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<h1 class='c001'>The Light Invisible</h1></div>
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<div class='line'>“<i>She moves in tumult: round her lies</i></div>
<div class='line in3'><i>The silence of the world of grace;</i></div>
<div class='line in1'><i>The twilight of our mysteries</i></div>
<div class='line in3'><i>Shines like high noon-day on her face,</i></div>
<div class='line in1'><i>Our piteous guesses, dim with fears,</i></div>
<div class='line in1'><i>She touches, handles, sees, and hears.</i></div>
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<div class='line'>“<i>A willing sacrifice, she takes</i></div>
<div class='line in3'><i>The burden of our Fall within;</i></div>
<div class='line in1'><i>Holy she stands; while on her breaks</i></div>
<div class='line in3'><i>The lightning of the wrath of sin:</i></div>
<div class='line in1'><i>She drinks her Saviour’s Cup of pain,</i></div>
<div class='line in1'><i>And, one with Jesus, thirsts again.</i>”</div>
<div class='c006'><span class='sc'>The Contemplative Soul</span></div>
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<div class='nf-center'>
<div><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></div>
</div></div>
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<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>The Lord of the World</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>By What Authority?</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>The King’s Achievement</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>The Queen’s Tragedy</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>Richard Raynal, Solitary</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>The Sentimentalists</span></div>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>A Mirror of Shalott</span></div>
</div></div>
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<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>A Book of the Love of Jesus</span></div>
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<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div><span class='sc'>Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd.</span></div>
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<p class='c009'> </p>
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<div><span class='large'>The</span></div>
<div class='c000'><span class='xxlarge'>Light Invisible</span></div>
<div class='c000'><span class='large'>By</span></div>
<div class='c000'><span class='xlarge'>Robert Hugh Benson</span></div>
<div class='c000'><i>Author of</i></div>
<div class='c000'>“The King’s Achievement,” “By What Authority?”</div>
<div>“The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary,”</div>
<div>“A Book of the Love of Jesus,” etc.</div>
</div></div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c002'>
<div><span class='sc'>New York, Cincinnati, Chicago</span></div>
<div><span class='xlarge'>BENZIGER BROTHERS</span></div>
<div>PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE</div>
<div>1910</div>
</div></div>
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<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>Preface</h2></div>
<p class='c013'><i>My friend, whose talk I have reported in this book
so far as I am able, would be the first to disclaim
(as indeed he was always anxious to do) the rôle of
an accredited teacher, other than that which his
sacred office conferred on him.</i></p>
<p class='c009'><i>All that he claimed (and this surely was within
his rights) was to be at least sincere in his perceptions
and expressions of spiritual truth. His power,
as he was at pains to tell me, was no more than
a particular development of a faculty common to all
who possess a coherent spiritual life. To one Divine
Truth finds entrance through laws of nature, to
another through the medium of other sciences or arts;
to my friend it presented itself in directly sensible
forms. Had his experiences, however, even seemed
to contravene Divine Revelation, he would have
rejected them with horror: entire submission to the</i>
<i>Divine Teacher upon earth, as he more than once
told me, should normally precede the exercise of all
other spiritual faculties. The deliberate reversal of
this is nothing else than Protestantism in its extreme
form, and must ultimately result in the extinction of
faith.</i></p>
<p class='c009'><i>For the rest, I can add nothing to his own words.
It is of course more than possible that here and there
I have failed to present his exact meaning; but at
least I have taken pains to submit the book before
publication to the judgment of those whose theological
learning is sufficient to reassure me that at least I
have not so far misunderstood my friend’s words and
tales, as to represent him as transgressing the explicit
laws of ascetical, moral, mystical, or dogmatic
theology.</i></p>
<p class='c009'><i>To these counsellors I must express my gratitude,
as well as to others who have kindly given me the
encouragement of their sympathy.</i></p>
<div class='c006'><i>R. B.</i></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>Contents</h2></div>
<table class='table0' summary=''>
<colgroup>
<col width='90%' />
<col width='10%' />
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class='c014'> </td>
<td class='c015'><span class='small'>PAGE</span></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Green Robe</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch01'>1</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Watcher</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch02'>15</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Blood-Eagle</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch03'>29</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>Over the Gateway</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch04'>49</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>Poena Damni</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch05'>65</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>Consolatrix Afflictorum</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch06'>77</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Bridge over the Stream</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch07'>95</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>In the Convent Chapel</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch08'>107</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>Under which King?</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch09'>127</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>With Dyed Garments</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch10'>145</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>Unto Babes</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch11'>159</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Traveller</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch12'>181</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Sorrows of the World</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch13'>203</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>In the Morning</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch14'>227</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c014'><span class='sc'>The Expected Guest</span></td>
<td class='c015'><SPAN href='#ch15'>241</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
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<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch01'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Green Robe</span></p>
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<div class='line'>“To see a world in a grain of sand,</div>
<div class='line in3'>And a heaven in a wild flower;</div>
<div class='line in1'>Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,</div>
<div class='line in3'>And eternity in an hour.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>Blake.</i></div>
</div></div>
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<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Green Robe</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>The</span> old priest was silent for a moment.</p>
<p class='c009'>The song of a great bee boomed up
out of the distance and ceased as the white
bell of a flower beside me drooped suddenly
under his weight.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I have not made myself clear,” said
the priest again. “Let me think a minute.”
And he leaned back.</p>
<p class='c009'>We were sitting on a little red-tiled platform
in his garden, in a sheltered angle of
the wall. On one side of us rose the old
irregular house, with its latticed windows,
and its lichened roofs culminating in a bell-turret;
on the other I looked across the
pleasant garden where great scarlet poppies
hung like motionless flames in the hot
June sunshine, to the tall living wall of
yew, beyond which rose the heavy green
masses of an elm in which a pigeon
lamented, and above all a tender blue sky.
The priest was looking out steadily before
him with great childlike eyes that shone
strangely in his thin face under his white
hair. He was dressed in an old cassock
that showed worn and green in the high
lights.</p>
<p class='c009'>“No,” he said presently, “it is not faith
that I mean; it is only an intense form of
the gift of spiritual perception that God
has given me; which gift indeed is common
to us all in our measure. It is the
faculty by which we verify for ourselves
what we have received on authority and
hold by faith. Spiritual life consists partly
in exercising this faculty. Well, then,
this form of that faculty God has been
pleased to bestow upon me, just as He has
been pleased to bestow on you a keen
power of seeing and enjoying beauty where
others perhaps see none; this is called
artistic perception. It is no sort of credit
to you or to me, any more than is the
colour of our eyes, or a faculty for mathematics,
or an athletic body.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now in my case, in which you are
pleased to be interested, the perception
occasionally is so keen that the spiritual
world appears to me as visible as what
we call the natural world. In such
moments, although I generally know the
difference between the spiritual and the
natural, yet they appear to me simultaneously,
as if on the same plane. It
depends on my choice as to which of the
two I see the more clearly.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Let me explain a little. It is a
question of focus. A few minutes ago
you were staring at the sky, but you
did not see the sky. Your own thought
lay before you instead. Then I spoke
to you, and you started a little and
looked at me; and you saw me, and
your thought vanished. Now can you
understand me if I say that these sudden
glimpses that God has granted me, were
as though when you looked at the sky,
you saw both the sky and your thought
at once, on the same plane, as I have said?
Or think of it in another way. You know
the sheet of plate-glass that is across the
upper part of the fireplace in my study.
Well, it depends on the focus of your
eyes, and your intention, whether you see
the glass and the fire-plate behind, or the
room reflected in the glass. Now can you
imagine what it would be to see them all
at once? It is like that.” And he made
an outward gesture with his hands.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” I said, “I scarcely understand.
But please tell me, if you will, your first
vision of that kind.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“I believe,” he began, “that when I
was a child the first clear vision came to
me, but I only suppose it from my mother’s
diary. I have not the diary with me now,
but there is an entry in it describing how
I said I had seen a face look out of a wall
and had run indoors from the garden; half
frightened, but not terrified. But I remember
nothing of it myself, and my
mother seems to have thought it must
have been a waking dream; and if it were
not for what has happened to me since
perhaps I should have thought it a dream
too. But now the other explanation seems
to me more likely. But the first clear
vision that I remember for myself was as
follows:</p>
<p class='c009'>“When I was about fourteen years old I
came home at the end of one July for my
summer holidays. The pony-cart was at
the station to meet me when I arrived
about four o’clock in the afternoon; but
as there was a short cut through the woods,
I put my luggage into the cart, and started
to walk the mile and a half by myself.
The field path presently plunged into a
pine wood, and I came over the slippery
needles under the high arches of the pines
with that intense ecstatic happiness of
home-coming that some natures know so
well. I hope sometimes that the first
steps on the other side of death may be
like that. The air was full of mellow
sounds that seemed to emphasise the deep
stillness of the woods, and of mellow lights
that stirred among the shadowed greenness.
I know this now, though I did not know
it then. Until that day although the
beauty and the colour and sound of the
world certainly affected me, yet I was not
conscious of them, any more than of the
air I breathed, because I did not then know
what they meant. Well, I went on in this
glowing dimness, noticing only the trees
that might be climbed, the squirrels and
moths that might be caught, and the
sticks that might be shaped into arrows or
bows.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I must tell you, too, something of my
religion at that time. It was the religion
of most well-taught boys. In the fore-ground,
if I may put it so, was morality:
I must not do certain things; I must do
certain other things. In the middle distance
was a perception of God. Let me
say that I realised that I was present to
Him, but not that He was present to me.
Our Saviour dwelt in this middle distance,
one whom I fancied ordinarily tender,
sometimes stern. In the background there
lay certain mysteries, sacramental and
otherwise. These were chiefly the affairs
of grown-up people. And infinitely far
away, like clouds piled upon the horizon
of a sea, was the invisible world of heaven
whence God looked at me, golden gates and
streets, now towering in their exclusiveness,
now on Sunday evenings bright with a
light of hope, now on wet mornings unutterably
dreary. But all this was uninteresting
to me. Here about me lay the
tangible enjoyable world––this was reality:
there in a misty picture lay religion,
claiming, as I knew, my homage, but not
my heart. Well; so I walked through
these woods, a tiny human creature, yet
greater, if I had only known it, than these
giants of ruddy bodies and arms, and
garlanded heads that stirred above me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“My path presently came over a rise in
the ground; and on my left lay a long
glade, bordered by pines, fringed with
bracken, but itself a folded carpet of
smooth rabbit-cropped grass, with a quiet
oblong pool in the centre, some fifty yards
below me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I cannot tell you how the vision
began; but I found myself, without experiencing
any conscious shock, standing
perfectly still, my lips dry, my eyes smarting
with the intensity with which I had
been staring down the glade, and one foot
aching with the pressure with which I had
rested upon it. It must have come upon
me and enthralled me so swiftly that my
brain had no time to reflect. It was no
work, therefore, of the imagination, but a
clear and sudden vision. This is what I
remember to have seen.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I stood on the border of a vast
robe; its material was green. A great
fold of it lay full in view, but I was
conscious that it stretched for almost
unlimited miles. This great green robe
blazed with embroidery. There were
straight lines of tawny work on either side
which melted again into a darker green in
high relief. Right in the centre lay a pale
agate stitched delicately into the robe with
fine dark stitches; overhead the blue lining
of this silken robe arched out. I was conscious
that this robe was vast beyond conception,
and that I stood as it were in a
fold of it, as it lay stretched out on some
unseen floor. But, clearer than any other
thought, stood out in my mind the certainty
that this robe had not been flung down and
left, but that it clothed a Person. And
even as this thought showed itself a ripple
ran along the high relief in dark green, as
if the wearer of the robe had just stirred.
And I felt on my face the breeze of His
motion. And it was this I suppose that
brought me to myself.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And then I looked again, and all was
as it had been the last time I had passed
this way. There was the glade and the
pool and the pines and the sky overhead,
and the Presence was gone. I was a boy
walking home from the station, with dear
delights of the pony and the air-gun, and
the wakings morning by morning in my
own carpeted bedroom, before me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I tried, however, to see it again as I had
seen it. No, it was not in the least like a
robe; and above all where was the Person
that wore it? There was no life about me,
except my own, and the insect life that
sang in the air, and the quiet meditative
life of the growing things. But who was
this Person I had suddenly perceived?
And then it came upon me with a shock,
and yet I was incredulous. It could not
be the God of sermons and long prayers
who demanded my presence Sunday by
Sunday in His little church, that God Who
watched me like a stern father. Why
religion, I thought, told me that all was
vanity and unreality, and that rabbits and
pools and glades were nothing compared to
Him who sits on the great white throne.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I need not tell you that I never spoke of
this at home. It seemed to me that I had
stumbled upon a scene that was almost
dreadful, that might be thought over in
bed, or during an idle lonely morning in
the garden, but must never be spoken of,
and I can scarcely tell you when the time
came that I understood that there was but
one God after all.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man stopped talking. And I
looked out again at the garden without
answering him, and tried myself to see how
the poppies were embroidered into a robe,
and to hear how the chatter of the starlings
was but the rustle of its movement, the
clink of jewel against jewel, and the moan
of the pigeon the creaking of the heavy
silk, but I could not. The poppies flamed
and the birds talked and sobbed, but that
was all.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
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<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch02'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Watcher</span></p>
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<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Il faut d’abord rendre l’organe de</div>
<div class='line in1'>la vision analogue et semblable à</div>
<div class='line in1'>l’objet qu’il doit contempler.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>Maeterlinck.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Watcher</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>On</span> the following day we went out soon
after breakfast and walked up and
down a grass path between two yew hedges;
the dew was not yet off the grass that lay
in shadow; and thin patches of gossamer
still hung like torn cambric on the yew
shoots on either side. As we passed for the
second time up the path, the old man suddenly
stooped and pushing aside a dock-leaf
at the foot of the hedge lifted a dead mouse,
and looked at it as it lay stiffly on the palm
of his hand, and I saw that his eyes filled
slowly with the ready tears of old age.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He has chosen his own resting-place,”
he said. “Let him lie there. Why did I
disturb him?”––and he laid him gently
down again; and then gathering a fragment
of wet earth he sprinkled it over the mouse.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,” he said,
“in sure and certain hope”––and then he
stopped; and straightening himself with
difficulty walked on, and I followed him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You seemed interested,” he said, “in
my story yesterday. Shall I tell you how
I saw a very different sight when I was a
little older?” And when I had told him how
strange and attractive his story had been,
he began.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I told you how I found it impossible
to see again what I had seen in the glade.
For a few weeks, perhaps months, I tried
now and then to force myself to feel that
Presence, or at least to see that robe, but
I could not, because it is the gift of God,
and can no more be gained by effort than
ordinary sight can be won by a sightless
man; but I soon ceased to try.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I reached eighteen years at last, that
terrible age when the soul seems to have
dwindled to a spark overlaid by a mountain
of ashes––when blood and fire and
death and loud noises seem the only things
of interest, and all tender things shrink
back and hide from the dreadful noonday
of manhood. Some one gave me one of
those shot-pistols that you may have seen,
and I loved the sense of power that it gave
me, for I had never had a gun. For a
week or two in the summer holidays I was
content with shooting at a mark, or at the
level surface of water, and delighted to see
the cardboard shattered, or the quiet pool
torn to shreds along its mirror where the
sky and green lay sleeping. Then that
ceased to interest me, and I longed to see a
living thing suddenly stop living at my will.
Now,” and he held up a deprecating hand,
“I think sport is necessary for some
natures. After all, the killing of creatures
is necessary for man’s food, and sport as
you will tell me is a survival of man’s
delight in obtaining food, and it requires
certain noble qualities of endurance
and skill. I know all that, and I know
further that for some natures it is a relief––an
escape for humours that will otherwise
find an evil vent. But I do know this––that
for me it was not necessary.</p>
<p class='c009'>“However, there was every excuse, and
I went out in good faith one summer evening
intending to shoot some rabbit as he
ran to cover from the open field. I walked
along the inside of a fence with a wood
above me and on my left, and the green
meadow on my right. Well, owing
probably to my own lack of skill, though
I could hear the patter and rush of the
rabbits all round me, and could see them in
the distance sitting up listening with cocked
ears, as I stole along the fence, I could not
get close enough to fire at them with any
hope of what I fancied was success; and
by the time that I had arrived at the end
of the wood I was in an impatient mood.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I stood for a moment or two leaning
on the fence looking out of that pleasant
coolness into the open meadow beyond;
the sun had at that moment dipped behind
the hill before me and all was in shadow
except where there hung a glory about the
topmost leaves of a beech that still caught
the sun. The birds were beginning to
come in from the fields, and were settling
one by one in the wood behind me, staying
here and there to sing one last line of
melody. I could hear the quiet rush and
then the sudden clap of a pigeon’s wings
as he came home, and as I listened I heard
pealing out above all other sounds the long
liquid song of a thrush somewhere above
me. I looked up idly and tried to see the
bird, and after a moment or two caught
sight of him as the leaves of the beech
parted in the breeze, his head lifted and his
whole body vibrating with the joy of life
and music. As some one has said, his body
was one beating heart. The last radiance
of the sun over the hill reached him and
bathed him in golden warmth. Then the
leaves closed again as the breeze dropped,
but still his song rang out.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then there came on me a blinding
desire to kill him. All the other creatures
had mocked me and run home. Here at
least was a victim, and I would pour out
the sullen anger that had been gathering
during my walk, and at least demand this
one life as a substitute. Side by side with
this I remembered clearly that I had come
out to kill for food: that was my one
justification. Side by side I saw both these
things, and I had no excuse––no excuse.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I turned my head every way and
moved a step or two back to catch sight of
him again, and, although, this may sound
fantastic and overwrought, in my whole
being was a struggle between light and
darkness. Every fibre of my life told me
that the thrush had a right to live. Ah!
he had earned it, if labour were wanting,
by this very song that was guiding death
towards him, but black sullen anger had
thrown my conscience, and was now struggling
to hold it down till the shot had
been fired. Still I waited for the breeze,
and then it came, cool and sweet-smelling
like the breath of a garden, and the leaves
parted. There he sang in the sunshine,
and in a moment I lifted the pistol and
drew the trigger.</p>
<p class='c009'>“With the crack of the cap came silence
overhead, and after what seemed an interminable
moment came the soft rush of
something falling and the faint thud among
last year’s leaves. Then I stood half terrified,
and stared among the dead leaves.
All seemed dim and misty. My eyes were
still a little dazzled by the bright background
of sunlit air and rosy clouds on which I
had looked with such intensity, and the
space beneath the branches was a world of
shadows. Still I looked a few yards away,
trying to make out the body of the thrush,
and fearing to hear a struggle of beating
wings among the dry leaves.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And then I lifted my eyes a little, vaguely.
A yard or two beyond where the thrush lay
was a rhododendron bush. The blossoms
had fallen and the outline of dark, heavy
leaves was unrelieved by the slightest
touch of colour. As I looked at it, I
saw a face looking down from the higher
branches.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It was a perfectly hairless head and face,
the thin lips were parted in a wide smile of
laughter, there were innumerable lines about
the corners of the mouth, and the eyes
were surrounded by creases of merriment.
What was perhaps most terrible about it
all was that the eyes were not looking at
me, but down among the leaves; the heavy
eyelids lay drooping, and the long, narrow,
shining slits showed how the eyes laughed
beneath them. The forehead sloped quickly
back, like a cat’s head. The face was the
colour of earth, and the outlines of the
head faded below the ears and chin into the
gloom of the dark bush. There was no
throat, or body or limbs so far as I could
see. The face just hung there like a down-turned
Eastern mask in an old curiosity
shop. And it smiled with sheer delight,
not at me, but at the thrush’s body. There
was no change of expression so long as I
watched it, just a silent smile of pleasure
petrified on the face. I could not move
my eyes from it.</p>
<p class='c009'>“After what I suppose was a minute or
so, the face had gone. I did not see it go,
but I became aware that I was looking only
at leaves.</p>
<p class='c009'>“No; there was no outline of leaf, or play
of shadows that could possibly have taken
the form of a face. You can guess how I
tried to force myself to believe that that
was all; how I turned my head this way
and that to catch it again; but there was
no hint of a face.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now, I cannot tell you how I did it;
but although I was half beside myself with
fright, I went forward towards the bush
and searched furiously among the leaves
for the body of the thrush; and at last I
found it, and lifted it. It was still limp and
warm to the touch. Its breast was a little
ruffled, and one tiny drop of blood lay at
the root of the beak below the eyes, like a
tear of dismay and sorrow at such an unmerited,
unexpected death.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I carried it to the fence and climbed
over, and then began to run in great steps,
looking now and then awfully at the gathering
gloom of the wood behind, where the
laughing face had mocked the dead. I
think, looking back as I do now, that my
chief instinct was that I could not leave the
thrush there to be laughed at, and that I
must get it out into the clean, airy meadow.
