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Horatio Alger, Jr. - "Ballads"

Hermann Hesse - "Siddhartha"

John Fox Jr. - "A Knight of the Cumberland"

Sara Teasdale - "Love Songs, by Sara Teasdale"

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"We must remember that our conviction of a double existence rests
on the revelation of God through His Son, not on a mere, vague
desire toward a future life common to all sorts and conditions of
men. They suspected and hoped; we know. Science may explain that
general desire if it pleases; it cannot explain, or destroy, the
triumphant certainty born of faith. Spiritualism has succeeded to
the biblical record of 'possession,' and I, for my part, of course
prefer what my Bible teaches. I do not myself find that the
'mediums' of modern spiritualism speak with tongues worthy of much
respect up to the present, and it is certain that rogues abound;
but the question is clamant. It demands to be discussed by our
spiritual guides and the fathers of the Church. Already they
recognize this fact and are beginning to approach it--some priests
in a right spirit, some--as at the Church Congress last month--in
a wrong spirit."

"A wrong spirit, May?" asked Sir Walter.

"In my opinion, a wrong spirit," answered the other. "There is
much, even in a meeting of the Church Congress, that makes truly
religious men mourn. They laughed when they should have learned.
I refer to incidents and criticisms of last October. There the
Dean of Manchester, who shows how those, who have apparently spoken
to us from Beyond through the mouths of living persons, describe
their different states and conditions. Stainton Moses gave us a
vision of heaven such as an Oxford don and myself might be supposed
to appreciate.

"Raymond describes a heaven wherein the average second lieutenant
could find all that, for the moment, he needs. But why laugh at
these things? If we make our own hells, shall we not make our own
heavens? We must go into the next world more or less cloyed and
clogged with the emotions and interests of this one. It is
inevitable. We cannot instantly throw off a lifetime of
interests, affections, and desires. We are still human and pass
onward as human beings, not as angels of light.

"Therefore, we may reasonably suppose that the Almighty will temper
the wind to the shorn lamb, nor impose too harsh and terrible a
transformation upon the souls of the righteous departed, but lead
one and all, by gradual stages and through not unfamiliar conditions,
to the heaven of ultimate and absolute perfection that He has
designed for His conscious creatures."

"Well spoken," said Sir Walter.

But Mr. May had not finished. He proceeded to the immediate point.

"Shall it be denied that devils have been cast out in the name of
God?" he asked. "And if from human tenements, then why not from
dwellings made with human hands also? May not a house be similarly
cleansed as well as a soul? This unknown spirit--angel or fiend,
or other sentient being--is permitted to challenge mankind and
draw attention to its existence. A mystery, I grant, but its Maker
has now willed that some measure of this mystery shall be revealed
to us. We are called to play our part in this spirit's existence.

"It would seem that it has endured a sort of imprisonment in this
particular room for more years than we know, and it may actually
be the spirit of some departed human being condemned, for causes
that humanity has forgotten, to remain within these walls. The
nameless and unknown thing cries passionately to be liberated, and
is permitted by its Maker to draw our terrified attention upon
itself by the exercise of destructive functions transcending our
reason.

"God, then, has willed that, through the agency of devout and
living men, the unhappy phantom shall now be translated and moved
from this environment for ever; and to me the appointed task is
allotted. So I believe, as firmly as I believe in the death and
resurrection of the Lord. Is that clear to you, Sir Walter?"

"It is. You have made it convincingly clear."

"So be it, then. I, too, Mary, am not dead to the meaning of
science in its proper place. We may take an illustration of what
I have told you from astronomy. As comets enter our system from
realms of which we have no knowledge, dazzle us a little, awaken
our speculations and then depart, so may certain immortal spirits
also be supposed to act. We entangle them possibly in our gross
air and detain them for centuries, or moments, until their Creator's
purpose in sending them is accomplished. Then He takes the means
to liberate them and set them on their eternal roads and to their
eternal tasks once more."

The listening woman, almost against her reason, felt herself
beginning to share these assumptions. But that they were fantastic,
unsupported by any human knowledge, and would presently involve an
experiment full of awful peril to the life of the man who uttered
them, she also perceived. Yet her reasonable caution and
conventional distrust began to give way a little under the priest's
magnetic voice, his flaming eyes, his positive and triumphant
certainty of truth. He burned with his inspiration, and she felt
herself powerless to oppose any argument founded on facts against
the mystic enthusiasm of such religious faith. His honesty and
fervor could not, however, abate Mary's acute fear. Her father
had entirely gone over to the side of the devotee and she knew it.

