The Light Invisible

“She moves in tumult: round her lies

The silence of the world of grace;

The twilight of our mysteries

Shines like high noon-day on her face,

Our piteous guesses, dim with fears,

She touches, handles, sees, and hears.

“A willing sacrifice, she takes

The burden of our Fall within;

Holy she stands; while on her breaks

The lightning of the wrath of sin:

She drinks her Saviour’s Cup of pain,

And, one with Jesus, thirsts again.”

The Contemplative Soul

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Lord of the World

By What Authority?

The King’s Achievement

The Queen’s Tragedy

Richard Raynal, Solitary

The Sentimentalists

A Mirror of Shalott

A Book of the Love of Jesus

Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd.

The

Light Invisible

By

Robert Hugh Benson

Author of

“The King’s Achievement,” “By What Authority?”

“The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary,”

“A Book of the Love of Jesus,” etc.

New York, Cincinnati, Chicago

BENZIGER BROTHERS

PRINTERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE

1910

Preface

My friend, whose talk I have reported in this book so far as I am able, would be the first to disclaim (as indeed he was always anxious to do) the rôle of an accredited teacher, other than that which his sacred office conferred on him.

All that he claimed (and this surely was within his rights) was to be at least sincere in his perceptions and expressions of spiritual truth. His power, as he was at pains to tell me, was no more than a particular development of a faculty common to all who possess a coherent spiritual life. To one Divine Truth finds entrance through laws of nature, to another through the medium of other sciences or arts; to my friend it presented itself in directly sensible forms. Had his experiences, however, even seemed to contravene Divine Revelation, he would have rejected them with horror: entire submission to the Divine Teacher upon earth, as he more than once told me, should normally precede the exercise of all other spiritual faculties. The deliberate reversal of this is nothing else than Protestantism in its extreme form, and must ultimately result in the extinction of faith.

For the rest, I can add nothing to his own words. It is of course more than possible that here and there I have failed to present his exact meaning; but at least I have taken pains to submit the book before publication to the judgment of those whose theological learning is sufficient to reassure me that at least I have not so far misunderstood my friend’s words and tales, as to represent him as transgressing the explicit laws of ascetical, moral, mystical, or dogmatic theology.

To these counsellors I must express my gratitude, as well as to others who have kindly given me the encouragement of their sympathy.

R. B.

Contents

The Green Robe

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower;

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

Blake.

The Green Robe

The old priest was silent for a moment.

The song of a great bee boomed up out of the distance and ceased as the white bell of a flower beside me drooped suddenly under his weight.

“I have not made myself clear,” said the priest again. “Let me think a minute.” And he leaned back.

We were sitting on a little red-tiled platform in his garden, in a sheltered angle of the wall. On one side of us rose the old irregular house, with its latticed windows, and its lichened roofs culminating in a bell-turret; on the other I looked across the pleasant garden where great scarlet poppies hung like motionless flames in the hot June sunshine, to the tall living wall of yew, beyond which rose the heavy green masses of an elm in which a pigeon lamented, and above all a tender blue sky. The priest was looking out steadily before him with great childlike eyes that shone strangely in his thin face under his white hair. He was dressed in an old cassock that showed worn and green in the high lights.

“No,” he said presently, “it is not faith that I mean; it is only an intense form of the gift of spiritual perception that God has given me; which gift indeed is common to us all in our measure. It is the faculty by which we verify for ourselves what we have received on authority and hold by faith. Spiritual life consists partly in exercising this faculty. Well, then, this form of that faculty God has been pleased to bestow upon me, just as He has been pleased to bestow on you a keen power of seeing and enjoying beauty where others perhaps see none; this is called artistic perception. It is no sort of credit to you or to me, any more than is the colour of our eyes, or a faculty for mathematics, or an athletic body.

“Now in my case, in which you are pleased to be interested, the perception occasionally is so keen that the spiritual world appears to me as visible as what we call the natural world. In such moments, although I generally know the difference between the spiritual and the natural, yet they appear to me simultaneously, as if on the same plane. It depends on my choice as to which of the two I see the more clearly.

“Let me explain a little. It is a question of focus. A few minutes ago you were staring at the sky, but you did not see the sky. Your own thought lay before you instead. Then I spoke to you, and you started a little and looked at me; and you saw me, and your thought vanished. Now can you understand me if I say that these sudden glimpses that God has granted me, were as though when you looked at the sky, you saw both the sky and your thought at once, on the same plane, as I have said? Or think of it in another way. You know the sheet of plate-glass that is across the upper part of the fireplace in my study. Well, it depends on the focus of your eyes, and your intention, whether you see the glass and the fire-plate behind, or the room reflected in the glass. Now can you imagine what it would be to see them all at once? It is like that.” And he made an outward gesture with his hands.

“Well,” I said, “I scarcely understand. But please tell me, if you will, your first vision of that kind.”

“I believe,” he began, “that when I was a child the first clear vision came to me, but I only suppose it from my mother’s diary. I have not the diary with me now, but there is an entry in it describing how I said I had seen a face look out of a wall and had run indoors from the garden; half frightened, but not terrified. But I remember nothing of it myself, and my mother seems to have thought it must have been a waking dream; and if it were not for what has happened to me since perhaps I should have thought it a dream too. But now the other explanation seems to me more likely. But the first clear vision that I remember for myself was as follows:

“When I was about fourteen years old I came home at the end of one July for my summer holidays. The pony-cart was at the station to meet me when I arrived about four o’clock in the afternoon; but as there was a short cut through the woods, I put my luggage into the cart, and started to walk the mile and a half by myself. The field path presently plunged into a pine wood, and I came over the slippery needles under the high arches of the pines with that intense ecstatic happiness of home-coming that some natures know so well. I hope sometimes that the first steps on the other side of death may be like that. The air was full of mellow sounds that seemed to emphasise the deep stillness of the woods, and of mellow lights that stirred among the shadowed greenness. I know this now, though I did not know it then. Until that day although the beauty and the colour and sound of the world certainly affected me, yet I was not conscious of them, any more than of the air I breathed, because I did not then know what they meant. Well, I went on in this glowing dimness, noticing only the trees that might be climbed, the squirrels and moths that might be caught, and the sticks that might be shaped into arrows or bows.

“I must tell you, too, something of my religion at that time. It was the religion of most well-taught boys. In the fore-ground, if I may put it so, was morality: I must not do certain things; I must do certain other things. In the middle distance was a perception of God. Let me say that I realised that I was present to Him, but not that He was present to me. Our Saviour dwelt in this middle distance, one whom I fancied ordinarily tender, sometimes stern. In the background there lay certain mysteries, sacramental and otherwise. These were chiefly the affairs of grown-up people. And infinitely far away, like clouds piled upon the horizon of a sea, was the invisible world of heaven whence God looked at me, golden gates and streets, now towering in their exclusiveness, now on Sunday evenings bright with a light of hope, now on wet mornings unutterably dreary. But all this was uninteresting to me. Here about me lay the tangible enjoyable world––this was reality: there in a misty picture lay religion, claiming, as I knew, my homage, but not my heart. Well; so I walked through these woods, a tiny human creature, yet greater, if I had only known it, than these giants of ruddy bodies and arms, and garlanded heads that stirred above me.

“My path presently came over a rise in the ground; and on my left lay a long glade, bordered by pines, fringed with bracken, but itself a folded carpet of smooth rabbit-cropped grass, with a quiet oblong pool in the centre, some fifty yards below me.

