George MacDonald - Lilith

She ceased with a smile and a look that seemed to say, “We are mother and son; we understand each other! Between us no farewell is possible.”

Mara kissed me on the forehead, and said, gayly,

“I told you, brother, all would be well!—When next you would comfort, say, ‘What will be well, is even now well.’”

She gave a little sigh, and I thought it meant, “But they will not believe you!”

“—You know me now!” she ended, with a smile like her mother’s.

“I know you!” I answered: “you are the voice that cried in the wilderness before ever the Baptist came! you are the shepherd whose wolves hunt the wandering sheep home ere the shadow rise and the night grow dark!”

“My work will one day be over,” she said, “and then I shall be glad with the gladness of the great shepherd who sent me.”

“All the night long the morning is at hand,” said Adam.

“What is that flapping of wings I hear?” I asked.

“The Shadow is hovering,” replied Adam: “there is one here whom he counts his own! But ours once, never more can she be his!”

I turned to look on the faces of my father and mother, and kiss them ere we went: their couches were empty save of the Little Ones who had with love’s boldness appropriated their hospitality! For an instant that awful dream of desolation overshadowed me, and I turned aside.

“What is it, my heart?” said Lona.

“Their empty places frightened me,” I answered.

“They are up and away long ago,” said Adam. “They kissed you ere they went, and whispered, ‘Come soon.’”

“And I neither to feel nor hear them!” I murmured.

“How could you—far away in your dreary old house! You thought the dreadful place had you once more! Now go and find them.—Your parents, my child,” he added, turning to Lona, “must come and find you!”

The hour of our departure was at hand. Lona went to the couch of the mother who had slain her, and kissed her tenderly—then laid herself in her father’s arms.

“That kiss will draw her homeward, my Lona!” said Adam.

“Who were her parents?” asked Lona.

“My father,” answered Adam, “is her father also.”

She turned and laid her hand in mine.

I kneeled and humbly thanked the three for helping me to die. Lona knelt beside me, and they all breathed upon us.

“Hark! I hear the sun,” said Adam.

I listened: he was coming with the rush as of a thousand times ten thousand far-off wings, with the roar of a molten and flaming world millions upon millions of miles away. His approach was a crescendo chord of a hundred harmonies.

The three looked at each other and smiled, and that smile went floating heavenward a three-petaled flower, the family’s morning thanksgiving. From their mouths and their faces it spread over their bodies and shone through their garments. Ere I could say, “Lo, they change!” Adam and Eve stood before me the angels of the resurrection, and Mara was the Magdalene with them at the sepulchre. The countenance of Adam was like lightning, and Eve held a napkin that flung flakes of splendour about the place.

A wind began to moan in pulsing gusts.

“You hear his wings now!” said Adam; and I knew he did not mean the wings of the morning.

“It is the great Shadow stirring to depart,” he went on. “Wretched creature, he has himself within him, and cannot rest!”

“But is there not in him something deeper yet?” I asked.

“Without a substance,” he answered, “a shadow cannot be—yea, or without a light behind the substance!”

He listened for a moment, then called out, with a glad smile, “Hark to the golden cock! Silent and motionless for millions of years has he stood on the clock of the universe; now at last he is flapping his wings! now will he begin to crow! and at intervals will men hear him until the dawn of the day eternal.”

I listened. Far away—as in the heart of an æonian silence, I heard the clear jubilant outcry of the golden throat. It hurled defiance at death and the dark; sang infinite hope, and coming calm. It was the “expectation of the creature” finding at last a voice; the cry of a chaos that would be a kingdom!

Then I heard a great flapping.

“The black bat is flown!” said Mara.

“Amen, golden cock, bird of God!” cried Adam, and the words rang through the house of silence, and went up into the airy regions.

At his AMEN—like doves arising on wings of silver from among the potsherds, up sprang the Little Ones to their knees on their beds, calling aloud,

“Crow! crow again, golden cock!”—as if they had both seen and heard him in their dreams.

