Chapter II: Part 2

“Gentlemen”--the Frenchman flung out his hands--“I who stand here tell you that something happened. God knows what. I only know this, that as the woman cried out and scrambled with her feet on the floor, the flame of the candle became smoke-coloured for one instant. I told myself it was the dust of her struggling and her foul breath.... Yes, gentlemen, as you tell yourselves now.... Bah! it is but epilepsy, is it not so, sir?”

The old Rector leaned forward with a deprecating hand, but the Frenchman glared and gesticulated; there was a murmur from the room, and the old priest leaned back again and propped his head on his hand.

“Then there was a prayer. I heard _Oremus_, but I did not dare to look at the woman. I fixed my eyes so on the bread and meat; it was the one clean thing in that terrible room. I whispered to myself, ‘Bread and mutton, bread and mutton.’ I thought of the refectory at home--anything. You understand me, gentlemen--anything familiar to quiet myself.

“Then there was the third exorcism....”

* * * * *

I saw the Frenchman’s hands rise and fall, clenched, and his teeth close on his lip to stay its trembling. He swallowed in his throat once or twice. Then he went on in a very low, hissing voice.

* * * * *

“Gentlemen, I swear to you by God Almighty that this was what I saw. I kept my eyes on the bread and meat. It lay there beneath my eyes, and yet I saw, too, the good Father Lasserre lean forward to the woman again, and heard him begin, ‘_Exorcizo te._...’

“And then this happened--this happened....

“The bread and the meat corrupted themselves to worms before my eyes....”

Father Meuron dashed forward, turned round and dropped into his chair as the two English priests on either side sprang to their feet.

In a few minutes he was able to tell us that all had ended well; that the woman had been presently found in her right mind, after an incident or two that I will take leave to omit; and that the apparent paroxysm of nature that had accompanied the words of the third exorcism had passed away as suddenly as it had come.

* * * * *

Then we went to night-prayers and fortified ourselves against the dark.

III

_Father Brent’s Tale_

It was universally voted on Monday that the Englishman should follow Father Meuron, and we looked with some satisfaction on his wholesome face and steady blue eyes as he took up his tale after supper.

* * * * *

“Mine is a very poor story,” he began, “after the one we heard on Saturday and, what is worse, there is no explanation that I have ever heard that seemed to me adequate. Perhaps some one will supply one this evening. I feel very much like the ant in London whom Monsignor has such sympathy with.”

He drew at his cigarette, smiling, and we settled ourselves down with looks of resolute science on our features. I at least was conscious of wishing to wear one.

* * * * *

“After my ordination to the sub-diaconate I was in England for the summer, and went down to stay with a friend on the Fal at the beginning of October.

“My friend’s house stood on a spot of land running out into the estuary; there was a beech wood behind it and on either side. There was a small embankment on which the building actually stood, of which the sea-wall ran straight down on to the rocks, so that at high tide the water came half way up the stone-work. There was a large smoking-room looking the same way and a little paved path separated its windows from the low wall.

“We had a series of very warm days when I was there, and after dinner we would sit outside in the dark and listen to the water lapping below. There was another house on the further side of the river about half a mile away, and we could see its lights sometimes. About three miles upstream--that is, on our right--lay Truro; and Falmouth, as far as I remember, about four miles to the left. But we were entirely cut off from our neighbors by the beechwoods all round us, and, except for the house opposite, might have been clean out of civilization.”

Father Brent tossed away his cigarette and lit another.

He seemed a very sensible person, I thought, unlike the excitable Frenchman, and his manner of speaking was serene and practical.

“My friend was a widower,” he went on, “but had one boy, about eleven years old, who, I remember, was to go to school after Christmas. I asked Franklyn, my friend, why Jack had not gone before, and he told me, as parents will, that he was a peculiarly sensitive boy, a little hysterical at times and very nervous, but he was less so than he used to be, and probably, his father said, if he was allowed time, school would be the best thing for him. Up to the present, however, he had shrunk from sending him.

“‘He has extraordinary fancies,’ he said, ‘and thinks he sees things. The other day--’ and then Jack came in, and he stopped, and I clean forgot to ask him afterward what he was going to say.

“Now, if any one here has ever been to Cornwall they will know what a queer county it is. It is cram full of legends and so on. Every one who has ever been there seems to have left their mark. You get the Phœnicians in goodness knows what century; they came there for tin, and some of the mines still in work are supposed to have been opened by them. Cornish cream, too, seems to have been brought there by them, for I need not tell you, perhaps, that the stuff is originally Cornish and not Devon. Then Solomon, some think, sent ships there, though personally I believe that is nonsense; but you get some curious names--Marazion, for instance, which means the bitterness of Zion. That has made some believe that the Cornish are the lost tribes. Then you get a connection with both Ireland and Brittany in names, language, and beliefs, and so on. I could go on forever. They still talk of ‘going to England’ when they cross the border into Devonshire.

