R. Thurston Hopkins

Give us our rest, O Father, in thine own appointed time and of thy gracious olden fashion. Lay thy annulling seal upon the o'erlabored heart: drop thy healing nepenthe into the weary brain. Teach us not to fear that which brings us nearer to Thee. Suffer us to go to sleep with no more consciousness than the flowers that take no care for their awakening. Give us this last and best of all thy gifts—Parva domus, magna quies!

Hilaire O'Hagan sat in the September sunshine on the grass that skirted the roadside. For some time he had been examining with a stare of melancholy interest the worn toes of his boots. On his head was a dingy straw hat; to his form and limbs there hung a faded and creased coat and a pair of shiny black trousers;—he held in his hand five shillings which had been thrust into his hand when the prison gates had opened to him that morning. He had taken the money and swaggered out with a parting gibe at the constable who closed the doors behind him.

O'Hagan was an incorrigible rascal. Some years before, when he stood in the Assize Court, a venerable judge had told him so. "O'Hagan," said the judge grimly, "you are what I should term an incorrigible rogue, and I shall send you to prison for two years with hard labour. You have run across my path many times before. When you gain your liberty it will be very much to your advantage if you keep out of my way for good and all."

O'Hagan had received the sentence with the same impertinent smirk on his face as he had received many similar sentences.

Now he was a free man. He was powerful, full of health, and—lazy. He reflected aloud, with evident enjoyment (and in the speech of a lettered gentleman), "This is indeed one of those days when it is good to be alive!"

"O'Hagan!" came a sudden voice, harsh and authoritative, from behind him: He rose to his feet and faced about. In the roadway appeared the constable to whom he had addressed some not over polite remarks on his way out of prison.

"Well?" said O'Hagan.

The constable snorted. "Didn't you hear me tell you to move on? We don't want any habitual criminals hanging about here."

O'Hagan dived his hands deep into the pockets of his shiny trousers and slouched along towards the next village. About a mile ahead was an inn he knew of where he might enjoy a great refreshment, and drink the waters of Lethe. He jingled the silver in his pocket and reflected that for one night at least he could eat strongly, and drink largely, and sleep deeply.

Outside a house screened by a mysterious ten foot wall full of the plain dignity of unpretending age, a long grey motor car was standing. O'Hagan turned and surveyed it, and his quick eye rested upon a leather hand case on a rug beneath the seat. It did not take him a moment to snatch it and hide it swiftly beneath his coat. For a second or so he stood back against the wall. At that moment a girl came out of the house, in company with an elderly gentleman, and walked towards the car. O'Hagan looked at the girl swiftly. At the same time she glanced at him, and their eyes met. Things looked unhealthy for O'Hagan. But fate was altogether with him, and the motor moved off and left him standing there with the case under his coat. No glorious figure, this man, but one of those whom specialists now place amongst the doomed as cursed with the criminal instinct, with the vices that require lavish means to feed them—a man who only feels a thrill in life when he is preying on his fellows, or eluding the hand of justice.

O'Hagan walked down the road a little way with his hand resting lovingly on the leather case. He turned a corner, cut through the hedge, and took a track across a field. In the shelter of a clump of bushes he sat leisurely on the grass and went over the contents. Among the various odds and ends was a leather purse. He opened it with trembling fingers. There was a sovereign, five one pound notes folded up, eight shillings in silver, and a small silver cross hanging on a black silk riband. He dropped the silver with a sigh of satisfaction into his trousers pocket, and the notes he stored in the lining of his hat. He took up the little cross and was about to thrust it into the thick grass, when he paused for a moment, and was aware of an oppressive feeling.

O'Hagan felt that his body was decreasing, sinking under the green turf, falling down, down, down, and yet "He" was still above, gazing, wondering, open-eyed, open-mouthed, as it were. Gradually, but none the less surely, he was being crowded round by many moving "?'s" which never seemed to grow distinct. He seemed to know at once he was back in the days long past. He shut his eyes against a burning that felt like tears. When he opened them again he was looking at his own name, fairly carved in on the silver cross in quaint old English letters:

The clump of bushes before him was now obscured by a thin white cloud. As he watched he was aware of a figure that stood out distinctly before him. He was a man of his own height, thick-set, serious-looking, in a monk's mantle and hood. O'Hagan gave a hurried glance, and as hurriedly turned his head away again. The face of the man exactly resembled his own. But it was an honest face, without the look of dissipation, and the secret furtive air, which he knew marred his own features. He also thought he could see a faint nimbus round his head—but this may have been illusion. O'Hagan moved away as if he had no wish to see him; but the stranger was not to be put off by any such trick. He touched O'Hagan's arm, and brought him to a standstill.

"Brother!" he said in a gentle voice.

O'Hagan pulled himself up sharply. For a moment it seemed as if he would have refused to stay, but the next he realized that it would be of no use.

