The drift of pinions

Front matter

*

I

I

Dedication

My dear Stephanie,

It seems years ago since you, among the first, were good enough to like my stories, and, still better, that great subject with which most of them had to do. Do you remember how I would sit on the buffet by the side of the big fire, and how you would lose yourself in the depths of the great chair opposite ? Others there were, but I think you understood the best of all, although you said so little while the firelight flickered on your hair. Most of the stories of this book I did not know then ; but indeed I think “ the drift of pinions ” against my door has grown with the years, and that therefore you will like these at least as well. At any rate, I offer them to you, in very grateful remembrance (but with a little wistfulness) of the days that come not again.

But this alone will not quite content jmu. I remember, if you do not, that you would always lean forward at the close of a story and say ; “Is it really true ? ” And you will be sure to want to know that same about my stories now.

CHAPTER I In No Strange Land

“ No ; I don’t see exactly what you mean,” said the little lady, a trifle impatiently perhaps. “ I can believe you’re not avoiding a straight issue, because I know you, but I’m certain other people might call it an attempt to do so. You’ve no right to change every outward circumstance in a story and then call it true. If an angel appeared to a Mosuto in this garden, you’ve no right to tell, on that account, as a ‘ true ’ story, how Gabriel appeared to a Frenchman in the trenches. The mentality of the Mosuto has a distinct bearing on the likelihood of the event ; and so might the environment of the trenches, and the imminence of sudden death, affect the judgment of a Frenchman.”

The ugly-looking man in the wicker chair, sitting next her under the mimosa, looked up thoughtfully and gazed at her a minute before replying. Then he leant forward to pick a fallen leaf out of his teacup which stood on the little table between them, and spoke as he did it.

“ Yes,” he said, ” you’re right in a way. At least I can see that it should be made plain, before the story is told, that that has been done, if only to indicate the view of things that makes one rather like such a transformation process, and also to discredit, at the start, a good deal of the criticism that is usually made about stories of this sort. But your common sense is not going to browbeat my spirit sense.”

B

" Explain,” she put in, leaning forward a little.

“ Well,” he said, “ take the last first. People bring entirely false standards to the test of the supernatural. By hypothesis, the supernatural is not the natural, and it is not therefore to be, at least finally and conclusively, tested by the standards one applies to the natural. Spiritual things must be judged by spiritual tests. You don’t lick a picture to find out if it’s pretty, and a Gothic cathedral may be the most wonderful song in stone imaginable, but a blind man cannot hear it. Well, now, I maintain that we know so little about the supernatural that we honestly don’t know by what to test it. People demand that a spirit shall prove itself intangible ; I fail to see the necessity. They insist that the environment and psychology of the seer of the vision have a great deal to do with the likelihood of his seeing at all in the first place, and of what he sees in the second. I believe that there is a spiritual world entirely indifferent to human psychology and environment, so far as any limitation of its activities is involved ; indeed, I am inclined to believe that any manifestation which appears to depend entirely upon such things united in the person of some one or other medium, is likely to be either not strictly supernatural at all, or, at best, the activity of a much inferior and probably debased portion of the spirit world.”

“ And the Mosuto in this garden ? ”

“ Well, it’s a good case. I think we lay far too much stress on the Mosuto and the garden in every instance. If there is to be a genuine angel-visit, I’m perfectly certain that it is indifferent to the angel whether he comes to this garden or to the trenches, to a Mosuto or a Frenchman, in war or peace, by day or night — ^though I will admit that I think there is one thing for which he looks. I don’t think he troubles much about race or place, but I think he looks for the characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven. And the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, remember. . . . So I don’t believe it matters in the least how I disguise my story, provided I keep the things of the spirit the same throughout.”

His companion smiled. “ I see,” she said. Then :

The gates of heaven are lightly locked,

We do not guard our gain.

The heaviest hind may easily Come silently and suddenly Upon me in a lane ;

And any little maid that walks In good thoughts apart.

May break the guard of the Three Kings,

And see the dear and dreadful things I hid within my heart

she quoted. “ That’s what our Lady said, according to G. K. C., and I suppose it’s much what you mean ? ”

He nodded.

A little silence fell between them, as it may fall between friends, a silence in which communication did not, however, cease. On the contrary, something beyond speech seemed to be explaining the one to the other. Across the lawn and the new rose-garden, and the dip down to the spruit that was full of young willows, where the rough road wound up and round a kopje, a Scotch-cart was lumbering slowly along, driven by a couple of red-shirted prisoners. The man watched it intently, and you might have thought he was speculating upon it. So he was — in a manner.

