A succession of incidents, that must have perturbed the doctor and his
companion in earnest, had followed upon their departure from Chadlands,
and Mary soon discovered that she was faced with a terrible problem.
For one young woman had little chance of winning her way against an old
man and the religious convictions that another had impressed upon him.
Sir Walter and the priest were now at one, nor did the common sense of
a fourth party to the argument convince them. At dinner Septimus May
declared his purpose.
"We are happily free of any antagonistic and material influence," he
said. "Providence has willed that those opposed to us should be taken
elsewhere, and I am now able to do my duty without more opposition."
"Surely, father, you do not wish this?" asked Mary. "I thought you--"
But the elder was fretful.
"Let me eat my meal in peace," he answered. "I am not made of iron, and
reason cuts both ways. It was reasonable to deny Mr. May before these
events. It would be unreasonable to pretend that the death of Peter
Hardcastle has not changed my opinions. To cleave to the possibility of
a physical explanation any longer is mere folly and obstinacy. I believe
him to be right."
"This is fearful for me--and fearful for everybody here. Don't you see
what it would mean if anything happened to you, Mr. May? Even supposing
there is a spirit hidden in the Grey Room with power and permission to
destroy us--why, that being so, are you any safer than dear Tom was or
this poor man?"
"Because I am armed, Mary, and they were defenseless. Unhappily youth
is seldom clothed in the whole armor of righteousness. My dear son was
a good and honorable man, but he was not a religious man. He had yet
to learn the incomparable and vital value of the practice of Christian
faith. Hardcastle invited his own doom. He admitted--he even appeared to
pride himself upon a crude and pagan rationalism. It is not surprising
that such a man should be called away to learn the lessons of which he
stood so gravely in need."
"I know that our dear Tom was bidden to higher work--to labor in a
higher cause than here, to purer knowledge of those things that matter
most to the human soul," said Mary. "But that is not to say God chose
to take him by a miracle. For what you believe amounts to a miracle.
You know that I am bearing my loss in the same spirit as yourself, but,
granted it had to be at God's will, that is no reason why we should
suppose the means employed were outside nature."
"How can you pretend they are inside nature, as we know it?" asked her
father.
"We know nothing at all yet, and I implore Mr. May to wait until we are
at least assured that science cannot find a reason."
"Fear not for me, my child," answered Septimus May. "You forget certain
details that have assisted to decide me. Remember that Hardcastle had
openly denied and derided the possibility of supernatural peril. He had
challenged this potent thing not an hour before he was brought face
to face with it. Tom went to his death innocently; this man cannot
be absolved so easily. In my case, with my knowledge and faith, the
conditions are very different, and I oppose an impregnable barrier
between myself and the secret being. I am an old priest, and I go
knowing the nature of my task. My weapons are such that a good spirit
would applaud them and an evil spirit be powerless against them. Do you
not see that the Almighty could never permit one of His creatures--for
even the devils also are His--to defeat His own minister or trample on
the name of Christ? It would amount to that. So armed one might walk in
safety through the lowermost hell, for hell can only believe and tremble
before the truth."
Mary looked hopelessly at her father; but he offered her small comfort.
Sir Walter still found himself conforming to the fierce piety and
dogmatic assurance of the man of God. In this welter and upheaval his
modest intellect found only a foothold here, and his judgment now firmly
inclined to the confident assertions of religion. He was himself a
devout and conventional believer, and he turned to the support of faith,
and shared, with increasing conviction, the opinion of Septimus May, as
uttered in a volume of confident words. He became blind to the physical
danger. He even showed a measure of annoyance at Mary's obstinate
entreaties. She strove to calm him, and told him he was not himself--an
assertion that, by his inner consciousness of its truth, seemed to
incense Sir Walter.
He begged her to be silent, and declared that her remarks savored of
irreverence. Startled and bewildered by such a criticism, the woman
was indeed silent for some time, while her father-in-law flowed on and
uttered his conviction. Yet not all his intensity and asseverations
could justify such extravagant assertion. At another time they might
even have amused Mary; but in sight of the fact that her father was
yielding, and that the end of the argument would mean the clergyman
in the Grey Room, she could win nothing but frantic anxiety from the
situation. Sir Walter was broken; he had lost his hold on reality,
and she realized that. His unsettled intelligence had gone over to the
opposition, and there was none, as it seemed, to argue on her side.
