And in the same key were Mrs. Mostyn's words when she next spoke.
"Mr. Lyndsay, I am an old woman and you are very young, and my heart goes out to all young creatures in sorrow, especially to one who has no mother of his own, no, nor father even, to comfort him. I know what trouble you have had. Would you be offended if I said how deeply I felt for you?"
"Offended, Mrs. Mostyn!"
"No. I see you understand me; you will not think me obtrusive when I say that I pray this great trial may be for your lasting good; may lead you to seek and to find salvation. The truth is brought home to us in many different ways, by many different instruments. My own eyes were opened by very extraordinary means."
She was silent for a few instants, and then went on—
"When I was young, Mr. Lyndsay, I lived for the world only. I went to church, of course, like other people, and said my prayers and called myself a Christian, but I did not know what the word meant. My sister Henrietta would often talk seriously to me, but it had no effect, and she was quite grieved over my hardened state; but my dear mother, a true saint, used to tell her to have no fear, that some day I should be sharply awakened to my soul's danger. But it was not till years after she was in heaven that her words came true."
I looked at her and waited.
"We were still living at Weald Manor with my brother Marmaduke, and we had young people staying with us. They were all going—all but myself—to a ball at Carchester. I stayed at home because I had a slight cold, which made me feel tired and feverish, and disinclined to be dancing till early next morning. I went to bed early, and when I had sent away my maid I sat beside the fire for a little, thinking. You know the long gallery?"
"Yes."
"My room was there; so I was quite alone, for the servants slept, just as they do now, in the opposite end of the house. But I had my dog with me, such a dear little thing, a black-and-tan terrier. He was lying asleep on the rug beside me. Well, all at once he got up and put his head on one side as if he heard something, and he began barking. I only said 'Nonsense, Totty, lie down,' and paid no more attention to him, till some moments afterwards he made a strange kind of noise as if he were trying to bark and was choked in some way. This made me look at him, and then I observed that he was trembling from head to foot, and staring in the strangest way at something behind me. I will honestly tell you he made me feel so uncomfortable I was afraid to look round; and still it was almost as bad to sit there and not look round, so at last I summoned up courage and turned my head. Then I saw it."
"The ghost?"
"Yes."
"What was it like?"
"It was like a shadow, only darker, and not lying against the wall as a shadow would do, but standing out from it in the air. It stood a little way from me in a corner of the room. It was in the shape of a man, with a ruff round his neck, and sleeves puffed out at the shoulders, as you often see in old pictures; but I don't remember much about that, for at the time I could think of nothing but the face."
"And that—?"
"That was simply dreadful. I can't tell you what it was like. I could not have imagined it, if I had not seen it. It was the look—the look in its eyes. After all these years it makes me tremble when I think of it. But what I felt was not the same nervous feeling which made me afraid to turn round. It went much deeper—indeed it went deeper than anything in my life had ever gone before; it went right down to my soul, in fact, and made me feel I had a soul."
She had turned quite pale.
"Yes, Mr. Lyndsay, strange as it sounds, the mere sight of that face made me realise in an instant what I had read and heard thousands of times, and what my mother and Henrietta had told me over and over again about the utter nothingness of earthly aims and comforts—of what in an ordinary way is called life. I had heard very fine sermons preached about the same thing: 'What is our life, it is even a vapour,' and the 'vain shadow' in which we walk. Have you ever thought how we can go on hearing and even repeating true and wise words without getting at their real sense, and, what is worse, without suspecting our own ignorance?"
"I know it well."
"When Henrietta used to say that the whirl of worldly occupations and interests and amusements in which I was so engrossed did not deserve to be called life, and could never satisfy the eternal soul within me, it used to seem to me an exaggerated way of saying that the next world would be better than this one; but I saw the meaning of her words, I saw the truth of them, as I see these flowers before me, and feel the gravel under my feet: it came to me in a moment, the night these terrible eyes looked into mine. The feeling did not last, but I have never forgotten it, and never shall. It was as if a veil were lifted for an instant, and I was standing outside of my life and looking back at it; and it seemed so poor and worthless and unreal—I can't explain myself properly."
"And did the figure remain for any time?"
"I do not know. I think I must have fainted. They found me lying in a half-unconscious state in my chair when they came home. I was ill in bed for weeks with what the doctors call low fever. But neither the fever nor anything else could remove the impression that had been made. That terrible thing was a blessed messenger to me. My real conversion was not till years later, but the way was prepared by the great shock I then received, and which roused me to a sense of my danger."