“Now I cannot tell you how the vision began; but I found myself, without experiencing any conscious shock, standing perfectly still, my lips dry, my eyes smarting with the intensity with which I had been staring down the glade, and one foot aching with the pressure with which I had rested upon it. It must have come upon me and enthralled me so swiftly that my brain had no time to reflect. It was no work, therefore, of the imagination, but a clear and sudden vision. This is what I remember to have seen.

“I stood on the border of a vast robe; its material was green. A great fold of it lay full in view, but I was conscious that it stretched for almost unlimited miles. This great green robe blazed with embroidery. There were straight lines of tawny work on either side which melted again into a darker green in high relief. Right in the centre lay a pale agate stitched delicately into the robe with fine dark stitches; overhead the blue lining of this silken robe arched out. I was conscious that this robe was vast beyond conception, and that I stood as it were in a fold of it, as it lay stretched out on some unseen floor. But, clearer than any other thought, stood out in my mind the certainty that this robe had not been flung down and left, but that it clothed a Person. And even as this thought showed itself a ripple ran along the high relief in dark green, as if the wearer of the robe had just stirred. And I felt on my face the breeze of His motion. And it was this I suppose that brought me to myself.

“And then I looked again, and all was as it had been the last time I had passed this way. There was the glade and the pool and the pines and the sky overhead, and the Presence was gone. I was a boy walking home from the station, with dear delights of the pony and the air-gun, and the wakings morning by morning in my own carpeted bedroom, before me.

“I tried, however, to see it again as I had seen it. No, it was not in the least like a robe; and above all where was the Person that wore it? There was no life about me, except my own, and the insect life that sang in the air, and the quiet meditative life of the growing things. But who was this Person I had suddenly perceived? And then it came upon me with a shock, and yet I was incredulous. It could not be the God of sermons and long prayers who demanded my presence Sunday by Sunday in His little church, that God Who watched me like a stern father. Why religion, I thought, told me that all was vanity and unreality, and that rabbits and pools and glades were nothing compared to Him who sits on the great white throne.

“I need not tell you that I never spoke of this at home. It seemed to me that I had stumbled upon a scene that was almost dreadful, that might be thought over in bed, or during an idle lonely morning in the garden, but must never be spoken of, and I can scarcely tell you when the time came that I understood that there was but one God after all.”

The old man stopped talking. And I looked out again at the garden without answering him, and tried myself to see how the poppies were embroidered into a robe, and to hear how the chatter of the starlings was but the rustle of its movement, the clink of jewel against jewel, and the moan of the pigeon the creaking of the heavy silk, but I could not. The poppies flamed and the birds talked and sobbed, but that was all.

The Watcher

“Il faut d’abord rendre l’organe de

la vision analogue et semblable à

l’objet qu’il doit contempler.”

Maeterlinck.

The Watcher

On the following day we went out soon after breakfast and walked up and down a grass path between two yew hedges; the dew was not yet off the grass that lay in shadow; and thin patches of gossamer still hung like torn cambric on the yew shoots on either side. As we passed for the second time up the path, the old man suddenly stooped and pushing aside a dock-leaf at the foot of the hedge lifted a dead mouse, and looked at it as it lay stiffly on the palm of his hand, and I saw that his eyes filled slowly with the ready tears of old age.

“He has chosen his own resting-place,” he said. “Let him lie there. Why did I disturb him?”––and he laid him gently down again; and then gathering a fragment of wet earth he sprinkled it over the mouse. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,” he said, “in sure and certain hope”––and then he stopped; and straightening himself with difficulty walked on, and I followed him.

“You seemed interested,” he said, “in my story yesterday. Shall I tell you how I saw a very different sight when I was a little older?” And when I had told him how strange and attractive his story had been, he began.

“I told you how I found it impossible to see again what I had seen in the glade. For a few weeks, perhaps months, I tried now and then to force myself to feel that Presence, or at least to see that robe, but I could not, because it is the gift of God, and can no more be gained by effort than ordinary sight can be won by a sightless man; but I soon ceased to try.

“I reached eighteen years at last, that terrible age when the soul seems to have dwindled to a spark overlaid by a mountain of ashes––when blood and fire and death and loud noises seem the only things of interest, and all tender things shrink back and hide from the dreadful noonday of manhood. Some one gave me one of those shot-pistols that you may have seen, and I loved the sense of power that it gave me, for I had never had a gun. For a week or two in the summer holidays I was content with shooting at a mark, or at the level surface of water, and delighted to see the cardboard shattered, or the quiet pool torn to shreds along its mirror where the sky and green lay sleeping. Then that ceased to interest me, and I longed to see a living thing suddenly stop living at my will. Now,” and he held up a deprecating hand, “I think sport is necessary for some natures. After all, the killing of creatures is necessary for man’s food, and sport as you will tell me is a survival of man’s delight in obtaining food, and it requires certain noble qualities of endurance and skill. I know all that, and I know further that for some natures it is a relief––an escape for humours that will otherwise find an evil vent. But I do know this––that for me it was not necessary.

“However, there was every excuse, and I went out in good faith one summer evening intending to shoot some rabbit as he ran to cover from the open field. I walked along the inside of a fence with a wood above me and on my left, and the green meadow on my right. Well, owing probably to my own lack of skill, though I could hear the patter and rush of the rabbits all round me, and could see them in the distance sitting up listening with cocked ears, as I stole along the fence, I could not get close enough to fire at them with any hope of what I fancied was success; and by the time that I had arrived at the end of the wood I was in an impatient mood.

“I stood for a moment or two leaning on the fence looking out of that pleasant coolness into the open meadow beyond; the sun had at that moment dipped behind the hill before me and all was in shadow except where there hung a glory about the topmost leaves of a beech that still caught the sun. The birds were beginning to come in from the fields, and were settling one by one in the wood behind me, staying here and there to sing one last line of melody. I could hear the quiet rush and then the sudden clap of a pigeon’s wings as he came home, and as I listened I heard pealing out above all other sounds the long liquid song of a thrush somewhere above me. I looked up idly and tried to see the bird, and after a moment or two caught sight of him as the leaves of the beech parted in the breeze, his head lifted and his whole body vibrating with the joy of life and music. As some one has said, his body was one beating heart. The last radiance of the sun over the hill reached him and bathed him in golden warmth. Then the leaves closed again as the breeze dropped, but still his song rang out.

“Then there came on me a blinding desire to kill him. All the other creatures had mocked me and run home. Here at least was a victim, and I would pour out the sullen anger that had been gathering during my walk, and at least demand this one life as a substitute. Side by side with this I remembered clearly that I had come out to kill for food: that was my one justification. Side by side I saw both these things, and I had no excuse––no excuse.

“I turned my head every way and moved a step or two back to catch sight of him again, and, although, this may sound fantastic and overwrought, in my whole being was a struggle between light and darkness. Every fibre of my life told me that the thrush had a right to live. Ah! he had earned it, if labour were wanting, by this very song that was guiding death towards him, but black sullen anger had thrown my conscience, and was now struggling to hold it down till the shot had been fired. Still I waited for the breeze, and then it came, cool and sweet-smelling like the breath of a garden, and the leaves parted. There he sang in the sunshine, and in a moment I lifted the pistol and drew the trigger.

