AUSTYN'S GOSPEL
"He did not see the ghost, you say; he only felt it? I should think he
did--on his chest. I never heard of a clearer case of nightmare. You
must be careful whom you tell the story to, old chap; for at the first
go-off it sounds as if it was not merely eating too much that was the
matter. It was, however, indigestion sure enough. No wonder! If a man of
his age who takes no exercise will eat three square meals a day, what
else can he expect? And Mallet is rather liberal with her cream."
Atherley it was, of course, who propounded this simple interpretation of
the night's alarms, as he sat in his smoking-room reviewing his
trout-flies after an early breakfast we had taken with the Canon.
"You always account for the mechanism, but not for the effect. Why
should indigestion take that mental form?"
"Why, because indigestion constantly does in sleep, and out of it as
well, for that matter. A nightmare is not always a sense of oppression
on the chest only; it may be an overpowering dread of something you
dream you see. Indigestion can produce, waking or asleep, a very good
imitation of what is experienced in a blue funk. And there is another
kind of dream which is produced by fasting--that, I need hardly say, I
have never experienced. Indeed, I don't dream."
"But the ghost--the ghost he almost saw."
"The sinking horror produced the ghost, instead of _vice versa_, as you
might suppose. It is like a dream. In unpleasant dreams we fancy it is
the dream itself which makes us feel uncomfortable. It is just the other
way round. It is the discomfort that produces the dream. Have you ever
dreamt you were tramping through snow, and felt cold in consequence? I
did the other night. But I did not feel cold because I dreamt I was
walking through snow, but because I had not enough blankets on my bed;
and because I felt cold I dreamt about the snow. Don't you know the
dream you make up in a few moments about the knocking at the door when
they call you in the morning? And ghosts are only waking dreams."
"I wonder if you ever had an illusion yourself--gave way to it, I mean.
You were in love once--twice," I added hastily, in deference to Lady
Atherley.
"Only once," said Atherley, calmly. "Do you ever see her now, Lindy? She
has grown enormously fat. Certainly I have had my illusions, and I don't
object to them when they are pleasant and harmless--on the contrary.
Now, falling in love, if you don't fall too deep, is pleasant, and it
never lasts long enough to do much mischief. Marriage, of course, you
will say, may be mischievous--only for the individual, it is useful for
the race. What I object to is the deliberate culture of illusions which
are not pleasant but distinctly depressing, like half your religious
beliefs."
"George," said Lady Atherley, coming into the room at this instant;
"have you--oh, dear! what a state this room is in!"
"It is the housemaids. They never will leave things as I put them."
"And it was only dusted and tidied an hour ago. Mr. Lyndsay, did you
ever see anything like it?"
I said "Never."
"If Lindy has a fault in this world, it is that he is as pernickety, as
my old nurse used to say--as pernickety as an old maid. The stiff
formality of his room would give me the creeps, if anything could. The
first thing I always want to do when I see it is to make hay in it."
"It is what you always do do, before you have been an hour there," I
observed.
"Jane, in Heaven's name leave those things alone! Is this sort of thing
all you came in for?"
"No; I really came in to ask if you had read Lucinda Molyneux's letter."
"No, I have not; her writing is too bad for anything. Besides, I know
exactly what she has got to say. She has at last found the religion
which she has been looking for all her life, and she intends to be
whatever it is for evermore."
"That is not all. She wants to come and stay here for a few days."
"What! Here? Now? Why, what--oh, I forgot the ghost! By Jove! You see,
Jane, there are some advantages in having one on the premises when it
procures you a visit from a social star like Mrs. Molyneux. But where
are you going to put her? Not in the bachelor's room, where your poor
uncle made such a night of it? It wouldn't hold her dressing bag, let
alone herself."
"Oh, but I hope the pink room will be ready. The plasterer from Whitford
came out yesterday to apologise, and said he had been keeping his
birthday."
"Indeed! and how many times a year does he have a birthday?"
"I don't know, but he was quite sober; and he did the most of it
yesterday and will finish it to-day, so it will be all right."
"When is she coming, then?"
"To-morrow. You would have seen that if you had read the letter. And
there is a message for you in it, too."
