The House of Dreams

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Contents

PAGE

THE PROLOGUE, 9

I. THE COMING OF THE DREAM, 1 4

II

The House of Dreams lies at the eastmost verge of Heaven, and therefore nearest to the Land of Sleep, where tired men lay them down in the shadow of the setting sun.

Its walls are built of opal, having the colour of fire mingled with snow ; its doors are of mother-of-pearl ; its gateways are fashioned of crystal, like unto pure yet softened light. Beside each gateway stands a tall angel, yet is the angel not separable from the gateway, but, as it were, a part of it. For in the evershifting colours of the opal, faces come and go, and eyes look out of the tints of mother-of-pearl, and living forms are faintly outlined in the crystal, like fair bodies seen through lucid sea-water, so that the whole vast edifice seems alive, and the angels of the gateways seem each instant newly fashioned out of the crystal pillars that fold them like a flame, or like a water simulating flame.

Awe fell upon me as I watched this sight, for there was in it a thing wonderful and dreadful. The walls were never still an instant, a gust of life ever passing through them as the sea-water is shaken with the tide, and the faces came and went as the swift fires bum and vanish in the opaL And, looking downward, I perceived that the pavement also was built up of life, so that I trod delicately lest I should hurt that on which I walked. And voices spoke within the walls, and in the pavement at my feet, making an endless murmuring of sound, joyous and musical. And the sound was like the distant calling of a multitude, and at times it seemed as if these infinite voices said one great word of praise, after which a silence fell.

Then I looked upon the Child, for so I called him still in my thoughts, though I knew that he was as the angels ; but the Child stood very still watching the rose within his hand. And once more, as I looked, the murmuring of voices ran through all the place like a gust of wind, and through the pavement at my feet, and the angels at the gateways took a brighter aspect as if the sun smote on them, and all the walls uttered a sound of praise.

Then one stood beside me, whose eyes read my thoughts, and of him I asked what these things might mean.

* This is the world where life is for evermore/ he answered. 'Even in that world from which you journeyed/ — and here he pointed to a small star burning faintly in the abyss, — * all things lived.'

* But all things died too,' I said.

' They could not know death unless they had first known life,' he answered.

* But there was that we called animate, and that we called inanimate. The flower of the field lived, but not as man lived ; and the dumb beast lived, but the beast knew no trouble of the soul such as man knew. By a figure of speech/ I went on, now growing bolder, * we did sometimes speak of the leaves of the forest as living and dying, but it was a mere metaphor. They had no conscious life.' And in saying this, it was the. wonder and the contradiction of these living walls that moved my thoughts.

* And who told you that ? * he said gravely. ' Did you think God so sterile in invention that He was able to give to man alone the power of thinking and of loving ? Your wise men told you that flowers had marriages: did they not also tell you that flowers had thought? Was there nothing that looked out of the eyes of dumb animals like that which looked

THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 2J

from the eyes of men ? And why call them dumb, when it was plain they talked to one another, you perhaps seeming to them just what they seemed to you, — dumb also, because they could not teach you their language ? And did you never walk in a wood at daybreak or at nightfall, and hear the leaves speaking? Listen now to what you hear, and say what it resembles/

And again the long sigh of life went through all the place, marvellously like the sound of leaves innumerable shaken in a forest, or of little waves that talked along a shore.

* You hear,' he said. * God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. It is of the nature of God to abhor death. The very walls and pillars of this house are living things that gladly serve Him — the very rivets of the universe are alive, and have His pulse in them.'

And as the Angel spoke my eyes fell before his glance, so that once more I took note of the pavement at my feet And straightway there came to me a memory of how I had once looked down through clear sea-water in a little cove beside a reef of coral, and had seen strange things ; for each instant fishes wonderful in colour, like pieces of a broken rainbow, swam past; and what had seemed pulp and sand stirred and took a shape ; and great sea-flowers opened silently and closed again as though they breathed ; and the sea's bottom seemed a kingdom, where a hundred cities in miniature existed, each one swarming with inhabitants. And even so, looking down through this translucent pavement, I saw [forms and faces unnumbered, ever and again floating so near the surface, as it might be called, that I withdrew my feet for fear that I should injure or dishonour these submerged flowers of life.