"What do you think the thing you saw Was, Mrs. Mostyn?"
"The ghost?"
"Yes."
Slowly, thoughtfully, she answered me—
"I am certain it was a lost soul: nothing else could have worn that dreadful look."
She paused for a few moments and then continued—
"Perhaps you are one of those who do not believe in the punishment of sin?"
"Who can disbelieve it, Mrs. Mostyn? Call it what we like, it is a fact. It confronts us on every side. We might as well refuse to believe in death."
"It is not that I meant! I was talking of punishment in the next world, Mr. Lyndsay."
"Well, there, too, no doubt it must continue, until the uttermost farthing is paid. I believe—at least I hope—that."
She shook her head with a troubled expression.
"There is no paying that debt in the next world. It can only be paid here. Here, a free pardon is offered to us, and if we do not accept it, then—— It is the fashion, even among believers, nowadays to avoid this awful subject. Preachers of the Gospel do not speak of it in the pulpit as they once did. It is considered too shocking for our modern notions. I have no patience with such weakness, such folly—worse than folly. It seems to me even more wrong to try and hide this terrible danger from ourselves and from others than to deny it altogether, as some poor deluded souls do. Mr. Lyndsay, have you ever realised what the place of torment will be like?"
"Yes; once, Mrs. Mostyn."
"You were in pain?"
"I suppose it was pain," I said.
For always, when anything revives this recollection, seared into my memory, the question rises: was it merely pain, physical pain, of which we all speak so easily and lightly? It lasted only ten minutes; ten minutes by the clock, that is. For me time was annihilated. There was no past or future, but only an intolerable present, in which mind and soul were blotted out, and all of sentient existence that remained was the animal consciousness of agony. I cannot share men's stoical contempt for a Gehenna, which is nothing worse.
"Mr. Lyndsay, imagine pain, worse than any ever endured on earth going on and on, for ever!"
A bird, not a thrush, but one of the minor singers, lighting on a bough near us, trilled one simple but ecstatic phrase.
"Do you really and truly believe, Mrs. Mostyn, that this will be the fate of any single being?"
"Of any single being? Do we not know that it is what will happen to the greatest number? For what does the Book say? 'Many are called but few are chosen.'"
Through the still, mild air, across the sun-steeped gardens, came the voices of the children—
"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!"
"Many are called," she repeated, "but few are chosen; and those who are not chosen shall be cast into everlasting fire."
There was a pause. She turned to look at me, and, as if struck by something in my face, said gently, soothingly:
"Yes, it is a terrible thought, but only for the unregenerate. It has no terror for me. I trust it need have no terror for you. After all, how simple, how easy is the way of escape! You have only to believe."
"And then?"
"And then you are safe, safe for evermore. Think of that. The foolish people who wish to explain away eternal punishment, forget that at the same time they explain away eternal happiness! You will be safe now, and after death you will be in heaven for evermore."
"I shall be in heaven for evermore, and always there will be hell."
"Yes."
"Where the others will be?"
"What others? Only the wicked!"
"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!" called the children once more.
"I must go to them! But, Mr. Lyndsay, think over what I have said."
And I remained and obeyed her, and beheld, entire, distinct, the spectre that drives men to madness or despair—illimitable omnipotent Malice. In its shadow the colour of the flowers was quenched, and the music of the birds rang false. Yet it wore the consecration of time and authority! What if it were true?
"Mr. Lyndsay," said Denis at my elbow, "Aunt Eleanour has sent me to fetch you to tea. Mr. Lyndsay, do you hear? Why do you look so strange?"
He caught my hand anxiously as he spoke, and by that little human touch the spell was broken. The phantom vanished; and, looking into the child's eyes, I felt it was a lie.
CHAPTER IV
CANON VERNADE'S GOSPEL
There was no Mrs. de Noël in the carriage when it returned; she had gone to London to stay with Mrs. Donnithorne, whom Atherley spoke of as Aunt Henrietta, and was not expected home till Wednesday.
