I Monsignor Maxwell’s Tale

I was still thinking over the Canon’s remarks as I came up into the sala on the following evening. They seemed to me eminently sensible; or, in other words, they exactly represented what I had always held myself, though I had never so expressed them even to my own mind.

I felt some interest, therefore, in the question as to the class to which Monsignor’s own story would be found to belong—whether to that which contains merely a series of phenomena or to that which appeared to corroborate the Christian Religion.

The rest of the company, with two or three strangers, were already in their places when I arrived, and Monsignor was enthroned in the centre chair, staring with a preoccupied look at the blazing fire. The Rector was on his right.

The conversation died away at last; there was a shifting of attitudes. Then the Canon looked at his watch, bending his sleek gray head sideways.

“We have twenty minutes,” he said in his terse way. Then he crossed his buckled feet and began without any preliminary comment.

“This happened to me in England. Naturally I shall not mention where it took place, nor how long ago. I knew a man, a Catholic from birth, of a remarkable faith and piety. He had tried his vocation in Religion again and again, for he seemed a born Religious, but his health had always broken down, and he had finally married. He had been told by his Director that his vocation was evidently to live in the world and as a layman. Whether I agree or disagree with the latter part of his advice is not to the point, but there was no question as to the former part of it. The man’s health simply could not stand it. But he led a most mortified and interior life with his wife in his London house, with a servant or two to look after them, and was present daily at mass at the church that I served then. His wife, too, was a very exceptional woman, utterly devoted to her husband, and I may say that I never paid them a visit without being very much the better for it.

“Now, he had a brother, a solicitor in a town in the North, also a Catholic, of course, whom I never saw, but who enters very materially into the story. We will call the brothers, if you please, Mr. James and Mr. Herbert, though I need not say that these were not their names.

“One morning after mass Mr. James came to me in the sacristy and said he wished to have a word with me, so I took him through into the presbytery and up into my own room. I could see that something was very much the matter with him.

“He took a letter out and gave it to me to read. It was from his brother, Mr. Herbert, and contained very sad news indeed—nothing else, in fact, than an announcement of his intention to secede from the Church. There was a story of a marriage difficulty, too, as there so often is in such cases. He had fallen in love with a woman of strong agnostic convictions, and nothing would induce her to marry him unless he conformed to her religion, such as it was. But, to do Mr. Herbert justice, I could see that there was a real loss of faith as well. There were two or three sheets filled with arguments that I could see were real to the man—or statements, perhaps, rather than arguments—against the Incarnation and the inspiration of the Scriptures and the authority of the Church, and so on, and I must confess that they were not mere clap-trap. The woman was plainly capable and shrewd, and had been talking to him, and both his heart and his head were seriously entangled.

“Well, I handed the letter back to Mr. James, and said what I could—recommended a book or two, promised to get him prayers, and so on, but the man waved it aside.

“‘Yes, yes, Father,’ he said; ‘I know, and I thank you, but I must do more than that. You don’t know what this means to me. I got the letter yesterday at midday, and I may say that I have done nothing but pray since, and this morning at mass I saw a light; at least, I think so, and I want your advice.’

“He was terribly excited, his eyes were bright and the lines in his face deeper than I had ever seen them, for he was only just entering middle age, and the papers shook in his hands. I did my best to quiet him, but it was no good. All his tranquillity, which had been one of his most striking virtues, was gone, and I could see that his whole being was rent.

“‘You don’t know what this means to me,’ he said again. ‘There is only one thing to be done. I must offer myself for him.’

“Well, I didn’t understand him at first, but we talked a little, and at last I found that the idea of mystical substitution had seized on his mind. He was persuaded that he must make an offering of himself to God, and ask to be allowed to bear the temptation instead of his brother. Of course, we know that that is one of the claims of the Contemplative, but, to tell the truth, I had never come across it before in my own experience.

“Well, he didn’t want my opinion upon the doctrine, and, indeed, I was glad he didn’t, for I knew nothing about it myself; but he wanted to know if I thought him justified in running the risk—for he seemed to take it as a matter of course that I believed it.

“‘Am I strong enough, Father?’ he asked. ‘Can I bear it? I cannot imagine my losing my faith,’ and a smile just flickered on his mouth and vanished again in trembling; ‘but—but God knows how weak I am.’

“Well, I reassured him on that point, at any rate, and told him that so far as his faith was concerned I considered it robust enough. To tell the truth, I suppose I was a little careless, because—because”—and Monsignor shifted a little in his chair and looked around—“well it was all so bewildering.

“Well, he soon went after that, saying that he would tell his wife, and imploring me to get prayers for him in his struggle, and I was left alone to think it over.

“For the next day or two he appeared at mass as usual, and just waited for me one morning to tell me that he had made the offering of himself before God. Then I had to go into the country on some business or other and was away from Monday to Saturday.