"It is well we have your opportunity to-night," he said, "for had
the police arrived, out of their ignorance they might deny it
to you."

Yet Mary fought on against them. In despair she appealed to Masters.
He had been an officer's orderly in his day, and when he left the
Army and came to Chadlands, he never departed again. He was an
intelligent man, who occupied a good part of his leisure in reading.
He set Sir Walter and Mary first in his affections; and that Mary
should have won him so completely she always held to be a triumph,
since Abraham Masters had no regard or admiration for women.

"Can't you help me, Masters?" she begged. "I'm sure you know as
well as I do that this ought not to happen."

The butler eyed his master. He was handing coffee, but none took it.

"By all means speak," said Sir Walter. "You know how I rate your
judgment, Masters. You have heard Mr. May upon this terrible
subject, and should be convinced, as I am."

Masters was very guarded.

"It's not for me to pass an opinion, Sir Walter. But the reverend
gentleman, no doubt, understands such things. Only there's the
Witch of Endor, if I may mention the creature, she fetched up more
than she bargained for. And I remember a proverb as I heard in
India, from a Hindoo. I've forgot the lingo now, but I remember
the sense. They Hindoos say that if you knock long enough at a
closed door, the devil will open it--excuse my mentioning such a
thing; but Hindoos are awful wise."

"And what then, Masters? I know not who may open the door of this
mystery; but this I know, that, in the Name of the Most High God,
I can face whatever opens it."

"I ain't particular frightened neither, your reverence," said
Masters. "But I wouldn't chance it alone, being about average
sinful and not near good enough to tackle that unknown horror hid
up there single-handed. I'd chance it, though, in high company
like yours. And that's something."

"It is, Masters, and much to your credit," declared Sir Walter.
"For that matter, I would do the like. Indeed, I am willing to
accompany Mr. May."

While Septimus May shook his head and Mary trembled, the butler
spoke again.

"But there's nobody else in this house would. Not even Fred
Caunter, who doesn't know the meaning of fear, as you can testify,
Sir Walter. But he's fed up with the Grey Room, if I may say so,
and so's the housekeeper, Mrs. Forbes, and so's Jane Bond. Not
that they would desert the ship; but there's others that be going
to do so. I may mention that four maids and Jackson intend to give
notice to-morrow. Ann Maine, the second housemaid, has gone
to-night. Her father fetched her. Excuse me mentioning it, but
Mrs. Forbes will give you the particulars to-morrow, if you please."

"Hysteria," declared Sir Walter. "I don't blame them. It is
natural. Everybody is free to go, if they desire to do so. But
tell them what you have heard to-night, Masters. Tell them that
no good Christian need fear to rest in peace. Explain that Mr. May
will presently enter the Grey Room in the name of God; and bid them
pray on their knees for him before they go to sleep."

Masters hesitated.

"All the same, I very much wish the reverend gentleman would give
Scotland Yard a chance. If they fall, then he can wipe their eye
after--excuse my language, Sir Walter. I've read a lot about the
spirits, being terrible interested in 'em, as all human men must
be; and I hear that running after 'em often brings trouble. I
don't mean to your life, Sir Walter, but to your wits. People get
cracked on 'em and have to be locked up. I stopped everybody
frightening themselves into 'sterics at dinner to-day; but you
could see how it took 'em; and, whether or no, I do beg Mr. May to
be so kind as to let me sit up along with him to-night.

"You never hear of two people getting into trouble with these here
customers, and while he was going for this blackguard ghost in the
name of the Lord, I could keep my weather eye lifting for trouble.
'Tis a matter for common sense and keeping your nerve, in my
opinion, and we don't want another death on our hands, I suppose.
There'll be half the mountebanks and photograph men and newspaper
men in the land here to-morrow, and 'twill take me all my time to
keep 'em from over-running the house. Because if they could come
in their scores for the late captain--poor gentleman!--what won't
they try now this here famous detective has been done in?"

"Henry deplored the same thing," said Mary. "And I answer again,
as I answered then," replied Septimus May. "You mean well, Sir
Walter, and your butler means well; but you propose an act in
direct opposition to the principle that inspires me."

