by Howard Pyle
Michael did not speak to the angels, and they leaned over the edge of the gulf, looking down and holding their breaths.
Michael leaped into the air and ascended as he had descended, until he disappeared like a star in the zenith.
After all this had been accomplished the six angels turned and went back again. They climbed the rocks and the thorny wilderness, and as they ascended they came more and more into the light of heaven again.
The celestial beings were still waiting for them at the Gate of Pearls and upon the walls of heaven. They shouted when they saw the six angels returning. The angels, coming from the darkness, kept their eyes covered with their hands from the blinding glare of the light. As they came near their friends they all shouted in answer — except Daihas.
Daihas did not shout like the others; he did not shelter his eyes. His face shone, but it was very white. He did not speak to anyone, but walked on through the crowd and straight forward until he had come to his own house. He did not even speak to Aiha, but went to his own room and shut the door behind him.
She came directly and knocked at his door, but he would not answer. She knocked again and again, but he would not answer. Then she went away. While she knocked he listened, trying not to answer, and when she had gone his thoughts flew back again to where they had been before.
III.
TO HELL.
He thought first of all of that kitchen that smelled of burned fat of the two women, of the dog that he saw there, of the light of the candle and the fire, and it seemed to him that he loathed and hated it. Then he thought of the vision of himself, stretched, a dead, hollow, empty shell, on the rock of basalt in the midst of the white desert. His heart swelled and his ears hummed with a sudden black horror. Was that vision true? What if all the life and all the things of heaven with which he was surrounded — the gardens and the paradises, and all that he saw and felt and knew — were nothing but such a hollow shell, an empty vision conjured up to amuse and beguile him? What if all these, the joys of heaven, were only fancied joys in which he was to live forever as in the midst of that thin, dead, flimsy shell in which there was no real life?
He thought of that pitiful devil as he had last seen him, burning with awful fire, and running shrieking in his torment, up and down the narrow rock, until in the madness of his agony he flung himself into the black gulf beneath. When he thought of the agony that he had then beheld, his heart shrunk with an echoing agony of pity, of horror, of remorse. He had never seen human suffering before. At last the tears ran from his eyes; then he felt happier again.
He heard the voice of his wife and others talking in the house. They sounded beyond the closed doors and seemed very distant. As he listened to them his mind was filled with the thought of them. In the endeavor to hear what they were saying his mind went away for a little while from these other things, but it always returned again.
Aiha came knocking at the door again and told him to come and eat some food, but he would not go. She went away and came again. She went away and came again three times. Then, after a long while, he knew that the day had ended and that everybody was resting except himself.
About the middle of the night his mind clung most closely to the thought of that dreadful empty shell which was the representation of himself. It appeared as a horror of death and emptiness! Then he remembered one thing that the evil spirit had said — that if that image was without life there was at least life in the two women and the dog. It seemed to him as though there was no other choice left than between a hollow mockery called heaven, upon the one hand, and loathsome squalor called hell, upon the other. Nevertheless it had been said that hell was alive, and between a squalor of life and an emptiness of death who would not choose the squalor?
He tried again and again to call up again the vision of hell, but he could not. Then he heard a few notes of the birds in the garden without, and he knew by this that it was nearly morning. He tried again to form the vision of hell, and then, at last, there appeared the church. It was very dim. He tried again and it grew more substantial. He trembled; his mouth was clammy and his ears rang. He tried again. The vision of the church grew more and more substantial. It was real. He walked across the grass between the graves and passed in at the door. His hands were as cold as ice and he shook as with an ague. He went through the church and down into the vault. He shrunk shuddering from the rows of coffins upon either side. Through a crack in the cover of one of them he could see a dry and shining forehead. He stared at it, but still he passed along the aisle and pushed open the door at the further end. He was in the mill. The mill was silent. The stones did not turn, but the air was full of the smell of freshly ground flour. He passed through the mill and entered the kitchen, and it was just as it had been before — there was the smell of burning fat and the light of the candle and the light of the fire. There were the two women and the dog.
He stood for a while with his back against the door, holding the latch in his hand. There was another door in the other side of the kitchen. Suddenly it was violently opened, and the devil whom he had seen in torment upon the rock came into the kitchen. The devil came across the kitchen to Daihas. The angel would have escaped but he could not. The devil took him by the hand and led him into the middle of the room. Daihas shook and shuddered; he was dizzy with fear. The devil, still holding the angel’s hand in his hand, leaned forward and began whispering in his ear.
He told the angel all he knew of evil and of sin.
The angel looked at the women and listened to what the devil said.
* * * * *
Daihas snatched his hand away and cried out in a shrill and dreadful voice. He turned and tried to run out by the door, but he could not escape. The devil ran after him, laughing, and flung his arm around Daihas’s neck from behind, and before he could open the door the devil bent the angel’s head backward and kissed him on the lips.