“Then the people are very odd--real Celts--with a genius for religion and the supernatural generally. They believe in pixies; they have got a hundred saints and holy wells and holy trees that no one else has ever heard of. They have the most astonishing old churches. There is one convent--at Lanherne, I think--where the Blessed Sacrament has remained with its light burning right up to the present. And lastly, all the people are furious Wesleyans.

“So the whole place is a confusion of history, a sort of palimpsest, as the Father Rector here would tell us. A cross you find in the moor may be pagan, or Catholic, or Anglican, or most likely all three together. And that is what makes an explanation of what I am going to tell you such a difficult thing.

“I did not know much about this when I went there on October 3d, but Franklyn told me a lot, and he took me about to one or two places here and there--to Truro to see the new Cathedral, to Perranzabuloe, where there is an old mystery theatre and a church in the sands, and so on. And one day we rowed down to Falmouth.

“The Fal is a lovely place when the tide is in. You find the odd combination of seaweed and beech trees growing almost together. The trees stand with their roots in saltish water, and the creeks run right up into the woods. But it is terrible when the tide is out--great sheets of mud, with wreckage sticking up, and draggled weed, and mussels, and so on.

“About the end of my first week it was high tide after dinner, and we sat out on the terrace looking across the water. We could hear it lapping below, and the moon was just coming up behind the house. I tossed over my cigarette end and heard it fizz in the water, and then I put out my hand to the box for another. There wasn’t one, and Franklyn said he would go indoors to find some. He thought he had some Nestors in his bedroom.

“So Franklyn went in and I was left alone.

“It was perfectly quiet; there was not a ripple on the water, which was about eight feet below me, as I got up from my chair and sat on the low wall. There was a sort of glimmer on the water from the moon behind, and I could see a yellow streak clean across the surface from the house opposite among the black woods. It was as warm as summer, too.”

Father Brent threw his cigarette away and sat a little forward in his chair. I began to feel more interested. He was plainly interested himself, for he clasped his hands round a knee and gave a quick look into our faces. Then he looked back again at the fire as he went on.

“Then across the streak of yellow light, and where the moon glimmered, I saw a kind of black line moving. It was coming toward me, and there seemed to be a sort of disturbance behind. I stood up and waited, wondering what it was. I could hear Franklyn pulling out a drawer in the bedroom overhead, but everything else was deadly still.

“As I stood it came nearer swiftly; it was just a high ripple in the water, and a moment later the flat surface below heaved up, and I could hear it lapping and splashing on the face of the wall.

“It was exactly as if some big ship had gone up the estuary. I strained my eyes out, but there was nothing to be seen. There was the glimmer of the moon on the water, the house lights burning half a mile away, and the black woods beyond. There was a beach, rocks, and shingle on my right, curving along toward a place called Meopas; and I could hear the wave hiss and clatter all along it as it went upstream.

“Then I sat down again.

“I cannot say I was exactly frightened; but I was very much puzzled. It surely could not be a tidal wave; there was certainly no ship; it could not be anything swimming, for the wave was like the wave of a really large vessel.

“In a minute or two Franklyn came down with the Nestors, and I told him. He laughed at me. He said it must have been a breeze, or the turn of the tide, or something. Then he said he had been in to look for Jack, and had found him in a sort of nightmare, tossing and moaning; he had not wakened him, he said, but just touched him and said a word or two, and the boy had turned over and gone to sleep.

“But I would not let him change the subject. I persisted it had been a really big wash of some kind.

“He stared at me.

“‘Take a cigarette,’ he said; ‘I found them at last under a hat.’

“But I went on at him. It had made an impression on me, and I was a little uncomfortable.

“‘It is bosh,’ he said; ‘but we will go and see if you like. The wall will be wet if there was a big wave.’

“He fetched a lantern, and we went down the steps that led round the side of the embankment into the water. I went first, until my feet were on the last step above the water. He carried the lantern.

“Then I heard him exclaim.

“‘You are standing in a pool,’ he said.

“I looked down and saw that it was so; the steps, three of them, at least, were shining with water in the light of the lantern.

“I put out my hand for the lantern, held on to a ring by my left hand, and leaned out as far as I could, looking at the face of the wall. It was wet and dripping for at least four feet above the mark of the high tide.

“I told him, and he came down and looked, too, and then we went up again to the house.

“We neither of us said very much more that evening. The only suggestion that Franklyn could make was that it must have been a very odd kind of tidal wave. For myself, I knew nothing about tidal waves; but I gathered from his tone that this certainly could not have been one.

“We sat about half an hour more, but there was no sound again.

“When we went up to bed we peeped into Jack’s room. He was lying perfectly quiet on his right side, turned away from the window, which was open, but there was a little frown, I thought, on his forehead, and his eyes seemed screwed up.”