“ You see,” he went on suddenly, “ I don’t believe, to go on with, that we have any true idea as to the real values of sensory objects at all. Scent, touch, sight, hearing — these are not delusions, as some have thought, most emphatically not, and the objects which we apprehend by them are not delusions either.

But I feel equally certain that the reality of anything is not what we take it to be. . . . It’s hard to express, but what I mean is this : I don’t believe that trees, beasts, flowers, rocks, the very earth, are only fleeting phantoms ; I believe that they have, or will have, some real value in the spiritual world ; but at the same time I am pretty sure that we have no idea what that value is, and that there is no objective reality in the sense-impressions themselves.”

The lady leaned back and her brown eyes glistened. “You mean that this garden may be just, in truth — ^well, the robe of God ? ” she queried.

“ Yes,” he said, reverently.

“ So you see where that gets you to,” he went on, rather excitedly. “ In the first place, if there is to be any soit of manifestation, that spiritual world is bound to wear a dress composed of our sense-impressions, including, very likely, that of materiality ; but I decline to believe that that dress has any objective reality either, or that you can argue anything from it. If an angel wishes to approach a soul on earth in anything other than (for the man) a purely spiritual manner, he must approach by means of sense-impressions ; moreover, if he wants to inform the individual that he is an angel, he must approach in such sense-wise that he is recognised as such. If an angel wanted to approach you, now, as an angel, it would be no use his coming as a prisoner in a red shirt with the broad-arrow on it, with a black face sticking out, and with language that would sound to you, down the telephone which we call hearing, as commonplace Sesuto remarks. You would say he was not an angel, but a Mosuto prisoner. But so, too, I can see not the least reason in the world why Sir Oliver Lodge’s son, Raymond, should not speak to his father of whisky-sodas and cigars in the spiritual world. Doubtless there are no such things there, but neither are there harps and vials. Granted Raymond — about whom, by the way, I express no opinion — there is no reason why he should not use such a form of language to convey an idea — ^though what that idea may be I have hardly the faintest conception. But that doesn’t surprise me. I am perfectly certain that this side of death I shall never understand at all what reality of the spiritual world it is which produces upon me the sense-impression that we call whisky-soda ! ”

" All the same, the whisky-soda notion jars me,” said his hearer, without a smile.

“ You’re right, too. I’m pretty sure. I should be sorry if the spiritual world had to use such a dress in which to convey something to me, or to convey something about a person I loved. Mind you, we may be wrong. For heaven’s sake, don’t let us argue as if there were anything more actually evil or earthly in whisky than in water, but I feel that the real value of a great many things is raised or lowered by our use of the sense-impressions we get from them. Well, there’s not much doubt but that the human use of whisky has depressed it pretty low ! But let’s drop that. The second great deduction I make is this : I believe that often the spiritual world , does not wish us to know that it has obtruded, and that therefore the dress it assumes is such that it is not determinable whether or no the affair is a manifestation of the spiritual, or not. . . . Do you know of Panhandle ? ”

” No ; who is he ? ”

“ Get Professor Jacks to tell you. The point is that he was a ghost all the time, and the Professor never knew it. He dressed himself up in whisky-sodas and so on — and sky-signs, and shot-guns, and ”

The brown eyes twinkled. That’s fiction,” she said. '' I can see you’re ragging me. But I’ll read it sometime. Just now, though, do you know a story to show me what you mean ? ”

“Yes,” he said, thoughtfully, “I do.”

“ Well, tell it me,” she pleaded.

“ Pour me out another cup of tea, then,” he said, ‘‘ and let me light a cigarette. Their spiritual values, anyway, are ”

“ Oh, shut up,” she laughed. “ Here you are. Now fire away. Only I shall know that you’ve put any dress you thought fit, on an otherwise true incident.”

“ Have it that way if you like,” he said ; “ only remember that the characteristic of this glimpse of the spiritual world, if it were a glimpse, was that it showed hardly a trace of its being a strange land at all. That is the point of it. Therefore I’m not sure that it was a manifestation. I think — but, there, ril say no more. Judge for yourself.” And then, while the butterflies danced across the flowers, he told his tale.

