第42章 THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION(2)

He got out of bed, he took his keys from the night-table at the bed head and went to his bureau.

He stood with Dale's tonic in his hand.He remained for some time holding it, and feeling a curious indisposition to go on with the thing in his mind.

He turned at last with an effort.He carried the little phial to his bedside, and into the tumbler of his water-bottle he let the drops fall, drop by drop, until he had counted twenty.Then holding it to the bulb of his reading lamp he added the water and stood watching the slow pearly eddies in the mixture mingle into an opalescent uniformity.He replaced the water-bottle and stood with the glass in his hand.But he did not drink.

He was afraid.

He knew that he had only to drink and this world of confusion would grow transparent, would roll back and reveal the great simplicities behind.And he was afraid.

He was afraid of that greatness.He was afraid of the great imperatives that he knew would at once take hold of his life.He wanted to muddle on for just a little longer.He wanted to stay just where he was, in his familiar prison-house, with the key of escape in his hand.Before he took the last step into the very presence of truth, he would--think.

He put down the glass and lay down upon his bed....

(3)

He awoke in a mood of great depression out of a dream of wandering interminably in an endless building of innumerable pillars, pillars so vast and high that the ceiling was lost in darkness.By the scale of these pillars he felt himself scarcely larger than an ant.He was always alone in these wanderings, and always missing something that passed along distant passages, something desirable, something in the nature of a procession or of a ceremony, something of which he was in futile pursuit, of which he heard faint echoes, something luminous of which he seemed at times to see the last fading reflection, across vast halls and wildernesses of shining pavement and through Cyclopaean archways.At last there was neither sound nor gleam, but the utmost solitude, and a darkness and silence and the uttermost profundity of sorrow....

It was bright day.Dunk had just come into the room with his tea, and the tumbler of Dr.Dale's tonic stood untouched upon the night-table.The bishop sat up in bed.He had missed his opportunity.To-day was a busy day, he knew.

"No," he said, as Dunk hesitated whether to remove or leave the tumbler."Leave that."Dunk found room for it upon the tea-tray, and vanished softly with the bishop's evening clothes.

The bishop remained motionless facing the day.There stood the draught of decision that he had lacked the decision even to touch.

From his bed he could just read the larger items that figured upon the engagement tablet which it was Whippham's business to fill over-night and place upon his table.He had two confirmation services, first the big one in the cathedral and then a second one in the evening at Pringle, various committees and an interview with Chasters.He had not yet finished his addresses for these confirmation services....

The task seemed mountainous--overwhelming.

With a gesture of desperation he seized the tumblerful of tonic and drank it off at a gulp.

(4)

For some moments nothing seemed to happen.

Then he began to feel stronger and less wretched, and then came a throbbing and tingling of artery and nerve.

He had a sense of adventure, a pleasant fear in the thing that he had done.He got out of bed, leaving his cup of tea untasted, and began to dress.He had the sensation of relief a prisoner may feel who suddenly tries his cell door and finds it open upon sunshine, the outside world and freedom.

He went on dressing although he was certain that in a few minutes the world of delusion about him would dissolve, and that he would find himself again in the great freedom of the place of God.

This time the transition came much sooner and much more rapidly.This time the phases and quality of the experience were different.He felt once again that luminous confusion between the world in which a human life is imprisoned and a circumambient and interpenetrating world, but this phase passed very rapidly; it did not spread out over nearly half an hour as it had done before, and almost immediately he seemed to plunge away from everything in this life altogether into that outer freedom he sought.And this time there was not even the elemental scenery of the former vision.He stood on nothing; there was nothing below and nothing above him.There was no sense of falling, no terror, but a feeling as though he floated released.There was no light, but as it were a clear darkness about him.Then it was manifest to him that he was not alone, but that with him was that same being that in his former vision had called himself the Angel of God.He knew this without knowing why he knew this, and either he spoke and was answered, or he thought and his thought answered him back.His state of mind on this occasion was altogether different from the first vision of God; before it had been spectacular, but now his perception was altogether super-sensuous.

(And nevertheless and all the time it seemed that very faintly he was still in his room.)It was he who was the first to speak.The great Angel whom he felt rather than saw seemed to be waiting for him to speak.

"I have come," he said, "because once more I desire to see God.""But you have seen God."

"I saw God.God was light, God was truth.And I went back to my life, and God was hidden.God seemed to call me.He called.Iheard him, I sought him and I touched his hand.When I went back to my life I was presently lost in perplexity.I could not tell why God had called me nor what I had to do.""And why did you not come here before?"

"Doubt and fear.Brother, will you not lay your hand on mine?"The figure in the darkness became distincter.But nothing touched the bishop's seeking hands.

"I want to see God and to understand him.I want reassurance.Iwant conviction.I want to understand all that God asks me to do.