“Now, to tell the truth, I did not think of him very much; I was harassed and bothered myself about my business, and scarcely did more than just mention his name at the altar, and I am ashamed to say I completely forgot to get prayers elsewhere for his brother or himself, and I was entirely unprepared for what was waiting for me when I reached home on the Saturday evening.”

Monsignor paused a moment or two. He was evidently speaking with a certain difficulty. His brisk, business-like way of talking had just a tinge of feeling in it which it generally lacked, and he moved in his chair now and then with something almost like nervousness. The other priests were silent. The young Englishman was bending forward in the firelight with his chin on his hands, and old Father Stein had sat back in his chair very quiet and was shading his face from the candlelight.

“My housekeeper heard my key in the lock of the front door,” went on Canon Maxwell, “and was waiting for me in the hall. She told me that Mr. James’ wife had sent round four times for me that afternoon, saying she must have me at once on my return, and that any delay might be fatal. But it was not a case for the Last Sacraments, apparently. I was astonished by such phrases, but they were evidently word for word what she had said, for my housekeeper apologized for repeating them.

“‘There is something terribly the matter, Father,’ she said; ‘the last time the servant was crying, and said that her master was out of his mind.’

“Well, I ran into church and told my penitents there that they must wait, or go to my colleague, and that I had had a sick call and did not know how long I should be away; and then I ran straight out of the church and down to the house, which was three or four streets off. (You must forgive my telling you this story with so many details; but somehow it is the only way I can do it; it is all as vivid and clear as if it had happened last week.)...

“It was a November evening; all the lamps were lit as I passed out of the thoroughfare down the side road where his house was; here the pavements were empty, and I ran again as fast as I could down the street and up the steps that led to his front door. Even as I stood there out of breath I knew that something was seriously wrong.

“Down in the kitchen below, as I could see plainly through the lighted windows, the Irish cook had been kneeling with her face hidden on the table; and she was now staring up at me with her eyes red and her hair disordered as the peal of the bell died away. Then she was out in the area almost screaming:

“‘Oh, God bless you, Father!’ and then the door opened and I was in the hall.

“‘Where is he?’ I asked the maid, all panting with my run; and she told me, ‘In his study,’ and then I was up at the door in a moment, knocking, and then, without waiting, I went in.

“It was one of those little back rooms that you see sometimes in London houses, just at the top of the stairs that lead down to the servants’ quarters. There was a little garden at the back of the house and a side street beyond that. The curtains over the window had not been drawn, and a lamp shone into the room from the lane outside. But I did not understand that at the time. I was only aware that the room was dark, except for a pale light that lay across the floor and wall and on the door that I closed behind me.

“But the horror of the room was beyond anything that I have ever felt. It—it”—Monsignor hesitated—“it was almost physical, and yet I knew it was not, but it was the sense of some extraordinary influence, spiritual and on the point of—” He stopped again. “You must forgive me,” he said, “but I can put it in no way but this—it seemed on the point of expressing itself visibly or tangibly; at any rate, I felt my hair rise slowly as I stood there, and then I leaned back against the door and groped for the handle.”

Old Father Stein nodded gravely.

“I know, I know,” he said in his heavy voice; “it was so with me at Benares.”

“It was so dark at first,” went on Monsignor, “that I could see nothing but the outlines of the furniture. There was the writing table, and so on, immediately on my left, the fireplace beyond it in the left-hand wall, a tall bureau beside the window opposite me. Then I felt my hand seized and gripped in the dark, and I looked down, horribly startled, and saw that his wife had been kneeling at his prie-dieu on the right, and had turned and clutched my hand as she saw me in the light of the street lamp, but she said nothing, and her silence was the worst of all.

“I looked again round the room and then suddenly gasped and, I must confess, nearly screamed, because quite close to me the man sat and stared up at me. I had been confused as I came in, and I believe now that I only had not seen him, because I had taken the dark outline of his body and the whiteness of his face to be a little side-table with papers upon it that often stood by his writing-place.

“Well, however that was, here was the man quite close to me, sitting bolt upright, with the lamplight falling on that deadly face, all lined as it was, with patches of dark beneath those awful, bright eyes.”

Monsignor stopped again, and I could see that the hand on his chair arm twitched sharply once or twice.

“Well, two or three times, I should think, I opened my mouth to speak, and I have never known before or since what it was literally not to be able to do it. It was as if a hand gripped my throat each time. I suppose it was a kind of hysterical contraction of the muscles. I understood then why the wife could not speak. The only emotion I was conscious of was an insane desire to get out of the room and the house, away from that terrifying silence and oppressiveness; and, under God, I believe that the one thing that kept me there was that frightful grip on my fingers, that tightened as if the wife read my thoughts even as the desire surged up.

“I stood there, I suppose, half a minute more before I moved or spoke, and then I made a little motion, and drew my fingers out of hers, and made the sign of the cross, and even then I dared not speak. But the face remained still in that tense quietness and the bright, sunken eyes never flinched or stirred.