* You marvel much at this,* said the Angel, *yet in the world from which you came all things were the same. Trees and flowers and birds and the creatures you call dumb all have a spiritual form and essence. To man God gave five senses only ; but there was a sixth, which here and there a wise man possessed, by which he saw the spiritual that dwelt always in the earthly. Such men spoke in fables only, and even then men of the five senses thought them mad ; but when they said they heard the spirit of the tree lamenting as the woodman^s axe crashed through the tender bark ; or spoke of fairies dwelling in the flowers, or of the spirit of the wind, or of the shapes of the dead gliding softly through the fields that they had loved, they did but speak the truth. They saw these things, for they possessed the sixth sense. They saw the world as utterly alive in every vein and pore.

* What you see here is but the fulness of what they saw in part yonder, ^here is nothing inanimate where God isT^ Yea, did not Christ say, that if men had not praised Him the very stones of the street would have cried out ; for He knew well that even the stones had life, and felt what foot it was that trod them.'

And behold, at the name of Christ, all these palaces of God seemed to shudder with an awful joy, and the walls cried Alleluia,

' Look at your child, and you will understand,' said the angel, ' Watch him.'

And, as I looked, I saw that the child had stooped his face above the rose he held, and was talking ta it. And while he spoke the rose in his hand changed shape and colour, expanding mystically, till presently it seemed a little globe of flame; and the ilame became whiter and purer each instant, till wings sprang out of it, as wings emerge from the broken chrysalis ; and then a human shape came to it, like a new-bom child ; and the child grew till, lo, it was a fair maiden ; and the maiden stood beside my son, radiant as he, each finding joy in the aspect of the other,

*He always said that flowers had souls/ I murmured, and my thoughts went back to that dark house, and that grey room, where I had often watched the child talking to a flower.

• He had the sixth sense,' said the angel, * He was right'

• And that was why we thought him strange?* *That was why: he was a poet You thought

him strange, but to him it was a much stranger thing that you did not see what he saw. You did not know how lonely the child was, and so God took him/

'I loved him,' I said, with proud resentment, for the words cut me like a reproach.

• You loved him, yes : but you did not understand,' said the angel in a tone so soft, that I knew he pitied me. The time would have come when you would have bid him put his foolish dreams away. You would have had him taught some task against which his heart rebelled. You would presently have had him enlist in the race for what dull men value most — gold. You would even have been angry because he did not succeed. Do not interrupt, — I know. As time went on, you and he would have g^own more and more estranged You would not have minded so much if other men had seen anything beautiful or wonderful about his gift ; but it was destined that many, many years should pass before that could happen. And in the meantime he was weak and sickly ; he would have suffered much ; he would have felt bitterly your disappointment in him, and would have known himself incapable of preventing it ; his life would have been a tragedy. Only now and then does God let the poet live out his full days on earth, for only at long intervals does there rise a man capable of enduring the bitter discipline, and triumphing. Your child would not have triumphed. He would have been bruised and hurt beyond endurance in the struggle, and worst of all, his gift would have perished. So God took him. God is kind.'

I trembled at the words, yet something told me they were true. I remembered that I had had great visions of my child's success in life. And as I thought, looking in the crystal at my feet, I saw a spot of darkness like a spreading cloud, and it formed itself into a picture. The picture of a narrow garret with one smoke-grimed window ; of a youth lying on a poor bed, pale and sad ; a table beside him with a crust of bread, and many papers ; a letter in his hand, which bore my name, over which we wept The picture vanished almost in the instant that it came ; and instead of it the crystal held a multitude of faces, listening radiant with pleasure, open-lipped and eager, while a youth sang to them some ecstatic song.

*You have seen: was it not better so?' said the angeL

And I, with bowed head, answered humbly, * Yea ; it is well with the child.'

And once more the living music throbbed through all the place, and far-off a multitude of voices cried * Alleluia^* and then a great silence fell

Ill

THE SANCTUARY OF THE WIND

From the great gateway of the House of Dreams the road slopes earthward, and it is by this road the pilgrims of eternity reach the infinite.

