I could note
the voluminous shroud--a piece of which as a precious souvenir lay even
then so close to my heart--the snowy woollen coverlet wrought over in
gold with sprigs of pine, the soft dent in the cushion on which her head
must for so long have lain. I could see myself--within my eyes the
memory of that first visit--coming once again with glad step to renew
that dear sight--dear, though it scorched my eyes and harrowed my
heart--and finding the greater sorrow, the greater desolation of the
empty tomb! There! I felt that I must think no more of that lest the thought should
unnerve me when I should most want all my courage. That way madness lay! The darkness had already sufficient terrors of its own without bringing
to it such grim remembrances and imaginings . . . And I had yet to go
through some ordeal which, even to her who had passed and repassed the
portals of death, was full of fear. It was a merciful relief to me when, in groping my way forwards through
the darkness, I struck against some portion of the furnishing of the
church. Fortunately I was all strung up to tension, else I should never
have been able to control instinctively, as I did, the shriek which was
rising to my lips. I would have given anything to have been able to light even a match. A
single second of light would, I felt, have made me my own man again. But
I knew that this would be against the implied condition of my being there
at all, and might have had disastrous consequences to her whom I had come
to save. It might even frustrate my scheme, and altogether destroy my
opportunity. At that moment it was borne upon me more strongly than ever
that this was not a mere fight for myself or my own selfish purposes--not
merely an adventure or a struggle for only life and death against unknown
difficulties and dangers. It was a fight on behalf of her I loved, not
merely for her life, but perhaps even for her soul. And yet this very thinking--understanding--created a new form of terror. For in that grim, shrouding darkness came memories of other moments of
terrible stress. Of wild, mystic rites held in the deep gloom of African forests, when,
amid scenes of revolting horror, Obi and the devils of his kind seemed to
reveal themselves to reckless worshippers, surfeited with horror, whose
lives counted for naught; when even human sacrifice was an episode, and
the reek of old deviltries and recent carnage tainted the air, till even
I, who was, at the risk of my life, a privileged spectator who had come
through dangers without end to behold the scene, rose and fled in horror. Of scenes of mystery enacted in rock-cut temples beyond the Himalayas,
whose fanatic priests, cold as death and as remorseless, in the reaction
of their phrenzy of passion, foamed at the mouth and then sank into
marble quiet, as with inner eyes they beheld the visions of the hellish
powers which they had invoked. Of wild, fantastic dances of the Devil-worshippers of Madagascar, where
even the very semblance of humanity disappeared in the fantastic excesses
of their orgies. Of strange doings of gloom and mystery in the rock-perched monasteries of
Thibet. Of awful sacrifices, all to mystic ends, in the innermost recesses of
Cathay. Of weird movements with masses of poisonous snakes by the medicine-men of
the Zuni and Mochi Indians in the far south-west of the Rockies, beyond
the great plains. Of secret gatherings in vast temples of old Mexico, and by dim altars of
forgotten cities in the heart of great forests in South America. Of rites of inconceivable horror in the fastnesses of Patagonia. Of . . . Here I once more pulled myself up. Such thoughts were no kind
of proper preparation for what I might have to endure. My work that
night was to be based on love, on hope, on self-sacrifice for the woman
who in all the world was the closest to my heart, whose future I was to
share, whether that sharing might lead me to Hell or Heaven. The hand
which undertook such a task must have no trembling. Still, those horrible memories had, I am bound to say, a useful part in
my preparation for the ordeal. They were of fact which I had seen, of
which I had myself been in part a sharer, and which I had survived. With
such experiences behind me, could there be aught before me more dreadful? . . . Moreover, if the coming ordeal was of supernatural or superhuman order,
could it transcend in living horror the vilest and most desperate acts of
the basest men? . . . With renewed courage I felt my way before me, till my sense of touch told
me that I was at the screen behind which lay the stair to the Crypt. There I waited, silent, still. My own part was done, so far as I knew how to do it. Beyond this, what
was to come was, so far as I knew, beyond my own control. I had done
what I could; the rest must come from others. I had exactly obeyed my
instructions, fulfilled my warranty to the utmost in my knowledge and
power. There was, therefore, left for me in the present nothing but to
wait. It is a peculiarity of absolute darkness that it creates its own
reaction. The eye, wearied of the blackness, begins to imagine forms of
light. How far this is effected by imagination pure and simple I know
not. It may be that nerves have their own senses that bring thought to
the depository common to all the human functions, but, whatever may be
the mechanism or the objective, the darkness seems to people itself with
luminous entities. So was it with me as I stood lonely in the dark, silent church. Here and
there seemed to flash tiny points of light. In the same way the silence began to be broken now and again by strange
muffled sounds--the suggestion of sounds rather than actual vibrations. These were all at first of the minor importance of movement--rustlings,
creakings, faint stirrings, fainter breathings. Presently, when I had
somewhat recovered from the sort of hypnotic trance to which the darkness
and stillness had during the time of waiting reduced me, I looked around
in wonder. The phantoms of light and sound seemed to have become real. There were
most certainly actual little points of light in places--not enough to see
details by, but quite sufficient to relieve the utter gloom. I
thought--though it may have been a mingling of recollection and
imagination--that I could distinguish the outlines of the church;
certainly the great altar-screen was dimly visible. Instinctively I
looked up--and thrilled. There, hung high above me, was, surely enough,
a great Greek Cross, outlined by tiny points of light. I lost myself in wonder, and stood still, in a purely receptive mood,
unantagonistic to aught, willing for whatever might come, ready for all
things, in rather a negative than a positive mood--a mood which has an
aspect of spiritual meekness. This is the true spirit of the neophyte,
and, though I did not think of it at the time, the proper attitude for
what is called by the Church in whose temple I stood a "neo-nymph."