"Then find me the place, like an angel; I cannot wade through all these
sheets of hieroglyphics. In the postscript? Let me see: 'Tell Sir George
I look forward to explaining to him the religious teaching which I have
been studying for months.' Months! Come; there must be something in a
religion which Mrs. Molyneux sticks to for months at a time--'studying
for months under the guidance of its great apostle Baron Zinkersen--'
What is this name? 'The deeper I go into it all the more I feel in it
that faith, satisfying to the reason as well as to the emotions, for
which I have been searching all my life. It is certainly the religion of
the future'--future underlined--'and I believe it will please even Sir
George, for it so distinctly coincides with his own favourite theories.'
Favourite theories, indeed! I haven't any. My mind is as open as day to
truth from any quarter. Only I distrust apostles with no vowels in their
names ever since that one, two years ago, made off with the spoons."
"No, George, he did not take any plate. It was money, and money Lucinda
gave him herself for bringing her letters from her father."
"Where was her father, then?" I inquired, much interested.
"Well, he was--a--he was dead," answered Lady Atherley; "and after some
time, a very low sort of person called upon Lucinda and said she wrote
all the letters; but Lucinda could not get the money back without going
to law, as some people wished her to do; but I am glad she did not, as I
think the papers would have said very unpleasant things about it."
"The apostle I liked best," said Atherley, "was the American one. I
really admired old Stamps, and old Stamps admired me; for she knew I
thoroughly understood what an unmitigated humbug she was. She had a fine
sense of humour, too. How her eyes used to twinkle when I asked posers
at her prayer-meetings!"
"Dreadful woman!" cried Lady Atherley. "Lucinda brought her to lunch
once. Such black nails, and she said she could make the plates and
dishes fly about the room, but I said I would rather not. I am thankful
she does not want to bring this baron with her."
"I would not have him. I draw the line there, and also at spiritual
seances. I am too old for them. Do you remember one I took you to at
Mrs. Molyneux's, Lindy, five years ago, when they raised poor old
Professor Delaine, and he danced on the table and spelt bliss with one
_s_? I was haunted for weeks afterwards by the dread that there might be
a future life, in which we should make fools of ourselves in the same
way. What is this?"
"It is the carriage just come back from the station. Mr. Lyndsay and the
little boys are going over to Rood Warren with a note for me. I hope you
will see Mr. Austyn, Mr. Lyndsay, and persuade him to come over
to-morrow."
"What! To dine?" said Atherley. "He won't come out to dinner in Lent."
I thought so myself, but I was glad of the excuse to see again the
delicate, austere face. As we drove along, I tried to define to myself
the quality which marked it out from others. Not sweetness, not marked
benevolence, but the repose of absolute spiritual conviction. Austyn's
God can never be my God, and in his heaven I should find no rest; but,
one among ten thousand, he believed in both, as the martyrs believed who
perished in the flames, with a faith which would have stood the
atheist's test;--"We believe a thing, when we are prepared to act as if
it were true."
Rood Warren lay in a little hollow beside an armlet of the stream that
waters all the valley. The hamlet consisted of a tiny church and a group
of labourers' cottages, in one of which, presumably because there was no
other habitation for him, the curate in charge made his home. An
apple-faced old woman received me at the door, and hospitably invited me
to wait within for Mr. Austyn's return from morning service, which I
did, while the carriage, with the little boys and Tip in it, drove up
and down before the door. The room in which I waited, evidently the one
sitting-room, was destitute of luxury or comfort as a monk's cell.
Profusion there was in one thing only--books. They indeed furnished the
room, clothing the walls and covering the table; but ornaments there
were none, not even sacred or symbolical, save, indeed, one large and
beautifully-carved crucifix over a mantelpiece covered with letters and
manuscripts. I have thought of this early home of Austyn's many a time
as dignities have been literally thrust upon him by a world which since
then has discovered his intellectual rank. He will end his days in a
palace, and, one may confidently predict of him, remain as absolutely
indifferent to his surroundings as in the little cottage at Rood
Warren.
But he did not come, and presently his housekeeper came in with many
apologies to explain he would not be back for hours, having started
after service on a round of parish visiting instead of first returning
home, as she had expected. She herself was plainly depressed by the
fact. "I did hope he would have come in for a bit of lunch first," she
said, sadly.
All I could do was to leave the note, to which late in the day came an
answer, declining simply and directly on the ground that he did not dine
out in Lent.