“ It was in Paris, before the war, but not long before, just at the time when the Anti-clerical legislation was pretty nearly at its worst. That legislation was popular, too, to a great extent, and in any case it had given a handle to the dregs of the people which they were not slow to fit into the weapon of their lust and greed. I, then, was staying in Paris, with that Abbe of whom I have often told you, and although it was time for me to return to England, I could not bring myself to leave him. His little church had its door locked on to the back street in which it stood, and the faithful slipped in at the side. Every day in the very early dawn we would go down, he looking so frail, and I feeling fearful, and the old sacristan, who had served the office for a generation, would meet us by the little side entrance. He would open the door, and stand there on guard while we made ready for Mass — though he would not have been much use as guard anyway. The Abbe would vest in the little sacristy, with a back glance over his shoulder now and again, and the httle congregation would gather — a woman with a child or two, an old bent bookseller from the barrows near Notre Dame, who never missed, and two who had been used to pass the streets in the habit of their order, and now could not. And I would kneel at the back and watch it all, and take the sacrist’s place when the Abbe went to the altar and the old man served him. The dull light used to filter in through the dusty glass, and shine on the dingy Renaissance altar with its gilded angels and heavy Madonna and wax flowers and brown and gold reliquaries — and holy priest. For he was holy, and I would, at the last, have changed not so much as a glass case of wax flowers, since they were knit up in some way with his spirit. And then he would come down and kneel for the Pope’s prayers, and his thin voice, so acute in its cry, always brought tears to my eyes at the last :

“ ‘ Sacred Heart of Jesus — Have mercy upon us.’

“ During the day he went out but seldom, and then only at a sick-call. I, too, had lost a great deal of my love for Paris, for the sufferings and fears of the Church had taken hold on me. Paris seemed drunken in her beauty and fury. The gay restaurant life, the moving crowds, the thronged shops — I had used to love them, but now Paris seemed to me like some wanton, painted and daubed, that played with souls for sport. I would go, perhaps, to the Bois ; or to the bookstalls, for a chat, if we could get out of ear-shot, with the faithful old fellow who sold there ; or to the heights of Montmartre — but little where else, until the evening. But after supper, with his office said, my friend and I would slip out to the river and walk by the bridges and the water, almost unseen.

‘‘ One night we had strayed farther Hhan we intended. The moon had stamped the towers of the great Cathedral out against the sky, and had deepened to black the shadows of the bridges on the water, and of the trees on the boulevards ; and we had walked far, almost in silence, drinking in the beauty of the night. As a matter of fact, we had reached a part of the city that I did not know at all, and I was just about to say to the priest that I thought we should be returning, when I felt him clutch my arm.

' Dick,' he said, ‘ look over there — under the trees across the way — can you see anything ? '

I looked. It was not so easy to see, but I thought I could make out two or three figures. I said as much.

‘ They're following us, Dick,' said the Abbe ; ‘ we ought not to have come so far. It is a bad quarter just here, and they look to me very like Apaches. I-et us turn back.'

‘ Well, not in a hurry,' said I, ' or they will think we suspect something. Stop and look at the water a minute, naturalty, and then turn back.'

“ We did so. We stood there, looking down at the moon-lit water, the priest's arm through mine, for what seemed interminable minutes, while no one moved across the road ; and then, turning round, we set off back, down the deserted boulevard, towards the lights of more-inhabited Paris.

'' But we had hardly turned, before a party of three men and one woman crossed the road towards our side, plainly to cut off our retreat. ‘ Keep on,’ I whispered, ‘ maybe they will do nothing ’ ; and without, I think, quickening our pace perceptibly, we walked on. I could hear the Abb6 praying beneath his breath.

“ The party reached the pathway ten yards or so before us, and glanced behind them. Then, seeing they were plainly alone, they spread out across the pavement and all attempt at concealment died out of their faces.

“ The Abbe stopped me. ‘ What is it you want, my children ? ’ he asked them.

“ ‘ Your life, you black — devil,’ spat out one of them without another word, and drew a knife.

“ My heart stood still : I don’t think I could have moved if I had been alone. There was nobody in sight, and in any case I knew only too well what would be the temper of any Paris crowd from that quarter. Yet even then I remember noticing how the light from the nearest lamp-standard ahead twinkled and laughed on the rippling water before us.

“ ‘ Run,’ cried my friend, dragging me round on the instant. I caught sight of the woman’s face as he did so, and the horror that thrilled me then did something to stir me into life. Till that night I did not believe that a soul could be devil-possessed, but a devil of lust and hate stared from that woman’s white face — and a young woman she was, too. I heard her laugh and yell : ‘ After them, my braves. And keep the little priest for me ! ’ and we were away.