Then Daihas broke away with another loud and terrible cry, and ran out of the door and through the mill and through the vault without thinking of the coffins. He ran through the church, leaving the doors open behind him. He felt as though he had been gone from his room a great while, but he had not. He crouched down in a corner, trembling and shuddering; the palms of his hands were wet with sweat; his teeth were locked together and his soul was heavy and sodden with all that he had heard and seen. His outside shell was still of heaven but he knew that he was now of hell within.
The day was breaking. He heard stir and movement going on in the house and the sound of voices. Suddenly he heard a violent opening and shutting of doors and running footsteps. They came to the door of his room. There was a sound of loud and hurried voices upon the other side. Aiha knocked at the door and called to him, in a shrill and piercing voice. “Daihas!” she cried, “come out and show your face. Something evil is come into the house and they say it has polluted heaven! Come out, Daihas! Come out!”
He did not answer. He heard the voice of one of the judges of the city. “Come out, Daihas,” called the judge; “let us see your face. What is it that has happened?”
* * * * *
Oh, woe, woe, for the time when the heart must show its obscenities upon the face! Woe, woe, for the time when the soul shall stand naked and devils shall laugh at the vile things seen, and angels shall shudder at the pollution! To everyone it must come — not the very least jot or tittle shall pass till all be fulfilled — but who among men would dare to open the door and face such damnation?
The fallen angel had that courage.
He arose slowly and heavily, weighed down by the weight of his sin. He dragged himself slowly and heavily across the room. He hesitated. He opened the door.
IV.
JUDGMENT.
Man, even if he be a devil or an angel, cannot sense pain beyond his limit.
All that passed was like a dim and bewildering vision. All that he saw in the streets of the city — the faces he beheld as they led him along those streets — all was like a nightmare. It di
d not seem as though anything was real.
The fallen angel stood for judgment in the judgment hall.
The judges and elders, shining like lightning, sat upon their golden thrones. They looked down upon the wretched one with beautiful, holy, unmerciful faces. He heard all that was said and answered all that was asked.
They pronounced judgment and he was condemned. He must quit the heaven in which he lived.
Whither should he go? He knew nothing but heaven and the world of spirits — and the vision of the kitchen. Despair came upon him and then he felt that they could not cast him out and that they could not harm him. Then he lifted up his voice and cried aloud in his despair, “I will not go! You shall not drive me out!”
There was a little space of silence. Then there was a great and sudden tumult. Daihas saw it all, though still as in a dream. He was turning his face slowly from right to left. Then it came to him as with a flash that they could not indeed cast him out of heaven. He had been Digitized by greater than them in his innocence and now he was greater than them in his pollution. They could not cast him out!
He heard a voice call upon Michael — then many voices calling “Michael! Michael! Michael!”
There came a blaze of light like a flash of lightning. Michael was there in the midst. He was there. He stood facing the fallen angel with awful archangelic front. The fallen one heard the archangel speak as though from a great distance. “Why do you remain here?” he said. “You are polluted.”
In all the universe the fallen angel saw only the archangel’ s face. His breath was hot in his throat. “I stay here,” he cried hoarsely, “because I want to live, and I have nowhere else to live.”
“You cannot live here,” said Michael; “you have polluted your angelhood, and you must go or you must die.” He held a living flame of fire in his hand. He raised his hand aloft.
The brain of Daihas expanded and rang like a crystal bubble. He tried to shut his eyes but he could not. He waited for the stroke. It was all like a vision; he thought that these things could not be so, and that all would presently pass. He heard a shriek. It was Aiha. She broke away from those who would have held her and flung herself upon her husband’s breast. She kissed his lips and he kissed hers — so she also became polluted.
Michael gave a loud cry and threw the fiery dart. Daihas heard Aiha scream as in echo even in the instant before he himself felt the dart. It pierced her back and his bosom. The agony! He screamed. He screamed again! The agony!. It did not seem to belong to him. He felt his limbs twist and writhe. He shrieked. The great hall, the people, the judges, the archangels whirled and spun and blurred before his dizzy eyes.
Oh! What then! In one instant he saw an awful vision. Heaven was gone. The angels, the judges, the judgment hall, the heavenly city, all except Michael and his wife — all appeared hollow, hideous empty shells with no life, but a dead and phosphorescent pallor. He still held Aiha in his arms. She still writhed; he felt her fainting. There were flames. The flames were from his mouth and nostrils. The purple blackness of death fell roaring upon him and then hummed into the silence of nothingness.
V.
TO THE SOIL OF THE EARTH.
He felt someone shaking him by the shoulder. He raised himself upon his elbow and looked around him, bewildered, like one first awakening from a sleep. Even as he awakened he smelled the savor of an aromatic odor in his nostrils. His wife was kneeling beside him shaking him by the shoulder.
He aroused himself. She was alive, and he was alive. Michael had not then destroyed them with living fire. He felt no ache, no pain, no smart. He was alive. An irrepressible joy swept like a great flood into his heart — a joy such as even heaven had never given him. He and she were alive — it was a real life.
