Our home was one of sorrow and of fear. The child's death had stricken us
with terror no less than grief. Referring it, as we both tacitly did, to
the mysterious and fiendish agency of the abhorred being whom, in an evil
hour, we had admitted into our house, we both viewed him with a degree
and species of fear for which I can find no name.
I felt that some further calamity was impending. I could not hope that we
were to be delivered from the presence of the malignant agent who
haunted, rather than inhabited our home, without some additional proofs
alike of his malice and his power.
My poor wife's presentiments were still more terrible and overpowering,
though not more defined, than my own. She was never tranquil while our
little girl was out of her sight; always dreading and expecting some new
revelation of the evil influence which, as we were indeed both persuaded,
had bereft our darling little boy of life. Against an hostility so
unearthly and intangible there was no guarding, and the sense of
helplessness intensified the misery of our situation. Tormented with
doubts of the very basis of her religion, and recoiling from the ordeal
of prayer with the strange horror with which the victim of hydrophobia
repels the pure water, she no longer found the consolation which, had
sorrow reached her in any other shape, she would have drawn from the
healing influence of religion. We were both of us unhappy, dismayed,
DEMON-STRICKEN.
Meanwhile, our lodger's habits continued precisely the same. If, indeed,
the sounds which came from his apartments were to be trusted, he and his
agents were more on the alert than ever. I can convey to you, good
reader, no notion, even the faintest, of the dreadful sensation always
more or less present to my mind, and sometimes with a reality which
thrilled me almost to frenzy--the apprehension that I had admitted into
my house the incarnate spirit of the dead or damned, to torment me and
my family.
It was some nights after the burial of our dear little baby; we had not
gone to bed until late, and I had slept, I suppose, some hours, when I
was awakened by my wife, who clung to me with the energy of terror. She
said nothing, but grasped and shook me with more than her natural
strength. She had crept close to me, and was cowering with her head under
the bedclothes.
The room was perfectly dark, as usual, for we burned no night-light; but
from the side of the bed next her proceeded a voice as of one sitting
there with his head within a foot of the curtains--and, merciful heavens!
it was the voice of our lodger.
He was discoursing of the death of our baby, and inveighing, in the old
mocking tone of hate and suppressed fury, against the justice, mercy, and
goodness of God. He did this with a terrible plausibility of sophistry,
and with a resolute emphasis and precision, which seemed to imply, "I
have got something to tell you, and, whether you like it or like it not,
I _will_ say out my say."
To pretend that I felt anger at his intrusion, or emotion of any sort,
save the one sense of palsied terror, would be to depart from the truth.
I lay, cold and breathless, as if frozen to death--unable to move, unable
to utter a cry--with the voice of that demon pouring, in the dark, his
undisguised blasphemies and temptations close into my ears. At last the
dreadful voice ceased--whether the speaker went or stayed I could not
tell--the silence, which he might be improving for the purpose of some
hellish strategem, was to me more tremendous even than his speech.
We both lay awake, not daring to move or speak, scarcely even breathing,
but clasping one another fast, until at length the welcome light of day
streamed into the room through the opening door, as the servant came in
to call us. I need not say that our nocturnal visitant had left us.
The magnanimous reader will, perhaps, pronounce that I ought to have
pulled on my boots and inexpressibles with all available despatch, run to
my lodger's bedroom, and kicked him forthwith downstairs, and the entire
way moreover out to the public road, as some compensation for the
scandalous affront put upon me and my wife by his impertinent visit. Now,
at that time, I had no scruples against what are termed the laws of
honour, was by no means deficient in "pluck," and gifted, moreover, with
a somewhat excitable temper. Yet, I will honestly avow that, so far from
courting a collision with the dreaded stranger, I would have recoiled at
his very sight, and given my eyes to avoid him, such was the ascendancy
which he had acquired over me, as well as everybody else in my household,
in his own quiet, irresistible, hellish way.
The shuddering antipathy which our guest inspired did not rob his
infernal homily of its effect. It was not a new or strange thing which
he presented to our minds. There was an awful subtlety in the train of
his suggestions. All that he had said had floated through my own mind
before, without order, indeed, or shew of logic. From my own rebellious
heart the same evil thoughts had risen, like pale apparitions hovering
and lost in the fumes of a necromancer's cauldron. His was like the
summing up of all this--a reflection of my own feelings and fancies--but
reduced to an awful order and definiteness, and clothed with a
sophistical form of argument. The effect of it was powerful. It revived
and exaggerated these bad emotions--it methodised and justified
them--and gave to impulses and impressions, vague and desultory before,
something of the compactness of a system.
