The Secret Places of the HeartWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
The Secret Places of the Heart
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
England -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
Vanished now are the beliefs that held our race for countless
generations. Where now was that Path of the Dead, mapped so clearly,
faced with such certainty, in which the heliolithic peoples believed
from Avebury to Polynesia? Not always have we had to go alone and
unprepared into uncharted darknesses. For a time the dream artist used a
palette of the doctor’s vague memories of things Egyptian, he painted a
new roll of the Book of the Dead, at a copy of which the doctor had been
looking a day or so before. Sir Richmond became a brown naked figure,
crossing a bridge of danger, passing between terrific monsters, ferrying
a dark and dreadful stream. He came to the scales of judgment before the
very throne of Osiris and stood waiting while dogheaded Anubis weighed
his conscience and that evil monster, the Devourer of the Dead,
crouched ready if the judgment went against him. The doctor’s attention
concentrated upon the scales. A memory of Swedengorg’s Heaven and Hell
mingled with the Egyptian fantasy. Now at last it was possible to know
something real about this man’s soul, now at last one could look into
the Secret Places of his Heart. Anubis and Thoth, the god with the ibis
head, were reading the heart as if it were a book, reading aloud from it
to the supreme judge.
Suddenly the doctor found himself in his own dreams. His anxiety to
plead for his friend had brought him in. He too had become a little
painted figure and he was bearing a book in his hand. He wanted to show
that the laws of the new world could not be the same as those of the
old, and the book he was bringing as evidence was his own Psychology of
a New Age.
The clear thought of that book broke up his dream by releasing a train
of waking troubles.... You have been six months on Chapter Ten; will it
ever be ready for Osiris?... will it ever be ready for print?...
Dream and waking thoughts were mingled like sky and cloud upon a windy
day in April. Suddenly he saw again that lonely figure on the narrow way
with darknesses above and darknesses below and darknesses on every hand.
But this time it was not Sir Richmond.... Who was it? Surely it was
Everyman. Everyman had to travel at last along that selfsame road,
leaving love, leaving every task and every desire. But was it
Everyman?... A great fear and horror came upon the doctor. That little
figure was himself! And the book which was his particular task in life
was still undone. He himself stood in his turn upon that lonely path
with the engulfing darknesses about him....
He seemed to wrench himself awake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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