"I cannot see why," observed Lady Atherley, as we sat together over the
drawing-room fire after tea, "because it is possible to have a very nice
dinner without meat. I remember one we had abroad once at an hotel on
Good Friday. There were sixteen courses, chiefly fish, no meat even in
the soup, only cream and eggs and that sort of thing, all beautifully
cooked with exquisite sauces. Even George said he would not mind fasting
in that way. It would have been nice if he could have come to meet Mrs.
Molyneux to-morrow. I am sure they must be connected in some way,
because Lord--"
And then my mind wandered whilst Lady Atherley entered into some
genealogical calculations, for which she has nothing less than a genius.
My attention was once again captured by the name de Noël, how introduced
I know not, but it gave me an excuse for asking--
"Lady Atherley, what is Mrs. de Noël like?"
"Cecilia? She is rather tall and rather fair, with brown hair. Not
exactly pretty, but very ladylike-looking. I think she would be very
good-looking if she thought more about her dress."
"Is she clever?"
"No, not at all; and that is very strange, for the Atherleys are such a
clever family, and she has quite the ways of a clever person, too; so
odd, and so stupid about little things that anyone can remember. I don't
believe she could tell you, if you asked her, what relation her husband
was to Lord Stowell."
"She seems a great favourite."
"Oh, no one could possibly help liking her. She is the most good-natured
person; there is nothing she would not do to help one; she is a dear
thing, but most odd, so very odd. I often think it is so fortunate that
she married a sailor, because he is so much away from home."
"Don't they get on, then?"
"Oh dear, yes; they are devoted to each other, and he thinks everything
she does quite perfect. But then he is very different from most men; he
thinks so little about eating, and he takes everything so easy; I don't
think he cares what strange people Cecilia asks to the house."
"Strange people!"
"Well; strange people to have on a visit. Invalids and--people that have
nowhere else they could go to."
"Do you mean poor people from the East End?"
"Oh no; some of them are quite rich. She had an idiot there with his
mother once who was heir to a very large fortune in the Colonies
somewhere; but of course nobody else would have had them, and I think
it must have been very uncomfortable. And then once she actually had a
woman who had taken to drinking. I did not see her, I am thankful to
say, but there was a deformed person once staying there, I saw him being
wheeled about the garden. It was very unpleasant. I think people like
that should always live shut up."
There was a little pause, and then Lady Atherley added--
"Cecilia has never been the same since her baby died. She used to have
such a bright colour before that. He was not quite two years old, but
she felt it dreadfully; and it was a great pity, for if he had lived he
would have come in for all the Stowell property."
The door opened.
"Why, George; how late you are, and--how wet! Is it raining?"
"Yes; hard."
"Have you bought the ponies?"
"No; they won't do at all. But whom do you think I picked up on the way
home? You will never guess. Your pet parson, Mr. Austyn."
"Mr. Austyn!"
"Yes; I found him by the roadside not far from Monk's cottage, where he
had been visiting, looking sadly at a spring-cart, which the owner
thereof, one of the Rood Warren farmers, had managed to upset and damage
considerably. He was giving Austyn a lift home when the spill took
place. So, remembering your hankering and Lindy's for the society of
this young Ritualist, I persuaded him that instead of tramping six miles
through the wet he should come here and put up for the night with us;
so, leaving the farmer free to get home on his pony, I clinched the
matter by promising to send him back to-morrow in time for his eight
o'clock service."
"Oh dear! I wish I had known he was coming. I would have ordered a
dinner he would like."
"Judging by his appearance, I should say the dinner he would like will
be easily provided."
Atherley was right. Mr. Austyn's dinner consisted of soup, bread, and
water. He would not even touch the fish or the eggs elaborately prepared
for his especial benefit. Yet he was far from being a skeleton at the
feast, to whose immaterial side he contributed a good deal--not taking
the lead in conversation, but readily following whosoever did, giving
his opinions on one topic after another in the manner of a man well
informed, cultured, thoughtful, original even, and at the same time with
no warmer interest in all he spoke of than the inhabitant of another
planet might have shown.
Atherley was impressed and even surprised to a degree unflattering to
the rural clergy.
"This is indeed a _rara avis_ of a country curate," he confided to me
after dinner, while Lady Atherley was unravelling with Austyn his
connection with various families of her acquaintance. "We shall hear of
him in time to come, if, in the meanwhile, he does not starve himself to
death. By the way, I lay you odds he sees the ghost. To begin with; he
has heard of it--everybody has in this neighbourhood; and then St.