My misfortune, therefore, did not soften, it exasperated me. I regarded
the Great Disposer of events as a persecutor of the human race, who took
delight in their miseries. I asked why my innocent child had been smitten
down into the grave?--and why my darling wife, whose first object, I
knew, had ever been to serve and glorify her Maker, should have been thus
tortured and desolated by the cruelest calamity which the malignity of a
demon could have devised? I railed and blasphemed, and even in my agony
defied God with the impotent rage and desperation of a devil, in his
everlasting torment.
In my bitterness, I could not forbear speaking these impenitent
repetitions of the language of our nightly visitant, even in the presence
of my wife. She heard me with agony, almost with terror. I pitied and
loved her too much not to respect even her weaknesses--for so I
characterised her humble submission to the chastisements of heaven. But
even while I spared her reverential sensitiveness, the spectacle of her
patience but enhanced my own gloomy and impenitent rage.
I was walking into town in this evil mood, when I was overtaken by the
gentleman whom I had spoken with in the churchyard on the morning when my
little boy was buried. I call him _gentleman_, but I could not say _what_
was his rank--I never thought about it; there was a grace, a purity, a
compassion, and a grandeur of intellect in his countenance, in his
language, in his mien, that was beautiful and kinglike. I felt, in his
company, a delightful awe, and an humbleness more gratifying than any
elation of earthly pride.
He divined my state of feeling, but he said nothing harsh. He did not
rebuke, but he reasoned with me--and oh! how mighty was that
reasoning--without formality--without effort--as the flower grows and
blossoms. Its process was in harmony with the successions of
nature--gentle, spontaneous, irresistible.
At last he left me. I was grieved at his departure--I was
wonder-stricken. His discourse had made me cry tears at once sweet and
bitter; it had sounded depths I knew not of, and my heart was disquieted
within me. Yet my trouble was happier than the resentful and defiant calm
that had reigned within me before.
When I came home, I told my wife of my having met the same good, wise man
I had first seen by the grave of my child. I recounted to her his
discourse, and, as I brought it again to mind, my tears flowed afresh,
and I was happy while I wept.
I now see that the calamity which bore at first such evil fruit, was good
for me. It fixed my mind, however rebelliously, upon God, and it stirred
up all the passions of my heart. Levity, inattention, and
self-complacency are obstacles harder to be overcome than the violence of
evil passions--the transition from hate is easier than from indifference,
to love. A mighty change was making on my mind.
I need not particularise the occasions upon which I again met my
friend, for so I knew him to be, nor detail the train of reasoning and
feeling which in such interviews he followed out; it is enough to say,
that he assiduously cultivated the good seed he had sown, and that his
benignant teachings took deep root, and flourished in my soul,
heretofore so barren.
One evening, having enjoyed on the morning of the same day another of
those delightful and convincing conversations, I was returning on foot
homeward; and as darkness had nearly closed, and the night threatened
cold and fog, the footpaths were nearly deserted.
As I walked on, deeply absorbed in the discourse I had heard on the same
morning, a person overtook me, and continued to walk, without much
increasing the interval between us, a little in advance of me. There came
upon me, at the same moment, an indefinable sinking of the heart, a
strange and unaccountable fear. The pleasing topics of my meditations
melted away, and gave place to a sense of danger, all the more unpleasant
that it was vague and objectless. I looked up. What was that which moved
before me? I stared--I faltered; my heart fluttered as if it would choke
me, and then stood still. It was the peculiar and unmistakeable form of
our lodger.
Exactly as I looked at him, he turned his head, and looked at me over his
shoulder. His face was muffled as usual. I cannot have seen its features
with any completeness, yet I felt that his look was one of fury. The next
instant he was at my side; and my heart quailed within me--my limbs all
but refused their office; yet the very emotions of terror, which might
have overcome me, acted as a stimulus, and I quickened my pace.
"Hey! what a pious person! So I suppose you have learned at last that
'evil communications corrupt good manners'; and you are absolutely afraid
of the old infidel, the old blasphemer, hey?"