by A. C. Benson
‘We set out that afternoon,’ he continued. ‘The woman lived on the farther side of the island, perhaps a couple of hours’ travel, for it was rough going; and as we went up over the path, Father Lasserre told me more.
‘It seemed that the woman blasphemed. (The subconscious self, said I to myself, as M. Charcot has explained. It is her old habit reasserting itself.)
‘She foamed and rolled her eyes. (An affection of the brain, said I.)
‘She feared holy water: they dared not throw it on her, her struggles were so fierce. (Because she has been taught to fear it, said I.)
‘And so the good father talked, eyeing me now and again; and I smiled in my heart, knowing that he was a simple old fellow who had not studied the new books.
‘She was quieter after sunset, he told me, and would take a little food then. Her fits came on her for the most part at midday. And I smiled again at that. Why it should be so, I knew. The heat affected her. She would be quieter, science would tell us, when evening fell. If it were the power of Satan that held her, she would surely rage more in the darkness than in the light. The Scriptures tell us so.
‘I said something of this to Father Lasserre, as if it were a question, and he looked at me.
‘“Perhaps, brother,” he said, “she is more at ease in the darkness and fears the light, and that she is quieter therefore when the sun sets.”
‘Again I smiled to myself. What piety! said I, and what foolishness!
‘The house where the three lived stood apart from any others. It was an old shed into which they had moved a week before, for the neighbours could no longer bear the woman’s screaming. And we came to it toward sunset.
‘It was a heavy evening, dull and thick, and as we pushed down the path I saw the smoking mountain high on the left hand between the tangled trees. There was a great silence round us, and no wind, and every leaf against the angry sky was as if cut of steel.
‘We saw the roof below us presently, and a little smoke escaped from a hole, for there was no chimney.
‘“We will sit here a little, brother,” said my friend. “We will not enter till sunset.”
‘And he took out his Office book and began to say his Matins and Lauds, sitting on a fallen tree trunk by the side of the path.
‘All was very silent about us. I suffered terrible distractions, for I was a young man and excited; and though I knew it was no more than epilepsy that I was to see, yet epilepsy is not a good sight to regard. But I was finishing the first nocturn when I saw that Father Lasserre was looking off his book.
‘We were sitting thirty yards from the roof of the hut which was built in a scoop of the ground, so that the roof was level with the ground on which we sat. Below it was a little open space, flat, perhaps twenty yards across, and below that yet farther was the wood again, and far over that was the smoke of the village against the sea. There was the mouth of a well with a bucket beside it; and by this was standing a man, a negro, very upright, with a vessel in his hand.
‘This fellow turned as I looked, and saw us there, and he dropped the vessel, and I could see his white teeth. Father Lasserre stood up and laid his finger on his lips, nodded once or twice, pointed to the west where the sun was just above the horizon, and the fellow nodded to us again and stooped for his vessel.
‘He filled it from the bucket and went back into the house.
‘I looked at Father Lasserre, and he looked at me.
‘“In five minutes,” he said. “That is the husband. Did you not see his wounds?”
‘I had seen no more than his teeth, I said, and my friend nodded again and proceeded to finish his nocturn.’
Again Father Meuron paused dramatically. His ruddy face seemed a little pale in the candlelight, although he had told us nothing yet that could account for his apparent horror. Plainly something was coming soon.
The Rector leaned back to me and whispered behind his hand in reference to what the Frenchman had related a few minutes before, that no priest was allowed to use exorcism without the special leave of the bishop. I nodded and thanked him.
Father Meuron flashed his eyes dreadfully round the circle, clasped his hands and continued:
‘When the sun showed only a red rim above the sea we went down to the house. The path ran on high ground to the roof, and then dipped down the edge of the cutting past the window to the front of the shed.
‘I looked through this window sideways as I went after Father Lasserre who was carrying his bag with the book and the holy water, but I could see nothing but the light of the fire. And there was no sound. That was terrible to me!
‘The door was closed as we came to it, and as Father Lasserre lifted his hand to knock there was the howl of a beast from within.
‘He knocked and looked at me.
‘“It is but epilepsy,” he said, and his lips wrinkled as he said it.’
The priest stopped again, and smiled ironically at us all. Then he clasped his hands beneath his chin, like a man in terror.
‘I will not tell you all that I saw,’ he went on, ‘when the candle was lighted and set on the table; but only a little. You would not dream well, my friends – as I did not that night.
‘But the woman sat in a corner by the fireplace, bound with cords by her arms to the back of the chair, and her feet to the legs of it.
‘Gentlemen, she was like no woman at all. The howl of a wolf came from her lips, but there were words in the howl. At first I could not understand, till she began in French – and then I understood – my God!
‘The foam dripped from her mouth like water, and her eyes – But there! I began to shake when I saw them until the holy water was spilled on the floor and I set it down on the table by the candle. There was a plate of meat on the table, roasted mutton, I think, and a loaf of bread beside it. Remember that, gentlemen! That mutton and bread! And as I stood there I told myself, like making acts of faith, that it was but epilepsy, or at the most madness.
