Маргарет Олифант
The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences
'A hundred years,—a drop in the bucket!' he said with his silent laugh. 'You will live forever, and you will come to my view; and we shall meet in the course of ages, from time to time, to compare notes. I would say good-by after the old fashion, but you are but newly arrived, and I will not treat you so badly as that.' With which he parted from me, waving his hand, with his everlasting horrible smile.
'Good-by!' I said to myself, 'good-by! why should it be treating me badly to say good-by—'
I was startled by a buffet on the mouth. 'Take that!' cried some one, 'to teach you how to wish the worst of tortures to people who have done you no harm.'
'What have I said? I meant no harm; I repeated only what is the commonest civility, the merest good manners.'
'You wished,' said the man who had struck me,—'I won't repeat the words: to me, for it was I only that heard them, the awful company that hurts most, that sets everything before us, both past and to come, and cuts like a sword and burns like fire. I'll say it to yourself, and see how it feels. God be with you! There! it is said, and we all must bear it, thanks, you fool and accursed, to you.'
And then there came a pause over all the place, an awful stillness,—hundreds of men and women standing clutching with desperate movements at their hearts as if to tear them out, moving their heads as if to dash them against the wall, wringing their hands, with a look upon all their convulsed faces which I can never forget. They all turned to me, cursing me with those horrible eyes of anguish. And everything was still; the noise all stopped for a moment, the air all silent, with a silence that could be felt. And then suddenly out of the crowd there came a great piercing cry; and everything began again exactly as before.
While this pause occurred, and while I stood wondering, bewildered, understanding nothing, there came over me a darkness, a blackness, a sense of misery such as never in all my life—though I have known troubles enough—I had felt before. All that had happened to me throughout my existence seemed to rise pale and terrible in a hundred scenes before me,—all momentary, intense, as if each was the present moment. And in each of these scenes I saw what I had never seen before. I saw where I had taken the wrong instead of the right step, in what wantonness, with what self-will it had been done; how God (I shuddered at the name) had spoken and called me, and even entreated, and I had withstood and refused. All the evil I had done came back, and spread itself out before my eyes; and I loathed it, yet knew that I had chosen it, and that it would be with me forever. I saw it all in the twinkling of an eye, in a moment, while I stood there, and all men with me, in the horror of awful thought. Then it ceased as it had come, instantaneously, and the noise and the laughter, and the quarrels and cries, and all the commotion of this new bewildering place, in a moment began again. I had seen no one while this strange paroxysm lasted. When it disappeared, I came to myself, emerging as from a dream, and looked into the face of the man whose words, not careless like mine, had brought it upon us. Our eyes met, and his were surrounded by curves and lines of anguish which were terrible to see.
'Well,' he said with a short laugh, which was forced and harsh, 'how do you like it? that is what happens when—If it came often, who could endure it?' He was not like the rest. There was no sneer upon his face, no gibe at my simplicity. Even now, when all had recovered, he was still quivering with something that looked like a nobler pain. His face was very grave, the lines deeply drawn in it; and he seemed to be seeking no amusement or distraction, nor to take any part in the noise and tumult which was going on around.
'Do you know what that cry meant?' he said. 'Did you hear that cry? It was some one who saw—even here once in a long time, they say, it can be seen—'
'What can be seen?'
He shook his head, looking at me with a meaning which I could not interpret. It was beyond the range of my thoughts. I came to know after, or I never could have made this record. But on that subject he said no more. He turned the way I was going, though it mattered nothing what way I went, for all were the same to me. 'You are one of the new-comers?' he said; 'you have not been long here—'
'Tell me,' I cried, 'what you mean by here. Where are we? How can one tell who has fallen—he knows not whence or where? What is this place? I have never seen anything like it. It seems to me that I hate it already, though I know not what it is.'
He shook his head once more. 'You will hate it more and more,' he said; 'but of these dreadful streets you will never be free, unless—' And here he stopped again.
'Unless—what? If it is possible, I will be free of them, and that before long.'
He smiled at me faintly, as we smile at children, but not with derision.
