radiance from its mightily broken visage, august andmournful, beat down upon his soul, pulsing like some dark star with thepowers of spiritual evil, he felt almost as though he were looking intoa face no farther removed from him in space than the face of any one ofthe Brothers who stood by his side.
And then the room filled and trembled with sounds that Harris understoodfull well were the failing voices of others who had preceded him in along series down the years. There came first a plain, sharp cry, as of aman in the last anguish, choking for his breath, and yet, with the veryfinal expiration of it, breathing the name of the Worship--of the darkBeing who rejoiced to hear it. The cries of the strangled; the short,running gasp of the suffocated; and the smothered gurgling of thetightened throat, all these, and more, echoed back and forth between thewalls, the very walls in which he now stood a prisoner, a sacrificialvictim. The cries, too, not alone of the broken bodies, but--farworse--of beaten, broken souls. And as the ghastly chorus rose and fell,there came also the faces of the lost and unhappy creatures to whom theybelonged, and, against that curtain of pale grey light, he saw floatpast him in the air, an array of white and piteous human countenancesthat seemed to beckon and gibber at him as though he were already one ofthemselves.
Slowly, too, as the voices rose, and the pallid crew sailed past, thatgiant form of grey descended from the sky and approached the room thatcontained the worshippers and their prisoner. Hands rose and sank abouthim in the darkness, and he felt that he was being draped in othergarments than his own; a circlet of ice seemed to run about his head,while round the waist, enclosing the fastened arms, he felt a girdletightly drawn. At last, about his very throat, there ran a soft andsilken touch which, better than if there had been full light, and amirror held to his face, he understood to be the cord of sacrifice--andof death.
At this moment the Brothers, still prostrate upon the floor, began againtheir mournful, yet impassioned chanting, and as they did so a strangething happened. For, apparently without moving or altering its position,the huge Figure seemed, at once and suddenly, to be inside the room,almost beside him, and to fill the space around him to the exclusion ofall else.
He was now beyond all ordinary sensations of fear, only a drab feelingas of death--the death of the soul--stirred in his heart. His thoughtsno longer even beat vainly for escape. The end was near, and he knew it.
The dreadfully chanting voices rose about him in a wave: "We worship! Weadore! We offer!" The sounds filled his ears and hammered, almostmeaningless, upon his brain.
Then the majestic grey face turned slowly downwards upon him, and hisvery soul passed outwards and seemed to become absorbed in the sea ofthose anguished eyes. At the same moment a dozen hands forced him to hisknees, and in the air before him he saw the arm of Kalkmann upraised,and felt the pressure about his throat grow strong.
It was in this awful moment, when he had given up all hope, and the helpof gods or men seemed beyond question, that a strange thing happened.For before his fading and terrified vision there slid, as in a dream oflight,--yet without apparent rhyme or reason--wholly unbidden andunexplained,--the face of that other man at the supper table of therailway inn. And the sight, even mentally, of that strong, wholesome,vigorous English face, inspired him suddenly with a new courage.
It was but a flash of fading vision before he sank into a dark andterrible death, yet, in some inexplicable way, the sight of that facestirred in him unconquerable hope and the certainty of deliverance. Itwas a face of power, a face, he now realised, of simple goodness such asmight have been seen by men of old on the shores of Galilee; a face, byheaven, that could conquer even the devils of outer space.
And, in his despair and abandonment, he called upon it, and called withno uncertain accents. He found his voice in this overwhelming moment tosome purpose; though the words he actually used, and whether they werein German or English, he could never remember. Their effect,nevertheless, was instantaneous. The Brothers understood, and that greyFigure of evil understood.
For a second the confusion was terrific. There came a great shatteringsound. It seemed that the very earth trembled. But all Harris rememberedafterwards was that voices rose about him in the clamour of terrifiedalarm--
"A man of power is among us! A man of God!"
