Part 4 (2/2)

'Good-by!' I said to myself, 'good-by! why should it be treating me badly to say good-by--'

I was startled by a buffet on the mouth. 'Take that!' cried some one, 'to teach you how to wish the worst of tortures to people who have done you no harm.'

'What have I said? I meant no harm; I repeated only what is the commonest civility, the merest good manners.'

'You wished,' said the man who had struck me,--'I won't repeat the words: to me, for it was I only that heard them, the awful company that hurts most, that sets everything before us, both past and to come, and cuts like a sword and burns like fire. I'll say it to yourself, and see how it feels. G.o.d be with you! There! it is said, and we all must bear it, thanks, you fool and accursed, to you.'

And then there came a pause over all the place, an awful stillness,--hundreds of men and women standing clutching with desperate movements at their hearts as if to tear them out, moving their heads as if to dash them against the wall, wringing their hands, with a look upon all their convulsed faces which I can never forget. They all turned to me, cursing me with those horrible eyes of anguish. And everything was still; the noise all stopped for a moment, the air all silent, with a silence that could be felt. And then suddenly out of the crowd there came a great piercing cry; and everything began again exactly as before.

While this pause occurred, and while I stood wondering, bewildered, understanding nothing, there came over me a darkness, a blackness, a sense of misery such as never in all my life--though I have known troubles enough--I had felt before. All that had happened to me throughout my existence seemed to rise pale and terrible in a hundred scenes before me,--all momentary, intense, as if each was the present moment. And in each of these scenes I saw what I had never seen before. I saw where I had taken the wrong instead of the right step, in what wantonness, with what self-will it had been done; how G.o.d (I shuddered at the name) had spoken and called me, and even entreated, and I had withstood and refused. All the evil I had done came back, and spread itself out before my eyes; and I loathed it, yet knew that I had chosen it, and that it would be with me forever. I saw it all in the twinkling of an eye, in a moment, while I stood there, and all men with me, in the horror of awful thought. Then it ceased as it had come, instantaneously, and the noise and the laughter, and the quarrels and cries, and all the commotion of this new bewildering place, in a moment began again. I had seen no one while this strange paroxysm lasted. When it disappeared, I came to myself, emerging as from a dream, and looked into the face of the man whose words, not careless like mine, had brought it upon us. Our eyes met, and his were surrounded by curves and lines of anguish which were terrible to see.

'Well,' he said with a short laugh, which was forced and harsh, 'how do you like it? that is what happens when--If it came often, who could endure it?' He was not like the rest. There was no sneer upon his face, no gibe at my simplicity. Even now, when all had recovered, he was still quivering with something that looked like a n.o.bler pain. His face was very grave, the lines deeply drawn in it; and he seemed to be seeking no amus.e.m.e.nt or distraction, nor to take any part in the noise and tumult which was going on around.

'Do you know what that cry meant?' he said. 'Did you hear that cry? It was some one who saw--even here once in a long time, they say, it can be seen--'

'What can be seen?'

He shook his head, looking at me with a meaning which I could not interpret. It was beyond the range of my thoughts. I came to know after, or I never could have made this record. But on that subject he said no more. He turned the way I was going, though it mattered nothing what way I went, for all were the same to me. 'You are one of the new-comers?' he said; 'you have not been long here--'

'Tell me,' I cried, 'what you mean by _here_. Where are we? How can one tell who has fallen--he knows not whence or where? What is this place? I have never seen anything like it. It seems to me that I hate it already, though I know not what it is.'

He shook his head once more. 'You will hate it more and more,' he said; 'but of these dreadful streets you will never be free, unless--' And here he stopped again.

'Unless--what? If it is possible, I will be free of them, and that before long.'

He smiled at me faintly, as we smile at children, but not with derision.

'How shall you do that? Between this miserable world and all others, there is a great gulf fixed. It is full of all the bitterness and tears that come from all the universe. These drop from them, but stagnate here.

We, you perceive, have no tears, not even at moments--' Then, 'You will soon be accustomed to all this,' he said. 'You will fall into the way.

Perhaps you will be able to amuse yourself to make it pa.s.sable. Many do.

