第48章 THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION(8)

"For some months now," he said, "there have been new forces at work in my mind.I have been invaded by strange doubts and still stranger realizations.This old church of ours is an empty mask.

God is not specially concerned in it."

"Edward!" she cried, "what are you saying?""I have been hesitating to tell you.But I see now I must tell you plainly.Our church is a cast hull.It is like the empty skin of a snake.God has gone out of it."She rose to her feet.She was so horrified that she staggered backward, pushing her chair behind her."But you are mad," she said.

He was astonished at her distress.He stood up also.

"My dear," he said, "I can assure you I am not mad.I should have prepared you, I know...."She looked at him wild-eyed.Then she glanced at the phial, gripped in her hand.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and going swiftly to the window emptied out the contents of the little bottle.He realized what she was doing too late to prevent her.

"Don't waste that!" he cried, and stepping forward caught hold of her wrist.The phial fell from her white fingers, and crashed upon the rough paved garden path below.

"My dear," he cried, "my dear.You do not understand."They stood face to face."It was a tonic," he said."I have been ill.I need it.""It is a drug," she answered."You have been uttering blasphemies."He dropped her arm and walked half-way across the room.Then he turned and faced her.

"They are not blasphemies," he said."But I ought not to have surprised you and shocked you as I have done.I want to tell you of changes that have happened to my mind.""Now!" she exclaimed, and then: "I will not hear them now.

Until you are better.Until these fumes--"Her manner changed."Oh, Edward!" she cried, "why have you done this? Why have you taken things secretly? I know you have been sleepless, but I have been so ready to help you.I have been willing--you know I have been willing--for any help.My life is all to be of use to you....""Is there any reason," she pleaded, "why you should have hidden things from me?"He stood remorseful and distressed."I should have talked to you," he said lamely.

"Edward," she said, laying her hands on his shoulders, "will you do one thing for me? Will you try to eat a little breakfast?

And stay here? I will go down to Mr.Whippham and arrange whatever is urgent with him.Perhaps if you rest--There is nothing really imperative until the confirmation in the afternoon....I do not understand all this.For some time--Ihave felt it was going on.But of that we can talk.The thing now is that people should not know, that nothing should be seen....

Suppose for instance that horrible White Blackbird were to hear of it....I implore you.If you rest here--And if I were to send for that young doctor who attended Miriam.""I don't want a doctor," said the bishop.

"But you ought to have a doctor."

"I won't have a doctor," said the bishop.

It was with a perplexed but powerless dissent that the externalized perceptions of the bishop witnessed his agreement with the rest of Lady Ella's proposals so soon as this point about the doctor was conceded.

(10)

For the rest of that day until his breakdown in the cathedral the sense of being in two places at the same time haunted the bishop's mind.He stood beside the Angel in the great space amidst the stars, and at the same time he was back in his ordinary life, he was in his palace at Princhester, first resting in his bedroom and talking to his wife and presently taking up the routines of his duties again in his study downstairs.

His chief task was to finish his two addresses for the confirmation services of the day.He read over his notes, and threw them aside and remained for a time thinking deeply.The Greek tags at the end of Likeman's letter came into his thoughts;they assumed a quality of peculiar relevance to this present occasion.He repeated the words: "Epitelesei.Epiphausei."He took his little Testament to verify them.After some slight trouble he located the two texts.The first, from Philippians, ran in the old version, "He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it"; the second was expressed thus: "Christ shall give thee light." He was dissatisfied with these renderings and resorted to the revised version, which gave "perfect" instead of "perform," and "shall shine upon you" for "give thee light." He reflected profoundly for a time.

Then suddenly his addresses began to take shape in his mind, and these little points lost any significance.He began to write rapidly, and as he wrote he felt the Angel stood by his right hand and read and approved what he was writing.There were moments when his mind seemed to be working entirely beyond his control.He had a transitory questioning whether this curious intellectual automatism was not perhaps what people meant by "inspiration."(11)

The bishop had always been sensitive to the secret fount of pathos that is hidden in the spectacle of youth.Long years ago when he and Lady Ella had been in Florence he had been moved to tears by the beauty of the fresh-faced eager Tobit who runs beside the great angel in the picture of Botticelli.And suddenly and almost as uncontrollably, that feeling returned at the sight of the young congregation below him, of all these scores of neophytes who were gathered to make a public acknowledgment of God.The war has invested all youth now with the shadow of tragedy; before it came many of us were a little envious of youth and a little too assured of its certainty of happiness.All that has changed.Fear and a certain tender solicitude mingle in our regard for every child; not a lad we pass in the street but may presently be called to face such pain and stress and danger as no ancient hero ever knew.The patronage, the insolent condescension of age, has vanished out of the world.It is dreadful to look upon the young.