When I reached the middle of the meadow
I came to a pond which never ran quite dry
even in the hottest summer. On the bank
I laid the thrush down, and then deliberately
but with all my force dashed the
pistol into the water; then emptied my
pockets of the cartridges and threw them
in too.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then I turned again to the piteous little
body, feeling that at least I had tried to
make amends. There was an old rabbit
hole near, the grass growing down in its
mouth, and a tangle of web and dead leaves
behind. I scooped a little space out
among the leaves, and then laid the thrush
there; gathered a little of the sandy soil
and poured it over the body, saying, I remember,
half unconsciously, ‘Earth to
earth, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain
hope’––and then I stopped, feeling I had
been a little profane, though I do not think
so now. And then I went home.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As I dressed for dinner, looking out over
the darkening meadow where the thrush
lay, I remember feeling happy that no evil
thing could mock the defenceless dead out
there in the clean meadow where the wind
blew and the stars shone down.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We reached in our going to and fro up
the yew path a little seat at the end standing
back from the path. Opposite us hung
a crucifix, with a pent-house over it, that
the old man had put up years before. As
he did not speak I turned to him, and saw
that he was looking steadily at the Figure
on the Cross; and I thought how He who
bore our griefs and carried our sorrows
was one with the heavenly Father, without
whom not even a sparrow falls to the
ground.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch03'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Blood-Eagle</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“And this I know: whether the one True Light</div>
<div class='line in1'>Kindle to Love or Wrath––consume me quite,</div>
<div class='line in3'>One glimpse of It within the Tavern caught</div>
<div class='line in1'>Better than in the Temple lost outright.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>Omar Khayyam.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Blood-Eagle</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>One</span> night when I went to my room I
found in a little shelf near the
window a book, whose title I now forget,
describing the far-off days when the religion
of Christ and of the gods of the
north strove together in England. I read
this for an hour or two before I went to
sleep, and again as I was dressing on the
following morning, and spoke of it at
breakfast.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes,” said the old man, “that was one
of my father’s books. I remember reading
it when I was a boy. I believe it is said to
be very ill-informed and unscientific in these
days. My parents used to think that all
religions except Christianity were of the
devil. But I think St. Paul teaches us a
larger hope than that.”</p>
<p class='c009'>He said nothing more at the time; but
in the course of the morning, as I was
walking up and down the raised terrace that
runs under the pines beside the drive, I
saw the priest coming towards me with a
book in his hand. He was a little dusty
and flushed.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I went to look for something that I
thought might interest you, after what you
said at breakfast,” he began, “and I have
found it at last in the loft.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We began to walk together up and down.</p>
<p class='c009'>“A very curious thing happened to me,”
he said, “when I was a boy. I remember
telling my father of it when I came home,
and it remained in my mind. A few years
afterwards an old professor was staying
with us; and after dinner one night, when
we had been talking about what you were
speaking of at breakfast, my father made
me tell it again, and when I had finished
the professor asked me to write it down
for him. So I wrote it in this book first;
and then made a copy and sent it to him.
The book itself is a kind of irregular diary
in which I used to write sometimes. Would
you care to hear it?”</p>
<p class='c009'>When I had told him I should like to
hear the story, he began again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I must first tell you the circumstances.
I was about sixteen years old. My parents
had gone abroad for the holidays, and I
went to stay with a school friend of mine at
his home not far from Ascot. We used
to take our lunch with us sometimes on
bright days––for it was at Christmas time––and
go off for the day over the heather.
You must remember that I was only a
schoolboy at the time, so I daresay I
exaggerated or elaborated some of the
details a little, but the main facts of the
story you can rely upon. Shall we sit
down while I read it?”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then when we had seated ourselves on a
bench that stood at the end of the terrace,
with the old house basking before us in the
hot sunshine, he began to read.</p>
<p class='c009'>“About six o’clock in the evening of
one of the days towards the end of January,
Jack and I were still wandering on high,
heathy ground near Ascot. We had walked
all day and had lost ourselves; but we kept
going in as straight a line as we could,
knowing that in time we should strike
across a road. We were rather tired and
silent; but suddenly Jack uttered an exclamation,
and then pointed out a light
across the heath. We stood a moment to
see if it moved, but it remained still.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘There can
be no house near here.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘It’s a broomsquire’s cottage, I expect,’
said Jack.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I asked what that meant.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Oh! I don’t know exactly,’ said Jack;
‘they’re a kind of gypsies.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“We stumbled on across the heather,
while the light grew steadily nearer. The
moon was beginning to rise, and it was a
clear night, one of those windless, frosty
nights that sometimes come after a wet
autumn. Jack plunged at one place into a
hidden ditch, and I heard the crackling of
ice as he scrambled out.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Skating to-morrow, by Jove,’ he said.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As we got closer I began to see that
we were approaching a copse of firs; the
heather began to get shorter. Then, as I
looked at the light, I saw there was a fixed
outline of a kind of house out of which it
shone. The window apparently was an
irregular shape, and the house seemed to
be leaning against a tall fir on the outskirts
of the copse. As we got quite close, our
feet noiseless on the soft heather, I saw that
the house was built altogether round the
fir, which served as a kind of central prop.
The house was made of wattled boughs,
and thatched heavily with heather.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I felt more and more anxious about it,
for I had never heard of ‘broomsquires,’
and also, I confess, a little timid; for the
place was lonely, and we were only two
boys. I was leading now, and presently
reached the window and looked in.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The walls inside were hung with blankets
and clothes to keep the wind out; there
was a long old settle in one corner, the floor
was carpeted with branches and blankets
apparently, and there was an opening opposite,
partly closed by a wattled hurdle that
leaned against it. Half sitting and half
lying on the settle, was an old woman with
her face hidden. An oil-lamp hung from
one of the branches of the fir that helped to
form the roof. There was no sign of any
other living thing in the place. As I looked
Jack came up behind and spoke over my
shoulder.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Can you tell us the way to the nearest
high-road?’ he asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The old woman sat up suddenly, with a
look of fright on her face. She was extraordinarily
dirty and ill-kempt. I could
see in the dim light of the lamp that she
had a wrinkled old face, with sunken dark
eyes, white eyebrows, and white hair; and
her mouth began to mumble as she looked
at us. Presently she made a violent gesture
to wave us from the window.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Jack repeated the question, and the old
woman got up and hobbled quietly and
crookedly to the door, and in a moment
she had come round close to us. I then
saw how very small she was. She could
not have been five feet tall, and was
very much bent. I must say again that
I felt very uneasy and startled with this
terrifying old creature close to me and
peering up into my face. She took me by
the coat and with her other hand beckoned
quickly away in every direction. She seemed
to be warning us away from the copse, but
still she said nothing.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Jack grew impatient.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Deaf old fool!’ he said in an undertone,
and then loudly and slowly, ‘Can
you tell us the way to the nearest high-road?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then she seemed to understand, and
pointed vigorously in the direction from
which we had come.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Oh! nonsense,’ said Jack, ‘we’ve
come from there. Come on this way,’
he said, ‘we can’t spend all night here.’
And then he turned the side of the little
house and disappeared into the copse.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The old woman dropped my coat in a
moment, and began to run after Jack, and
I went round the other side of the house
and saw Jack moving in front, for the firs
were sparse at the edge of the wood, and
the moonlight filtered through them. The
old woman, I saw as I turned into the wood,
had stopped, knowing she could not catch
us, and was standing with her hands
stretched out, and a curious sound, half cry
and half sob came from her. I was a little
uneasy, because we had not treated her with
courtesy, and stopped, but at that moment
Jack called.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’re sure to find
a road at the end of this.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“So I went on.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Once I turned and saw the little old
woman standing as before; and as I looked
between the trees she lifted one hand to her
mouth and sent a curious whistling cry after
us, that somehow frightened me. It seemed
too loud for one so small.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As we went on the wood grew darker.
Here and there in an open patch there lay
a white splash of moonlight on the fir
needles, and great dim spaces lay round us.
Although the wood stood on high ground,
the trees grew so thickly about us that we
could see nothing of the country round.
Now and then we tripped on a root, or else
caught in a bramble, but it seemed to me
that we were following a narrow path that
led deeper and deeper into the heart of
the wood. Suddenly Jack stopped and
lifted his hand.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Hush!’ he said.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I stopped too, and we listened breathlessly.
Then in a moment more,––––</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Hush!’ he said, ‘something’s
coming,’ and he jumped out of the path
behind a tree, and I followed him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then we heard a scuffling in front of us
and a grunting, and some big creature came
hurrying down the path. As it passed us I
looked, almost terrified out of my mind,
and saw that it was a huge pig; but the
thing that held me breathless and sick was
that there ran nearly the whole length of its
back a deep wound, from which the blood
dripped. The creature, grunting heavily,
tore down the path towards the cottage,
and presently the sound of it died away.
As I leaned against Jack, I could feel his
arm trembling as it held the tree.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Oh!’ he said in a moment, ‘we must
get out of this. Which way, which
way?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“But I had been still listening, and held
him quiet.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Wait,’ I said, ‘there is something
else.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Out of the wood in front of us there
came a panting, and the soft sounds of
hobbling steps along the path. We
crouched lower and watched. Presently
the figure of a bent old man came in sight,
making his way quickly along the path.
He seemed startled and out of breath. His
mouth was moving, and he was talking to
himself in a low voice in a complaining
tone, but his eyes searched the wood from
side to side.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As he came quite close to us, as we lay
hardly daring to breathe, I saw one of his
hands that hung in front of him, opening
and shutting; and that it was stained with
what looked black in the moonlight. He
did not see us, as by now we were hidden
by a great bramble bush, and he passed
on down the path; and then all was silent
again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When a few minutes had passed in
perfect stillness, we got up and went on,
but neither of us cared to walk in the path
down which those two terrible dripping
things had come; and we went stumbling
over the broken ground, keeping a parallel
course to the path for about another two
hundred yards. Jack had begun to recover
himself, and even began to talk and laugh
at being frightened at a pig and an old man.
He told me afterwards that he had not seen
the old man’s hand.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then the path began to lead uphill.
At this point I suddenly stopped Jack.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Do you see nothing?’ I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I scarcely remember what I said
or did. But this is what my friend told me
afterwards. Jack said there was nothing
but a little rising ground in front, from
which the trees stood back.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Do you see nothing on the top of the
mound? Out in the open, where the
moonlight falls on her?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Jack told me afterwards that he thought
I had gone suddenly mad, and grew
frightened himself.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Do you not see a woman standing
there? She has long yellow hair in two braids;
she has thick gold bracelets on her bare
arms. She has a tunic, bound by a girdle,
and it comes below her knees: and she has
red jewels in her hair, on her belt, on her
bracelets; and her eyes shine in the moonlight:
and she is waiting,––waiting for that
which has escaped.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now Jack tells me that when I said
this I fell flat on my face, with my hands
stretched out, and began to talk: but he said
he could not understand a word I said. He
himself looked steadily at the rising ground,
but there was nothing to be seen there:
there were the fir-trees standing in a
circle round it, and a bare space in the
middle, from which the heather was gone,
and that was all. This mound would be
about fifteen yards from us.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I lay there, said Jack, a few minutes,
and then sat up and looked about me. Then
I remembered for myself that I had seen
the pig and the old man, but nothing more:
but I was terrified at the remembrance,
and insisted upon our striking out a new
course through the wood, and leaving the
mound to our left. I did not know myself
why the mound frightened me, but I
dared not go near it. Jack wisely did not
say anything more about it until afterwards.
We presently found our way out of the
copse, struck across the heath for another
half-mile or so, and then came across a
road which Jack knew, and so we came
home.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When we told our story, and Jack, to
my astonishment, had added the part of
which I myself had no remembrance, Jack’s
father did not say very much; but he took
us next day to identify the place. To our
intense surprise the house of the broomsquire
was gone; there were the trampled
branches round the tree, and the smoked
branch from which the oil lamp had hung,
and the ashes of a wood-fire outside the
house, but no sign of the old man or his
wife. As we went along the path, now in
the cheerful frosty sunshine, we found dark
splashes here and there on the brambles,
but they were dry and colourless. Then
we came to the mound.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I grew uneasy again as we came to it,
but was ashamed to show my fear in the
broad daylight.</p>
<p class='c009'>“On the top we found a curious thing,
which Jack’s father told us was one of the
old customs of the broomsquires, that no
one was altogether able to explain. The
ground was shovelled away, so as to form
a kind of sloping passage downwards into
the earth. The passage was not more than
five yards long; and at the end of it, just
where it was covered by the ground overhead,
was a sort of altar, made of earth
and stones beaten flat; and plastered into
its surface were bits of old china and glass.
But what startled us was to find a dark
patch of something which had soaked deep
into the ground before the altar. It was
still damp.”</p>
<p class='c009'>When the old man had read so far, he
laid down the book.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When I told all this to the Professor,”
he said, “he seemed very deeply interested.
He told us, I remember, that the wound on
the pig identified the nature of the sacrifice
that the old man had begun to offer. He
called it a ‘blood-eagle,’ and added some
details which I will not disgust you with.
He said too that the broomsquire had confused
two rites––that only human sacrifices
should be offered as ‘blood-eagles.’ In
fact it all seemed perfectly familiar to him:
and he said more than I can either remember
or verify.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“And the woman on the rising ground?”
I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” said the old man, smiling, “the
Professor would not listen to my evidence
about that. He accepted the early part of
the story, and simply declined to pay any
attention to the woman. He said I had
been reading Norse tales, or was dreaming.
He even hinted that I was romancing.
Under other circumstances this method of
treating evidence would be called ‘Higher
Criticism,’ I believe.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“But it’s all a brutal and disgusting
worship,” I said.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes, yes,” said the old man, “very
brutal and disgusting; but is it not very
much higher and better than the Professor’s
faith? He was only a skilled Ritualist
after all, you see.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch04'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>Over the Gateway</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“––For faith, that, when my need is sore,</div>
<div class='line in1'>Gleams from a partly-open door,</div>
<div class='line in1'>And shows the firelight on the floor––”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>A Canticle of Common Things.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>Over the Gateway</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>We</span> were sitting together one morning
in the common sitting-room in the
centre of the house. There had been a fall
of rain during the night, and it was thought
better that the old man should not sit in
the garden until the sun had dried the
earth––so we sat indoors instead, but with
the great door wide open, that looked on
to a rectangle of lawn that lay before the
house. Once a drive had led to this door
through a gate with pedestals and stone
balls, that stood exactly opposite, about
fifteen yards away, but the drive had long
been grassed over; although even now it
showed faintly under two slight ridges in
the grass that ran from the gate to the
door. Otherwise the lawn was enclosed by
a low old brick wall, almost hidden by a
wealth of ivy, against which showed in rich
masses of colour the heads of purple and
yellow irises and tawny wallflowers.</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man had been silent at breakfast.
He had offered the Holy Sacrifice as
usual that morning in the little chapel upstairs,
and I had noticed at the time even
that he seemed pre-occupied: and at breakfast
he had talked very little, letting every
subject drop as I suggested it; and I had
understood at last that his thoughts were
far away in the past; and I did not wish to
trouble him.</p>
<p class='c009'>We were sitting in two tall carved chairs
at the doorway, his feet were wrapped in a
rug, and his eyes were looking steadily and
mournfully out across towards the iron-work
gate in the wall. Tall grasses of the
patch of uncut meadow outside leaned
against it or pushed their feathery heads
through it; and I saw presently that the
priest was looking at the gate, letting his
eyes rove over every detail of climbing
plant, iron-work and the old brickwork––and
not, as I had at first thought, merely
gazing into the dim distances of the years
behind him.</p>
<p class='c009'>Suddenly he broke the long silence.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Did I ever tell you,” he asked, “about
what I saw out there in the garden? It
looks ordinary enough now: yet I saw
there what I suppose I shall never see again
on this side of death, or at least not until I
am in the very gate of death itself.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I too looked out at the gate. The
atmosphere was full of that “clear shining
after rain” of which King David sang––it
was air made visible and radiant by the
union of light and water, those two most
joyous creatures of God. A great chestnut
tree blotted out all beyond the gate.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Tell me if you can,” I said. “You
know how I love to hear those stories.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Years ago, as perhaps you know, not
long after my ordination I was working in
London. My father lived here then, as
his father before him. That coat of arms
in the centre of that iron gate was put up
by him soon after he succeeded to the
property. I used to come down here now
and then for a breath of country air. I
hardly remember any pleasure so keen as
the pleasure of coming into this glorious
country air out of the smoke and noise of
London––or of lying awake at night with
the rustle of the pines outside my window
instead of the ceaseless human tumult of
the town.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, I came down here once, suddenly,
on a summer evening, bearing heavy news.
I need not go into details; it would be
useless to do that––but it will be enough
to say that the news did not personally
affect me or my family. It was a curious
series of circumstances that led me to be
the bearer of such news at all––but it was
to a lady who happened by the merest
chance to be staying with my family. I
scarcely knew her at all––in fact I had only
seen her once before. The news had come
to my ears in London, and I had heard
that the one whom it most concerned did
not know it––and that they dared not write
or telegraph. I volunteered of course to
take the news myself.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It was with a very heavy heart that I
walked up from the station––the road
seemed intolerably short. I may say that
I knew that the news would be heart-breaking
to her who had to hear it. I
came in by the gate at the end of the
avenue” (he waved his hand round to the
right) “and passed right down to the back
of the house, behind us. This door at
which we are sitting had been the front
door, but the drive had just been turfed
over, and we used the door at the back
instead, and this lawn here was very much
as you see it now, only the drive still
showed plainly like a long narrow grave
across the grass.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As I came in through the door at the
back, she was coming out, with a book and
a basket-chair to sit in the garden. My
heart gave a terrible throb of pain––for I
knew that by the time my business was
done there would be no thought of a quiet
evening in the garden, and that look of
serene happiness would be wiped out of her
face––and all through what I had to say.
For a moment she did not recognise me in
the dark entry and stood back as I came in,
and then––––</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Why it is you,’ she said; ‘you have
come home. I did not know you were
expected.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“I breathed a moment steadily to recover
myself.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘I was not expected,’ I said; and then,
after a moment: ‘May I speak to you?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Speak to me? Why, certainly. In
the garden or here?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘In here,’ I answered, and went past
her and pushed open the door into this
room.</p>
<p class='c009'>“She came past me, and stood here by
the door still holding the book, with her
finger between the leaves.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now you are wondering, I expect, why
I did not get some other woman to break
the news to her. Well, I had debated that
ever since I had volunteered to be the
bearer of these tidings: and partly because
I was afraid of being cowardly––call it
pride if you will––and partly for other
reasons which I need not mention, I felt I
was bound to fulfil my promise literally.
It might be, I thought too, that she would
prefer the news to be known by as few
people as possible. At least, whether I
judged rightly or wrongly, here was my
task before me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“She stood there,” the old man went on,
pointing to the doorpost on the right, “and
I here,” and he pointed a yard further back,
“and the door was wide open as it is now,
and the fragrant evening air poured past us
into the room. Her face would be partly
in shadow; but in her eyes there was just a
dawning wonder at my abruptness, with
perhaps the faintest tinge of anxiety, but
no more.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘I have come,’ I said slowly, looking
out into the garden, ‘on a very hard
errand.’ I could not go on. I turned
and looked at her. Ah! the anxiety had
deepened a little. ‘And––and it concerns
you and your happiness.’ I looked again,
and I remember how her face had changed.
Her lips were a little open, and her eyes
shone wide open, half in shadow and half
in light, and there were new and terrible
little lines on her forehead. And then I
told her.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It was done in a sentence or two,
and when I looked again her lips had closed
and her hand had clenched itself into the
moulding of the doorpost. I can see her
rings now blazing in the light that poured
over the chestnut tree (it was lower then)
into the room. Then her lips moved once
or twice––her hand unclenched itself hesitatingly––and
she went steadily across the
room. There was a great sofa there then,
and when she reached it she threw herself
face downwards across the arm and
back.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And I waited at the doorway, looking
out at the iron gate. Sorrow was new to
me then. I had not learnt to understand
it then, or to be quiet under it. And as I
looked I knew only that there was a
terrible struggle going on in the room
behind. There in front of me was a
garden full of peace and sweetness and the
soft glow of sunset light; and there behind
me was something very like hell––and I
stood between the living and the dead.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then I remembered that I was a
priest, and ought to be able to say something––just
a word of the Divine message that
the Saviour brought––but I could not.
I felt I was in deep waters. Even God
seemed far away, intolerably serene and
aloof; and I longed with all my power
for a human person to pray and to bear a
little of that strife behind me, from which
I felt separated by so wide a gulf. And
then God gave me the clear vision again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You see the iron gate,” the old man
went on, pointing. “Well, right between
those posts, but a little above them,
outlined clearly against the chestnut tree,
beyond, was the figure of a man.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I do not know how to explain
myself, but I was conscious that across this
material world of light and colour there
cut a plane of the spiritual world, and that
where the planes crossed I could look
through and see what was beyond. It was
like smoke cutting across a sunbeam. Each
made the other visible.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, this figure of a man, then, was
kneeling in the air, that is the only way I
can describe it––his face was turned towards
me, but upwards. Now the most curious
thing that struck me at the time was that
he was, as it were, leaning at a sharp angle
to one side; but it did not appear to be
grotesque. Instead the world seemed tilted;
the chestnut tree was out of the perpendicular;
the wall out of the horizontal.