There are a number of fine things to be seen here. If you are curious, come with me and I will show you. Or work,--there is even work. There is only one thing that is impossible, or if not impossible--' And here he paused again and raised his eyes to the dark clouds and lurid sky overhead. 'The man who gave that cry! if I could but find him! he must have seen--'

'What could he see?' I asked. But there arose in my mind something like contempt. A visionary! who could not speak plainly, who broke off into mysterious inferences, and appeared to know more than he would say. It seemed foolish to waste time, when evidently there was still so much to see, in the company of such a man; and I began already to feel more at home. There was something in that moment of anguish which had wrought a strange familiarity in me with my surroundings. It was so great a relief to return out of the misery of that sharp and horrible self-realization, to what had come to be, in comparison, easy and well known. I had no desire to go back and grope among the mysteries and anguish so suddenly revealed. I was glad to be free from them, to be left to myself, to get a little pleasure perhaps like the others. While these thoughts pa.s.sed through my mind, I had gone on without any active impulse of my own, as everybody else did; and my latest companion had disappeared. He saw, no doubt, without any need for words, what my feelings were. And I proceeded on my way. I felt better as I got more accustomed to the place, or perhaps it was the sensation of relief after that moment of indescribable pain. As for the sights in the streets, I began to grow used to them. The wretched creatures who strolled or sat about with signs of sickness or wounds upon them disgusted me only, they no longer called forth my pity.

I began to feel ashamed of my silly questions about the hospital. All the same, it would have been a good thing to have had some receptacle for them, into which they might have been driven out of the way. I felt an inclination to push them aside as I saw other people do, but was a little ashamed of that impulse too; and so I went on. There seemed no quiet streets, so far as I could make out, in the place. Some were smaller, meaner, with a different kind of pa.s.sengers, but the same hubbub and unresting movement everywhere. I saw no signs of melancholy or seriousness; active pain, violence, brutality, the continual shock of quarrels and blows, but no pensive faces about, no sorrowfulness, nor the kind of trouble which brings thought. Everybody was fully occupied, pus.h.i.+ng on as if in a race, pausing for nothing.

The glitter of the lights, the shouts, and sounds of continual going, the endless whirl of pa.s.sers-by, confused and tired me after a while. I went as far out as I could go to what seemed the out-skirts of the place, where I could by glimpses perceive a low horizon all lurid and glowing, which seemed to sweep round and round. Against it in the distance stood up the outline, black against that red glow, of other towers and house-tops, so many and great that there was evidently another town between us and the sunset, if sunset it was. I have seen a western sky like it when there were storms about, and all the colors of the sky were heightened and darkened by angry influences. The distant town rose against it, cutting the firmament so that it might have been tongues of flame flickering between the dark solid outlines; and across the waste open country which lay between the two cities, there came a distant hum like the sound of the sea, which was in reality the roar of that other mult.i.tude. The country between showed no greenness or beauty; it lay dark under the dark overhanging sky. Here and there seemed a cl.u.s.ter of giant trees scathed as if by lightning, their bare boughs standing up as high as the distant towers, their trunks like black columns without foliage.

Openings here and there, with glimmering lights, looked like the mouths of mines; but of pa.s.sengers there were scarcely any. A figure here and there flew along as if pursued, imperfectly seen, a shadow only a little darker than the s.p.a.ce about. And in contrast with the sound of the city, here was no sound at all, except the low roar on either side, and a vague cry or two from the openings of the mine,--a scene all drawn in darkness, in variations of gloom, deriving scarcely any light at all from the red and gloomy burning of that distant evening sky.

A faint curiosity to go forwards, to see what the mines were, perhaps to get a share in what was brought up from them, crossed my mind. But I was afraid of the dark, of the wild uninhabited savage look of the landscape; though when I thought of it, there seemed no reason why a narrow stretch of country between two great towns should be alarming. But the impression was strong and above reason. I turned back to the street in which I had first alighted, and which seemed to end in a great square full of people.

In the middle there was a stage erected, from which some one was delivering an oration or address of some sort. He stood beside a long table, upon which lay something which I could not clearly distinguish, except that it seemed alive, and moved, or rather writhed with convulsive twitchings, as if trying to get free of the bonds which confined it.

Round the stage in front were a number of seats occupied by listeners, many of whom were women, whose interest seemed to be very great, some of them being furnished with note-books; while a great unsettled crowd coming and going, drifted round,--many, arrested for a time as they pa.s.sed, proceeding on their way when the interest flagged, as is usual to such open-air a.s.semblies. I followed two of those who pushed their way to within a short distance of the stage, and who were strong, big men, more fitted to elbow the crowd aside than I, after my rough treatment in the first place, and the agitation I had pa.s.sed through, could be. I was glad, besides, to take advantage of the explanation which one was giving to the other. 'It's always fun to see this fellow demonstrate,' he said, 'and the subject to-day's a capital one. Let's get well forward, and see all that's going on.'

'Which subject do you mean?' said the other; 'the theme or the example?'

And they both laughed, though I did not seize the point of the wit.

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