"I am sorry," Lady Atherley observed, as we drove home through the dusk; "I should like to have had her here when Uncle Augustus was with us. I would have asked Mrs. Mostyn to dine with us, but I am not sure she and Uncle Augustus would get on. When her sister, Mrs. Donnithorne, met Uncle Augustus and his wife at lunch at our house once, she said she thought no minister of the Gospel ought to allow his child to take part in worldly amusements or ceremonials. It was very awkward, because Uncle Augustus's eldest girl had been presented only the day before. And Aunt Clara, Uncle Augustus's wife, you know, who is rather quick, said it depended whether the minister of the Gospel was a gentleman or a shoe-black, because Mrs. Donnithorne was attending a dissenting chapel then where the preacher was quite a common uneducated sort of person. And after that they would not talk to each other, and, altogether, I remember, it was very unpleasant. I do think it is such a pity," cried Lady Atherley with real feeling, "when people will take up these extreme religious views, as all the Atherleys do. I am sure it is quite a comfort to have someone like you in the house, Mr. Lyndsay, who is not particular about religion."
"If this is the best Aunt Eleanour has to show in the way of a ghost, she does well to keep so quiet about it," was Atherley's comment on that part of the story which, by special permission, I repeated to him next day. "I never heard a weaker ghost story. She explains the whole thing away as she tells it. She was, as she candidly admits, ill and feverish—sickening for a fever, in fact, when the most rational person's senses are apt to play them strange tricks. She is alone at the dead of night in a house she believes to be haunted; and then her dog—an odious little beast, I remember him well, always barking at something or nothing;—the dog suggests there is somebody near. She looks round into a dark part of the room, and naturally, inevitably—all things considered—sees a ghost. Did you say it wore a ruff and puffed sleeves?"
"So Mrs. Mostyn said."
"Of course, because, as I told you, Aunt Eleanour believed in the Elizabethan portrait theory. If it had been Aunt Henrietta, the ghost would have been in armour. Ghosts and all visitors from the other world obligingly correspond with the preconceived notions of the visionary. When a white robe and a halo were considered the proper celestial outfit, saints and angels always appeared with white robes and halos. In the same way, the African savage, who believes in a god with a crooked leg, always sees him in dreams, waking or asleep, with a crooked leg; and—"
Here we were interrupted by a great stir in the hall outside, and Lady Atherley looked in to explain that the carriage with Uncle Augustus was just coming down the drive.
Her manner reminded me of the full importance of this arrival, as well as of the unfortunate circumstance that, owing to the ill-timed absence of the dissenting plasterer, the Canon must be lodged in the little room opposite to my own.
However, when I went into the drawing-room, I found him accepting his niece's apologies and explanations with great good-humour. To me also he was especially gracious.
"I had the pleasure of dining at Lindesford, Mr. Lyndsay, when you must have been in long clothes. I remember we had some of the finest trout I ever tasted. Are they still as good in your river?"
His voice, like himself, was massive and impressive; his bearing and manner inspired me with wistful admiration: what must life be to a man so self-confident, and so rightly self-confident?
"Is not Uncle Augustus a fine-looking man?" asked Lady Atherley, when he had left the room with Atherley. "I cannot think why they do not make him a bishop; he would look so well in the robes. He ought to have had something when the last ministry was in, for Aunt Clara and Lord Lingford are cousins; but, unfortunately, the families were on bad terms because of a lawsuit."
The morning after was bright and fair, so that sunlight mingled with the drowsy calm—Sunday in the country as we remember it, looking lovingly back from lands that are not English to the tenderer side of the Puritan Sabbath. But I missed my little aubade from the lawn, and not till breakfast-time did I behold my small friends, who then came into the breakfast-room, one on either side of their mother—two miniature sailors, exquisitely neat but visibly dejected. Behind walked Tip, demurely recognising the change in the atmosphere, but, undisturbed thereby, he at once, with his usual air of self-satisfied dignity, assumed his place in the largest arm-chair.
"The landau could take us all to church except you, George," said Lady Atherley, looking thoughtfully into the fire as we waited for breakfast and the Canon. "But I suppose you would prefer to walk?"
"Why should you suppose I am going to church, either walking or driving?"
"Well, I certainly hoped you would have gone to-day; as Uncle Augustus is going to preach it seems only polite to do so."
"Well, I don't mind; I daresay it will do me no harm; and if it is understood I attend only out of consideration for my wife's uncle, then—"
He was interrupted by the entrance of the person in question.
Many times during breakfast Denis looked thoughtfully at his great-uncle, and at last inquired—
"Do you preach very long sermons, Uncle Augustus?"