Septimus May had acted like a dangerous drug on Sir Walter; he appeared
to be intoxicated in some degree. But only in mind, not in manner. He
argued for his new attitude, and he was not as excited as the priest,
but maintained his usual level tones.
"I agreed with Mannering and Henry yesterday, as you know, Mary," he
said, "and at my desire Mr. May desisted from his wish. We see how
mistaken I was, how right he must have been. I have thought it out this
afternoon, calmly and logically. These unfortunate young men have died
without a reason, for be sure no explanation of Peter Hardcastle's death
will be forthcoming though the whole College of Surgeons examines his
corpse. Then we must admit that life has been snatched out of these
bodies by some force of which we have no conception. Were it natural,
science would have discovered a reason for death; but it could not,
because their lives flowed away as water out of a bottle, leaving the
bottle unchanged in every particular. But life does not desert its
physical habitation on these terms. It cannot quit a healthy, human body
neither ruined nor rent. You must be honest with yourself, my child,
as well as with your father-in-law and me. A physical cause being
absolutely ruled out, what remains? To-night I emphatically support Mr.
May, and my conscience, long in terrible concern, is now at rest again.
And because it is at rest, I know that I have done well. I believe that
what dear Tom's father desires to do--namely, to spend this night in
the Grey Room--is now within his province and entirely proper to his
profession, and I share his perfect faith and confidence."
"It is you who lack faith, Mary," continued Septimus May. "You lack
faith, otherwise you would appreciate the unquestionable truth of what
your father tells you. Listen," he continued, "and understand something
of what this means from a larger outlook than our own selfish and
immediate interests. Much may come of my action for the Faith at large.
I may find an answer to those grave questions concerning the life beyond
and the whole problem of spiritualism now convulsing the Church and
casting us into opposing sections. It is untrodden and mysterious
ground; but I am called upon to tread it. For my part, I am never
prepared to flout inquirers if they approach these subjects in a
reverent spirit. We must not revile good men because they think
differently from ourselves. We must examine the assertions of such
inquirers as Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Conan Doyle in a mood of reverence
and sympathy. Some men drift away from the truth in vital particulars;
but not so far that they cannot return if the road is made clear to
them.
"We must remember that our conviction of a double existence rests on the
revelation of God through His Son, not on a mere, vague desire toward
a future life common to all sorts and conditions of men. They suspected
and hoped; we know. Science may explain that general desire if it
pleases; it cannot explain, or destroy, the triumphant certainty born
of faith. Spiritualism has succeeded to the biblical record of
'possession,' and I, for my part, of course prefer what my Bible
teaches. I do not myself find that the 'mediums' of modern spiritualism
speak with tongues worthy of much respect up to the present, and it is
certain that rogues abound; but the question is clamant. It demands
to be discussed by our spiritual guides and the fathers of the Church.
Already they recognize this fact and are beginning to approach it--some
priests in a right spirit, some--as at the Church Congress last
month--in a wrong spirit."
"A wrong spirit, May?" asked Sir Walter.
"In my opinion, a wrong spirit," answered the other. "There is much,
even in a meeting of the Church Congress, that makes truly religious men
mourn. They laughed when they should have learned. I refer to incidents
and criticisms of last October. There the Dean of Manchester, who shows
how those, who have apparently spoken to us from Beyond through
the mouths of living persons, describe their different states and
conditions. Stainton Moses gave us a vision of heaven such as an Oxford
don and myself might be supposed to appreciate.
"Raymond describes a heaven wherein the average second lieutenant could
find all that, for the moment, he needs. But why laugh at these things?
If we make our own hells, shall we not make our own heavens? We must go
into the next world more or less cloyed and clogged with the emotions
and interests of this one. It is inevitable. We cannot instantly throw
off a lifetime of interests, affections, and desires. We are still human
and pass onward as human beings, not as angels of light.