Anthony himself was never in a more favourable condition for spiritual
visitations. Look at him; he is blue with asceticism. But he won't turn
tail to the ghost; he'll hold his own. There's metal in him."
This led me to ask Austyn, as we went down the bachelor's passage to our
rooms, if he were afraid of ghosts.
"No; that is, I don't feel any fear now. Whether I should do so if face
to face with one, is another question. This house has the reputation of
being haunted, I believe. Have you seen the ghost yourself?"
"No, but I have seen others who did, or thought they did. Do you believe
in ghosts?"
"I do not know that I have considered the subject sufficiently to say
whether I do or not. I see no _primâ facie_ objection to their
appearance. That it would be supernatural offers no difficulty to a
Christian whose religion is founded on, and bound up with, the
supernatural."
"If you do see anything, I should like to know."
I went away, wondering why he repelled as well as attracted me; what it
was behind the almost awe-inspiring purity and earnestness I felt in him
that left me with a chill sense of disappointment? The question was so
perplexing and so interesting that I determined to follow it up next
day, and ordered my servant to call me as early as Mr. Austyn was
wakened.
In the morning I had just finished dressing, but had not put out my
candles, when a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of Austyn
himself.
"I did not expect to find you up, Mr. Lyndsay; I knocked gently, lest
you should be asleep. In case you were not, I intended to come and tell
you that I had seen the ghost."
"Breakfast is ready," said a servant at the door.
"Let me come down with you and hear about it," I said.
We went down through staircase and hall, still plunged in darkness, to
the dining-room, where lamps and fire burned brightly. Their glow
falling on Austyn's face showed me how pale it was, and worn as if from
watching.
Breakfast was set ready for him, but he refused to touch it.
"But tell me what you saw."
"I must have slept two or three hours when I awoke with the feeling that
there was someone besides myself in the room. I thought at first it was
the remains of a dream and would quickly fade away; but it did not, it
grew stronger. Then I raised myself in bed and looked round. The space
between the sash of the window and the curtains--my shutters were not
closed--allowed one narrow stream of moonlight to enter and lie across
the floor. Near this, standing on the brink of it, as it were, and
rising dark against it, was a shadowy figure. Nothing was clearly
outlined but the face; _that_ I saw only too distinctly. I rose and
remained up for at least an hour before it vanished. I heard the clock
outside strike the hour twice. I was not looking at it all this time--on
the contrary, my hands were clasped across my closed eyes; but when from
time to time I turned to see if it was gone, it was reminded me of a
wild beast waiting to spring, and I seemed to myself to be holding it at
bay all the time with a great strain of the will, and, of course"--he
hesitated for an instant, and then added--"in virtue of a higher power."
The reserve of all his school forbade him to say more, but I understood
as well as if he had told me that he had been on his knees, praying all
the time, and there rose before my mind a picture of the
scene--moonlight, kneeling saint, and watching demon, which the leaf of
some illustrated missal might have furnished.
The bronze timepiece over the fireplace struck half-past six.
"I wonder if the carriage is at the door," said Austyn, rather
anxiously. He went into the hall and looked out through the narrow
windows. There was no carriage visible, and I deeply regretted the
second interruption that must follow when it did come.
"Let us walk up the hill and on a little way together. The carriage will
overtake us. My curiosity is not yet satisfied."
"Then first, Mr. Lyndsay, you must go back and drink some coffee; you
are not strong as I am, or accustomed to go out fasting into the morning
air."
Outside in the shadow of the hill, where the fog lay thick and white,
the gloom and the cold of the night still lingered, but as we climbed
the hill we climbed, too, into the brightness of a sunny
morning--brilliant, amber-tinted above the long blue shadows.
* * * * *
I had to speak first.
"Now tell me what the face was like."
"I do not think I can. To begin with, I have a very indistinct
remembrance of either the form or the colouring. Even at the time my
impression of both was very vague; what so overwhelmed and transfixed my
attention, to the exclusion of everything besides itself, was the look
upon the face."
"And that?"