"They are not generally considered so," replied the Canon with some dignity.
"Denis, I have often told you not to ask questions," said Lady Atherley.
"When I am grown up," remarked Harold, "I will be an atheist."
"Do you know what an atheist is?" inquired his father.
"Yes, it is people who never go to church."
"But they go to lecture-rooms, which you would find worse."
"But they don't have sermons."
"Don't they? Hours long, especially when they bury each other."
"Oh!" said Harold, evidently taken aback, and somewhat reconciled to the church.
"When I am grown up," said Denis, "I mean to be the same church as Aunt Cissy."
"And what may that be?" inquired the Canon.
Denis was silent and looked perplexed; but some time afterwards, when we were talking of other things, he called out, with the joy of one who has captured that elusive thing, a definition:
"In Aunt Cissy's church they climb trees and make toffee on Sundays."
After which Lady Atherley seemed glad to take them both away with her.
It was perhaps this remark that led the Canon to ask, on the way to church—
"Is it true that Mrs. de Noël attends a dissenting chapel?"
"No," said Lady Atherley. "But I know why people say so. She lent a field last year to the Methodists to have their camp-meeting in."
"Oh! but that is a pity," said the Canon. "A very great pity—a person in her position encouraging dissent, especially when there is no real occasion for it. Clara's nephew, young Littlemore, did something of the kind last year, but then he was standing for the county; and though that hardly justifies, it excuses, a little pandering to the multitude."
"Cissy only let them have it once," said Lady Atherley, as if making the best of it. "And, indeed, I believe it rained so hard that day they were not able to have the meeting after all."
Then the carriage stopped before the lych-gate, through which the fresh-faced school children were trooping; and while the bell clanged its last monotonous summons, we walked up between the village graves to the old church porch that older yews overshadow, where the village lads were loitering, as Sunday after Sunday their sleeping forefathers had loitered before them.
We worshipped that morning in a magnificent pew to one side of the chancel, and quite as large, from which we enjoyed a full view of clergy and congregation. The former consisted of the Canon, Mr. Jackson, clergyman of the parish, and a young man I had not seen before. Not a large number had mustered to hear the Canon; the front seats were well filled by men and women in goodly apparel, but in the pews behind and in the side aisles there was a mere sprinkling of worshippers in the Sunday dress of country labourers. Our supplicaitions were offered with as little ritualistic pageantry as Mrs. Mostyn herself could have desired, though the choir probably sang oftener and better than she would have approved. In spite of their efforts it was as uninspiring a service as I have ever taken part in. This was not due, as might be suspected, to Atherley's presence, for his demeanour was irreproachable. His little sons, delighted at having him with them, carefully found his places for him in prayer and hymnbook, and kept watch that he did not lose them afterwards, so that he perforce assumed a really edifying degree of attention. Nor, indeed, did the rest of the congregation err in the direction of restlessness or wandering looks, but rather in the opposite extreme, insomuch that during the litany, when we were no longer supported by music, and had, most of us, assumed attitudes favourable to repose, we appeared one and all to succumb to it, especially towards the close, when, from the body of the church at least, only the aged clerk was heard to cry for mercy. But with the third service, there came a change, which reminded me of how once in a foreign cathedral, when the procession filed by—the singing-men nudging each other, the standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the sight—the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action. So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne of Him he called upon, and felt Its glory beating on his face; then, by that one earnest and believing presence, all was transformed and redeemed; the old emblems recovered their first significance, the time-worn phrases glowed with life again, and we ourselves were altered—our very heaviness was pathetic: it was the lethargy of death itself, and our poor sleepy prayers the strain of manacled captives striving to be free.
The Canon's sermon did not maintain this high-strung mood, though why not it would be difficult to say. Like all his, it was eloquent, brilliant even, declaimed by a fine voice of wide compass, whose varying tones he used with the skill of a practised orator. The text was "Our conversation is in Heaven," its theme the contrast between the man of this world, with his heart fixed upon its pomps, its vanities, its honours, and the believer indifferent to all these, esteeming them as dross merely compared to the heavenly treasure, the one thing needful. Certainly the utter worthlessness of the prizes for which men labour and so late take rest, barter their happiness, their peace, their honour, was never more scathingly depicted. I remember the organ-like bass of his note in passages which denounced the grovelling worship of earthly pre-eminence and riches, the clarion-like cry with which he concluded a stirring eulogy of the Christian's nobler service of things unseen.
