A Severe Mercy

by Sheldon Vanauken

  If my reasoning—my judgment—is correct, then her death in the dearness of our love had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealousy of God. It saved her faith from assault. It brought me, if Lewis is right, her far greater help from eternity. And it saved our love from perishing in one of the other ways that love could perish. Would I not rather our love go through death than hate?

  If her death did, in truth, have these results, it was, precisely, a severe mercy.

  Our love had to perish, Lewis says. Perish in its earthly form, at least, or perish utterly in hate or indifference. Perish unless it could be redeemed. But must we assume that God decreed her death? Or let her die when He could have healed her, because of the good results? Either question, it seems to me, is too simple. Qeation is a continuing act, I believe, and, although God allows us choice, His eternal will is acting upon the consequences. Our love, to be redeemed, would have had to die to its old self in both of us, both of us seeking first the Kingdom, both of us turning our eyes to Dante’s ‘eternal Fountain’, and each of us content in the other’s doing so. She would have been content. It took her death, ironical as it must seem, to make me content in her turning her gaze from me to the eternal Fountain.

  But then—did I doom her to death? How if I had turned to-wards the eternal Fountain with adoration? There would have been no jealousy then. Only the laughter of the Great Dance. ‘Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in)/Your earthly love.’ If I had, would she have begun to heal? Of course I do not know. I must not presume to answer, for God may have had purposes beyond my imagining. But I am at peace with the question.

  C. S. Lewis said in the Severe Mercy Letter that I would in the end come to think as he was thinking about our love but that I would think ‘far more deeply & fruitfully’ than he could because it would cost me so much more. This book is, in fact, the fruit of the thinking that my friend and my father-in-Christ, all those years ago, gave me to do. I said to him three years after that May letter, although my thinking was not yet done, that I felt a Tightness and harmony in Davy’s death.

  A year before her death, Davy offered-up her life for me, for the fulfilment of my soul. If I could cease to be jealous of God only through her death, if the love we both loved could only be saved through her death, if I would turn my eyes towards the eternal Fountain only through her death, is it unlikely that her offering-up was accepted?

  And if I offered-up all I was to God, whatever I thought I meant by that at the time, was I not, in fact, offering-up myself to God, pledging, as it were, to turn to the eternal Fountain? And would that not be her best good after the God in whom she had her being? It is awesomely mysterious: if she gave that which she offered, it would be the fulfilment of my soul; and if I gave that which I offered, it would be her best good after God. The Great Dance.

  There were other prayers besides the offerings-up. One year before she went into hospital, Davy, half-sick and with an intimation of death, prayed for one more year. Her symptoms were the same as those which were to be her death. After her prayer, she then got well and lively. C. S. Lewis was to say, years later, about someone else facing death and healed for awhile: ‘There can be miraculous reprieve as well as miraculous pardon.’ Davy prayed for the year. One year later, almost to the day, she was pronounced dying.

  The specialists’ prognosis was that she would die in coma or of bleeding. I prayed very hard that she not die in either of those ways but die, if she must die, clear-eyed and aware. She died improbably clear-eyed and fully aware. No horrors. As Lewis said, ‘a beautiful death, an act wh. consummates (not, as so often, an event wh. merely stops) the earthly life.’

  I prayed to be allowed to take her fear of death. She, under-standing this kind of substitution or carrying another’s burden, gave me the fear. And I took it, knowing it to be altogether different to my own fear of loss; and with all my strength and imagination entered in to her fear. She seemed to be improbably free of it. That, too, was an intimation of the Great Dance.

  Long years before I even knew Davy, my dog, Polly, was struck by a car. The vet said no hope, paralysed hind quarters, and wanted to put her out. But I thought that I, who loved her, must do it. I went back to Glenmerle and took Polly and my rifle and a piece of steak into the woods. She ate a bit of the steak to please me. And I stroked her and called her good dog till she went to sleep. Then I fired.

