But was it possible to feel desolate in Heaven? Life now filled to the horizon. Our business, our studies, and our pleasures occupied every moment. Every day new expedients of delight unfurled before us. Our conceptions of happiness increased faster than their realization. The imagination itself grew, as much as the aspiration. We saw height beyond height of joy, as we saw outline above outline of duty. How paltry looked our wildest earthly dream! How small our largest worldly deed! One would not have thought it possible that one could even want so much as one demanded here; or hope so far as one expected now.

What possibilities stretched on; each leading to a larger, like newly-discovered stars, one beyond another; as the pleasure or the achievement took its place, the capacity for the next increased. Satiety or its synonyms passed out of our language, except as a reminiscence of the past. See, what were the conditions of this eternal problem. Given: a pure heart, perfect health, unlimited opportunity for usefulness, infinite chance of culture, home, friendship, love; the elimination from practical life of anxiety and separation; and the intense spiritual stimulus of the presence of our dear Master, through whom we approached the mystery of God—how incredible to anything short of experience the sum of happiness!

I soon learned how large a part of our delight consisted in anticipation; since now we knew anticipation without alloy of fear. I thought much of the joys in store for me, which yet I was not perfected enough to attain. I looked onward to the perpetual meeting of old friends and acquaintances, both of the living and the dead; to the command of unknown languages, arts, and sciences, and knowledges manifold; to the grandeur of helping the weak, and revering the strong; to the privilege of guarding the erring or the tried, whether of earth or heaven, and of sharing all attainable wisdom with the less wise, and of even instructing those too ignorant to know that they were not wise, and of ministering to the dying, and of assisting in bringing together the separated. I looked forward to meeting select natures, the distinguished of earth or Heaven; to reading history backward by contact with its actors, and settling its knotty points by their evidential testimony. Was I not in a world where Loyola, and Jeanne d’Arc, or Luther, or Arthur, could be asked questions?

I would follow the experiments of great discoverers, since their advent to this place. What did Newton, and Columbus, and Darwin in the eternal life?

I would keep pace with the development of art. To what standard had Michael Angelo been raising the public taste all these years?

I would join the fragments of those private histories which had long been matter of public interest. Where, and whose now, was Vittoria Colonna?

I would have the finales of the old Sacred stories. What use had been made of the impetuosity of Peter? What was the private life of Saint John? With what was the fine intellect of Paul now occupied? What was the charm in the Magdalene? In what sacred fields did the sweet nature of Ruth go gleaning? Did David write the new anthems for the celestial chorals? What was the attitude of Moses towards the Persistence of Force? Where was Judas? And did the Betrayed plead for the betrayer?

I would study the sociology of this explanatory life. Where, if anywhere, were the Cave-men? In what world, and under what educators, were the immortal souls of Laps and Bushmen trained? What social position had the early Christian martyrs? What became of Caligula, whose nurse, we were told, smeared her breasts with blood, and so developed the world-hated tyrant from the outraged infant? Where was Buddha, “the Man who knew”? What affectionate relation subsisted between him and the Man who Loved?

I would bide my time patiently, but I, too, would become an experienced traveler through the spheres. Our Sun I would visit, and scarlet Mars, said by our astronomers below to be the planet most likely to contain inhabitants. The colored suns I would observe, and the nebulÆ, and the mysteries of space, powerless now to chill one by its reputed temperature, said to be forever at zero. Where were the Alps of Heaven? The Niagara of celestial scenery? The tropics of the spiritual world? Ah, how I should pursue Eternity with questions!

What was the relation of mechanical power to celestial conditions? What use was made of Watts and Stevenson?

What occupied the ex-hod-carriers and cooks?

Where were all the songs of all the poets? In the eternal accumulation of knowledge, what proportion sifted through the strainers of spiritual criticism? What were the standards of spiritual criticism? What became of those creations of the human intellect which had acquired immortality? Were there instances where these figments of fancy had achieved an eternal existence lost by their own creators? Might not one of the possible mysteries of our new state of existence be the fact of a world peopled by the great creatures of our imagination known to us below? And might not one of our pleasures consist in visiting such a world? Was it incredible that Helen, and Lancelot, and Sigfried, and Juliet, and Faust, and Dinah Morris, and the Lady of Shalott, and Don Quixote, and Colonel Newcome, and Sam Weller, and Uncle Tom, and Hester Prynne and Jean Valjean existed? could be approached by way of holiday, as one used to take up the drama or the fiction, on a leisure hour, down below?

Already, though so short a time had I been in the upper life, my imagination was overwhelmed with the sense of its possibilities. They seemed to overlap one another like the molecules of gold in a ring, without visible juncture or practical end. I was ready for the inconceivable itself. In how many worlds should I experience myself? How many lives should I live? Did eternal existence mean eternal variety of growth, suspension, renewal? Might youth and maturity succeed each other exquisitely? Might individual life reproduce itself from seed, to flower, to fruit, like a plant, through the cycles? Would childhood or age be a matter of personal choice? Would the affectional or the intellectual temperaments at will succeed each other? Might one try the domestic or the public career in different existences? Try the bliss of love in one age, the culture of solitude in another? Be oneself yet be all selves? Experience all glories, all discipline, all knowledge, all hope? Know the ecstasy of assured union with the one creature chosen out of time and Eternity to complement the soul? And yet forever pursue the unattainable with the rapture and the reverence of newly-awakened and still ungratified feeling?