"Brethren, as His kingdom is not of this world, so too our kingdom is not of this world."
"I think you will admit, George," said Lady Atherley, as we left the church, "that you have had a good sermon to-day."
"Yes, indeed," heartily assented Atherley. "It was excellent. Your uncle certainly knows his business, which is more than can be said of most preachers. It was a really splendid performance. But who on earth was he talking about—those wonderful people who don't care for money or success, or the best of everything generally? I never met any like them."
"My dear George! How extraordinary you are! Any one could see, I should have thought, that he meant Christians."
Atherley and the children walked home while we waited for the Canon, who stayed behind to exchange a few words in the vestry with his old schoolfellow, Mr. Jackson.
As we drove home he made, aloud, some reflections, probably suggested by the difference between their positions.
"It really grieves me to see Jackson where he is at his age. He deserves a better living. He is an excellent fellow, and not without ability, but wanting, unfortunately, in tact and savoir-faire. He always had an unhappy knack of blurting out the truth in season and out of season. I did my best to get him a good living once—a first-rate living—in Sir John Marsh's gift; and I warned him before he went to lunch with Sir John to be careful what he said. 'Sir John,' I said, 'is one of the old school; he thinks the Squire is pope of the parish, and you will have to humour him a little. He will talk a great deal of nonsense in this strain, and be careful not to contradict him, for he can't bear it.' But Jackson did contradict him—flatly; he told me so himself, and, of course, Sir John would have nothing to say to him. 'But he made such extravagant statements,' said Jackson. 'If I had kept quiet he would have thought I agreed with him.'—'What did that matter?' I said. 'Once you were vicar you could have shown him you didn't.'—'The truth is,' said Jackson, 'I cannot sit by and hear black called white without protesting.' That is Jackson all over! A man of that kind will never get on. And then, such an imprudent marriage—a woman without a penny!"
"I have never seen any one who wore such extraordinary bonnets," said Lady Atherley.
"Who was that young man who bowed to the altar and crossed himself?" asked the Canon.
"I suppose that must be Mr. Austyn, curate in charge at Rood Warren. He comes over to help Mr. Jackson sometimes, I believe. George has met him; I have not. I want to get him over to dinner. He is a nephew of Mr. Austyn of Temple Leigh."
"Oh, that family!" said the Canon. "I am sorry he has taken up such an extreme line. It is a great mistake. In the Church, preferment in these days always goes to the moderate men."
"Rood Warren is not far from here," said Lady Atherley, "and he has a parishioner—Oh, that reminds me. Mr. Lyndsay, would you be so kind as to look out and tell the coachman to drive round by Monk's? I want to leave some soup."
"Monk, I presume, is a sick labourer?" said the Canon. "I hope you are not as indiscriminate in your charities as most Ladies Bountiful."
"Mr. Jackson says this is a really deserving case. He knows all about him, though he really is in Mr. Austyn's parish. Monk has never had anything from the parish, and been working hard all his life, and he is past seventy. He was breaking stones on the road a few weeks ago; but he caught a chill or something one very cold day, and has been laid up ever since. This is the house. Oh, Mr. Lyndsay, you should not trouble to get out. As you are so kind, will you carry this in?"
The interior of the tiny thatched cottage was scrupulously clean and neat, as they nearly all are in the valley, but barer and more scantily furnished than most of them. No photographs or pictures decorated the white-washed walls, no scraps of carpet or matting hid the red-brick floor. The Monks were evidently of the poorest. An old piece of faded curtain had been hung from a rope between the chimney-piece and the door to shield the patient from the draught. He sat in a stiff wooden arm-chair near the fire, drawing his breath laboriously. "He was better now," said his wife, a nurse as old and as frail-looking as himself. "Nights was the worst." His shoulders were bent, his hair white with age, his withered features almost as coarse and as unshapely as the poor clothes he wore. The mask had been rough-hewn, to begin with; time and exposure had further defaced it. No gleam of intellectual life transpierced and illumined all. It was the face of an animal—ugly, ignorant, honest, patient. As I looked at it there came over me a rush of the pity I have so often felt for this suffering of age in poverty—so unpicturesque, so unwinning, to shallow sight so unpathetic—and I put out my hand and let it rest for a moment on his own, knotted with rheumatism, stained and seamed with toil. Then he looked up at me from under his shaggy brows with haggard, wistful eyes, and gasped: "It's hard work, sir; it's hard work." And I went out into the sunshine, feeling that I had heard the epitome of his life.