'How shall you do that? Between this miserable world and all others, there is a great gulf fixed. It is full of all the bitterness and tears that come from all the universe. These drop from them, but stagnate here. We, you perceive, have no tears, not even at moments—' Then, 'You will soon be accustomed to all this,' he said. 'You will fall into the way. Perhaps you will be able to amuse yourself to make it passable. Many do. There are a number of fine things to be seen here. If you are curious, come with me and I will show you. Or work,—there is even work. There is only one thing that is impossible, or if not impossible—' And here he paused again and raised his eyes to the dark clouds and lurid sky overhead. 'The man who gave that cry! if I could but find him! he must have seen—'
'What could he see?' I asked. But there arose in my mind something like contempt. A visionary! who could not speak plainly, who broke off into mysterious inferences, and appeared to know more than he would say. It seemed foolish to waste time, when evidently there was still so much to see, in the company of such a man; and I began already to feel more at home. There was something in that moment of anguish which had wrought a strange familiarity in me with my surroundings. It was so great a relief to return out of the misery of that sharp and horrible self-realization, to what had come to be, in comparison, easy and well known. I had no desire to go back and grope among the mysteries and anguish so suddenly revealed. I was glad to be free from them, to be left to myself, to get a little pleasure perhaps like the others. While these thoughts passed through my mind, I had gone on without any active impulse of my own, as everybody else did; and my latest companion had disappeared. He saw, no doubt, without any need for words, what my feelings were. And I proceeded on my way. I felt better as I got more accustomed to the place, or perhaps it was the sensation of relief after that moment of indescribable pain. As for the sights in the streets, I began to grow used to them. The wretched creatures who strolled or sat about with signs of sickness or wounds upon them disgusted me only, they no longer called forth my pity. I began to feel ashamed of my silly questions about the hospital. All the same, it would have been a good thing to have had some receptacle for them, into which they might have been driven out of the way. I felt an inclination to push them aside as I saw other people do, but was a little ashamed of that impulse too; and so I went on. There seemed no quiet streets, so far as I could make out, in the place. Some were smaller, meaner, with a different kind of passengers, but the same hubbub and unresting movement everywhere. I saw no signs of melancholy or seriousness; active pain, violence, brutality, the continual shock of quarrels and blows, but no pensive faces about, no sorrowfulness, nor the kind of trouble which brings thought. Everybody was fully occupied, pushing on as if in a race, pausing for nothing.
The glitter of the lights, the shouts, and sounds of continual going, the endless whirl of passers-by, confused and tired me after a while. I went as far out as I could go to what seemed the out-skirts of the place, where I could by glimpses perceive a low horizon all lurid and glowing, which seemed to sweep round and round. Against it in the distance stood up the outline, black against that red glow, of other towers and house-tops, so many and great that there was evidently another town between us and the sunset, if sunset it was. I have seen a western sky like it when there were storms about, and all the colors of the sky were heightened and darkened by angry influences. The distant town rose against it, cutting the firmament so that it might have been tongues of flame flickering between the dark solid outlines; and across the waste open country which lay between the two cities, there came a distant hum like the sound of the sea, which was in reality the roar of that other multitude. The country between showed no greenness or beauty; it lay dark under the dark overhanging sky. Here and there seemed a cluster of giant trees scathed as if by lightning, their bare boughs standing up as high as the distant towers, their trunks like black columns without foliage. Openings here and there, with glimmering lights, looked like the mouths of mines; but of passengers there were scarcely any. A figure here and there flew along as if pursued, imperfectly seen, a shadow only a little darker than the space about. And in contrast with the sound of the city, here was no sound at all, except the low roar on either side, and a vague cry or two from the openings of the mine,—a scene all drawn in darkness, in variations of gloom, deriving scarcely any light at all from the red and gloomy burning of that distant evening sky.