“With the crack of the cap came silence overhead, and after what seemed an interminable moment came the soft rush of something falling and the faint thud among last year’s leaves. Then I stood half terrified, and stared among the dead leaves. All seemed dim and misty. My eyes were still a little dazzled by the bright background of sunlit air and rosy clouds on which I had looked with such intensity, and the space beneath the branches was a world of shadows. Still I looked a few yards away, trying to make out the body of the thrush, and fearing to hear a struggle of beating wings among the dry leaves.

“And then I lifted my eyes a little, vaguely. A yard or two beyond where the thrush lay was a rhododendron bush. The blossoms had fallen and the outline of dark, heavy leaves was unrelieved by the slightest touch of colour. As I looked at it, I saw a face looking down from the higher branches.

“It was a perfectly hairless head and face, the thin lips were parted in a wide smile of laughter, there were innumerable lines about the corners of the mouth, and the eyes were surrounded by creases of merriment. What was perhaps most terrible about it all was that the eyes were not looking at me, but down among the leaves; the heavy eyelids lay drooping, and the long, narrow, shining slits showed how the eyes laughed beneath them. The forehead sloped quickly back, like a cat’s head. The face was the colour of earth, and the outlines of the head faded below the ears and chin into the gloom of the dark bush. There was no throat, or body or limbs so far as I could see. The face just hung there like a down-turned Eastern mask in an old curiosity shop. And it smiled with sheer delight, not at me, but at the thrush’s body. There was no change of expression so long as I watched it, just a silent smile of pleasure petrified on the face. I could not move my eyes from it.

“After what I suppose was a minute or so, the face had gone. I did not see it go, but I became aware that I was looking only at leaves.

“No; there was no outline of leaf, or play of shadows that could possibly have taken the form of a face. You can guess how I tried to force myself to believe that that was all; how I turned my head this way and that to catch it again; but there was no hint of a face.

“Now, I cannot tell you how I did it; but although I was half beside myself with fright, I went forward towards the bush and searched furiously among the leaves for the body of the thrush; and at last I found it, and lifted it. It was still limp and warm to the touch. Its breast was a little ruffled, and one tiny drop of blood lay at the root of the beak below the eyes, like a tear of dismay and sorrow at such an unmerited, unexpected death.

“I carried it to the fence and climbed over, and then began to run in great steps, looking now and then awfully at the gathering gloom of the wood behind, where the laughing face had mocked the dead. I think, looking back as I do now, that my chief instinct was that I could not leave the thrush there to be laughed at, and that I must get it out into the clean, airy meadow. When I reached the middle of the meadow I came to a pond which never ran quite dry even in the hottest summer. On the bank I laid the thrush down, and then deliberately but with all my force dashed the pistol into the water; then emptied my pockets of the cartridges and threw them in too.

“Then I turned again to the piteous little body, feeling that at least I had tried to make amends. There was an old rabbit hole near, the grass growing down in its mouth, and a tangle of web and dead leaves behind. I scooped a little space out among the leaves, and then laid the thrush there; gathered a little of the sandy soil and poured it over the body, saying, I remember, half unconsciously, ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope’––and then I stopped, feeling I had been a little profane, though I do not think so now. And then I went home.

“As I dressed for dinner, looking out over the darkening meadow where the thrush lay, I remember feeling happy that no evil thing could mock the defenceless dead out there in the clean meadow where the wind blew and the stars shone down.”

We reached in our going to and fro up the yew path a little seat at the end standing back from the path. Opposite us hung a crucifix, with a pent-house over it, that the old man had put up years before. As he did not speak I turned to him, and saw that he was looking steadily at the Figure on the Cross; and I thought how He who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows was one with the heavenly Father, without whom not even a sparrow falls to the ground.

The Blood-Eagle

“And this I know: whether the one True Light

Kindle to Love or Wrath––consume me quite,

One glimpse of It within the Tavern caught

Better than in the Temple lost outright.”

Omar Khayyam.

The Blood-Eagle

One night when I went to my room I found in a little shelf near the window a book, whose title I now forget, describing the far-off days when the religion of Christ and of the gods of the north strove together in England. I read this for an hour or two before I went to sleep, and again as I was dressing on the following morning, and spoke of it at breakfast.

“Yes,” said the old man, “that was one of my father’s books. I remember reading it when I was a boy. I believe it is said to be very ill-informed and unscientific in these days. My parents used to think that all religions except Christianity were of the devil. But I think St. Paul teaches us a larger hope than that.”

He said nothing more at the time; but in the course of the morning, as I was walking up and down the raised terrace that runs under the pines beside the drive, I saw the priest coming towards me with a book in his hand. He was a little dusty and flushed.

“I went to look for something that I thought might interest you, after what you said at breakfast,” he began, “and I have found it at last in the loft.”

We began to walk together up and down.

“A very curious thing happened to me,” he said, “when I was a boy. I remember telling my father of it when I came home, and it remained in my mind. A few years afterwards an old professor was staying with us; and after dinner one night, when we had been talking about what you were speaking of at breakfast, my father made me tell it again, and when I had finished the professor asked me to write it down for him. So I wrote it in this book first; and then made a copy and sent it to him. The book itself is a kind of irregular diary in which I used to write sometimes. Would you care to hear it?”

When I had told him I should like to hear the story, he began again.

“I must first tell you the circumstances. I was about sixteen years old. My parents had gone abroad for the holidays, and I went to stay with a school friend of mine at his home not far from Ascot. We used to take our lunch with us sometimes on bright days––for it was at Christmas time––and go off for the day over the heather. You must remember that I was only a schoolboy at the time, so I daresay I exaggerated or elaborated some of the details a little, but the main facts of the story you can rely upon. Shall we sit down while I read it?”

Then when we had seated ourselves on a bench that stood at the end of the terrace, with the old house basking before us in the hot sunshine, he began to read.

“About six o’clock in the evening of one of the days towards the end of January, Jack and I were still wandering on high, heathy ground near Ascot. We had walked all day and had lost ourselves; but we kept going in as straight a line as we could, knowing that in time we should strike across a road. We were rather tired and silent; but suddenly Jack uttered an exclamation, and then pointed out a light across the heath. We stood a moment to see if it moved, but it remained still.

“‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘There can be no house near here.’

“‘It’s a broomsquire’s cottage, I expect,’ said Jack.

“I asked what that meant.

“‘Oh! I don’t know exactly,’ said Jack; ‘they’re a kind of gypsies.’

“We stumbled on across the heather, while the light grew steadily nearer. The moon was beginning to rise, and it was a clear night, one of those windless, frosty nights that sometimes come after a wet autumn. Jack plunged at one place into a hidden ditch, and I heard the crackling of ice as he scrambled out.

“‘Skating to-morrow, by Jove,’ he said.

“As we got closer I began to see that we were approaching a copse of firs; the heather began to get shorter. Then, as I looked at the light, I saw there was a fixed outline of a kind of house out of which it shone. The window apparently was an irregular shape, and the house seemed to be leaning against a tall fir on the outskirts of the copse. As we got quite close, our feet noiseless on the soft heather, I saw that the house was built altogether round the fir, which served as a kind of central prop. The house was made of wattled boughs, and thatched heavily with heather.

“I felt more and more anxious about it, for I had never heard of ‘broomsquires,’ and also, I confess, a little timid; for the place was lonely, and we were only two boys. I was leading now, and presently reached the window and looked in.