That night Mrs. Mallet surpassed herself by her rendering of a menu, especially composed by Atherley for the delectation of their guest. Their pains were not wasted. The Canon's commendation of each course—and we talked of little else, I remember, from soup to dessert—was as discriminating as it was warm.
"I am glad you approve of our cook, Uncle," said Lady Atherley in the drawing-room afterwards, "for she is only a stop-gap. Our own cook left us quite suddenly the other day, and we had such difficulty in finding this one to take her place. No one can imagine how inconvenient it is to have a haunted house."
"My dear Jane, you don't mean to tell me you are afraid of ghosts?"
"Oh no, Uncle."
"And I am sure your husband is not?"
"No; but unfortunately cooks are."
"Eh! what?"
Then Lady Atherley willingly repeated the story of her troubles.
"Preposterous! perfectly preposterous!" cried the Canon. "The Education Act in operation for all these years, and our lower orders still believe in bogies and hobgoblins! And yet it is hardly to be wondered at; their social superiors are not much wiser. The nonsense which is talked in society at present is perfectly incredible. Persons who are supposed to be in their right mind gravely relate to me such incidents that I could imagine myself transported to the Middle Ages. I hear of miraculous cures, of spirits summoned from the dead, of men and women floating in the air; and as to diabolic possession, it seems to have become as common as colds in the head."
He had risen, and now addressed us from the hearthrug.
"Then Mrs. Molyneux and others come and tell me about personal friends of their own who can foretell everything that is going to happen; who can read your inmost thoughts; who can compel others to do this and to do that, whether they like it or no; who, being themselves in one quarter of the globe, constantly appear to their acquaintances in another. 'What!' I say. 'They can be in two places at once, then! Certainly no conjurer can equal that!'"
"And what do they say to that?" asked Atherley.
"Oh, they assure me the extraordinary beings who perform these marvels are not impostors, but very superior and religious characters. 'If they are not impostors,' I say, 'then their right place is the lunatic asylum.' 'Oh but, Canon Vernade, you don't understand; it is only our Western ignorance which makes such things seem astonishing! Far more marvellous things are going on, and have been going on for centuries, in the East; for instance, in the Brotherhoods of—I forget—some unpronounceable name.' 'And how do you know they have?' I ask. 'Oh, by their traditions, which have been handed on for generations.' 'That is very reliable information indeed,' I say. 'Pray, have you ever played a game of Russian scandal?' 'Well; but, then, there are the sacred books. There can be no mistake about them, for they have been translated by learned European professors, who say the religious sentiments are perfectly beautiful.' 'Very possibly,' I say. 'But it does not follow that the historical statements are correct.'"
"I gave my ladies' Bible-class a serious lecture about it all the other day. I said: 'Do, my dear ladies, get rid of these childish notions, these uncivilised hankerings after marvels and magic, which make you the dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change; study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of a Christmas pantomime, but in a universe governed by fixed laws, in which the miraculous performances you describe to me never can, and never could, have taken place. And be sure of this, that any book and any teacher, however admirable their moral teaching, who tell you that two and two make anything but four, are not inspired, so far as arithmetic and common sense are concerned.'"
"Hear, hear!" cried Atherley heartily.
The Canon's brow contracted a little.
"I need hardly explain," he said, "that what I said did not apply to revealed truth. Jane, my dear, as I must leave by an early train to-morrow, I think I shall say good-night."
I fell asleep that night early, and dreamt that I was sitting with Gladys in the frescoed dining-room of an old Italian palace. It was night, and through the open window came one long shaft of moonlight, that vanished in the aureole of the shaded lamp standing with wine and fruit upon the table between us. And I said in my dream—
"Oh, Gladys, will it be always like this, or must we part again?"
And she, smiling her slow soft smile, said: "You may stay with me till the knock comes."
"What knock, my darling?"
But even as I spoke I heard it, low and penetrating, and I stretched out my arms imploringly towards Gladys; but she only smiled, and the knock was repeated, and the whole scene dissolved around me, and I was sitting up in bed in semi-darkness, while somebody was tapping with a quick agitated touch at my door. I remembered then that I had forgotten to unlock it before I went to bed, and I rose at once and made haste to open it, not without a passing thrill of unpleasant conjecture as to what might be behind it. It was a tall figure in a long grey garment, who carried a lighted candle in his hand. For a moment, startled and stupefied as I was, I failed to recognise the livid face.
