The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 19 March 1914, Page 5

The Storyteller

THE UTILE DOOR The pleasantest man in the world was Mr. Seth Morton, whoso blue blood, handsome bank account, and sure philosophy made hinr the first citizen of the town and a favorite everywhere. Precision was his chief characteristic. He had settled for himself all the irritating questions of life, and closed the door on the past, just revelled in ttie present, and saw the future as clearly as he saw Westport Pay from his verandah. He had twenty or thirty years to live, being now about fifty. All his nearest relatives were dead, and wife and child had never been his. In his time there would be no more serious troubles for his country and people, no grave problems to solve. The question of poverty he had solved, also the social evils of the time, like drink and gambling. Men were poor, wasteful, riotous because they wished to be; just leave them to their indulgence, and help along their families with wise charity. Needless to say, he could not understand reformers, exhorters, and writers who discussed social and other questions. He usually urged them to visit WesEport and take a course in nature, watching the sun rise over the Green Mountains, and the shadows lengthen on the bay at sunset. Placidity would result from the course and the mania for discussion vanish. Mr. Morton lived according to his nature. When he retired every night, after carrying out a long programme of locking and barring doors and windows, winding ancient clocks, and setting furniture in order, lie was quite certain that, in a house where there was a particular place for everything, everything was in its place, well dusted, and at right angles to its receptacles and the world. If he thought otherwise, there was no sleep for him until he had risen and made sure. If he dreamed even that a nervous paper had escaped to the floor and was rustling about in the draughts, he walked in his sleep to pick up imaginary papers, and

pin them down to their proper places. None the less he an amiable, upright, courteous man of the world, and very popular. Miss Karnsworth, his niece, spent a summer with him whenever she was not abroad, and he accompanied her every Sunday to Mass. Neither had any particular belief in religion, but both liked Monsignor Lachance very much, and did not like the Episcopalian minister. Monsignor had taste and preached very effective sermons, with a marked French accent, but as fresh, fluent, and strong as the brook that flowed back of the rectory. Monsiguor never discussed problems, and his parish was free from them ; he talked chiefly on duty and the preparation for eternity. And his” little dog Fanny, ardent lover of her master, sat in the vestry demurely, without whimper or movement, except now and then to peep out hastily at Mr. Morton and Miss Farnsworth in the front pew. Fanny refused to be separated from Monsignor any longer than necessity demanded. The altar and the sanctuary he had decorated with artistic wall-papers and gilt mouldings, so as to look like real paintings; for Monsignor was also an artist. The grounds about the church and rectory were as beautiful as if a millionaire had paid to plant and ornament them. And the little churchyard at the back, with its hedges and bushes, really looked like a place for tired souls to rest. This particular year, however, the enchantment had vanished for the time. Sitting in the front pew on the first Sunday of her visit, Miss Farnsworth missed Fanny’s demure little peep from the vestry, and noticed the sadness of Monsignor’s lively face. lie preached a pretty and pathetic sermon, Mr. Morton said afterward. And very true also,’ replied his niece. Yes, allowing for the exquisite exaggeration of Catholic sentiment, all high colors, my dear, but exquisite. Monsignor has had trouble, and we must go in at once and condole with him. A pretty figure lie used, the little door, eh ? We go in and out of doors all our life ; we love some and dread others ; we envy a few, where the great are familiar; and one we entirely and c«npletelv forget.’ ‘lsn’t that true, Uncle Seth?’ Of course, with the exaggeration, mind ! We all overlook the little door of death. It is always within reacli of our hand. It may open suddenly for us; but, no matter how we are engaged, no matter how reluctant, no matter how tied up in pleasure or business, when that little door opens, each one will turn his back on time and hop into eternity. The little door will close, and never open again. Gapital'figure ! As long as I live I shall see that little door beside me. Clever man ; and yet he’s no orator, but so effective.’ Monsignor welcomed them brightly and then sighed. ‘ What has happened ! Do tell us. We saw that you were grieved,’ said Miss Farnsworth. Monsignor tried to speak but could not. He pointed to a crayon near bv, in which Fanny looked demure and eager through the vestry door. ‘ All that remains of poor Fanny,’ said Monsignor, with tears. ‘ The little door opened for her,’ Mr. Morton said softly. Then Monsignor told the story of her sickness and her death and her burial, so pitifully that one would have thought Fanny a human person. “ Since vou feel her death so keenly,’ said Mr. Morton, ‘ why do you not get another dog of the same breed V 1 And go through the same sorrow’ again ? Quite useless!’ said Monsignor. ‘ Well, then, get three or four dogs,’ suggested he, ever ready to find a way out of a difficulty. The lady gasped and the priest threw up his hands in disgust.

