shining over the hill the uneasiness came on me again. It struck me
vividly for the first time that a night spent alone in that house
would be slightly uncomfortable. By this time, of course, too, the
possibility of a connection between my present state and my previous
experiences had occurred to my mind; but I had striven to resist this
idea as merely one more nervous suggestion.
“My uneasiness grew greater still as I came up the street. I am ashamed
to say that I stopped to talk three or four times to my parishioners
simply out of that unaccountably strong terror of my own house. I
noticed, too, across the street that a face peeped from Bridget’s
window and drew back on seeing me. A moment later her door opened and
she came out.
“I did not turn or wait for her, but as I reached my door I was
conscious of a very distinct relief that she was behind me, and as I
went in she came immediately after me.
“‘I am very sorry, Father,’ she said, ‘I haven’t your tea ready yet.’
“I told her to bring it as soon as she could, and went slowly upstairs
with the horror deepening at every step. I knew perfectly well now why
she had waited; it was that she did not like to enter the empty house
alone.... Yet I did not feel that I could ask her what it was she
feared. That would be a kind of surrender on my part--an allowing to
myself that there was something to fear, and you must remember that I
still was trying to tell myself that it was all nerves.”
The Rector leaned forward.
“I am very sorry, Father Girdlestone,” he said softly, “but it is past
time for night-prayers.” He paused. “But may we make an exception
to-night and hear the rest afterward?”
The old man stood up and motioned with a little smile toward the chapel
gallery.
III
“As I went forward into the room,” began the old man again as soon as
we had taken our seats in silence, “I knew beyond doubt that I was
accompanied. I heard Bridget moving about downstairs, but it was as
sound heard through the roar of a train. There went with me something
resembling a loud noise--interior, you understand, yet on the brink of
manifestation in the world of sense; or you may call it a blackness,
or a vast weight, as heavy as heaven and earth, and it was all centred
round a personality. It was of such a nature that I should have
been surprised at nothing. It appeared to me that all that I looked
upon--the serge curtains, my table, my chair, the glow of the fire on
the hearth, and the glimmer on the bare boards--all these were but as
melting shreds and rays hanging upon some monstrous reality. They were
there, they were just in existence, but they were as accidents without
substance.
“I do not know if there were definite sounds or not, or even definite
appearances, beyond the normal, material sounds and sights. There may
have been, but I do not think so.
“I went across the room, walking, it seemed to me, on nothingness. My
body was still in sensible relations with matter, but it seemed to me
that I was not. I found my chair and sat down in it to wait. I was
nerveless now, sunk in a kind of despair that I cannot hope to make
plain to you. I imagine that a lost soul on the edge of death must be
in that state.
“I looked almost vacantly round the room once or twice; but there
was nothing. I understood without consideration what was happening,
and the general course of events. It was all one, I perceived now.
That which had started up at the rock, which had invaded first the
innermost chamber of my soul, and then the intellectual plane, and had
established itself there, had now taken its final step forward, and
was claiming the world of sense as well. I felt entirely powerless. You
will wonder why I did not go downstairs to the Blessed Sacrament. I do
not know, but it was impossible. Here was the battlefield, I knew very
well.
“I perceived something else, too. It was the reason of the assaults. I
did not fully understand it, but I knew that the object was to drive me
from the place--to make the village and the neighborhood detestable to
me. I knew that I could escape by going away, yet it was not exactly
a temptation. I had no interior desire to escape. It was merely a
question as to which force would prevail in my soul--that which
impelled me away and grace which held me there. I was as a passive
dummy between them....
“I do not know how long it was before Bridget pushed open the door.
I saw her with the tray come across the room and set it down upon my
table. Then I saw her looking at me.
“‘Bridget,’ I said, ‘I shall want no supper to-night. And tell the
people that I am unwell and that there will be no night-prayers. There
will be mass, I hope, as usual in the morning.’
“I said those words, I believe; but the voice was not as my own. It was
as if another spoke. I saw her looking at me across the dusk with an
extraordinary terror in her face.
“‘Come away, Father,’ she whispered.
“I shook my head.
“‘Come away,’ she whispered again. ‘This is not a good house to be in.’
“I said nothing.
“‘Shall I fetch Father Donovan to you, Father,’ she whispered, ‘or the
doctor?’
