H. Rider Haggard

“ Oh! happy was her life with Anthony, for though now sex, as we know it, had ceased to be, spirit grew ever closer unto spirit, and, as below they dreamed and hoped, their union had indeed become an altar on which Love’s perfect fire flamed an offering to Heaven. Happy, too, was her communion with those other souls that had been mingled in her lot, and with many more whom she had known aforetime and elsewhere, and long forgotten. For Barbara learned that life is an ancient story of which we spell out the chapters one by one. ”

“ A woman descended from a carriage. She was finely dressed, dark and handsome. Barbara knew her at once for the girl, Bess Catton, who alone could manage her son in his rages, and whom she had dismissed for her bad conduct. She entered the place and they entered with her, although she saw them not. She sat down, and presently a man whom she seemed to know drew out of the throng and spoke to her. He was a tall man of middle age, with heavy eyes. Looking into his heart they saw that it was stained with evil. The soul within him lay asleep wrapped round with the webs of sin. ”

“ These yearned back to their darkness and attained sometimes to other coverings of a mortal flesh, or to some land of which Barbara had no knowledge. For such was their fate if in them there was no spark of repentant spirit that in this new world could be fanned to flame.
Upwards or downwards, such is the law of a universe in which nothing can stand still. Up from the earth which Barbara had left came the spirit shape of all that lived and could die, even to that of the flower. But down to the earth it seemed that much of it was whirled again, to ascend once more in an age to come ”

“ She drank of the wine, and a wonderful life fell upon her like a glory. “Who are you, O Vision?” she asked; and by way of answer, there rose up within her a picture of herself, Barbara, leaning over a cot and looking at the white face of a dead child in a certain room in London. ”

“ I swore to my mother that I never would, and had she been alive to-day—— But Bess always liked her glass, and drinking alone is no company. Ah! if my mother had lived everything would have been different, for I out-grew the bad fit and might have become quite a decent fellow. But then I met Bess again on the streets, and she had the old hold on me and there was none to keep me back, and she knew how to play her fish until I married her. ”

“ She learned that in this world beyond the world, that yet itself was but a rung in the ladder of many worlds, up which ladder all souls must climb to judgment, there was sorrow as well as bliss, there were both suffering and delight. ”

“ In this room seated round a table was a company of women gaudily dressed and painted, and with them were men. One of these was a mere boy now being drawn into evil for the first time, and Barbara grieved for him.
These welcomed the woman Bess and her companion noisily, and made room for them in seats near to the window. Then the meal began, a costly meal at which not much was eaten, but a great deal was drunk. The revellers grew excited with wine; they made jests and told foul stories.
Their son Anthony entered unobserved and stood with his back against the curtains. ”

“ I wonder what my mother thinks also, and my father, who was a good man by all accounts, though nobody seems to remember much about him. Supposing that they could see me now, supposing that they could have been at that supper party and witnessed the conjugal interview between me and the female creature who is my legal wife, what would they think? Well, they are dead and can’t, for the dead don’t come back. The dead are just a few double-handfuls of dirt, no more ”