The true level was that of the man.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I know this sounds foolish, but it
showed me how the world of spirits was
the real world, and the world of sense
comparatively unreal, just as the sorrow of
the woman behind me was more real than
the beams overhead.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And again, compared with the kneeling
figure, the chestnut tree and the gate
seemed unsubstantial and shadowy. I
know that men who see visions tell us
that it is usually the other way. All I can
say is that it was not so with me. This
figure was kneeling, as I have said; his
robe streamed away behind him––a great
cloak––drawn tightly back from the
shoulders, as if he were battling with a
strong wind––the Wind of Grace, I suppose,
that always blows from the Throne.
His arms were stretched out in front of
him, but opened sufficiently to let me see
his face; and his face will be with me till I
die, and please God afterwards. It was
beardless, and bore the unmistakable character
of a priest’s face.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now you know how close the intensest
pain and the intensest joy lie together.
Their lines so nearly meet. In this man’s
face they did meet. Anguish and ecstasy
were one. His eyes were open, his lips
parted. I could not tell whether he was
old or young. His face was ageless, as
the faces of all are who look upon Him
who inhabits eternity. He was praying.
I can say no more than that. He had
opened his heart to this woman’s sorrow.
He had made it his own: and it met there,
in petition if you wish to call it so, or in
resignation if you prefer that name for it,
or in adoration––you may call it what you
will––all that is true, but each is inadequate––but
that sorrow met there with his own
purified will, which itself had become one
with the eternal will of God. I tell you
I know it.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I looked at him, and in my ears was
a sobbing from the room behind; but as I
looked the glory of anguish deepened on
his face, and the sobbing behind me
slackened and ceased, and I heard a
whispering and the name of God and of
His Son, and then the sight before me had
passed; and there stood the chestnut tree
again as real and as beautiful as before; and
when I turned the woman was standing up,
and the light of conquest was in her eyes.</p>
<p class='c009'>“She held out her hand to me, and I
stooped and kissed it, but I dared not take
it in my own, for she had been in heavenly
places. I had seen her sorrow carried and
laid before the throne of God by one
greater than either of us, and something
of his glory rested upon her.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man’s voice ceased. When
I turned to look at him he was looking
steadily again at the iron gate in the wall,
and his eyes were shining like the radiant
air outside. “I do not know,” he said in
a moment, “whether she is alive or dead,
but I offered the Holy Sacrifice this morning
for her peace in either state.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch05'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>Poena Damni</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c018'><span class='c019'>“All their sins stand before them,
and produce in their essences
remorse, eternal despair and a
hostile will against God. For
such a soul there is no remedy.
It cannot come into the light of
God.... Even if St. Peter had
left many thousand keys upon
earth, not a single one of them
could open Heaven for it.”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>A German Mystic.</i></span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>Poena Damni</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>We</span> were sitting at dinner one evening
when the priest, who had been
talkative, seemed to fall into a painful train
of thought that silenced him. He grew
more and more ill at ease, and was obviously
relieved when I threw my cigarette
away and he was able to propose a move
to the next room. Presently his distress
seemed to pass; and then, as we sat near
the fireplace, he explained himself.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I must ask your pardon,” he said,
“but somehow I fell into a very dreadful
train of thought. It was suggested to me,
I think, by the red lamp on the table and
the evening light through the windows,
and the silver and glass. (You know the
power of association!) I went through
one of the most fearful moments of my
life under just those circumstances.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I was silent, as the priest seemed to have
more to say.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It has affected my nerves,” he said,
“and it would be rather a relief to tell
you. Would you mind if I did so?”</p>
<p class='c009'>On my assurance that it would greatly
interest me, he began.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It is a fashion among those who do
not really accept Revelation as revelation
to believe in a kind of Universalism. Quite
apart from authority, this doctrine contravenes,
as you of course know, the reality
of man’s free will. The incident of which
I wish to tell you concerns the way in which
I first caught a glimpse of that for myself.</p>
<p class='c009'>“A good many years ago I made the
acquaintance of a man in the West of
England, under circumstances that I need
not describe further than saying that he
seemed to have confidence in me. He
asked me to stay with him in his country
house, and I went down from London for
the inside of a week. I found him living
the usual country life, fishing and so forth;
for it was summer when I visited him. It
was a fine old house that he lived in,
surrounded by coverts. He had a charming
wife and two or three children, and at
first I thought him extremely happy and
contented.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then I thought that I noticed that
things were not so well with him. The
cottages on his estate were ill-cared for, and
that is always a bad sign. From one or
two small signs, such as you can guess, I
found that the tone among his servants
was not what it should be; and one or two
horrid pieces of cruelty came under my
notice. I know this sounds as if I were
a sort of spy, greedy for information; but
all that I can say is, that these signs were
unmistakable and obvious, and came to
me, of course, unsought and unexpected.
Then I saw that his domestic relations were
not right. I do not know how else to
describe all this than by saying that there
seemed a kind of blight upon his surroundings.
Nothing was absolutely wrong,
and yet all was just wrong.</p>
<p class='c009'>“At first I thought that I myself was
depressed or jaundiced in some way; but
at last I could not continue to believe that;
and on the Friday of my stay, the last day, I
became finally certain that something was
horribly wrong with the man himself.
Then that evening he opened his heart to
me, so far as it was possible for him to
do so.</p>
<p class='c009'>“His wife, with the two daughters, had
left us after dessert and gone into the
garden, and we remained in the dining-room.
The windows looked to the west,
across a smooth sloping lawn, with the lake
at the end; beyond that rose up a delicate
birch wood, and beyond that again a soft
green sky, where the sun had set, deepening
into a liquid evening blue overhead, in
which a star or two glimmered. I could
see, as I looked out, the white figures of
his wife and daughters against the shining
surface of the lake at the end of the lawn.</p>
<p class='c009'>“After he had lit his cigarette, and had
a glass or two of wine, suddenly he opened
his heart to me, and told me an appalling
story that I could not tell you. I sat and
watched his strong sinewy hand rise and
fall with the cigarette, under the red lamp-light;
I glanced at his quiet well-bred face
with the downcast eyes and the long
moustache, and I wondered whether it
was possible really for such a tale to be
true; but he spoke with a restrained conviction
that left no room for doubt. What
I gathered from the story was this;––that
he had identified himself, his whole will,
his whole life practically, with the cause of
Satan. I could not detect as he talked
that he had ever seriously attempted to
detach himself from that cause. It has
been said that a saint is one who always
chooses the better of the two courses open
to him at every step; so far as I could see
this man had always chosen the worse of
the two courses. When he had done
things that you and I would think right,
he had always done them for some bad
reason. He had been continuously aware,
too, of what was happening. I do not
think that I have ever heard such a skilful
self-analysis. Now and then, as I saw the
gulf of despair towards which his talk was
leading, I interrupted him, suggesting
alleviations of the horror––suggesting that
he was pessimistic––that he had acted often
under misconceptions––and the like; but
he always met me with a quiet answer that
silenced me. In fact,” said the priest, who
was beginning to tremble a little, “I have
never thought it possible that a heart
could be so corrupt and yet retain so
much knowledge and feeling.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When he had finished his story he
looked at me for a moment, and then said:</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Lately I have seen what I have lost,
and what I shall lose; and I have told you
this to ask if the Christian Gospel has any
hope for such as I am.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Of course I answered as a Christian
priest must answer, for I honestly thought
that here was the greatest miracle of God’s
grace that I had ever seen. When I had
finished I lifted my eyes from the cloth
and looked up. His fingers, while I was
speaking, had been playing with an apostle
spoon, but as I looked up he looked up
too, and our eyes met.”</p>
<p class='c009'>As the priest said this, he got up, and
leaned his head against the high oak mantelpiece,
and was silent a moment. Then he
went on:</p>
<p class='c009'>“God forgive me if I was wrong––if I
am wrong now––but this is what I think I
saw.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Out of his eyes looked a lost soul.
As a symbol, or a sign, too, his eyes shone
suddenly with that dull red light that you
may see sometimes in a dog’s eyes. It was
the <i>poena damni</i> of which I had read, which
shone there. It was true, as he had said,
that he was seeing clearly what he had lost
and would lose; it was the gate of heaven
opening to one who could not enter in.
It was the chink of light under the door to
one who cried, ‘Lord, Lord, open to me,’
but through the door there came that
answer, ‘I know you not.’ Ah! it was not
that he had never known before what God
was, and His service and love; it was just
his condemnation that he had known: that
he had seen, not once or twice but again and
again, the two ways, and had, not once nor
twice but again and again, chosen the
worse of those two; and now he was
powerless.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I tell you I saw this for a moment.
There was this human face, so well-bred,
with its delicate lines, looking almost
ethereal in the soft red light of the lamp:
behind him, between the windows hung a
portrait of an ancestor, some old Caroline
divine in ruff and bands. Through the
windows was that sweet glory of evening––with
the three figures by the lake. Here,
between us, was the delicate soothing luxury
of cleanliness and coolness and refreshment,
such as glass and silver and fruit suggest:
and there for one second in this frame of
beauty and peace looked the eyes of one
who desired even a drop of living water to
cool his tongue, for he was tormented in a
flame.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And I saw all this; and then the room
began to swim and whirl, and the table
to tilt and sway, and I fell, I suppose, forward,
and sank down on to the floor.
When I recovered there were the men in
the room, and the anxious face of my host
looking down on me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I had to return to town the next
morning. I wrote to him a long letter
the following week, saying that I had been
ill on the evening on which he had given
me his confidence: and that I had not said
all that I could say: and I went on, giving
the lie to what I had thought I had seen,
speaking to him as I should speak to any
soul who was weary of sin and desired
God.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Indeed I thought it most possible, as I
wrote the letter, that I had had a horrible
delusion; and that all could be well with
him. I got an answer of a few lines, saying
that he must apologise for having troubled
me with such a story; adding that he had
greatly exaggerated his own sin; that he
too had been over-excited and unwell: and
that he too trusted in a God of Love––and
begging me not to refer to the conversation
again.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest sat down again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now you may of course accept this
version of it, if you will. I only would to
God that I could too.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch06'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>“Consolatrix Afflictorum”</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c018'><span class='c019'>“Should it be burdensome for
thee ... she will for thy sake
herself raise me up when I chance
to fall, and console me when
sorrowing.”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>St. Leander of Seville.</i></span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>“Consolatrix Afflictorum”</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>The</span> following letter will explain itself.</p>
<p class='c009'>The original was read to me by my
friend on one of those days during my stay
with him; and he allowed me, at my
request, to make a copy. The sermon
referred to in the first sentence of the
letter was preached in a foreign watering-place
on Christmas Day.</p>
<div class='c006'>“<span class='sc'>Villa––––</span></div>
<div class='c006'>“<i>December 29, 18––</i></div>
<p class='c020'>“Reverend and Dear Sir,</p>
<p class='c021'>“I listened with great attention to
your sermon on Christmas Day; I am
getting on in years, and I am an invalid;
so you will understand that I have few
friends––and I think none who would not
think me mad if I told them the story that
I am proposing to tell you. For many
years I have been silent on this subject;
since it always used to be received with
incredulity. But I fancy that you will not
be incredulous. As I watched you and
listened to you on Christmas Day, I
thought I saw in you one to whom the
supernatural was more than a beautiful and
symbolical fairy-story, and one who held
it not impossible that this unseen should
sometimes manifest itself. As you reminded
us, the Religion of the Incarnation
rests on the fact that the Infinite and the
Eternal expresses Himself in terms of
space and time; and that it is in this that
the greatness of the Love of God consists.
Since then, as you said, the Creation, the
Incarnation, and the Sacramental System
alike, in various degree, are the manifestation
of God under these conditions, surely it
cannot be ‘materialistic’ (whatever that
exactly means), to believe that the ‘spiritual’
world and the personages that inhabit
it sometimes express themselves in the same
manner as their Maker. However, will
you have patience with me while I tell you
this story? I cannot believe that such a
grace should be kept in darkness.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I was about seven years old when my
mother died, and my father left me chiefly
to the care of servants. Either I must have
been a difficult child, or my nurse must
have been a hard woman: but I never gave
her my confidence. I had clung to my
mother as a saint clings to God: and when
I lost her, it nearly broke my heart. Night
after night I used to lie awake, with the
firelight in the room, remembering how she
would look in on her way to bed; when at
last I slept it seems to me now as if I never
did anything but dream of her; and it was
only to wake again to that desolate emptiness.
I would torture myself by closing
my eyes, and fancying she was there; and
then opening them and seeing the room
empty. I would turn and toss and sob
without a sound. I suppose that I was as
near the limit that divides sanity from
madness as it is possible to be. During
the day I would sit on the stairs when I
could get away from my nurse, and pretend
that my mother’s footsteps were moving
overhead, that her door opened, that I
heard her dress on the carpet: again I
would open my eyes, and in self-cruelty
compel myself to understand that she was
gone. Then again I would tell myself that
it was all right: that she was away for the
day, but would come back at night. In
the evenings I would be happier, as the
time for her return drew nearer; even when
I said my prayers I would look forward
to the moment, into which I had cheated
myself in believing, when the door would
open, after I was in bed, and my mother
look in. Then as the time passed, my false
faith would break down, and I would sob
myself to sleep, dream of her, and sob myself
awake again. As I look back it appears
to me as if this went on for months: I
suppose, however, in reality, it could not
have been more than a very few weeks,
or my reason would have given way.
And at last I was caught on the edge of the
precipice, and drawn lovingly back to safety
and peace.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I used to sleep alone in the night-nursery
at this time, and my nurse occupied
a room opening out of it. The night-nursery
had two doors, one at the foot of
my bed, and one at the further end of the
room, in the corner diagonally opposite to
that in which the head of my bed stood.
The first opened upon the landing, and the
second into my nurse’s room, and this
latter was generally kept a few inches open.
There was no light in my room, but a
night-light was kept burning in the nurse’s
room, so that even without the firelight my
room was not in total darkness.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I was lying awake one night (I suppose
it would be about eleven o’clock), having
gone through a dreadful hour or two of
misery, half-waking and half-sleeping. I
had been crying quietly, for fear my nurse
should hear through the partly opened door,
burying my hot face in the pillow. I was
feeling really exhausted, listening to my
own heart, and cheating myself into the
half-faith that its throbs were the footsteps
of my mother coming towards my room; I
had raised my face and was staring at the
door at the foot of my bed, when it opened
suddenly without a sound; and there, as I
thought, my mother stood, with the light
from the oil-lamp outside shining upon
her. She was dressed, it seemed, as once
before I had seen her in London, when she
came into my room to bid me good-night
before she went out to an evening party.
Her head shone with jewels that flashed as
the firelight rose and sank in the room, a
dark cloak shrouded her neck and shoulders,
one hand held the edge of the door,
and a great jewel gleamed on one of her
fingers. She seemed to be looking at me.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I sat up in bed in a moment, amazed
but not frightened, for was it not what I
had so often fancied? and I called out to
her:</p>
<p class='c021'>“‘Mother, mother!’</p>
<p class='c021'>“At the word she turned and looked on
to the landing, and gave a slight movement
with her head, as if to some one waiting
there, either of assent or dismissal, and
then turned to me again. The door closed
silently, and I could see in the firelight, and
in the faint glimmer that came through the
other door, that she held out her arms to
me. I threw off the bedclothes in a
moment, and scrambled down to the end of
the bed, and she lifted me gently in her
arms, but said no word. I too said nothing,
but she raised the cloak a little and wrapped
it round me, and I lay there in bliss, my
head on her shoulder, and my arm round
her neck. She walked smoothly and noiselessly
to a rocking-chair that stood beside
the fire and sat down, and then began to
rock gently to and fro. Now it may be
difficult to believe, but I tell you that I
neither said anything, nor desired to say
anything. It was enough that she was
there. After a little while I suppose I fell
asleep, for I found myself in an agony of
tears and trembling again, but those arms
held me firmly, and I was soon at peace;
still she spoke no word, and I did not see
her face.</p>
<p class='c021'>“When I woke again she was gone, and
it was morning, and I was in bed, and the
nurse was drawing up the blind, and the
winter sunshine lay on the wall. That day
was the happiest I had known since my
mother’s death; for I knew she would come
again.</p>
<p class='c021'>“After I was in bed that evening I lay
awake waiting, so full of happy content and
certainty that I fell asleep. When I
awoke the fire was out, and there was no
light but a narrow streak that came through
the door from my nurse’s room. I lay there
a minute or two waiting, expecting every
moment to see the door open at the foot of
my bed; but the minutes passed, and then
the clock in the hall below beat three. Then
I fell into a passion of tears; the night was
nearly gone, and she had not come to me.
Then, as I tossed to and fro, trying to stifle
my crying, through my tears there came
the misty flash of light as the door opened,
and there she stood again. Once again I
was in her arms, and my face on her shoulder.
And again I fell asleep there.</p>
<p class='c021'>“Now this went on night after night,
but not every night, and never unless I
awoke and cried. It seemed that if I
needed her desperately she came, but only
then.</p>
<p class='c021'>“But there were two curious incidents
that occurred in the order in which I will
write them down. The second I understand
now, at any rate; the first I have
never altogether understood, or rather there
are several possible explanations.</p>
<p class='c021'>“One night as I lay in her arms by the fire,
a large coal suddenly slipped from the grate
and fell with a crash, awaking the nurse in
the other room. I suppose she thought
something was wrong, for she appeared at the
door with a shawl over her shoulders, holding
the night-light in one hand and shading
it with the other. I was going to speak,
when my mother laid her hand across my
mouth. The nurse advanced into the room,
passed close beside us, apparently without
seeing us, went straight to the empty bed,
looked down on the tumbled clothes, and
then turned away as if satisfied, and went
back to her room. The next day I managed
to elicit from her, by questioning, the
fact that she had been disturbed in the night,
and had come into my room, but had seen
me sleeping quietly in bed.</p>
<p class='c021'>“The other incident was as follows.
One night I was lying half dozing against
my mother’s breast, my head against her
heart, and not, as I usually lay, with my
head on her shoulder. As I lay there it
seemed to me as if I heard a strange sound
like the noise of the sea in a shell, but more
melodious. It is difficult to describe it,
but it was like the murmuring of a far-off
crowd, overlaid with musical pulsations.
I nestled closer to her and listened; and
then I could distinguish, I thought, innumerable
ripples of church bells pealing, as
if from another world. Then I listened
more intently to the other sound; there
were words, but I could not distinguish
them. Again and again a voice seemed to
rise above the others, but I could hear no
intelligible words. The voices cried in
every sort of tone––passion, content, despair,
monotony. And then as I listened
I fell asleep. As I look back now, I have
no doubt what voices those were that I
heard.</p>
<p class='c021'>“And now comes the end of the story.
My health began to improve so remarkably
that those about me noticed it. I never
gave way, during the day at any rate, to
those old piteous imaginings; and at night,
when, I suppose, the will partly relaxes its
control, whenever my distress reached a
certain point, she was there to comfort me.
But her visits grew more and more rare, as
I needed her less, and at last ceased. But
it is of her last visit, which took place in
the spring of the following year, that I wish
to speak.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I had slept well all night, but had
awakened in the dark just before the
dawn from some dream which I forget,
but which left my nerves shaken. When
in my terror I cried out, again the door
opened, and she was there. She stood with
the jewels in her hair, and the cloak across
her shoulders, and the light from the landing
lay partly on her face. I scrambled at once
down the bed, and was lifted and carried to
the chair, and presently fell asleep. When
I awoke the dawn had come, and the birds
were stirring and chirping, and a pleasant
green light was in the room; and I was still
in her arms. It was the first time, except
in the instance I have mentioned, that I had
awakened except in bed, and it was a great
joy to find her there. As I turned a little
I saw the cloak which sheltered us both––of
a deep blue, with an intricate pattern of
flowers and leaves and birds among
branches. Then I turned still more to see
her face, which was so near me, but it was
turned away; and even as I moved she
rose and carried me towards the bed. Still
holding me on her left arm she lifted and
smoothed the bedclothes, and then laid me
gently in bed, with my head on the pillow.
And then for the first time I saw her face
plainly. She bent over me, with one hand
on my breast as if to prevent me from
rising, and looked straight into my eyes;
and it was not my mother.</p>
<p class='c021'>“There was one moment of blinding
shock and sorrow, and I gave a great
sob, and would have risen in bed, but
her hand held me down, and I seized it
with both my own, and still looked in
her eyes. It was not my mother, and
yet was there ever such a mother’s face
as that? I seemed to be looking into
depths of indescribable tenderness and
strength, and I leaned on that strength in
those moments of misery. I gave another
sob or two as I looked, but I was quieter,
and at last peace came to me, and I had
learnt my lesson.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I did not at the time know who she
was, but my little soul dimly saw that my
own mother for some reason could not at
that time come to me who needed her so
sorely, and that another great Mother had
taken her place; yet, after the first moment
or so, I felt no anger or jealousy, for one
who had looked into that kindly face could
have no such unworthy thought.</p>
<p class='c021'>“Then I lifted my head a little, I remember,
and kissed the hand that I held
in my own, reverently and slowly. I do
not know why I did it, except that it was
the natural thing to do. The hand was
strong and white, and delicately fragrant.