Near the gateway this road is broad and firm like a solid sea, but in the great distances it becomes a film of splendour, and lastly a mere thread of light, like a slender bridge, uniting earth with heaven. Worlds innumerable hang in clusters in the deep abyss, like gold or silver fruit upon a tree whose branches are concealed ; and here and there a stain of light upon the sky shows where worlds are being born, and here and there a fading point of red declares some world whose work is done quietly burning out, as a candle in a socket. And the sky is not as it is with us, a great expanse of blue with stars and planets at long intervals, but it is sown so thick with stars that there is no night there, nor can be.

c

For beyond all forms and shapes that the eye can see, there still move clouds of glittering dust, like the sand-pillars in a desert ; yet is each grain of this star-dust a world larger than the earth, and each world obeys silently the rhythmic order of the heavens.

Now It happened in my dream, as I watched this supreme vision of the works of God, that I saw afar off something moving like a bead of light along the road that led earthward; and even as I looked it came nearer, travelling with a speed inconceivable, till at last I discerned a company of angels, bearing in their midst the newly-dead. And the angels and the newly-dead passed into the House of Dreams, and as they entered bade me follow. And then there came straightway to my mind what the child had said about the silver and the golden tablets whereby men were judged, and a strong curiosity moved me to see what these things meant.

Now as one enters the House of Dreams the first place that is reached is a great vestibule, which is called the Sanctuary of the Wind. It has neither roof nor walls as we count such things ; but ten thousand angels make a wall around it, and living forms rise over it in lessening tiers, so that it is as though one looked up into the leafy height of a great

THE SANCTUARY OF THE WIND 3$

forest, only that each leaf is a face ; and as though one looked round on the far-ranged colonnades of the forest, but behold, each tree is an angel, motionless and solemn. And this again is noticeable : that all these congregated forms stand open-lipped and eager as if waiting for a sign to speak, and listening or watching for a footfall: so that expectation hangs tremulous upon the air. The silence of the place is dreadful ; yet is the silence, as it were, sound suspended, not extinguished : for the pulse of breathing runs through the dome and walls, as though a common heart beat through this living temple, measuring the moments of the infinite. In this great vestibule the angels laid the newly dead.

For a time I dared not look upon the Thing that lay upon the bier in the very centre of this silence, for my human repugnance to death was still strong upon me. Yet it lay there so lonely that I could have wept for it The limbs were straightened out in decent composure : the hands lay upon the breast in utter humbleness, the grey and awful face bore the aspect of an infinite surprise and pain. In this realm of perfect life it seemed a thing anomalous and dreadful.

The Angel at my side again read my thoughts, and said, *Come near, and look upon the dead,' and I came, and behold it was the woman I had seen with the infant at her breast beside the Church of St Clement Danes. ' She is dead/ I said, with awe.

* She is not dead, but sleepeth,' he replied.

And even as he spoke a strange thing began to happen. For far up in the apex of the dome a glow began to spread, ever overflowing in warmer radiance, till all the dome became one living rose of light. And the light, still rippling downward, touched the walls, and stained them also with the colour of the living rose, so that it seemed as though I stood within the inverted calyx of a glorious flower. And the glow fell upon the face of the dead woman, so that the greyness and awfulness went out of it ; and the years, as well as the shadow of death, fell from it like a mist, leaving it young and bright. He who has seen the sunrise on a great array of snow-clad mountains may faintly figure what this thing meant ; for even as the icy peaks, quiet and cold as death, become instantly the fire-robed archangels of the day, so this light came as the essential light of life, transfiguring all it touched.

' And now,' said the Angel, * listen, for the mystic Wind is about to blow.'

* And what Wind is that ? ' I said ; for his words

THE SANCTUARY OF THE WIND 37

seemed so strange that I comprehended them not

* The Wind is the Wind of the Maker/ he replied. * It is the Soul of God who breathes through all things. It IS never seen, it is rarely felt; yet it is. Did not one of your own poets say of the awakening of the earth in spring, * Thou sendest forth thy wind, they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the earth ' ? And did not a yet greater One speak of the wind that blew where it listed, of which men heard the sound indeed, but knew not whence it came or whither it went ? Nay, hast not thou thyself known the coming and the going of the Wind of the Maker in the soul ; and have not your poets, and others in whom the sixth sense dwelt, spoken of waiting for the inspiration of the Highest, and of all their best work as not their own, but the utterance of some other Power that spoke and thought within and through them ? *

And as he spoke many memories came to me of the things which men had said of strange pressures on their spirits, and sudden births of impulse in their hearts, and I wondered much that I had never understood them. Yet, perhaps, they understood not themselves ; speaking only in an unintelligible language of things beyond their reach.

