WaynfleteColeridge, Christabel R. (Christabel Rose)
General
Waynflete
Coleridge, Christabel R. (Christabel Rose)
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
"I suppose you will have to go away soon," he said to Cuthbert
afterwards.
"Yes--on the 18th, I fear--but I want you to come with me. There's no
one here to look after you even as clumsily as I can. I suppose Mrs
Palmer stays; but her notions are limited to good beef-tea."
"It's not a bad notion. Cuthbert, don't you want to know what happened
to me?"
"Yes--when you can tell me."
"I'm going to tell you now. Come here--quite close--lock the door
first."
Cuthbert did as he was told, and sat down quietly.
"Well," he said, "how was it?"
"Well, that night when I was walking from Kirk Hinton, I got on very
slowly, and it was a long--long time."
"Yes--you got very tired."
"Yes, but I thought hard. I almost made up my mind that the whole thing
was a craze inherited from the other Guy, or at least shared with him.
I thought nothing existed outside my own brain; that the old Guy had
probably got drunk at the old public in the valley, and that I should
too. That the cause of the whole horror was in _me_, because my brain
was made wrong or crooked."
He paused, and Cuthbert said no more than, "Well?"
"You've always wanted me to think that. You don't know what it's like
to think so, when there is a great horror that your brain has made for
you."
Guy spoke very quietly. Cuthbert hardly ventured to answer him. "You
would never understand what I meant by `feeling.' But then I
felt--_nothing_. I don't think even Christ felt like that--quite, when
He said God had forsaken Him. For _I_ felt that there was no one even
to forsake me."
"But, my dear boy," exclaimed Cuthbert, distressed, "I do not think so.
I never meant to teach you to think so. That one hallucination--"
"If you knew what a spiritual presence in your soul is, good or evil--
you would know what is involved in finding it a delusion. I was _glad_
when I felt him come."
"Did you see--it?"
"I saw the figure on the bridge, standing in my way. Well, it was a
question of drowning myself or letting him drown me. I was almost mad--
I--I think he laughed at me--I'm not sure. His eyes--"
Guy dropped his voice, and into his own eyes there came a wild,
uncertain look, as of a sorely shaken brain. But he sat up and spoke
emphatically.
"Suddenly I knew that I could try to get across. That's the point, you
see, Cuthbert--that's the point! One can try, one _can_ fight--devil or
delusion--I don't know which--one can resist, and he will flee. I think
he will always flee--for there's help. _All_ spiritual presences are
not evil; something helped me. I fainted, I suppose; but I got across
the river--I set myself to get on, but the hill was so steep--and long--
I was so deadly faint. It took an awful time, I had to stop so often;
oh, I don't wonder the other Guy was too late! But I got there in time.
Aunt Margaret knew it, she quite understood."
"It is all over now," said Cuthbert, soothingly; "you won't see the
figure again."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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