Then it was withdrawn, and she was
standing by the door, and the door was
open; and then she was gone, and the
door was closed.</p>
<p class='c021'>“I have never seen her since, but I have
never needed to see her, for I know who
she is; and, please God, I shall see her
again; and next time I hope my mother
and I will be together; and perhaps it will
not be very long; and perhaps she will allow
me to kiss her hand again.</p>
<p class='c021'>“Now, my dear sir, I do not know how
all this will appear to you; it may seem to
you, though I do not think it will, merely
childish. Yet, in a sense, I desire nothing
more than that, for our Saviour Himself
told us to be like children, and our Saviour
too once lay on His Mother’s breast. I
know that I am getting an old man, and
that old men are sometimes very foolish;
but it more and more seems to me that
experience, as well as His words, tells me
that the great Kingdom of Heaven has a
low and narrow door that only little children
can enter, and that we must become
little again, and drop all our bundles, if we
would go through.</p>
<p class='c021'>“That, dear and Reverend Sir, is my
story. And may I ask you to remember
me sometimes at the altar and in your
prayers? for surely God will ask much
from one to whom He has given so much,
and as yet I have nothing to show for it;
and my time must be nearly at an end,
even if His infinite patience is not.</p>
<p class='c022'>“Believe me,</p>
<p class='c023'>“Yours faithfully,</p>
<p class='c024'>“–––– ––––.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch07'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Bridge over the Stream</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Lo, I am free! I choose the pain thou bearest:</div>
<div class='line in3'>Thou art the messenger of one who waits;</div>
<div class='line in1'>Thou wilt reveal the hidden face thou wearest</div>
<div class='line in3'>When my feet falter at the Eternal Gates.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>Old Foes.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Bridge over the Stream</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>We</span> were at tea one afternoon on the little
low, tiled platform that marked the
site of an old summer-house. Tall hurdles
covered with briar-roses on the further side
of the path fenced off the rest of the
garden from us, and the sun had just sunk
below the level of the house, throwing
both ourselves and the garden into cool
shadow. The servant had brought out
the tea-things, but he presently returned
with something of horror on his face. The
old man looked up and saw him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“What is it, Parker?” he asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There’s been an accident, sir. Tom
Awcock at the home farm has been drawn
into some machine, and they say he must
lose both arms, and maybe his life.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man turned quite white, and his
eyes grew larger and brighter.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Is the doctor with him?” he asked, in
a perfectly steady voice.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir, and they’ve sent a message,
Would you be good enough to step down?
The rector’s away, and Tom’s mother’s
crying terrible. But not yet, sir. About
seven o’clock, they say. It won’t be over
till then, and there’s no immediate danger.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Tell them I will be there at seven,”
said the clergyman.</p>
<p class='c009'>Parker went back to the house, and
presently we heard the footsteps of a
child running down the drive towards the
farm.</p>
<p class='c009'>“How shocking it is!” I said in a moment
or two.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Ah!” said the old man, smiling, “I
have learnt my lesson. It is not really so
shocking as you think. Does that sound
very hard?”</p>
<p class='c009'>I said nothing, for it seemed to me that
all the consolations of religion could not
soften the horror of such things. If such
agonies are necessary as remedies or atonements,
at least they are terrible.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I learnt my lesson,” the old man went
on, “down the road there outside the
hedge––down by the bridge. Would you
like to hear it? Or are you tired of an old
dreamer’s stories?” and he smiled at me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I know you think that I am hard––that
I am a little apart maybe from
human life––that I cannot understand the
blind misery of those who suffer in ignorance;
yet you would be the first, I believe,
to think that Mrs. Awcock’s consolations
are unreal, and that when she tells me that
she knows there is a wise purpose behind,
she is only repeating what is proper to
say to a clergyman. But that is not so;
that old threadbare sentence is intensely
real to these people, and, I hope, to myself
too. For there is nothing that I desire
more than to be a child like them. It is
the apparent purposelessness that distresses
you: it is the certainty of a deliberate purpose
that comforts me. Well, shall I tell
you what I saw?”</p>
<p class='c009'>I was a little distressed at what looked
like callousness, but I told him I would
like to hear the story.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I was standing one evening––it would
be about five years ago––in the field down
there near the stream. You remember the
bridge there, over which the road goes,
just outside the hedge. I love running
water, and I went slowly up and down by
the side of the beck. There were children
on the road, coming back from school,
and they stopped on the bridge to look at
the water, as children and old men will.
They did not see me, as the field is a little
below the road, and besides their backs
were turned to me. I could see a pink
frock or two, and a pair of stout bare legs.
Two girls were taking their brother home––he
was between them, a hand clasped
by each of the sisters. I suppose the
eldest girl would be about nine, and the
boy five. They were talking solemnly,
and I could hear every word.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Why are children always supposed to
be gay? There is no solemnity in the
world to be compared to the solemnity of
a little boy, or of his sister who has charge
of him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“One of the girls said, ‘Look, Johnny,
there are little fishes down there.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘When I am a man’––––Johnny began,
very slowly.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Look, Johnny,’ said the other girl,
‘there’s a blue flower.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Up to this I remember every word.
But then I began to watch Johnny.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The girls went on talking, but they
leaned over more, and I could not hear
them plainly. Johnny stealthily withdrew
a hand from each of his sisters, and began
to look for a stone to throw at the fishes
or the blue flower, I suppose; for man is
lord of Creation. I could see him presently
through the hedge digging patiently with
his fingers and loosening a stone that was
firm in the road. And at that moment I
heard a far-away shout and the distant bark
of a dog.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The evening was wonderfully still:
every leaf hung quiet: and there were far-off
clouds heaping themselves up in the west,
tower over tower. We had a thunderstorm
that night, I remember. The brook was
quiet, just slipping noiselessly from pool to
pool.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Still Johnny was digging and the girls
were talking. Then out of the village
above us came again far-off noises. I could
hear a rumble and the clatter of hoofs,
then a cry or two more, and the nearer
terrified yelp of a dog. But the girls were
intent on the brook––and Johnny on the
stone.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Even now I did not understand what
was happening: but I grew uneasy––and
with great difficulty, for I was an old man
even then, tried to scramble up the high
bank by the bridge. As I reached the top
I saw that one of the girls had gone. She
had run, I suppose, off the bridge down by
the side of the road. The other girl was
still standing––but looking in a frightened
way up the hill. Down the hill came the
loud rumble of a cart and the clatter of
hoofs, terribly near.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The girl by the side of the road began
to scream to her sister, who darted off, and
then remembered Johnny and turned.
Johnny got up too and ran to the parapet
and stood against it.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I was shouting too by now, through
the hedge: but I could do nothing more,
nothing more, because the hedge was high
and thick, and I was an old man. Then
in a moment I remembered that shouting
would only distract them, and I stopped.
It was useless. I could do absolutely
nothing. But it was very hard.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then I saw the galloping body of a
horse through the branches, with a butcher’s
cart that rocked behind him. There was
no one on the cart.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now there was room for the cart to
pass the boy safely. By the wheelmarks,
which I looked at afterwards, there were
three clear feet––if only the boy had stood
still.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The girls seemed petrified as they
stood, one in act to run, the other crouching
and hiding her face against the hedge. The
cart was now within ten yards, as I could
see, though I was still staring at Johnny.
Then this is what I saw.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Somewhere behind him over the parapet
of the bridge there was a figure. I remember
nothing about it except the face
and the hands. The face was, I think, the
tenderest I have ever seen. The eyes were
downcast, looking upon the boy’s head with
indescribable love, the lips were smiling.
One hand was over the boy’s eyes, the
other against his shoulder behind. In a
moment the memory of other stories I
had heard came to mind––and I gave a
sob of relief that the boy was safe in such
care.</p>
<p class='c009'>“But as the iron hoofs and rocking
wheels came up, the hand on the boy’s
shoulder suddenly pushed him to meet
them; and yet those tender eyes and mouth
never flinched, and the child took a step
forward in front of the horse, and was
beaten down without a cry: and the cart
lurched heavily, righted itself, and dashed
on out of sight.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When the cloud of dust had passed,
the little body lay quiet on the road, and
the two girls were clinging to one another,
screaming and sobbing, but there was
nothing else.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I was as angry at first as an old man
could be. I nearly (may He forgive me
for it now!) cursed God and died. But the
memory of that tender face did its work.
It was as the face of a mother who nurses
her first-born child, as the face of a child
who kisses a wounded creature, it was as I
think the Father’s Face itself must have
been, which those angels always behold, as
He looked down upon the Sacrifice of His
only Son.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Will you forgive me now if I seemed
hard a few minutes ago? Perhaps you
still think it was hardness that made me
speak as I did. But, for myself, I hope I
may call it by a better name than that.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch08'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>In the Convent Chapel</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“In her all longings mix and meet;</div>
<div class='line in3'>Dumb souls through her are eloquent;</div>
<div class='line in1'>She feels the earth beneath her feet</div>
<div class='line in3'>Vibrate in passionate intent;</div>
<div class='line in1'>Through her our tides of feeling roll</div>
<div class='line in1'>And find their God within her soul.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>The Contemplative Soul.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>In the Convent Chapel</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>One</span> evening about this time, on coming
indoors for tea, I found the old man
seated at the open door that looked on to
the lawn, with a book on his knees, and his
finger between the pages. He held the
book towards me as I came near him, and
showed me the title, “The Interior Castle.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“I have just been reading,” he said,
“Saint Teresa’s description of the difference
between the intellectual and the imaginative
vision. It is curious how she fails really
to express it, except to any one who happens
to have had a glimpse already for himself
of what she means. I suppose it is one of
the signs of reality in the spiritual world
that no one can ever describe so much as
he knows.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I sat down.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I am afraid I don’t understand a word
you are saying,” I answered smiling.</p>
<p class='c009'>For answer he opened the book and read
Saint Teresa’s curious gasping incoherent
sentences––at least so I thought them.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Still,” I said, “I am afraid––––”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Oh,” he said almost impatiently,
“surely you know now; indeed you know
it, but do not recognise it.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Can you give me any sort of instance?”
I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>He thought for a moment or two in
silence; and then––––</p>
<p class='c009'>“I think I can,” he said, “if you are
sure it will not bore you.”</p>
<p class='c009'>He poured out tea for us both, and
then began:</p>
<p class='c009'>“Most of the tales I have told you are
of the imaginative vision, by which I do
not mean that the vision is in any way unreal
or untrue, which is what most people
mean by ‘imaginative,’ but only that it
presents itself in the form of a visible
picture. It seems chiefly the function of
the imagination to visualise facts, and it is
an abuse of that faculty to employ it chiefly
in visualising fancies. But it is possible
for spiritual facts to represent themselves
vividly and clearly to the intellect instead,
so that the person to whom the intellectual
vision is given does not, so to speak, ‘see’
anything, but only ‘apprehends’ something
to be true. However, this will become
more clear presently.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Some years ago I took my annual
holiday in the form of a solitary walking
tour. I will not tell you where I went, as
there are others concerned in this story
who would dislike intensely to be publicly
spoken of in the way that I shall have to
speak of them; but it is enough to say
that I came at last to a little town towards
sunset. My object in coming to this place
was to visit a convent of enclosed nuns
whose reputation for holiness was very
great. I carried with me a letter of introduction
to the Reverend Mother, which I
knew would admit me to the chapel. I
left my bag at the inn, and then walked
down to the convent, which stood a little
way out of the town.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The lay sister who opened the door to
me asked me to come into the parlour
while she told the Reverend Mother; and
after waiting a few minutes in the prim
room with its bees-waxed floor and its religious
engravings and objects, a wonderfully
dignified little old lady, with a quiet
wrinkled face, came in with my letter open
in her hand. We talked a few minutes
about various things, and I had a glass of
cowslip wine in a thick-lipped wineglass.</p>
<p class='c009'>“She told me that the convent was a
very ancient foundation, that it had been
a country house ever since the Dissolution
of the Religious Houses, until about twenty
years ago, when it had been acquired for
the community. There still remained of
the old buildings part of the cloisters, with
the south transept of the old church, which
was now the chapel; the whole, with a wall
or two, forming the courtyard through
which I had come. Behind the house lay
the garden, on to which the window of
the parlour looked; and as I sat I could
see a black cross or two marking the nuns’
graveyard. I made inquiries as to the
way the time of the community was spent.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Our object,’ said the old lady, ‘is
perpetual intercession for sinners. We
have the great joy of the Blessed Sacrament
amongst us in the chapel, and, except
during the choir offices and Mass, there is
always a nun kneeling before It. We look
after one or two ladies incurably ill, who
have come to end their days with us, and
we make our living by embroidery.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“I asked how it was that she could
receive strangers if the order was an enclosed one.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘The lay sisters and myself alone can
receive strangers. We find that necessary.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“After a little more talk I asked whether
I might see the chapel, and she took me out
into the courtyard immediately.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As we walked across the grass she
pointed out to me the cloisters, now built
up into a corridor, and the long ruined
wall of the old nave which formed one side
of the quadrangle. A grave-faced and
stout collie dog had joined us at the door,
and we three went together slowly towards
the door in the centre of the west wall of
the restored transept. The evening sun
lay golden on the wall before us and on
the ruined base of the central tower of the
old church, round which jackdaws wheeled
and croaked.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old priest broke off and turned to
me, with his eyes burning:</p>
<p class='c009'>“What a marvellous thing the Religious
Life is,” he said, “and above all the Contemplative
Life! Here were these nuns
as no doubt they and their younger sisters
are still, without one single thing that in
the world’s opinion makes life worth living.
There is practically perpetual silence, there
are hours to be spent in the chapel, no
luxuries, no amusements, no power of
choice, they are always rather hungry and
rather tired, at the very least. And yet
they are not sacrificing present happiness
to future happiness, as the world always
supposes, but they are intensely and radiantly
happy ‘now in this present time.’ I
don’t know what further proof any one
wants of Who our Lord is than that men
and women find the keenest, and in fact
their only joy, in serving Him and belonging
to Him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, I remember that something of
this sort was in my mind as I went across
the courtyard beside this motherly old lady
with her happy quiet face. She had been
over fifty years in Religion, my friend had
told me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“At the door she stopped.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘I will not come in,’ she said, ‘but you
will find me in the parlour when you come
out.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“And she turned and went back, with
the collie walking slowly beside her, his
golden plumed tail raised high against her
black habit.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The door was partly open, but a thick
curtain hung beyond. I pushed it quietly
aside and stepped in. It seemed very
dark at first, in contrast to the brilliant
sunshine outside; but I presently saw that
I was kneeling before a high iron-barred
screen, in which was no door. On the left,
in the further corner of the chapel, glimmered
a blue light in a silver lamp before
a statue of our Lady.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Opposite me rose up the steps before
the high altar; but not far away, because,
as you remember, the chapel had once been
the transept of a church, and the east
wall, in the centre of which the high altar
stood, was longer than both the south wall
where a second altar stood, and the modern
brick wall that closed it on the north. A
slender crucifix in black and white and
six thin tapers rose above the altar, and
high above stood the Tabernacle closed by
a white silk curtain, before which flickered
a tiny red spark.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I said a prayer or two, and then I
noticed for the first time a dark outline
rising in the centre of the space before the
altar. For a moment I was perplexed, and
then I saw that it was the nun whose hour
it was for intercession. Her back was
turned to me as she knelt at the faldstool,
and her black veil fell in rigid lines on to
her shoulders, and mingled with her black
serge habit below. There she knelt perfectly
motionless, praying. I had not, and have
not, a notion as to her age. She might
have been twenty-five or seventy.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As I knelt there I thought deeply,
wondering as to the nun’s age, how long
she had been professed, when she would
die, whether she was happy; and, I am
afraid, I thought more of her than of Him
Who was so near. Then a kind of anger
seized me, as I compared in my mind the
life of a happy good woman in the world
with that of this poor creature. I pictured
the life, as one so often sees it in homes, of
a mother with her children growing up
about her, her hands busy with healthy
home work, her life glorified by a good
man’s love; as she grows older, passing from
happy stage to happy stage, comforting,
helping, sweetening every soul she meets.
Was it not for this that women––and men
too, I thought, rebuking myself––were
made? Then think of the sour life of the
cloister––as loveless and desolate as the
cold walls themselves! And even, I thought,
even if there is a strange peculiar joy in the
Religious Life––even if there is an absence
of sorrows and anxieties such as spoil the
happiness of many lives in the world––yet,
after all, surely the Contemplative Life is
useless and barren. The Active Life may be
well enough, if the prayers and the discipline
issue in greater efficiency, if the priest is
more fervent when he ministers outside,
and the sister of charity more charitable.
Yes, I thought, the active Religious Life is
reasonable enough; but the Contemplative––––!
After all it is essentially selfish,
it is a sin against society. Possibly it was
necessary when the wickedness of the world
was more fierce, to protest against it by this
retirement; but not now, not now! How
can the lump be leavened if the leaven be
withdrawn? How can a soul serve God
by forsaking the world which He made and
loves?”...</p>
<p class='c009'>“And so,” said the priest, turning to
me again, “I went on––poor ignorant fool!––thinking
that the woman who knelt in
front of me was less useful than myself,
and that my words and actions and sermons
and life did more to advance God’s kingdom
than her prayers! And then––then––at
the moment when I reached that
climax of folly and pride, God was good to
me and gave me a little light.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now, I do not know how to put it––I
have never put it into words before, except
to myself––but I became aware, in my
intellect alone, of one or two clear facts. In
order to tell you what those facts were I
must use picture language; but remember
they are only translations or paraphrases of
what I perceived.</p>
<p class='c009'>“First I became aware suddenly that
there ran a vital connection from the
Tabernacle to the woman. You may think
of it as one of those bands you see in
machinery connecting two wheels, so that
when either wheel moves the other moves
too. Or you may think of it as an electric
wire, joining the instrument the telegraph
operator uses with the pointer at the other
end. At any rate there was this vital
band or wire of life.</p>
<p class='c009'>Now in the Tabernacle I became aware
that there was a mighty stirring and movement.
Something within it beat like a vast
Heart, and the vibrations of each pulse
seemed to quiver through all the ground.
Or you may picture it as the movement of a
clear deep pool when the basin that contains
it is jarred––it seemed like the movement
of circular ripples crossing and recrossing in
swift thrills. Or you may think of it as that
faint movement of light and shade that
may be seen in the heart of a white-hot
furnace. Or again you may picture it as
sound––as the sound of a high ship-mast
with the rigging, in a steady wind; or the
sound of deep woods in a July noon.</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest’s face was working, and his
hands moved nervously.</p>
<p class='c009'>“How hopeless it is,” he said, “to express
all this! Remember that all these
pictures are not in the least what I perceived.
They are only grotesque paraphrases
of a spiritual fact that was shown
me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I was aware that there was something
of the same activity in the heart of
the woman, but I did not know which was
the controlling power. I did not know
whether the initiative sprang from the
Tabernacle and communicated itself to the
nun’s will; or whether she, by bending
herself upon the Tabernacle, set in motion
a huge dormant power. It appeared to me
possible that the solution lay in the fact
that two wills co-operated, each reacting
upon the other. This, in a kind of way,
appears to me now true as regards the
whole mystery of free-will and prayer and
grace.</p>
<p class='c009'>“At any rate the union of these two
represented itself to me, as I have said, as
forming a kind of engine that radiated
an immense light or sound or movement.
And then I perceived something else too.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I once fell asleep in one of those fast
trains from the north, and did not awake
until we had reached the terminus. The
last thing I had seen before falling asleep
had been the quiet darkening woods and
fields through which we were sliding, and it
was a shock to awake in the bright humming
terminus and to drive through the
crowded streets, under the electric glare
from the lamps and windows. Now I felt
something of that sort now. A moment
ago I had fancied myself apart from movement
and activity in this quiet convent;
but I seemed somehow to have stepped into
a centre of busy, rushing life. I can
scarcely put the sensation more clearly
than that. I was aware that the atmosphere
was charged with energy; great
powers seemed to be astir, and I to be
close to the whirling centre of it all.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Or think of it like this. Have you
ever had to wait in a City office? If you
have done that you will know how intense
quiet can coexist with intense activity.
There are quiet figures here and there
round the room. Or it may be there is
only one such figure––a great financier––and
he sitting there almost motionless.
Yet you know that every movement tingles,
as it were, out from that still room all over
the world. You can picture to yourself
how people leap to obey or to resist––how
lives rise and fall, and fortunes are made
and lost, at the gentle movements of this
lonely quiet man in his office. Well, so it
was here. I perceived that this black
figure knelt at the centre of reality and
force, and with the movements of her will
and lips controlled spiritual destinies for
eternity. There ran out from this peaceful
chapel lines of spiritual power that lost
themselves in the distance, bewildering in
their profusion and terrible in the intensity
of their hidden fire. Souls leaped up and
renewed the conflict as this tense will strove
for them. Souls even at that moment
leaving the body struggled from death into
spiritual life, and fell panting and saved at
the feet of the Redeemer on the other side
of death. Others, acquiescent and swooning
in sin, woke and snarled at the merciful
stab of this poor nun’s prayers.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest was trembling now with excitement.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes,” he said; “yes, and I in my
stupid arrogance had thought that my life
was more active in God’s world than hers.
So a small provincial shopkeeper, bustling
to and fro behind the counter, might think,
if only he were mad enough, that his life was
more active and alive than the life of a
director who sits at his table in the City.