' Well, one can not go on grieving forever,' Mr. Morton protested. ' There must be a reaction, and whatever will help it—' ' Even four terriers,' his niece remarked.

1 Whatever will help it,’ repeated he firmly, ‘ is not to be despised.’ ‘ Perliaps,’ Monsignor said slyly, ‘you can tell mo what will help death.’ ‘ To a Catholic I can tell nothing on that subject. Your exaggeration of death is very beautiful, I admit; but it is still an exaggeration. Have I not seen it and admired it—all the details, I mean ? A poor fellow gets dangerously ill. Let alone, he would pass, into eternity without a tear. What do you folks do?’ Begin your exaggeration. Looks and hints about the last rites; the visit of the solemn priest; the last rites most solemnly given; a little preparation for judgment; some delicate allusions to sin, purgatory, and hell ; the last prayers with a lighted candle in the sufferer’s hand; then the wake, the chants of the Requiem, the burial, the Month’s Mind, the anniversary! Why you are never done! How, then, can a man escape this exaggeration?’ ‘ But what yon call exaggeration,’ said Monsignor, who took Seth Morton seriously, ‘is the outcome of human need.’ ‘Why then do I not need it? When my time comes I shall lie down just as I do at night; and slip away at the proper moment through the little door. Ah, that little door ! A very apt, pretty, touching illustration!’ & Well, you will have to slip like a flash through the little door if you are to escape the shame, the humiliation, the pain, the darkness which accompany every death except a sudden one,’ said Monsignor. ‘ Do you see, my dear,’ said Morton to Miss Farnsworth, ‘ the exaggeration of these people? I ask, where is the shame, where is the humiliation, in a fact which comes to everyone ? I admit the pain ; but why talk of darkness, when the dead do not know it, can not feel it? Words, words, words!’ Miss Farnsworth rose to end the discussion; for Monsignor was warming up to the combat, and would not be denied the last word. ‘ The shame,’ he said, shaking a finger at Morton, is that a man becomes a baby again, without the baby s unconsciousness and innocence. The humiliation is the violent separation of the soul from the body, leaving the latter a mere clod for the terrible grave. The pain who shall describe it without having experienced it ? The darkness—why, even a pagan dreads the darkness of annihilation.’

'Words, words, words!' reoeated Morton, with emphasis. *Dear Monsignor, come down to lunch to-morrow and have it out with him,' said Miss Farnsworth. They went on chattering as she slipped out the door and into the automobile, and were still arguing when the machine moved away. ' I have never seen the like of it, my dear. He has a flow of English like a torrent. I think the Catholic exaggeration is due largely to French vivacity and French imagination. But that idea of the little door is capital. Right here at your hand, in space so to speak, it may open any minute, and even if you were entertaining the crowned heads of Europe when that door opens, in you go.' He chuckled for some time, until Miss Farnsworth protested that the idea made her uncomfortable, as it brought death too near by associating it with a door. 'I never thought before,' said she, 'how many doors we use in a day, and to have death associated with the process is too much.' ' Well, my dear, hereafter I'll forget it for your sake; but at the same time, I feel bound to tell you, I shall see that little door quite often.' And so he did, but always in a pretty or amusing light. When a poor soul drowned, he saw the little door «opening in the blue deeps of the lake, to the eerie music which just breathes in the ear of the drowning. When an old man, lifting his sack of potatoes in the field just at sunset after the day's labor, sank down again to earth, he saw the little door opening for him into the violet shadows of evening. He discovered that the royal moment for the little door to open for him