"What do you want with me?" he began. "I know I'm a thief and a drunkard. Do you want to hand me a Sunday School tract? If so get it over."

The stranger's hand tightened on his arm, and he began to speak in a calm but strangely thrilling voice. "It is written there: 'men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.'"

"Well?" said O'Hagan, trying to hold a countenance of little concern.

"Well?" said the stranger, "for why did you steal?"

O'Hagan coughed and held down his head.

"A man without scruple and without heart," the stranger remarked to himself.

O'Hagan looked up with a start. "Look here," he began. "You've no right to——"

Then of a sudden the mist began to rise from the clump of bushes and the stranger vanished. O'Hagan was back in the flesh. He stood there dazed for the moment, with the little cross clutched in his hand. He sat down again and tried to force his spirit back to the other scene, but in vain. He felt that he had been thrilled through and through. The oppression, however, unlike the stern-faced monk, did not vanish, it deepened. A throbbing headache came on, which refused to be shaken off, and eventually sent O'Hagan to the "Bell Inn" to drink still deeper of the waters of oblivion.

The day was already falling when he walked, jingling his silver, into the sanded bar of the "Bell Inn," and an hour or so later, when it began to fill with drovers and country folk, O'Hagan had looked much on the good brown ale. He was in fact becoming very noisy. Seated in a corner, he sang "Nell and Roger at the Wake" in a hoarse voice. The country folk grinned and looked at him curiously.

"Shut your gab, old sport," said a rough-looking drover at last, "that song is not fit for decent folk to hear."

O'Hagan swore like any trooper, and reached his hand out to a large spirit bottle at his elbow, and for a moment the drover thought he would get it thrown at his head. However, O'Hagan rose to his feet, made a bow to the company, and made an apology to the drover. He stood there, a blackguard on the face of him, but a gentleman in spite of that undefinable and vaguely repulsive smirk which played about his straight and refined mouth. He slunk away into the night.

As O'Hagan walked the night deepened in throbs of gathering darkness. The sense of uneasiness that had been with him ever since the priest in the cassock had appeared to him was not to be easily thrown off. He set himself to argue down the uneasiness for which there was no more foundation than a bad attack of "nerves" after the gloomy life in prison. He told himself, till he believed it, that a man—just a human man—had been crossing the fields, and that being smitten with religious fervour he had quoted the Scripture aloud, as he had often heard such people do. He told himself it was mere fancy that was the cause of the belief that something was shining around the man's head. As he argued these things away, and banished the face of his visitor, a certain sort of reason usurped his place. But he did not feel comfortable, however, he fell short of any form of fear.

It was O'Hagan's whole business to find desolate corners, where he could sleep without the fear of interruption by the police; and hence being in a part of the country that he knew well, he bethought himself suddenly of the great barn next to the mansion house at Tilney St. Lawrence. It was always full of good hay, as large as a barrack and no thoroughfare passed within a quarter of a mile of it. In such a place, and with the scent of the hay to lull him, O'Hagan threw his tired body down, and soon lost all the cares of the world in complete repose.

All his life O'Hagan had been a habitual dreamer; the nights were few, that is to say, when on awakening he did not find that some mental traffics and discoveries had been his, and at times, the whole night through he would meet with most dazzling adventures. In prison his dreams had been a great solace to him, and each night he had settled down to devote the dark hours to the cultivation of joyous dreams. He was one of those men who went to sleep fair and square, and looked for dreams. But as O'Hagan stretched in the hay, things were revealed to him that were beyond all dreams, and of course he could not keep the strange priest out of the vision. It opened with finding himself in front of the doors of an old church, where, he understood, he was going to hide from someone who wanted to kill him. He knocked on the door and the man who opened the door was the very priest he had seen in the afternoon. He asked him to step in and instantly turned round and walked up the dimly lit aisle, and O'Hagan understood that he had to follow. In silence they passed through a small arch in the chancel and mounted a narrow oak staircase with many corners and tortuous turns and arrived at a small landing with a studded door set in it. Quite inexplicably O'Hagan's heart sank at the sight of it. However, the priest unlocked and opened it, and held it open for him to enter, and without coming in himself, closed it. It was a small oak room with a stone floor, and a curious smell at once attracted his notice. It was there—there, close to him—under his very nose—the strong, acrid odour of decay—the nauseating smell of the grave. Looking about he saw the floor was paved with grave stones. In one corner stood a fine seventeenth century lead coffin. A curious greyish light shone from it. O'Hagan's conjecture had been right: there was something awful in the room, and with the terror of nightmare seizing him swiftly by the throat and throttling him, he awoke in a spasm of terror. O'Hagan was sitting bolt upright with the impression that someone had flashed a lantern in his face, though the barn was absolutely pitch dark. "I've had a most diabolical nightmare. It was the drink," he said to himself, and decided to go to sleep again. But the excessive heat of the barn would let him rest no longer. The atmosphere seemed to be hot and pungent, and he groped about and opened the door to let in some air. Almost at the same moment someone cried "Fire!" and shapes of things began to define in a soft grey glimmering;—and the gloom was broken up by a red and angry spurt of flame from a wing of the old manor house. Again cries of "Fire!" came to his ears, and grew and multiplied. O'Hagan was fully awake in an instant, and running at top speed towards the old mansion. When he reached it the whole sky about was illuminated by a red and angry light. Almost at the moment of his arrival a tower of smoke arose in front of the porch window, and with a tingling report, a pane fell outwards at his feet. A crowd of cowed and white-faced country folk drew back when he rushed up. Then he looked up at the porch window and saw what it was that made the people go. He saw a girl's terrified face at the window. "The girl I lifted the bag from," he said aloud. "She'll be burnt to death."