“‘Fetch no one,’ I said to her. ‘Tell no one. Ask for prayers, if you
will. Go and leave me to myself, Bridget.’
“I think I understood even then what the struggle was she was going
through. I do not know if she perceived all that I perceived, but even
from her face, without her words, I knew that she was conscious of
something. Yet she did not like to leave me alone. She stood perfectly
still, looking first at me, then slowly round the room, then back at me
again. And as she looked the dusk fell veil on veil.
“Then something happened, I do not know what; I never questioned her
afterward, but she was gone. I heard her stumbling and moaning down the
stairs. An instant later the street door opened and banged, and I was
left alone.
“I cannot tell you what I felt. I knew only that the crisis was come,
and that the result was out of my hands. I closed my eyes, I think, and
lay right back in my chair. It was as if I were submitting myself to an
operation; I wondered vaguely as to what shape it would take.
“All about the room I felt the force gathering. There was no
oscillation, no vibration, but a steady, continuous stream
concentrating itself within the four walls. With this the sense of
the central personality grew every moment more and more intense and
vivid. It seemed to me as if I were some tiny, conscious speck of
matter in the midst of a life whose vastness and malignance was beyond
conception. At times it was this; at other times it was as if I looked
within and saw a space full of some indescribable blackness--a space of
such a nature that I could not tell whether it was as tiny as a pinhole
or as vast as infinity. It was spaceless space, sheer emptiness, but
with an emptiness that was a horror, and it was within me.
“Yet it was not simple spirit--it was not the correlative of matter. It
was rather spirit in the very throes of manifestation in matter....
“Sometimes then I attended to this; sometimes I lay with every sense at
full stretch--at a tenseness that seemed impossible, directed outward.
I cannot tell even now whether the room was poised in deathly silence
or in an indescribable clamor and roar of tongues. It was one or the
other, or it was both at once.
“Or, to take the sense of sight.... Although my eyes were closed, every
detail of the room was before me. Sometimes I saw it as rigid as a man
at grips with death, in a kind of pallor--the table, the dying fire,
the uncurtained windows--all in the pallor--the very names of the books
visible--all, as it were, striving to hold themselves in material being
under the stress of some enormous destructive force with which they
were charged--as rigid and as silent and as significant as an electric
wire--and as full of power. Or at times all seemed to me to have gone,
simply to have dissolved into nothingness, as a breath fades on a
window--to retain but a phantom of themselves....
“Well, well ... words are very useless, gentlemen; ... they are poor
things----”
The old priest paused a moment, leaning forward in his chair with his
thin, veined hands together. For myself I cannot say what I felt.
I seemed to be in somewhat of the same state as that which he was
describing; all my senses, too, were stretched to the full by the
intensity of my attention. Yet the narrator seemed little affected; he
leaned and looked peacefully into the fire, and I caught the glint of
light on his deep eyes.
Then he leaned back and went on.
“Now you must picture to yourselves, gentlemen, that this state grew
steadily in its energy. I did not know before--and I can scarcely
believe it now--that human nature could bear so much. Yet I seemed to
myself to be observing my strained faculties from a plane apart from
them. It was as the owner of a besieged castle might stand on a keep
and watch the figures of his men staring out over the battlements at a
sight he could not see. There were my eyes looking, my ears listening,
even the touch of my fingers on the chair-arms questioning what it was
that they held; and there was I--my very self--far within waiting for
communications.
“I suppose that I knew there was no escape. I could not descend into
the sphere of reason, for another Power held the keys; I could not
sink again to the inner Presence of God, for that chamber, too, was
occupied; there was this last stand to be made--the world of sense. If
that was lost, all was lost; and I could not lift a finger to help.
And, as I said, the strain grew greater each instant, as the opening
swell of an organ waxes with a long, steady crescendo to its final
roar....
“I do not know at exactly what point I understood the assault, but it
became known to me presently that what was intended was to merge the
world of sense, so far as I was concerned, into this mighty essence of
evil--to burst through, or, rather, to transcend the material. Then
I knew I should be wholly lost. I remember, too, that I perceived
soon after this that this was what the world calls madness ... and I
understood at this moment as never before how that process consummates
itself. It begins, as mine did, with the carrying of the inner life
by storm; that may come about by deliberate acquiescence in sin. I
should suppose that it always does in some degree. Then the intellect
is attacked--it may only be in one point--a ‘delusion’ it is called,
and with many persons regarded only as eccentric--the process goes
no further. But when the triumph is complete the world of sense,
too, is lost, and the man raves. I knew at that time for absolute
fact that this is the process. The ‘delusions’ of the mad are not
non-existent--they are glimpses, horrible or foul or fantastic, of that
strange world that we take so quietly for granted, that at this moment
and at every moment is perpetually about us, foaming out its waters in
lust or violence or mad irresponsible blasphemy against the Most High.