“Then I dropped on my knees; and at last with really an extraordinary effort, as if I was breaking something, I managed to speak and say a prayer or two—the Our Father and the Hail, Mary; I could remember nothing else. Then I glanced at him quickly, and he had not stirred, but was watching me with a kind of bitter indifference—that is all I can say of it. I went on with the creed, finished it, said Amen, and then one loud, harsh bark of laughter broke from him, and—and—I could swear that something else laughed, too.”

A sharp exclamation broke from Father Brent, and a kind of sigh from the French priest as Monsignor suddenly sat up and struck his hand on his knee at his last word, and my own heart leaped and stood still, while my nerves jangled like struck wires.

“There, there,” said the Rector; “our nerves are out of order; be kind to us, Monsignor.”

He shook his head.

“But I must tell you,” he said, “though I hardly know what words to use.... This other laughter was not like his. I could not swear that—that there was a vibration of sound. It might have been interior, but it was there; it was objective and external to me.... Only I was absolutely convinced that there was laughter, neither mine, nor the man’s, nor his wife’s. There; that is all I can say of it.”

He paused a moment.

“Well,” he went on, “we got him upstairs at last, and on his bed. I tell you it was a very odd relief to get out of the room downstairs. He had not slept, his wife whispered to me as we went up, for four nights—not since the Monday, in fact, and had scarcely eaten, either. There was no time to hear more, for he turned round as he walked up and looked at us as we held him, and there was no more talking with that face before us. And there we sat beside him in his bedroom—he lay quiet with closed eyes—and I did not dare to leave him till three or four in the morning, when I was nearly dead with weariness. His wife made me go then, and promised to send again if there was any change.

“Well, during the sung mass, at which I was not officiating, the message came, and I was back at his house directly. There had been a change; he was now willing to talk. He looked ghastly, but his wife told me that she thought he had slept an hour or two after I had left.

“Well, we talked, and I found that the man’s faith was gone—or perhaps it is safer to say completely obscured. I scarcely know how to express it, but it was as if he had practically no conception of what I was talking about.

“‘I believed it once,’ he said; ‘yes, I am sure I did, but I can’t imagine why or how.’”

“‘Then what is all this trouble of mind about?’ I asked.

“‘Why,’ he said, ‘why, if it is not true, what is left?’

“I didn’t quite see what he meant, and asked him.

“‘You,’ he said, and just touched me with his finger; ‘you and I,’ and he touched himself, ‘and—and—all this,’ and he tapped the table, ‘and—all that,’ and he flung his arm out toward the window and the chimney-pots and the bustling thoroughfare. ‘All of it—all of it—what does it all mean; what is the good of it?’

“It was a piteous thing to see his face, the blackness and the misery of his despair at an empty, meaningless world and a self that could do nothing but writhe and cry in the dark.

“You see the whole thing for him stood or fell by God, lived and moved in Him; now God was gone, and what was left?

“Well, of course I reminded him of his offering of himself to God for his brother. God had accepted it, I told him; and he just laughed miserably in my face.

“‘Do you think Herbert suffered like this?’ he asked.

“Well, I was tired and bewildered, and this seemed to me an answer. Of course you all see the explanation.”

“The other suffered less because his faith was less,” put in Father Brent instantly.

“Exactly,” said Monsignor. “Well, I am ashamed to say I didn’t see that, at least not clearly enough to put it to him; but I did point out that it was of the very essence of his contract that he should suffer severely in the very manner in which he was suffering, and that the coincidence was remarkable; and, further, that the fact that he was in such distress showed that God was something to him after all. I don’t know even then that I accepted the whole thing as being quite real. But what else could I say?... Well, he smiled again at that.

“‘Have you never regretted a happy dream?’ he said.

“Well, I am wearying you,” said Monsignor, looking at his watch, “but I am just at the end. I went to that man every day for, I suppose, two or three hours for five or six weeks, and it seemed practically useless. I had never realized before so completely that faith was a gift which can be given or withdrawn; that it is something infused into us, not produced by us. Finally the man died of congestion of the brain.”

“Good Lord!” said a voice.

“Yes,” said Canon Maxwell, blowing down his pipe, “those—those were my sentiments.”

“Monsignor! Do you mean he died without faith?”

“Father Jenks, I gave him the sacraments. He asked for them. I did not press too many questions; I thought it best to leave well alone.”

“And the brother?”

“Oh, the brother—Mr. Herbert—was at the funeral, and informed me that the marriage was broken off, and I never heard of his apostasy. And there was one other person who contributed to the interest of the whole affair, and that was the wife.”

“What happened to her?”

“She became a Poor Clare. She told me that self-immolation was the only possible act for her after what she had seen and known.”

There was a long silence.

“Well, well, well,” said Father Bianchi.