The Jessica Letters Part 2

Show me the mansion where I, too, may won: Here in forgetful peace I would abide, And barter earth for G.o.d's sweet benison."

"Nay," he replied, "not thine the life Elysian, Live thou the world's life, holding yet thy vision A hope and memory, till thy course be run."

II

Then said my soul: "I faint and seek my rest; The glory of the vision veils mine eyes; These infinite murmurs beating at my breast Turn earthly music into plangent sighs.

"Because thou biddest, I will tread the maze With men my brothers, yet my hands withhold From building at the Babel towers they raise, And all my life within my heart infold."

The Angel answered: "Lo, as in a dream Thy feet have pa.s.sed beyond the gates of flame; And evermore the toils of men must seem But wasteful folly in a path of shame.

"Yet I command thee, and vouchsafe no reason, Thou shalt endure the world's work for a season; Work thou, and leave to others fame and blame."

III

I bowed submission, dumb a little while.

Then said my soul: "Thy will I dare not balk; I reach my hands to labours that defile, And help to rear a plant of barren stalk.

"Yet only I, because in life I bear The vision of that peace, may never feel The spur of keen ambition, never share The dread of loss that makes the world's work real.

"Therefore in scorn I draw my bitter breath, And sorrow cherish as my proudest right, Till scorn and sorrow fade in sweeter death."

The Angel answered, turning as for flight:

"The labour sorrow-done is more than sterile, And scorn will change thy vision to soul's peril: Be glad; thy work is gladness, child of light!"

IX

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. TOWERS:

Many thanks for this copy of your book, _The Forest Philosophers of India_. I have just finished reading it, and now I understand you better.

Your sense of reality has been destroyed by this mysticism of the East.

The normal man has a more materialistic consciousness. But having lost that, your very spirit has dissolved into these strange illuminations which you call thought, but which I fear are only the ghostly rays of a Nirvana intelligence. With you life is but a breath without form, a whisper out of your long eternity. And I confess that to me the impression of a man not being at home in his own body is nothing short of terrifying.

You were not expecting so fierce a criticism of your own book from one of your own reviewers, I suspect. Ah, but your "Three Commands" have laid me under a spell. I cannot say anything about them without saying too much; and I am a little rebellious.

X

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. TOWERS:

I have not replied earlier to your letter on the problem of consciousness, because I was waiting to read Dr. Minot's article. At last I got hold of the magazine, and so far from finding your comments "a tangle of crude ideas," they have even proved suggestive--perhaps not in the way you expected. For following your line of thought, I wondered if it could have been some violent death-rate among our own species that has produced that desperate phenomenon, the literary consciousness of the historical novelist I have been reviewing for you. And, come to think of it, I do not know any other cla.s.s of people whose problem of consciousness could be so readily reduced to a "bionomical" plat.i.tude. They all write for the same slaying purpose. Did you ever observe how few of their characters survive the ordeals of art? Usually it is the long-lost heroine, and the hero, "wounded unto death" however, and one has the impression that even these would not have lived so long but for the necessity of the final page.

But I must not fail to tell you of a dramatic episode in connection with my first venture into the realm of biological thought. _The Popular Science Monthly_ has long been proscribed at the parsonage on account of its heretical tendencies. And my purpose was to keep a profound secret the fact that I had purchased a copy containing Minot's article. But some demon prompted me to inquire of my father the meaning of the term "epiphenomenon." Now a long a.s.sociation with the idea of omniscience has rendered him wiser in consciousness than in fact, which is a joke the imagination often plays upon serious people. But he could neither give a definition nor find the word in his ancient Webster. This dictionary is his only unquestioned authority outside the Holy Scriptures, and he declines to accept any word not vouched for by this venerable authority.

Therefore he reasoned that "epiphenomenon" had been built up to accommodate some modern theory of thought, some new leprosy of the mind never dreamed of by the n.o.ble lexicographer. And so, fixing me with a pair of accusing gla.s.ses, he inquired:

"My daughter, where did you see this remarkable word?"