‘My friends, it is probable that few of you know the form of exorcism. It is neither in the Ritual nor the Pontifical and I cannot remember it all myself. But it began thus.’
The Frenchman sprang up and stood with his back to the fire, with his face in shadow.
‘Father Lasserre was here where I stand, in his cotta and stole, and I beside him. There where my chair stands was the square table, as near as that, with the bread and meat and the holy water and the candle. Beyond the table was the woman; her husband stood beside her on the left hand, and the old mother was there’ – he flung out a hand to the right – ‘on the floor telling her beads and weeping – but weeping!
‘When the Father was ready and had said a word to the others, he signed to me to lift the holy water again – she was quiet at the moment – and then he sprinkled her.
‘As he lifted his hand she raised her eyes, and there was a look in them of terror, as if at a blow, and as the drops fell she leapt forward in the chair, and the chair leapt with her. Her husband was at her and dragged the chair back. But, my God! it was terrible to see him, his teeth shone as if he smiled, but the tears ran down his face.
‘Then she moaned like a child in pain. It was as if the holy water burned her; she lifted her face to her man as if she begged him to wipe off the drops.
‘And all the while I still told myself that it was the terror of her mind only at the holy water – that it could not be that she was possessed by Satan – it was but madness – madness and epilepsy!
‘Father Lasserre went on with the prayers and I said Amen, and there was a psalm – Deus in nomine tuo salvum me fac – and then came the first bidding to the unclean spirit to go out, in the name of the Mysteries of the Incarnation and Passion.
‘Gentlemen, I swear to you that something happened then, but I do not know what. A confusion fell on me and a kind of darkness. I saw nothing – it was as if I were dead.’
The priest lifted a shaking hand to wipe off the sweat from his forehead. There was a profound silence in the
room. I looked once at Monsignor and he was holding his pipe an inch off his mouth, and his lips were slack and open as he stared.
‘Then when I knew where I was, Father Lasserre was reading out of the Gospels how our Lord gave authority to His Church to cast out unclean spirits; and all the while his voice never trembled.’
‘And the woman?’ said a voice hoarsely, from Father Brent’s chair.
‘Ah! the woman! My God! I do not know. I did not look at her. I stared at the plate on the table; but at least she was not crying out now.
‘When the Scripture was finished, Father Lasserre gave me the book.
‘“Bah! Father!” he said. “It is but epilepsy, is it not?”
‘Then he beckoned me, and I went with him holding the book till we were within a yard of the woman. But I could not hold the book still; it shook, it shook—’
Father Meuron thrust out his hand – ‘It shook like that, gentlemen.
‘He took the book from me, sharply and angrily. “Go back, sir,” he said, and he thrust the book into the husband’s hand.
‘“There,” he said.
‘I went back behind the table and leaned on it.
‘Then Father Lasserre – my God! the courage of this man! – he set his hands on the woman’s head. She writhed up her teeth to bite, but he was too strong for her, and then he cried out from the book the second bidding to the unclean spirit.
‘“Ecce crucem Domini! – Behold the Cross of the Lord! Flee, ye adverse hosts! The lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed!”
‘Gentlemen’ – the Frenchman flung out his hands – ‘I who stand here tell you that something happened – God knows what – I only know this, that as the woman cried out and scrambled with her feet on the floor, the flame of the candle became smoke-coloured for one instant. I told myself it was the dust of her struggling and her foul breath. Yes, gentlemen, as you tell yourselves now. Bah! it is but epilepsy, is it not so, sir?’
The old Rector leaned forward with a deprecating hand, but the Frenchman glared and gesticulated; there was a murmur from the room and the old priest leaned back again and propped his head on his hand.
‘Then there was a prayer. I heard Oremus, but I did not dare to look at the woman. I fixed my eyes so, on the bread and meat: it was the one clean thing in that terrible room. I whispered to myself, “Bread and mutton, bread and mutton.” I thought of the refectory at home – anything – you understand me, gentlemen, anything familiar to quiet myself.
‘Then there was the third exorcism.’
I saw the Frenchman’s hands rise and fall, clenched, and his teeth close on his lip to stay its trembling. He swallowed in his throat once or twice.
‘Gentlemen, I swear to you by God Almighty that this was what I saw. I kept my eyes on the bread and meat. It lay there, beneath my eyes, and yet I saw too the good Father Lasserre lean forward to the woman again, and heard him begin, “Exorcizo te.” …
‘And then this happened – this happened …
‘The bread and the meat corrupted themselves to worms before my eyes …’
Father Meuron dashed forward, turned round, and dropped into his chair as the two English priests on either side sprang to their feet.
In a few minutes he was able to tell us that all had ended well; that the woman had been presently found in her right mind, after an incident or two that I will take leave to omit; and that the apparent paroxysm of nature that had accompanied the words of the third exorcism had passed away as suddenly as it had come.
Then we went to night-prayers and fortified ourselves against the dark.
EPILOGUE
Arthur and Hugh Benson not only wrote fine ghost stories, they left us a fair amount of detail as to why they wrote them.
