When I was outside the church, I looked at my watch in the brightmoonlight, and found I had one minute to wait. So I stood in the shadowof the doorway and looked out at the scene before me. Not a sign of lifewas visible around me, either on land or sea. On the broad plateau onwhich the church stands there was no movement of any kind. The wind,which had been pleasant in the noontide, had fallen completely, and not aleaf was stirring. I could see across the creek and note the hard linewhere the battlements of the Castle cut the sky, and where the keeptowered above the line of black rock, which in the shadow of the landmade an ebon frame for the picture. When I had seen the same view onformer occasions, the line where the rock rose from the sea was a fringeof white foam. But then, in the daylight, the sea was sapphire blue; nowit was an expanse of dark blue--so dark as to seem almost black. It hadnot even the relief of waves or ripples--simply a dark, cold, lifelessexpanse, with no gleam of light anywhere, of lighthouse or ship; neitherwas there any special sound to be heard that one coulddistinguish--nothing but the distant hum of the myriad voices of the darkmingling in one ceaseless inarticulate sound. It was well I had not timeto dwell on it, or I might have reached some spiritually-disturbingmelancholy.
Let me say here that ever since I had received my Lady's messageconcerning this visit to St. Sava's I had been all on fire--not, perhaps,at every moment consciously or actually so, but always, as it were,prepared to break out into flame. Did I want a simile, I might comparemyself to a well-banked furnace, whose present function it is to containheat rather than to create it; whose crust can at any moment be broken bya force external to itself, and burst into raging, all-compelling heat.No thought of fear really entered my mind. Every other emotion therewas, coming and going as occasion excited or lulled, but not fear. WellI knew in the depths of my heart the purpose which that secret quest wasto serve. I knew not only from my Lady's words, but from the teachingsof my own senses and experiences, that some dreadful ordeal must takeplace before happiness of any kind could be won. And that ordeal, thoughmethod or detail was unknown to me, I was prepared to undertake. Thiswas one of those occasions when a man must undertake, blindfold, waysthat may lead to torture or death, or unknown terrors beyond. But, then,a man--if, indeed, he have the heart of a man--can always undertake; hecan at least make the first step, though it may turn out that through theweakness of mortality he may be unable to fulfil his own intent, orjustify his belief in his own powers. Such, I take it, was theintellectual attitude of the brave souls who of old faced the tortures ofthe Inquisition.
But though there was no immediate fear, there was a certain doubt. Fordoubt is one of those mental conditions whose calling we cannot control.The end of the doubting may not be a reality to us, or be accepted as apossibility. These things cannot forego the existence of the doubt."For even if a man," says Victor Cousin, "doubt everything else, at leasthe cannot doubt that he doubts." The doubt had at times been on me thatmy Lady of the Shroud was a Vampire. Much that had happened seemed topoint that way, and here, on the very threshold of the Unknown, when,through the door which I was pushing open, my eyes met only an expanse ofabsolute blackness, all doubts which had ever been seemed to surround mein a legion. I have heard that, when a man is drowning, there comes atime when his whole life passes in review during the space of time whichcannot be computed as even a part of a second. So it was to me in themoment of my body passing into the church. In that moment came to mymind all that had been, which bore on the knowledge of my Lady; and thegeneral tendency was to prove or convince that she was indeed a Vampire.Much that had happened, or become known to me, seemed to justify theresolving of doubt into belief. Even my own reading of the books in AuntJanet's little library, and the dear lady's comments on them, mingledwith her own uncanny beliefs, left little opening for doubt. My havingto help my Lady over the threshold of my house on her first entry was inaccord with Vampire tradition; so, too, her flying at cock-crow from thewarmth in which she revelled on that strange first night of our meeting;so, too, her swift departure at midnight on the second. Into the samecategory came the facts of her constant wearing of her Shroud, even herpledging herself, and me also, on the fragment torn from it, which shehad given to me as a souvenir; her lying still in the glass-covered tomb;her coming alone to the most secret places in a fortified Castle whereevery aperture was secured by unopened locks and bolts; her verymovements, though all of grace, as she flitted noiselessly through thegloom of night.
All these things, and a thousand others of lesser import, seemed, for themoment, to have consolidated an initial belief. But then came thesupreme recollections of how she had lain in my arms; of her kisses on mylips; of the beating of her heart against my own; of her sweet words ofbelief and faith breathed in my ear in intoxicating whispers; of . . . Ipaused. No! I could not accept belief as to her being other than aliving woman of soul and sense, of flesh and blood, of all the sweet andpassionate instincts of true and perfect womanhood.
And so, in spite of all--in spite of all beliefs, fixed or transitory,with a mind whirling amid contesting forces and compelling beliefs--Istepped into the church overwhelmed with that most receptive ofatmospheres--doubt.
In one thing only was I fixed: here at least was no doubt or misgivingwhatever. I intended to go through what I had undertaken. Moreover, Ifelt that I was strong enough to carry out my intention, whatever mightbe of the Unknown--however horrible, however terrible.
