Part 7

“When I came back from the sacristy again there was an old woman waiting for me, who told me that her name was Giovannina. I had seen her before as she kissed my hands. She was as old as the _parrocho_ himself--I cannot tell how old--yellow and wrinkled as a monkey.

“She put five lire into my hands.

“‘Five masses, Father,’ she said, ‘for a soul in purgatory.’

“‘And the name?’

“‘That does not matter,’ she said. ‘And will you say them, my Father, at the altar of S. Espedito?’

“I took the money and went off, and as I went down the church, I saw her looking after me, as if she wished to speak, but she made no sign, and I went home; and I had a dozen other masses to say, some for my friends, and a couple that the _parrocho_ gave me, and those, therefore, I began to say first. When I had said the fifth of the twelve, Giovannina waited for me again at the door of the sacristy. I could see that she was troubled.

“‘Have you not said them, my Father?’ she asked. ‘He is here still.’

“I did not notice what she said, except the question, and I said no; I had had others to say first. She blinked at me with her old eyes a moment, and I was going on, but she stopped me again.

“‘Ah! Say them at once, my Father,’ she said; ‘he is waiting.’

“Then I remembered what she had said before and I was angry.

“‘Waiting!’ I said; ‘and so are thousands of poor souls.’

“‘Ah, but he is so patient,’ she said; ‘he has waited so long.’

“I said something sharp, I forget what, but the _parrocho_ had told me not to hang about and talk nonsense to women, and I was going on, but she took me by the arm.

“‘Have you not seen him too, my Father?’ she said.

“I looked at her, thinking she was mad, but she held me by the arm and blinked up at me, and seemed in her senses. I told her to tell me what she meant, but she would not. At last I promised to say the masses at once. The next morning I began the masses, and said four of them, and at each the old woman was there close to me, for I said them at the altar of S. Espedito that was in the nave, as she had asked me, and I had a great devotion to him as well, and she was always at her chair just outside the altar-rails. I scarcely saw her, of course, for I was a young priest and had been taught not to lift my eyes when I turned round, but on the fourth day I looked at her at the _Orate fratres_ and she was staring not at me or the altar, but at the corner on the left. I looked there when I turned, but there was nothing but the glass case with the silver hearts in it to S. Espedito.

“That was on a Friday, and in the evening I went to the church again to hear confessions, and when I was done, the old woman was there again.

“‘They are nearly done, my Father?’ she said, ‘and you will finish them to-morrow?’

“I told her Yes; but she made me promise that whatever happened I would do so.

“Then she went on, ‘Then I will tell you, my Father, what I would not before. I do not know the man’s name, but I see him each day during mass at that altar. He is in the corner. I have seen him there ever since the church was built.’

“Well, I knew she was mad then, but I was curious about it, and asked her to describe him to me; and she did so. I expected a man in a sheet or in flames or something of the kind, but it was not so. She described to me a man in a dress she did not know--a tunic to the knees, bareheaded, with a short sword in his hand. Well, then I saw what she meant, she was thinking of S. Espedito himself. He was a Roman soldier, you remember, gentlemen?

“‘And a cuirass?’ I said. ‘A steel breastplate and helmet?’

“Then she surprised me.

“‘Why, no, Father; he has nothing on his head or breast, and there is a bull beside him.’

“Well, gentlemen, I was taken aback by that. I did not know what to say.”

Monsignor leant swiftly forward.

“Mithras,” he said abruptly.

The Italian smiled.

“Monsignor knows everything,” he said.

Then I broke in, because I was more interested than I knew.

“Tell me, Monsignor, what was Mithras?”

The priest explained shortly. It was an Eastern worship, extraordinarily pure, introduced into Italy a little after the beginning of the Christian era. Mithras was a god, filling a position not unlike that of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He offered a perpetual sacrifice, and through that sacrifice souls were enabled to rise from earthly things to heavenly, if they relied upon it and accompanied that faith by works of discipline and prayer.

“I beg your pardon, Father Bianchi,” he ended.