  There was something about Davy’s death that was, very remotely, like that. Considering the prayers and their answers and considering the events—her coming out of the coma, the merry little celebration of Christ’s birthday, and the way she died, taken up into the light—I cannot escape the impression that Somebody was being very gentle with us. Perhaps she had to die— for me, for our dear love, for God. And I had to live with grief, for God. But He was, perhaps, as gentle with us both as He could be.

  Our Shining Barrier love, however much we did not know of the meanings of God, was in many ways both innocent and good. Our subordination of self to the love was, at least, a step towards the dying to self that is the inexorable demand of Christ. We sought the beautiful and perhaps the good, and we came at last to Messiah. Our love was troubled for awhile by my heart’s paganism, but still we loved and neither of us was consumed by the cruel passions of self. In the end, all we asked of God, even the reprieve, was given us—all except the final healing. But our prayer for that was always conditional, mine by her best good, hers by the Kingdom’s good. Our love-under the aweful shadow —was deep and clear. If God saved our love—and, indeed, trans-formed it into its real and eternal self—in the only way possible, her death, it was for me, despite grief and aloneness, worth it. How much more worth it she, who has me to forgive in the Great Dance, may count it. We ended as we began—in love. We even ended as we began in another way, for, at the time of the coma, we were for a few fragile days young lovers wandering in the misty spring of vanished Glenmerle.

  Only Love Himself with a severe mercy could breach the Shining Barrier and, by breaching it, save that guarded love for the eternity it longed for; and the Love and the Law are one.

  Soon after that Ladywood May was over, with thoughts of eternity and the beginnings, at least, of thoughts on the severe mercy in my mind and with my grief in my heart, I went travelling. And on a moonlit June night I walked in between the gateposts of Glenmerle and down through the park by the old lily pond, now dried-up, to the bridge.

  *When Davy was first ill. we briefly thought she might be pregnant. In our first and last Christian reconsideration of children, we accepted that “baby”—to have and to hold. Our wills were submitted to God.

  CHAPTER X

  Epilogue: The Second Death

  DEAD COLLIE

  I’ll not catch such a flurry of living and grace,

  To chase down the wind is sheer folly:

  Just say that my life has a void lifeless place

  For a little dead collie.

  Still I muse on your goodness —so glad to be good —

  Free courtesy ruled your brief living,

  Never thinking you could disobey if you would,

  And purely forgiving.

  A whistle from me and you whirled from your play,

  Up ears and eager paws drumming,

  Your duty and wishes all one in the gay

  Swift rush of your coming.

  Even now a clear whistle might reach and surpass

  All limits and bring back the rushing

  Of printless gay paws running over the grass,

  And the silky head brushing.

  TWO YEARS HAVE PASSED since Davy’s death— it is again the dead of winter—and in those years grief has remained the salient fact of my existence. The Second Death is not yet, but one more link with Davy is broken when Flurry goes. She had been with us since pagan days in Grey Goose and at Horsebite, and she had charmed the student group. Flurry and Davy had had a delighted reunion on that last Christmas Day, and she had been the compani
on of my grief. Always I had been touched by her goodness. Sometimes at night when I went out to call her, I would know by distant barks that she was playing with other dogs, and I would wonder whether perhaps she might choose not to come to my whistle. But then in a moment there would be the swift patter of paws and a joyous whirlwind would arrive. There was an emptiness when she went, I hope, to join her mistress. My poem is really about them both.

  At this time, two years, almost to the day, after Davy’s death, I had the most remarkable dream—if it was a dream—of my whole life. I dream as most people do in fragmentary and half-remembered scenes. My dreams of Davy, however treasured, had been ordinary dream-like dreams. But now I had a dream—the ‘Oxford-Vision Dream’—so detailed, so significant, so completely unlike anything I ever dreamt before or after, that the great question was whether to believe that it represented a reality. I was as aware of its significance during the dream as I was afterwards. When I dreamed it, there at Mole End, I was about to sail for England; but in the dream I was already there, in Oxford. If the dream did represent truth—if I was dreaming true—then it was of God.