“Well, I saw that this was what threatened, yet I could not move a
finger. No thought of flight entered my mind. All had gone too far by
now....
“Then, gentlemen, the climax came.”
Again the old priest was silent.
I heard Monsignor’s pipe drop with a clatter, and my nerves thrilled
like a struck harp. He made no movement to pick it up. He stared only
at the old man.
Then the quiet voice went on.
“This was the climax, gentlemen.... The intensity swelled and
swelled;... each moment I thought must be the last--the utmost effort
of hell. Then with a crash the full close sounded; and through the
rending tear, through the veil of matter that whirled away and was
gone, I caught one swift glimpse of all that lay beneath. It was not
through one sense that I perceived it; it was through perception pure
and simple.... Well, how can I say it? It was this....
“I perceived two vast forces pressed one against the other, as silent
and as rigid as ... as the glass of a diver’s helmet against the huge,
incumbent, glittering water. It is a wretched simile.... Let us say
that the appearance was as the meeting of fire and water without mist
or tumult. The forces were absolutely opposed, absolutely alien, yet
absolutely one in the plane of being. They could meet as the created
and uncreated could not--as flesh and spirit cannot. They met, level,
coincident, each rigid to breaking point--each full of an energy to
which there is no parallel in this world.
“It seemed to me that all had waited for this. The enemy had been
permitted to enter the gate; and at the instant of his triumph the
fire of God was upon him, locked in the embrace of utter repulsion....
“And it was given to me to watch that, gentlemen.... On the edge of
what the world labels as madness, at the very instant that I hung
balanced on that line, I saw that endless war of spirit and spirit,
which has been waging since Michael drove Satan from heaven--that
ceaseless, writhing conflict in which all that is not for God is
against Him, seeking to dethrone and annihilate Him who gave it being.
Ah, words ... words ... but I saw it...!”
There was a dead silence in the room. The priest drew one breath.
“Then I saw no more. I was in my chair as before, holding the arms;
and the room round me stole back into being--through the pallor of a
phantom to the dusk of earthly twilight; and I perceived that my eyes
were closed and not open.
“There then I stayed, knowing that the war still waged beneath, yet
fainter every moment as the tide crawled back, contesting inch by
inch, rolled back by that remorseless power. Twice or three times I
heard the murmur of sound in the room; the serge curtains swayed. I
could hear them. I heard the door vibrating softly; then once more the
quiet silence was there, and I heard the ashes slip by their weight
from grate to fender. Nature at least was itself again. Then once
more, as into my intellect the light stole back, and I knew that God
reigned and that His Son was Incarnate, crucified and risen by many
irrefragable proofs, round the house I could hear the murmuring of
voices, and saw through closed eyelids of utter repose the glimmer of
lanterns on the ceiling.
“Within myself, too, I watched the roar of evil; I drew breath after
breath, deep and life-giving, as far down within the secret chambers
of my soul the foul filth ebbed and sank, and that spring rising into
life everlasting, of which our Saviour spoke, welled up in its stead,
filling every cranny and corner of my soul with that strange sweetness,
so sweet and so dear that we forget it as the very air we breathe.
“The murmur of conflict was infinitely far away; and it seemed to me
that once more I went down, down, in that introversion of which I spoke
just now, seeing all clean and sweet about me, down into the Presence
of the Lord who rules heaven and earth at His will. Then a door closed,
deep, deep below, and I knew that the enemy was gone....
“Well, gentlemen,” said the priest after a pause, leaning back, “that
is really the story. But there are a few details to add.
“When the men that Bridget had fetched came upstairs they found me
asleep, but they told me afterward there were streaks of foam at the
corners of my mouth. Yet she was not gone three minutes.
“I never spoke a word to them of what happened. They knew quite enough
for laymen.... We had night-prayers as usual that evening. I said the
_Visita quæsumus Domine_ at the end....