The Italian smiled again.

“Yes, Monsignor,” he said, “I know that now, but I did not know it for many years afterwards, and I know something else now that I did not know then. Well, to return.

“I told my old woman that she was dreaming, that it could not be so, that there was no room for a bull in the corner, that it was a picture of S. Espedito that she was thinking of.

“‘And why did you not get the masses said before?’ I asked.

“She smiled rather slyly at me then.

“‘I did get five said once before,’ she said, ‘in Naples, but they did him no good. And when once again I told the _parrocho_ here, he told me to be off; he would not say them.’

“And she had waited for a young priest, it seemed, and had determined not to tell him the story till the masses were said, and had saved up her money meanwhile.

“Well, I went home, and got to talking with the old priest, and led him on, so that he thought that he had introduced the subject, and presently he told me that when the foundation of the church had been laid forty years before, they had found an old cave in the hill, with heathen things in it. He knew no more than that about it, but he told me to fetch a bit of pottery from a cupboard, and showed it me, and there was just the tail of a bull upon it, and an eagle.”

Monsignor leaned forward again.

“Just so,” he said, “and the bull was lying down?”

The Italian nodded, and was silent.

We all looked at him. It seemed a tame ending, I thought. Then Father Brent put our thoughts into words.

“That is not all?” he said.

Father Bianchi looked at him sharply, and at all of us, but said nothing.

“Ah! that is not all,” said the other again persistently.

“Bah!” cried the Italian suddenly. “It was not all, if you will have it so. But the rest is madness, as mad as Giovannina herself. What I saw, I saw because she made me expect it. It was nothing but the shadow, or the light in the glass case.”

A perceptible thrill ran through us all. The abrupt change from contempt to seriousness was very startling.

“Tell us, Father,” said the English priest; “we shall think no worse of you for it. If it was only the shadow, what harm is there in telling it?”

“Indeed you must finish,” went on Monsignor; “it is in the contract.”

The Italian looked round again, frowned, smiled and laughed uneasily.

“I have told it to no one till to-day,” he said, “but you shall hear it. But it was only the shadow--you understand that?”

A chorus, obviously insincere, broke out from the room.

“It was only the shadow, Padre Bianchi.”

Again the priest laughed shortly; then the smile faded, and he went on.

“I went down early the next morning, before dawn, and I made my meditation before the Blessed Sacrament; but I could not help looking across once or twice at the corner by S. Espedito’s altar; it was too dark to see anything clearly; but I could make out the silver hearts in the glass case. When I had finished Giovannina came in.

“I could not help stopping by her chair as I went to rest.

“‘Is there anything there?’ I asked.

“She shook her head at me.

“‘He is never there till mass begins,’ she said.

* * * * *

“The sacristy door that opens out of doors was set wide as I came past it in my vestments; and the dawn was coming up across the hills, all purple.”

Monsignor murmured something, and the priest stopped.

“I beg your pardon,” said Monsignor; “but that was the time the sacrifice of Mithras was offered.”

“When I came out into the church,” went on the priest, “it was all gray in the light of the dawn, but the chapels were still dark. I went up the steps, not daring to look in the corner, and set the vessels down. As I was spreading the corporal the server came up and lighted the candles. And still I dared not look. I turned by the right and came down, and stood waiting till he knelt beside me.

“Then I found I could not begin. I knew what folly it was, but I was terribly frightened. I heard the server whisper, _In nomine Patris_....

“Then I shut my eyes tight, and began.

“Well, by the time I had finished the preparation, I felt certain that something was watching me from the corner. I told myself, as I tell myself now,” snapped the Italian fiercely--“I told myself it was but what the woman had told me. And then at last I opened my eyes to go up the steps, but I kept them down, and only saw the dark corner out of the side of my eyes.

“Then I kissed the altar and began.

“Well, it was not until the Epistle that I understood that I should have to face the corner at the reading of the Gospel; but by then I do not think I could have faced it directly, even if I had wished.

