Chapter VI: Part 6

“He did not wish his sister to speak, though he was afraid of her no more; and yet he knew that there was some secret to be told that would explain all--why they were here, and why she had come back to him, and why the sea was here, and the little beach below them, and the wind and the birds. But he was content to wait until it was time for her to tell him, as he knew she would. It was enough to lie here, after the dusty journey, beside her, and to wait for the word that should be spoken.

“Now, at first he was so out of breath and his heart beat so in his ears that he could hear nothing but that and his own panting; but it grew quieter soon, and he began to hear something else--the noises of the sea beneath him. It was a still day, but there was movement down below, and the surge heaved itself softly against the cliff and murmured in deep caves below, like the pedal note of the Frankfort organ, solemn and splendid; and the waves leaned over and crashed gently on the sand. It was all so far beneath that he saw the breaking wave before the sound came up to him, and he lay there and watched and listened; and that great sound made him happier even than the light on the water and the coolness and rest; for it was the sea itself that was speaking now.

“Then he saw suddenly that his sister had turned on her elbow and was looking at him; and he looked into her eyes, and knew her, though she had died before he was born. And she, too, was listening, with her lips parted, to the sound of the surge. And now he knew that the secret was to be told; and he watched her eyes, smiling. And she lifted her hand, as if to hold him silent, and waited, and again the sweet murmur and crash rose up from the sea, and she spoke softly.

“‘It is the Precious Blood,’ she said.”

Father Stein was silent, and we all were silent for a while. As far as I was concerned, at least, the story had somehow held me with an extraordinary fascination, I scarcely knew why.

There was a movement among the others, and presently the Frenchman spoke.

“_Et puis?_” he said.

“The man awoke,” said Father Stein, “and found tears on his face.”

* * * * *

It was such a short story that there were still a few minutes before the time for night-prayers, and we sat there without speaking again until the clock sounded in the campanile overhead, and the Rector rose and led the way into the west gallery of the church. I saw Father Stein waiting at the door for me to come up, and I knew why he was waiting.

He took my arm in his thick hand and held it a moment as the others passed down the two steps.

“I was that man,” he said.

XII

_Mr. Percival’s Tale_

When I came in from mass into the refectory on the morning following Father Stein’s story, I found a layman breakfasting there with the Father Rector. We were introduced to each other, and I learned that Mr. Percival was a barrister, who had arrived from England that morning on a holiday, and was to stay at St. Filippo for a fortnight.

I yield to none in my respect for the clergy; at the same time a layman feels occasionally something of a pariah among them. I suppose this is bound to be the case, so I was pleased then to find another dog of my breed with whom I might consort, and even howl, if I so desired. I was pleased, too, with his appearance. He had that trim, academic air that is characteristic of the Bar, in spite of his twenty-two hours’ journey, and was dressed in an excellently made gray suit. He was very slightly bald on his forehead, and had those sharp-cut, mask-like features that mark a man as either lawyer, priest or actor; he had, besides, delightful manners and even, white teeth. I do not think I could have suggested any improvements in person, behavior, or costume.

By the time that my coffee had arrived the Father Rector had run dry of conversation, and I could see that he was relieved when I joined in.

In a few minutes I was telling Mr. Percival about the symposium we had formed for the relating of preternatural adventures, and I presently asked him whether he had ever had any experience of the kind.

He shook his head.

“I have not,” he said in his virile voice; “my business takes my time.”

“I wish you had been with us earlier,” put in the Rector. “I think you would have been interested.”

“I am sure of it,” he said. “I remember once--but you know, Father, frankly I am something of a sceptic.”

“You remember?” I suggested.

He smiled very pleasantly with eyes and mouth.

“Yes, Mr. Benson; I was once next door to such a story. A friend of mine saw something; but I was not with him at the moment.”

“Well, we thought we had finished last night,” I said; “but do you think you would be too tired to entertain us this evening?”

“I shall be delighted to tell the story,” he said easily. “But indeed I am a sceptic in this matter; I cannot dress it up.”

“We want the naked fact,” I said.

I went sight-seeing with him that day, and found him extremely intelligent and at the same time accurate. The two virtues do not run often together, and I felt confident that whatever he chose to tell us would be salient and true. I felt, too, that he would need few questions to draw him out; he would say what there was to be said unaided.