"What do you expect to happen?" asked Mary. "Do you suppose you
will see something, and that something will tell you what it is,
and why it killed dear Tom?"

"That, at any rate, would be a very great blessing to the living,"
said her father.

"The least the creature could do, in my humble opinion," ventured
Masters.

But Septimus May deprecated such curiosity.

"Hope for no such thing, and do not dwell upon what is to happen
until I am able to tell you what does happen," he answered. "Allow
no human weakness, no desire to learn the secrets of another world,
to distract your thoughts. I am only concerned with what I know
beyond possibility of doubt is my duty--to be entered upon as
swiftly as possible. I hear my call in the very voice of the wind
shouting round the house to-night. But beyond my duty I do not seek.
Whether information awaits me, whether some manifestation indicating
my success and valuable to humanity will be granted, I cannot say.
I do not stop now to think about that.

"Alone I do this thing--yet not alone, for my hand is in my Maker's
hand. Your part will not be to accompany me. Let each man and
woman be informed of what I do, and let them lift a petition for
me, that my work be crowned with success. But let them not assume
that to-morrow I shall have anything to impart. The night may be
one of peace within, though so stormy without. I may pray till
dawn with no knowledge how my prayer prospers, or I may be called
to face a being that no human eye has ever seen and lived. These
things are hidden from us."

"You are wonderful, and it is heartening to meet with such mighty
faith," replied Sir Walter. "You have no fear, no shadow of
hesitation or doubt at the bottom of your mind?"

"None. Only an overmastering desire to obey the message that
throbs in my heart. I will be honest with you, for I recognize
that many might doubt whether you were in the right to let me face
this ordeal. But I am driven by an overwhelming mandate. Did I
fear, or feel one tremor of uncertainty, I would not proceed; for
any wavering might be fatal and give me helpless into the power of
this watchful spirit; but I am as certain of my duty as I am that
salvation awaits the just man.

"I believe that I shall liberate this arrested being with cathartic
prayer and cleansing petition to our common Maker. And have I not
the spirit of my dead boy on my side? Could any living man, however
well intentioned, watch with me and over me as he will? Fear
nothing; go to your rest, and let all who would assist me do so on
their knees before they sleep."

Even Masters echoed some of this fierce and absolute faith when he
returned to the servants' hall.

"His eyes blaze," he said. "He's about the most steadfast man ever
I saw inside a pulpit, or out of it. You feel if that man went to
the window and told the rain to stop and the wind to go down, they
would. No ghost that ever walked could best him anyway. They
asked me to talk and say what I felt, and I did; but words are
powerless against such an iron will as he's got.

"I doubted first, and Sir Walter said he doubted likewise; but he's
dead sure now, and what's good enough for him is good enough for us.
I'll bet Caunter, or any man, an even flyer that he's going to put
the creature down and out and come off without a scratch himself.
I offered to sit up with him, so did Sir Walter; but he wouldn't
hear of it. So all we've got to do is to turn in and say our
prayers. That's simple enough for God-fearing people, and we can't
do no better than to obey orders."

It was none the less a nervous and highly strung household that
presently went to bed, and no woman slept without another woman to
keep her company. Sir Walter found himself worn out in mind and
body. Mary made him take his bromide, and he slept without a
dream, despite the din of the great "sou'-wester" and the distant,
solemn crash of more than one great tree thrown upon the lap of
mother earth at last.

Before he retired, however, something in the nature of a procession
had escorted the priest to his ordeal. Mr. May donned biretta,
surplice, and stole, for, as he explained, he was to hold a
religious service as sacred and significant as any other rite.

"Lord send him no congregation then," thought Masters.

But, with Sir Walter and Mary, he followed the ministrant, and
left him at the open door of the Grey Room. The electric light
shone steadily; but the storm seemed to beat its fists at the
windows, and the leaded panes shook and chattered. With no bell
and candle, but his Bible alone, Septimus May entered the room,
having first made the sign of the Cross before him; then he turned
and bade good-night to all.

"Be of good faith!" were the last words he spoke to them.

Having done so he shut the door, and they heard his voice
immediately uplifted in prayer. They waited a little, and the
sound roiled steadily on. Sir Walter then bade Masters extinguish
all the lights and send the household to bed, though the time was
not more than ten o'clock.