I do not question that I am a direct descendant from my fict.i.tious grandmother, Eve! I am always being tempted by apples of information, and I have often known the mortifying sensation of wis.h.i.+ng to hide my guilty countenance in my more modern petticoat on that account.

He read the "blasphemous" article through, only pausing to point out heresies and perversions of the sacred truth as he went along. But when he reached the sentence in which the author calmly a.s.serts the theory of monism, he actually gagged with indignation: "My child, do you know that this G.o.dless wretch claims that the same principle of life which makes the cabbage also vitalises man?" I looked horrified, but I could barely restrain my laughter; for, indeed, there are "flat-dutch"-headed gentlemen in his congregation who might as well have come up at the end of a cabbage stalk for all the thinking they do. But I need not tell you that the magazine containing the profane treatise on consciousness was burned, while a livid picture was drawn of my own future if I persisted in stealing forbidden fruit from this particular tree of knowledge.

But your last letter put me into a more serious frame of mind. And I _am_ complimented that you entertain the hope that I may be of a.s.sistance in re-establis.h.i.+ng the lost bond between you and real life. But do you know that you have appealed to the missionary instincts of a barbarian? The attributes of patience and indulgence do not belong to natures like mine.

Never has any affliction worked out patience in me, never has my strongest affection taken the form of indulgence. In me Love and Friends.h.i.+p, Sorrow and Gladness, take fiercer forms of expression.

But I will not conceal from you the fact that from the first I have felt in our relations.h.i.+p a curious sensation of magic in one opposed to mystery in the other. I have felt the abandon and madness of a happy dancer, whirling around the dim edge of your shadow-land in the wild expectation of beholding the disembodied spirit of you come forth to join me. It is not that I _wished_ to work a charm, but the shadow of your mysterious life draws me into the opposition of a counter-influence. The gift of power is not in me to set foot across the magic line into the dim land of your soul, any more than I could dissolve into a breath of moonlit air, or a wave of the sea. For, in you, I seem to perceive some strange phenomenon of a spirit changed to twilight gloom which covers all your hills and valleys with the mournful shadow of approaching night. Often this conception appalls me, but more frequently I conceive a wild energy from the idea, as of one sent to rim the shadows in close and closer till some star shall s.h.i.+ne down and bless them into heroic form and substance. And I have been amazed to find within my mind a witch's charm for working rainbow miracles upon your dim sky,--but so it is. There have always been mad moments in my life when I have felt all-powerful, as if I had got hold of the ribbon ends of an incantation! This is another one of my limitations at which you must not laugh. For a juggler must be taken seriously, or he juggles in vain; he must have an opportunity to create the necessary illusion in you to insure the success of his performance.

Meanwhile, I go to make the circle of my dance smaller; who knows but to-morrow I may be a snow-bunting on your tall cliffs, or a little homeless wren seeking shelter in your valley.

XI

PHILIP TO JESSICA

MY DEAR MISS DOANE:

So I am a disembodied ghost in your estimation, and you, "happy dancer,"

are whirling around the rim of my shadow-land with some sweet incantation learned in your Georgia woods to conjure me out into the visible world.

Really I would call that a delicious bit of impertinence were I not afraid the word might be taken in the wrong sense.

And yet, I must confess it, there is too much truth in what you say. Some day, when I am bolder, I may unfold to you the whole story of my ruin--for it is a ruin to be disembodied, is it not? I may even indicate the single phrase, the mysterious word of all mysteries, that might evoke the spirit from the past and incarnate him in the living present. Do not try to guess the phrase, I beseech you, for it would frighten you now and so I should lose my one chance of reincarnation. When I visit you in the South, some day soon, I will tell you the magic word I have learned.