When we had taken our places that night he began by again apologizing for his attitude of mind.

“I do not know, reverend Fathers,” he said, “what are your own theories in this matter; but it appears to me that if what seems to be preternatural can possibly be brought within the range of the natural, one is bound scientifically to treat it in that way. Now in this story of mine--for I will give you a few words of explanation first in order to prejudice your minds as much as possible--in this story the whole matter might be accounted for by the imagination. My friend, who saw what he saw, was under rather theatrical circumstances, and he is an Irishman. Besides that, he knew the history of the place in which he was; and he was quite alone. On the other hand, he has never had an experience of the kind before or since; he is perfectly truthful, and he saw what he saw in moderate daylight. I give you these facts first, and I think you would be perfectly justified in thinking they account for everything. As for my own theory, which is not quite that, I have no idea whether you will agree or disagree with it. I do not say that my judgment is the only sensible one, or anything offensive like that. I merely state what I feel I am bound to accept for the present.”

There was a murmur of assent. Then he crossed his legs, leaned back and began:

* * * * *

“In my first summer after I was called to the Bar I went down South Wales for a holiday with another man who had been with me at Oxford. His name was Murphy; he is a J.P. now, in Ireland, I think. I cannot think why we went to South Wales; but there it is. We did.

“We took the train to Cardiff, sent on our luggage up the Taff Valley to an inn of which I cannot remember the name, but it was close to where Lord Bute has a vineyard. Then we walked up to Llandaff, saw St. Tylo’s tomb, and went on again to this village.

“Next morning we thought we would look about us before going on, and we went out for a stroll. It was one of the most glorious mornings I ever remember, quite cloudless and very hot, and we went up through woods to get a breeze at the top of the hill.

“We found that the whole place was full of iron mines, disused now, as the iron is richer further up the country; but I can tell you that they enormously improved the interest of the place. We found shaft after shaft, some protected and some not, but mostly overgrown with bushes, so we had to walk carefully. We had passed half a dozen, I should think, before the thought of going down one of them occurred to Murphy.

“Well, we got down at last, though I rather wished for a rope once or twice, and I think it was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen. You know, perhaps, what the cave of a demon-king is like in the first act of a pantomime. Well, it was like that. There was a kind of blue light that poured down the shafts, refracted from surface to surface, so that the sky was invisible. On all sides passages ran into total darkness; huge reddish rocks stood out fantastically everywhere in the pale light; there was a sound of water falling into a pool from a great height, and presently, striking matches as we went, we came upon a couple of lakes of marvelously clear blue water, through which we could see the heads of ladders emerging from other black holes of unknown depth below.

“We found our way out after a while into what appeared to be the central hall of the mine. Here we saw plain daylight again, for there was an immense round opening at the top, from the edges of which curved away the sides of the shaft, forming a huge circular chamber.

“Imagine the Albert Hall roofless; or, better still, imagine Saint Peter’s with the top half of the dome removed. Of course, it was far smaller, but it gave an impression of great size, and it could not have been less than two hundred feet from the edge, over which we saw the trees against the sky, to the tumbled, dusty, rocky floor where we stood.

“I can only describe it as being like a great burnt-out hell in the _Inferno_. Red dust lay everywhere; escape seemed impossible; and vast crags and galleries, with the mouths of passages showing high up, marked by iron bars and chains, jutted out here and there.

“We amused ourselves here for some time by climbing up the sides, calling to one another, for the whole place was full of echoes, rolling down stones from some of the upper edges; but I nearly ended my days there.

“I was standing on a path, about seventy feet up, leaning against the wall. It was a path along which feet must have gone a thousand times when the mine was in working order, and I was watching Murphy, who was just emerging onto a platform opposite me, on the other side of the gulf.

“I put my hand behind me to steady myself, and the next instant very nearly fell forward over the edge at the violent shock to my nerves given by a wood-pigeon who burst out of a hole, brushing my hand as he passed. I gripped on, however, and watched the bird soar out across space, and then up and out at the opening; and then I became aware that my knees were beginning to shake. So I stumbled along, and threw myself down on the little platform onto which the passage led.