A faint curiosity to go forwards, to see what the mines were, perhaps to get a share in what was brought up from them, crossed my mind. But I was afraid of the dark, of the wild uninhabited savage look of the landscape; though when I thought of it, there seemed no reason why a narrow stretch of country between two great towns should be alarming. But the impression was strong and above reason. I turned back to the street in which I had first alighted, and which seemed to end in a great square full of people. In the middle there was a stage erected, from which some one was delivering an oration or address of some sort. He stood beside a long table, upon which lay something which I could not clearly distinguish, except that it seemed alive, and moved, or rather writhed with convulsive twitchings, as if trying to get free of the bonds which confined it. Round the stage in front were a number of seats occupied by listeners, many of whom were women, whose interest seemed to be very great, some of them being furnished with note-books; while a great unsettled crowd coming and going, drifted round,—many, arrested for a time as they passed, proceeding on their way when the interest flagged, as is usual to such open-air assemblies. I followed two of those who pushed their way to within a short distance of the stage, and who were strong, big men, more fitted to elbow the crowd aside than I, after my rough treatment in the first place, and the agitation I had passed through, could be. I was glad, besides, to take advantage of the explanation which one was giving to the other. 'It's always fun to see this fellow demonstrate,' he said, 'and the subject to-day's a capital one. Let's get well forward, and see all that's going on.'
'Which subject do you mean?' said the other; 'the theme or the example?'
And they both laughed, though I did not seize the point of the wit.
'Well, both,' said the first speaker. 'The theme is nerves; and as a lesson in construction and the calculation of possibilities, it's fine. He's very clever at that. He shows how they are all strung to give as much pain and do as much harm as can be; and yet how well it's all managed, don't you know, to look the reverse. As for the example, he's a capital one—all nerves together, lying, if you like, just on the surface, ready for the knife.'
'If they're on the surface I can't see where the fun is,' said the other.
'Metaphorically speaking. Of course they are just where other people's nerves are; but he's what you call a highly organized nervous specimen. There will be plenty of fun. Hush! he is just going to begin.'
'The arrangement of these threads of being,' said the lecturer, evidently resuming after a pause, 'so as to convey to the brain the most instantaneous messages of pain or pleasure, is wonderfully skilful and clever. I need not say to the audience before me, enlightened as it is by experiences of the most striking kind, that the messages are less of pleasure than of pain. They report to the brain the stroke of injury far more often than the thrill of pleasure; though sometimes that too, no doubt, or life could scarcely be maintained. The powers that be have found it necessary to mingle a little sweet of pleasurable sensation, else our miserable race would certainly have found some means of procuring annihilation. I do not for a moment pretend to say that the pleasure is sufficient to offer a just counterbalance to the other. None of my hearers will, I hope, accuse me of inconsistency. I am ready to allow that in a previous condition I asserted somewhat strongly that this was the case; but experience has enlightened us on that point. Our circumstances are now understood by us all in a manner impossible while we were still in a condition of incompleteness. We are all convinced that there is no compensation. The pride of the position, of bearing everything rather than give in, or making a submission we do not feel, of preserving our own will and individuality to all eternity, is the only compensation. I am satisfied with it, for my part.'
The orator made a pause, holding his head high, and there was a certain amount of applause. The two men before me cheered vociferously. 'That is the right way to look at it,' one of them said. My eyes were upon them, with no particular motive; and I could not help starting, as I saw suddenly underneath their applause and laughter a snarl of cursing, which was the real expression of their thoughts. I felt disposed in the same way to curse the speaker, though I knew no reason why.
He went on a little farther, explaining what he meant to do; and then turning round, approached the table. An assistant, who was waiting, uncovered it quickly. The audience stirred with quickened interest, and I with consternation made a step forwards, crying out with horror. The object on the table, writhing, twitching to get free, but bound down by every limb, was a living man. The lecturer went forwards calmly, taking his instruments from their case with perfect composure and coolness. 'Now, ladies and gentlemen,' he said, and inserted the knife in the flesh, making a long clear cut in the bound arm. I shrieked out, unable to restrain myself. The sight of the deliberate wound, the blood, the cry of agony that came from the victim, the calmness of all the lookers-on, filled me with horror and rage indescribable. I felt myself clear the crowd away with a rush, and spring on the platform, I could not tell how. 'You devil!' I cried, 'let the man go! Where is the police? Where is a magistrate? Let the man go this moment! fiends in human shape! I'll have you brought to justice!' I heard myself shouting wildly, as I flung myself upon the wretched sufferer, interposing between him and the knife. It was something like this that I said. My horror and rage were delirious, and carried me beyond all attempt at control.