"Canon Vernade! You are ill?"
Too ill to speak, it would seem, for without a word he staggered forward and sank into a chair, letting the candle almost drop from his hand on to the table beside him; but when I put out my hand to ring the bell, he stayed me by a gesture. I looked at him, deadly pale, with blue shadows about the mouth and eyes, his head thrown helplessly back, and then I remembered some brandy I had in my dressing-bag. He took the glass from me and raised it to his lips with a trembling hand. I stood watching him, debating within myself whether I should disobey him by calling for help or not; but presently, to my great relief, I saw the stimulant take effect, and life come slowly surging back in colour to his cheeks, in strength to his whole prostrate frame. He straightened himself a little, and turned upon me a less distracted gaze than before.
"Mr. Lyndsay, there is something horrible in this house."
"Have you seen it?"
He shook his head.
"I saw nothing; it is what I felt."
He shuddered.
I looked towards the grate. The fire had long been out, but the wood was still unconsumed, and I managed, inexpertly enough, to relight it. When a long blue flame sprang up, he drew his chair near the hearth and stretched towards the blaze his still tremulous hands.
"Mr. Lyndsay," he said, in a voice as strangely altered as his whole appearance, "may I sit here a little—till it is light? I dread to go back to that room. But don't let me keep you up."
I said, and in all honesty, that I had no inclination to sleep. I put on my dressing-gown, threw a rug over his knees, and took my place opposite to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early spring-time, which even the birds do not brighten with their babble.
Silently staring into the fire, he vouchsafed no further explanations, and I did not venture to ask for any; but I doubt if even such language as he could command would have been so full of horrible suggestion as that grey set face, and the terror-stricken gaze, which the growing light made every minute more distinct, more weird. What had so suddenly and so completely overthrown, not his own strength merely, but the defences of his faith? He groped amongst them still, for, from time to time, I heard him murmuring to himself familiar verses of prayer and psalm and gospel, as if he sought therewith to banish some haunting fear, to quiet some torturing suspicion. And at last, when the dull grey day had fully broken, he turned towards me, and cried in tones more heart-piercing than ever startled the great congregations in church or cathedral—
"What if it were all a delusion, and there be no Father, no Saviour?"
And the horror of that abyss into which he looked, flashing from his mind to my own, left me silent and helpless before him. Yet I longed to give him comfort; for, with the regal self-possession which had fallen from him, there had slipped from me too some undefined instinct of distrust and disapproval. All that I felt now was the sad tie of brotherhood which united us, poor human atoms, strong only in our capacity to suffer, tossed and driven, whitherward we knew not, in the purposeless play of soulless and unpitying forces.
CHAPTER V
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.
CHAPTER VI
MRS. MOLYNEUX'S GOSPEL
"The room is all ready now," said Lady Atherley, "but Lucinda has never written to say what train she is coming by."
"A good thing, too," said Atherley; "we shall not have to send for her. Those unlucky horses are worked off their legs already. Is that the carriage coming back from Rood Warren? Harold, run and stop it, and tell Marsh to drive round to the door before he goes to the stables. I may as well have a lift down to the other end of the village."
"What do you want to do at the other end of the village?"
"I don't want to do anything, but my unlucky fate as a landowner compels me to go over and look at an eel-weir which has just burst. Lindy, come along with me, and cheer me up with one of your ghost stories. You are as good as a Christmas annual."
"And on your way back," said Lady Atherley, "would you mind the carriage stopping to leave some brandy at Monk's? Mr. Austyn told me last night he was so weak, and the doctor has ordered him brandy every hour."
Atherley was disappointed with what he called my last edition of the ghost; he complained that it was little more definite than the Canon's.
"Your last two stories are too highflown for my simple tastes. I want a good coherent description of the ghost himself, not the particular emotions he excited. I had expected better things from Austyn. Upon my word, as far as we have gone, old Aunt Eleanour's is the best. I think Austyn, with his mediæval turn of mind and his quite mediæval habit of living upon air, might have managed to raise something with horns and hoofs. It is a curious thing that in the dark ages the devil was always appearing to somebody. He doesn't make himself so cheap now. He has evidently more to do; but there is a fashion in ghosts as in other things, and that reminds me our ghost, from all we hear of it, is decidedly rococo. If you study the reports of societies that hunt the supernatural, you will find that the latest thing in ghosts is very quiet and commonplace. Rattling chains and blue lights, and even fancy dress, have quite gone out. And the people who see the ghosts are not even startled at first sight; they think it is a visitor, or a man come to wind the clocks. In fact, the chic thing for a ghost in these days is to be mistaken for a living person."