“The walls inside were hung with blankets and clothes to keep the wind out; there was a long old settle in one corner, the floor was carpeted with branches and blankets apparently, and there was an opening opposite, partly closed by a wattled hurdle that leaned against it. Half sitting and half lying on the settle, was an old woman with her face hidden. An oil-lamp hung from one of the branches of the fir that helped to form the roof. There was no sign of any other living thing in the place. As I looked Jack came up behind and spoke over my shoulder.

“‘Can you tell us the way to the nearest high-road?’ he asked.

“The old woman sat up suddenly, with a look of fright on her face. She was extraordinarily dirty and ill-kempt. I could see in the dim light of the lamp that she had a wrinkled old face, with sunken dark eyes, white eyebrows, and white hair; and her mouth began to mumble as she looked at us. Presently she made a violent gesture to wave us from the window.

“Jack repeated the question, and the old woman got up and hobbled quietly and crookedly to the door, and in a moment she had come round close to us. I then saw how very small she was. She could not have been five feet tall, and was very much bent. I must say again that I felt very uneasy and startled with this terrifying old creature close to me and peering up into my face. She took me by the coat and with her other hand beckoned quickly away in every direction. She seemed to be warning us away from the copse, but still she said nothing.

“Jack grew impatient.

“‘Deaf old fool!’ he said in an undertone, and then loudly and slowly, ‘Can you tell us the way to the nearest high-road?’

“Then she seemed to understand, and pointed vigorously in the direction from which we had come.

“‘Oh! nonsense,’ said Jack, ‘we’ve come from there. Come on this way,’ he said, ‘we can’t spend all night here.’ And then he turned the side of the little house and disappeared into the copse.

“The old woman dropped my coat in a moment, and began to run after Jack, and I went round the other side of the house and saw Jack moving in front, for the firs were sparse at the edge of the wood, and the moonlight filtered through them. The old woman, I saw as I turned into the wood, had stopped, knowing she could not catch us, and was standing with her hands stretched out, and a curious sound, half cry and half sob came from her. I was a little uneasy, because we had not treated her with courtesy, and stopped, but at that moment Jack called.

“‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’re sure to find a road at the end of this.’

“So I went on.

“Once I turned and saw the little old woman standing as before; and as I looked between the trees she lifted one hand to her mouth and sent a curious whistling cry after us, that somehow frightened me. It seemed too loud for one so small.

“As we went on the wood grew darker. Here and there in an open patch there lay a white splash of moonlight on the fir needles, and great dim spaces lay round us. Although the wood stood on high ground, the trees grew so thickly about us that we could see nothing of the country round. Now and then we tripped on a root, or else caught in a bramble, but it seemed to me that we were following a narrow path that led deeper and deeper into the heart of the wood. Suddenly Jack stopped and lifted his hand.

“‘Hush!’ he said.

“I stopped too, and we listened breathlessly. Then in a moment more,––––

“‘Hush!’ he said, ‘something’s coming,’ and he jumped out of the path behind a tree, and I followed him.

“Then we heard a scuffling in front of us and a grunting, and some big creature came hurrying down the path. As it passed us I looked, almost terrified out of my mind, and saw that it was a huge pig; but the thing that held me breathless and sick was that there ran nearly the whole length of its back a deep wound, from which the blood dripped. The creature, grunting heavily, tore down the path towards the cottage, and presently the sound of it died away. As I leaned against Jack, I could feel his arm trembling as it held the tree.

“‘Oh!’ he said in a moment, ‘we must get out of this. Which way, which way?’

“But I had been still listening, and held him quiet.

“‘Wait,’ I said, ‘there is something else.’

“Out of the wood in front of us there came a panting, and the soft sounds of hobbling steps along the path. We crouched lower and watched. Presently the figure of a bent old man came in sight, making his way quickly along the path. He seemed startled and out of breath. His mouth was moving, and he was talking to himself in a low voice in a complaining tone, but his eyes searched the wood from side to side.

“As he came quite close to us, as we lay hardly daring to breathe, I saw one of his hands that hung in front of him, opening and shutting; and that it was stained with what looked black in the moonlight. He did not see us, as by now we were hidden by a great bramble bush, and he passed on down the path; and then all was silent again.

“When a few minutes had passed in perfect stillness, we got up and went on, but neither of us cared to walk in the path down which those two terrible dripping things had come; and we went stumbling over the broken ground, keeping a parallel course to the path for about another two hundred yards. Jack had begun to recover himself, and even began to talk and laugh at being frightened at a pig and an old man. He told me afterwards that he had not seen the old man’s hand.

“Then the path began to lead uphill. At this point I suddenly stopped Jack.

“‘Do you see nothing?’ I asked.

“Now I scarcely remember what I said or did. But this is what my friend told me afterwards. Jack said there was nothing but a little rising ground in front, from which the trees stood back.

“‘Do you see nothing on the top of the mound? Out in the open, where the moonlight falls on her?’

“Jack told me afterwards that he thought I had gone suddenly mad, and grew frightened himself.

“‘Do you not see a woman standing there? She has long yellow hair in two braids; she has thick gold bracelets on her bare arms. She has a tunic, bound by a girdle, and it comes below her knees: and she has red jewels in her hair, on her belt, on her bracelets; and her eyes shine in the moonlight: and she is waiting,––waiting for that which has escaped.’

“Now Jack tells me that when I said this I fell flat on my face, with my hands stretched out, and began to talk: but he said he could not understand a word I said. He himself looked steadily at the rising ground, but there was nothing to be seen there: there were the fir-trees standing in a circle round it, and a bare space in the middle, from which the heather was gone, and that was all. This mound would be about fifteen yards from us.

“I lay there, said Jack, a few minutes, and then sat up and looked about me. Then I remembered for myself that I had seen the pig and the old man, but nothing more: but I was terrified at the remembrance, and insisted upon our striking out a new course through the wood, and leaving the mound to our left. I did not know myself why the mound frightened me, but I dared not go near it. Jack wisely did not say anything more about it until afterwards. We presently found our way out of the copse, struck across the heath for another half-mile or so, and then came across a road which Jack knew, and so we came home.

“When we told our story, and Jack, to my astonishment, had added the part of which I myself had no remembrance, Jack’s father did not say very much; but he took us next day to identify the place. To our intense surprise the house of the broomsquire was gone; there were the trampled branches round the tree, and the smoked branch from which the oil lamp had hung, and the ashes of a wood-fire outside the house, but no sign of the old man or his wife. As we went along the path, now in the cheerful frosty sunshine, we found dark splashes here and there on the brambles, but they were dry and colourless. Then we came to the mound.

“I grew uneasy again as we came to it, but was ashamed to show my fear in the broad daylight.

“On the top we found a curious thing, which Jack’s father told us was one of the old customs of the broomsquires, that no one was altogether able to explain. The ground was shovelled away, so as to form a kind of sloping passage downwards into the earth. The passage was not more than five yards long; and at the end of it, just where it was covered by the ground overhead, was a sort of altar, made of earth and stones beaten flat; and plastered into its surface were bits of old china and glass. But what startled us was to find a dark patch of something which had soaked deep into the ground before the altar. It was still damp.”

When the old man had read so far, he laid down the book.

