FullReads

“Be patient. I only watch you till they come,” was the answer.

“Till they come. Till who come?” she murmured.

Something within told her to inquire no more. But oh! was it possible –was the earth dream coming true?

A long while went by. She looked about her, and understood that she was lying in a great and beautiful room beneath a dome which seemed to be fashioned of translucent ivory or alabaster. At the end of the room were curtains woven of some glittering stuff that gave out light. At length these curtains were drawn, and through them, bearing a cup in her hand, passed a shape like to that of a mortal woman, only so radiant that Barbara knew that had she been alive with the old life she would have felt afraid.

This shape also was clad in garments that gave out light, and in its hair were jewelled flowers. It glided to her side and looked at her with loving, mysterious eyes. Then it held the cup to her lips, and said, or rather thought, for the speech of that land declared itself in thought and vision:

“Drink of this new wine.”

She drank of the wine, and a wonderful life fell upon her like a glory.

“Who are you, O Vision?” she asked, and by way of answer there rose up within her a picture of herself, Barbara, leaning over a cot and looking at the white face of a dead child in a certain room in London. Then she knew that this was her daughter, and stretched out her arms towards her and received her in her arms.

Presently she looked again, and there around the bed appeared four other shapes of beauty.

“You have forgotten us, Barbara,” said one of them, “but we are your sisters who died in infancy.”

For the third time she looked, and behold! kneeling at her side, just as he had been found kneeling in the church, was her adored father, grown more young. Once more she looked, and last of all, breathing ineffable love, came her lost darling, Anthony himself.

From heart to heart flashed their swift thoughts, like lightnings from cloud to cloud, till all her being was a very sea of joy. Now the great room was full of presences, and now the curtains were gone and all space beyond was full of presences, and from that glorious company of a sudden there arose a song of welcome and beneath the burden of its sweetness she swooned to sleep.

Barbara dwelt in joy with those she loved and learned many things. She learned that this sweet new life of hers was what she had fashioned on the earth with her prayers and strivings; that the seeds of love and suffering sown down in the world’s rank soil had here blossomed to this perfect flower. Now she knew what was meant by the saying that the kingdom of Heaven is within you, and by the other saying that as man sows so shall he reap. She learned that in this world beyond the world, and that yet itself was but a rung in the ladder of many universes, up which ladder all souls must climb to the ultimate judgment, there was sorrow as well as bliss, there were both suffering and delight.

Here the sinful were brought face to face with the naked horror of their sins, and from it fled wailing and aghast. Here the cruel, the covetous, the lustful and the liar were as creatures dragged from black caverns of darkness into the burning light of day. These yearned back to their darkness and attained sometimes to other coverings of a mortal flesh, or to some land of which she had no knowledge. For such was their fate if in them there was no spark of repentant spirit that in this new world could be fanned to flame.

Upwards or downwards, such is the law of the universe in which nothing can stand still. Up from the earth which Barbara had left came the spirit shape of all that lived and could die, even to that of the flower. But down to the earth it seemed that much of it was whirled again, to ascend once more in an age to come, since though the stream of life pulses continually forward, it has its backwash and its eddies.