"Therefore, we may reasonably suppose that the Almighty will temper
the wind to the shorn lamb, nor impose too harsh and terrible a
transformation upon the souls of the righteous departed, but lead one
and all, by gradual stages and through not unfamiliar conditions, to the
heaven of ultimate and absolute perfection that He has designed for His
conscious creatures."
"Well spoken," said Sir Walter.
But Mr. May had not finished. He proceeded to the immediate point.
"Shall it be denied that devils have been cast out in the name of God?"
he asked. "And if from human tenements, then why not from dwellings made
with human hands also? May not a house be similarly cleansed as well as
a soul? This unknown spirit--angel or fiend, or other sentient being--is
permitted to challenge mankind and draw attention to its existence. A
mystery, I grant, but its Maker has now willed that some measure of this
mystery shall be revealed to us. We are called to play our part in this
spirit's existence.
"It would seem that it has endured a sort of imprisonment in this
particular room for more years than we know, and it may actually be the
spirit of some departed human being condemned, for causes that humanity
has forgotten, to remain within these walls. The nameless and unknown
thing cries passionately to be liberated, and is permitted by its
Maker to draw our terrified attention upon itself by the exercise of
destructive functions transcending our reason.
"God, then, has willed that, through the agency of devout and living
men, the unhappy phantom shall now be translated and moved from this
environment for ever; and to me the appointed task is allotted. So I
believe, as firmly as I believe in the death and resurrection of the
Lord. Is that clear to you, Sir Walter?"
"It is. You have made it convincingly clear."
"So be it, then. I, too, Mary, am not dead to the meaning of science in
its proper place. We may take an illustration of what I have told you
from astronomy. As comets enter our system from realms of which we
have no knowledge, dazzle us a little, awaken our speculations and then
depart, so may certain immortal spirits also be supposed to act. We
entangle them possibly in our gross air and detain them for centuries,
or moments, until their Creator's purpose in sending them is
accomplished. Then He takes the means to liberate them and set them on
their eternal roads and to their eternal tasks once more."
The listening woman, almost against her reason, felt herself beginning
to share these assumptions. But that they were fantastic, unsupported by
any human knowledge, and would presently involve an experiment full of
awful peril to the life of the man who uttered them, she also perceived.
Yet her reasonable caution and conventional distrust began to give way a
little under the priest's magnetic voice, his flaming eyes, his positive
and triumphant certainty of truth. He burned with his inspiration,
and she felt herself powerless to oppose any argument founded on facts
against the mystic enthusiasm of such religious faith. His honesty
and fervor could not, however, abate Mary's acute fear. Her father had
entirely gone over to the side of the devotee and she knew it.
"It is well we have your opportunity to-night," he said, "for had the
police arrived, out of their ignorance they might deny it to you."
Yet Mary fought on against them. In despair she appealed to Masters. He
had been an officer's orderly in his day, and when he left the Army and
came to Chadlands, he never departed again. He was an intelligent man,
who occupied a good part of his leisure in reading. He set Sir Walter
and Mary first in his affections; and that Mary should have won him so
completely she always held to be a triumph, since Abraham Masters had no
regard or admiration for women.
"Can't you help me, Masters?" she begged. "I'm sure you know as well as
I do that this ought not to happen."
The butler eyed his master. He was handing coffee, but none took it.
"By all means speak," said Sir Walter. "You know how I rate your
judgment, Masters. You have heard Mr. May upon this terrible subject,
and should be convinced, as I am."
Masters was very guarded.
"It's not for me to pass an opinion, Sir Walter. But the reverend
gentleman, no doubt, understands such things. Only there's the Witch
of Endor, if I may mention the creature, she fetched up more than she
bargained for. And I remember a proverb as I heard in India, from
a Hindoo. I've forgot the lingo now, but I remember the sense. They
Hindoos say that if you knock long enough at a closed door, the devil
will open it--excuse my mentioning such a thing; but Hindoos are awful
wise."