whs the early dawn on Lake Champlain. He had heard the world’s most delicate music, seen its tenderest colors, drunk in its most engaging poetry, enjoyed its highest pleasures, but one and all faded before the wondrous dawn over the bay. The piney hills and the misty mountains looked like youth, just awaked from sleep, thinking and listening. So they must have looked on creation’s morn. A single star hung in the blue like a lamp in a vast, pure sanctuary, and was reflected without a ripple in the stilL waters of the lake. Twittering notes from sleepy birds came faint and uncertain from the trees. The dew still fell, a magic perfume scented the air, and some delicate, penetrating, delicious spirit filled every vefti in him, tingled every nerve, exalted every feeling and thought, until he seemed to be approaching the confines of eternity. Ah, this should bo the hour for the door to open, he sighed. No spectators, mj) doctors and nurses and lawyers and ministers and rites and medicines ; just the opening and the closing of a door amid this perfect beauty, and then silence ! However, one has to take the world as he finds it, and Seth Morton had settled the order of his going with his usual precision. He would get sick respectably, have a nurse and a doctor, die placidly, and leave the funeral question to his heirs. Meanwhile one must enjoy life and do his duty—for him a very easy affair. He had twenty or thirty years ahead of him. Life offered no real enjoyment after threescore and ten. He would surrender gracefully at that and pass through the .little door without regret or pain. One morning after breakfast his toe twitched a little, and he stooped to rub it. A few minutes later it twiched again, and as he stooped once more he forgot all about the toe and this world. The little door had suddenly opened, but had not let him in. Consciousness always found Seth Morton quite himself. When he sprang out of the darkness after a day’s oblivion, and at a glance took in the room where he lay with its painful details, he knew what had happened. He was probably doomed, and there must be no fuss about accepting it. First, to find out the precise situation, and then to get ready for it. Miss Farnsworth came in casually, but passed over to the window without glancing at him; so he called her, and with an effort found the phrase: ‘ Send me the doctor.’ It cost him such an effort to say so little, and his niece such an effort to understand him, that fie fell into a quiet rage. He thought he had spoken clearly, and afterward he felt certain he had concealed his rage. But the soothing hand of the lady on his brow, and her tender assurance that everything was all right and he would soon be well, and he must not disturb himself about anything, proved that he had said nothing and concealed nothing. The nurse made this situation more clear a little later. She washed his face and hands, combed his hair, and twisted his moustache and beard into proper shape. His gorge rose, and he ordered this impertinent creature to be dismissed at once. No one paid any attention. The doctor discovered after a while that the nurse impressed the patient badly, and secured a male nurse in her stead. This aggravated the affair. If Seth despised anything on earth, it was a man who washed and combed and manicured ; and to have such a creature performing these offices in his very presence, on himself, was maddening. He would have risen from his bed and driven the nurse from the house personally, but found this task impossible. Then he suddenly reflected that these exhibitions of feeeling, of repugnance to his attendants, were most unusual in him, and must be stirring up disagreeable criticism. He must repress them, he must dissemble, he must return to that poise which had made him almost distinguished. In making the effort he forgot even the names of his feelings, and in his lucid intervals he saw that his attendants read him like an open book. Like a flash Monsignor’s saying came to him: ‘The shame!’ He had become a. child again ; helpless, without reflection, almost without thought, and utterly dependent upon the people around him. A pain struck

him, at the heart first, but reaching down into unfathomable depths, and growing as it searched the ahyss. He was a babbling child again, and worse was coming. When the little door opened at last, there would be left behind a dead body, shortly to be laid away in the mould. Although he knew this body was not himself, still, it being dear to him, he raged that he could not secure its annihilation, could not save it from vulgar handling, from the wretched pageant of death and burial and monumental stone. At this point something in him revolted and made war on the fact called death. He cursed it so fluently that Miss Farnsworth would have been scandalised had his words been distinct. Seth Morton soon to become a clod ! While a host of common creatures —dirty laborers, foolish and poor and without hope in this world—would live on robust and joyful. This thought gnawed him even when time had given him back some strength, a little speech, and hope, ‘ You are a lucky chap,’ said the medical man. ‘ You will get well, and be around again as brisk as ever, when you should liave been dead a month ago. But you will have to be careful for years.’ ‘ Just live with the sword hanging over my head?’ he replied. ‘ I would have preferred to die.’ ‘ Part of your sickness, my dear chap,’ said the doctor. ‘ You’ll be glad enough next year to enjoy life on half-decent terms.’ ‘ I’m enjoying it now,’ he admitted ; ‘ but only when I avoid thinking.’ He detested the doctor for his robust strength, his ruddy face, active body, and strong voice. What right had any one to such qualities when he lived without them ? He quarrelled with his visitors on this score, and they did not know the cause. He tilted even with Monsignor—for whom he had greater respect than ever—while he sneered at him for his energy and vivacity. What right had the prelate to this surplus vigor, while he lav half alive in his chair? Monsignor read the feeling in his eves, and gave him an antidote. ‘Do not be envious of the healthy,’ said he. ‘ Their time of shame and humiliation comes even as yours. Let that thoxight kill your envy.’ ‘ It never occurred to me, Monsignor, and of course it is so. The gayest and happiest and strongest will come to this terrible moment. In a hundred years not one of all these millions will be alive. They will have passed through the little door, suffered the shame and the humiliation.’