“ I suppose terror does lend one wings ; anyway, I ran as I have never run before ; and although those street Apaches know how to run, I had been counted good at the ’Varsity, and the little Abbe in the old days, not so long before, had been athletic enough, too.

So, somehow, we distanced them at first. We had been compelled to run away from home and the more populous streets, and we were soon at a place at which we must turn inland from the river. We did so, doubling down one street, up and down another, and gradually losing what we had gained. ‘ Wliere are we ? ' I managed to gasp at one corner, and the Abbe just replied: ‘Don't know.' It was a terrible prospect. Every house we flew by was dark and still ; a good many shuttered shops offered us still less hope of help ; and we had neither breath nor courage to cry for assistance.

“ And then, so quickly that a few seconds sufficed for it all, came the rescue. We had darted round a corner, and were running down a street, when we noticed that the houses had given place to a high wall and that in the wall was a little door, ajar, from which came a pencil of yellow light. The little Abbe was nearest the wall, and it was he who gasped, ‘ In there.' In a second, and just as we could hear the feet of our pursuers coming round the corner, we pushed open the door and darted in.

“ Now I cannot hope to make you feel our incredible amazement at what we found inside. We were in a small chapel, stone-pillared and flagged ; before us was an altar with eight or ten lights blazing on it, and in the centre of the lights, in a monstrance, the Blessed Sacrament. And before the altar, at a prie-dieu, praying, a nun knelt in her habit, who neither moved at our sudden noisy entry, nor stirred at all when we left. As I say, we blundered in. Personally, I was half dazed by the light and the contrast. It was simply Heaven after Hell. I don't think I thought for a second of what our pursuers might do ; I just gasped half-audibly : ‘ Oh, my God,' and

staggered forward to kneel at a high chair, bow my head and close my eyes, and try to stay the beating of my heart.

“But I did hear the Abbe push the door to, and I was conscious that he came swiftly forward and stood by me, irresolute. Practically at once, however, the footsteps reached the door, the handle rattled, and the door itself was opened. Then there followed a kind of eternity. I braced myself to get up on the instant and do battle to push the Apache without and close the door ; I reproached myself that in the overwhelming amazement of my surprise I had not held it ; and I struggled with a kind of torrent of hideous thoughts as to what might happen to that kneeling nun and that which she adored — for, remember, men stopped at nothing in those days. I tell you, it seemed an instant hanging on the brink of eternity. I was all but springing up ; I seemed to know I would be up in a second ; and yet that second died out and lengthened, and still I knelt.

“ And then the door banged, and the Abbe gave a choking sob and fell on his knees at my side. I looked up at him, and could see that he was but praying through tears, and so again I hid my face. No sound of steps or voices reached us — no sound at all save that once a bit of wax fell from a candle on to the altar. We waited perhaps an hour, and then I rose to my feet. The Abbe’s white face looked up at me, but we neither of us spoke. I genuflected and stole silently to the door. I listened ; I could hear nothing. I opened it bit by bit, ever so slowly, and peered out : the street was empty. I beckoned the priest, and he came to me. ‘ Shall we go ? ’ I whispered; and he nodded. Together we stole out, and in fears enough, but, unseen and unmolested, reached, in half an hour or so, a street my friend knew, and so at length his house.

so THE DRIFT OF PINIONS

“ We hardly spoke on that rapid half-walk, half-run home, but once in his study, my friend faced me.

“ ‘ Dick,’ said he, ‘ what do you make of it ? ’ and his voice trembled.

“ ‘ Make of it ? ’ I queried, for I did not understand the drift of his meaning. He made a gesture of impatience.

“ * First,’ he said, ticking the points off on his fingers, ‘ the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and even, as you know, its Reservation, except under most peculiar and stringent circumstances, is forbidden to-day in Paris. Secondly, I know Paris well, and there is no Order of Perpetual Adoration left. Thirdly, by what conceivable carelessness could the door into the street from such a chapel have been left open? Fourthly — although I admit this is not conclusive — how came the nun never to stir or to have her vigil relieved, though we were there a long time ? And fifthly, what did the man see at the door which prevented him and his friends from coming in ? ’

“ ‘ Oh ! ’ I said, ‘ as to that, the sudden sight of the chapel and the Sacrament, as with us, acted upon him so strongly that he could not break its sanctity.’