And while I thought, far-off there pealed the voice of a trumpet, very faint yet clear, and then a great voice cried, ' Blow, O wind, on these dry bones, that they may live!' And the voice cried thrice, and the innumerable angels, crowded tier on tier, stooped eager-lipped and listening, and the silence deepened.

And then, at last, it came : a soft rushing of divinest air, like the sigh of a sleeper ; and the faces of the angels were kindled into rapture as a fire is quickened by the draught, and a faint rustling of ten thousand plumes of flame filled the place, and I hid my face for very awe, yet was it the awe of a supreme delight. Thrice had the Voice cried, and thrice there came that heavenly gust of air ; for the Godhead is Triune in all its acts and revelations. And the Wind touched the form upon the bier; and at its first breath the hands of the dead woman moved ; and at the second, a tiny pulse thrilled in her temples, and I saw the little veins grow bluer in the closed eyelids, and a smile hovered round her mouth ; and at the third, she sat up, and looked round like a child awakened from its dreams. And then the Wind came no more, but once again a Voice spake, at whose sound love and trembling filled the heart, crying, * I have the keys of Death and Hades, and am alive for evermore.' And I knew it was the Son of Man who spake.

THE SANCTUARY OF THE WIND 39

Far off through the worlds the mystic Wind sped, and I knew then that it was the Wind of Life, and that there was no more death. And I knew also that with God there is neither form nor substance, nor beginning nor end, yet is He the All, and is in all. For He alone needs no form, nor can be compassed by form; but inhabiteth eternity and so pervades all things.

And in that moment I remembered many of those earthly thoughts that had made a torture and a darkness of my mind. For it had often been to me a thing inconceivable that God should know and care for all the creatures He had made ; but now I saw that all my error lay in my foolish conception of God as form, for form imposes limits, and He is illimitable. And as all men dwell equally in the illimitable atmosphere, and breathe the common air, so all men dwell in God, and share equally in Him. And as one cannot dwell nearer to the atmosphere than another, so all men stand equally near to God, who folds them like an atmosphere. And so there is neither Nearness nor Famess with God, nor Place, nor Time, nor Number, nor Space nor Dimension ; He, alone being the Beginning and the End, and the First and the Last, and the One and the All, and His reckoning being not by years or centuries of years, but from Everlasting to Everlasting.

And behold, my thought uttered itself through my very silence, and a solemn whisper grew and gathered, the very air, as it were, crying, * He is from Everlasting to Everlasting.'

And the woman who had been dead stood beside the empty bier and smiled.

IV

While I stood lost in the wonder of these thoughts, the Angel, whom God had made my guide, spake and said, ' Now knowest thou the All-glorious ? *

And I replied, ' Yea, I have felt Him.'

* And knowest thou now what the Sixth Sense is ? ' he asked.

And I replied, ' It is the sense that sees where no vision is/

' And not that alone,' he answered ; ' it is also the perception of the imperceptible. For on earth men and women communicate mainly by speech, but here thought overhears thought, and silence has a thousand tongues. Hast thou not already felt the silence of this higher world, and found it blissful ? '

And, in truth, the place was very still. For all these angels that I saw spake no word either to other, nor was there any sound except that of the one word of praise that fell like the diapason of a breaking wave at intervals. Yet did their faces yearn either to other, and I perceived dimly that their thoughts embraced and were social. Also I remembered that already the Angel at my side had given me answers to my thought when the thought was yet unuttered, so that it was plain that here soul touched soul, and mind entered into mind by means and methods that man knows not of.

Also I perceived, and for the first time, that language, as we know it, is equally the embarrassment and the expression of the soul. For some men have it not, and can never rightly utter themselves ; and some possess it so imperfectly that it hides rather than displays their thought ; and some debase it, so that they say perpetually the things they do not mean. And love in its intensest ecstasy is silent, and sorrow also in its divinest woe is dumb. And lovers there are who dwell together through long years, yet grope blindly at the door of language which is locked between them, neither being able to clasp the other close in perfect unity, because neither can unlock this door of words. And, again, words wrongly uttered have set nations on fire, and bred estrangement, and sown the seeds of deadly enmity ; so that language has been but a bitter blessing at the best.

