The Land of Darkness: Along with Some Further Chapters in the Experiences of the Little PilgrimOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
The Land of Darkness: Along with Some Further Chapters in the Experiences of the Little Pilgrim
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Future life -- Fiction; Purgatory -- Fiction
‘If anything comes into your heart to do or say, it will be well for
them,’ the Sage replied: and he took her by the hand and led her into a
house she knew. She began to know them all now as her vision became
accustomed to the atmosphere of the earth. She perceived that the sun
was shining though it had appeared so dim, and that it was a clear
summer morning, very early, with still the colours of the dawn in the
east. When she went indoors at first she saw nothing, for the room was
darkened, the windows all closed, and a miserable watch light only
burning. In the bed there lay a child whom she knew. She knew them
all--the mother at the bedside, the father near the door, even the nurse
who was flitting about disturbing the silence. Her heart gave a great
throb when she recognised them all, and though she had been glad for the
first moment to think that she had come just in time to give welcome to
a little brother stepping out of earth into the better country, a shadow
of trouble and pain enveloped her when she saw the others and remembered
and knew. For he was their beloved child--on all the earth there was
nothing they held so dear; they would have given up their home and all
they possessed, and become poor and homeless and wanderers, with joy, if
God, as they said, would have but spared their child. She saw into
their hearts and read all this there, and knowing them she knew it
without even that insight. Everything they would have given up and
rejoiced, if but they might have kept him. And there he lay, and was
about to die. The little Pilgrim forgot all but the pity of it, and
their hearts that were breaking, and the vacant place that was soon to
be. She cried out aloud upon the Father with a great cry. She forgot
that it was a grief to Him in His great glory to refuse.
There came no reply: but the room grew light as with a reflection out of
heaven, and the child in the bed, who had been moving restlessly in the
weariness of ending life, turned his head towards her, and his eyes
opened wide and he saw her where she stood. He cried out, ‘Look! mother,
mother!’ The mother, who was on her knees by the bedside, lifted her
head and cried, ‘What is it, what is it, O my darling?’ and the father,
who had turned away his face not to see the child die, came nearer to
the bed, hoping they knew not what. Their faces were paler than the face
of the dying, upon which there was light; but no light came to them out
of the hidden heaven. ‘Look! she has come for me,’ he said; but his
voice was so weak they could not hear him, nor take any comfort. At this
the little Pilgrim put out her arms to him, forgetting in her joy the
poor people who were mourning, and cried out, ‘Oh, but I must go with
him. I must take him home!’ For this was her own work, and she thought
of her wonderings and her questions no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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