  THE OXFORD-VISION DREAM

  It was morning. I had come back to Oxford two years after Davy’s death and found digs, a ground-floor room with its own door opening onto a large garden with paths angling across it. I was just dressed to go out to an early lecture at the Schools. Morning sunlight was slanting in the windows. I heard a small sound and turned: it was Davy. I was fully aware that she was dead and, instantly and overwhelmingly, aware that something miraculous was happening. I was, I told myself, full awake.

  ‘Davy!’

  I cried. She smiled broadly. I felt pure joy as I took a step towards her, but I also felt a little tentative, hesitant.

  ‘It’s all right, dearling,’ she said, and held out her arms. I went into them, and we hugged each other and kissed—the kiss was heaven. But even in the joy, I was conscious, with a sort of amazement, that she was warm and solid. Weren’t ghosts supposed to be . . . But I could feel her shoulder blades under my hands. I stood back and looked at her. She looked just as she had always done, even to the slight dark circles under her eyes. I felt an immense gratitude to her, and to God for letting her come. There was, also, just a hint of shyness, tentativeness — not knowing quite what the rules were, so to speak, for this sort of thing. I, standing back, looked at her face, her clothes, all in a second or two.

  ‘Davy, Davy!’ I said.

  ‘Oh my dear!’ she said. Then she added, ‘I can’t stay long.’

  We went over and sat on the edge of the bed with our arms around each other, and I said something about being grateful for ever that she was there at all. Then I couldn’t resist asking her how she, in heaven, could have dark shadows under her eyes.

  She grinned, knowing me, and then said seriously, ‘I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you very much at all.’

  I grinned back at her. ‘That’s reasonable,’ I said. Then, after a little silence, I said, ‘Can you tell me one thing, dearling? Are you—well, with me sometimes? I’ve sometimes thought you might be.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘I know all your doings.’

  ‘Thank God!’ I said. Then I said, very casually, ‘And my letters to you—have you, um, read them? Over my shoulder, maybe?’

  She knew—we always knew—that it was important to me. Her arms around me tightened, and she said in a low voice, ‘Yes, dearling. I’ve read them all.’

  And then our eyes met in that look of perfect understanding —that look of knowing—that I had missed more than any other thing. After that, we just sat there on the edge of the bed, holding each other, cheek to cheek. There was more said, and there was laughter. And I was pervaded with bliss. I don’t recall her exact words, but she gave me to understand that she had wanted this meeting as much as I could have done; and I remember thinking that God had allowed it because He loved her.

  Finally, she said that she must go, and I accepted her going peacefully. She left by the door, and I leaned in the doorway, watching her go across the garden and through the alleyway. Then she was gone.

  I turned back into the room, thinking, ‘How I’ve been blessed!’ It was, of course, too late for the lecture. I would, I thought, go up to the High and get some breakfast. I put on my tie and jacket, thinking very happily about this wonder that had happened. Then—there she was again. But with a difference. She stood there, merely smiling a little; and now, I realised, I could see through her. Then, even as I watched, she lifted her hand in a little wave and faded and was gone.

  I murmured to myself, making a distinction that I don’t now fully understand: ‘This was an apparition and the other was a vision. Dear Davy! she came back again just to show me that she really is with me.’ And I smiled at the corner where she had been and perhaps still was. Then I went out.

  There was a great deal more of the dream, equally real and detailed: I went to breakfast, met friends, the waitress got muddled and forgot the bacon; I started to tell one of the chaps about the vision and then realised after a few words that no one who didn’t see it could believe it, so changed the subject. After breakfast I walked down towards the House with him, but left him and took shelter in St. Aldate’s porch when rain came on.