Yes, that is a vulgar simile; but the only
one that I can think of which in the least
expresses what I knew to be true. There
lay my little foolish narrow life behind
me, made up of spiritless prayers and
efforts and feeble dealings with souls; and
how complacent I had been with it all, how
self-centred, how out of the real tide of
spiritual movement! And meanwhile, for
years probably, this nun had toiled behind
these walls in the silence of grace, with the
hum of the world coming faintly to her
ears, and the cries of peoples and nations,
and of persons whom the world accounts
important, sounding like the voices of children
at play in the muddy street outside;
and indeed that is all that they are, compared
to her––children making mud-pies
or playing at shop outside the financier’s
office.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest was silent, and his face became
quieter again. Then in a moment he
spoke again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” he said, “that is what I believe
to have been an intellectual vision. There
was no form or appearance or sound; but
I can only express what was shown to me
to be true, under those images. It almost
seems to me as I look back now as if the
air in the chapel were full of a murmurous
sound and a luminous mist as the currents
of need and grace went to and fro. But I
know really that the silence was deep and
the air dim.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then I made a foolish remark.</p>
<p class='c009'>“If you feel like that about the Contemplative
Life, I wonder you did not try
to enter it yourself.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest looked at me for a moment.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It would be rash, surely, for a little
shopkeeper of no particular ability to compete
with Rothschild.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch09'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>Under Which King?</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c018'><span class='c019'>“All such knowledge as this,
whether it comes from God or
not, can be but of little profit
to the soul in the way of perfection,
if it trusts to it: yea, rather,
if it is not careful to reject it,
... it will bring upon it great
evil; ... for all the dangers
and inconveniences of the supernatural
apprehensions, and many
more, are to be found here.”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>The Ascent of Mount Carmel</i>.</span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>Under Which King?</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>Within</span> a day or two of our conversation
on St. Teresa, I asked the old
priest about what is called “Quietism.” A
friend had given me an old copy of Molinos’
<i>Spiritual Guide</i>, and I knew that the writer
had been condemned and imprisoned for
life, and yet I could not understand in what
lay his crime.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It is difficult to put into words,” said
the priest, “or even to understand, why
certain sentences are condemned, since it is
probably possible to parallel them from
other Catholic mystics whose names are
honoured. Yet the fact remains that the
result of Molinos’ teaching was neglect of
the Sacraments and of external means of
grace, which was not so in the case of the
schools of other mystics.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“But I will tell you a story,” he went
on, “to illustrate the effect of certain kinds
of mysticism; and I must leave you to
judge whether my friend was right or
wrong in what he decided, for I must tell
you first that the incident did not happen
to me. On the whole I may say that I
have my own opinion on the subject, but I
will not tell you what it is, as sometimes I
am strongly inclined to change it. However,
you shall hear the story. Shall we
take a stroll on the terrace?”</p>
<p class='c009'>And when we had reached it, he
began:</p>
<p class='c009'>“My friend was a priest of about thirty
years of age (this happened some forty
years ago). He was working in the country
at the time, and had a great deal of leisure
for reading, and this he chiefly occupied in
the study of various mystics, and most of
them of the Quietistic school. You know,
too, that one of their characteristic lines of
thought lies in the abandonment of all
effort save that of adhering to God, and
even that is to be a passive rather than an
active effort. The soul must lie still, says
one of them, and be drawn as if by a
rope up the Mount of Perfection. The
slightest movement will check or divert
that swift and steady approach towards
God.</p>
<p class='c009'>“But my friend not only studied writers
of this school intellectually, but he put
himself more or less under their spiritual
direction. He told me afterwards that it
seemed to him that if he used the Sacraments
faithfully, and if he found that his
devotion towards them did not cool, he
would be sufficiently protected against
possible extravagances or heresies in his
spiritual reading. His daily meditation,
too, he told me, began to mean more to
him than ever in his lifetime: the presence
of God seemed more real and accessible,
and, above all, the guidance of God in his
daily life more apparent. The time that
really matters, as he said to me once, is the
time between our religious exercises; and in
this time, too, God manifested Himself. In
fact, from all that he said to me, I have very
little doubt that his character and spiritual
life were both deepened and purified, at any
rate at first, by his devotional study of
these mystics.</p>
<p class='c009'>“One word more before I begin the
actual story.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I said just now that the guidance of
God began to be more apparent in his daily
life. There are two main ways of settling
questions that come up for decision, and
both ways are possible to a religious man.
One way is to lay stress on the intellectual
side, to weigh the arguments carefully, and
decide, as it were, by reasoning alone: the
other is to lay comparatively little stress on
the arguments and the intellectual side generally,
and to make the main effort lie in the
aspiration of the will towards God for guidance.
We may call them, roughly, the intellectual
and the intuitive. Now of course my
friend’s mystical studies inclined him more
and more towards the latter. He told me,
in fact, that in the most ordinary questions––in
his visiting his people––in his preaching––in
his dealings with souls––he began
more and more to refuse intellectual light,
and to trust instead to the immediate interior
guidance of the Holy Ghost. More
than once, for example, he laid aside the
sermon he had prepared, as he entered the
pulpit, and preached from a text that had
seemed to be suggested to him. Of course
it was not so good from the literary point
of view; but that, as he very justly said,
is not the most important question in
judging of a sermon. He seemed to find,
he told me, that his spiritual power in every
way developed, both in his interior life and
in his dealings with others.</p>
<p class='c009'>“In his conversations, too, he would
allow long silences to come, if it did not
seem to him that God moved him to speak;
at other times he would drop conventional
modes of speech and say things that,
humanly judged, were calculated to do the
very opposite of what he personally desired.
Sometimes in such a case his wish was
attained, and sometimes not; but in both
cases he forced himself to regard it as if he
had succeeded. In short, he acted and
spoke in obedience to this interior drawing,
and disregarded consequences entirely. And
this, I need hardly say, is one road to interior
peace.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And then at last a startling thing
happened.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There had been some crime committed:
I have not an idea what it was. Two men
were involved in the consequences. One,
whom we will call A., had committed the
crime: but he could only be prosecuted if
B., whom he had seriously injured, consented
to take action. Now my friend was
deeply interested in A., and he thought he
knew that the one chance of A.’s salvation
lay in his being allowed to go unpunished.
But Lord B., who, by the way, was an Irish
peer, of no importance himself, though
his father had been well known, was a hard,
vindictive man, and had publicly announced
his intention of ruining A. In this state
of affairs my friend was asked to intercede
by A. and his friends.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Lord B. lived in a large country-house
some four or five miles from my friend’s
house. He was an unmarried man, but
generally had his house fairly full of his
friends, who did not bear the best possible
reputation.</p>
<p class='c009'>“My friend arrived at the house by
appointment with B., whom he did not
personally know, towards the close of a
rainy autumn afternoon. In spite of his
anxiety he had resolved to be guided as
usual by the interior monitor whom he had
learnt to trust, and he had hardly thought
of a single argument which he could use.
Yet he felt confident that he was right in
coming, and equally confident that he would
know what to say when the time came. As
he got near the house this confident sense of
guidance increased to an extent that almost
terrified him. It seemed to him, as he
walked under the dripping yellow branches,
that a strong, almost physical, oppression
carried him forward. As if in a dream he
saw the manservant appear in answer to his
ring, and heard, as from a great distance,
the man tell him that Lord B. had come
in a little while before, and was now expecting
him in the smoking-room.</p>
<p class='c009'>“On entering the house these curious
sensations, which he hardly attempted to
describe to me, seemed to diminish a little,
and he felt cool and confident. He told
me that the sense of oppression resting on
him was dispelled, as if by a breeze, as he
passed along the corridor on the ground
floor on his way to the smoking-room in
the west wing of the house.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The servant threw open the door and
announced him, and my friend went
through, and the door closed behind him:
but the moment he had crossed the threshold
he felt that something was wrong.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There was a circle of men, some in
shooting costume, and some as if they had
not been out all day, sitting in easy chairs
round the fire, which was to the right of
the door. My friend could see most of
their faces, and Lord B.’s face among them,
as he paused at the door; but not one
offered to move, though all looked curiously
at him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There was silence for a moment, and
then Lord B. said suddenly and loudly:</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Well, here’s the parson at last, sermon
and all.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“And then two or three of the men
laughed.</p>
<p class='c009'>“My friend saw of course that Lord B.
had arranged the interview in this way simply
in order to insult him, and that he would not
be able to speak to him in private at all, as
he had hoped. There was, he told me, just
one great heave of anger in his heart at
this offensive behaviour; but he did his best
to crush it down, and still stood without
speaking. He had not, he said, an idea
what to say or do, so he stood and waited.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Lord B. got up in a moment and lit a
cigarette with his back to my friend; and
then turned and faced him, leaning against
the mantelpiece.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’re all waiting.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Still there was silence. One of the
men beyond the fire suddenly laughed.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Now then,’ said Lord B. impatiently,
‘for God’s sake say what you came to say,
and go.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“As this sentence ended my friend felt
a curious sensation run over him, like those
he had experienced in the park, but far
stronger. He could never give me any
description of it, except by saying that it
seemed as if a force were laying hold of
him in every remote fibre of his bodily and
spiritual being. His own will seemed to
give up the control into some stronger hand,
and he felt a sense of being steadied and
quieted.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then he was aware that his own voice
said a single sentence of some half-dozen
words; but though he heard each word, it
was instantly obliterated from his mind.
In his description of it all to me afterwards,
he said it was like words that we hear
immediately before we fall asleep in a
lecture-room or a railway carriage: each
word is English and intelligible, but the
sentence conveys no impression.</p>
<p class='c009'>“While his voice spoke for perhaps two or
three seconds, his eyes were fixed on Lord
B.’s face, and in that momentary interval
he saw a terrible fear and astonishment suddenly
stamped upon it. The mouth opened
in loose lines and the cigarette fell out, and
B.’s hands rose instinctively as if to keep
my friend off. One of the men, too, at the
further end of the circle suddenly sprang
erect, with the same kind of imploring
horror on his face.</p>
<p class='c009'>“That was all that my friend had time to
see; for the same power that had laid hold
of him turned him immediately to the
door, and he opened it and went out and
down the corridor. As he went the
strange sensation passed, but he felt the
sweat prick to his skin and then pour
down his face. He heard, too, as he
reached the end of the corridor, a bell peal
violently somewhere. He passed out into
the hall, and even as he opened the front
door a servant dashed past him through
the hall and down the corridor, up which
he had just come.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He went straight home, feeling terribly
tired and overwrought, and had to go to
bed on reaching his house, tortured by
neuralgia.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Two hours later a note was brought by
a groom from Lord B., written in a shaking
hand, with an abject apology for his
reception in the afternoon; an entreaty to
him not to mention the subject again
which he had spoken of in the sitting-room,
with a scarcely veiled offer of a bribe, and
an emphatic promise to withdraw all proceedings
against A.</p>
<p class='c009'>“On the following day he was told that
Lord B. was supposed to be unwell, and
that the house-party had been hurriedly
broken up the night before.</p>
<p class='c009'>“From that day to this he has never
had an idea of what the sentence was
that his voice spoke that worked such a
miracle.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“That is a most curious story,” I said.
“What do you make of it?”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest smiled.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I will tell you what my friend made
of it. He gave up his study of mysticism,
yet without in any sense condemning that
line of thought of which I have spoken.
His reasons, which he explained to me
after coming to a decision, were that such
a visitation might or might not be from
God. If it were not from God, then that
proved that he had been meddling with
high things, and had somehow slipped
under some other control. If it were
from God, it might be that it was just
for that very purpose that he had been
brought so far, but that he dared not
pursue that path without some distinct
further sign. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘no
soul can be lost by following the simple
and well-beaten path of ordinary devotion
and prayer.’ And so he returned
to intellectual forms of meditation, such
as most Christians use. He died a few
years ago, full of holiness and good
works.</p>
<p class='c009'>“But for you there are several opinions
open. Either that it was an intensely
strong case of hypnotic thought-transference
from Lord B. to my friend, and
that the latter only spoke mechanically of
something that lay in the former’s mind;
or you may decide that the whole affair
was of the Evil One, and that A. would
have been all the better for prosecution,
and that an evil being somehow found
entrance into the strained nature of my
friend, and used it for his own purposes;
or that the prophetic gift was bestowed on
him, but that the ordeal was too fierce
and he too cowardly to claim it. And
there are other solutions as well, no doubt
possible.</p>
<p class='c009'>“For myself I think I have formed my
opinion; but I would prefer, as Herodotus
says, to keep it to myself.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch10'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>With Dyed Garments</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Jesu, well ought I love Thee,</div>
<div class='line'>For Thou me shewest Thy rood-tree,</div>
<div class='line'>Thy crown of thorns, and nails three,</div>
<div class='line'>The sharp spear that piercéd Thee.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>Swete Jhesu now wil I Synge.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>With Dyed Garments</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>When</span> the second post came in one
morning I saw a letter addressed
to the priest, in the trembling large characters
of an old man’s hand, lying upon
the slab in the hall. When I came in to
lunch I found the old clergyman with an
open letter in his hand, and his face full of
almost childish happiness.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I have heard from my oldest friend,”
he said, making a little movement with the
letter. “It is months since he has written.
I have known him ever since we were
boys.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We sat down to lunch, but he kept on
referring to his friend, and to the pleasure
the letter gave him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“We are always planning to meet,” he
said to me presently. “But we never can
manage it. We are both so old. He is
much more active than I am, however.
He is full of good works, while I, as
you know, lead an idle life. I could
not take charge of a church. It is all I
can do now to serve my own little chapel
upstairs.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Where is he working?” I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I think perhaps you fancy he is in
Holy Orders, but he is not. He has been
on the Stock Exchange till a few years ago,
and now he is living in the country, getting
ready to die, as he tells me. But he is full
of good works; his letter here has news
about the village, and of a man whose
acquaintance he has made in the reading-room
there, which he himself built a year
ago; but he is full of plans too, and asks
my advice.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“It is not often you come across a
business man like that,” I said.</p>
<p class='c009'>“No, he is wonderful, but he has been
like that for years. He has done a great
deal all his life among poor people in
London. For years he never missed his
two or three nights a week in some club,
or on some committee, or visiting sick
people.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I began to think that it might have been
through the friendship of the priest that
this man had been such a worker. But
presently he began again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Perhaps the most wonderful thing was
the way he first began to do such work.
Let me see, have I mentioned his name?
No? Then I can tell you, otherwise it
would not be discreet; that is––” he added,
“if you would care to hear.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I told him I should be very much
interested.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then after lunch we will have coffee
in the garden, and I will tell you.”</p>
<p class='c009'>When we had sat down under the shade
of a wall, with the tall avenue of pines
opposite us making a dark tangled frieze
against the delicate sky, he began.</p>
<p class='c009'>“What I am going to tell you now has
been gathered partly from conversations
with my friend: and partly from letters he
has written to me. Years ago I jotted
down the order of events, with names and
dates, but that, of course, I fear I cannot
show even to you. However, I know the
story well, and you may rely on the main
facts.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I must tell you first that many years
ago now, my friend, who was about forty
years old, had lately become a partner in
his father’s firm: and of course was greatly
occupied with all the details of business.
It was a broker’s firm, well established and
did a good steady business. My friend at
that time had no idea of doing any work
outside his occupation. I heard him say in
fact, about this time, that his work seemed
to absorb all his energies and capacity.
Then the first event of the series took place.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He was coming home one frosty afternoon
in December, between three and four
o’clock, on the top of an omnibus. He
was sitting in front and looking about him.
He noticed a poorly-dressed man standing
on the pavement on the right-hand side, as
if he wished to cross. Then he began to
cross, and came at last right up to the
omnibus on which my friend was sitting,
and paused a moment to let it pass. As
he stood there, my friend watching him
with that listless interest with which a tired
man will observe details, a hansom cab
moving quickly came in the opposite direction.
It seemed as if the horse would run
the man down. It was too sudden to warn
him, but the man saw it, and to avoid the
horse sprang quickly forward, his head half
turned away, and his feet came between the
front and back wheels of the omnibus.
There was a jolt and a terrible scream, and
my friend horrified leant far over the side
to see. When the omnibus had passed the
man stood for a moment on his crushed
feet, and then swayed forward and fell on
his face. My friend started up and made a
movement to go to him, but several others
had seen the accident and ran to the man,
and a policeman was crossing quickly from
the other side, so he sat down again and
the omnibus carried him on.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now this horrible thing remained in my
friend’s mind, haunted him, shocked him
profoundly. He could not forget the
terrible face of pain that he had seen upturned
for an instant, and his imagination
carried him on in spite of himself to dwell
on the details of those crushed feet. He
wrote me a long letter a week or two afterwards,
minutely describing all that I have
told you.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The following summer he was going
down to the Kennington Oval one Saturday
afternoon to see the close of some famous
cricket match. He travelled by the Underground
Railway as far as Westminster, and
from there determined to walk at least
across the Bridge. He walked on the right-hand
side, and had reached the steps of
St. Thomas’ Hospital. He waited here a
moment undecided whether to walk on or
drive.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As he waited, he half turned and saw a
beggar sitting in the angle between the
steps and the wall. There was a white dog
beside him. The beggar’s face was partly
bandaged; but what caught my friend’s
attention most were his two hands. They
were lying palms downwards on the beggar’s
knees, bandaged like his face, but in the
centre of each was a dark spot, showing
through the wrapping, as if there were a
festering wound that soaked through from
underneath. My friend looked at him in
disgust for a moment: but terribly fascinated
by those quiet suffering hands; and
then he passed on. But during all that
afternoon he could not forget those hands.
I daresay he was overwrought and nervous.
But his memory too went back to the
accident by the Marble Arch. That night
too, as he told me in a conversation afterwards,
as he tossed about, his windows wide
open to catch the night air, half waking
visions kept moving before him of a man
with crushed feet and bandaged hands, who
moaned and lifted a drawn face to the sky.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Early that autumn he was alone, except
for the servants, in his father’s house in
London. A maid was taken ill. I forget
the nature of the illness, but perhaps you
will be able to identify it when I have
finished. At any rate the girl grew quickly
worse. One morning just before he started
to the City the doctor, who had called early
that morning, asked to have a word with
him, and told him he thought he ought to
operate immediately, and asked for his
sanction.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Well,’ said my friend, ‘of course I
must speak to the girl about it. Have you
told her yet?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘No,’ said the doctor, ‘I thought I
should mention it to you first. I understand
that the girl has no relations in the
world.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Can you tell me the nature of the
operation?’ asked my friend.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘It is not really serious. It is an incision
in the right side,’ and he added a few
details explaining the case.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Well,’ said my friend, ‘we had better
go upstairs together.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“They went up and found the girl perfectly
conscious and reasonable. She consented
to the operation, which was fixed for
that evening.</p>
<p class='c009'>“But all that day the picture floated before
his eyes of the quiet room at the top of the
house, and the girl lying there waiting.
And then the scene would shift a little.
And he would see the girl after it was over,
with a bandage against her side, and the
knowledge of the little wound beneath.
When he reached home, late in the evening,
the doctor was waiting for him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘It has been perfectly successful,’ he
said, ‘and I think she will recover.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now, that evening, as my friend sat at
the dinner-table alone, smoking and thinking,
his old experiences came to his mind
again. In less than a year he had seen
three things, none of which seemed to have
any very close relation to him, but each of
which had deeply affected him. He told
me afterwards that he began to suspect a
design underlying them; but he had not a
glimmer of light, strange as it may seem
to you and me, as to the nature of that
design. Within a month, however, I received
a letter from him, from some place
in the country where he was staying, describing
the following incident.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He had gone down from a Saturday to
Monday to a friend’s house in Surrey. On
the Sunday afternoon he and his friend
went for a walk through some woods.
Autumn was in full glory, and the trees
were blazing in red and gold: and the
bramble branches were weighed down with
purple fruit. As they walked together
along a grass ride they heard shouts and
laughter of children in the woods on one
side. They could hear footsteps pattering
through dry leaves, and the tearing and
trampling of brushwood; and in a moment
more a boy burst out of the thin hedge,
tripped in a bramble, and rolled into the
grass walk. He was up again in a moment
laughing and flushed, but my friend saw
across his forehead a little thin red dotted
line where a thorn had scratched him. As
the boy laughed up into their faces, he
lifted his hand to his forehead.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Why it’s wet,’ he said, and then, looking
at his fingers: ‘Why, it’s blood! I’ve
scratched myself.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Other footsteps came running through
the undergrowth, and the boy himself ran
off down the road, and the footsteps in the
wood stopped, retraced themselves and
died away in faint rustlings up the hill.
