The Bond of Black

I could not see the face, but by her figure and her gait as she turned to make her way out I recognised her.

It was Aline Cloud. She had come there to listen to the preaching of the man she loved. Once again, then, had she come into the life of this man who had fled from her as from a temptress.

The verger went back into the church, and my friend pushed to the door in order that whoever remained should not witness us, then answered —

“I’ve been busy – terribly busy, my dear fellow. Forgive me.”

“Of course,” I answered. “But it was a surprise to me to hear that you had left Duddington, although, of course, we couldn’t expect you to bury yourself down there altogether.”

“Well, I had this offer,” he answered, hanging up his surplice in the cupboard, “and being so much interested in the work here, I couldn’t refuse.”

“It seems a dismal place,” I observed, “a terribly dismal place.”

“Yes,” he sighed. “There’s more misery and poverty here than even in the East End. Here we have the deserving poor – the people who are too proud to throw themselves on the parish, yet they haven’t a few coppers to get the bare necessaries of life with. If you came one round with me, Clifton, you’d witness scenes which would cause your heart to bleed. And this in London – the richest city in the world! While at the Café Royal or Jimmy’s you will cheerfully give a couple or three pounds for a dinner with a friend, here, within fifty yards of this place, are people actually starving because they can’t get a herring and a pennyworth of bread. Ah! you who have had no experience in the homes of these people can’t know how despairing, how cheerless, is the life of the deserving poor.”

“And you live here?” I asked. “You prefer this cramped, gloomy place to the fresh air and free life of the country? You would rather visit these overcrowded slums than the homely cottages of the agricultural labourer?”

“Certainly,” he responded simply. “I entered the Church with the object of serving the Master, and I intend to do so.”

“And the lady who was once a parish-worker here,” I said, with some hesitancy. “Have you seen her?”

“Ah!” he sighed, as a dark shadow crossed his thoughtful brow, and his lips compressed. “You alone know my secret, old fellow, you alone are aware of the torment I am suffering.”

“What torment?” I inquired, surprised.

At that instant, however, the old verger, a man who spoke with a pronounced South London drawl, interrupted by dashing in alarmed and pale-faced, saying —

“There’s been a robbery, sir – an awful sacrilege!”

“Sacrilege!” echoed Yelverton, starting up.

“Yes, sir. The chalice you used this morning at Communion I put in the niche beside the organ, meaning to clean it to-night. I’ve always put it there these twelve years. But it’s gone.”

My friend went forth into the church, and I followed until we came to the niche which the old verger indicated.

There was no chalice there, but in its place only white ashes and a few pieces of metal melted out of all recognition.

All three of us stood gazing at the fused fragments of the sacramental cup, astonished and amazed.

Chapter Nineteen

The Result of the Compact

“There’s some Devil’s work been performed here!” gasped the newly-appointed vicar, turning over the ashes with trembling hands, while at the same time I, too, bent and examined the fused fragments of the Communion cup.

The recollection of the miraculous changes effected in my own room was fresh within my memory, and I stood amazed. The agency to which was due the melting of the chalice was still a mystery, but had I not seen Aline, the Woman of Evil, leave the church?

It was apparent that Yelverton had not detected her presence, or he would most probably have referred to it. He loved her with an all-absorbing love, yet, like myself, he seemed to hold her in some mysterious dread, the reason of which I always failed to discover. His theory that the clergy should not marry was, I believe, a mere cloak to hide his terror of her. This incident showed me that now he had come back to his old parish she haunted him as she had done in the past, sometimes unseen, and at others boldly greeting him. That night she had sat a few pews behind me listening to his brilliant discourse, veiled and unrecognised in the half-lighted church, and had escaped quickly, in order that none should be aware of her presence.

But I had caught a glimpse of her, and knowledge of her visit had been immediately followed by this astounding discovery. Her evil influence had once more asserted itself upon a sacred object and destroyed it.

Truly her power was Satanic. Yet she was so calm, so sweet, so eminently beautiful, that I did not wonder that he loved her. Indeed, I recollected how enthusiastically I once had fallen down and worshipped her.