Through it all I heard a shout of laughter rising from everybody round. The lecturer laughed; the audience roared with that sound of horrible mockery which had driven me out of myself in my first experience. All kinds of mocking cries sounded around me. 'Let him a little blood to calm him down.' 'Let the fool have a taste of it himself, doctor.' Last of all came a voice mingled with the cries of the sufferer whom I was trying to shield, 'Take him instead; curse him! take him instead.' I was bending over the man with my arms outstretched, protecting him, when he gave vent to this cry. And I heard immediately behind me a shout of assent, which seemed to come from the two strong young men with whom I had been standing, and the sound of a rush to seize me. I looked round, half mad with terror and rage; a second more and I should have been strapped on the table too. I made one wild bound into the midst of the crowd; and struggling among the arms stretched out to catch me, amid the roar of the laughter and cries—fled—fled wildly, I knew not whither, in panic and rage and horror which no words could describe. Terror winged my feet. I flew, thinking as little of whom I met, or knocked down, or trod upon in my way, as the others did at whom I had wondered a little while ago.
No distinct impression of this headlong course remains in my mind, save the sensation of mad fear such as I had never felt before. I came to myself on the edge of the dark valley which surrounded the town. All my pursuers had dropped off before that time; and I have the recollection of flinging myself upon the ground on my face in the extremity of fatigue and exhaustion. I must have lain there undisturbed for some time. A few steps came and went, passing me; but no one took any notice, and the absence of the noise and crowding gave me a momentary respite. But in my heat and fever I got no relief of coolness from the contact of the soil. I might have flung myself upon a bed of hot ashes, so much was it unlike the dewy cool earth which I expected, upon which one can always throw one's self with a sensation of repose. Presently the uneasiness of it made me struggle up again and look around me. I was safe; at least the cries of the pursuers had died away, the laughter which made my blood boil offended my ears no more. The noise of the city was behind me, softened into an indefinite roar by distance, and before me stretched out the dreary landscape in which there seemed no features of attraction. Now that I was nearer to it, I found it not so unpeopled as I thought. At no great distance from me was the mouth of one of the mines, from which came an indication of subterranean lights; and I perceived that the flying figures which I had taken for travellers between one city and another were in reality wayfarers endeavoring to keep clear of what seemed a sort of press-gang at the openings. One of them, unable to stop himself in his flight, adopted the same expedient as myself, and threw himself on the ground close to me when he had got beyond the range of pursuit. It was curious that we should meet there, he flying from a danger which I was about to face, and ready to encounter that from which I had fled. I waited for a few minutes till he had recovered his breath, and then, 'What are you running from?' I said. 'Is there any danger there?' The man looked up at me with the same continual question in his eyes,—Who is this fool?
'Danger!' he said. 'Are you so new here, or such a cursed idiot, as not to know the danger of the mines? You are going across yourself, I suppose, and then you'll see.'
'But tell me,' I said; 'my experience may be of use to you afterwards, if you will tell me yours now.'
'Of use!' he cried, staring; 'who cares? Find out for yourself. If they get hold of you, you will soon understand.'
I no longer took this for rudeness, but answered in his own way, cursing him too for a fool. 'If I ask a warning I can give one; as for kindness,' I said, 'I was not looking for that.'
At this he laughed, indeed we laughed together,—there seemed something ridiculous in the thought; and presently he told me, for the mere relief of talking, that round each of these pit-mouths there was a band to entrap every passer-by who allowed himself to be caught, and send him down below to work in the mine. 'Once there, there is no telling when you may get free,' he said; 'one time or other most people have a taste of it. You don't know what hard labor is if you have never been there. I had a spell once. There is neither air nor light; your blood boils in your veins from the fervent heat; you are never allowed to rest. You are put in every kind of contortion to get at it, your limbs twisted, and your muscles strained.'