“When I told all this to the Professor,” he said, “he seemed very deeply interested. He told us, I remember, that the wound on the pig identified the nature of the sacrifice that the old man had begun to offer. He called it a ‘blood-eagle,’ and added some details which I will not disgust you with. He said too that the broomsquire had confused two rites––that only human sacrifices should be offered as ‘blood-eagles.’ In fact it all seemed perfectly familiar to him: and he said more than I can either remember or verify.”

“And the woman on the rising ground?” I asked.

“Well,” said the old man, smiling, “the Professor would not listen to my evidence about that. He accepted the early part of the story, and simply declined to pay any attention to the woman. He said I had been reading Norse tales, or was dreaming. He even hinted that I was romancing. Under other circumstances this method of treating evidence would be called ‘Higher Criticism,’ I believe.”

“But it’s all a brutal and disgusting worship,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” said the old man, “very brutal and disgusting; but is it not very much higher and better than the Professor’s faith? He was only a skilled Ritualist after all, you see.”

Over the Gateway

“––For faith, that, when my need is sore,

Gleams from a partly-open door,

And shows the firelight on the floor––”

A Canticle of Common Things.

Over the Gateway

We were sitting together one morning in the common sitting-room in the centre of the house. There had been a fall of rain during the night, and it was thought better that the old man should not sit in the garden until the sun had dried the earth––so we sat indoors instead, but with the great door wide open, that looked on to a rectangle of lawn that lay before the house. Once a drive had led to this door through a gate with pedestals and stone balls, that stood exactly opposite, about fifteen yards away, but the drive had long been grassed over; although even now it showed faintly under two slight ridges in the grass that ran from the gate to the door. Otherwise the lawn was enclosed by a low old brick wall, almost hidden by a wealth of ivy, against which showed in rich masses of colour the heads of purple and yellow irises and tawny wallflowers.

The old man had been silent at breakfast. He had offered the Holy Sacrifice as usual that morning in the little chapel upstairs, and I had noticed at the time even that he seemed pre-occupied: and at breakfast he had talked very little, letting every subject drop as I suggested it; and I had understood at last that his thoughts were far away in the past; and I did not wish to trouble him.

We were sitting in two tall carved chairs at the doorway, his feet were wrapped in a rug, and his eyes were looking steadily and mournfully out across towards the iron-work gate in the wall. Tall grasses of the patch of uncut meadow outside leaned against it or pushed their feathery heads through it; and I saw presently that the priest was looking at the gate, letting his eyes rove over every detail of climbing plant, iron-work and the old brickwork––and not, as I had at first thought, merely gazing into the dim distances of the years behind him.

Suddenly he broke the long silence.

“Did I ever tell you,” he asked, “about what I saw out there in the garden? It looks ordinary enough now: yet I saw there what I suppose I shall never see again on this side of death, or at least not until I am in the very gate of death itself.”

I too looked out at the gate. The atmosphere was full of that “clear shining after rain” of which King David sang––it was air made visible and radiant by the union of light and water, those two most joyous creatures of God. A great chestnut tree blotted out all beyond the gate.

“Tell me if you can,” I said. “You know how I love to hear those stories.”

“Years ago, as perhaps you know, not long after my ordination I was working in London. My father lived here then, as his father before him. That coat of arms in the centre of that iron gate was put up by him soon after he succeeded to the property. I used to come down here now and then for a breath of country air. I hardly remember any pleasure so keen as the pleasure of coming into this glorious country air out of the smoke and noise of London––or of lying awake at night with the rustle of the pines outside my window instead of the ceaseless human tumult of the town.

“Well, I came down here once, suddenly, on a summer evening, bearing heavy news. I need not go into details; it would be useless to do that––but it will be enough to say that the news did not personally affect me or my family. It was a curious series of circumstances that led me to be the bearer of such news at all––but it was to a lady who happened by the merest chance to be staying with my family. I scarcely knew her at all––in fact I had only seen her once before. The news had come to my ears in London, and I had heard that the one whom it most concerned did not know it––and that they dared not write or telegraph. I volunteered of course to take the news myself.

“It was with a very heavy heart that I walked up from the station––the road seemed intolerably short. I may say that I knew that the news would be heart-breaking to her who had to hear it. I came in by the gate at the end of the avenue” (he waved his hand round to the right) “and passed right down to the back of the house, behind us. This door at which we are sitting had been the front door, but the drive had just been turfed over, and we used the door at the back instead, and this lawn here was very much as you see it now, only the drive still showed plainly like a long narrow grave across the grass.

“As I came in through the door at the back, she was coming out, with a book and a basket-chair to sit in the garden. My heart gave a terrible throb of pain––for I knew that by the time my business was done there would be no thought of a quiet evening in the garden, and that look of serene happiness would be wiped out of her face––and all through what I had to say. For a moment she did not recognise me in the dark entry and stood back as I came in, and then––––

“‘Why it is you,’ she said; ‘you have come home. I did not know you were expected.’

“I breathed a moment steadily to recover myself.

“‘I was not expected,’ I said; and then, after a moment: ‘May I speak to you?’

“‘Speak to me? Why, certainly. In the garden or here?’

“‘In here,’ I answered, and went past her and pushed open the door into this room.

“She came past me, and stood here by the door still holding the book, with her finger between the leaves.

“Now you are wondering, I expect, why I did not get some other woman to break the news to her. Well, I had debated that ever since I had volunteered to be the bearer of these tidings: and partly because I was afraid of being cowardly––call it pride if you will––and partly for other reasons which I need not mention, I felt I was bound to fulfil my promise literally. It might be, I thought too, that she would prefer the news to be known by as few people as possible. At least, whether I judged rightly or wrongly, here was my task before me.

“She stood there,” the old man went on, pointing to the doorpost on the right, “and I here,” and he pointed a yard further back, “and the door was wide open as it is now, and the fragrant evening air poured past us into the room. Her face would be partly in shadow; but in her eyes there was just a dawning wonder at my abruptness, with perhaps the faintest tinge of anxiety, but no more.

“‘I have come,’ I said slowly, looking out into the garden, ‘on a very hard errand.’ I could not go on. I turned and looked at her. Ah! the anxiety had deepened a little. ‘And––and it concerns you and your happiness.’ I looked again, and I remember how her face had changed. Her lips were a little open, and her eyes shone wide open, half in shadow and half in light, and there were new and terrible little lines on her forehead. And then I told her.

“It was done in a sentence or two, and when I looked again her lips had closed and her hand had clenched itself into the moulding of the doorpost. I can see her rings now blazing in the light that poured over the chestnut tree (it was lower then) into the room. Then her lips moved once or twice––her hand unclenched itself hesitatingly––and she went steadily across the room. There was a great sofa there then, and when she reached it she threw herself face downwards across the arm and back.

“And I waited at the doorway, looking out at the iron gate. Sorrow was new to me then. I had not learnt to understand it then, or to be quiet under it. And as I looked I knew only that there was a terrible struggle going on in the room behind. There in front of me was a garden full of peace and sweetness and the soft glow of sunset light; and there behind me was something very like hell––and I stood between the living and the dead.

“Then I remembered that I was a priest, and ought to be able to say something––just a word of the Divine message that the Saviour brought––but I could not. I felt I was in deep waters. Even God seemed far away, intolerably serene and aloof; and I longed with all my power for a human person to pray and to bear a little of that strife behind me, from which I felt separated by so wide a gulf. And then God gave me the clear vision again.

“You see the iron gate,” the old man went on, pointing. “Well, right between those posts, but a little above them, outlined clearly against the chestnut tree, beyond, was the figure of a man.

