Part 22

And then, one day, in a bleak sitting-room in the convent, he proposed to Agnes Holt.

"Agnes--" he cleared his throat, and he was honestly husky--"I suppose you have understood that my intentions toward you had a wedding in view. I can make you very happy."

"I must talk to the Mother Superior," she said, blushing furiously, her voice low.

He took her hand, and, opening a case, put a ring on her finger.

"I have talked to the Mother Superior, myself," he told her, "and that is all right." He drew her toward him, trembling a little, and on her forehead, with his mustached lips, he kissed her. He was suddenly still, and strangely cold. The touch of that skin reminded him of his last hand-shake with Leonard Holt.

"I must put an end to this obsession!" he told himself angrily, that night at his hotel, and he poured himself stiff drinks of Bourbon. Should he tell Father John? No! he decided. He knew Father John well for a relative and a friend and a genial companion with lovable peccadillos. But he knew, too, that the little clergyman could thunder with the thunder of Sinai. Marry the daughter of a man in whose death he was implicated! Never would Father John consent. The cleric would not understand. What could a priest know of business?

"It's no use going to him," Kerrigan decided.

He stopped a moment, thinking. And, half-laughing and half-nervous, he remembered a conversation with a friend of his, a great Wall Street operator, who combined the shrewdness of his kind with his kind's superstition, and had recourse in moments of tension to clairvoyants and tarot cards. He told Kerrigan of M. Sergius.

"He's a Greek monk--been expelled from Mount Athos for practising magic. What that man can tell you--"

"I suppose the next thing you 'll tell me is that he raises spirits."

"Listen! You just ask Cabot Montgomery how they found that will of Van Vleet's. Just ask him."

"There's one born every minute," Kerrigan laughed, "and some of 'em live."

"Listen, brother," Kerrigan was told, "this man does it for nothing. Do you get me? For nothing! If it's important enough he 'll do it. If not, outside. This is none of your country-fair crystal-gazers."

In Kerrigan, too, was that strain of superstition that all men laugh at and all men have. And right now as he sat in a mental, spiritual whirlwind, the memory of that conversation came to him as a preserver. After all, if he put things to the test-- Of course it was foolish; it was ridiculous, but still-- Nothing could come of it, by any manner of means, and yet--

"What's the harm?" he laughed.

At his time of life, he smiled, to put himself in the hands of a charlatan, to conjure up a spirit! In this century, with the telephone by his bedside, with the electric light overhead, to patronize a mumming magician! Nothing would, could happen.

But that nothing would be his answer. It would mean that his life was free forever, purged of the foolish innuendos, the lunatic accusations of outsiders; the morbid worries of his own abnormal mind. Free to go ahead and be married, and to live happily ever after.

When the butler had come for him silently, in the big blue limousine, one fine night of stars, he had gone with a little tremor in his veins. What would Father John and the gentle nuns and his little betrothed think of this mad excursion? Well, he had thrown down a gauntlet to Fate, and he would go through with it, regardless of the empty issue. There was a witticism on his lips as he entered the apartment; but the witticism froze.

Silently the butler ushered him into a dim room lighted by tapers. In a corner, silent, were Sergius and four young men. In the middle of the floor was a strange geometric design of circles and squares.

"Your butler just came for me--" Kerrigan felt the need of saying something, no matter how banal. In a sort of awe Kerrigan noted the white garments of the former monk, and of his disciples; the white shoes embroidered in red; the white crowns with the Hebrew letters.

"Do you still wish to go ahead with this?" the Russian asked him.

"Of course," Kerrigan uttered. His own voice seemed strange in his ears.

"You are to obey me in all things." The ex-monk's voice had a terrible hidden menace in it, "and if you move out of that circle you are worse than a dead man! Follow me."

