iota; but I
mentioned a moment ago another conviction that is mine because I know.
So now let me supplement these two statements with a third: the dead,
though they do not return, are active; and those who lived beauty in
their lives are--benevolently active.
This may prepare you for a further assurance, yet one less easy to
express intelligibly. Be patient while I make the difficult attempt.
The origin of the wisdom that now seeks to shape and guide my life
through Beauty is, indeed, not Marion, but a power that stands behind
her, and through which, with which, the energy of her being acts. It
stood behind her while she lived. It stands behind not only her, but
equally behind all those peerless, exquisite manifestations of self-less
love that give bountifully of their best without hope or expectation of
reward in kind. No human love of this description, though it find no
object to receive it, nor one single flower that "wastes" its sweetness
on the desert air, but acknowledges this inexhaustible and spendthrift
source. Its evidence lies strewn so thick, so prodigally, about our
world, that not one among us, whatever his surroundings and conditions,
but sooner or later must encounter at least one marvellous instance of
its uplifting presence. Some at once acknowledge the exquisite flash and
are aware; others remain blind and deaf, till some experience, probably
of pain, shall have prepared and sensitized their receptive quality. To
all, however, one day, comes the magical appeal. As in my own case,
there was apparently some kind of preparation before I grew conscious of
that hunger for beauty which, awakening intuition, opened the heart to
truth and so to wisdom. It then came softly, delicately, whispering like
the dawn, yet rich with a promise I could, at first, not easily fathom,
though as sure of fulfilment as that promise of day that steals upon the
world when night is passing.
I have tried to tell you something of this mystery. I cannot add to
that. I was lifted, as it were, towards some region or some state of
being, wherein I was momentarily aware of a vaster outlook upon life, of
a deeper insight into the troubles of my fellow-creatures, where,
indeed, there burst upon me a comprehension of life's pains and
difficulties so complete that I may best describe it as that full
understanding which involves also full forgiveness, and that sympathy
which is love, God's love.
This exaltation passed, of course, with the passing of the thrill that
made it possible; it was truly instantaneous; a point of ecstasy,
perhaps, in some category not of time at all, but of some state of
consciousness that lifted me above, outside of, self. But it was real,
as a thunderstorm is real. For, with this glimpse of beauty that I call
the "thrill," I touched, for an instant so brief that it seemed timeless
in the sense of having no duration, a pinnacle of joy, of vision, beyond
anything attainable by desire or by. intellect alone. I stood aware of
power, wisdom, love; and more, this power, wisdom, love were mine to
draw upon and use, not in some future heaven, but here and now. _