When I had entered the church and closed the heavy door behind me, thesense of darkness and loneliness in all their horror enfolded me round.The great church seemed a living mystery, and served as an almostterrible background to thoughts and remembrances of unutterable gloom.My adventurous life has had its own schooling to endurance and upholdingone's courage in trying times; but it has its contra in fulness ofmemory.
I felt my way forward with both hands and feet. Every second seemed asif it had brought me at last to a darkness which was actually tangible.All at once, and with no heed of sequence or order, I was conscious ofall around me, the knowledge or perception of which--or even speculationon the subject--had never entered my mind. They furnished the darknesswith which I was encompassed with all the crowded phases of a dream. Iknew that all around me were memorials of the dead--that in the Cryptdeep-wrought in the rock below my feet lay the dead themselves. Some ofthem, perhaps--one of them I knew--had even passed the grim portals oftime Unknown, and had, by some mysterious power or agency, come backagain to material earth. There was no resting-place for thought when Iknew that the very air which I breathed might be full of denizens of thespirit-world. In that impenetrable blackness was a world of imaginingwhose possibilities of horror were endless.
I almost fancied that I could see with mortal eyes down through thatrocky floor to where, in the lonely Crypt, lay, in her tomb of massivestone and under that bewildering coverlet of glass, the woman whom Ilove. I could see her beautiful face, her long black lashes, her sweetmouth--which I had kissed--relaxed in the sleep of death. I could notethe voluminous shroud--a piece of which as a precious souvenir lay eventhen so close to my heart--the snowy woollen coverlet wrought over ingold with sprigs of pine, the soft dent in the cushion on which her headmust for so long have lain. I could see myself--within my eyes thememory of that first visit--coming once again with glad step to renewthat dear sight--dear, though it scorched my eyes and harrowed myheart--and finding the greater sorrow, the greater desolation of theempty tomb!
There! I felt that I must think no more of that lest the thought shouldunnerve me when I should most want all my courage. That way madness lay!The darkness had already sufficient terrors of its own without bringingto it such grim remembrances and imaginings . . . And I had yet to gothrough some ordeal which, even to her who had passed and repassed theportals of death, was full of fear.
It was a merciful relief to m
e when, in groping my way forwards throughthe darkness, I struck against some portion of the furnishing of thechurch. Fortunately I was all strung up to tension, else I should neverhave been able to control instinctively, as I did, the shriek which wasrising to my lips.
I would have given anything to have been able to light even a match. Asingle second of light would, I felt, have made me my own man again. ButI knew that this would be against the implied condition of my being thereat all, and might have had disastrous consequences to her whom I had cometo save. It might even frustrate my scheme, and altogether destroy myopportunity. At that moment it was borne upon me more strongly than everthat this was not a mere fight for myself or my own selfish purposes--notmerely an adventure or a struggle for only life and death against unknowndifficulties and dangers. It was a fight on behalf of her I loved, notmerely 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 ofterrible 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 toreveal themselves to reckless worshippers, surfeited with horror, whoselives counted for naught; when even human sacrifice was an episode, andthe reek of old deviltries and recent carnage tainted the air, till evenI, who was, at the risk of my life, a privileged spectator who had comethrough 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 reactionof their phrenzy of passion, foamed at the mouth and then sank intomarble quiet, as with inner eyes they beheld the visions of the hellishpowers which they had invoked.
Of wild, fantastic dances of the Devil-worshippers of Madagascar, whereeven the very semblance of humanity disappeared in the fantastic excessesof their orgies.
Of strange doings of gloom and mystery in the rock-perched monasteries ofThibet.
Of awful sacrifices, all to mystic ends, in the innermost recesses ofCathay.
Of weird movements with masses of poisonous snakes by the medicine-men ofthe Zuni and Mochi Indians in the far south-west of the Rockies, beyondthe great plains.
Of secret gatherings in vast temples of old Mexico, and by dim altars offorgotten 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 kindof proper preparation for what I might have to endure. My work thatnight was to be based on love, on hope, on self-sacrifice for the womanwho in all the world was the closest to my heart, whose future I was toshare, whether that sharing might lead me to Hell or Heaven. The handwhich undertook such a task must have no trembling.
Still, those horrible memories had, I am bound to say, a useful part inmy preparation for the ordeal. They were of fact which I had seen, ofwhich I had myself been in part a sharer, and which I had survived. Withsuch 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 ofthe basest men? . . .
With renewed courage I felt my way before me, till my sense of touch toldme 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, whatwas to come was, so far as I knew, beyond my own control. I had donewhat I could; the rest must come from others. I had exactly obeyed myinstructions, fulfilled my warranty to the utmost in my knowledge andpower. There was, therefore, left for me in the present nothing but towait.
It is a peculiarity of absolute darkness that it creates its ownreaction. The eye, wearied of the blackness, begins to imagine forms oflight. How far this is effected by imagination pure and simple I knownot. It may be that nerves have their own senses that bring thought tothe depository common to all the human functions, but, whatever may bethe mechanism or the objective, the darkness seems to people itself withluminous entities.
So was it with me as I stood lonely in the dark, silent church. Here andthere seemed to flash tiny points of light.