“I suppose I had been more startled than I knew, for I tripped as I went forward, and knocked my knee rather sharply on a stone. I felt for an instant quite sick with the pain on the top of jangling nerves, and lay there saying what I am afraid I ought not to have said.

“Then Murphy came up when I called, and we made our way together through one of the sloping shafts, and came out onto the hillside among the trees.”

Mr. Percival paused; his lips twitched a moment with amusement.

“I am afraid I must recall my promise,” he said. “I told you all this because I was anxious to give a reason for the feeling I had about the mine, and which I am bound to mention. I felt I never wanted to see the place again--yet in spite of what followed I do not necessarily attribute my feelings to anything but the shock and the pain that I had had. You understand that?”

His bright eyes ran round our faces.

“Yes, yes,” said Monsignor sharply; “go on, please, Mr. Percival.”

“Well, then!”

The lawyer uncrossed his legs and placed them the other way.

“During lunch we told the landlady where we had been, and she begged us not to go there again. I told her that she might rest easy; my knee was beginning to swell. It was a wretched beginning to a walking tour.

“It was not that, she said; but there had been a bad accident there. Four men had been killed there twenty years before by a fall of rock. That had been the last straw on the top of ill-success, and the mine had been abandoned.

“We inquired as to details, and it seemed that the accident had taken place in the central chamber, locally called ‘The Cathedral,’ and after a few more questions I understood.

“‘That was where you were, my friend,’ I said to Murphy; ‘it was where you were when the bird flew out.’

“He agreed with me, and presently when the woman was gone announced that he was going to the mine again to see the place. Well, I had no business to keep him dangling about. I couldn’t walk anywhere myself, so I advised him not to go on to that platform again, and presently he took a couple of candles from the sticks and went off. He promised to be back by four o’clock, and I settled down rather drearily to a pipe and some old magazines.

“Naturally, I fell sound asleep. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon and the magazines were dull. I awoke once or twice, and then slept again deeply.

“I was awakened by the woman coming in to ask whether I would have tea; it was already five o’clock. I told her Yes. I was not in the least anxious about Murphy; he was a good climber, and therefore neither a coward nor a fool.

“As tea came in I looked out of the window again and saw him walking up the path, covered with iron dust, and a moment later I heard his step in the passage, and he came in.

“Mrs. What’s-her-name had gone out.

“‘Have you had a good time?’ I asked.

“He looked at me very oddly and paused before he answered.

“‘Oh, yes,’ he said; and put his cap and stick in a corner.

“I knew Murphy.

“‘Well, why not?’ I asked him, beginning to pour out tea.

“He looked round at the door, then he sat down without noticing the cup I pushed across to him.

“‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘I think I am going mad.’

“Well, I forget what I said, but I understood that he was very much upset about something, and I suppose I said the proper kind of thing about his not being a damned fool.

“Then he told me his story.”

Mr. Percival looked round at us again, still with that slight twitching of the lips that seemed to signify amusement.

“Please remember--” he began, and then broke off. “No; I won’t----”

“Well.

“He had gone down the same shaft that we went down in the morning, and had spent a couple of hours exploring the passages. He had found an engine-room with tanks and rotten beams in it and rusty chains. He had found some more lakes, too, full of that extraordinary electric-blue water; he had disturbed a quantity of bats somewhere else. Then he had come out again into the central hall, and on looking at his watch had found it after four o’clock, so he thought he would climb up by the way we had come in the morning and go straight home.

“It was as he climbed that his odd sensations began. As he went up, clinging with his hands, he became perfectly certain that he was being watched. He couldn’t turn round very well, but he looked up as he went to the opening overhead, but there was nothing there but the dead-blue sky, and the trees very green against it, and the red rocks curving away on every side. It was extraordinarily quiet, he said; the pigeons had not come home from feeding, and he was out of hearing of the dripping water that I told you of.

“Then he reached the platform and the opening of the path where I had my fright in the morning, and turned round to look.

“At first he saw nothing peculiar. The rocks up which he had come fell away at his feet down to the floor of the ‘Cathedral’ and to the nettles with which he had stung his hands a minute or two before. He looked around at the galleries overhead and opposite, but there was nothing there.