' You did not suffer much pain V said Monsignor. He thought it over before answering. Looking back to the last night of health, and the long space between, he seemed to be staring into the depths of Dante's Inferno, where no fires blazed, where only a black atmosphere choked the laboring breath. Pain ! After the confusion of his brain had departed, was there a single moment waking or sleeping devoid of pain ? And the varieties of suffering ! One morning he looked ?t his room, for which he cared little, and a wave of anguish swept over his heart at the thought that all these trifles of use and ornament might next day be thrown into the auction room. In health he he would have made little of selling them, but now they had become inexpressibly dear. He thought of the house, the grounds, the horses and cattle, the books and pictures, and every thought added to his suffering. Rather than endure it, he would see that, all were destroyed by fire. The night tortured him. Others slept and he could not, and the slow hours beat him as with scorpions. Would morning never come? He remembered that his dear mother had slept only briefly for weeks before she died. She was old, worn out, and such suffering was to be expected. How precisely he had uttered that statement. No one could help her, and the rest of the world had to sleep, no matter how wakeful the sick. And he had slept while his mother dear sat in her chair, scant of breath, sure of death, praying for it; yet condemned to count the seconds till the dawn, and to look forward to further pain. ' Yes, I suffered considerable pain,' lie replied, in his precise way; for now he had control of himself.

I am quite able now to believe in some kind of bell; for 1 went through it, Monsignor.’ ‘ Mostly of the mind, 1 fancy.’ ‘ A child without a child’s unconsciousness and innocence,’ he quoted smiling. ‘ It would take a book to tell all that 1 suffered. It is much like being buried alive.’ The tears suddenly streamed down bis cheeks, and Monsignor comforted him. ‘ These hot bears are not for my own pain, but for the foolishness of the past,’ said he. ‘ I must have been a hard charatcer in my other day. 1 look to myself now like a brass machine, which thought and felt mechanically, and ignored more than half of life, and cackled and disputed as such a machine would, with brass brains and feelings. I settled my exit from life in machine fashion, as a matter of a few weeks at most, and of no feeling ; and here I have been through such an inferno as Dante with all his powers could not describe.’ ' Monsignor spoke to him soothingly, but feeling and exhaustion had overcome him, and for a few minutes he lay back, deathly pale, hardly breathing, so that Monsignor beckoned for the nurse in the next room. He stretched out his hand for Monsignor and murmured ; ‘Oh, the darkness! That is the worst of all!’ Life ebbed for a few minutes, then came slowly back again. Some force within him seemed to be fighting for expression, or deliverance, and insisting that he should help in the struggle—be who was so weary that the mere sight of effort tired him still more. This battle went on tirelessly, and at times, as now, he murmured : ‘lf I could only give up and die!’ ‘ Life is too strong within you, and it is a good sign,’ said the priest. ‘ But life is not worth so much suffering.’ Monsignor remained silent. Seth looked at him wistfully. ‘ You must have had experiences which help you to understand what I have endured, what I am suffering now,’ he said. ‘ And which help me to bear it,’ replied the priest. * Yo\ir case is so simple: a rich man, surrounded with aid and comfort, whose illness gives no one sorrow or trouble, whose death means wealth to his heirs, and who is about to get well and to live for many years. But I have seen a young man dying with full knowledge of the end, whose eyes looked on a helpless wife and five little children, soon to be handed over to the poorhouse. What is your suffering to that, my friend?’ ‘And how did lie die?’ ‘ Peacefully, somewhat helped by exaggerated Catholic sentiment.’ Seth laughed at the irony before he answered: ‘ I know now that there is no exaggeration in your case of the sick and the dying, Monsignor. His convalescence ended in September—the month beautiful in the Adriondacks, where the maple and oak forests flamed with autumn glory, and the dark, stately pines and spruces put on a deeper green by contrast. The physician gave him a rule o^Hf 6 - All his precision returned, his poise resumed its ancient sway, the clocks were wound up at the proper hour, and vagrant papers pursued to the dust-heap. The villagers perceived no change in him, pronouncing him as sound as ever, while Monsignor was in doubt for a time. He sensed some deep change in the man, but the signs flitted bv like shadows. The late illness was never mentioned, still less discussed. Seth Morton knew every soul in Westport. and it was not rema.rka.ble, therefore, that he should sit for half an hour by a. sick man s bed, or chat with such invalids as crawled sadly about the streets, or listen patiently to an old man s complaints of his ills. Monsignor, how6ver, found it remarkably* that ho should follow the course of one narishioner’s fatal sickness, and be present at the administration of the last rites : vet more, that he should read the nravers for the sick and the agonisiusr with relish, and innuire about them ; and' that, in addition, he should quote

famous scenes from notable novels, wherein much was made of the Catholic ritual of the sick room.