The priest stopped again.

We were all very quiet. The story was not exciting, but it was distinctly interesting, and I could see the others were puzzled. Perhaps what impressed us most was the very matter-of-fact tone in which the story was told.

The Rector put in a word during the silence.

“How do you know it was not a tidal wave?” he asked.

“It may have been, Father,” said the young priest; “but that is not the end.”

He filled his lungs with smoke, blew it out, and went on.

* * * * *

“Nothing whatever happened of any interest for the next day or two, except that Franklyn asked a boatman at Meopas whether he had heard anything of a wave on the Monday night. The man looked at us and shook his head, still looking at us oddly.

“‘I was in bed early,’ he said.

“On the Thursday afternoon Franklyn got a note asking him to dine in Truro, to meet some one who had come down from town. I told him to go, of course, and he went off in his dog-cart about half-past six.

“Jack and I dined together at half-past seven, and I may say we made friends. He was less shy when his father was away. I think Franklyn laughed at him a little too much, hoping to cure him of his fancies.

“The boy told me some of them, though, that night. I don’t remember any of them particularly, but I do remember the general effect, and I was really impressed by the sort of insight he seemed to have into things. He said some curious things about trees and their characters. Perhaps you remember Macdonald’s ‘Phantastes.’ It was rather like that. He was fond of beeches, I gathered, and thought himself safe in them; he liked to climb them and to think the house was surrounded by them. And there was a lot of things like that he said. I remember, too, that he hated cypresses and cats and the twilight.

“‘But I am not afraid of the dark,’ he said. ‘I like the dark as much as the light, and I always sleep with my windows open and no curtains.’”

Monsignor Maxwell nodded abruptly. I could see he was watching.

“I know,” he said--“I knew another child like that.”

“Well,” went on Father Brent, “the boy said good-night and went to bed about nine. I sat in the smoking-room a bit, for it had turned a little cold, and about ten stepped out on to the terrace.

“It was perfectly still and cloudy. I forget whether there was a moon. At any rate, I did not see it. There was just the black gulf of water, with the line of light across it from the house opposite. Then I went indoors and shut the windows.

“I read again for a while, and finished my book. I had said my office, so I looked about for another novel. Then I remembered there had been one I wanted to read in Franklyn’s room overhead, so I took a candle and went up. Jack’s room was over the smoking-room, and his father’s was beyond it on the right, and there was a door between them. Both faced the front, remember.

“Franklyn’s room had three windows, two looking on to the river and one upstream toward Truro, over the beach I spoke of before. I went in there, and saw that the door was open between the two rooms, so I slipped off my shoes for fear of disturbing the boy and went across to the book-shelf that stood between the two front windows. All three windows were open. Franklyn was mad about fresh air.

“I was bending down to look at the backs of the books, and had my finger on the one I wanted when I heard a kind of moan from the boy’s room.

“I stood up, startled, and it came again. Why, he had had a nightmare only three days before, I remembered. As I stood there wondering whether it would be kind to wake him, I heard another sound.

“It was a noise that came through the side window that looked up the beach, and it was the noise of a breaking wave.”

The priest made a momentary pause, and as he flicked the end of his cigarette I saw his fingers tremble very slightly.

“I didn’t hesitate then, but went straight into the room next door, and as I went across the floor heard the boy moaning and tossing. It was pitch dark, and I could see nothing. I was thinking that tidal waves don’t come downstream. Then my knee struck the edge of the bed.

“‘Jack,’ I said, ‘Jack.’

“There was a rustle from the bed-clothes, and (I should have thought) long before he could have awakened I heard his feet on the floor, and then felt him brush past me. Then I saw him outlined against the pale window, with his hands on the glass over his head. Then I was by him, taking care not to touch him.

“All this took about five seconds, I suppose, from the time when I heard the wave on the beach. I stared out now over the boy’s head, but there was nothing in the world to be seen but the black water and the glimmer of the light across it.

“Jack was perfectly silent, but I could see that he was watching. He didn’t seem to know I was there.

“Then I whispered to him rather sharply.

“‘What is it, Jack? What do you see?’

“He said nothing, and I repeated my question.

“Then he answered, almost as if talking to himself.

“‘Ships,’ he said; ‘three ships.’

“Now I swear there was nothing there. I thought it was a nightmare.

“‘Nonsense,’ I said; ‘how can you see them? It’s too dark.’

“‘A light in each,’ he said; ‘in the bows--blazing!’

“As he said it I saw his head turning slowly to the left as if he was following them. Then there came the sound of the wave breaking on the stone-work just below the windows.

“‘Are you frightened?’ I said suddenly.

“‘Yes,’ said the boy.

“‘Why?’

“‘I don’t know.’

“Then I saw his hands come down from the window and cover his face, and he began to moan again.