“Now I do not know how to explain myself, but I was conscious that across this material world of light and colour there cut a plane of the spiritual world, and that where the planes crossed I could look through and see what was beyond. It was like smoke cutting across a sunbeam. Each made the other visible.

“Well, this figure of a man, then, was kneeling in the air, that is the only way I can describe it––his face was turned towards me, but upwards. Now the most curious thing that struck me at the time was that he was, as it were, leaning at a sharp angle to one side; but it did not appear to be grotesque. Instead the world seemed tilted; the chestnut tree was out of the perpendicular; the wall out of the horizontal. The true level was that of the man.

“I know this sounds foolish, but it showed me how the world of spirits was the real world, and the world of sense comparatively unreal, just as the sorrow of the woman behind me was more real than the beams overhead.

“And again, compared with the kneeling figure, the chestnut tree and the gate seemed unsubstantial and shadowy. I know that men who see visions tell us that it is usually the other way. All I can say is that it was not so with me. This figure was kneeling, as I have said; his robe streamed away behind him––a great cloak––drawn tightly back from the shoulders, as if he were battling with a strong wind––the Wind of Grace, I suppose, that always blows from the Throne. His arms were stretched out in front of him, but opened sufficiently to let me see his face; and his face will be with me till I die, and please God afterwards. It was beardless, and bore the unmistakable character of a priest’s face.

“Now you know how close the intensest pain and the intensest joy lie together. Their lines so nearly meet. In this man’s face they did meet. Anguish and ecstasy were one. His eyes were open, his lips parted. I could not tell whether he was old or young. His face was ageless, as the faces of all are who look upon Him who inhabits eternity. He was praying. I can say no more than that. He had opened his heart to this woman’s sorrow. He had made it his own: and it met there, in petition if you wish to call it so, or in resignation if you prefer that name for it, or in adoration––you may call it what you will––all that is true, but each is inadequate––but that sorrow met there with his own purified will, which itself had become one with the eternal will of God. I tell you I know it.

“I looked at him, and in my ears was a sobbing from the room behind; but as I looked the glory of anguish deepened on his face, and the sobbing behind me slackened and ceased, and I heard a whispering and the name of God and of His Son, and then the sight before me had passed; and there stood the chestnut tree again as real and as beautiful as before; and when I turned the woman was standing up, and the light of conquest was in her eyes.

“She held out her hand to me, and I stooped and kissed it, but I dared not take it in my own, for she had been in heavenly places. I had seen her sorrow carried and laid before the throne of God by one greater than either of us, and something of his glory rested upon her.”

The old man’s voice ceased. When I turned to look at him he was looking steadily again at the iron gate in the wall, and his eyes were shining like the radiant air outside. “I do not know,” he said in a moment, “whether she is alive or dead, but I offered the Holy Sacrifice this morning for her peace in either state.”

Poena Damni

“All their sins stand before them, and produce in their essences remorse, eternal despair and a hostile will against God. For such a soul there is no remedy. It cannot come into the light of God.... Even if St. Peter had left many thousand keys upon earth, not a single one of them could open Heaven for it.”

A German Mystic.

Poena Damni

We were sitting at dinner one evening when the priest, who had been talkative, seemed to fall into a painful train of thought that silenced him. He grew more and more ill at ease, and was obviously relieved when I threw my cigarette away and he was able to propose a move to the next room. Presently his distress seemed to pass; and then, as we sat near the fireplace, he explained himself.

“I must ask your pardon,” he said, “but somehow I fell into a very dreadful train of thought. It was suggested to me, I think, by the red lamp on the table and the evening light through the windows, and the silver and glass. (You know the power of association!) I went through one of the most fearful moments of my life under just those circumstances.”

I was silent, as the priest seemed to have more to say.

“It has affected my nerves,” he said, “and it would be rather a relief to tell you. Would you mind if I did so?”

On my assurance that it would greatly interest me, he began.

“It is a fashion among those who do not really accept Revelation as revelation to believe in a kind of Universalism. Quite apart from authority, this doctrine contravenes, as you of course know, the reality of man’s free will. The incident of which I wish to tell you concerns the way in which I first caught a glimpse of that for myself.

“A good many years ago I made the acquaintance of a man in the West of England, under circumstances that I need not describe further than saying that he seemed to have confidence in me. He asked me to stay with him in his country house, and I went down from London for the inside of a week. I found him living the usual country life, fishing and so forth; for it was summer when I visited him. It was a fine old house that he lived in, surrounded by coverts. He had a charming wife and two or three children, and at first I thought him extremely happy and contented.

“Then I thought that I noticed that things were not so well with him. The cottages on his estate were ill-cared for, and that is always a bad sign. From one or two small signs, such as you can guess, I found that the tone among his servants was not what it should be; and one or two horrid pieces of cruelty came under my notice. I know this sounds as if I were a sort of spy, greedy for information; but all that I can say is, that these signs were unmistakable and obvious, and came to me, of course, unsought and unexpected. Then I saw that his domestic relations were not right. I do not know how else to describe all this than by saying that there seemed a kind of blight upon his surroundings. Nothing was absolutely wrong, and yet all was just wrong.

“At first I thought that I myself was depressed or jaundiced in some way; but at last I could not continue to believe that; and on the Friday of my stay, the last day, I became finally certain that something was horribly wrong with the man himself. Then that evening he opened his heart to me, so far as it was possible for him to do so.

“His wife, with the two daughters, had left us after dessert and gone into the garden, and we remained in the dining-room. The windows looked to the west, across a smooth sloping lawn, with the lake at the end; beyond that rose up a delicate birch wood, and beyond that again a soft green sky, where the sun had set, deepening into a liquid evening blue overhead, in which a star or two glimmered. I could see, as I looked out, the white figures of his wife and daughters against the shining surface of the lake at the end of the lawn.

“After he had lit his cigarette, and had a glass or two of wine, suddenly he opened his heart to me, and told me an appalling story that I could not tell you. I sat and watched his strong sinewy hand rise and fall with the cigarette, under the red lamp-light; I glanced at his quiet well-bred face with the downcast eyes and the long moustache, and I wondered whether it was possible really for such a tale to be true; but he spoke with a restrained conviction that left no room for doubt. What I gathered from the story was this;––that he had identified himself, his whole will, his whole life practically, with the cause of Satan. I could not detect as he talked that he had ever seriously attempted to detach himself from that cause. It has been said that a saint is one who always chooses the better of the two courses open to him at every step; so far as I could see this man had always chosen the worse of the two courses. When he had done things that you and I would think right, he had always done them for some bad reason. He had been continuously aware, too, of what was happening. I do not think that I have ever heard such a skilful self-analysis. Now and then, as I saw the gulf of despair towards which his talk was leading, I interrupted him, suggesting alleviations of the horror––suggesting that he was pessimistic––that he had acted often under misconceptions––and the like; but he always met me with a quiet answer that silenced me. In fact,” said the priest, who was beginning to tremble a little, “I have never thought it possible that a heart could be so corrupt and yet retain so much knowledge and feeling.

“When he had finished his story he looked at me for a moment, and then said:

“‘Lately I have seen what I have lost, and what I shall lose; and I have told you this to ask if the Christian Gospel has any hope for such as I am.’