But as my friend had looked he had seen
in his memory those other experiences of
the last year. And all seemed to concentrate
themselves on one Figure––with
wounded feet and hands and side––and a
torn forehead.</p>
<p class='c009'>‘My friend stood quiet so long that his
companion spoke to him and touched his
arm.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Yes, I am ready,’ he said; ‘let us go
home.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“The end of the letter I cannot quote to
you. It is too intimate and personal. But
it ended with a request to myself to give
him an introduction to some friend who
would give him work to do in some poor
district. And work of that kind he has
carried on ever since.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old priest’s voice ceased.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There is one thing my friend did not
know,” he said after a moment. “When
that particular operation on the side is performed,
of which I have spoken, there
comes out blood and water. A doctor will
tell you so.”</p>
<p class='c009'>And then:</p>
<p class='c009'>“That is my friend’s story,” he said,
“Do you not think it remarkable?”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch11'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>Unto Babes</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c018'><span class='c019'>“Saint Bernard speaks of the words
of Job that he says: ‘<i>Abscondit
lucem in manibus</i>’ (that is to say,
‘God has light hid in His hands’)––‘Thou
wot well, he that has a
candle a-light between his hands,
he may hide it and shew it at his
own will. So does our Lord to
His chosen.’”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>The Abbey of the Holy Ghost.</i></span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>Unto Babes</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>A few</span> days after the conversation I
have described my visit to the old
man came to an end, and my work drew
me back to London; but I left behind me
a promise to return and spend Christmas
at his house. He in the meantime would,
he promised me, try to put together
some other stories for me against the
time that I should return. There were
many others, he said, that he had come
across in his life which he hoped would
interest me, besides a few more personal
experiences of his own.</p>
<p class='c009'>And so I left him smiling and waving
to me from his bedroom window that overlooked
the drive (for I had to go by an
early train), with the clean-shaven face of
his old servant looking at me discreetly
and gravely from the clear-glass chapel
window next to the priest’s room, where
he had been setting things ready before his
master was dressed.</p>
<hr class='c004' />
<p class='c009'>It was a dark winter afternoon when I
returned, a week or so before Christmas.</p>
<p class='c009'>The coachman told me on my inquiry
that his master seemed very much aged
during the autumn and winter, that he had
scarcely left the house since the leaves had
fallen, except to sit for an hour or two in
sunshiny weather in the sheltered angle of
the wall where was the tiled platform that
I have spoken of; and that he was afraid
he had been suffering from depression.
There had been days of almost complete
silence, at least so Parker had told him,
when the master had sat all day turning
over letters and books and old drawers.</p>
<p class='c009'>I reproached myself with having troubled
the old man with demands for more stories;
and feared that it had been in the attempt
to please me that he had fallen brooding
over the past, perhaps dwelling too much
on sorrows of which I knew nothing.</p>
<p class='c009'>As we passed under the pines that tossed
their sombre plumes in the wind, the sun,
breaking through clouds in an angry glory
on my right, blazed on the little square-paned
windows of the house on my left.
The chapel-window on the top story seemed
especially full of red light streaming from
within, but the flame swept across the upper
story as we drove past, and left the windows
blank and colourless just before we turned
the corner at the back of the house.</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man met me in the hall, and I
was startled to see the change that had come
to him. His eyes seemed larger than ever,
and there was a sorrow in them that I had
not seen before. They had been the eyes
of a stainless child, wide and smiling; now
they were the eyes of one who was under
some burden almost too heavy to be borne.
In the stronger light of the sitting-room as
the candles shone on his face, I saw that my
impression had only been caused by a drooping
of the eyelids, that now hung down a
little further. But it looked a tired face.</p>
<p class='c009'>He welcomed me, and said several
charming things to me that I should be
ashamed to quote, but he made me feel
that he was glad that I had come; and so
I was glad too. But he said among other
things this:</p>
<p class='c009'>“I am glad you have come now, because
I think I shall have something further to
tell you. I have had indications during this
autumn that the end is coming, and I think
that if I have to pass through a dark valley,––and
I feel that I am at its entrance even
now,––I think that He will give me His
staff as well as His rod. But I am an old
man and full of fancies, so please do not
question me. But I am very glad,” and
he took my hand and stroked it for a
moment, “very glad that you are here,
because I do not think that you will be
afraid.”</p>
<p class='c009'>During the following days he told me
many stories, bringing out the old books
and letters of which the coachman had
spoken, and spelling out notes through his
tortoiseshell glass, as he sat by the open
fireplace in the central sitting-room, with
the logs crackling and overrun with swift
sparks as they rested on their bed of
ashes. The door into the garden where
the old drive had once been was now
kept closed, and a heavy curtain hung
over it.</p>
<p class='c009'>We did not go out very much together––only
in the early afternoons we would walk
for an hour or so, he leaning on my arm
and on a stick, up and down the terraced
walk that lay next the drive under the pines,
as the sunset burned across the hills like
a far-away judgment. Some day perhaps I
will write out some of the stories that he
told me, although not all. I have the notes
by me.</p>
<p class='c009'>Here is one of them.</p>
<p class='c009'>We were walking on one of these dark
winter afternoons very slowly uphill towards
the village that the priest might get
a change from the garden. The morning
had been gusty and wet, with sleet showers
and even a sprinkle of pure snow as the
sky cleared after lunch-time; and now the
weather was settling down for a frost, and
the snow lay thinly here and there on the
rapidly hardening ground.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It is remarkable,” the old man was
saying to me, “how in spite of our Lord’s
words people still think that faith is a
matter more or less of intellect. Such a
phrase as ‘intelligent faith’ is, of course,
strictly most incorrect.”</p>
<p class='c009'>He stopped and looked at me as he said
this, as if prepared for dispute. I did not
disappoint him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You are very puzzling;” I said. “I
cannot believe that you do not value intellect.
Surely it is a gift of God, and therefore
may adorn faith, as any other gift
may do.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes,” he said, walking on, “it may
adorn it; but it has nothing more to do
with it really than jewels have to do with a
beautiful woman. In fact, sometimes faith
is far more beautiful unadorned, and it is
quite possible to crush a delicate and growing
faith with a weight of learned arguments
intended to adorn and perfect it. Christian
apologetics, it seems to me, are only really
useful in the mouth of one who realises
their entire inadequacy. You can demonstrate
nothing of God. You can, by arguments,
draw a number of lines that converge
towards God, and render His existence
and His attributes probable; but you cannot
reach Him along those lines. Faith
depends not on intellectual but on moral
conditions. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’
said our Saviour, not ‘Blessed are the profound
or acute of intellect’––‘for they
shall see God.’ It is certainly true of
intellectual as of all other riches that they
who possess them shall find difficulty in
entering into the kingdom of God.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“And so,” I said, “you think that intellectual
powers are not things to covet,
and that education is not a very important
question after all?”</p>
<p class='c009'>“No more than wealth,” he answered,
“at least so far as you mean by education
instruction in demonstrable facts or exact
sciences. The point of our existence here
is to know God. Well, you know for
yourself how the race for wealth is ruining
millions of souls to-day. No less surely is
keen intellectual competition ruining souls.
Mr. ––––, for instance,” he said, naming a
well-known critic and poet; “was there
ever a man of keener and finer intellect, or
of more unerring instinct in matters of
literary taste? Well, once I talked with
that man most of a day on all his own
subjects; in fact, he did nearly all the
talking, and I was astonished, I must confess,
at the perfection of the training of his
already brilliant powers. So much I could
perceive, though of course I could not
follow him. And of course there were
many delicate shades of beauty, if not much
more, invisible to me in his talk and criticism.
His scale of intellectual beauty ran
up out of my sight altogether. But what
astonished me more was the coarseness and
dulness of his spiritual instinct. I will
not call him a child in matters of faith,
because that would be high praise; but he
was just an ill-bred boor. I have known
many a Sussex villager of far purer and
finer spiritual fibre. No, no; faith can and
does exist quite apart from intellect; and
to increase or develop the one often means
the decrease and incoherence of the other.
<i>Seigneur, donnez-moi la foi du charbonnier!</i>”</p>
<p class='c009'>I must confess that this was a new point
of view for me; and I am not sure now
whether I do not still think it exaggerated
and dangerous; but I said nothing, because
it did seem to open up difficult questions,
and also to throw light on other difficult
questions. The priest turned to me again
as he walked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Why, it must be so,” he said; “if it
were not, clever people would have a better
hope of salvation than stupid people; and
that is absurd––as absurd as if rich people
should be nearer God than poor people.
No, no; talents are distributed unevenly, it
is true: to one ten and to another five;
but each has one pound, all alike.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We had reached the top of the slope,
and the towering hedges had gradually
fallen away, so that we could now see far
and wide over the country. Away behind
us, as we paused for breath, we could see
the misty Brighton downs, while in the
middle distance lay tumbled wooded hills,
with smoke beginning to curl up here and
there from the evening fires of hidden
villages. The sky was clear overhead, but
in the west, where the sunset was beginning
to smoulder, a few heavy clouds still
lingered.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And God sees all:” said the priest.
“Can you put up with another story as we
walk home again? I think I ought to be
turning now.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We turned and began to retrace our
steps downhill.</p>
<p class='c009'>“This is not an experience of my own,”
he said. “It was told me by a friend of
mine in Cornwall. He was the squire of
a little village a few miles out of Truro,
and lived there most of the year except a
few weeks in the spring, when he would go
abroad. He was a man of great learning
and taste, but had the faith of a little child.
It was like a spring of clear water to hear
him speak of God and heavenly things.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There was a boy in the village who
was an idiot. His parents were dead, and
he lived alone with his old grandmother,
who was a strict Calvinist, and who regarded
her grandson as hopelessly damned because
his faith and his expression of it were not
as hers. There were evident signs, she said,
that God’s inscrutable decrees were against
him. The local preachers there would
have nothing to do with the boy; and the
clergyman of the parish, after an attempt
or two, had given the child up as hopeless.
I think my friend told me that the clergyman
had tried to teach him Old Testament
history.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, the boy was a terrible and disgusting
case. I will not go into details
beyond saying that the boy’s head had the
look of a mule about it; his mother, I
think, had had a fright shortly before his
birth, and the boy used to think sometimes
that he was a horse or mule, and the village
children used to encourage him in it, and
ride and drive him on the green, for he was
quite harmless. And so he grew up, neglected
and untaught, spending much of his
time out of doors, and creeping home on
all fours in the evening, snorting and
stamping and neighing when he was much
excited; and he would stable himself in a
corner of the wide dark kitchen, and
munch grass; while his grandmother sat
in her high chair by the fire reading in her
Bible, or looking over her spectacles at the
poor misshapen body in the corner that
held a damned soul.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now my friend hated to see this child.
It was the one thing that troubled his faith.
Those who have the faith of children have
also the troubles of children; and this
living example before his eyes of what
looked like the carelessness of God, or
worse, was a greater offence to my friend’s
faith than all infidel arguments, or the mere
knowledge that such things happened.</p>
<p class='c009'>“On a certain Christmas Eve my friend
had been a long tramp over the hills with
a guest who was staying with him for the
shooting. They were returning through
his own property towards evening, and
were just dropping down from the hill.
Their path lay along the upper edge of an
old disused stone-quarry, whose entrance
lay perhaps a hundred yards away from the
valley-road that led into the village––so it
was a lonely and unfrequented place. The
evening was closing in; and my friend, as
he led the way along the path, was trying
to make out the outlines of stones and
bushes on the floor of the quarry, which
lay perhaps seventy feet below them. All
at once his eye was caught by the steady
glimmer of light somewhere in the dimness
beneath, and the sound of a voice. He
guessed at once that there were tramps
below, and was angry at the thought that
they must have wilfully disregarded the
notice he had put up about making a fire
so close to the wood: and he determined
to turn them out, and, if need be, to give
them shelter for the night in one of his
own outhouses. So he stopped and explained
to his friend which path would take
him home, while that he himself intended
to make his way along the lip of the quarry
to the entrance, and then to go on into its
interior where the tramps had made their
camp; and he promised to be at the house
five minutes after his friend.</p>
<p class='c009'>“So they separated, and he himself soon
found his way down a narrow overgrown
path that brought him to the opening of
the quarry.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It was a good deal darker here, as the
hill shadowed it from the west, and high
trees rose on one side; but he was able to
stumble along the stony path which led to
the interior, though it grew darker still as
he went. Presently he turned the corner
of a tall boulder, and emerged into the
kind of semi-circus that formed the heart
of the quarry: before him, about a third
way up the slope, burned the glimmer of
light he had noticed from above, but even
as he saw it it went out: my friend stood
in the path and called out, explaining who
he was, not threatening at all, but offering,
if it was any one who wanted shelter, to
provide it for the night. There was no
answer, only the sound of scuffling in the
dimness in front, and then the confused
sound of footsteps scrambling: my friend
ran forward, calling, and made out presently
an oddly shaped thing scrambling over the
silt and stone towards a shoulder of rock
that stood out against the sky on his left
(I think he said). He tried to follow, but
it was too dark, and after he had stumbled
once or twice, he gave up the pursuit. In
a moment more the climbing figure stood
out clear against the sky for an instant, and
then disappeared: and the squire saw with
a shock of disgust the mule-like head and
tangled hair rising from the high shoulders
of the village idiot, and his hands dangling
on each side of him; and he heard a high-screaming
neighing. But at least, he thought
to himself, he would go and see what the
boy had been doing.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He made his way up the slope of silted
gravel and mud that lay against the face of
the rock, and at last reached a little platform
apparently stamped and cut out at
the top of the skree just where it touched
the quarry-side. It was too dark for him
to distinguish anything clearly, so he struck
a match and held it in the still sheltered air
while he looked about him. This is what
he saw.</p>
<p class='c009'>“There was a short halter, with a kind
of rude head-stall, fastened to a rusty iron
staple driven into the rock. There was a
little pile of cut grass below it. There was
a kind of mud trough constructed against
the stone, with a little straw sprinkled in it
and holly berries and leaves in front of it;
but this showed signs of having been hastily
trampled down, though parts of it survived:
there were marks of hob-nailed boots in it
here and there. So much my friend had
noticed when the match burned his fingers:
but just before he dropped it he noticed
something else which made him open his
box and light another match: and then he
saw the end of a farthing taper sticking out
of the ground into which it had been pushed,
and another crushed into a ball. He drew
out the first and lighted it, and then noticed
this last thing. Quite plainly marked on
the soft edge of the mud-trough, in a place
which the hob-nailed boots had not touched,
was the mark of a tiny child’s naked foot,
as if a baby had stood in the trough or
manger, with one foot on the floor and
another on the edge.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I do not know what you think
of this, but I know what my friend thought
of it, and what I myself think of it. But
before he went home he went first to the
cottage where the boy lived and found him
as usual tethered in the corner, with his
grandmother nodding before the fire. The
boy would do nothing but snort and stamp:
and the grandmother could only say that
ten minutes ago the boy had run in and
gone straight to his corner as usual. The
squire asked whether the boy had been
trusted with a child by any one; but the
grandmother said it was impossible. Nor
indeed did he ever after hear a word of a
child having been missed on that afternoon.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then, before he went home, he went
to the little church, already decorated for
the festival, and there with the fragrance of
the holly and yew in the air about him, and
the glimmer of a candle near the altar
where the church-cleaner was sweeping, he
praised the Holy Child whose Birth-night
it was, and who had not disdained to lie in
a manger and be adored by the beasts of the
stall.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The following morning on his way
back from church he went to the quarry
again with his friend to show him what he
had seen; but the manger and the holly-berries
and crumpled taper were all gone,
and there was nothing to see but the iron
staple and the platform beaten hard and
flat.”</p>
<p class='c009'>We had reached the avenue of pines by
now that led to the house, and turned in
by the little garden-gate.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The story seems to show,” the priest
added, “that intellect has not much to do
with the knowledge of God; and that the
things which He hides from the wise and
prudent He reveals to babes.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch12'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Traveller</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c018'><span class='c019'>“I am amazed, not that the Traveller
returns from that Bourne,
but that he returns so seldom.”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>The Pilgrims’ Way.</i></span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Traveller</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>On</span> one of these evenings as we sat
together after dinner in front of the
wide open fireplace in the central room of
the house, we began to talk on that old
subject––the relation of Science to Faith.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It is no wonder,” said the priest, “if
their conclusions appear to differ, to shallow
minds who think that the last words are
being said on both sides; because their
standpoints are so different. The scientific
view is that you are not justified in committing
yourself one inch ahead of your
intellectual evidence: the religious view is
that in order to find out anything worth
knowing your faith must always be a little
in advance of your evidence; you must
advance <i>en échelon</i>. There is the principle
of our Lord’s promises. ‘Act as if it were
true, and light will be given.’ The scientist
on the other hand says, ‘Do not presume
to commit yourself until light is given.’
The difference between the methods lies, of
course, in the fact that Religion admits the
heart and the whole man to the witness-box,
while Science only admits the head––scarcely
even the senses. Yet surely the
evidence of experience is on the side of
Religion. Every really great achievement
is inspired by motives of the heart, and not
of the head; by feeling and passion, not by
a calculation of probabilities. And so are
the mysteries of God unveiled by those
who carry them first by assault; ‘The
Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence; and
the violent take it by force.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“For example,” he continued after a
moment, “the scientific view of haunted
houses is that there is no evidence for them
beyond that which may be accounted for
by telepathy, a kind of thought-reading.
Yet if you can penetrate that veneer of
scientific thought that is so common now,
you find that by far the larger part of
mankind still believes in them. Practically
not one of us really accepts the scientific
view as an adequate one.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Have you ever had an experience of
that kind yourself?” I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” said the priest, smiling, “you
are sure you will not laugh at it? There
is nothing commoner than to think such
things a subject for humour; and that I
cannot bear. Each such story is sacred to
one person at the very least, and therefore
should be to all reverent people.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I assured him that I would not treat his
story with disrespect.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” he answered, “I do not think
you will, and I will tell you. It only
happened a very few years ago. This was
how it began:</p>
<p class='c009'>“A friend of mine was, and is still, in
charge of a church in Kent, which I will
not name; but it is within twenty miles of
Canterbury. The district fell into Catholic
hands a good many years ago. I received
a telegram, in this house, a day or two
before Christmas, from my friend, saying
that he had been suddenly seized with a
very bad attack of influenza, which was
devastating Kent at that time; and asking
me to come down, if possible at once, and
take his place over Christmas. I had only
lately given up active work, owing to
growing infirmity, but it was impossible to
resist this appeal; so Parker packed my
things and we went together by the next
train.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I found my friend really ill, and quite
incapable of doing anything; so I assured
him that I could manage perfectly, and
that he need not be anxious.</p>
<p class='c009'>“On the next day, a Wednesday, and
Christmas Eve, I went down to the little
church to hear confessions. It was a
beautiful old church, though tiny, and full
of interesting things: the old altar had
been set up again; there was a rood-loft
with a staircase leading on to it; and an
awmbry on the north of the sanctuary had
been fitted up as a receptacle for the Most
Holy Sacrament, instead of the old hanging
pyx. One of the most interesting discoveries
made in the church was that of
the old confessional. In the lower half of
the rood-screen, on the south side, a square
hole had been found, filled up with an
insertion of oak; but an antiquarian of the
Alcuin Club, whom my friend had asked to
examine the church, declared that this
without doubt was the place where in the
pre-Reformation times confessions were
heard. So it had been restored, and put to
its ancient use; and now on this Christmas
Eve I sat within the chancel in the dim
fragrant light, while penitents came and
knelt outside the screen on the single step,
and made their confessions through the old
opening.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I know this is a great platitude, but I
never can look at a piece of old furniture
without a curious thrill at a thing that has
been so much saturated with human
emotion; but, above all that I have ever
seen, I think that this old confessional
moved me. Through that little opening
had come so many thousands of sins, great
and little, weighted with sorrow; and back
again, in Divine exchange for those burdens,
had returned the balm of the
Saviour’s blood. ‘Behold! a door opened
in heaven,’ through which that strange
commerce of sin and grace may be carried
on––grace pressed down and running
over, given into the bosom in exchange
for sin! <i>O bonum commercium!</i>”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest was silent for a moment, his
eyes glowing. Then he went on.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, Christmas Day and the three
following festivals passed away very happily.
On the Sunday night after service,
as I came out of the vestry, I saw a child
waiting. She told me, when I asked her
if she wanted me, that her father and
others of her family wished to make their
confessions on the following evening about
six o’clock. They had had influenza in
the house, and had not been able to come
out before; but the father was going to
work next day, as he was so much better,
and would come, if it pleased me, and
some of his children to make their confessions
in the evening and their communions
the following morning.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Monday dawned, and I offered the
Holy Sacrifice as usual, and spent the
morning chiefly with my friend, who was
now able to sit up and talk a good deal,
though he was not yet allowed to leave
his bed.</p>
<p class='c009'>“In the afternoon I went for a walk.</p>
<p class='c009'>“All the morning there had rested a
depression on my soul such as I have not
often felt; it was of a peculiar quality.