“ ‘ Ah ! ’ said the priest with a French shrug of his shoulders. ‘ My friend, you do not know these poor souls. . . . No, it was just such a heaven as they love to make into hell. Why, I tell you, when I saw where we were, I was for going out and on, and trying to save it. Only there was ho time, and as soon as that man opened the door, the sight of his face stopped me.’

“ ‘ His face ? ’ queried I, stupidly.

“ ‘ Yes, his face,’ repeated the Abbe, impatiently. ‘ My friend Dick, what would you have expected to see on his face ? ’

“ ‘ Well,’ said I, hesitatingly, ‘ I don’t know. Astonishment, of course, at finding himself at a chapel door. Fear, I should have thought, on my assumption that it was a sense of sanctity that kept him out ; but on yours, well, triumph perhaps.

“ ‘ Exactly,’ exclaimed the Abbe, exultantly, ‘ and it was just because there were no such emotions there, that I was arrested where I stood. My friend, I could swear that he saw nothing. Into what he thought the door opened, I do not know ; but this I know, that his face, as I saw it, was flushed and hot and eager, as you would expect from the chase, and that it changed absolutely not at all. He looked in, and out again in a second, as one might hastily snatch open a cupboard door, and find nothing, and close it.’

" He stopped, with a gesture. I stared at him. ‘ But they must have seen that we were not in the street into which we had plainly turned a minute before,’ I objected.

“ The Abbe lifted his hands, with a shrug, and elevated his eyebrows. Then, peering at me eagerly, he almost whispered : ‘ And did you hear their

footsteps departing ? ’

“ I looked at him with a sudden sense of awe. ‘ Why, no,’ I said ; and silence fell between us as we stood there.”

The story-teller threw away his cigarette, which had gone out, and lifted a warning hand. “ No, my dear,” he said. “ Don’t ask questions. There’s absolutely no more to be said, except perhaps this : that my friend made inquiries from authorities who were positive that no such infringement of the ecclesiastical rule of the time could have been possible, and who were, moreover, plainly distrustful of 'my friend when he pressed them, for they asserted that no such Order existed, or had existed (so far as they knew) in that quarter of Paris. He and I, with some English friends of mine, tried to retrace our steps, but could not, though that in itself is not surprising — ^we had been lost, and Paris is labyrinthine in certain parts. Nor can I aid your curiosity about the chapel. At the time, I had no thought but that all was normal, although providentially fortunate, and I noted nothing in the chapel to give any indication of date or place. And even now I absolutely decline to pass a judgment. It is not a matter for judgment. No hypothesis, natural or non-natural, can be either proved or disproved. Only one thing I know : our lives were saved by a miracle that night, and no explanation that I may learn, hereafter, will surprise me.'*

The little woman smiled. You stupid person,'* she said, I wasn't even going to ask that sort of question. But I am wondering where, when, and to whom it all happened, and what it was that happened — in short, the truth that makes it true."

But Dick will tell neither her nor anyone.

CHAPTER II Our Lady’s Pain

Geographically Basutoland is one and undivided, but those who work in it labour under no such delusion. It is not one land but two. There is the Lesuto, the fertile strip that lies to the west of the Malutis, bordered by the Free State on the one hand and the mountains on the other, the land of mealies and shops, the land whose people ought to be well off but never seem to have much to give away ; and then there is the Sehonghong, the land of rivers, which rise for the most part in Mont aux Sources, and flow down parallel to the steep Natal border, where are kranzes that drop several thousand feet in sheer descent to the plains below. Here are river- valleys deep in wheatfields, and few white men, and seeming poverty, but riches of kind and of generosity that are not much known in the Lesuto. In between the two, over that first barrier as one comes from the Lesuto, lies a no-man’s land of hill upon hill, rough and rugged and inhospitable, although a thousand clear streams and scores of fantastic peaks, often white with snow against the blue of the sky, make it a land of great delight. Almost anywhere, by any of the half-dozen-odd passes and tracks, euphemistically designated roads, by which one can travel from the Lesuto to the Sehonghong, and back, there are rather more than twenty-four hours to be spent between the last settlements of the one and the first huts of the other. The traveller has a long, hard, solitary day and a lonely night before him when he leaves his outpost camp, and then, some time or another before the set of the next day’s sun, he will be among villages once more. It is just the one night’s camp between, for which it will be impossible to get a roof over one’s head if it rains or snows, difficult to procure firewood, hopeless to think of milk.