"And what then, Masters? I know not who may open the door of this
mystery; but this I know, that, in the Name of the Most High God, I can
face whatever opens it."
"I ain't particular frightened neither, your reverence," said Masters.
"But I wouldn't chance it alone, being about average sinful and not near
good enough to tackle that unknown horror hid up there single-handed.
I'd chance it, though, in high company like yours. And that's
something."
"It is, Masters, and much to your credit," declared Sir Walter. "For
that matter, I would do the like. Indeed, I am willing to accompany Mr.
May."
While Septimus May shook his head and Mary trembled, the butler spoke
again.
"But there's nobody else in this house would. Not even Fred Caunter, who
doesn't know the meaning of fear, as you can testify, Sir Walter.
But he's fed up with the Grey Room, if I may say so, and so's the
housekeeper, Mrs. Forbes, and so's Jane Bond. Not that they would desert
the ship; but there's others that be going to do so. I may mention that
four maids and Jackson intend to give notice to-morrow. Ann Maine, the
second housemaid, has gone to-night. Her father fetched her. Excuse me
mentioning it, but Mrs. Forbes will give you the particulars to-morrow,
if you please."
"Hysteria," declared Sir Walter. "I don't blame them. It is natural.
Everybody is free to go, if they desire to do so. But tell them what you
have heard to-night, Masters. Tell them that no good Christian need fear
to rest in peace. Explain that Mr. May will presently enter the Grey
Room in the name of God; and bid them pray on their knees for him before
they go to sleep."
Masters hesitated.
"All the same, I very much wish the reverend gentleman would give
Scotland Yard a chance. If they fall, then he can wipe their eye
after--excuse my language, Sir Walter. I've read a lot about the
spirits, being terrible interested in 'em, as all human men must be; and
I hear that running after 'em often brings trouble. I don't mean to your
life, Sir Walter, but to your wits. People get cracked on 'em and
have to be locked up. I stopped everybody frightening themselves into
'sterics at dinner to-day; but you could see how it took 'em; and,
whether or no, I do beg Mr. May to be so kind as to let me sit up along
with him to-night.
"You never hear of two people getting into trouble with these here
customers, and while he was going for this blackguard ghost in the name
of the Lord, I could keep my weather eye lifting for trouble. 'Tis a
matter for common sense and keeping your nerve, in my opinion, and we
don't want another death on our hands, I suppose. There'll be half
the mountebanks and photograph men and newspaper men in the land here
to-morrow, and 'twill take me all my time to keep 'em from over-running
the house. Because if they could come in their scores for the late
captain--poor gentleman!--what won't they try now this here famous
detective has been done in?"
"Henry deplored the same thing," said Mary. "And I answer again, as I
answered then," replied Septimus May. "You mean well, Sir Walter, and
your butler means well; but you propose an act in direct opposition to
the principle that inspires me."
"What do you expect to happen?" asked Mary. "Do you suppose you will
see something, and that something will tell you what it is, and why it
killed dear Tom?"
"That, at any rate, would be a very great blessing to the living," said
her father.
"The least the creature could do, in my humble opinion," ventured
Masters.
But Septimus May deprecated such curiosity.
"Hope for no such thing, and do not dwell upon what is to happen until
I am able to tell you what does happen," he answered. "Allow no human
weakness, no desire to learn the secrets of another world, to distract
your thoughts. I am only concerned with what I know beyond possibility
of doubt is my duty--to be entered upon as swiftly as possible. I hear
my call in the very voice of the wind shouting round the house to-night.
But beyond my duty I do not seek. Whether information awaits me, whether
some manifestation indicating my success and valuable to humanity will
be granted, I cannot say. I do not stop now to think about that.
"Alone I do this thing--yet not alone, for my hand is in my Maker's
hand. Your part will not be to accompany me. Let each man and woman be
informed of what I do, and let them lift a petition for me, that my work
be crowned with success. But let them not assume that to-morrow I shall
have anything to impart. The night may be one of peace within, though
so stormy without. I may pray till dawn with no knowledge how my prayer
prospers, or I may be called to face a being that no human eye has ever
seen and lived. These things are hidden from us."