All speculation ended with his reception into the household of the faith. Seth Morton was not given to explanations about his conduct, and no one asked for them on this occasion—not even Monsignor, who knew that the story would come out in good time. And it did, one moonlight night the next summer, as they sat gazing upon the silvery surface of the bay after dinner. In some way Seth had begun to talk of his recent illness, and this was his account of the path which his soul had travelled.

' What I suffered then and later only God, Who has made us capable of suffering, could tell. The details would fill a volume, and be of interest only to men who escaped death like myself. I never believed until then that one man could suffer so much, and often I asked myself, why should there be suffering so bitter and long without relief ? After a while two things disgusted me : that which bred suffering. I knew you called it sin, which is the parent of death; but at that time'l just cursed the thing. The other was the foolishness of the orators and mouthers who compare sickness and death to the decay of the leaves and the falling of the flowers. I cursed these people also, for I was once their partisan. I really believed once that sickness and death were as meaningless as autumn's decay. How men can fool themselves with words !

'When I was able to get about again I saw the reality of life, and fearful reality of death. I knew that I must pass through the same experience again, and in my dread I began to look about for protection and strength. I saw your care of the sick. Did you know that I watched you? There was another thought in my mind at the time. When health returned, my sickness looked like a wretched dream. It began to fade from my mind and heart. I watched you and your sick with a double purpose: to see what you did to strengthen them, and to make sure that the terrors of my sickness were proper to every man, not merely peculiar to me, not merely a dream.

' I learned that each human being actually walked through that black tunnel which all but engulfed me. I sat through Joe Richard's dying, you remember? lie looked as indifferent as a child, and he said nothing, but to me he told the story of his dying—my own story of shame, humiliation, pain, and darkness. But with a difference. Where I fell desolate, he found courage, resignation, patience; where I sank in the darkness, he saw light of some kind which brought him peace, often a smile to his face. I saw on him the effect of the Last Sacraments. Joe became another man, consoled his wife, and looked at his children without anguish, as if the parting were to be for a little while. He made me think of a sturdy sea-captain setting out to sea, amid the wailing of the women, quite sure of his successful return.

' Then I read your ritual, and the prayers of the Church for her dying children brought back all that I had suffered. The words had a meaning for me which they could not have for a healthy person. I felt that wonderful compassion, and still more wonderful understanding, which she feels and has for the agonising. She alone understands what it means to sicken "and die, and she alone has the power to soothe and sustain in the last hour. She does things. Do you recall, Monsignor, your story of the colored man in the hospital ? ' He saw the priest administering Extreme Unction to Catholic patients, and he asked the priest to do as much for him. The priest undertook a bi'ief examination of his previous convictions and present condition, which to the sufferer seemed too long. "Parson, excuse me," said he, "but I belong to a religion which done more talking than the auctioneers. Is you giving me the same talk game? I've had enough o' talk. Now I want somethin' done for me. Jest like what you "done for that fellow over there." The doctors talked to me, the nurses talked, my friends talked, you yourself talked—all assuring me that my cure was only a question of time. You remember how I took the game of talk !'

Monsignor smiled and waved his hand. Seth fell silent for a minute. ' Anyway, I settled a few questions for myself,' he continued. ' The chatter about falling leaves and fading roses is the meanest chatter going, in relation to sick* ness and death. Every man in dying suffers a mysterious and complex anguish, for which there is no name adequate ; for which there is no ointment, except Extreme Unction. Strange that the bombastic can get away with that stuff every time, in a world which has a good number of invalids, who must laugh right out in meeting at the comparison. Beautiful the Church is to me in everything now, but most beautiful in that single point: her care of the sick and the dying. In a world so harsh to helplessness, and to what "it can not understand, her tender service to the dying is enough to prove her divinity. And to think, Monsignor, that all this came to me through your figure of the little door !' — A ve Maria.