I seemed open to so many
strange, impressions. Nothing else, perhaps, can explain my ridiculous conversation with her,
when, for the third time that evening, I came suddenly upon the woman
half-way down the stairs, standing by an open window as if in the act of
listening. She was dressed in black, a black shawl over her square
shoulders and black gloves on her big, broad hands. Two black objects,
prayer books apparently, she clasped, and on her head she wore a bonnet
with shaking beads of jet. At first I did not know her, as I came
running down upon her from the landing; it was only when she stood aside
to let me pass that I saw her profile against the tapestry and
recognized Mrs. Marsh. And to catch her on the front stairs, dressed
like this, struck me as incongruous--impertinent. I paused in my
dangerous descent. Through the opened window came the sound of bells--
church bells--a sound more depressing to me than superstition, and as
nauseating. Though the action was ill judged, I obeyed the sudden
prompting--was it a secret desire to attack, perhaps?--and spoke to her. "Been to church, I suppose, Mrs. Marsh?" I said. "Or just going,
perhaps?" Her face, as she looked up a second to reply, was like an iron doll that
moved its lips and turned its eyes, but made no other imitation of life
at all. "Some of us still goes, sir," she said unctuously. It was respectful enough, yet the implied judgment of the rest of the
world made me almost angry. A deferential insolence lay behind the
affected meekness. "For those who believe no doubt it is helpful," I smiled. "True religion
brings peace and happiness, I'm sure--joy, Mrs. Marsh, joy!" I found
keen satisfaction in the emphasis. She looked at me like a knife. I cannot describe the implacable thing
that shone in her fixed, stern eyes, nor the shadow of felt darkness
that stole across her face. She glittered. I felt hate in her. I knew--
she knew too--who was in the thoughts of us both at that moment. She replied softly, never forgetting her place for an instant:

"There is joy, sir--in 'eaven--over one sinner that repenteth, and in
church there goes up prayer to Gawd for those 'oo--well, for the others,
sir, 'oo--"

She cut short her sentence thus. The gloom about her as she said it was
like the gloom about a hearse, a tomb, a darkness of great hopeless
dungeons. My tongue ran on of itself with a kind of bitter satisfaction:

"We must believe there are no others, Mrs. Marsh. Salvation, you know,
would be such a failure if there were. No merciful, all-foreseeing God
could ever have devised such a fearful plan--"

Her voice, interrupting me, seemed to rise out of the bowels of the
earth:

"They rejected the salvation when it was offered to them, sir, on
earth." "But you wouldn't have them tortured forever because of one mistake in
ignorance," I said, fixing her with my eye. "Come now, would you, Mrs.
Marsh? No God worth worshipping could permit such cruelty. Think a
moment what it means." She stared at me, a curious expression in her stupid eyes. It seemed to
me as though the "woman" in her revolted, while yet she dared not suffer
her grim belief to trip. That is, she would willingly have had it
otherwise but for a terror that prevented. "We may pray for them, sir, and we do--we may 'ope." She dropped her
eyes to the carpet. "Good, good!" I put in cheerfully, sorry now that I had spoken at all. "That's more hopeful, at any rate isn't it?" She murmured something about Abraham's bosom, and the "time of salvation
not being forever," as I tried to pass her. Then a half gesture that she
made stopped me. There was something more she wished to say--to ask. She
looked up furtively. In her eyes I saw the "woman" peering out through
fear. "Per'aps, sir." she faltered, as though lightning must strike her dead,
"per'aps, would you think, a drop of cold water, given in His name,
might moisten--?" But I stopped her, for the foolish talk had lasted long enough. "Of
course," I exclaimed, "of course. For God is love, remember, and love
means charity, tolerance, sympathy, and sparing others pain," and I
hurried past her, determined to end the outrageous conversation for
which yet I knew myself entirely to blame. Behind me, she stood
stock-still for several minutes, half bewildered, half alarmed, as I
suspected. I caught the fragment of another sentence, one word of it,
rather--"punishment"--but the rest escaped me. Her arrogance and
condescending tolerance exasperated me, while I was at the same time
secretly pleased that I might have touched some string of remorse or
sympathy in her after all. Her belief was iron; she dared not let it go;
yet somewhere underneath there lurked the germ of a wholesome revulsion. She would help "them"--if she dared. Her question proved it. Half ashamed of myself, I turned and crossed the hall quickly lest I
should be tempted to say more, and in me was a disagreeable sensation as
though I had just left the Incurable Ward of some great hospital. A
reaction caught me as of nausea. Ugh! I wanted such people cleansed by
fire. They seemed to me as centers of contamination whose vicious
thoughts flowed out to stain God's glorious world. I saw myself,
Frances, Mabel too especially, on the rack, while that odious figure of
cruelty and darkness stood over us and ordered the awful handles turned
in order that we might be "saved"--forced, that is, to think and believe
exactly as she thought and believed. I found relief for my somewhat childish indignation by letting myself
loose upon the organ then. The flood of Bach and Beethoven brought back
the sense of proportion. It proved, however, at the same time that there
had been this growth of distortion in me, and that it had been provided
apparently by my closer contact--for the first time--with that funereal
personality, the woman who, like her master, believed that all holding
views of God that differed from her own, must be damned eternally. It
gave me, moreover, some faint clue perhaps, though a clue I was unequal
of following up, to the nature of the strife and terror and frustrate
influence in the house. That housekeeper had to do with it. She kept it
alive. Her thought was like a spell she waved above her mistress's head. Chapter VII


That night I was wakened by a hurried tapping at my door, and before I
could answer, Frances stood beside my bed. She had switched on the light
as she came in. Her hair fell straggling over her dressing gown. Her
face was deathly pale, its expression so distraught it was almost
haggard. The eyes were very wide. She looked almost like another woman. She was whispering at a great pace: "Bill, Bill, wake up, quick!" "I am awake. What is it?" I whispered too. I was startled. "Listen!" was all she said. Her eyes stared into vacancy. There was not a sound in the great house. The wind had dropped, and all
was still. Only the tapping seemed to continue endlessly in my brain. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to half-past two.