"You are wonderful, and it is heartening to meet with such mighty
faith," replied Sir Walter. "You have no fear, no shadow of hesitation
or doubt at the bottom of your mind?"
"None. Only an overmastering desire to obey the message that throbs in
my heart. I will be honest with you, for I recognize that many might
doubt whether you were in the right to let me face this ordeal. But I
am driven by an overwhelming mandate. Did I fear, or feel one tremor of
uncertainty, I would not proceed; for any wavering might be fatal and
give me helpless into the power of this watchful spirit; but I am as
certain of my duty as I am that salvation awaits the just man.
"I believe that I shall liberate this arrested being with cathartic
prayer and cleansing petition to our common Maker. And have I not the
spirit of my dead boy on my side? Could any living man, however well
intentioned, watch with me and over me as he will? Fear nothing; go to
your rest, and let all who would assist me do so on their knees before
they sleep."
Even Masters echoed some of this fierce and absolute faith when he
returned to the servants' hall.
"His eyes blaze," he said. "He's about the most steadfast man ever I saw
inside a pulpit, or out of it. You feel if that man went to the window
and told the rain to stop and the wind to go down, they would. No ghost
that ever walked could best him anyway. They asked me to talk and say
what I felt, and I did; but words are powerless against such an iron
will as he's got.
"I doubted first, and Sir Walter said he doubted likewise; but he's dead
sure now, and what's good enough for him is good enough for us. I'll bet
Caunter, or any man, an even flyer that he's going to put the creature
down and out and come off without a scratch himself. I offered to sit
up with him, so did Sir Walter; but he wouldn't hear of it. So all we've
got to do is to turn in and say our prayers. That's simple enough for
God-fearing people, and we can't do no better than to obey orders."
It was none the less a nervous and highly strung household that
presently went to bed, and no woman slept without another woman to keep
her company. Sir Walter found himself worn out in mind and body. Mary
made him take his bromide, and he slept without a dream, despite the din
of the great "sou'-wester" and the distant, solemn crash of more than
one great tree thrown upon the lap of mother earth at last.
Before he retired, however, something in the nature of a procession had
escorted the priest to his ordeal. Mr. May donned biretta, surplice,
and stole, for, as he explained, he was to hold a religious service as
sacred and significant as any other rite.
"Lord send him no congregation then," thought Masters.
But, with Sir Walter and Mary, he followed the ministrant, and left him
at the open door of the Grey Room. The electric light shone steadily;
but the storm seemed to beat its fists at the windows, and the leaded
panes shook and chattered. With no bell and candle, but his Bible alone,
Septimus May entered the room, having first made the sign of the Cross
before him; then he turned and bade good-night to all.
"Be of good faith!" were the last words he spoke to them.
Having done so he shut the door, and they heard his voice immediately
uplifted in prayer. They waited a little, and the sound roiled steadily
on. Sir Walter then bade Masters extinguish all the lights and send the
household to bed, though the time was not more than ten o'clock.
As for Masters, the glamour and appeal of those strenuous words at the
dinner-table had now passed, and presently, as he prepared to retire, he
found himself far less confident and assured than his recent words had
implied. He sank slowly from hope to fear, even pictured the worse, and
asked himself what would follow if the worst happened. He believed that
it might mean serious disaster for Sir Walter. If another life were
sacrificed to this unknown peril, and it transpired that his master had
sanctioned what would amount to suicide in the eyes of reason; then he
began to fear that grave trouble must result. Already the burning words
of Septimus May began to cool and sound unreal, and Masters suspected
that, if they were repeated in other ears, which had not heard him utter
them, or seen the fervor of religious earnestness and reverence in which
they had been spoken, this feverish business of exorcising a ghost in
the twentieth century might only awake derision and receive neither
credence nor respect. His entire concern was for Sir Walter, not Mr.