“I slept like a child, and I said a mass of thanksgiving next day.”
Father Brent broke the silence that followed. His voice seemed strange.
“And the church, Father?”
The old priest smiled at him full.
“You have guessed it,” he said. “Yes, the church was built thirty years
later. It is a basilica, as I said; it presents Our Lord in glory in an
apse. It stands, curiously enough, on the rock; but it is in the middle
of a huge colliery town, and--well, I may as well say it--there is a
grated tribune above the high altar at one side through which a convent
of Poor Clares can assist at the holy sacrifice. Poor Clares!
“I ceased to wonder at the assault as soon as the convent was built.”
He stood up, smiling.
VI
_Father Bianchi’s Tale_
Father Bianchi, as the days went on, seemed a little less dogmatic
on the theory that miracles (except, of course, those of the saints)
did not happen. He was warned by Monsignor Maxwell that his turn was
approaching to contribute a story, and suddenly at supper announced
that he would prefer to get it over at once that evening.
“But I have nothing to tell,” he cried, expostulating with hands and
shoulders, “nothing to tell but the nonsense of an old peasant-woman.”
* * * * *
When we had taken our places upstairs, and the Italian had again
apologized and remonstrated with raised eyebrows, he began at last,
and I noticed that he spoke with a seriousness that I should not have
expected.
“When I was first a priest,” he said, “I was in the south of Italy, and
said my first mass in a church in the hills. The village was called
Arripezza.”
“Is that true?” said Monsignor suddenly, smiling.
The Italian grinned brilliantly. “Well, no,” he said, “but it is near
enough, and I swear to you that the rest is true. It was a village in
the hills, ten miles from Naples. They have many strange beliefs there;
it is like Father Brent’s Cornwall. All along the coast, as you know,
they set lights in the windows on one night of the year, because they
relate that our Lady once came walking on the water with her divine
Child, and found none to give her shelter. Well, this village that we
will call Arripezza was not on the coast. It was inland, but it had its
own superstitions to compensate it--superstitions cursed by the Church.
“I knew little of all this when I went there. I had been in the
seminary until then.
“The _parrocho_ was an old man, but old! He could say mass sometimes on
Sundays and feasts, but that was all, and I went to help him. There
were many at my first mass as the custom is, and they all came up to
kiss my hands when it was done.
“When I came back from the sacristy again there was an old woman
waiting for me, who told me that her name was Giovannina. I had seen
her before as she kissed my hands. She was as old as the _parrocho_
himself--I cannot tell how old--yellow and wrinkled as a monkey.
“She put five lire into my hands.
“‘Five masses, Father,’ she said, ‘for a soul in purgatory.’
“‘And the name?’
“‘That does not matter,’ she said. ‘And will you say them, my Father,
at the altar of S. Espedito?’
“I took the money and went off, and as I went down the church, I saw
her looking after me, as if she wished to speak, but she made no
sign, and I went home; and I had a dozen other masses to say, some
for my friends, and a couple that the _parrocho_ gave me, and those,
therefore, I began to say first. When I had said the fifth of the
twelve, Giovannina waited for me again at the door of the sacristy. I
could see that she was troubled.
“‘Have you not said them, my Father?’ she asked. ‘He is here still.’
“I did not notice what she said, except the question, and I said no;
I had had others to say first. She blinked at me with her old eyes a
moment, and I was going on, but she stopped me again.
“‘Ah! Say them at once, my Father,’ she said; ‘he is waiting.’
“Then I remembered what she had said before and I was angry.
“‘Waiting!’ I said; ‘and so are thousands of poor souls.’
“‘Ah, but he is so patient,’ she said; ‘he has waited so long.’
“I said something sharp, I forget what, but the _parrocho_ had told me
not to hang about and talk nonsense to women, and I was going on, but
she took me by the arm.
“‘Have you not seen him too, my Father?’ she said.
“I looked at her, thinking she was mad, but she held me by the arm and
blinked up at me, and seemed in her senses. I told her to tell me what
she meant, but she would not. At last I promised to say the masses at
once. The next morning I began the masses, and said four of them, and
at each the old woman was there close to me, for I said them at the
altar of S. Espedito that was in the nave, as she had asked me, and I
had a great devotion to him as well, and she was always at her chair
just outside the altar-rails. I scarcely saw her, of course, for I was
a young priest and had been taught not to lift my eyes when I turned
round, but on the fourth day I looked at her at the _Orate fratres_ and
she was staring not at me or the altar, but at the corner on the left.