“Then he looked across at the platform where he had been in the morning and where the accident had taken place.

“Let me tell you what this was like. It was about twenty yards in breadth and ten deep, but lay irregular and filled with tumbled rocks. It was a little below the level of his eyes, right across the gulf, and in a straight line would be about fifty or sixty yards away. It lay under the roof, rather retired, so that no light from the sky fell directly on to it; it would have been in complete twilight if it hadn’t been for a smaller shaft above it, which shot down a funnel of bluish light, exactly like a stage effect. You see, reverend Fathers, it was very theatrical altogether. That might account, no doubt----”

Mr. Percival broke off again, smiling.

“I am always forgetting,” he said. “Well, we must go back to Murphy. At first he saw nothing but the rocks and the thick, red dust and the broken wall behind it. He was very honest, and told me that as he looked at it he remembered distinctly what the landlady had told us at lunch. It was on that little stage that the tragedy had happened.

“Then he became aware that something was moving among the rocks, and he became perfectly certain that people were looking at him; but it was too dusky to see very clearly at first. Whatever it was was in the shadows at the back. He fixed his eyes on what was moving. Then this happened.”

The lawyer stopped again.

“I will tell you the rest,” he said, “in his own words so far as I remember them.

“‘I was looking at this moving thing,’ he said, ‘which seemed exactly of the red color of the rocks, when it suddenly came out under the funnel of light, and I saw it was a man. He was in a rough suit all iron stained, with a rusty cap, and he had some kind of a pick in his hand. He stopped first in the centre of the light, with his back turned to me, and stood there looking. I cannot say that I was consciously frightened; I honestly do not know what I thought he was. I think that my whole mind was taken up in watching him.

“‘Then he turned round slowly and I saw his face. Then I became aware that if he looked at me I should go into hysterics or something of the sort, and I crouched down as low as I could. But he didn’t look at me; he was attending to something else, and I could see his face quite clearly. He had a beard and moustache, rather ragged and rusty; he was rather pale, but not particularly. I judged him to be about thirty-five.’ Of course,” went on the lawyer, “Murphy didn’t tell it me quite as I am telling it to you. He stopped a good deal; he drank a sip of tea once or twice and changed his feet about.

“Well, he had seen this man’s face very clearly, and described it very clearly.

“It was the expression that struck him most.

“‘It was a rather amused expression,’ he said; ‘rather pathetic and rather tender, and he was looking interestedly about at everything--at the rocks above and beneath; he carried his pick easily in the crook of his arm. He looked exactly like a man whom I once saw visiting his home where he had lived as a child.’ (Murphy was very particular about that, though I don’t believe he was right.) ‘He was smiling a little in his beard and his eyes were half shut. It was so pathetic that I nearly went into hysterics then and there,’ said Murphy. ‘I wanted to stand up and explain that it was all right, but I knew he knew more than I did. I watched him, I should think, for nearly five minutes; he went to and fro softly in the thick dust, looking here and there, sometimes in the shadow and sometimes out of it. I could not have moved for ten thousand pounds and I could not take my eyes off him.

“‘Then just before the end I did look away from him. I wanted to know if it was all real, and I looked at the rocks behind and the openings. Then I saw that there were other people there; at least, there were things moving of the color of the rocks.

“‘I suppose I made some sound then; I was horribly frightened. At any rate, the man in the middle turned right round and faced me, and at that I sank down with the sweat dripping from me, flat on my face, with my hands over my eyes.

“‘I thought of a hundred thousand things--of the inn and you and the walk we had had--and I prayed--well, I suppose I prayed. I wanted God to take me right out of this place. I wanted the rocks to open and let me through.’”

Mr. Percival stopped. His voice shook with a tiny tremor. He cleared his throat.

“Well, reverend Fathers, Murphy got up at last and looked about him, and of course there was nothing there but just the rocks and the dust and the sky overhead. Then he came away home the shortest way.”

It was a very abrupt ending, and a little sigh ran round the circle.

Monsignor struck a match noisily and kindled his pipe again.

“Thank you very much, sir,” he said briskly.

Mr. Percival cleared his throat again, but before he could speak Father Brent broke in.