"And that I literally cannot describe. I know no words that could depict
it, no images that could suggest it; you might as well ask me to tell
you what a new colour was like if I had seen it in my dreams, as some
people declare they have done. I could convey some faint idea of it by
describing its effect upon myself, but that, too, is very
difficult--that was like nothing I have ever felt before. It was the
realisation of much which I have affirmed all my life, and steadfastly
believed as well, but only with what might be called a notional assent,
as the blind man might believe that light is sweet, or one who had never
experienced pain might believe it was something from which the senses
shrink. Every day that I have recited the creed, and declared my belief
in the Life Everlasting, I have by implication confessed my entire
disbelief in any other. I knew that what seemed so solid is not solid,
so real is not real; that the life of the flesh, of the senses, of
things seen, is but the "stuff that dreams are made of"--"a dream within
a dream," as one modern writer has called it; "the shadow of a dream,"
as another has it. But last night--"
He stood still, gazing straight before him, as if he saw something that
I could not see.
"But last night," I repeated, as we walked on again.
"Last night? I not only believed, I saw, I felt it with a sudden
intuition conveyed to me in some inexplicable manner by the vision of
that face. I felt the utter insignificance of what we name existence,
and I perceived too behind it that which it conceals from us--the real
Life, illimitable, unfathomable, the element of our true being, with its
eternal possibilities of misery or joy."
"And all this came to you through something of an evil nature?"
"Yes; it was like the effect of lightning oh a pitch-dark night--the
same vivid and lurid illumination of things unperceived before. It must
be like the revelation of death, I should think, without, thank God,
that fearful sense of the irrevocable which death must bring with it.
Will you not rest here?"
For we had reached Beggar's Stile. But I was not tired for once, so
keen, so life-giving was the air, sparkling with that fine elixir
whereby morning braces us for the day's conflict. Below, through
slowly-dissolving mists, the village showed as if it smiled, each little
cottage hearth lifting its soft spiral of smoke to a zenith immeasurably
deep, immaculately blue.
"But the ghost itself?" I said, looking up at him as we both rested our
arms upon the gate. "What do you think of that?"
"I am afraid there is no possible doubt what that was. Its face, as I
tell you, was a revelation of evil--evil and its punishment. It was a
lost soul."
"Do you mean by a lost soul, a soul that is in never-ending torment?"
"Not in physical torment, certainly; that would be a very material
interpretation of the doctrine. Besides, the Church has always
recognised degree and difference in the punishment of the lost. This,
however, they all have in common--eternal separation from the Divine
Being."
"Even if they repent and desire to be reunited to Him?"
"Certainly; that must be part of their suffering."
"And yet you believe in a good God?"
"In what else could I believe, even without revelation? But goodness,
divine goodness, is far from excluding severity and wrath, and even
vengeance. Here the witness of science and of history are in accord with
that of the Christian Church; their first manifestation of God is
always of 'one that is angry with us and threatens evil.'"
The carriage had overtaken us and stopped now close to us. I rose to say
good-bye. Austyn shook me by the hand and moved towards the carriage;
then, as if checked by a sudden thought, returned upon his steps and
stood before me, his earnest eyes fixed upon me as if the whole
self-denying soul within him hungered to waken mine.
"I feel I must speak one word before I leave you, even if it be out of
season. With the recollection of last night still so fresh, even the
serious things of life seem trifles, far more its small
conventionalities. Mr. Lyndsay, your friend has made his choice, but you
are dallying between belief and unbelief. Oh, do not dally long! We
need no spirit from the dead to tell us life is short. Do we not feel it
passing quicker and quicker every year? The one thing that is serious in
all its shows and delusions is the question it puts to each one of us,
and which we answer to our eternal loss or gain. Many different voices
call to us in this age of false prophets, but one only threatens as well
as invites. Would it not be only wise, prudent even, to give the
preference to that? Mr. Lyndsay, I beseech you, accept the teaching of
the Church, which is one with that of conscience and of nature, and
believe that there _is_ a God, a Sovereign, a Lawgiver, a Judge."
He was gone, and I still stood thinking of his words, and of his gaze
while he spoke them.
The mists were all gone, now, leaving behind them in shimmering dewdrops
an iridescent veil on mead and copse and garden; the river gleamed in
diamond curves and loops, while in the covert near me the birds were
singing as if from hearts that over-brimmed with joy.
And slowly, sadly, I repeated to myself the words--Sovereign, Lawgiver,
Judge.
I was hungering for bread; I was given a stone.