Every soul that tries, however poorly, to
serve God, knows by experience those
heavinesses by which our Lord tests and
confirms His own: but it was not like
that. An element of terror mingled with
it, as of impending evil.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As I started for my walk along the
high road this depression deepened. There
seemed no physical reason for it that I
could perceive. I was well myself, and
the weather was fair; yet air and exercise
did not affect it. I turned at last, about
half-past three o’clock, at a milestone
that marked sixteen miles to Canterbury.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I rested there for a moment, looking
to the south-east, and saw that far on the
horizon heavy clouds were gathering;
and then I started homewards. As I went
I heard a far-away boom, as of distant
guns, and I thought at first that there was
some sea-fort to the south where artillery
practice was being held; but presently I
noticed that it was too irregular and prolonged
for the report of a gun; and then
it was with a sense of relief that I came to
the conclusion it was a far-away thunderstorm,
for I felt that the state of the
atmosphere might explain away this depression
that so troubled me. The thunder
seemed to come nearer, pealed more loudly
three or four times and ceased.</p>
<p class='c009'>“But I felt no relief. When I reached
home a little after four Parker brought
me in some tea, and I fell asleep afterwards
in a chair before the fire. I was wakened
after a troubled and unhappy dream by
Parker bringing in my coat and telling me
it was time to keep my appointment at
the church. I could not remember what
my dream was, but it was sinister and
suggestive of evil, and, with the shreds of
it still clinging to me, I looked at Parker
with something of fear as he stood silently
by my chair holding the coat.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The church stood only a few steps
away, for the garden and churchyard adjoined
one another. As I went down
carrying the lantern that Parker had
lighted for me, I remember hearing far
away to the south, beyond the village,
the beat of a horse’s hoofs. The horse
seemed to be in a gallop, but presently the
noise died away behind a ridge.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When I entered the church I found
that the sacristan had lighted a candle or
two as I had asked him, and I could just
make out the kneeling figures of three or
four people in the north aisle.</p>
<p class='c009'>“When I was ready I took my seat in
the chair set beyond the screen, at the
place I have described; and then, one by
one, the labourer and his children came up
and made their confessions. I remember
feeling again, as on Christmas Eve, the
strange charm of this old place of penitence,
so redolent of God and man, each
in his tenderest character of Saviour and
penitent; with the red light burning like
a luminous flower in the dark before me,
to remind me how God was indeed tabernacling
with men, and was their God.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now I do not know how long I had
been there, when again I heard the beat of
a horse’s hoofs, but this time in the village
just below the churchyard; then again
there fell a sudden silence. Then presently
a gust of wind flung the door wide, and
the candles began to gutter and flare in
the draught. One of the girls went and
closed the door.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Presently the boy who was kneeling
by me at that time finished his confession,
received absolution and went down the
church, and I waited for the next, not
knowing how many there were.</p>
<p class='c009'>“After waiting a minute or two I turned
in my seat, and was about to get up,
thinking there was no one else, when a
voice whispered sharply through the hole
a single sentence. I could not catch the
words, but I supposed they were the usual
formula for asking a blessing, so I gave
the blessing and waited, a little astonished
at not having heard the penitent come
up.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then the voice began again.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest stopped a moment and looked
round, and I could see that he was trembling
a little.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Would you rather not go on?” I said.
“I think it disturbs you to tell me.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“No, no,” he said; “it is all right, but
it was very dreadful––very dreadful.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, the voice began again in a loud
quick whisper, but the odd thing was that
I could hardly understand a word; there
were just phrases here and there, like the
name of God and of our Lady, that I
could catch. Then there were a few old
French words that I knew; ‘<i>le roy</i>’ came
over and over again. Just at first I
thought it must be some extreme form of
dialect unknown to me; then I thought it
must be a very old man who was deaf,
because when I tried, after a few sentences,
to explain that I could not understand, the
penitent paid no attention, but whispered
on quickly without a pause. Presently I
could perceive that he was in a terrible
state of mind; the voice broke and
sobbed, and then almost cried out, but
still in this loud whisper; then on the
other side of the screen I could hear
fingers working and moving uneasily, as
if entreating admittance at some barred
door. Then at last there was silence for
a moment, and then plainly some closing
formula was repeated, which gradually
grew lower and ceased. Then, as I rose,
meaning to come round and explain that
I had not been able to hear, a loud moan
or two came from the penitent. I stood
up quickly and looked through the upper
part of the screen, and there was no one
there.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I can give you no idea of what a shock
that was to me. I stood there glaring, I
suppose, through the screen down at the
empty step for a moment or two, and perhaps
I said something aloud, for I heard a
voice from the end of the church.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Did you call, sir?’” And there stood
the sacristan, with his keys and lantern,
ready to lock up.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I still stood without answering for a
moment, and then I spoke; my voice
sounded oddly in my ears.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Is there any one else, Williams? Are
they all gone?’ or something like that.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Williams lifted his lantern and looked
round the dusky church.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘No, sir; there is no one.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“I crossed the chancel to go to the
vestry, but as I was half-way, suddenly
again in the quiet village there broke out
the desperate gallop of a horse.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘There! there!’ I cried, ‘do you hear
that?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“Williams came up the church towards
me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Are you ill, sir?’ he said. ‘Shall I
fetch your servant?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“I made an effort and told him it was
nothing; but he insisted on seeing me home:
I did not like to ask him whether he had
heard the gallop of the horse; for, after
all, I thought, perhaps there was no connection
between that and the voice that
whispered.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I felt very much shaken and disturbed;
and after dinner, which I took alone of
course, I thought I would go to bed very
soon. On my way up, however, I looked
into my friend’s room for a few minutes.
He seemed very bright and eager to talk,
and I stayed very much longer than I had
intended. I said nothing of what had happened
in the church; but listened to him
while he talked about the village and the
neighbourhood. Finally, as I was on the
point of bidding him good-night, he said
something like this:</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Well, I mustn’t keep you, but I’ve
been thinking while you’ve been in church
of an old story that is told by antiquarians
about this place. They say that one of St.
Thomas à Becket’s murderers came here
on the very evening of the murder. It is
his day, to-day, you know, and that is what
put me in mind of it, I suppose.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“While my friend said this, my old
heart began to beat furiously; but, with a
strong effort of self-control, I told him I
should like to hear the story.</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Oh! there’s nothing much to tell,’
said my friend; ‘and they don’t know who
it’s supposed to have been; but it is said to
have been either one of the four knights, or
one of the men-at-arms.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘But how did he come here?’ I asked,
‘and what for?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Oh! he’s supposed to have been in
terror for his soul, and that he rushed here
to get absolution, which, of course, was
impossible.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘But tell me,’ I said. ‘Did he come
here alone, or how?’</p>
<p class='c009'>“‘Well, you know, after the murder
they ransacked the Archbishop’s house and
stables: and it is said that this man got one
of the fastest horses and rode like a madman,
not knowing where he was going;
and that he dashed into the village, and into
the church where the priest was: and then
afterwards, mounted again and rode off.
The priest, too, is buried in the chancel,
somewhere, I believe. You see it’s a very
vague and improbable story. At the Gatehouse
at Malling, too, you know, they say
that one of the knights slept there the night
after the murder.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“I said nothing more; but I suppose I
looked strange, because my friend began to
look at me with some anxiety, and then
ordered me off to bed: so I took my candle
and went.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now,” said the priest, turning to me,
“that is the story. I need not say that I
have thought about it a great deal ever
since: and there are only two theories
which appear to me credible, and two others,
which would no doubt be suggested, which
appear to me incredible.</p>
<p class='c009'>“First, you may say that I was obviously
unwell: my previous depression
and dreaming showed that, and therefore
that I dreamt the whole thing. If
you wish to think that––well, you must
think it.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Secondly, you may say, with the
Psychical Research Society, that the whole
thing was transmitted from my friend’s
brain to mine; that his was in an energetic,
and mine in a passive state, or something of
the kind.</p>
<p class='c009'>“These two theories would be called
‘scientific,’ which term means that they are
not a hair’s-breadth in advance of the facts
with which the intellect, a poor instrument
at the best, is capable of dealing. And
these two ‘scientific’ theories create in
their turn a new brood of insoluble difficulties.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Or you may take your stand upon the
spiritual world, and use the faculties which
God has given you for dealing with it, and
then you will no longer be helplessly
puzzled, and your intellect will no longer
overstrain itself at a task for which it was
never made. And you may say, I think,
that you prefer one of two theories.</p>
<p class='c009'>“First, that human emotion has a power
of influencing or saturating inanimate
nature. Of course this is only the old
familiar sacramental principle of all creation.
The expressions of your face, for
instance, caused by the shifting of the
chemical particles of which it is composed,
vary with your varying emotions. Thus
we might say that the violent passions of
hatred, anger, terror, remorse, of this poor
murderer, seven hundred years ago, combined
to make a potent spiritual fluid that
bit so deep into the very place where it was
all poured out, that under certain circumstances
it is reproduced. A phonograph,
for example, is a very coarse parallel, in
which the vibrations of sound translate
themselves first into terms of wax, and
then re-emerge again as vibrations when
certain conditions are fulfilled.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Or, secondly, you may be old-fashioned
and simple, and say that by some law, vast
and inexorable, beyond our perception, the
personal spirit of the very man is chained
to the place, and forced to expiate his sin
again and again, year by year, by attempting
to express his grief and to seek forgiveness,
without the possibility of receiving it.
Of course we do not know who he was;
whether one of the knights who afterwards
did receive absolution, which possibly was
not ratified by God; or one of the men-at-arms
who assisted, and who, as an anonymous
chronicle says, ‘<i>sine confessione et
viatico subito rapti sunt</i>.’</p>
<p class='c009'>“There is nothing materialistic, I think,
in believing that spiritual beings may be
bound to express themselves within limits
of time and space; and that inanimate
nature, as well as animate, may be the
vehicles of the unseen. Arguments against
such possibilities have surely, once for all,
been silenced, for Christians at any rate,
by the Incarnation and the Sacramental
system, of which the whole principle is that
the Infinite and Eternal did once, and does
still, express Itself under forms of inanimate
nature, in terms of time and space.</p>
<p class='c009'>“With regard to another point, perhaps
I need not remind you that a thunderstorm
broke over Canterbury on the day and
hour of the actual murder of the Archbishop.”</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch13'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Sorrows of the World</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“... quell’ ombre orando, andavan sotto il pondo</div>
<div class='line in3'>simile a quel che talvolta si sogna,</div>
<div class='line in1'>disparmente angosciate tutte a tondo</div>
<div class='line in3'>e lasse su per la prima cornice,</div>
<div class='line in3'>purgando le caligine del mondo.”</div>
<div class='c006'><i>Il Purgatorio.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Sorrows of the World</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>As</span> the days went on I became more reassured
about my friend. Parker told me
there was an improvement since I had come:
and the shadow in his eyes seemed a little
lightened. On Christmas Eve the Rector
called, and they were shut up together in
the chapel for an hour after tea; and the old
man, I suppose, made his confession. He
seemed brighter than ever that evening,
and told me story after story after dinner,
old tales of when he was a child.</p>
<p class='c009'>On Christmas morning he celebrated the
Holy Mysteries as usual in the chapel, and
I received the Communion at his hands.
We went to church in the brougham,
and that was the last time the old priest
was seen in public. There was intense
curiosity about him in the village, as well
as the greatest reverence and love for
him, and I noticed a ripple of interest
along the benches as we passed up to the
Hall pew.</p>
<p class='c009'>On the evening of Christmas Day he
had provided a Christmas tree in the servants’
hall; but we only looked in for a
moment when the shouting was at its
loudest, and he nodded at a child or two
who caught sight of him, and I saw his
whole face kindle with joy and tenderness,
and then we went back to the fire in the
sitting-room.</p>
<p class='c009'>The morning of St. John’s Day broke
dark and heavy. We had to have candles
at breakfast, and the old man seemed
curiously changed and depressed again.
He hardly spoke at all, and looked at me
almost resentfully, like an overwrought
child, when I failed to blow out the spirit
lamp at the first attempt.</p>
<p class='c009'>All day long the gloom outside seemed
to gather, the sun went down in a pale
sky barred with indigo, and the wind began
to rise.</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man, after a word or two, went
to his room soon after dinner, and I understood
from Parker, who presently came in,
that the master was exceedingly sorry for
his discourtesy, but that he did not feel
equal to conversation, and intended to go
to bed early, and that he would be obliged
if I could manage to amuse myself alone
that evening. But I too went upstairs early,
feeling a little uneasy.</p>
<p class='c009'>On the top landing of the north end of
the house there are three doors: the central
one is the chapel door; that on the right,
approached by two little steep steps of its
own, was the priest’s room; that on the left
opposite was my own room. As I went in, I
noticed that a light shone from under the
chapel door, and that his own door was wide
open, showing the flickering light of the fire
within. As I paused I saw Parker pass
across the doorway, and called to him in a
low voice.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir; he’s fairly well, I think,” he
answered to my inquiry. “He is in the
chapel just now, and is coming to bed
directly. He told me just now, sir, too,
to ask whether you would serve him to-morrow
morning.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Certainly,” I said; “but are you sure
he ought to get up? He has not been well
all day.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, sir,” said Parker; “I will do my
best to persuade him to stay in bed, and
will let you know if I succeed, but I doubt
whether the master will be persuaded.”</p>
<p class='c009'>As I crossed outside the chapel door to
go to my own room I heard a murmur
from within, with a word or two which I
cannot write down.</p>
<p class='c009'>Before I was in bed I heard the chapel
door open, and footsteps go up the little
steps opposite, and the door close. Presently
it opened again; and then a tap at my
door.</p>
<p class='c009'>“It’s only me, sir,” said Parker’s voice.
“May I speak to you a moment?” and
then he came in with a candle in his hand.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I’m not easy about him, sir,” he said.
“But he won’t let me sleep in his room, as
I asked. I’ve come to ask you whether you
will let me lie down on your sofa. I don’t
like to leave him. My own room is at the
other end of the house. Excuse me, sir,
if I’ve asked what I shouldn’t. But I don’t
like to sleep on the landing for fear he
should look out and see me, and be displeased.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Of course I assented, almost eagerly, for
I felt a strange discomfort and loneliness
myself.</p>
<p class='c009'>Parker went noiselessly downstairs and
got a rug or two and a pillow, and then, with
many apologies, lay down on the sofa near
the window. My bed stood at the other
end of the long narrow room under the
sloping side of the roof. I blew the candles
out presently, and the room was in darkness.</p>
<p class='c009'>I could not sleep at first. I was anxious
for my friend, and I lay and listened for
the slightest sound from the landing. But
Parker’s face, as I had seen it as he had stood
with the candle in his hand, reassured me
that he too would be on the watch. The
wind had half died down again. Only there
came gusts from time to time that shook
the leaded windows. Gradually I began to
doze, then I suppose I dropped off to sleep,
and I dreamed.</p>
<p class='c009'>In my dream I knew that I was still in
my room, lying on my bed, but the room
seemed illuminated with a light whose
source I could not imagine. The curtains,
I thought, were no longer drawn over the
windows, but looped back, and the light
from my room fell distinctly upon the
panes. I thought I was sitting up in bed
watching for something at the window,
something which would terrify me when it
came. And then as I watched there came
a gust of wind, and lashed, to judge by the
sound, a big spray of ivy across the outside.
Then again it came, and again, but the
sound grew more distinct. I could see
nothing at the window, but there came that
ceaseless patter and tap, like a thousand
fingers. Then a dead leaf or two was
whirled up, stuck for a moment on the
glass, and whirled away again. It seemed
to me that the ivy-spray and the leaves
were clamouring to be admitted into shelter
from that wild wind outside. I grew terrified
at their insistence, and tried in my
dream to call to Parker, whom I fancied to
be still in the room, and in the struggle
awoke, and the room was dark. No; as I
looked about me it was not quite dark.
There lay across the floor an oblong patch
of light from the door. I gradually realised
that the door was open; there came a
draught round the corner at the foot of my
bed. I sat up and called gently to Parker.
But there was no answer. I got out of
bed noiselessly, and went across the floor to
where I saw the dim outlines of the sofa.
As I drew near I stumbled over a rug, and
then felt the pillow, also on the floor. I
put my hands almost instinctively down,
and felt that the sofa was still warm, but
Parker was gone. Then I looked out of
the door. The landing was lit by an oil-lamp,
and its light fell upon the priest’s
door. It was almost closed, but I could
hear a faint murmur of voices.</p>
<p class='c009'>I put on my dressing-gown and slippers
and went out. Almost simultaneously the
door opposite opened a little wider, and
Parker’s face looked out, white and scared.
When he saw me, he came swiftly out and
down the stairs, beckoning to me; but as
we met, a loud high voice came from the
priest’s room.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Parker, Parker! tell him to come in––at
once––at once. Don’t leave me.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Go in, sir: go in,” Parker said, in a
loud whisper to me, pushing me towards
the door. I went quickly up the two
steep steps and entered, Parker close
behind me, and I heard him close the door
softly.</p>
<p class='c009'>There was a tall screen on my left, and
behind it was the bed, with the head in the
corner of the room: a fire was burning
near the bed. I came round the screen
quickly, and saw the priest sitting up in
bed. He wore a tippet over his shoulders
and a small skull-cap on his head. His
eyes were large and bright, and looked at
me almost unintelligently. His hands
were hidden by the bedclothes. There
was a little round table by the head of the
bed, on which stood two burning candles
in silver candlesticks. I drew up a chair
by the table and sat down.</p>
<p class='c009'>“My old friend,” I said, “what is it?
Cannot you sleep?”</p>
<p class='c009'>He made no answer to me directly,
but stared past me round the room, and
then fixed his eyes at the foot of the
bed.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The sorrows of the world,” he said,
“and the sorrows under the earth. They
come to me now, because I have not understood
them, nor wept for them.”</p>
<p class='c009'>And then he drew out his old, thin,
knotted hands, and clasped them outside
the rug that lay on the outside of the bed.
I laid my own hand upon them.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You have had a greater gift than that,”
I said. “You have known instead the
joys of the world.”</p>
<p class='c009'>He paid no attention to me, but stared
mournfully before him, but he did not
withdraw his hands.</p>
<p class='c009'>There came a sudden gust of wind outside;
and even in that corner away from the
window the candle flames leant over to one
side, and then the chimney behind me
sighed suddenly.</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest unclasped his hands, and my
own hand fell suddenly on the coverlet.
He stretched out his left hand to the
window as it still shook, and pointed at
it in silence, glaring over my head as he
did so.</p>
<p class='c009'>Almost instinctively I turned to the long
low window and looked. But the curtains
were drawn over it: they were just stirring
and heaving in the draught, but there was
nothing to be seen. I could hear the pines
tossing and sighing like a troubled sea
outside.</p>
<p class='c009'>Then he broke out into a long wild talk,
now in a whisper, and now breaking into
something like a scream.</p>
<p class='c009'>Parker came quickly round from the
doorway, where he had been waiting out of
sight, and stood behind me, anxious and
scared. Sometimes I could not hear what
the priest said: he muttered to himself:
much of it I could not understand: and
some of it I cannot bring myself to write
down––so sacred was it––so revealing of
his soul’s inner life hidden with Christ in
God.</p>
<p class='c009'>“The sorrows of the world,” he cried
again; “they are crying at my window, at
the window of a hard old man and a traitorous
priest ... betrayed them with a
kiss.... Ah! the Holy Innocents who have
suffered! Innocents of man and bird and
beast and flower; and I went my way or
sat at home in the sunshine; and now they
come crying to me to pray for them. How
little I have prayed!” Then he broke into
a torrent of tender prayer for all suffering
things. It seemed to me as he prayed as
if the wind and the pines were silent. Then
he began again:</p>
<p class='c009'>“Their pale faces look through the
glass; no curtains can shut them out.
Their thin fingers tap and entreat....
And I have closed my heart at that door
and cannot open it to let them in.... There
is the face of a dog who has suffered––his
teeth are white, but his eyes are glazed and
his tongue hangs out.... There is a rose
with drenched petals––a rose whom I forgot.
See how the wind has battered it.... The
sorrows of the world!... There come the
souls from under the earth, crying for one to
release them and let them go––souls that
all men have forgotten, and I, the chief of
sinners.... I have lived too much in the
sweetness of God and forgotten His
sorrows.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then he turned to a crucifix of ebony
and silver that hung on the wall at his
side, and looked on it silently. And then
again he broke into compassionate prayer
to the Saviour of the world, entreating
Him by His Agony and Bloody Sweat, by
His Cross and Passion, to remember all
suffering things. That prayer that I heard
gave me a glimpse into mysteries of which
I had not dreamed; mysteries of the unity
of Christ and His members, a unity of
pain. These great facts, which I thank
God I know more of now, stood out in
fiery lines against the dark sorrow that
seemed to have filled the room from this
old man’s heart.</p>
<p class='c009'>Then suddenly he turned to me, and his
eyes so searched my own that I looked
down, while his words lashed me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You, my son,” he said, “what have
you done to help our Lord and His children?
Have you watched or slept?
Couldst thou not watch with me one
hour? What share have you borne in
the Incarnation? Have you believed for
those who could not believe, hoped for the
despairing, loved and adored for the cold?
And if you could not understand nor do
this, have you at least welcomed pain that
would have made you one with them?
Have you even pitied them? Or have you
hidden your face for fear you should grieve
too much? But what am I that I should
find fault?” Then he broke off again
into self-reproach.</p>
<p class='c009'>At this point Parker bent over me and
whispered:</p>
<p class='c009'>“He will die, sir, I think, unless you
can get him to be quiet.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man overheard, and turned
almost fiercely.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Quiet?” he cried, “when the world
is so unquiet! Can I rest, do you think,
with those at my window?” Then, with a
loud cry, “Ah! they are in the room!
They look at me from the air! I cannot
bear it.” And he covered his face with his
old thin hands, and shrank back against
the wall.</p>
<p class='c009'>I got up from my seat, and looked
round as I did so. It seemed to my fancy
as if there were some strange Presence
filling the room. It seemed as I turned as
if crowding faces swiftly withdrew themselves
over and behind the screen. A
picture on the wall overhead lifted and
dropped again like a door as if to let something
escape. The coverlet, which was a
little disarranged by the old man’s movement,
rippled gently as if some one who
had been seated on the bed had risen. I
heard Parker, too, behind me draw his
breath quickly through his teeth. All this
I noticed in a moment; the next I had
bent over the bed towards the priest and
put my hand on his shoulder. Either
he or I was trembling, I felt as I touched
him.</p>
<p class='c009'>“My dear old friend,” I said, “cannot
you lie down quietly a little? You
cannot think how you are distressing us
both.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then I added a word or two, presumptuously,
I felt, in the presence of this old
man, who knew so much about the Love of
God and the Compassion of our Saviour.</p>
<p class='c009'>Presently he withdrew his hands and
looked at me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes, yes,” he said; “but you do not
understand. I am a priest.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I sat down again. I tried hard to control
a great trembling that had seized me.