“So when I was saying the _Munda cor_ in the centre, I thought of a plan, and as I went to read the Gospel I put my left hand over my eyes, as if I were in pain, and read the Gospel like that. And so all through the mass I went on; I always dropped my eyes when I had to turn that way at all, and I finished everything and gave the blessing.

“As I gave it, I looked at the old woman, and she was kneeling there, staring across at the corner; so I knew that she was still dreaming she saw something.

“Then I went to read the last Gospel.”

The priest was plainly speaking with great difficulty; he passed his hands over his lips once or twice. We were all quiet.

“Well, gentlemen, courage came to me then; and as I signed the altar I looked straight into the corner.”

He stopped again, and began resolutely once more; but his voice rang with hysteria.

“Well, gentlemen, you understand that my head was full of it now, and that the corner was dark, and that the shadows were very odd.”

“Yes, yes, Padre Bianchi,” said Monsignor easily, “and what did the shadows look like?”

The Italian gripped the arms of the chair, and screamed his answer.

“I will not tell you, I will not tell you. It was but the shadow. My God, why have I told you the tale at all?”

VII

_Father Jenks’ Tale_

I have not yet had occasion to describe Father Jenks, the Ontario priest; partly, I think, because he had not previously distinguished himself by anything but silence, and partly because he was so true to his type that I had scarcely noticed even that.

It was not until the following evening, when he was seated in the central chair of the group, that I really observed him sufficiently to take in his characteristics with any definiteness and to see how wholly he was American. He was clean-shaven, with a heavy mouth, square jaw, and an air of something that I must call dulness, relieved only by a spark of alertness in each of his eyes, as he leaned back and began his story. He spoke deliberately, in an even voice, and as he spoke looked steadily a little above the fire; his hands lay together on his right knee, which was crossed over his left, and I noticed a large, elastic-sided boot cocked toward the warmth. I knew that he had passed a great part of his early life in England, and I was not surprised to observe that he spoke with hardly a trace of American accent or phraseology.

“I, too, am a man of one story,” he said, “and I dare say you may think it not worth the telling. But it impressed me.”

He looked round with heavy, amused eyes as if to apologize.

“It was when I was in England, in the eighties. I was in the Cotswolds. You know them, perhaps?”

Again he looked round. Monsignor Maxwell jerked the ash off his cigarette impatiently. This American’s air of leisure was a little tiresome.

“I lived in a cottage,” went on the other, “at the edge of Minchester, not two hundred yards from the old church. My own schism shop, as the parson called it once or twice in the local paper, was a tin building behind my house; it was not beautiful. It was a kind of outlandish stranger beside the church, and the parson made the most of that. I never was able to understand.”

He broke off again and pressed his lips in a reminiscent smile.

“Now, all that part of the Cotswolds is like a table; it is flat at the top, with steep sides sloping down into the valleys. The great houses stand mostly half way down these slopes. It is too windy on the top for their trees and gardens. The Dominicans have a house a few miles from Minchester up one of the opposite hills; and I would go over there to my confession on Saturdays and stay an hour or two over tea, talking to one of them. It was there that I heard the tale of the house I am going to speak about.

“This was a house that stood not two miles from my own village--a great place, built half way down one of the slopes. It had been a Benedictine house once, though there was little enough of that part left; most of it was red brick with twisted chimneys; but on the lawn that sloped down toward the wood and the stream at the bottom of the valley there was the west arch of the nave still standing, with the doorway beneath and a couple of chapels on either side. Mrs.--er--Arbuthnot we will call her, if you please--had laid it out with a rockery beneath; and once I saw her from the hill behind drinking tea with her friends in one of the chapels.

“Then the dining-room, I heard from the Dominicans, had been the abbot’s chapel. This, too, was what they told me. The house had been shut up for forty years and had a bad name. It had once been a farm, but things had happened there--the sons had died, a famous horse bred there had broken its neck somehow on the lawn. Then another family had taken it from the owner, and the only son of the lot, too, had died; and then folks began to talk about a curse; and the oldest inhabitant was trotted out as usual to make mischief and gossip; and the end was, the house was shut up.