“Now, that is just an instance of what I was saying, Monsignor, the night we began. May I ask if you really believe that those were the souls of the miners? Where’s the justice of it? What’s the point?”

Monsignor glanced at the lawyer.

“Have you any theory, sir?” he asked.

Mr. Percival answered without lifting his eyes.

“I think so,” he said shortly; “but I don’t feel in the least dogmatic.”

Father Brent looked at him almost indignantly.

“I should like to hear it,” he said. “If you can square that----”

“I do not square it,” said the lawyer. “Personally I do not believe they were spirits at all.”

“Oh?”

“No, I do not, though I do not wish to be dogmatic. To my mind it seems far more likely that this is an instance of Mr. Hudson’s theory--the American, you know. His idea is that all apparitions are no more than the result of violent emotions experienced during life. That about the pathetic expression is all nonsense, I believe.”

“I don’t understand,” said Father Brent.

“Well, these men, killed by the fall of the roof, probably went through a violent emotion. This would be heightened in some degree by their loneliness and isolation from the world. This kind of emotion, Mr. Hudson suggests, has a power of saturating material surroundings, which under certain circumstances would once more, like a photograph, give off an image of the agent. In this instance, too, the absence of other human visitors would give this materialized emotion a chance, so to speak, of surviving; there would be very few cross-currents to confuse it. And finally, Murphy was alone; his receptive faculties would be stimulated by that fact, and all that he saw, in my belief, was the psychical wave left by these men in dying.”

“Oh! Did you tell him so?”

“I did not. Murphy is a violent man.”

I looked up at Monsignor, and saw him nodding emphatically to himself.

XIII

_My Own Tale_

I must confess that I was a little taken aback on my last evening before leaving for England when Monsignor Maxwell turned on me suddenly at supper and exclaimed aloud that I had not yet contributed a story.

I protested that I had none; that I was a prosaic person; that there was some packing to be done; that my business was to write down the stories of other people; that I had my living to make and could not be liberal with my slender store; that it was a layman’s function to sit at holy and learned priests’ feet, not to presume to inform them on any subject under the sun.

But it was impossible to resist; it was pointed out to me that I had listened on false pretences if I had not intended to do my share, that telling a story did not hinder my printing it. And, as a final argument, it was declared that unless I occupied the chair that night all present withdrew the leave that had already been given to me to print their stories on my return to England.

There was nothing, therefore, to be done; and as I had already considered the possibility of the request, I did not occupy an unduly long time in pretending to remember what I had to say.

When I was seated upstairs and the fire had been poked according to the ritual and the matches had gone round, and buckled shoes protruded side by side with elastic-ankled boots, I began.

“This is a very unsatisfactory story,” I said, “because it has no explanation of any kind. It is quite unlike Mr. Percival’s. You will see that even theorizing is useless when I have come to the end. It is simply a series of facts that I have to relate; facts that have no significance except one that is supernatural, but it is utterly out of the question even to guess at that significance.

“It is unsatisfactory, too, for a second reason, and that is, that it is on such very hackneyed lines. It is simply one more instance of that very dreamy class of phenomena, named ‘haunted houses,’ except that there is no ghost in it. Its only claim to interest is, as I have said, the complete futility of any attempt to explain it.”

This was rather a pompous exordium, I felt, but thought it best not to raise expectations too high, and I was therefore deliberately dull.

“Sixteen years ago from last summer I was in France. I had left school, where I had labored two hours a week at French for four years, and gone away in order to learn it in six weeks. This I accomplished very tolerably, in company with five other boys and an English tutor. Our general adventures are not relevant, but toward the end of our stay we went over one Sunday from Portrieux in order to see a French château about three miles away.

“It was a really glorious June day, hot and fresh and exhilarating, and we lunched delightfully in the woods with a funny, fat little French count and his wife, who came with us from the hotel. It is impossible to imagine less uncanny circumstances or companions.

“After lunch we all went cheerfully to the house, whose chimneys we had seen among the trees.