Then each turned and looked at the sleeping bedfellow, gazed a moment with loving eyes, kissed the silent companion of the night, and sprang from the couch. The Little Ones who had lain down beside my father and mother gazed blank and sad for a moment at their empty places, then slid slowly to the floor. There they fell each into the other’s arms, as if then first, each by the other’s eyes, assured they were alive and awake. Suddenly spying Lona, they came running, radiant with bliss, to embrace her. Odu, catching sight of the leopardess on the feet of the princess, bounded to her next, and throwing an arm over the great sleeping head, fondled and kissed it.

“Wake up, wake up, darling!” he cried; “it is time to wake!”

The leopardess did not move.

“She has slept herself cold!” he said to Mara, with an upcast look of appealing consternation.

“She is waiting for the princess to wake, my child,” said Mara.

Odu looked at the princess, and saw beside her, still asleep, two of his companions. He flew at them.

“Wake up! wake up!” he cried, and pushed and pulled, now this one, now that.

But soon he began to look troubled, and turned to me with misty eyes.

“They will not wake!” he said. “And why are they so cold?”

“They too are waiting for the princess,” I answered.

He stretched across, and laid his hand on her face.

“She is cold too! What is it?” he cried—and looked round in wondering dismay.

Adam went to him.

“Her wake is not ripe yet,” he said: “she is busy forgetting. When she has forgotten enough to remember enough, then she will soon be ripe, and wake.”

“And remember?”

“Yes—but not too much at once though.”

“But the golden cock has crown!” argued the child, and fell again upon his companions.

“Peter! Peter! Crispy!” he cried. “Wake up, Peter! wake up, Crispy! We are all awake but you two! The gold cock has crown SO loud! The sun is awake and coming! Oh, why WON’T you wake?”

But Peter would not wake, neither would Crispy, and Odu wept outright at last.

“Let them sleep, darling!” said Adam. “You would not like the princess to wake and find nobody? They are quite happy. So is the leopardess.”

He was comforted, and wiped his eyes as if he had been all his life used to weeping and wiping, though now first he had tears wherewith to weep—soon to be wiped altogether away.

We followed Eve to the cottage. There she offered us neither bread nor wine, but stood radiantly desiring our departure. So, with never a word of farewell, we went out. The horse and the elephants were at the door, waiting for us. We were too happy to mount them, and they followed us.

It had ceased to be dark; we walked in a dim twilight, breathing through the dimness the breath of the spring. A wondrous change had passed upon the world—or was it not rather that a change more marvellous had taken place in us? Without light enough in the sky or the air to reveal anything, every heather-bush, every small shrub, every blade of grass was perfectly visible—either by light that went out from it, as fire from the bush Moses saw in the desert, or by light that went out of our eyes. Nothing cast a shadow; all things interchanged a little light. Every growing thing showed me, by its shape and colour, its indwelling idea—the informing thought, that is, which was its being, and sent it out. My bare feet seemed to love every plant they trod upon. The world and my being, its life and mine, were one. The microcosm and macrocosm were at length atoned, at length in harmony! I lived in everything; everything entered and lived in me. To be aware of a thing, was to know its life at once and mine, to know whence we came, and where we were at home—was to know that we are all what we are, because Another is what he is! Sense after sense, hitherto asleep, awoke in me—sense after sense indescribable, because no correspondent words, no likenesses or imaginations exist, wherewithal to describe them. Full indeed—yet ever expanding, ever making room to receive—was the conscious being where things kept entering by so many open doors! When a little breeze brushing a bush of heather set its purple bells a ringing, I was myself in the joy of the bells, myself in the joy of the breeze to which responded their sweet TIN-TINNING, [2] Tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota Che ’l ben disposto spirito d’ amor turge. DEL PARADISO, x. 142. myself in the joy of the sense, and of the soul that received all the joys together. To everything glad I lent the hall of my being wherein to revel. I was a peaceful ocean upon which the ground-swell of a living joy was continually lifting new waves; yet was the joy ever the same joy, the eternal joy, with tens of thousands of changing forms. Life was a cosmic holiday.