“Of course I answered as a Christian priest must answer, for I honestly thought that here was the greatest miracle of God’s grace that I had ever seen. When I had finished I lifted my eyes from the cloth and looked up. His fingers, while I was speaking, had been playing with an apostle spoon, but as I looked up he looked up too, and our eyes met.”

As the priest said this, he got up, and leaned his head against the high oak mantelpiece, and was silent a moment. Then he went on:

“God forgive me if I was wrong––if I am wrong now––but this is what I think I saw.

“Out of his eyes looked a lost soul. As a symbol, or a sign, too, his eyes shone suddenly with that dull red light that you may see sometimes in a dog’s eyes. It was the poena damni of which I had read, which shone there. It was true, as he had said, that he was seeing clearly what he had lost and would lose; it was the gate of heaven opening to one who could not enter in. It was the chink of light under the door to one who cried, ‘Lord, Lord, open to me,’ but through the door there came that answer, ‘I know you not.’ Ah! it was not that he had never known before what God was, and His service and love; it was just his condemnation that he had known: that he had seen, not once or twice but again and again, the two ways, and had, not once nor twice but again and again, chosen the worse of those two; and now he was powerless.

“I tell you I saw this for a moment. There was this human face, so well-bred, with its delicate lines, looking almost ethereal in the soft red light of the lamp: behind him, between the windows hung a portrait of an ancestor, some old Caroline divine in ruff and bands. Through the windows was that sweet glory of evening––with the three figures by the lake. Here, between us, was the delicate soothing luxury of cleanliness and coolness and refreshment, such as glass and silver and fruit suggest: and there for one second in this frame of beauty and peace looked the eyes of one who desired even a drop of living water to cool his tongue, for he was tormented in a flame.

“And I saw all this; and then the room began to swim and whirl, and the table to tilt and sway, and I fell, I suppose, forward, and sank down on to the floor. When I recovered there were the men in the room, and the anxious face of my host looking down on me.

“I had to return to town the next morning. I wrote to him a long letter the following week, saying that I had been ill on the evening on which he had given me his confidence: and that I had not said all that I could say: and I went on, giving the lie to what I had thought I had seen, speaking to him as I should speak to any soul who was weary of sin and desired God.

“Indeed I thought it most possible, as I wrote the letter, that I had had a horrible delusion; and that all could be well with him. I got an answer of a few lines, saying that he must apologise for having troubled me with such a story; adding that he had greatly exaggerated his own sin; that he too had been over-excited and unwell: and that he too trusted in a God of Love––and begging me not to refer to the conversation again.”

The priest sat down again.

“Now you may of course accept this version of it, if you will. I only would to God that I could too.”

“Consolatrix Afflictorum”

“Should it be burdensome for thee ... she will for thy sake herself raise me up when I chance to fall, and console me when sorrowing.”

St. Leander of Seville.

“Consolatrix Afflictorum”

The following letter will explain itself.

The original was read to me by my friend on one of those days during my stay with him; and he allowed me, at my request, to make a copy. The sermon referred to in the first sentence of the letter was preached in a foreign watering-place on Christmas Day.

“Villa––––

“December 29, 18––

“Reverend and Dear Sir,

“I listened with great attention to your sermon on Christmas Day; I am getting on in years, and I am an invalid; so you will understand that I have few friends––and I think none who would not think me mad if I told them the story that I am proposing to tell you. For many years I have been silent on this subject; since it always used to be received with incredulity. But I fancy that you will not be incredulous. As I watched you and listened to you on Christmas Day, I thought I saw in you one to whom the supernatural was more than a beautiful and symbolical fairy-story, and one who held it not impossible that this unseen should sometimes manifest itself. As you reminded us, the Religion of the Incarnation rests on the fact that the Infinite and the Eternal expresses Himself in terms of space and time; and that it is in this that the greatness of the Love of God consists. Since then, as you said, the Creation, the Incarnation, and the Sacramental System alike, in various degree, are the manifestation of God under these conditions, surely it cannot be ‘materialistic’ (whatever that exactly means), to believe that the ‘spiritual’ world and the personages that inhabit it sometimes express themselves in the same manner as their Maker. However, will you have patience with me while I tell you this story? I cannot believe that such a grace should be kept in darkness.

“I was about seven years old when my mother died, and my father left me chiefly to the care of servants. Either I must have been a difficult child, or my nurse must have been a hard woman: but I never gave her my confidence. I had clung to my mother as a saint clings to God: and when I lost her, it nearly broke my heart. Night after night I used to lie awake, with the firelight in the room, remembering how she would look in on her way to bed; when at last I slept it seems to me now as if I never did anything but dream of her; and it was only to wake again to that desolate emptiness. I would torture myself by closing my eyes, and fancying she was there; and then opening them and seeing the room empty. I would turn and toss and sob without a sound. I suppose that I was as near the limit that divides sanity from madness as it is possible to be. During the day I would sit on the stairs when I could get away from my nurse, and pretend that my mother’s footsteps were moving overhead, that her door opened, that I heard her dress on the carpet: again I would open my eyes, and in self-cruelty compel myself to understand that she was gone. Then again I would tell myself that it was all right: that she was away for the day, but would come back at night. In the evenings I would be happier, as the time for her return drew nearer; even when I said my prayers I would look forward to the moment, into which I had cheated myself in believing, when the door would open, after I was in bed, and my mother look in. Then as the time passed, my false faith would break down, and I would sob myself to sleep, dream of her, and sob myself awake again. As I look back it appears to me as if this went on for months: I suppose, however, in reality, it could not have been more than a very few weeks, or my reason would have given way. And at last I was caught on the edge of the precipice, and drawn lovingly back to safety and peace.

“I used to sleep alone in the night-nursery at this time, and my nurse occupied a room opening out of it. The night-nursery had two doors, one at the foot of my bed, and one at the further end of the room, in the corner diagonally opposite to that in which the head of my bed stood. The first opened upon the landing, and the second into my nurse’s room, and this latter was generally kept a few inches open. There was no light in my room, but a night-light was kept burning in the nurse’s room, so that even without the firelight my room was not in total darkness.

“I was lying awake one night (I suppose it would be about eleven o’clock), having gone through a dreadful hour or two of misery, half-waking and half-sleeping. I had been crying quietly, for fear my nurse should hear through the partly opened door, burying my hot face in the pillow. I was feeling really exhausted, listening to my own heart, and cheating myself into the half-faith that its throbs were the footsteps of my mother coming towards my room; I had raised my face and was staring at the door at the foot of my bed, when it opened suddenly without a sound; and there, as I thought, my mother stood, with the light from the oil-lamp outside shining upon her. She was dressed, it seemed, as once before I had seen her in London, when she came into my room to bid me good-night before she went out to an evening party. Her head shone with jewels that flashed as the firelight rose and sank in the room, a dark cloak shrouded her neck and shoulders, one hand held the edge of the door, and a great jewel gleamed on one of her fingers. She seemed to be looking at me.

“I sat up in bed in a moment, amazed but not frightened, for was it not what I had so often fancied? and I called out to her:

“‘Mother, mother!’