“I know nothing about the dates of houses, but the sort of impression I got of this house was that it was about three hundred years old; but it may equally have been four, or two. I did not know then and do not know now anything about it except its name, which I will not tell you; and its owner’s name, which I will not tell you either, and--and something else that I will tell you. We will call the owner, if you please, Comte Jean Marie the First. The house is built in two courts, the right-hand court, through which we entered, was then used as a farm-yard; and I should think it probable that it is still so used. This court was exceedingly untidy. There was a large manure heap in the centre, and the servants’ quarters to our right looked miserably cared for. There was a cart or two with shafts turned up, near the sheds that were built against the wall opposite the gate; and there was a sleepy old dog with bleared eyes that looked at us intensely from his kennel door.

“Our French friend went across to the servants’ cottages with his moustache sticking out on either side of his face; and presently came back with two girls and the keys. There was no objection, he exclaimed dramatically, to our seeing the house!

“The girls went before us, and unlocked the iron gate that led to the second court; and we went through after them.

“Now we had heard at the hotel that the family lived in Paris; but we were not prepared for the dreadful desolation of that inner court. The living part of the house was on our left; and what had once been a lawn to our right; but the house was discolored and weather-stained; the green paint of the closed shutters and door was cracked and blistered; and the lawn resembled a wilderness; the grass was long and rank; there were rose-trees trailing along the edge and across the path; and a sun-dial on the lawn reminded me strangely of a drunken man petrified in the middle of a stagger. All this, of course, was what was to be expected in an adventure of this kind. It would do for a Christmas number.

“But it was not our business to criticize; and after a moment or two, we followed the girls who had unlocked the front door and were waiting for us to enter.

“One of them had gone before to open the shutters.

“It was not a large house, in spite of its name, and we had soon looked through the lower rooms of it. They, too, were what you would expect; the floors were beeswaxed; there were tables and chairs of a tolerable antiquity; a little damask on the walls and so on. But what astonished us was the fact that none of the furniture was covered up, or even moved aside; and the dust lay, I should say, half an inch thick on every horizontal surface. I heard the Frenchman crying on his God in an undertone--as is the custom of Gauls--” (I bowed a little to Father Meuron)--“and finally he burst out with a question as to why the rooms were in this state.

“The girl looked at him stolidly. She was a stout, red-faced girl.

“‘It is by the Count’s orders,’ she said.

“‘And does the Count not come here?’ he asked.

“‘No, sir.’

“Then we all went upstairs. One of the girls had preceded us again and was sitting with her hand on a door to usher us in.

“‘See here is the room the most splendid!’ she said; and threw the door open.

“It was certainly the room the most splendid. It was a great bed-chamber hung with tapestry; there were some excellent chairs with carved legs; a splendid gold-framed mirror tilted forward over the carved mantle-piece; and, above all, and standing out from the wall opposite the window was a great four-posted bed, with an elaborately carved head to it, and heavy curtains hanging from the canopy.

“But what surprised us more than anything that we had yet seen, was the sight of the bed. Except for the dust that lay on it, it might have been slept in the night before. There were actually damask sheets upon it, thrown back, and two pillows. All gray with dust. These were not arranged but tumbled about, as a bed is in the morning before it is made.

“As I was looking at this, I heard a boy cry out from the washing-stand.

“‘Why, it has had water in it,’ he said.

“This did not sound exceptional for a basin, but we all crowded round to look; and it was perfectly true; there was a gray film round the interior of it; and when he had disturbed it as a boy would with his finger we could see the flowered china beneath. The line came two-thirds of the way up the sides of the basin. It must have been partly filled with water a long while ago, which gradually evaporated, leaving its mark in the dust that must have collected there week after week.

“The Frenchman lost his patience at that.

“‘My sacred something!’ he said, ‘why is the room like this?’

“The same girl who had answered him before, answered him again in the same words. She was standing by the mantle-piece watching us.

“‘It is the Count’s orders,’ she said stolidly.

“‘It is by the Count’s orders that the bed is not made?’ snapped the man.

“‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl simply.

“Well, that did not content the Frenchman. He exhibited a couple of francs and began to question.

“This is the story that he got out of her. She told it quite simply.