And now had I not a compact with her? Had I not given myself over to her, body and soul, to become her puppet and her slave?

I shuddered when I recollected that hour of my foolishness. This Woman of Evil held me irrevocably in her power.

“How strange!” I exclaimed at last, when I had thoroughly examined the ashes. I would have told him of Aline’s presence, but, with my lips sealed by my promise, I feared to utter a word, lest I might be stricken by her deadly hate, for she certainly was something more than human.

“Strange!” he cried. “It’s marvellous. Feel! The ashes are quite warm! The heat required to melt and fuse a heavy vessel like that would be enormous. It couldn’t have been done by any natural means.”

“How, then, do you account for it?” I inquired quickly.

“I can’t account for it,” he answered in a hoarse voice, gazing about the darkened church, for the lights had been nearly all extinguished, and the place was weird and eerie. Then, with his lips compressed for a moment, he looked straight at me, saying in a strange, hard voice: “Clifton, such a change as this could not be effected by any human means. If this had happened in a Roman Catholic church, it would have been declared to be a miracle.”

“A miracle wrought by the Evil One!” I said.

And he bowed his head, his face ashen, his hands still trembling.

“I cannot help thinking,” he said after a pause, “that this is a bad augury for my ministry here. It is the first time I have, as vicar, administered the Sacrament, and the after result is in plain evidence before us – a result which absolutely staggers belief.”

“Yes,” I said pensively. “It is more than extraordinary. It is an enigma beyond solution; an actual problem of the supernatural.”

“That the chalice should be thus profaned and desecrated by an invisible agency is a startling revelation indeed,” he said. “A hellish influence must be at work somewhere, unless,” and he paused, “unless we have been tricked by a mere magician’s feat.”

“But are not the ashes still hot?” I suggested. “See here!” and I took up some of the fused metal. “Is not this silver? There seems no doubt that the cup was actually consumed here in the spot where the verger placed it, and that it was consumed by an uncommonly fierce fire.”

Without responding, he stood gazing blankly upon the ashes. I saw that his heart was torn by a thousand doubts and fears, and fell to wondering whether he had ever had any cause to suspect the woman he feared of possessing the power of destruction.

Again he glanced round the cavernous darkness of the silent church, and a shudder went through him.

“Let’s go, my dear fellow,” he said, endeavouring to steady himself. “I’m utterly unnerved to-night. Perhaps the efforts of my sermon have been a little too much for me. The doctor told me to avoid all undue excitement.”

“Keep yourself quiet,” I urged. “No doubt some explanation will be forthcoming very soon,” I added, endeavouring to reassure him.

But he shook his head gloomily, answering —

“The Prince of this World is all-powerful. The maleficent spirit is with us always, and evil has fallen upon me, and upon my work.”

“No, no!” I cried quickly. “You talk too hopelessly, my dear old chap. You’re upset to-night. To-morrow, after a rest, you’ll be quite fit again. You’ve excited yourself in your sermon, and this is the reaction.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and together we left the church. I walked with him across to his lodgings in a poorish-looking house in Liverpool Street, facing the disused burial-ground. He had not entered upon residence at the vicarage, for, as he explained to me, his wants were few, and he preferred furnished apartments to the worries of an establishment of his own. As I entered the small, rather close-smelling house, I could not help contrasting it with Mrs Walker’s clean, homely cottage in Duddington, where the ivy covered the porch, and the hollyhocks grew so tall in the little front garden. He took me into his shabby little sitting-room, the window of which overlooked the churchyard, and I saw how terribly dreary was his abode.

I remarked that the place was scarcely so open and healthy as at Duddington, but as he sank into his chair exhausted, he answered simply —

“My work lies here among the poor, and it is my duty to live among them. Many men in London live away from their parishes because the locality happens to be a working-class one, but such men can never carry on their work well. To know the people, to obtain their confidence, and to be able to assist them, one must live among them, however dismal is the life, however dreary the constant outlook of bricks and mortar.”

With this theory I was compelled to agree. Surely this man must be devout and God-fearing if he could give up the world, as he had done, to devote himself to the poor in such a locality, and live the dismal life of the people among whom his work lay.