Hugh Benson, in A Mirror of Shalott, puts words in his characters’ mouths regarding ghosts and the supernatural that could only have been his own views:
Father Brent mused a moment.
‘It is like this,’ he said. ‘Half at least of the stories one hears have no point – no reason. Take the ordinary haunted house tale, or the appearances at the time of death. Now what is the good of all that? They tell us nothing; they don’t generally ask for prayers. It is just a white woman wringing her hands, or a groaning, or something. At the best one only finds a skeleton behind the panelling … How can spirits go wandering about, and be so futile at the end of it too? Then why is everything so vague? Why don’t they give us a hint – I’m not wanting precise information – but a kind of hint of the way things go? Then the whole thing is mixed up with such childish nonsense. Look at the spiritualists, and the tambourine business, and table-rapping. Either those things are true, even if they’re diabolical – and in that case people in the spiritual world seem considerably sillier even than people in this – or they’re not true; and in that case the whole thing is so fraudulent that it seems useless to inquire.’ …
‘I am entirely willing,’ said Monsignor, ‘to allow that half the stories one hears are fraudulent or hysterical; I’m quite ready to allow that. But it seems to me that there remain a good many others; and if one doesn’t accept those to some extent, I don’t know what becomes of the value of human evidence …
‘It seems perfectly clear that these other stories aren’t sent to help our faith, or anything like that. I don’t believe that for one instant … Here is this exceedingly small earth, certainly with a very fair number of people living on it – but absolutely a mere fraction of the number of intelligences that are in existence. And all about us – since we must use that phrase – is a spiritual world, compared with which the present generation is as a family of ants in the middle of London. Things happen – this spiritual world is crammed full of energy and movement and affairs … We know practically nothing of it all … What conceivable right have we to demand that the little glimpses that we seem to get sometimes of the spiritual world are given us for our benefit or information?…
‘Then there is this, too,’ he continued. ‘It really is important to remember that the spiritual world exists in another mode from that in which the material world exists … Of course in the faith we have an adequate and guaranteed translation of the supernatural into the natural, and vice versa; and in these ghost stories, or whatever we call them, we have a certain sort of translation too. The Real Thing, whatever it is, expresses itself in material terms, more or less. But in these we have no sort of guarantee that the translation is adequate, or that we are adequate to understand it. We can try, of course; but we really don’t know. Therefore it seems to me that in all ghost stories the best thing is to hear it, to satisfy ourselves that the evidence is good or bad, and then to hold our tongues. We don’t want elaborate commentaries on what may be, after all, an utterly corrupt text.’
And in his closing paragraphs, Hugh Benson gives what I have always thought one of the best descriptions of ghostly literature and the feeling it should convey:
‘It is like looking on at the backs of a crowd; they are attending to something else, not to us at all. Just occasionally we catch the eye of some one who turns round; but that is all …
‘Or, shall we say, each of us is like a new-born child in a great house? In one sense, we are attended to a great deal. All kinds of mysteries are performed of which we are, at least partly, the object; and what we do know of them, we do know, but that is very little indeed. And meanwhile there are dark corridors along which footsteps pass; we catch the sound of voices, and the glimmer of lights.’
Arthur Benson, in his introduction to Paul the Minstrel, gives valuable background to the writing of the stories:
These stories were all written at a very happy time of my life, and they were first published when I was a master at Eton with a boarding-house … I used to tell or read stories on Sunday evenings to any boys who cared to come to listen; and I remember with delight those hours when perhaps twenty boys would come and sit all about my study, filling every chair and sofa and overflowing on to the floor, to listen to
long, vague stories of adventure, with at all events an appearance of interest and excitement.
One wanted to do the best for the boys, to put fine ideas, if one could, into their heads and hearts. But direct moral exhortation to growing boys, feeling the life of the world quickening in their veins, and with vague old instincts of love and war rising uninterpreted in their thoughts, is apt to be a fruitless thing enough. It is not that they do not listen; but they simply do not understand the need of caution and control, nor do they see the unguarded posterns by which evil things slip smiling into the fortress of the soul.
Every now and then I used to try to shape a tale which in a figure might leave an arresting or a restraining thought in their minds; or even touch with a light of romance some of the knightly virtues which are apt to be dulled into the aspect of commonplace and uninteresting duties …
I chose, not deliberately but instinctively, the old romantic form for the setting of these tales, a semi-mediaeval atmosphere such as belongs to the literary epic; some of the stories are pure fantasy; but they all aim more or less directly at illustrating the stern necessity of moral choice; the difficulty is to get children to believe, at the brilliant outset of life, that it will not do to follow the delights of impulse …
… In these stories I tried my best to touch into life the poetical and beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage to a far-off but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning off the narrow way, and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which loitered in shady corners, or even sometimes straddled horribly across the very road.
The romance, then, of these stories is coloured by what may be thought to be a conventional and commonplace morality enough; but it is real for all that; and life as it proceeds has a blessed way of revealing the urgency and the unseen features of the combat. It is just because virtue seems dry and humdrum that the struggle is so difficult. It is so hard to turn aside from what seems so dangerously beautiful, to what seems so plain and homely. But it is what we mostly have to do …