The vast sound was repeated--the rushing through space as of hugeprojectiles--and he sank to the floor of the room, unconscious. Theentire scene had vanished, vanished like smoke over the roof of acottage when the wind blows.
And, by his side, sat down a slight un-German figure,--the figure of thestranger at the inn,--the man who had the "rather wonderful eyes."
* * * * *
When Harris came to himself he felt cold. He was lying under the opensky, and the cool air of field and forest was blowing upon his face. Hesat up and looked about him. The memory of the late scene was stillhorribly in his mind, but no vestige of it remained. No walls or ceilingenclosed him; he was no longer in a room at all. There were no lampsturned low, no cigar smoke, no black forms of sinister worshippers, notremendous grey Figure hovering beyond the windows.
Open space was about him, and he was lying on a pile of bricks andmortar, his clothes soaked with dew, and the kind stars shining brightlyoverhead. He was lying, bruised and shaken, among the heaped-up debrisof a ruined building.
He stood up and stared about him. There, in the shadowy distance, laythe surrounding forest, and here, close at hand, stood the outline ofthe village buildings. But, underfoot, beyond question, lay nothing butthe broken heaps of stones that betokened a building long since crumbledto dust. Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and that greatwooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, made lines through the generaldebris. He stood, then, among the ruins of a burnt and shatteredbuilding, the weeds and nettles proving conclusively that it had lainthus for many years.
The moon had already set behind the encircling forest, but the starsthat spangled the heavens threw enough light to enable him to make quitesure of what he saw. Harris, the silk merchant, stood among these brokenand burnt stones and shivered.
Then he suddenly became aware that out of the gloom a figure had risenand stood beside him. Peering at him, he thought he recognised the faceof the stranger at the railway inn.
"Are _you_ real?" he asked in a voice he hardly recognised as his own.
"More than real--I'm friendly," replied the stranger; "I followed you uphere from the inn."
Harris stood and stared for several minutes without adding anything. Histeeth chattered. The least sound made him start; but the simple words inhis own language, and the tone in which they were uttered, comforted himinconceivably.
"You're English too, thank God," he said inconsequently. "These Germandevils--" He broke off and put a hand to his eyes. "But what's becomeof them all--and the room--and--and--" The hand travelled down to histhroat and moved nervously round his neck. He drew a long, long breathof relief. "Did I dream everything--everything?" he said distractedly.
He stared wildly about him, and the stranger moved forward and took hisarm. "Come," he said soothingly, yet with a trace of command in thevoice, "we will move away from here. The high-road, or even the woodswill be more to your taste, for we are standing now on one of the mosthaunted--and most terribly haunted--spots of the whole world."
He guided his companion's stumbling footsteps over the broken masonryuntil they reached the path, the nettles stinging their hands, andHarris feeling his way like a man in a dream. Passing through thetwisted iron railing they reached the path, and thence made their way tothe road, shining white in the night. Once safely out of the ruins,Harris collected himself and turned to look back.
"But, how is it possible?" he exclaimed, his voice still shaking. "Howcan it be possible? When I came in here I saw the building in themoonlight. They opened the door. I saw the figures and heard the voicesand touched, yes touched their very hands, and saw their damned blackfaces, saw them far more plainly than I see you now." He was deeplybewildered. The g
lamour was still upon his eyes with a degree of realitystronger than the reality even of normal life. "Was I so utterlydeluded?"
Then suddenly the words of the stranger, which he had only half heard orunderstood, returned to him.
"Haunted?" he asked, looking hard at him; "haunted, did you say?" Hepaused in the roadway and stared into the darkness where the building ofthe old school had first appeared to him. But the stranger hurried himforward.
"We shall talk more safely farther on," he said. "I followed you fromthe inn the moment I realised where you had gone. When I found you itwas eleven o'clock--"
"Eleven o'clock," said Harris, remembering with a shudder.
"--I saw you drop. I watched over you till you recovered consciousnessof your own accord, and now--now I am here to guide you safely back tothe inn. I have broken the spell--the
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