“‘Come back to bed,’ I said; but I daren’t touch him. I could see he was sleep walking.

“Then he turned, went straight across the room, still making an odd sound, and I heard him climb into bed.

“I covered him up and went out.”

Father Brent stopped again. He had rather a curious look in his face, and I saw that his cigarette had gone out. None of us spoke or moved.

Then he went on again abruptly.

“Well, you know, I didn’t know I was frightened exactly until I came out on to the landing. There was a tall glass there on the right hand of the staircase, and just as I came opposite I thought I heard the hiss of the wave again, and I nearly screamed. It was only the wheels of Franklyn’s dog-cart coming up the drive, but as I looked in the glass I saw that my face was like paper.... We had a long talk about the Phœnicians that evening. Franklyn looked them out in the Encyclopædia; but there was nothing particularly interesting.

“Well, that’s all. Give me a match, Father. This beastly thing’s gone out. It’s a _spaghetto_.”

* * * * *

We had no theories to suggest. Monsignor alone was temerarious enough to remark that the story was an excellent illustration of his own views.

IV

_The Father Rector’s Tale_

The Father-Rector of San Filippo was an old man, a Canadian by birth, who had been educated in England, but he had worked in many parts of the world since receiving the priesthood nearly fifty years ago, and for my part I certainly expected that he would have many experiences to relate.

At first, however, he entirely refused to tell a story. He said he had had an uneventful life, that he could not compete with the tales he had heard. But persuasion proved too strong, and on going in to see him on another matter one morning I found him at his tin despatch-box with a diary in his hand.

“I have found something that I think may do,” he said, “if no one else has promised for this evening. It is really the only thing approaching the preternatural I have ever experienced.”

I congratulated him and ourselves; and the same evening after supper he told his story, with the diary beside him, to which he referred now and then. (I shall omit his irrelevancies, of which there were a good many.)

* * * * *

“This happened to me,” he said, “nearly thirty years ago. I had been twenty years a priest, and was working in a town mission in the south of England. I made the acquaintance of a Catholic family who had a large country house about ten miles away. They were not very fervent people, but they had a chapel in the house, where I would say mass sometimes on Sundays, when I could get away from my own church on Saturday night.

“On one of these occasions I met for the first time an artist, whose name you would all know if I mentioned it, but it will be convenient to call him Mr. Farquharson. He made an extremely unpleasant impression on me, and yet there was no reason for it that I could see. He was a big man, palish, with curling brown hair. He was always very well dressed, with a suspicion of scent about him; he talked extremely wittily and would say the most surprising things that were at once brilliant and dangerous; and yet in his talk he never transgressed good manners. In fact, he was very cordial always to me; he seemed to go out of his way to be courteous and friendly, and yet I could not bear the fellow. However, I tried to conceal that, and with some success, as you will see.

“I was astonished that he asked me no questions about our beliefs or practices. Such people generally do, you know; and they profess to admire our worship and its dignity. In the evening he played and sang magnificently--very touching and pathetic songs, as a rule.

“On the following morning he attended mass, but I did not think much of that. Guests generally do, I have found, in Catholic houses. Then I went off in the afternoon back to my mission.

“I suppose it was six weeks before I met him again, and then it was at the same place. My hostess gave me tea alone, for I arrived late, and as we sat in the hall, told me that Mr. Farquharson was there again. Then she added, to my surprise, that he had expressed a great liking for me, and had come down from town partly with the hope of meeting me. She went on talking about him for a while; told me that three of his pictures had been taken again by the French Salon, and at last told me that he had been baptized and educated as a Catholic, but had for many years ceased to practise his religion. She had only learned this recently.

“Well, that explained a good deal; and I was a good deal taken aback. I did not quite know how to act. But she talked on about him a little, and I became sorry for the man and determined that I would make no difference in my behavior toward him. From what she said, I gathered that it might be in my power to win him back. He had everything against him, she told me.

“Now, let me tell you a word about his pictures. I had seen them here and there, as well as reproductions of them, as all the world had at that time, and they were very remarkable. They were on extraordinarily simple and innocent subjects, and often religious--a child going to first Communion; a knight riding on a lonely road; a boy warming his hands at the fire; a woman praying. There was not a line or a color in them that any one could dislike, and yet--yet they were corrupt. I know nothing about art; but it needed no art to see that these were corrupt. I did not understand it then, and I do not now; but--well, there it is. I cannot describe their effect on me; but I know that many others felt the same, and I believe that kind of painting is not uncommon in the French school.”

The priest paused a moment.

“As I went down the long passage to the smoking-room I declare that I was not thinking of this side of the man. I was only wondering whether I could do anything, but the moment I came in and found him standing alone on the hearth-rug all this leaped back into my mind.