“The last time that Count Jean Marie had come to the place, it had been for his honeymoon. He had come down from Paris with his bride. They had dined together downstairs, very happily and gaily; and had slept in the room in which we were at this moment. A message had been sent out for the carriage early next morning; and the couple had driven away with their trunks leaving their servants behind. They had not returned, but a message had come down from Paris that the house was to be closed. It appeared that the servants who had been left behind had had orders that nothing was to be tidied; even the bed was not to be made; the rooms were to be locked up, and left as they were.

“The Frenchman had hardly been able to restrain himself as he heard this unconvincing story; though his wife shook him by the shoulders at each violent gesture that he made, and at the end he had put a torrent of questions.

“‘Were they frightened then?’

“‘I do not know, sir.’

“‘I mean the bride and bridegroom, fool!’

“‘I do not know, sir.’

“‘Sacred name!--and--and--why do you not know?’

“‘I have never seen any of them, sir.’

“‘Not seen them! Why you said just now----’

“‘Yes, sir; but I was not born then. It was thirty years ago.’

* * * * *

“I do not think I have ever seen people so bewildered as we all were. This was entirely unexpected. The Frenchman’s jaw dropped; he licked his lips once or twice; and turned away. We all stood perfectly still a moment, and then we went out.”

I indulged myself with a pause just here. I was enjoying myself more than I thought I should. I had not told the story for some while; and had forgotten what a good one it was. Besides, it had the advantage of being perfectly true. Then I went on again with a pleased consciousness of faces turned to me and black-ended cigarettes.

“I must tell you this,” I said. “I was relieved to get out of the room. It is sixteen years ago now; and I may have embroidered on my sensations; but my impression is that I had been just a little uncomfortable even before the girl’s story. I don’t think that I felt that there was any presence there, or anything of that kind. It was rather the opposite; it was the feeling of an extraordinary emptiness.”

“Like a Catholic Cathedral in Protestant hands,” put in a voice.

I nodded at the zealous, convert-making Father Brent.

“It was very like that,” I said, “and had, too, the same kind of pathos and terror that one feels in the presence of a child’s dead body. It is unnaturally empty, and yet significant; and one does not quite know what it signifies.”

I paused again.

“Well, reverend Fathers, that is the first Act. We went back to Portrieux; we made enquiries and got no answer. All shrugged their shoulders, and said that they did not know. There were no tales of the bride’s hair turning white in the night, or of any curse or ghost or noises or lights. It was just as I have told you. Then we went back to England; and the curtain came down.

“Now generally such curtains have no resurrection. I suppose we have all had fifty experiences of First Acts; and we do not know to this day whether the whole play is a comedy or a tragedy; or even whether the play has been written at all.”

“Do not be modern and allusive, Mr. Benson,” said Monsignor.

“I beg your pardon, Monsignor, I will not. I forgot myself. Well, here is the Second Act. There are only two, and this is a much shorter one.

“Nine years later I was in Paris, staying in the Rue Picot with some Americans. A French friend of theirs was to be married to a man; and I went to the wedding at the Madeleine. It was--well, it was like all other weddings at the Madeleine. No description can be adequate to the appearance of the officiating clergyman and the altar and the bridesmaids and the French gentlemen with polished boots and butterfly ties, and the conversation, and the gaiety, and the general impression of a confectioner’s shop and a milliner’s and a salon and a holy church. I observed the bride and bridegroom and forgot their names for the twentieth time, and exchanged some remarks in the sacristy with a leader of society who looked like a dissipated priest; with my eyes starting out of my head in my anxiety not to commit a _solécisme_ or a _barbarisme_. And then we went home again.

“On the way home we discussed the honeymoon. The pair were going down to a country house in Brittany. I enquired the name of it; and, of course, it was the château I had visited nine years before. It had been lent them by Count Jean Marie the Second. The gentleman resided in England, I heard, in order to escape the conscription; he was a connection of the bride’s; and was about thirty years of age.

“Well, of course, I was interested; and made enquiries and related my adventure. The Americans were mildly interested, too, but not excited. Thirty-nine years is ancient history to that energetic nation.” (I bowed to Father Jenks, before I remembered that he was a Canadian; and then pretending that I had not I went on quickly, and missed a dramatic opportunity.) “But two days afterward they were excited. One of the girls came into déjeuner, and said that she had met the bride and bridegroom dining together in the Bois. They had seemed perfectly well; and had saluted her politely. It seemed that they had come back to Paris after one night at the château, exactly as another bride and bridegroom had done thirty-nine years before.