As for Masters, the glamour and appeal of those strenuous words at
the dinner-table had now passed, and presently, as he prepared to
retire, he found himself far less confident and assured than his
recent words had implied. He sank slowly from hope to fear, even
pictured the worse, and asked himself what would follow if the
worst happened. He believed that it might mean serious disaster
for Sir Walter. If another life were sacrificed to this unknown
peril, and it transpired that his master had sanctioned what
would amount to suicide in the eyes of reason; then he began to
fear that grave trouble must result. Already the burning words
of Septimus May began to cool and sound unreal, and Masters
suspected that, if they were repeated in other ears, which had not
heard him utter them, or seen the fervor of religious earnestness
and reverence in which they had been spoken, this feverish business
of exorcising a ghost in the twentieth century might only awake
derision and receive neither credence nor respect. His entire
concern was for Sir Walter, not Mr. May. He could not sleep,
lighted a pipe, considered whether it was in his power to do
anything, felt a sudden impulse to take certain steps, yet
hesitated--from no fear to himself, but doubt whether action might
not endanger another. Mary did not sleep either, and she suffered
more, for she had never approved, and now she blamed herself not a
little for her weak opposition. A thousand arguments occurred to
her while she lay awake. Then, for a time, she forgot present
tribulations, and her own grief overwhelmed her, as it was wont to
do by night. For while the events that had so swiftly followed
each other since her husband's death banished him now and again,
save from her subconscious mind, when alone he was swift to return
and her sorrow made many a night sleepless. She was herself ill,
but did not know it. The reaction had yet to come, and could not
be long delayed, for her nervous energy was worn out now. She wept
and lived days with the dead; then the present returned to
her mind, and she fretted and prayed--for Septimus May and for
daylight. She wondered why stormy nights were always the longest.
She heard a thousand unfamiliar sounds, and presently leaped from
her bed, put on a dressing-gown, and crept out into the house.
To know that all was well with the watcher would hearten her.
But then her feet dragged before she had left the threshold of
her own room, and she stood still and shuddered a little. For how
if all were not well? How if his voice no longer sounded?

She hesitated to make the experiment, and balanced the relief of
reassurance against the horror of silence. She remembered a storm
at sea, when through a long night, not lacking danger to a
laboring steamer with weak engines, she had lain awake and felt
her heart warm again when the watch shouted the hour.

She set out, then, determined to know if all prospered with her
father-in-law. Nor would she give ear to misgiving or ask herself
what she would do if no voice were steadily uplifted in the Grey
Room.

The great wind seemed to play upon Chadlands like a harp. It
roared and reverberated, now stilled a moment for another leap,
now died away against the house, yet still sounded with a steady
shout in the neighbor trees. At the casements it tugged and
rattled; against them it flung the rain fiercely. Every bay and
passage of the interior uttered its own voice, and overhead was
creaking of old timbers, rattling of old slates, and rustling of
mortar fragments dislodged by sudden vibrations.

Mary proceeded on her way, and then, to her astonishment, heard a
footfall, and nearly ran into an invisible figure approaching from
the direction of the Grey Room. Man and woman startled each other,
but neither exclaimed, and Mrs. May spoke.

"Who is it?" she asked; and Masters answered:

"Oh, my gracious! Terrible sorry, ma'am! If I didn't think--"

"What on earth are you doing, Masters?"

"Much the same as you, I expect, ma'am. I thought just to creep
along and see if the reverend gentleman was all right. And he is.
The light's burning--you can see it under the door--and he's
praying away, steady as a steam-threshing machine. I doubt he's
keeping the evil creature at arm's length, and I'm a tidy lot more
hopeful than what I was an hour ago. The thing ain't strong enough
to touch a man praying to God like what he can. But if prayers keep
it harmless, then it's got ears and it's alive!"

"Can you believe that, Masters?" she whispered.

"Got to, ma'am. If it was just a natural horror beyond the reach
of prayer, it would have knocked his reverence out long before now,
like other people. It settled the police officer in under an hour,
and Mr. May's been up against it for three--nearly four hours, so
far. He'll bolt it yet, I shouldn't wonder, like a ferret bolts
a rat."

"You really feel more hopeful?"