"What puzzles me is that a sceptic like you can so easily swallow the astonishing coincidence of these different people all having imagined the ghost in the same house."
"Why, the coincidence is not a bit more astonishing than several people in the same place having the same fever. Nothing in the world is so infectious as ghost-seeing. The oftener a ghost is seen, the oftener it will be seen. In this sort of thing particularly, one fool makes many. No, don't wait for me. Heaven only knows when I shall be released."
The door of Monk's cottage was open, but no one was to be seen within, and no one answered to my knock, so, anxious to see him again, I groped my way up the dark ladder-like stairs to the room above. The first thing I saw was the bed where Monk himself was lying. They had drawn the sheet across his face: I saw what had happened. His wife was standing near, looking not so much grieved as stunned and tired. "Would you like to see him, sir?" she asked, stretching out her withered hand to draw the sheet aside. I was glad afterwards I had not refused, as, but for fear of being ungracious, I would have done.
Since then I have seen death—"in state" as it is called—invested with more than royal pomp, but I have never felt his presence so majestic as in that poor little garret. I know his seal may be painful, grotesque even: here it was wholly benign and beautiful. All discolorations had disappeared in an even pallor as of old ivory; all furrows of age and pain were smoothed away, and the rude peasant face was transfigured, glorified, by that smile of ineffable and triumphant repose.
Many times that day it rose before me, never more vividly than when, at dinner, Mrs. Molyneux, in colours as brilliant as her complexion, and jewels as sparkling as her eyes, recounted in her silvery treble the latest flowers of fashionable gossip. I am always glad to be one of any audience which Mrs. Molyneux addresses, not so much out of admiration for the discourse itself, as for the charm of gesture and intonation with which it is delivered. But the main question—the subject of Atherley's conversion—she did not approach till we were in the drawing-room, luxuriously established in deep and softly-cushioned chairs. Then, near the fire, but turned away from it so as to face us all, and in the prettiest of attitudes, she began, gracefully emphasising her more important points by movements of her spangled fan.
"I do not mention the name of the religion I wish to speak to you about, because—now I hope you won't be angry, but I am going to be quite horribly rude—because Sir George is certain to be so prejudiced against—oh yes, Sir George, you are; everybody is at first. Even I was, because it has been so horribly misrepresented by people who really know nothing about it. For instance, I have myself heard it said that it was only a kind of spiritualism. On the contrary, it is very much opposed to it, and has quite convinced me for one of the wickedness and danger of spiritualism."
"Well, that is so much to its credit," Atherley generously acknowledged.
"And then, people said it was very immoral. Far from that; it has a very high ethical standard indeed—a very moral aim. One of its chief objects is to establish a universal brotherhood amongst men of all nations and sects."
"A what?" asked Atherley.
"A universal brotherhood."
"My dear Mrs. Molyneux, you don't mean to seriously offer that as a novelty. I never heard anything so hackneyed in my life. Why, it has been preached ad nauseam for centuries!"
"By the Christian Church, I suppose you mean. And pray how have they practised their preaching?"
"Oh, but excuse me; that is not the question. If your religion is as brand-new as you gave me to understand, there has been no time for practice. It must be all theory, and I hoped I was going to hear something original."
"Oh really, Sir George, you are quite too naughty. How can I explain things if you are so flippant and impatient? In one sense, it is a very old religion; it is the truth which is in all religions, and some of its interesting doctrines were taught ages before Christianity was ever heard of, and proved, too, by miracles far far more wonderful than any in the New Testament. However, it is no good talking to you about that; what I really wanted you to understand is how infinitely superior it is to all other religions in its theological teaching. You know, Sir George, you are always finding fault with all the Christian Churches—and even with the Mahommedans too, for that matter—because they are so anthropomorphic, because they imply that God is a personal being. Very well, then, you cannot say that about this religion, because—this is what is so remarkable and elevated about it—it has nothing to do with God at all."