“Before I finish let me sum up the situation.

“In neither case was there apparently any shocking incident, and yet something had been experienced that broke up plans and sent away immediately from a charming house and country two pairs of persons who had deliberately formed the intention of living there for a while. In both cases the persons in question had come back to Paris.

“I need hardly say that I managed to call with my friends upon the bride and bridegroom, and, at the risk of being impertinent, asked the bride point-blank why they had changed their plans and come back to town.

“She looked at me without a trace of horror in her eyes, and smiled a little.

“‘It was _triste_,’ she said; ‘a little _triste_. We thought we would come away; we desired crowds.’”

I paused again.

“‘We desired crowds,’” I repeated. “You remember, reverend Fathers, that I had experienced a sense of loneliness, even with my friends, during five minutes spent in that upstairs room. I can only suppose that if I had remained longer I should have experienced such a further degree of that sensation that I should have felt exactly as those two pairs of brides and bridegrooms felt and have come away immediately. I might even, if I had been in authority, have given orders that nothing was to be touched except my own luggage.”

“I do not understand that,” said Father Brent, looking puzzled.

“Nor do I altogether,” I answered; “but I think I perceive it to be a fact for all that. One might feel that one was an intruder, that one had meddled with something that desired to be left alone, and that one had better not meddle further in any kind of way.”

“I suppose you went down there again,” observed Monsignor Maxwell.

“I did; a fortnight afterwards. There was only one girl left; the other was married and gone away. She did not remember me; it was nine years ago, and she was a little redder in the face and a little more stolid.

“The lawn had been clipped and mown, but was beginning to grow rank again. Then I went upstairs with her. The room was comparatively clean; there was water in the basin; and clean sheets on the bed; but there was just a little film of dust lying on everything. I pretended I knew nothing and asked questions; and I was told exactly the same story as I had heard nine years before; only this time the date was only a fortnight ago.

“When she had finished she added:

“‘It happened so once before, sir; before I was born.’

“‘Do you understand it?’ I said.

“‘No, sir; the house is a little _triste_ perhaps. Do you think so, sir?’

“I said that perhaps it was. Then I gave her two francs and came away.

“That is all, reverend Fathers.”

* * * * *

There was silence for a minute. Then Padre Bianchi made what I consider a tactless remark.

“Bah! that does not terrify me,” he said.

“‘Terrify’ is certainly not the word,” remarked Monsignor Maxwell.

“I am not quite sure about that,” ended Father Brent.

* * * * *

The bell rang for night-prayers.

“Sum up, Father Rector,” said Monsignor without moving. “You have heard all the stories and Mr. Benson is going to-morrow.”

The old priest smiled as he stood up; and was silent for a moment, looking at us all.

“I can only sum up like this, with the sentiments with which Monsignor began,” he said: “The longer I live and the more I hear and see, the greater I feel my ignorance to be. I heard a man say the other day that Catholics were the only genuine agnostics alive; and that he respected them for it. They knew some things that others did not; but they did not pretend to affirm or to deny that of which they had no possibility of judging. Is that what you meant me to say, Monsignor?”

Monsignor nodded meditatively.

“I think that is a sound conclusion,” he said. “It is understood then, Mr. Benson, that if you print these stories, you will add that not one of us commits himself to belief in any of them--except, I suppose, each in his own.”

“I will mention it,” I said.

“Perhaps you might say that we do not even commit ourselves to our own. You can say what you like about yours, of course.”

“I will mention that, too,” I said, “and I will class myself with the rest. The agnostic position is certainly the soundest in all matters outside the deposit of faith. We all stand, then, exactly where we did at the beginning?”

“Certainly I do,” said Padre Bianchi.

“We all do,” said a number of voices.

* * * * *

Then we went to night-prayers together for the last time.

PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK

Transcriber’s Notes

• Italics represented with _underscores_.

• Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.

• Each chapter was preceded by a half-title page that reproduced
the chapter name. These redundant chapter titles have not been
reproduced.

• Obvious typographic errors silently corrected.

• Variations in hyphenation kept as in the original.