They moved forward through an opening into the strange geometric design, and behind them on silent feet came the four attendants. Kerrigan noticed in a sort of daze the sword they carried, the trumpet, the book, and the lighted taper. About him, outside the circle, were strange paper symbols that seemed to cut him off from the world of sane and living men. The Magus lit a circle of censers about the outer square. He closed the circle and lifted one on high. He swung it toward the four corners of the square. An attendant handed him a sword. He stuck it in the ground. Another handed him a trumpet. He blew it brazenly.

"O Lord! Hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto Thee...."

Queer little whorls of smoke mounted through the air from the censers. The attendants had retired to the four points of the compass. The Magus raised the bare sword. His voice vibrated like an organ:

"O ye spirits! Ye I conjure by the power, wisdom, and virtue of the Spirit of God ... by the Holy Name of God Eheith ... by which Adam, having invoked, acquired the knowledge of all created things ... by the invisible name Yod, which had Abel invoked he would have escaped from the hand of Cain, his brother...."

It seemed to Kerrigan, standing there that about this circle was something that was not life, and that it was cut off from the security of things without as an island is cut off by water. About it the incense rose in shadowy vapors. The lights of the candles became dulled to a pale, diaphanous gold. There was something terrible about it all. He had imagined a grisly, morbid thing of quackery. This he could have stood smiling. But cold, stern majesty of ritual made his heart contract, as it might be oppressed in the nave of some great cathedral.

"... By the Two Tables of the Law; by the Seven Burning Candlesticks; by the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest may go..."

He wanted to raise his voice, to tell the man to stop this mummery. He wanted to walk to the door and slam it contemptuously, and to walk home through the cool mundane air. That would be an end for him of all this morbidness. But somehow he could not go. It was as though he were held by hypnosis to the spot.

"... That spirit who was known here as Leonard Holt, and with whom this man, for a sufficient reason, would converse. I conjure and invoke him in the name of the Lord Adonai. I conjure him in the name of the god El, strong and powerful...."

Fear arose in Kerrigan like a cold marsh vapor. He had come there in a braggadocio test of fate, to something whose being and name he knew not; to face it man to man, and to abide by the result. But he seemed now to be, as it were, in a dock, not to argue but to be judged, by that vagueness against which he had thrown down the gauntlet.

The Magus had fallen to his knees. Before him a disciple held an open book and a taper.

"In the name of Him who hath made the heavens and the earth, and who hath measured them in the hollow of His hand, enclosing the earth in three of His fingers..."

Without those circles now, Kerrigan imagined, things were hovering with a force as of a great wind. Things hurtled themselves against the mystic, powerful symbols like troopers against an impregnable fortalice. No longer was he certain that nothing could happen. If in a minute now, at any instant, the Thing that was being called would come, not the vacuous, impractical body, but a terrible being armed with the awful majesty of the dead, standing before him accusingly, with terrible eyes--standing like a flaming weapon between Kerrigan and the daughter who was flesh of him, who they said was murdered ... If! If! If! If! His skin contracted in a tense horripilation. His breath came shallow and panting, like that of a strained dog.

The Magus stood up. Again the sword flashed in his hand. He laid his hand on his heart. His voice rang vibrant with power. The acolytes bowed their heads.

"Here be the symbols of secret things--the standards, the banners, the ensigns of God the Conqueror; the arms of the Almighty One to compel the aerial potencies. I command absolutely--"

Across Kerrigan's mind thoughts raced like skipping rabbits; like reels of living pictures. He was being tried! His wrists shook as the blood pulsed through. Tried! Tried by ordeal of justice! By the terrible thing that made a dead man's wounds open when you touched him. By ordeal of justice! That was it. He felt his face contract into a horrible grimace. By ordeal of justice! There was a weight on his chest of as huge granite blocks, very cold. He could n't breathe. Through his heart there ran a pain like a knife....

"... By their power and virtue that he come near to us, into our presence from whatsoever part of the world he may be in--"

"Master!" An acolyte stepped forward and touched the exorcist's white samite sleeve. He pointed to the crumpled figure in the circle. "Master, this man is dead!"

End of Project Gutenberg's Changeling and Other Stories, by Donn Byrne