I looked there when I turned, but there was nothing but the glass case
with the silver hearts in it to S. Espedito.
“That was on a Friday, and in the evening I went to the church again to
hear confessions, and when I was done, the old woman was there again.
“‘They are nearly done, my Father?’ she said, ‘and you will finish them
to-morrow?’
“I told her Yes; but she made me promise that whatever happened I would
do so.
“Then she went on, ‘Then I will tell you, my Father, what I would not
before. I do not know the man’s name, but I see him each day during
mass at that altar. He is in the corner. I have seen him there ever
since the church was built.’
“Well, I knew she was mad then, but I was curious about it, and asked
her to describe him to me; and she did so. I expected a man in a sheet
or in flames or something of the kind, but it was not so. She described
to me a man in a dress she did not know--a tunic to the knees,
bareheaded, with a short sword in his hand. Well, then I saw what she
meant, she was thinking of S. Espedito himself. He was a Roman soldier,
you remember, gentlemen?
“‘And a cuirass?’ I said. ‘A steel breastplate and helmet?’
“Then she surprised me.
“‘Why, no, Father; he has nothing on his head or breast, and there is a
bull beside him.’
“Well, gentlemen, I was taken aback by that. I did not know what to
say.”
Monsignor leant swiftly forward.
“Mithras,” he said abruptly.
The Italian smiled.
“Monsignor knows everything,” he said.
Then I broke in, because I was more interested than I knew.
“Tell me, Monsignor, what was Mithras?”
The priest explained shortly. It was an Eastern worship,
extraordinarily pure, introduced into Italy a little after the
beginning of the Christian era. Mithras was a god, filling a position
not unlike that of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He offered
a perpetual sacrifice, and through that sacrifice souls were enabled
to rise from earthly things to heavenly, if they relied upon it and
accompanied that faith by works of discipline and prayer.
“I beg your pardon, Father Bianchi,” he ended.
The Italian smiled again.
“Yes, Monsignor,” he said, “I know that now, but I did not know it for
many years afterwards, and I know something else now that I did not
know then. Well, to return.
“I told my old woman that she was dreaming, that it could not be so,
that there was no room for a bull in the corner, that it was a picture
of S. Espedito that she was thinking of.
“‘And why did you not get the masses said before?’ I asked.
“She smiled rather slyly at me then.
“‘I did get five said once before,’ she said, ‘in Naples, but they did
him no good. And when once again I told the _parrocho_ here, he told me
to be off; he would not say them.’
“And she had waited for a young priest, it seemed, and had determined
not to tell him the story till the masses were said, and had saved up
her money meanwhile.
“Well, I went home, and got to talking with the old priest, and led
him on, so that he thought that he had introduced the subject, and
presently he told me that when the foundation of the church had been
laid forty years before, they had found an old cave in the hill, with
heathen things in it. He knew no more than that about it, but he told
me to fetch a bit of pottery from a cupboard, and showed it me, and
there was just the tail of a bull upon it, and an eagle.”
Monsignor leaned forward again.
“Just so,” he said, “and the bull was lying down?”
The Italian nodded, and was silent.
We all looked at him. It seemed a tame ending, I thought. Then Father
Brent put our thoughts into words.
“That is not all?” he said.
Father Bianchi looked at him sharply, and at all of us, but said
nothing.
“Ah! that is not all,” said the other again persistently.
“Bah!” cried the Italian suddenly. “It was not all, if you will have it
so. But the rest is madness, as mad as Giovannina herself. What I saw,
I saw because she made me expect it. It was nothing but the shadow, or
the light in the glass case.”
A perceptible thrill ran through us all. The abrupt change from
contempt to seriousness was very startling.
“Tell us, Father,” said the English priest; “we shall think no worse of
you for it. If it was only the shadow, what harm is there in telling
it?”
“Indeed you must finish,” went on Monsignor; “it is in the contract.”
The Italian looked round again, frowned, smiled and laughed uneasily.
“I have told it to no one till to-day,” he said, “but you shall hear
it. But it was only the shadow--you understand that?”