glamour--"
"I owe you a great deal, sir," interrupted Harris again, beginning tounderstand something of the stranger's kindness, "but I don't understandit all. I feel dazed and shaken." His teeth still chattered, and spellsof violent shivering passed over him from head to foot. He found that hewas clinging to the other's arm. In this way they passed beyond thedeserted and crumbling village and gained the high-road that ledhomewards through the forest.
"That school building has long been in ruins," said the man at his sidepresently; "it was burnt down by order of the Elders of the community atleast ten years ago. The village has been uninhabited ever since. Butthe simulacra of certain ghastly events that took place under that roofin past days still continue. And the 'shells' of the chief participantsstill enact there the dreadful deeds that led to its final destruction,and to the desertion of the whole settlement. They weredevil-worshippers!"
Harris listened with beads of perspiration on his forehead that did notcome alone from their leisurely pace through the cool night. Although hehad seen this man but once before in his life, and had never beforeexchanged so much as a word with him, he felt a degree of confidence anda subtle sense of safety and well-being in his presence that were themost healing influences he could possibly have wished after theexperience he had been through. For all that, he still felt as if hewere walking in a dream, and though he heard every word that fell fromhis companion's lips, it was only the next day that the full import ofall he said became fully clear to him. The presence of this quietstranger, the man with the wonderful eyes which he felt now, rather thansaw, applied a soothing anodyne to his shattered spirit that healed himthrough and through. And this healing influence, distilled from the darkfigure at his side, satisfied his first imperative need, so that healmost forgot to realise how strange and opportune it was that the manshould be there at all.
It somehow never occurred to him to ask his name, or to feel any unduewonder that one passing tourist should take so much trouble on behalf ofanother. He just walked by his side, listening to his quiet words, andallowing himself to enjoy the very wonderful experience after his recentordeal, of being helped, strengthened, blessed. Only once, rememberingvaguely something of his reading of years ago, he turned to the manbeside him, after some more than usually remarkable words, and heardhimself, almost involuntarily it seemed, putting the question: "Then areyou a Rosicrucian, sir, perhaps?" But the stranger had ignored thewords, or possibly not heard them, for he continued with his talk asthough unconscious of any interruption, and Harris became aware thatanother somewhat unusual picture had taken possession of his mind, asthey walked there side by side through the cool reaches of the forest,and that he had found his imagination suddenly charged with thechildhood memory of Jacob wrestling with an angel,--wrestling all nightwith a being of superior quality whose strength eventually became hisown.
"It was your abrupt conversation with the priest at supper that firstput me upon the track of this remarkable occurrence," he heard theman's quiet voice beside him in the darkness, "and it was from him Ilearned after you left the story of the devil-worship that becamesecretly established in the heart of this simple and devout littlecommunity."
"Devil-worship! Here--!" Harris stammered, aghast.
"Yes--here;--conducted secretly for years by a group of Brothers beforeunexplained disappearances in the neighbourhood led to its discovery.For where could they have found a safer place in the whole wide worldfor their ghastly traffic and perverted powers than here, in the veryprecincts--under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and holyliving?"
"Awful, awful!" whispered the silk merchant, "and when I tell you thewords they used to me--"
"I know it all," the stranger said quietly. "I saw and heard everything.My plan first was to wait till the end and then to take steps for theirdestruction, but in the interest of your personal safety,"--he spokewith the utmost gravity and conviction,--"in the interest of the safetyof your soul, I made my presence known when I did, and before theconclusion had been reached--"
"My safety! The danger, then, was real. They were alive and--" Wordsfailed him. He stopped in the road and turned towards his companion, theshining of whose eyes he could just make out in the gloom.
"It was a concourse of the shells of violent men, spiritually developedbut evil men, seeking after death--the death of the body--to prolongtheir vile and unnatural existence. And had they accomplished theirobject you, in turn, at the death of your body, would have passed intotheir power and helped to swell their dreadful purposes."
Harris made no reply. He was trying hard to concentrate his mind uponthe sweet and common things of life. He even thought of silk and St.Paul's Churchyard and the faces of his partners in business.
"For you came all prepared to be caught," he heard the other's voicelike some one talking to him from a distance; "your deeply introspectivemood had already reconstructed the past so vividly, so intensely, thatyou were _en rapport_ at once with any forces of those days that chancedstill to be lingering. And they swept you up all unresistingly."
Harris tightened his hold upon the stranger's arm as he heard. At themoment he had room for one emotion only. It did not seem to him odd thatthis stranger should have such intimate knowledge of his mind.
"It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave theirphotographs upon surrounding scenes and objects," the other added, "andwho ever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful andlovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon? It is unfortunate.But the wicked passions of men's hearts alone seem strong enough toleave pictures that persist; the good are ever too lukewarm."
The stranger sighed as he spoke. But Harris, exhausted and shaken as hewas to the very core, paced by his side, only half listening. He movedas in a dream still. It was very wonderful to him, this walk home underthe stars in the early hours of the October morning, the peaceful forestall about them, mist rising here and there over the small clearings, andthe sound of water from a hundred little invisible streams filling inthe pauses of the talk. In after life he always looked back to it assomething magical and impossible, something that had seemed toobeautiful, too curiously beautiful, to have been quite true. And, thoughat the time he heard and understood but a quarter of what the strangersaid, it came back to him afterwards, staying with him till the end ofhis days, and always with a curious, haunting sense of unreality, asthough he had enjoyed a wonderful dream of which he could recall onlyfaint and exquisite portions.
But the horror of the earlier experience was effectually dispelled; andwhen they reached the railway inn, somewhere about three o'clock in themorning, Harris shook the stranger's hand gratefully, effusively,meeting the look of those rather wonderful eyes with a full heart, andwent up to his room, thinking in a hazy, dream-like way of the wordswith which the stranger had brought their conversation to an end as theyleft the confines of the forest--
"And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after thebrain that sent them forth has crumbled into dust, how vitally importantit must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them withthe keenest possible restraint."
But Harris, the silk merchant, slept better than might have beenexpected, and with a soundness that carried him half-way through theday. And when he came downstairs and learned that the stranger hadalready taken his departure, he realised with keen regret that he hadnever once thought of asking his name.
"Yes, he signed the visitors' book," said the girl in reply to hisquestion.
And he turned over the blotted pages and found there, the last entry, ina very delicate and individual handwriting--
"_John Silence_, London."
Three More John Silence Stories Page 8