“His personality was exactly like his own pictures. There was nothing that one could point to in his face and say that it revealed his character. It did not. It was a clean-shaven, clever face, strong and artistic; his hand as he took mine was firm and slender and strong, too. And yet--yet my flesh crept at him. It seemed to me he was a kind of devil.

“Again I did my utmost to hide all this as we sat and talked that evening till the dressing gong rang; and again I succeeded, but it was a sore effort. Once when he put his hand on my arm I nearly jerked it off, so great was the horror it gave me.

“I did not sit near him at dinner; there were several people dining there that night, but our host was unwell and went to bed early, and this man and myself, after he had played and sung an hour or so in the drawing-room, talked till late in the smoking-room, and all the while the horror grew; I have never felt anything like it. I am generally fairly placid; but it was all I could do to keep quiet. I even wondered once or twice whether it was not my duty to tell him plainly what I felt, to--to--well, really, this sounds absurd--but to curse him as an unclean and corrupt creature who had lost faith and grace and everything, and was on the very brink of eternal fire.”

The old man’s voice rang with emotion. I had never seen him so much moved, and was astonished at his vehemence.

“Well, thank God, I did not!

“At last it came out that I knew about his having been a Catholic. I did not tell him where I had learned it, but perhaps he suspected. Of course, though, I might have learned it in a hundred ways.

“He seemed very much surprised--not at my knowing, but at my treating him as I had. It seemed that he had met with unpleasantness more than once at the hands of priests who knew.

“Well, to cut it short, before I went away next day he asked me to call upon him some time at his house in London, and he asked me in such a way that I knew he meant it.”

The priest stopped and referred to his diary. Then he went on.

“It was in the following May, six months later, that I fulfilled my promise.

“It may have been association, and what I suspected of the man, but the house almost terrified me by its beauty and its simplicity and its air of corruption. And yet there was nothing to account for it. There was not a picture in it, as far as I could see, that had anything in it to which even a priest could object. There was a long gallery leading from the front door, floored, ceiled, and walled with oak in little panels, with pictures in each along the two sides, chiefly, I should suppose now, of that same French school of which I have spoken. There was an exquisite crucifix at the end, and yet, in some strange way, even that seemed to be tainted. I felt, I suppose, in the manner that Father Stein described to us when he mentioned Benares; and yet there, I have heard, the pictures and carving correspond with the sensation, and here they did not.

“He received me in his studio at the end of the passage. There was a great painting on an easel, on which he was working, a painting of Our Lady going to the well at Nazareth--most exquisite and yet terrible. I could hardly keep my eyes off it. It was nearly finished, he told me. And there was his grand piano against the wall.

“Well, we sat and talked; and before I left that evening I knew everything. He did not tell me in confession, and the story became notorious after his death five years later; but yet I can tell you no more now than that all I had felt about him was justified by what I heard. Part of what the world did not hear would not have seemed important to any but a priest; it was just the history of his own soul, apart from his deeds, the history of his wanton contempt of light and warnings. And I heard more besides, too, that I cannot bear to think of even now.”

The priest stopped again; and I could see his lips were trembling with emotion. We were all very quiet ourselves; the effect on my mind, at least, was extraordinary. Presently he went on:

“Before I left I persuaded him to go to confession. The man had not really lost faith for a moment, so far as I could gather. I learned from details that I cannot even hint at that he had known it all to be true, pitilessly clear in his worst moments. Grace had been prevailing especially of late, and he was sick of his life. Of course, he had tried to stifle conscience, but by the mercy of God he had failed. I cannot imagine why, except that there is no end to the loving kindness of God; but I have known many souls, not half so evil as his, lose their faith and their whole spiritual sense beyond all human hope of recovery.”

The priest stopped again, turned over several pages of his diary, and as he did so I saw him stop once or twice and read silently to himself, his lips moving.

“I must miss out a great deal here. He did not come to confession to me, but to a Carthusian, after a retreat. I need not go into all the details of that, so far as I knew them, and I will skip another six months.

“During that time I wrote to him more than once, and just got a line or two back. Then I was ordered abroad, and when we touched at Brindisi I received a letter from him.”

The priest lifted his diary again near his eyes.

“Here is one sentence,” he said; “listen.

“‘I know I am forgiven; but the punishment is driving me mad. What would you say if you knew all! I cannot write it. I wonder if we shall meet again. I wonder what you would say.’

“There was more that I cannot read; but it offers no explanation of this sentence. I wrote, of course, at once, and said I would be home in four months, and asked for an explanation. I did not hear again, though I wrote three or four times; and after three or four months in Malta I went back to England.

“My first visit was to Mr. Farquharson, when I had written to prepare him for my coming.”

The old man stopped again, and I could see he was finding it more and more difficult to speak. He looked at the diary again once or twice, but I could see that it was only to give himself time to recover. Then he lowered it once more, leaned his elbow on the chair arm and his head on his hand, and went on in a slow voice full of effort.