  Then I awoke in Virginia. What was I to make of this extra-ordinary dream? Was it just a dream? Or something more? I remembered what C. S. Lewis had said about the relationship between the significant and the fortuitous in the total act of creation. Then how could that dream be merely the accidental effect of whatever I had had for dinner? It must, I decided, on some level contain truth. It was a sort of ‘All shall be most well.’ It left me with a serene, peaceful happiness that lasted a long time.

  A fortnight later I was on shipboard, sailing for England. One night I came up on deck. It was bitter cold and ice drifted in the dark ocean. In my hand I held Davy’s grey-goose ring and her wedding ring with its ten little diamonds, one for each of the months we had known each other before I put it on her finger. And one for each chapter of this book, perhaps. Just a few more diamonds and there would have been one for each of our years. Now I dropped them quietly overboard into the deep sea.

  Liverpool, and the boat train to London. With me was a friend who had also been on the ship, and we were planning a fortnight in London before I went on to Oxford. But there on the train, rushing through the night, I was seized by a terrible urgency to get to Oxford. It was sudden; it was causeless; but it was irresistible. I’ve never known anything quite so powerful without some sort of reason. Still, I told my friend London was off. A taxi to Padding-ton, where I rang up a small hotel on the Banbury Road. Then the Oxford train. Another taxi—not looking out—to the hotel. I booked in and left my cases. Then I stepped out into the dark, misty Oxford night.

  Instantly I was overwhelmed—by Oxford. The air itself—the familiar mixture of coal smoke and mist. Bells were ringing some-where. Never has a place, just as a place—and only smell and sound at that—had such an impact on me. Davy!—she and I had left here together, in winter like this; and now I was coming back alone. This was the city, for us, of God. And the city of a hundred friends, though all, except the dons, were gone. I walked that night like a ghost about the town, hearing the bells, peering up in the darkness at St. Mary’s spire. The Turl and Jesus. The dark bulk of the Bodleian. Beaumont Street and, on St. John’s, the narrow passageway to Pusey Lane. I stood again in the cobbled lane in the mist and the light of the gaslamp. There was the Studio, dark and empty. The tears mixed with the mist on my face. Then in the darkness I walked to the village of Binsey and on to the churchyard where Edmund had scattered a handful of ashes. I sat there a long time on a mossy headstone, the song of the Lady sweet and kind humming through my mind. Coming back into Oxford I thought of the ‘Song of Two Lovers’—the line about being in Oxford in dark empty streets without a key. It could have been written for this night; but if there were an old grey house by the sea for Davy and me, it
must be waiting by the ocean of eternity.

  In the next days I found digs in Wellington Square—I was to be in England for half a year—and I called on the few people I knew. I had not exchanged letters with C. S. Lewis for several months—I tried to wait until I had something to say—and now I heard to my astonishment that he was married. He had said nothing of any such prospect in the letter I’d had in September which spoke of the ‘good, long talks’ we must have ‘and perhaps we shall both get high.’ As soon as I was settled in I wrote to him at Cam-bridge, saying that I was in England and was he, in fact, married?

  Lewis replied on March 7th:

  Yes. I have married (knowingly) a woman desperately ill, almost certainly dying: Joy Davidman whose Smoke on the Mountain you have probably read. She is in the Wingfield and of course I spend all of the week end I possibly can at her bed-side. If you cd. meet the 1.15 from Bletchley on Sat. we cd. lunch together at the Royal Oxford before I catch the bus for the hospital.

  We did so meet, and he told me of marrying Joy in a civil ceremony, simply as an act of friendship to prevent the Government deporting her to America as a communist, despite her being a lapsed communist and, in fact, a Jewish Christian. He and she had even drawn up a paper stating that the marriage was not a real one. But in less than a fortnight from our luncheon Lewis was to marry her sacramentally with a priest at the hospital bed-side. Lewis told me that he had come to love her, and he wanted to take her home to the Kilns to die. But he quite certainly said that he was in love with her.