Also I perceived that even among men the human soul utters itself not by language only; for the painter speaks by the tongueless beauty of his art, and the sculptor by the voiceless lips of his immobile effigy, which is but dead marble after all. And lovers speak by clasped hands, and the glance of fond eyes, and the meeting of warm lips ; and the stars write their wisdom on the spectroscope without sound ; and across a crowd the faces of men flash messages, even as the heavens declare the glory of God across the abyss of space. And the angel read my thoughts, and said, * Come with me, that I may teach thee the mystery of the unuttered.*

Now in the eastmost portion of the Sanctuary of the Wind sprang a fountain, of the colour of amber, as though fire mingled in the water; and beside it grew a tree, which is the Tree of Knowledge. And of the fruit of this tree the Angel bade me taste, saying, 'When thou hast eaten, the Sixth Sense shall be fully thine.' And I ate ; and straightway a bitter pain smote me, as though the veil of being were rent in twain ; and after the pain came a joy that was itself akin to pain ; and then a sense of infinite felicity, and then a peace, which was the peace of God. And the Angel said, * What seest thou ? '

And I looked, and behold each angel in all that mighty concourse was a Thought, and when they moved the noise of their wings was like the voice of speech, and as the noise of a host Yet spake they no word either to other. And behold the brow of the angel at my side was like a fair crystal, on which shadows came and went, and images, and a starry fire ; and these also were thoughts, and I understood them. And there was nothing in his mind which I could not see, nor aught in me that was concealed from him. And our minds met and mingled, as the separate notes and chords blend in perfect music.

And I looked and saw a man and woman pass whom I had known on earth, and this was their story. They had been man and wife, but he dwelt solitary in a world of thought whither the woman could not follow him, for her mind was simple and unlearned, and his ever sought the veiled face of abstract Truth. And though they loved each other dearly, yet, as the years sped, a chasm grew between them ; and she sighed to see him so silent, but knew that if she spoke, her words would seem light and foolish to him ; and he saw her drift away from him, but had no power to hold her fast. And sometimes he was angry with her, and wondered if he had not been happier with another mate, whose mind would have been the twin-star of his own ; and often she lay awake at night, and thought, ' He had been a greater man without me : I am but a drag upon him after all.' And often she rose quietly in the night while he slept, and prayed that God would give her grace, and instruct her how to be a better helpmeet to him ; and at times she made desperate efforts to read the books he read, and understand them; but when she tried to speak of them he laughed, and told her plainly that such things were beyond her. And so it was as though a wall of ice came between them, through which they saw each other, and the house grew very cold ; so that, at last, the cold found the woman's heart, and she died. And then the man knew what he had lost, and his grief was terrible. He remembered a hundred things in her greater than wisdom, and wiser than the knowledge of the sages. He raged against himself, that he had never uttered the little foolish speeches of affection which a woman loves to hear, and which are as the unnoticed dew that keeps the flower of love fresh. Yet he also knew that if he had her back again, nothing would be altered ; for the man was reticent, and speech was always difficult to him, and his tongue perpetually betrayed him, saying ever the thing he did not mean. And it was this knowledge that broke his heart. It was the very rage of love that killed him, and he died in bitter silence. Yet now these two walked together, and their faces were as mirrors in which the same sky hangs reflected ; and though they spoke not, yet could I perceive the soul of each leaning out, as it were, to touch the other soul ; and sometimes they seemed but one, so commingled were they in each other, as bright flames perpetually are sucked into one another in a kind of rapture.

And the Angel said, * EJven so is it here. Those who love neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels.' '

And I saw yet another thing that was wonderful to me. For near the Tree of Knowledge sat one whom many men, and I also, had known on earth as one who held the keys of wisdom, and his face was grave and solemn, yet joyous withal. Now this man, toil as he would hkd never among men made his message quite clear : for the gift of words was denied him, and could not be won. And this was pain and grief to him, for though in his own mind truth shone like a sun, yet could not he impart his visions ; for in his hands language grew harsh and crabbed, and was as a muddy vesture flung upon the fair silver-shining form of truth. So the world paid little heed to him, saying briefly, * He is mad ' ; and the same world ran eagerly after many lesser men and praised them.