“The first change was in the gallery; its pictures were all gone, and in their place hung others--engravings and portraits of no interest or beauty that I could see. The crucifix was gone, and in its place stood another very simple and common--a plaster figure on a black cross. It was all very commonplace--such a room as you might see in any house. The man took me through as before, but instead of opening the studio door as I expected, turned up the stairs on the right, and I followed. He stopped at a little door at the end of a short passage, tapped, and threw it open. He announced my name and I went in.”

He paused once more.

“There was a Japanese screen in front of me, and I went round it, wondering what I should find. I caught a sight of a simple, commonplace room with a window looking out on my left, and then I saw an old man sitting in a high chair over the fire, on which boiled a saucepan, warming his hands, with a rug over his knees. His face was turned to me, but it was that of a stranger.

“There was a table between us, and I stood hesitating, on the point of apologizing, and the old man looked at me, smiling.

“‘You do not know me,’ he said.

“Then I saw he bore an odd sort of resemblance to Mr. Farquharson; and I supposed it was his father. That would account for the mistake, too, I thought in a moment. My letter must have been delivered to him instead.

“‘I came to see Mr. Farquharson,’ I said. ‘I beg your pardon if--’ Then he interrupted me. Well, you will guess--this was the man I had come to see.

“It took a minute or two before I could realize it. I swear to you that the man looked not ten, nor twenty, nor thirty, but fifty years older.

“I went and took his hand and sat down, but I could not say a word. Then he told me his story; and as he told it I watched him. I looked at his face; it had been full and generous in its lines, now the skin was drawn tightly over his cheeks and great square jaw. His hair, so much of it as escaped under his stuff cap, was snow white and like silk. His hands, stretched over the fire, were gnarled and veined and tremulous. And all this had come to him in less than one year.

“Well, this was his story: His health had failed abruptly within a month of my last sight of him. He had noticed weakness coming on soon after his reconciliation, and the failure of his powers had increased like lightning.

“I will tell you what first flashed into my mind--that it was merely a sudden, unprecedented breakdown that had first given room for grace to reassert itself, and had then normally gone forward. The life he had led--well, you understand.

“Then he told me a few more facts that soon put that thought out of my head. All his artistic powers had gone, too. He gave me an example.

“‘Look round this room,’ he said in his old man’s voice, ‘and tell me frankly what you think of it--the pictures, the furniture.’

“I did so, and was astonished at their ugliness. There were a couple of hideous oleographs on the wall opposite the window; perhaps you know them--of the tombs of our Lord and His Blessed Mother, with yellow candlesticks standing upon them. There were green baize curtains by the windows; an Axminster carpet of vivid colors on the floor; a mahogany table in the centre with a breviary upon it and a portfolio open. It was the kind of a room that you might find in twenty houses in a row on the outskirts of a colliery town.

“I supposed, of course, that he had furnished his room like this out of a morbid kind of mortification, and I hinted this to him.

“He smiled again, but he looked puzzled.

“‘No,’ he said; ‘indeed not. Then you do think them ugly, too? Well, well; it is that I do not care. Will you believe me when I tell you that? There is no asceticism in the matter. Those pictures seem to me as good as any others. I have sold the others.’

“‘But you know they are not good,’ I said.

“‘My friends tell me so, and I remember I used to think so once, too. But that has all gone. Besides, I like them.’

“He turned in his chair and opened the portfolio that lay by him.

“‘Look,’ he said, and pushed it over to me, watching my face as I took it.

“It was full of sheets of paper scrawled with such pictures as a stupid child might draw. There was not the faintest trace of any power in them. Here is one of them that he gave me.” (He drew out a paper from his diary and held it up.) “I will show it you presently.

“As I looked at them it suddenly struck me that all this was an elaborate pose. I suppose I showed the thought in the way I glanced up at him. At any rate, he knew it. He smiled again pitifully.

“‘No,’ he said; ‘it is not a pose. I have posed for forty years, but I have forgotten how to do it now. It does not seem to me worth while, either.’

“‘Are you happy?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, I suppose so,’ he said.

“I sat there bewildered.

“‘And music?’ I said.

“He made a little gesture with his old hands.

“‘Tell Jackson to let you see the piano in the studio,’ he said, ‘as you go downstairs. And you might look at the picture of Our Lady at Nazareth at the same time. You will see how I tried to go on with it. My friends tell me it is all wrong, and asked me to stop. I supposed they knew, so I have stopped.’

“Well, we talked a while, and I learned how all was with him. He believed with his whole being, and that was all. He received the sacraments once a week, and he was happy in a subdued kind of way. There was no ecstasy of happiness; there was no torment from the imagination, such as is usual in these cases of conversion. He had suffered agonies at first from the loss of his powers, as he realized that his natural perceptions were gone, and it was then that he had written to me.”