What hocus-pocus I must seem to be talking, as if there were some cheap tragedy in my life. Indeed there is nothing of the sort. I have lived as tamely as a house-cat, my only escapade having been an innocent attempt at playing Timon for a couple of years. The drama of my life has been a mere battling with shadows. Your relation of the effect produced in your home by Dr. Minot's heresies carries me back to the first act in that shadow fight, for I too was brought up by the strictest of parents, and, indeed, was myself, as a boy, a veritable prodigy of piety. What would you think of me as a preacher expounding the gospel over a piano-stool for pulpit to a rapt congregation of three? I could show you a sermon of that precocious Mr. Pound-text printed in the New York _Observer_ when he was as much as nine years old--and the sermon might be worse.

I can recall these facts readily enough; but the battle of doubt and faith that I pa.s.sed through a few years later I can no more realise than I can now realise your father's blessed a.s.surance of heaven. I know vaguely that it was a time of unspeakable agony for me, a rending asunder, as it were, of soul and body. The doctrine was bred into my bones; I saw the folly of it intellectually, but the emotional comfort of it was the very quintessence of my life. The struggle came upon me alone and I was without help or guidance. Into those few years of boyish vacillation, I see now that the whole tragedy of more than a century of human experience was thrust. One day I sat in church listening to a sermon of appealing eloquence: "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." Was I too deliberately turning my back on the light? I hid my face and cried. That was the end. I came out of the church free, but I had suffered too much. Something pa.s.sed from my life that day which nothing can replace; for perfect faith, like love, comes to a man but once.

1 was empty of comfort and without resting-place for my spirit. Then said I: Look you, belief in this religion as dogma is gone; why not hold fast to its imaginative beauty! If revelation is a fraud, at least the intricacies of this catholic faith have grown up from the long yearning of the human heart, and possess this inner reality of corresponding with our spiritual needs. And for several years I wrought at Christian symbolism, trying to build up for my soul a home of poetical faith so to speak. But in the end this could not satisfy me; I knew that I was cheris.h.i.+ng a sham, a pretty make-believe after the manner of children. Better the blindness of true religion than this illusion of the imagination. And I was now a grown man.

Then by some inner guidance I turned to India. How shall I tell you what I found in the philosophies of that land! One thing will surprise you.

Instead of pessimism I found in India during a certain period of time a happiness, an exultation of happiness, such as the world to-day cannot even imagine. And I found that this happiness sprang from no pretended revelation but from a profound understanding of the heart. Do this, said the books, and you will feel thus, and so step by step to the consummation of ecstasy. I read and was amazed; I understood and knew that I too, if my will were strong, might slip from bondage and be blessed. But I saw further that the path lay away from this world, that I must renounce every desire which I had learned to call good, that I must strip my soul naked of all this civilisation which we have woven in a loom of three thousand years. The dying command of Buddha terrified me: "All things pa.s.s away; work out your own salvation diligently!" The words were spoken to comfort and strengthen the bereaved disciples, but to me they sounded as an imprecation, so different is the training of our society from theirs. The loneliness and austerity of the command appalled me; I would not take the first step, and turned back to seek the beautiful things of the eye.

And now at last I am caught up in the illusion of a new Western ideal--not Christianity, for that has pa.s.sed away, strange as such a statement may sound to you in your orthodox home, but yet a legacy of Christ. Thou shalt love G.o.d with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself, was the law of Christianity. We have forgotten G.o.d and the responsibility of the individual soul to its own divinity; we have made a fetish of our neighbour's earthly welfare. We are not Christians but humanitarians, followers of a maimed and materialistic faith. This is the ideal of the world to-day, and from it I see but one door of escape--and none but a strong man shall open that door.

So I look at the world and life, but, even as I write, something like a foreboding shudder comes over me. I think of your home and your father and the straitness of the law under which you live, and I wonder whether after all the ghost of that fierce theology is yet laid. Can it be that this law which darkened my boyhood shall arise again and claim the joy of my maturer years?

Alas, you who venture to trip so gayly about the rim of my shadow-land with your brave incantations, behold what spirit of gloom and malignant mutterings you have evoked from the night. I have written more than I meant--too much, I fear.