Still he watched me. Then he said more
quietly:</p>
<p class='c009'>“Is it nearly morning?”</p>
<p class='c009'>“It is not yet twelve o’clock, sir,” said
Parker’s voice steadily behind me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then I must watch and pray a little
longer,” said the old man. “Joy cometh
in the morning.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then quite quietly he turned and lifted
the crucifix from its nail, kissed it and replaced
it. Then he put his hands over his
face again and remained still.</p>
<p class='c009'>The wind outside seemed quieter. But
whenever it sighed in the chimney or at
the window the priest winced a little, as if
a sudden pain had touched him.</p>
<p class='c009'>He was supported by pillows behind his
back and head, against which he leaned
easily. After a few minutes of silence his
hands dropped and clasped themselves on
his lap. His eyes were closed, and he
seemed breathing steadily. I hoped that
he would fall asleep so. But as I turned
to whisper to Parker, I suppose I must
have made a slight noise, for when I looked
at the servant he paid no attention to me,
but was looking at his master. I turned
back again, and saw the old man’s eyes
gazing straight at me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes,” he said; “go and sleep; why
are you here? Parker, why did you allow
him to come?”</p>
<p class='c009'>“I woke up and came myself,” I said.
“Parker did not disturb me.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, go back to bed now. You will
serve me in the morning?”</p>
<p class='c009'>I tried to say something about his not
being fit to get up, but he waved it
aside.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You cannot understand,” he said
quietly. “That is my one hope and
escape. Joy cometh in the morning.
There are many souls here and elsewhere
that are waiting for that joy, and I must
not disappoint them. And I too,” he
added softly, “I too look for that joy. Go
now, and we will meet in the morning.”
And he smiled at me so gently that I got
up and went, feeling comforted.</p>
<p class='c009'>After I had been in bed a little while, I
heard the priest’s door open and close
again, and then Parker tapped at my open
door and came in.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I have left him quiet, sir. I do not
think he will sleep, but he would not let
me stay.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Have you ever seen him like this
before?” I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Never quite like this, sir,” he said; and
as I looked at the old servant I saw that his
eyes were bright with tears, and his lips
twitching.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” I said, “we have both heard
strange things to-night. Your master
whom you love is in the hands of God.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The old servant’s face broke into lines of
sorrow; and then the tears ran down his
face.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “I am not
quite myself. Shall I put the candle out,
sir?” Then he lay down on the sofa.</p>
<p class='c009'>“One word more, Parker. You will
wake me if you hear anything more. And
anyhow you will call me at seven if I should
be asleep.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Certainly, sir,” answered Parker’s
voice from the darkness.</p>
<p class='c009'>I slept and woke often that night. Each
time I woke I went quietly to the door
and looked across the landing and listened.
Each time I was not so quiet but that
Parker heard me and was by me as I
looked, and each time there was a line of
light under the priest’s door; and once or
twice a murmur of one voice at least from
the room.</p>
<p class='c009'>Towards morning I fell into a sound
sleep, and awoke to find Parker arranging
my clothes and setting ready my bath.
The rugs and the pillow were gone from
the sofa, and there was no sign on the
servant’s face that anything unusual had
happened during the night.</p>
<p class='c009'>“How is he?” I asked quickly. “Have
you seen him?”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Yes, sir,” said Parker; “he is dressing
now, and will be ready at half-past seven.
It is a little before seven now, sir.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“But how is he?” I asked again.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I scarcely know, sir,” answered Parker.
“He does not seem ill, but he is very
silent again this morning, sir.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then, after a pause, “Is there anything I
can do for you, sir?”</p>
<p class='c009'>“There is nothing more, thank you,” I
said, and he left the room.</p>
<p class='c009'>I got up presently and dressed. The
morning was still dark, and I dressed by
candlelight. When I drew the curtains
back the sky had just begun to glimmer in
the reflected dawn from the other side of
the house; but it was too dark to see to
read except by artificial light.</p>
<p class='c009'>I went out on to the landing, paused a
moment, and heard a footstep in the
priest’s room. Then I opened the door of
the oratory and went in.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch14'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>In the Morning</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c018'><span class='c019'>“At the end of woe suddenly our
eyes shall be opened, and in
clearness of light our sight shall
be full: which light is God, our
Maker and Holy Ghost, in Christ
Jesus our Saviour.”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>Mother Julian.</i></span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>In the Morning</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>The</span> oratory is a little room, white-washed,
crossed by oaken beams on
the walls. The window is opposite the
door; and the altar stands to the left. There
is a bench or two on the right.</p>
<p class='c009'>When I entered on this morning the
tapers were lighted, the vestments laid out
upon the altar, and all prepared. I went
across and knelt by the window. Presently
I heard the priest’s door open, and in a
moment more he came in, followed by
Parker, who closed the door behind him
and came and knelt at the bench. I looked
eagerly at the old man’s face; it was white
and tired-looking, and the eyebrows seemed
to droop more than ever, but it was a quiet
face. It was only for an instant that I saw
it, for he turned to the altar and began to
vest: and then when he was ready he
began.</p>
<p class='c009'>It was strange to hear that voice, which
had rung with such intensity of pain so few
hours before, now subdued and controlled;
and to watch the orderly movements of
those hands that had twisted and gesticulated
with such terrible appeal. I felt
that Parker too was watching with a close
and awful interest what we both half feared
would be a shocking climax to the scenes of
the night before, but which we half hoped
too would recall and quiet that troubled
spirit.</p>
<p class='c009'>Dawn was now beginning to shine
on the western sky. There was a tall holly
tree that rose nearly to the level of the
window. As I looked out for a moment
my eye was caught by the outline of a bird,
faintly seen, sitting among the upper
branches.</p>
<p class='c009'>Now I will only mention one incident
that took place. I was in such a strange
and disordered state of mind that I scarcely
now can remember certainly anything but
this. As the Priest’s Communion drew
near there came a sudden soft blow against
the window panes....</p>
<p class='c009'>When the priest began to unvest, I left
the chapel and went downstairs to await him
in the breakfast room. But as he did not
come, I went outside the house for a few
minutes, and presently found myself below
the chapel window. It seemed to me that
I was in a dream––the very earth I trod on
seemed unreal. I was unable to think connectedly.
The scene in the chapel seemed
to stand out vividly. It seemed to me as
if in some sense it were a climax, but of
what nature, whether triumphant or full of
doom, I could not tell.</p>
<p class='c009'>As I stood there, perplexed, downcast, in
the growing glimmer of the day, my eyes
fell upon a small rumpled heap at my feet,
and looking closer I saw it was the body of
a thrush; it was still limp and warm, and
as I lifted it I remembered the sudden blow
against the window panes. But as I still
stood, utterly distracted, the chapel window
was thrown open, and Parker’s face looked
out as I gazed up. He beckoned to me
furiously and withdrew, leaving the window
swinging.</p>
<p class='c009'>I laid the thrush under a bush at the
corner of the house as I ran round, and
came in quickly and up the stairs. Parker
met me on the landing.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He just reeled and fell, sir,” he said,
“up the stairs into his room. I’ve laid him
on the bed, and must get down to the
stables to send for the doctor. Will you
stay with him, sir, till I come back?”
And without waiting for an answer he was
gone.</p>
<p class='c009'>That evening I was still sitting by my
friend’s side. I had food brought up to
my room during the day, but except for
those short intervals was with him continually.
The doctor had come and gone. All
that he could tell us was that the old man
had had a seizure of some kind, and he had
looked grave when I told him of the events
of the night before.</p>
<p class='c009'>“His age is against him, too,” the
doctor had said; “I cannot say what will
happen.”</p>
<p class='c009'>And then he had given directions, and
had left, promising to return again, at any
rate the next morning.</p>
<p class='c009'>I had been trying to read with a shaded
lamp, looking from time to time at the
figure of the old man on the bed, as he lay
white and quiet, with his eyes closed, as he
had lain all day.</p>
<p class='c009'>At about six o’clock, I had just glanced
at my watch, when a slight movement made
me turn to the bed again, and I could see
in the dim light that his eyes were open and
fixed upon me, but all the pain was gone
out of them, and they were a child’s eyes
again. I rose and went to his side, and sat
down in the same chair that I had occupied
the night before. Immediately I had sat
down he put out his hand, and I took it
and held it. His eyes smiled at me, and
then he spoke, very slowly, with long
pauses.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well,” he said, “you have been with
me and have seen and heard, last night and
this morning; but it is all ended, and the
valley is lightening again at its eastern end
where the sun rises. So it was not all
dreams and fancies––those old stories that
you bore with so patiently to please me.
Now tell me what you heard and saw. Did
you see them all in the room last night?
and––and”––his eyes grew wide and
insistent––“what did you see this
morning?”</p>
<p class='c009'>Now the doctor had told me that he
must not be over-excited, but soothed; and
honestly enough, though some who may
read this may not agree with me, I thought
it was better to speak plainly of those
things so strange to you and me, but so dear
and familiar to him. And so I told him all
I had heard and seen.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Ah!” he said when I had finished,
“then we were not quite as one. But still
you saw and heard more than most men.
Now will you hear one more story? I will
not tell you all I saw last night, because the
Lord has been gracious to me, and is rising
with healing in His wings on me and on
many other poor creatures. But the wounds
are aching still, and if you will spare me, I
will not speak much of the shadows of last
night, but only of the joys that came in the
morning. Will you hear it?”</p>
<p class='c009'>“My dear old friend,” I said, “are you
sure it will not be too much for you?”</p>
<p class='c009'>He shook his head; and then, still holding
my hand in his, his fingers tightening
and relaxing as he told his tale, with many
pauses and efforts, he began:</p>
<p class='c009'>“Last night the sorrows of death came
to me,” he said, “and all the blood and
agony and desolation of the whole world
seemed to be round me. And I have had
so little sorrow in my life that I was ill
prepared to meet them. Our Lord has
always shown me such grace and given me
so much joy. But He warned me again
and again this autumn. That was why I
spoke to you as I did when you came before
Christmas.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Well, last night, all this came to me.
And it seemed as if I were partly responsible.
Years ago I was set apart as a priest
to stand between the dead and the living.
It was meant that I should be the meeting-place,
as every priest must be, of creation’s
need and God’s grace––as every Christian
must be in his station. That is what intercession
and the Holy Sacrifice both signify
and effect. The two tides of need and
fulfilment must meet in a priest’s heart.
But all my life I have known much of fulfilment
and little of need. Last night the
first was almost withdrawn, and the second
deepened almost beyond bearing. But I
knew, as I told you last night, that with the
morning would come peace––that I should
be able to carry up the burden laid on me,
and make it one with Him on Whom the
iniquities of us all are laid. But I need
not say more of that now. This morning
when I went to the altar a lull had come in
the storm. But it was all in my heart
still. I felt sure that I should have the
clear vision once more: and as I lifted up
the Body of our Lord, it came.</p>
<p class='c009'>“As I lifted It up It disappeared; as
those tell us who look in crystals. And this
is what I saw. I do not know how long I saw
it, it seemed as if time stood still, but you told
me there was no perceptible pause. Well”––and
the old man raised himself slightly
in the bed––“between my hands I saw a
long slope running as it seemed from me
downhill. On the nearer higher end of the
slope were men going to and fro, and I
knew they needed something––and yet
many of them did not seem to know it
themselves––but they were all in need.
One there was who walked quickly, clenching
and unclenching his hands, and I knew
he fought with sin. And there was a
woman with a dead child across her knees;
and there was a blind child crying in a
corner.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Then further down the slope were
wounded creatures of all kinds, and lonely
beasts seeking a place to die, and the very
grass of the field seemed to be in sorrow,
and there were blind sea-creatures gasping.
They were not small, as you might think,
but I saw them as if I looked through a
hole in a wall.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And they stretched down, rank on
rank, heaving and striving, men and beasts
warring and trampling down the flowers.
There was a thrush I saw, too, shivering
in a tree; and the thought of the story I
have told you came to my mind, and there
were a thousand things that I forget.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Now when I saw all this my hands
trembled, but what I saw did not tremble,
so I knew that it was real. And then very
far away and faint at the foot of the slope
was a level silvery mist, like a sea-fog,
with delicate currents and lines, now swift
and piercing, now slow; and in the mist
moved faces; but I could not distinguish
the features. And these were the souls
that waited until their sins should be done
away.</p>
<p class='c009'>“And then with something like terror
I remembered that I held in my hands the
Body of the Lord. And I was puzzled
and distracted, but I knelt to adore, and
as I lowered the Holy Thing, the clouds
closed and the light died out. And it
may be that I was cowardly––and I think
God will pardon an old man for whom the
light was too strong––but when I consecrated
the chalice, I dared not look at it.
At the Communion, too, I closed my eyes
again.” The old man paused a moment
and then continued. “I heard no sound
such as you describe. As I unvested and
went to my room I was still perplexed at
what I had seen, and could not understand
it, and then on a sudden I understood it,
and it was then I suppose that I fell down.”</p>
<p class='c009'>There was a silence for a moment: then
I answered.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I cannot understand even now.”</p>
<p class='c009'>The priest smiled at me, and his hand
closed again on mine.</p>
<p class='c009'>“I think there is no need for me to tell
you that. It will be plain to you soon.
Remember what it was that I saw, and
where I saw it, and all will be easy.</p>
<p class='c009'>“You can leave me now for a little,” he
went on. “I am perfectly free from pain,
and I wish to think. Would you send Parker
to me in about an hour’s time?” And
then, as I went towards the door, he added:</p>
<p class='c009'>“One word more. I had forgotten
something. I have yet one more clear
vision to see before I die. I have seen, you
remember, what you too have seen, how
all things need God; but there is yet one
more thing to see which will make all
plain, and I think you can guess what
that is. And I pray that you will be with
me when I see it.”</p>
<p class='c009'>Then I turned and went quietly out.</p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c011' /></div>
<p class='c016'><SPAN name='ch15'></SPAN>
<span class='xxlarge'>The Expected Guest</span></p>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c016'><span class='c019'>“Jhesu! Jhesu! Esto michi, Jhesu!”</span></p>
<div class='c006'><span class='c019'><i>Old Prayer</i></span></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c012'>The Expected Guest</h2></div>
<p class='drop-capa0_25_0_7 c017'><span class='sc'>As</span> day after day went by and the old
man seemed no worse, I began to
have hopes that he might recover, but the
doctor discouraged me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“At the best,” he said, “he may just
linger on. But I do not think the end is
far off. You must remember he is an old
man.” And so at last the end came.</p>
<p class='c009'>During these days, since Parker was of
course too much occupied with his master,
a boy waited on me. On the last evening,
as the boy came in for the second time at
dinner, he looked white and frightened.</p>
<p class='c009'>“What is it?” I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“We don’t like it, sir, in the servants’
hall. Two children ran in just now and
said they had seen something, and we are
all upset, sir. The maids are crying.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“What was it the children thought they
saw?” I asked. The boy hesitated.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Tell me,” I repeated.</p>
<p class='c009'>The boy put down the dish he held and
came closer to me.</p>
<p class='c009'>“They say they saw the master himself,
sir, on the front lawn, at the gate.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Where were the children?” I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Passing round from the house, sir, in
front, under the chestnut. They had been
sent by the Rector to inquire.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I got up from the table.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Where are they?” I asked.</p>
<p class='c009'>“In the servants’ hall, sir.”</p>
<p class='c009'>“Bring them into the sitting-room.” And
I followed him out and waited. Presently
the swing-door opened and the children
looked in. Behind them were the pale faces
of the servants, whispering and staring.</p>
<p class='c009'>“Come in,” I said to the children, “and
sit down. Don’t be afraid.”</p>
<p class='c009'>They came timidly in, evidently very
much frightened. The door closed behind
them.</p>
<p class='c009'>This was their story.</p>
<p class='c009'>They had been to the house to inquire
how the old man was, and were returning
to the Rectory. But they had hardly
started, in fact had only just reached the
chestnut-tree in front of the house, when
both of them, who were looking towards
the lighted windows, had seen quite plainly
the figure of the old priest standing just
inside the gate. He was bareheaded, they
said, dressed in black, but they could only
see his head and shoulders over the bank,
as the road is a little lower than the grass
which borders on it and runs up to the
gate. He seemed, they said, to be looking
out for some one. When I asked them how
they could possibly see any one at that
distance on such a dark night, they had no
sort of explanation; they could only repeat
that they did see him quite plainly. At
last I took them out myself, and made
them point out to me the place where they
had seen it; but, as I expected, all was
dark, and we could not even make out the
white balls on the pedestals. I took them
on to the end of the drive, as they still
seemed upset; and they told me there that
they would not be frightened to go the
rest of the way alone. Fortunately, however,
as we waited a man passed in the
direction of the village, and he consented
to see them as far as the Rectory gate.</p>
<p class='c009'>When I entered the house again the
maids with the boy were standing in the
hall. They looked eagerly towards the
door as I opened it, and one of them cried
out.</p>
<p class='c009'>“What is it now?” I asked. One of
the elder servants answered:</p>
<p class='c009'>“Oh sir, the master’s worse. Parker’s
afraid he’s going. He’s just run downstairs
for you, sir; and now he’s gone
back.”</p>
<p class='c009'>I did not wait to hear any more, but
pushed past them, through the sitting-room,
and ran upstairs.</p>
<p class='c009'>The door of the old man’s room was
open, and I heard faint sounds from within.
I went straight in without knocking, and
turned the corner of the screen.</p>
<p class='c009'>Parker, who was kneeling by the bed,
supporting his master in his arms, turned
his head as I came in sight, and made a
gesture with it. I came close up.</p>
<p class='c009'>“He’s going fast, sir, I’m afraid,” he
whispered.</p>
<p class='c009'>The old man was sitting up in bed
looking quite straight before him. His
lips were slightly parted; and his eyes were
full of expectancy. He kept lifting his
hands gently, half opening them with a
welcoming movement, and then letting
them fall. Now he leaned gently forward,
as if to meet something with his
hands extended, then sinking a little back
upon Parker’s arm. He paid no attention
to me, and it seemed as if his
eyes were focused to an almost infinite
distance.</p>
<p class='c009'>I too knelt down by the bed and waited
watching him. Then there came soft footsteps
at the door, but it was not for that
he waited. Then a whispering and a sobbing:
and I knew that the servants were
gathering outside.</p>
<p class='c009'>Still he waited for that which he knew
would come before he died. And the expectancy
deepened in his eyes to an almost
terrible intensity; and it was the expectancy
that feared no disappointment. It was
perfectly still outside, the servants were
quiet now, and the old man’s breathing was
inaudible. Once I heard the far-off bark
of a dog away somewhere in the village.</p>
<p class='c009'>As I watched his face I saw how wrinkles
covered it, the corners of his eyes and his
forehead were deeply furrowed, and the
lines deepened and shifted as his face
worked. And then suddenly he cried out:
“He is coming, my son, He is coming far
away.” And then silence.</p>
<p class='c009'>I heard a sudden movement outside and
then stillness again. Then a maid broke
out into sobbing: and I heard footsteps,
and then the door of my room across the
landing open and shut: and the sobbing
ceased. But the old man paid no heed.
Then suddenly he cried out again:</p>
<p class='c009'>“Behold He stands at the door and
knocks.”</p>
<p class='c009'>He made an indescribable gesture with
his hands. Then I was startled, for there
came a loud pealing at the bell downstairs.</p>
<p class='c009'>Parker whispered to me to send one of
the servants downstairs: and I went to the
door for an instant and told the boy to go:
then I came back. The boy’s footsteps
died away down the staircase. I knelt
down again by the bed.</p>
<p class='c009'>Then once more the old man cried out:</p>
<p class='c009'>“He is coming, my son. He is here:”
and then, “Look!”</p>
<p class='c009'>As he said this across his face there
came an extraordinary smile; for one
moment, as I started up and looked, his
face was that of a child, the wrinkles
seemed suddenly erased, and a great rosy
flush swept from forehead to mouth, and
his eyes shone like stars. I noticed too,
even at this moment, for I was almost
facing him as I sprang up, that the focus
of his eyes was contracted to a point at the
foot of his bed where the screen stood.</p>
<p class='c009'>Then he fell back; and Parker laid him
gently down.</p>
<p class='c009'>A moment after footsteps came up the
stairs: and the boy whispered from the
doorway that the Rector had come.</p>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c002'>
<div>THE END</div>
</div></div>
<div class='pbb'>
<hr class='pb c002' /></div>
<p class='c009'> </p>
<div class='tnbox'>
<ul class='ul_1 c011'>
<li>Transcribe’s Notes:
<ul class='ul_2'>
<li>Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
</li>
<li>Typographical errors were silently corrected.
</li>
<li>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant
form was found in this book.
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul></div>
<p class='c009'> </p>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
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