The Rector stopped again a moment, fingering the paper.

“I saw his doctor, of course, and----”

Monsignor broke in. I noticed that he had been listening intently.

“The piano and the picture,” he said.

“Ah, yes. Well, the piano was just a box of strings; many of the notes were broken, and the other wires were hopelessly out of tune. They were broken, the man told me, within a week or two of his master’s change of life. He spoke quite frankly to me. Mr. Farquharson had tried to play, it seemed, and could scarcely play a right note, and in a passion of anger it was supposed he had smashed the notes with his fists. And the picture--well, it was a miserable sight. There was a tawdry sort of crown, ill drawn and ill colored, on her head, and a terrible sort of cherub was painted all across the sky. Some one else, it seemed, had tried to paint these out, which increased the confusion.

“The doctor told me it was softening of the brain. I asked him honestly to tell me whether he had ever come across such a case before, and he confessed he had not.

“It took me a week or two, and another conversation with Mr. Farquharson, before I understood what it all meant. It was not natural, the doctor assured me, and it could scarcely be that Almighty God had arbitrarily inflicted such a punishment. And then I thought I understood, as no doubt you have all done before this.”

The old priest’s voice had an air of finality in his last sentence, and he handed the scrap of paper to Father Bianchi, who sat beside him.

“One moment, Father,” I said; “I do not understand at all.”

The priest turned to me, and his eyes were full of tears.

“Why, this is my reading of it,” he said; “the man had been one mass of corruption, body, mind, and soul. Every power of his had been nurtured on evil for thirty years. Then he made his effort and the evil was withdrawn, and--and--well, he fell to pieces. The only thing that was alive in him was the life of grace. There was nothing else to live. He died, too, three months later, tolerably happy, I think.”

* * * * *

As I pondered this the paper was handed to me, and I looked at it in bewildered silence. It was a head grotesque in its feebleness and lack of art. There was a crown of thorns about it, and an inscription in a child’s handwriting below:

_Deus in virtute tua salvum me fac!_

* * * * *

Then my own eyes were full of tears, too.

V

_Father Girdlestone’s Tale_

I

“I have found another _raconteur_ for this evening,” said Monsignor as he came in to dinner on the following day, “but he cannot be here till late.”

The Rector looked up questioningly.

“Yes, I know,” said Monsignor unfolding his napkin. “But it is a long story; it will take at least two nights; but--but it is a beauty, reverend Fathers.”

We murmured appreciatively.

“I heard him tell it twenty years ago,” proceeded the priest. “I was a boy then.... I had a bad night after it, I remember. But the first part is rather dull.”

The appreciative murmur was even louder.

“Well, then, is that settled?”

We assented.

* * * * *

The entrance of Father Girdlestone that evening was somewhat dramatic. We were all talking briskly together in our wide semicircle when Father Brent uttered an exclamation. The talk died, and I, turning from my corner, saw a very little old man standing behind the Rector’s chair, motionless and smiling. He was one of the smallest men, not actually deformed, I have ever seen; small and very delicate looking. His white, silky hair was thin on his head, but abundant over his ears; his face was like thin ivory, transparent and exquisitely carved; his eyes so overhung that I could see nothing of them but two patches of shadow with a diamond in each. And there he stood, as if materialized from air, beneath the folds of his ample Roman cloak.

“I beg your pardon, reverend Fathers,” he said, and his voice was as delicate as his complexion. “I tapped, but no one seemed to hear me.”

The Rector bustled up from his chair.

“My dear Father,” he began; but Monsignor interrupted.

“A most appropriate entry, Father Girdlestone,” he said. “You could not have made a more effective beginning.” He waved his hand--“Father Girdlestone,” he said, introducing us. “And this is the Father Rector.”

We were all standing up by now, looking at this tranquil little old man, and we bowed and murmured deferentially. There was something very dignified about this priest.

Then chairs were re-sorted. I got my own again, moving it against the wall, watching him as with almost foreign manners he bowed this way and that before seating himself in the centre. Then we all sat down; and after a word or two of talk he began.

* * * * *

“I understand from my friend, Monsignor Maxwell,” he said, “that you gentlemen would like to hear my story. I am very willing indeed to tell it. No possible harm can follow from it, and, perhaps, even good may be the result, if ever any one who shall hear it is afflicted with the same visitation. But it is a long story, gentlemen, and I am an old man and shall no doubt make it longer.”

He was reassured, I think, by our faces, and without further apology he began his tale.

* * * * *

“My first and only curacy,” he said, “was in the town of Cardiff. I was sent there after my ordination, four years before the re-establishment of the hierarchy in England; and the year after our bishops were given us I was sent to found a mission inland. Now, gentlemen, I shall not tell you where that was, though no doubt you will be able to find out if you desire to do so. It will be enough now to describe to you the circumstances and the place.

