12 Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV (28 page)

    "But it seeks my love."

    "Learn to give it your love and it may go, having received what it came for."

    "T'sh! You talk like a priest. Suffer your persecutors. Do good to them that despitefully use you. You talk as a priest."

    "As a friend I spoke naturally, indeed, right out of my heart. The idea suddenly came to me that all this - truth or seeming, it doesn't matter which - may be some strange form of lesson. I have had lessons - painful ones. I shall have many more. If you could welcome -"

    "I can't! I can't!" Guildea cried fiercely. "Hatred! I can give it that - always that, nothing but that - hatred, hatred."

    He raised his voice, glared into the emptiness of the room, and repeated, "Hatred!"

    As he spoke the waxen pallor of his cheeks increased, until he looked like a corpse with living eyes. The Father feared that he was going to collapse and faint, but suddenly he raised himself upon his chair and said, in a high and keen voice, full of suppressed excitement:

    "Murchison, Murchison!"

    "Yes. What is it?"

    An amazing ecstasy shone in Guildea's eyes.

    "It wants to leave me," he cried. "It wants to go! Don't lose a moment! Let it out! The window - the window!"

    The Father, wondering, went to the near window, drew aside the curtains and pushed it open. The branches of the trees in the garden creaked drily in the light wind. Guildea leaned forward on the arms of his chair. There was silence for a moment. Then Guildea, speaking in a rapid whisper, said:

    "No, no. Open this door - open the hall door. I feel - I feel that it will return the way it came. Make haste - ah, go!"

    The Father obeyed - to soothe him, hurried to the door and opened it wide. Then he glanced back to Guildea. He was standing up, bent forward. His eyes were glaring with eager expectation, and, as the Father turned, he made a furious gesture towards the passage with his thin hands.

    The Father hastened out and down the stairs. As he descended in the twilight he fancied he heard a slight cry from the room behind him, but he did not pause. He flung the hall door open, standing back against the wall. After waiting a moment - to satisfy Guildea, he was about to close the door again, and had his hand on it, when he was attracted irresistibly to look forth towards the park. The night was lit by a young moon, and, gazing through the railings, his eyes fell upon a bench beyond them.

    Upon the bench something was sitting, huddled together very strangely.

    The Father remembered instantly Guildea's description of that former night, that night of Advent, and a sensation of horror-stricken curiosity stole through him.

    Was there then really something that had indeed come to the Professor? And had it finished its work, fulfilled its desire and gone back to its former existence?

    The Father hesitated a moment in the doorway. Then he stepped out resolutely and crossed the road, keeping his eyes fixed upon this black or dark object that leaned so strangely upon the bench. He could not tell yet what it was like, but he fancied it was unlike anything with which his eyes were acquainted. He reached the opposite path, and was about to pass through the gate in the railings, when his arm was brusquely grasped. He started, turned round, and saw a policeman eyeing him suspiciously.

    "What are you up to?" said the policeman.

    The Father was suddenly aware that he had no hat upon his head, and that his appearance, as he stole forward in his cassock, with his eyes intently fixed upon the bench in the Park, was probably unusual enough to excite suspicion.

    "It's all right, policeman," he answered quickly, thrusting some money into the constable's hand.

    Then, breaking from him, the Father hurried towards the bench, bitterly vexed at the interruption. When he reached it, nothing was there. Guildea's experience had been almost exactly repeated and, filled with unreasonable disappointment, the Father returned to the house, entered it, shut the door and hastened up the narrow stairway into the library.

    On the hearthrug, close to the fire, he found Guildea lying with his head lolled against the armchair from which he had recently risen. There was a shocking expression of terror on his convulsed face. On examining him the Father found that he was dead.

    The doctor, who was called in, said that the cause of death was failure of the heart.

    When Father Murchison was told this, he murmured:

    "Failure of the heart! It was that then!"

    He turned to the doctor and said:

    "Could it have been prevented?"

    The doctor drew on his gloves and answered:

    "Possibly, if it had been taken in time. Weakness of the heart requires a great deal of care. The Professor was too much absorbed in his work. He should have lived very differently."

    The Father nodded.

    "Yes, yes," he said, sadly.