“Then the owner had built on to it. He pulled down a bit more of the ruins, meaning to live in it himself, and then his son went up.”

The Canadian smiled with one corner of his mouth.

“This is what I heard from the Dominicans, you know.”

Father Brent looked up swiftly.

“They are right, though,” he said. “I know the house and others like it.”

“Yes, Father,” said the other priest; “your island has its points.”

He recrossed his legs and drew out his pipe and pouch.

“Well, as this priest says, there are other houses like it. Otherwise I could scarcely tell this tale. It’s too ancient and feudal to happen in my country.”

He paused so long to fill his pipe that Father Maxwell sighed aloud.

“Yes, Monsignor,” said the priest without looking up, “I am going on immediately.”

He put his pipe into the corner of his mouth, took out his matches and went on.

“Well, Mrs. Arbuthnot had taken the house a year before I came to Minchester. She was what the Dominicans called a frivolous woman; but I called her real solid before the end. What they meant was that she had parties down there, and tea in the chapel, and a dresser with blue plates where the altar used to stand in the abbot’s place, and a vestment for her fire-screen, and all that; and a couple of chestnuts that she used to drive about the country with, and a groom in boots, and a couple of fellows with powdered hair to help her in and out.

“Well, I saw all that at a garden-party she gave, and I must say we got on very well. I had seen her before once or twice out of my window on Sunday morning going along with a morocco prayer-book with a cross on it, and a bonnet on the back of her head. Then I showed her round the old church one day with some visitors of hers, and she left a card on me next day.

“On the day of the garden-party I saw the house, and the blue china and the rest, and she asked me what I thought of it all, and I said it was very nice; and she asked me whether I thought it wrong, with a sort of cackle; and I told her she had better follow her own religious principles and let me follow mine, and not have any exchanges. She told me then I was a sensible man, and called up her son to introduce us. He was a fellow of twenty or so, a bright lad, up at Oxford. He was just engaged to be married, too--that was why they had the party--and when I saw his girl, too, I thought things looked pretty unwholesome for the old curse, and I think I said so to the lady. She thought me more sensible than ever after that, and I heard her telling another old body what I had said.”

The Canadian paused again to strike a match, and I saw the corners of his mouth twitching either with the effort to draw or with amusement; I scarcely knew which. When the pipe was well alight he went on.

“It was on the last Sunday of September that year that I heard the young man was ill, and that the marriage was put off. I remember it well, partly because they were having a high time at the church, decorating it all for Michaelmas, which was next day, with the parson pretending it was for Harvest Festival, as they always do. I had seen the pumpkins go in the day before, and wondered where they put them all. I went up to the churchyard after mass to have a look, and was nearly knocked down by the parson. I began to say something or other, but he ran past me, through from the vicarage, with his coat-tails flying and his man after him. But I stopped the man, and got out of him that Archie was ill, and that the parson was sent for.

“Well, then I went back home and sat down.”

The priest drew upon his pipe in silence a moment or two.

I felt rather impressed. His airy manner of talking was shot now with a kind of seriousness, and I wondered what was coming next.

He went on almost immediately.

“I heard a bit more as the day wore on. One of my people stayed after Catechism to tell me that the young man was worse, that a doctor had come from Stroud, and another wired for from London.

“Well, I waited. I thought I knew what would happen. I thought I had seen a bit more in the old lady than the Dominicans had seen, but what I was going to say to her I knew no more than the dead.

“Then that night as I was going to bed--I had just said Matins and Lauds for Michaelmas day--the message came.

“I was half way upstairs when I heard a knocking at the door, and I went down again and opened it. There stood one of the fellows I had seen on the box of the carriage, and he was out of breath with running. He had a lantern in his hand, because there was a thick mist that night up from the valley.

“He gave me the lady’s compliments, and would I step down? Master Archie was ill. That was all.”