Ah me! was it possible to feel desolate even in Heaven?

I think it may be, because I had been much occupied with thoughts like these; or it may be that, since my dear mother’s coming, I had been, naturally, thrown more by myself in my desire to leave those two uninterrupted in their first reunion—but I must admit that I had lonely moments, when I realized that Heaven had yet failed to provide me with a home of my own, and that the most loving filial position could not satisfy the nature of a mature man or woman in any world. I must admit that I began to be again subject to retrospects and sadnesses which had been well brushed away from my heart since my advent to this place. I must admit that in experiencing the immortality of being, I found that I experienced no less the immortality of love.

Had I to meet that old conflict here? I never asked for everlasting life. Will He impose it, and not free me from that? God forgive me! Have I evil in my heart still? Can one sin in Heaven? Nay, be merciful, be merciful! I will be patient. I will have trust. But the old nerves are not dead. The old ache has survived the grave.

Why was this permitted, if without a cure? Why had death no power to call decay upon that for which eternal life seemed to have provided no health? It had seemed to me, so far as I could observe the heavenly society, that only the fortunate affections of preËxistence survived. The unhappy, as well as the imperfect, were outlived and replaced. Mysteries had presented themselves here, which I was not yet wise enough to clear up. I saw, however, that a great ideal was one thing which never died. The attempt to realize it often involved effects which seemed hardly less than miraculous.

But for myself, events had brought no solution of the problems of my past; and with the tenacity of a constant nature I was unable to see any for the future.

I mused one evening, alone with these long thoughts. I was strolling upon a wide, bright field. Behind me lay the city, glittering and glad. Beyond, I saw the little sea which I had crossed. The familiar outline of the hills uprose behind. All Heaven seemed heavenly. I heard distant merry voices and music. Listening closely, I found that the Wedding March that had stirred so many human heart-beats was perfectly performed somewhere across the water, and that the wind bore the sounds towards me. I then remembered to have heard it said that Mendelssohn was himself a guest of some distinguished person in an adjacent town, and that certain music of his was to be given for the entertainment of a group of people who had been deaf-mutes in the lower life.

As the immortal power of the old music filled the air, I stayed my steps to listen. The better to do this, I covered my eyes with my hands, and so stood blindfold and alone in the midst of the wide field.

The passion of earth and the purity of Heaven—the passion of Heaven and the deferred hope of earth—what loss and what possession were in the throbbing strains!

As never on earth, they called the glad to rapture. As never on earth, they stirred the sad to silence. Where, before, had soul or sense been called by such a clarion? What music was, we used to dream. What it is, we dare, at last, to know.

And yet—I would have been spared this if I could, I think, just now. Give me a moment’s grace. I would draw breath, and so move on again, and turn me to my next duty quietly, since even Heaven denies me, after all.

I would—what would I? Where am I? Who spoke, or stirred? Who called me by a name unheard by me of any living lip for almost twenty years?

In a transport of something not unlike terror, I could not remove my hands from my eyes, but still stood, blinded and dumb, in the middle of the shining field. Beneath my clasped fingers, I caught the radiance of the edges of the blades of grass that the low breeze swept against my garment’s hem; and strangely in that strange moment, there came to me, for the only articulate thought I could command, these two lines of an old hymn:

“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green.”

“Take down your hands,” a voice said quietly. “Do not start or fear. It is the most natural thing in the world that I should find you. Be calm. Take courage. Look at me.”

Obeying, as the tide obeys the moon, I gathered heart, and so, lifting my eyes, I saw him whom I remembered standing close beside me. We two were alone in the wide, bright field. All Heaven seemed to have withdrawn to leave us to ourselves for this one moment.

I had known that I might have loved him, all my life. I had never loved any other man. I had not seen him for almost twenty years. As our eyes met, our souls challenged one another in silence, and in strength. I was the first to speak:

“Where is she?”

“Not with me.”

“When did you die?”

“Years ago.”

“I had lost all trace of you.”

“It was better so, for all concerned.”

“Is she—is she”—

“She is on earth, and of it; she has found comfort long since; another fills my place. I do not grieve to yield it. Come!”

“But I have thought—for all these years—it was not right—I put the thought away—I do not understand”—

“Oh, come! I, too, have waited twenty years.”

“But is there no reason—no barrier—are you sure? God help me! You have turned Heaven into Hell for me, if this is not right.”

“Did I ever ask you to give me one pitying thought that was not right?”

“Never, God knows. Never. You helped me to be right, to be noble. You were the noblest man I ever knew. I was a better woman for having known you, though we parted—as we did.”

“Then do you trust me? Come!”

“I trust you as I do the angels of God.”

“And I love you as His angels may. Come!”

“For how long—am I to come?”

“Are we not in Eternity? I claim you as I have loved you, without limit and without end. Soul of my immortal soul! Life of my eternal life!—Ah, come.”