May. He could not sleep, lighted a pipe, considered whether it was in
his power to do anything, felt a sudden impulse to take certain steps,
yet hesitated--from no fear to himself, but doubt whether action might
not endanger another. Mary did not sleep either, and she suffered more,
for she had never approved, and now she blamed herself not a little for
her weak opposition. A thousand arguments occurred to her while she lay
awake. Then, for a time, she forgot present tribulations, and her own
grief overwhelmed her, as it was wont to do by night. For while the
events that had so swiftly followed each other since her husband's death
banished him now and again, save from her subconscious mind, when alone
he was swift to return and her sorrow made many a night sleepless. She
was herself ill, but did not know it. The reaction had yet to come, and
could not be long delayed, for her nervous energy was worn out now.
She wept and lived days with the dead; then the present returned to her
mind, and she fretted and prayed--for Septimus May and for daylight. She
wondered why stormy nights were always the longest. She heard a
thousand unfamiliar sounds, and presently leaped from her bed, put on a
dressing-gown, and crept out into the house. To know that all was well
with the watcher would hearten her. But then her feet dragged before
she had left the threshold of her own room, and she stood still and
shuddered a little. For how if all were not well? How if his voice no
longer sounded?
She hesitated to make the experiment, and balanced the relief of
reassurance against the horror of silence. She remembered a storm at
sea, when through a long night, not lacking danger to a laboring steamer
with weak engines, she had lain awake and felt her heart warm again when
the watch shouted the hour.
She set out, then, determined to know if all prospered with her
father-in-law. Nor would she give ear to misgiving or ask herself what
she would do if no voice were steadily uplifted in the Grey Room.
The great wind seemed to play upon Chadlands like a harp. It roared
and reverberated, now stilled a moment for another leap, now died away
against the house, yet still sounded with a steady shout in the neighbor
trees. At the casements it tugged and rattled; against them it flung
the rain fiercely. Every bay and passage of the interior uttered its own
voice, and overhead was creaking of old timbers, rattling of old slates,
and rustling of mortar fragments dislodged by sudden vibrations.
Mary proceeded on her way, and then, to her astonishment, heard a
footfall, and nearly ran into an invisible figure approaching from
the direction of the Grey Room. Man and woman startled each other, but
neither exclaimed, and Mrs. May spoke.
"Who is it?" she asked; and Masters answered:
"Oh, my gracious! Terrible sorry, ma'am! If I didn't think--"
"What on earth are you doing, Masters?"
"Much the same as you, I expect, ma'am. I thought just to creep along
and see if the reverend gentleman was all right. And he is. The light's
burning--you can see it under the door--and he's praying away, steady
as a steam-threshing machine. I doubt he's keeping the evil creature at
arm's length, and I'm a tidy lot more hopeful than what I was an hour
ago. The thing ain't strong enough to touch a man praying to God like
what he can. But if prayers keep it harmless, then it's got ears and
it's alive!"
"Can you believe that, Masters?" she whispered.
"Got to, ma'am. If it was just a natural horror beyond the reach of
prayer, it would have knocked his reverence out long before now, like
other people. It settled the police officer in under an hour, and Mr.
May's been up against it for three--nearly four hours, so far. He'll
bolt it yet, I shouldn't wonder, like a ferret bolts a rat."
"You really feel more hopeful?"
"Yes, I do, ma'am; and if he can fire the creature and signal 'All's
clear' for Chadlands, it will calm everybody and be a proper feather in
his cap, and he did ought to be made a bishop, at the least. Not that
Scotland Yard men will believe a word of it to-morrow, all the same.
Ghosts are bang out of their line, and I never met even a common
constable that believed in 'em, except Bob Parrett, and he had bats in
the belfry, poor chap. No; they'll reckon it's somebody in the house, I
expect, who wanted to kill t' others, but ain't got no quarrel with Mr.
May. And you'd be wise to get back to bed, ma'am, and try to sleep, else
you'll catch a cold. I'll look round again in an hour or to, if I don't
go to sleep my self."
They parted, while the storm still ran high, and through the empty
corridor, when it was lulled, a voice rolled steadily on from the Grey
Boom.
When it suddenly ceased, an hour before dawn, the storm had already
begun to sink, and through a rack of flying and breaking cloud the
"Hunter" wheeled westerly to his setting.