'For what?' I said.
'For gold!' he cried with a flash in his eyes—'gold! There it is inexhaustible; however hard you may work, there is always more, and more!'
'And to whom does all that belong?' I said. 'To whoever is strong enough to get hold and keep possession,—sometimes one, sometimes another. The only thing you are sure of is that it will never be you.'
Why not I as well as another? was the thought that went through my mind, and my new companion spied it with a shriek of derision.
'It is not for you nor your kind,' he cried. 'How do you think you could force other people to serve you? Can you terrify them or hurt them, or give them anything? You have not learned yet who are the masters here.'
This troubled me, for it was true. 'I had begun to think,' I said, 'that there was no authority at all,—for every man seems to do as he pleases; you ride over one, and knock another down, or you seize a living man and cut him to pieces'—I shuddered as I thought of it—'and there is nobody to interfere.'
'Who should interfere?' he said. 'Why shouldn't every man amuse himself as he can? But yet for all that we've got our masters,' he cried with a scowl, waving his clinched fist in the direction of the mines; 'you'll find it out when you get there.'
It was a long time after this before I ventured to move, for here it seemed to me that for the moment I was safe,—outside the city, yet not within reach of the dangers of that intermediate space which grew clearer before me as my eyes became accustomed to the lurid threatening afternoon light. One after another the fugitives came flying past me,—people who had escaped from the armed bands whom I could now see on the watch near the pit's mouth. I could see too the tactics of these bands,—how they retired, veiling the lights and the opening, when a greater number than usual of travellers appeared on the way, and then suddenly widening out, throwing out flanking lines, surrounded and drew in the unwary. I could even hear the cries with which their victims disappeared over the opening which seemed to go down into the bowels of the earth. By and by there came flying towards me a wretch more dreadful in aspect than any I had seen. His scanty clothes seemed singed and burned into rags; his hair, which hung about his face unkempt and uncared for, had the same singed aspect; his skin was brown and baked. I got up as he approached, and caught him and threw him to the ground, without heeding his struggles to get on. 'Don't you see,' he cried with a gasp, 'they may get me again.' He was one of those who had escaped out of the mines; but what was it to me whether they caught him again or not? I wanted to know how he had been caught, and what he had been set to do, and how he had escaped. Why should I hesitate to use my superior strength when no one else did? I kept watch over him that he should not get away.
'You have been in the mines?' I said.
'Let me go!' he cried. 'Do you need to ask?' and he cursed me as he struggled, with the most terrible imprecations. 'They may get me yet. Let me go!'
'Not till you tell me,' I cried. 'Tell me and I'll protect you. If they come near I'll let you go. Who are they, man? I must know.'
He struggled up from the ground, clearing his hot eyes from the ashes that were in them, and putting aside his singed hair. He gave me a glance of hatred and impotent resistance (for I was stronger than he), and then cast a wild terrified look back. The skirmishers did not seem to remark that anybody had escaped, and he became gradually a little more composed. 'Who are they?' he said hoarsely. 'They're cursed wretches like you and me; and there are as many bands of them as there are mines on the road; and you'd better turn back and stay where you are. You are safe here.'
'I will not turn back,' I said.
'I know well enough: you can't. You've got to go the round like the rest,' he said with a laugh which was like a sound uttered by a wild animal rather than a human voice. The man was in my power, and I struck him, miserable as he was. It seemed a relief thus to get rid of some of the fury in my mind. 'It's a lie,' I said; 'I go because I please. Why shouldn't I gather a band of my own if I please, and fight those brutes, not fly from them like you?'
He chuckled and laughed below his breath, struggling and cursing and crying out, as I struck him again, 'You gather a band! What could you offer them? Where would you find them? Are you better than the rest of us? Are you not a man like the rest? Strike me you can, for I'm down. But make yourself a master and a chief—you!'