"Yes, I do, ma'am; and if he can fire the creature and signal
'All's clear' for Chadlands, it will calm everybody and be a proper
feather in his cap, and he did ought to be made a bishop, at the
least. Not that Scotland Yard men will believe a word of it
to-morrow, all the same. Ghosts are bang out of their line, and
I never met even a common constable that believed in 'em, except
Bob Parrett, and he had bats in the belfry, poor chap. No; they'll
reckon it's somebody in the house, I expect, who wanted to kill
t' others, but ain't got no quarrel with Mr. May. And you'd be
wise to get back to bed, ma'am, and try to sleep, else you'll catch
a cold. I'll look round again in an hour or to, if I don't go to
sleep my self."

They parted, while the storm still ran high, and through the empty
corridor, when it was lulled, a voice rolled steadily on from the
Grey Boom.

When it suddenly ceased, an hour before dawn, the storm had already
begun to sink, and through a rack of flying and breaking cloud the
"Hunter" wheeled westerly to his setting.




CHAPTER VIII

THE LABORS OF THE FOUR


Despite the storm, Sir Walter slept through the night, and did not
waken until his man drew the blinds upon a dawn sky so clear that
it seemed washed of its blue. He had directed to be wakened at
six o'clock.

"What of Mr. May?" he asked.

"Masters wants to know if we shall call him, Sir Walter."

"Not if he has returned to his room, but immediately if still in
the Grey Room."

"He's not in his own room, sir."

"Then seek him at once."

The valet hesitated.

"Please, Sir Walter, there's none much cares to open the door."

He heard his daughter's voice outside at the same moment.

"Mr. May has not left the Grey Room, father."

"I'll be with you in a moment," he answered.

Then he rose, dressed partially, and joined her. She was full of
active fear.

"All went well at two o'clock," she said, "for I crept out to
listen. So did Masters. Mr. May's voice sounded clear and steady."

They found the butler at the door of the Grey Room. He was pale
and mopping his forehead.

"I've called to him, but it's as silent as the grave in there," he
said. "It's all up with the gentleman; I know it!"

"He may not be there; he may have gone out," answered Sir Walter.

Then he opened the door widely and entered. The electric light
still shone and killed the pallid white stare of the morning. Upon
a little table under it they observed Septimus May's Bible, open at
an epistle of St. Paul, but the priest himself was on the floor
some little distance away. He lay in a huddled heap of his
vestments. He had fallen upon his right side apparently, and,
though the surplice and cassock which he had worn were disarranged,
he appeared peaceful enough, with his cheek on a foot stool, as
though disposed deliberately upon the ground to sleep. His biretta
was still upon his head; his eyes were open, and the fret and
passion manifested by his face in life had entirely left it. He
looked many years younger, and no emotion of any kind marked his
placid countenance. But he was dead; his heart had ceased to beat
and his extremities were already cold. The room appeared unchanged
in every particular. As in the previous cases, death had come by
stealth, yet robbed, as far as the living could judge, of all
terror for its victim.

Masters called Caunter and Sir Walter's valet, who stood at the
door. The latter declined to enter or touch the dead, but Caunter
obeyed, and together the two men lifted Mr. May and carried him
to his own room. In a moment it seemed that the house knew what
had happened.

A scene of panic and hysteria followed below stairs, and, without
Jane Bond's description of it, Mary knew the people were running
out of the house as from a plague. She left her father with
Masters, and strove to calm the frightened domestics. She spoke
well, and explained that the event, horrible though it was, yet
proved that no cause for their alarm any longer existed.

"If it had been a wicked spirit we do not understand, it would have
had no power over Mr. May, who was a saint of God," she said. "Be
at peace, restrain yourselves, and fear nothing now. There is no
ghost here. Had it been a demon or any such thing, it must have
been conscious, and therefore powerless against Mr. May. This
proves that there is some fearful natural danger which we have not
yet discovered hidden in the room, but no harm can happen to
anybody if they do not go into the room. The police are coming
from Scotland Yard in an hour or two, and you may feel as sure,
as I do, and Sir Walter does, that they will find out the truth,
whatever it is. You must none of you think of leaving before they
come. If you do, they will only send for you again. Please
prepare your breakfast and be reasonable. Sir Walter is terribly
upset, and it would be a base thing if any of you were to desert
him at a moment like this."

They grew steadier before her, and Mrs. Forbes, the housekeeper,
who believed what Mary had said, added her voice.

Then Sir Walter's daughter returned to her father, who was with
Masters in the study. A man had already started for a doctor, but
with Mannering away there was none nearer than Neon Abbot.

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