“At the word she turned and looked on to the landing, and gave a slight movement with her head, as if to some one waiting there, either of assent or dismissal, and then turned to me again. The door closed silently, and I could see in the firelight, and in the faint glimmer that came through the other door, that she held out her arms to me. I threw off the bedclothes in a moment, and scrambled down to the end of the bed, and she lifted me gently in her arms, but said no word. I too said nothing, but she raised the cloak a little and wrapped it round me, and I lay there in bliss, my head on her shoulder, and my arm round her neck. She walked smoothly and noiselessly to a rocking-chair that stood beside the fire and sat down, and then began to rock gently to and fro. Now it may be difficult to believe, but I tell you that I neither said anything, nor desired to say anything. It was enough that she was there. After a little while I suppose I fell asleep, for I found myself in an agony of tears and trembling again, but those arms held me firmly, and I was soon at peace; still she spoke no word, and I did not see her face.

“When I woke again she was gone, and it was morning, and I was in bed, and the nurse was drawing up the blind, and the winter sunshine lay on the wall. That day was the happiest I had known since my mother’s death; for I knew she would come again.

“After I was in bed that evening I lay awake waiting, so full of happy content and certainty that I fell asleep. When I awoke the fire was out, and there was no light but a narrow streak that came through the door from my nurse’s room. I lay there a minute or two waiting, expecting every moment to see the door open at the foot of my bed; but the minutes passed, and then the clock in the hall below beat three. Then I fell into a passion of tears; the night was nearly gone, and she had not come to me. Then, as I tossed to and fro, trying to stifle my crying, through my tears there came the misty flash of light as the door opened, and there she stood again. Once again I was in her arms, and my face on her shoulder. And again I fell asleep there.

“Now this went on night after night, but not every night, and never unless I awoke and cried. It seemed that if I needed her desperately she came, but only then.

“But there were two curious incidents that occurred in the order in which I will write them down. The second I understand now, at any rate; the first I have never altogether understood, or rather there are several possible explanations.

“One night as I lay in her arms by the fire, a large coal suddenly slipped from the grate and fell with a crash, awaking the nurse in the other room. I suppose she thought something was wrong, for she appeared at the door with a shawl over her shoulders, holding the night-light in one hand and shading it with the other. I was going to speak, when my mother laid her hand across my mouth. The nurse advanced into the room, passed close beside us, apparently without seeing us, went straight to the empty bed, looked down on the tumbled clothes, and then turned away as if satisfied, and went back to her room. The next day I managed to elicit from her, by questioning, the fact that she had been disturbed in the night, and had come into my room, but had seen me sleeping quietly in bed.

“The other incident was as follows. One night I was lying half dozing against my mother’s breast, my head against her heart, and not, as I usually lay, with my head on her shoulder. As I lay there it seemed to me as if I heard a strange sound like the noise of the sea in a shell, but more melodious. It is difficult to describe it, but it was like the murmuring of a far-off crowd, overlaid with musical pulsations. I nestled closer to her and listened; and then I could distinguish, I thought, innumerable ripples of church bells pealing, as if from another world. Then I listened more intently to the other sound; there were words, but I could not distinguish them. Again and again a voice seemed to rise above the others, but I could hear no intelligible words. The voices cried in every sort of tone––passion, content, despair, monotony. And then as I listened I fell asleep. As I look back now, I have no doubt what voices those were that I heard.

“And now comes the end of the story. My health began to improve so remarkably that those about me noticed it. I never gave way, during the day at any rate, to those old piteous imaginings; and at night, when, I suppose, the will partly relaxes its control, whenever my distress reached a certain point, she was there to comfort me. But her visits grew more and more rare, as I needed her less, and at last ceased. But it is of her last visit, which took place in the spring of the following year, that I wish to speak.

“I had slept well all night, but had awakened in the dark just before the dawn from some dream which I forget, but which left my nerves shaken. When in my terror I cried out, again the door opened, and she was there. She stood with the jewels in her hair, and the cloak across her shoulders, and the light from the landing lay partly on her face. I scrambled at once down the bed, and was lifted and carried to the chair, and presently fell asleep. When I awoke the dawn had come, and the birds were stirring and chirping, and a pleasant green light was in the room; and I was still in her arms. It was the first time, except in the instance I have mentioned, that I had awakened except in bed, and it was a great joy to find her there. As I turned a little I saw the cloak which sheltered us both––of a deep blue, with an intricate pattern of flowers and leaves and birds among branches. Then I turned still more to see her face, which was so near me, but it was turned away; and even as I moved she rose and carried me towards the bed. Still holding me on her left arm she lifted and smoothed the bedclothes, and then laid me gently in bed, with my head on the pillow. And then for the first time I saw her face plainly. She bent over me, with one hand on my breast as if to prevent me from rising, and looked straight into my eyes; and it was not my mother.

“There was one moment of blinding shock and sorrow, and I gave a great sob, and would have risen in bed, but her hand held me down, and I seized it with both my own, and still looked in her eyes. It was not my mother, and yet was there ever such a mother’s face as that? I seemed to be looking into depths of indescribable tenderness and strength, and I leaned on that strength in those moments of misery. I gave another sob or two as I looked, but I was quieter, and at last peace came to me, and I had learnt my lesson.

“I did not at the time know who she was, but my little soul dimly saw that my own mother for some reason could not at that time come to me who needed her so sorely, and that another great Mother had taken her place; yet, after the first moment or so, I felt no anger or jealousy, for one who had looked into that kindly face could have no such unworthy thought.

“Then I lifted my head a little, I remember, and kissed the hand that I held in my own, reverently and slowly. I do not know why I did it, except that it was the natural thing to do. The hand was strong and white, and delicately fragrant. Then it was withdrawn, and she was standing by the door, and the door was open; and then she was gone, and the door was closed.

“I have never seen her since, but I have never needed to see her, for I know who she is; and, please God, I shall see her again; and next time I hope my mother and I will be together; and perhaps it will not be very long; and perhaps she will allow me to kiss her hand again.

“Now, my dear sir, I do not know how all this will appear to you; it may seem to you, though I do not think it will, merely childish. Yet, in a sense, I desire nothing more than that, for our Saviour Himself told us to be like children, and our Saviour too once lay on His Mother’s breast. I know that I am getting an old man, and that old men are sometimes very foolish; but it more and more seems to me that experience, as well as His words, tells me that the great Kingdom of Heaven has a low and narrow door that only little children can enter, and that we must become little again, and drop all our bundles, if we would go through.

“That, dear and Reverend Sir, is my story. And may I ask you to remember me sometimes at the altar and in your prayers? for surely God will ask much from one to whom He has given so much, and as yet I have nothing to show for it; and my time must be nearly at an end, even if His infinite patience is not.

“Believe me,

“Yours faithfully,

“–––– ––––.”

The Bridge over the Stream

“Lo, I am free! I choose the pain thou bearest:

Thou art the messenger of one who waits;

Thou wilt reveal the hidden face thou wearest

When my feet falter at the Eternal Gates.”

Old Foes.

The Bridge over the Stream

We were at tea one afternoon on the little low, tiled platform that marked the site of an old summer-house. Tall hurdles covered with briar-roses on the further side of the path fenced off the rest of the garden from us, and the sun had just sunk below the level of the house, throwing both ourselves and the garden into cool shadow. The servant had brought out the tea-things, but he presently returned with something of horror on his face. The old man looked up and saw him.

“What is it, Parker?” he asked.

“There’s been an accident, sir. Tom Awcock at the home farm has been drawn into some machine, and they say he must lose both arms, and maybe his life.”

The old man turned quite white, and his eyes grew larger and brighter.

“Is the doctor with him?” he asked, in a perfectly steady voice.