'Why not I?' I shouted again, wild with rage and the sense that I had no power over him, save to hurt him. That passion made my hands tremble; he slipped from me in a moment, bounded from the ground like a ball, and with a yell of derision escaped, and plunged into the streets and the clamor of the city from which I had just flown. I felt myself rage after him, shaking my fists with a consciousness of the ridiculous passion of impotence that was in me, but no power of restraining it; and there was not one of the fugitives who passed, however desperate he might be, who did not make a mock at me as he darted by. The laughing-stock of all those miserable objects, the sport of fate, afraid to go forwards, unable to go back, with a fire in my veins urging me on! But presently I grew a little calmer out of mere exhaustion, which was all the relief that was possible to me. And by and by, collecting all my faculties, and impelled by this impulse, which I seemed unable to resist, I got up and went cautiously on.
Fear can act in two ways: it paralyzes, and it renders cunning. At this moment I found it inspire me. I made my plans before I started, how to steal along under the cover of the blighted brushwood which broke the line of the valley here and there. I set out only after long thought, seizing the moment when the vaguely perceived band were scouring in the other direction intercepting the travellers. Thus, with many pauses, I got near to the pit's mouth in safety. But my curiosity was as great as, almost greater than my terror. I had kept far from the road, dragging myself sometimes on hands and feet over broken ground, tearing my clothes and my flesh upon the thorns; and on that farther side all seemed so silent and so dark in the shadow cast by some disused machinery, behind which the glare of the fire from below blazed upon the other side of the opening, that I could not crawl along in the darkness, and pass, which would have been the safe way, but with a breathless hot desire to see and know, dragged myself to the very edge to look down. Though I was in the shadow, my eyes were nearly put out by the glare on which I gazed. It was not fire; it was the lurid glow of the gold, glowing like flame, at which countless miners were working. They were all about like flies,—some on their knees, some bent double as they stooped over their work, some lying cramped upon shelves and ledges. The sight was wonderful, and terrible beyond description. The workmen seemed to consume away with the heat and the glow, even in the few minutes I gazed. Their eyes shrank into their heads; their faces blackened. I could see some trying to secret morsels of the glowing metal, which burned whatever it touched, and some who were being searched by the superiors of the mines, and some who were punishing the offenders, fixing them up against the blazing wall of gold. The fear went out of my mind, so much absorbed was I in this sight. I gazed, seeing farther and farther every moment into crevices and seams of the glowing metal, always with more and more slaves at work, and the entire pantomime of labor and theft, and search and punishment, going on and on,—the baked faces dark against the golden glare, the hot eyes taking a yellow reflection, the monotonous clamor of pick and shovel, and cries and curses, and all the indistinguishable sound of a multitude of human creatures. And the floor below, and the low roof which overhung whole myriads within a few inches of their faces, and the irregular walls all breached and shelved, were every one the same, a pandemonium of gold,—gold everywhere. I had loved many foolish things in my life, but never this; which was perhaps why I gazed and kept my sight, though there rose out of it a blast of heat which scorched the brain.
While I stooped over, intent on the sight, some one who had come up by my side to gaze too was caught by the fumes (as I suppose), for suddenly I was aware of a dark object falling prone into the glowing interior with a cry and crash which brought back my first wild panic. He fell in a heap, from which his arms shot forth wildly as he reached the bottom, and his cry was half anguish yet half desire. I saw him seized by half a dozen eager watchers, and pitched upon a ledge just under the roof, and tools thrust into his hands. I held on by an old shaft, trembling, unable to move. Perhaps I cried too in my horror,—for one of the overseers who stood in the centre of the glare looked up. He had the air of ordering all that was going on, and stood unaffected by the blaze, commanding the other wretched officials, who obeyed him like dogs. He seemed to me, in my terror, like a figure of gold, the image perhaps of wealth or Pluto, or I know not what, for I suppose my brain began to grow confused, and my hold on the shaft to relax. I had strength enough, however (for I cared not for the gold), to fling myself back the other way upon the ground, where I rolled backwards, downwards, I knew not how, turning over and over upon sharp ashes and metallic edges, which tore my hair and beard.—and for a moment I knew no more.