“Well, in a minute we were off into the thick of the mist. I took nothing with me but my stole, for it was not a proper sick call. We said little or nothing to each other. He just told me that Master Archie had been taken ill about ten o’clock, quite suddenly. He didn’t know what it was.”

The priest paused again for a moment.

Then he went on almost apologetically.

“You know how it is, gentlemen, when something runs in your head. It may be a tune or a sentence. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed how strong it is sometimes when you have something on your mind.

“Well, what ran in my head was a bit of the office I had just said. It was this. I have never forgotten it since:

“_Stetit Angelus juxta oram templi habens thuribulum aureum in manu sua._”

He said it again, and then added:

“It comes frequently in the office, you remember. It was very natural to remember it.

* * * * *

“Well, in half an hour we were at the top of the hill above the house. I think there must have been a moon, because we could see the mist round us like smoke, but nothing of the house, not even the lights in the top floors below us. It was all white and misty.

“Then we started down through the iron gate and the plantation. I could have lost my way again and again but for the fellow with me, and still we saw nothing of the house till we were close to it on one side; and then I looked up and saw a window like a great yellow door overhead.

“We came round to the front of the house, and there was a carriage there drawn up, with the lamps smoking in the mist, and as we came up I saw that the horses were steaming and blowing. The driver had just brought the London doctor from Stroud and was waiting for orders, I suppose.”

The Canadian paused again.

I was more interested than ever. His descriptions had become queerly particular, and I wondered why. I did not understand yet. The rest, too, were very quiet.

“We went in through the hall past the stuffed bear that held the calling cards and all that, you know, and then turned in to the left to the big dining-room that had been the Abbot’s chapel. Some fool had left the window open. I suppose they were too flurried to think of it. At any rate, the mist had got in, and made the gas-jets overhead look high up like great stars.

“There was a door open upstairs somewhere, and I could hear whispering.

“Well, we went up the staircase that opened on one side below the gallery, that they had put up above the eastern end. The footpace was still there, you know, below the gallery, and the sideboard stood there.

“We came out on to the gallery presently, and my man stopped.

“Then some one came out with Mrs. Arbuthnot and the door closed. She saw me standing there, and I thought she was going to scream; but the fellow with her in the fur coat--he was the London doctor I heard afterward--took her by the arm.

“Well, she was quiet enough then, but as white as death. She had her bonnet on still, just as she must have put it on to go to church with in the morning, when the young man was taken ill. She beckoned me along, and I went.

“As I was going past the doctor he first shook his head at me, and then whispered as I went on to keep her quiet. I knew there was no hope then for Archie, and I was sorry, very sorry, gentlemen.”

The priest shook his own head meditatively once or twice, leaned forward and spat accurately into the heart of the fire.

“Well, it was a big room that I went into, and to tell the truth, I left the door open this time, because I was startled by the screen at the bed and all that.

“The screen stood in the corner by the window to keep off the draught; and the bed to one side of it. I could just catch a glimpse of the lad’s face on the pillow and the local doctor close by him. There was a woman or two there as well.

“But the worst was that the lad was talking and moaning out loud, but I didn’t attend to him then, and besides, Mrs. Arbuthnot had gone through by another door, and I went after her.

“It was a kind of dressing-room--Archie’s perhaps. There was a tall glass and silver things on the table by the window, and a candle or two burning. She turned round there and faced me, and she looked so deadly that I forgot all about the lad for the present. I just looked out to catch her when she fell. I had seen a woman like that once or twice before.

“Well, she said all that I expected--all about the curse and that, and the sins of the fathers; and it was all her fault for taking the beastly place, and how she would swear to clear out--I couldn’t get a word in--and at last she said she’d become a Catholic if the boy lived.

“I did get a word in then, and told her not to talk nonsense. The Church didn’t want people like that. They must believe first and so on, and all the while I was looking out to catch her.

“Well, she didn’t hear a word I said, but she sat down all on a sudden, and I sat down, too, opposite her, and all the while the boy’s voice grew louder and louder from the next room.