“WELL, it is a story to take or to leave. I tell it you as it happened
to me. Think what you like about it.”
The speaker was a spare man of middle height; an Anglican priest, whose
long black coat and white band set off a face that might have belonged
to a seer of old: pallid yet not bloodless, with delicately cut mobile
nostrils and grey eyes now piercingly bright, now losing themselves in
far-off mystery. The few grey hairs combed across the ample brow seemed
instinct with the life beneath them. In moments of great spiritual
excitement, when the eyes kindled and the nostrils worked, they would
appear to rise as into a halo above the inspired pallor of the face.
And the cypresses were around us, gloomily aspiring; while the ground
on which we sat was alive and gay with the most delicious little pink
cyclamens: sweet, everyday human thoughts that come like a smile across
the over-strained soul.
“I was in England then, working in a large Northern parish in the
midst of dirt, misery and ignorance; and would often come home
exhausted by the sufferings I had seen and could do so little to
alleviate. One pouring wet evening I got in very late, soaked to the
skin, faint with hunger, oppressed by the thought of the preparation
needed for an early communion service I was to celebrate on the morrow.
I told Janet to admit no one: that for no reason would I go out again
that night; and sat down to dinner.
“I had hardly begun when the door bell rang, and voices reached me from
the hall—that of a woman, evidently a lady, pleading, and Janet’s,
repeating my order.
“‘But,’ the strange voice insisted, ‘he would surely come if he knew.
It is to see a dying man. Tell him it is to see a dying man. To save a
passing soul.’
“The woman’s distress and anxiety were so evident that I could remain
passive no longer. I called Janet and told her to show the lady in. She
was tall, graceful, dressed in black, with a long veil which she kept
lowered, so that I could see the features but indistinctly. With every
sign of agitation she repeated to me what she had said in the hall.
‘Would I come with her? It was to see a person who must die this night,
and all unprepared.’
“I had no heart to refuse; and we sallied forth together, she leading,
I following. After some time I found myself in a better part of the
town, where the rows of squalid houses had given place to detached
residences, each in its garden. At one of these we stopped, ascended
the steps, and I rang.
“The door was opened by a butler, who had the air of being an old,
confidential servant. I asked to see the person who was dying.
“The man looked at me in amazement. ‘No one is even ill here; much less
dying. You must have the wrong address.’
“I looked around for my mysterious guide. I was alone.
“‘But,’ said I to the butler, ‘I assure you that a lady came to me this
evening, asked me to follow her to a house where a man must die this
night, and led me here. Are you certain there is no one ill?’
“‘Not only my master, but all the servants are perfectly well,’ was the
reply.
“Just then a door opened and the master of the house appeared: a young,
florid man, easy and good-natured, with a certain air of distinction
about him. I introduced myself and repeated my story.
“‘Well, come in out of the rain now, at any rate,’ said he. ‘I am just
sitting down to dinner. You will not refuse to join me?’
“I accepted the invitation and found my host bright, well-read,
well-travelled: a most agreeable companion.
“As we were smoking after the meal, he said, hesitatingly:—
“‘Do you know I have been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long
time past? I have had an instinctive feeling that I could confide in
you as in no one else: a strange sympathy going out to you while you
were personally unknown to me. And now I feel it stronger than ever. I
cannot shake it off. May I make a father confessor of you? I am sick of
this life. I want to be at something real.’
“I encouraged him to speak, and promised him all the help my experience
should enable me to give him.
“‘Well, I will leave you for a little to collect my thoughts,’ said he.
‘Be so kind as to remain here.’
“While he was away I looked about the room, and found myself attracted
by a picture, evidently a portrait, of a lady. I considered it
attentively, and to my utter surprise recognised my mysterious visitor
and guide.
“‘Who is that?’ I asked my host on his return.
“‘That? My mother. She died when I was a child. Yet’—with a hesitancy
that was almost shamefacedness—‘yet, I feel somehow as though she were
still caring for me.’
“We had a long talk in which he recounted his life, that of a young man
about town; and the upshot of it was that he promised to come to the
communion service on the following morning.
“I was at the church very early, waiting anxiously for his appearance.
“‘Do you really suppose he will come?’ said the friend who was to help
me celebrate, and to whom I had related the strange experience. ‘You
had better give up any hope of seeing him. It was probably nothing but
a fit of the sentimentality that follows a comfortable dinner. It took
that form because you happened to be with him. I have seen dozens of
such cases.’
“Still I had faith in my convert; and as the service went on and he did
not appear, I felt my heart grow big with sorrowful disappointment.
“I walked home sadly enough.
“In the hall I found the butler of the previous evening. He looked
white and scared. He was trembling.
“‘Sir, sir,’ he stammered, ‘come with me. Come quickly. My master is
dead. I found him dead this morning.’”
* * * * *
A silence fell upon us. The cypresses waved mysteriously towards the
heavens—my friend’s face, with the awe-struck eyes, showing white amid
the gloom.
“A mother’s love,” he murmured. “Why should it not compel the forces of
material being? A mother’s love. Is it not ‘the last relay and ultimate
outpost of Eternity?’”