He was upon his knees. He caught her in his arms. Her body was firm and warm. It seemed to him that she was firmer and warmer than she had ever been before, even in heaven. They kissed one another upon the lips. Neither spoke, they could not; the tears ran down from their eyes. They held one another very close, then slowly and reluctantly they loosed the embrace and stood on their feet.
“Where are we?” said she.
“I do not know,” said he, “only that we are together and that we are really alive.”
They looked about them and they saw that they were in a dark and shady forest. It was a forest of pine trees — dark, shadowy, silent. The trunks of the trees rose straight into the air; they were streaked gray and blue with resin. The wind moved through the branches overhead, now and then whispering and murmuring now and then roaring sonorously. Everything else was perfectly silent except for the far-away clamor of a flock of crows. The wind did not reach them where they were. The air was hot and was full of the odor of resin, and underneath the feet was a soft and balsamic mat of brown.
“I think we are in a woods,” said she. “I do not know where we are. Let us try to find our way out.”
“Yes, come; let us find our way out.”
They went away together hand in hand. They walked through the dark and silent woods for a long time. By and by the shadow of the woods grew less deep and after a while they came out into a sweet, fresh woodland of oak and beech and other trees. Now their feet rustled through great warm heaps of crisp dead leaves. They left a path of dark brown behind them, where the dry leaves were turned up by their footsteps. A damp, fragrant, earthy smell pervaded the air, cool after the warm stillness of the pines. The green and golden foliage above stirred and rustled ceaselessly. Quivering patches of golden sunlight shimmered and flickered everywhere. A little animal rustled suddenly in the leaves, and the wife caught the husband’s arm at the quick sound. There were timid, gentle wild birds in the thickets, and a wood bird far away in the misty green of the further depths sang a few limpid notes, speaking somehow of cool shady places and hidden streams. Another brief liquid song answered it from a distance, then there was silence again, only for the rushing of the wind through the leaves overhead. They came to a brook that ran gurgling between dark stones and rippled over a gravelly shallow. They crossed the brook by stepping from stone to stone. Little fish shot, shadow-like, hither and thither at their passing. Beyond the brook they came to a roadway cut through the leaves and winding around the trees. They followed it, and by and by the woodlands began to grow thinner and the trees more young and slender. The sun shone down in broad, warm patches of light, the grass was high and green. They came to a broad shining pond with alders growing along the margin. There were thickets all about them, and flowers and taller clumps of grass. The air smelled fragrant of mint.
Beyond the thickets they came out into the dry grassy edge of an open field. Behind them were the thickets and the pond and the woods; before them the little field sloped up steeply in the broad, warm sun, to a low stone wall and a white gate. There was a white, dusty road beyond the wall and the gate, then another wall, then a low white farmhouse with green trees about it and white outbuildings behind it; then a pasture where cows and sheep were grazing, then the sharp crest of the hill with a tree against the sky. A sweet, warm wind swept over the grassy hill and blew the hair of the young woman across her face. A cock crew in the sun and they could see pigeons flying about the eaves of the barn. It was all very strange and wonderful to the two fallen angels.
Then they saw a sight that was still more wonderful to them. They saw a man working. They had never before seen one toil at labor. A man was ploughing in the same field where they stood, driving the furrows straight. He wore no coat. Now and then he shouted to the horses. A flock of black birds followed behind him in the moist purple furrows.
The man did not see them until he had reached the end of the furrow and had turned his plough out of the earth. He turned the horses with a jerk, and as he did so he saw the two fallen angels standing, looking wonderingly at him. Then he drew the lines and stopped the horses. He wrapped the lines about the handle of the plough and came through the grass to where they stood. He was lean and strong and he had a hairy chin
and throat. He wore a coarse linen shirt and the shirt was wet with sweat. The back of his hands and wrists were burned hard and brown with the sun and with toil, and were covered with hair; he took off his hat as he reached them, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “Who are you?” said he.
“We do not know,” said they (for they had forgotten their names).
“Where did you come from?”
“We came from what is called heaven.” The man stared at them wonderingly with pale gray eyes. “From heaven!” he repeated.
“What were you doing?” asked the fallen angel.
“I was working.”
“I do not understand.”
“I was ploughing,” said the man.
“I do not understand.”
“I was turning up the earth to plant fresh seed.”
“I do not understand.”
The man wondered. “I see, now, that you do indeed come from heaven,” he said. “It is this way with planting. The earth must be turned up so that which is underneath comes upon the top, and the grass and the things that grow are turned underneath. Then seed is sprinkled in the earth. The seed grows and becomes ripe, and produces more seed. Then the seed is gathered and is ground into flour, and the flour is made into bread, and the bread is eaten.”
“I understand what bread is, for they eat bread in heaven.”
The man laughed. “That is true,” said he, “but if we down here did not plough the earth, they up yonder could not eat.”