“It was a little colliery village to which I went--we will call it Abergwyll. There was a number of Irish Catholics there, who are, as you know, the most devout persons on the face of the earth. They begged very hard for a priest, and I expect, gentlemen, there was collusion in the matter. The Bishop’s chaplain had Irish blood in his veins.”

He smiled pleasantly.

“At least, there I was sent, with a stipend of £40 and a letter of commendation and permission to beg. My parishioners set at my disposal a four-roomed house standing at the outskirts of the village, removed, I should say, forty yards from any other house. Behind my house was open country--a kind of moor--stretching over hill and dale to the mountains of Brecon. The colliery itself stood on the further side of the village and beneath it, half a mile away. Of the four rooms, I used one as a chapel on the ground floor; that at the back was the kitchen. I slept over the kitchen, and used as my sitting-room and sacristy that over the chapel.

“I will not detain you with my first experiences. They were most edifying. I have never seen such devotion and fervor. My own devotion was sensibly increased by all that I heard and saw. The shepherd in this case, at least, was taught many lessons by his sheep.

“Now, the first ambition of every young priest who is worthy of the name is to build a great church to God’s glory. Even I had this ambition. I had not a great deal of work to do--in fact, I may say that there was really nothing to do except to say mass and office and to conduct evening devotions, as I did every night in the chapel; and that little chapel, gentlemen, was full every night.

“Much of the day, therefore, I spent in walking and dreaming. In the morning, as summer came on, I was accustomed to take my office-book out with me and to go over the moor, perhaps three hundred yards away, to a little ravine where a stream went down into the valley. There I would sit in the shade of a rock, listening to the voice of the water and saying my prayers. When I had done I would lie on my back, looking up at the rock and the sky, and dreaming--well, as every young priest dreams.

“I do not know when it was that I first understood what God intended me to do. I began by thinking of a great town where my church should stand--Cardiff, or perhaps Newport. I even arranged its architecture; it was to be a primitive Roman basilica, large and plain, with a great apse with a Christ in glory frescoed there. On His right were to be the redeemed, on His left the lost--no, more than that, with a pair of great angels behind the throne. That, gentlemen, without text or comment, has always seemed to me the greatest sermon on earth.”

He paused and looked round at us an instant.

“Well, gentlemen, you know what day-dreaming is. I even occupied my time--I, with £40 a year and twenty colliery parishioners--in drawing designs for my church. And then suddenly on a summer’s day a new thought came to me, and something else with it.

“I was lying on my back on the short grass, looking up at the rock against the sky, when the thought came to me that here my basilica should stand. The rock should be levelled, I thought, to a platform. The foundations should be blasted out, and here my church should stand, alone on the moor, to witness that the demands of God’s glory were dominant and sovereign.... Yes, gentlemen, most unpractical and fantastic....

“I sat up at the thought. It came to me as a revelation. In that instant I no more doubted that it should be accomplished than that God reigned. I looked below me at the stream. Yes; I saw it all; there the stream should dash and chatter; all about me were the solemn moors; and here on the rock behind me should stand my basilica, and the Blessed Sacrament within it.

“I was just about to turn to look at my rock again when something happened.”

The old man stopped dead.

“Now, gentlemen, I do not know if I can make this plain to you. What happened to me happened only interiorly; but it was as real as a thunderclap or a vision. It was this: It was an absolute conviction that something was looking at me from over the top of the rock behind.

“My first thought was that I had heard a sound. Then simultaneously the horn blew from the colliery a mile away, and--and”--he hesitated--“I was aware that this external sound was on a different plane. I do not know how to make that plain to you; but it was as when one’s imagination is full of some remembered melody and a real sound breaks upon it. The horn ceased and there was silence again. Then after a moment my interior experience ceased, too, as abruptly as it had begun.

“All that time, three or four seconds, at least, I had sat still and rigid without turning my head. I must describe to you as well as I can my sensations during those seconds. You must forgive me for being verbose about it.

“Those who have attained to Saint Teresa’s Prayer of Quiet tell us that it is a new world into which they consciously penetrate--a world with objects, sounds and all the rest--but that these are almost incommunicable even to the brain of the percipient. No adequate image or analogy can be found for those intentions; still less can they be expressed in words. I suppose that this is an illustration of the truth that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us....

“Well, gentlemen, I was aware during those seconds that I was in that state that I had, as it were, slipped through the crust of the world of sense and even of intellectual thought. What I perceived of a person watching me was not on this plane at all. It was not One who in any sense had a human existence, who had ever had one, or ever would. It did not in the least resemble, therefore, an apparition of the dead. But the perception of this was gradual, as also of the nature of the visitation, of which I shall speak in a moment. At first there was only the act of the entrance into my neighborhood, as of one entering a room; then gradually, although with great speed, I perceived the nature of the visitation and the character of the visitant.