The heavy hall doors were surrounded by the inmates of the house who had escaped and O'Hagan pushed through them, and sprang up the broad stairway mid choking volumes of smoke. When reached the room above the porch the heat was fierce, and the roaring of the fire filled his ears, and he had scarce carried the terrified girl out of the room when a side door fell in, and a branch of flame shot brandishing through the aperture, and the head of the stairs became lit up with a dreadful and fluctuating glare. He carried her swiftly down the stairs, he feared every moment that they would crumple and fall in. But he fought his way grimly, and his jerky swear words were lost in the roaring of the fire. Another moment and they were in the open. Firelight and moonlight illuminating the country around with confused and violent lustre, and banked against the stars and the sky they could see a glowing track of smoke.

"That was a near thing, Miss."

"I thought my end had come!" she said, the colour returning slowly to her face. "There would have been no chance at all if you had not come up for me, as I was then almost suffocated. It was a very brave act!" She did not thank him—she couldn't have spoken plain words of thanks to save her life—but O'Hagan knew what she thought—"Don't say any more about it, Miss, I am really a coward at heart."

"I'm sure I owe my life to you," she said earnestly. "I know there are some things for which thanks are an insult, but you will not mind if I offer you a little token of gratitude?"

O'Hagan's hand was resting on a small silver cross in his pocket, and in another moment he solemnly handed the girl the money and notes he had stolen. "Why, whatever is this?" asked the girl, staring at O'Hagan in bewildered amazement.

"That's yours," he said by way of assistance.

"But I don't understand!" she cried, greatly puzzled.

"Well, Miss, I suppose it does require some elucidation," O'Hagan replied somewhat nervously. "You see, it's only a return of stolen goods. You remember visiting a house in the big grey motor car yesterday, Miss?"

"Yes."

"Well, I stole your bag from under the seat. I have given you back again all that I have left. But I will take this little cross as a token." He dangled the little silver charm before her face, and before she had time to take in the situation O'Hagan had disappeared.

The long plains of Northern Europe stretched before the gaze of a regiment of British infantry—great undulations of sodden earth left by the winter rains and thaws. There, in the piercing cold that froze the feet, they waited the signal to advance. Stray bullets whined and pinged as they struck the wire and sand bags on the top of the trenches; occasionally a man fell on his face; and the ghastly change in the faces of the troops bore testimony to the effects. Hilaire O'Hagan lay stretched upon his face, occasionally looking towards his officer. His heart beat like the pulsing of a motor car. His throat felt dry, his cheeks were burning. At times a cold shiver passed right through his frame. He fidgeted and lolled from one side, to the other. It seemed to him that he had waited hours for the signal to get over the trenches. He tried to strike a match for his pipe; his hand was trembling furiously. It occurred to him that after having passed through the gory awfulness of six months' incessant fighting, he was beginning to lose his nerve. He was no longer master of himself. He was afraid. Every man has the instinct that prompts fear, for upon that instinct the whole foundation of life-preservation is founded. But over and above this instinct, common to all of us, O'Hagan had imagination—the graphic, vivid imagination that always lurks in Irish blood. Is not the entire history of the Celt a rejection of the things of this world for the Shadow and the dream? Upon this basis of fear and imagination O'Hagan started to build, building and building until he had created a grand structure of blind terror which yielded a most exquisite torture to his mind.

A whistle sounded and a shudder traversed the men all down the trench. The officer called to his men. He mounted the parapet and jumped over. There was a sound like the rushing of a river as the regiment poured itself over the trench. The men advanced slowly and dazedly. Now any acute observer would note that the men were bewildered and had little heart in the fight. Their faces worked; and they struggled to walk on, but it seemed useless. The bullets were pattering all around and taking heavy toll. Then a few yards in front a shrapnel shell kicked up the mud. The German guns had found the range. Someone shouted out the fatal words "Lie down." The regiment was soon hugging the earth, which was about the best thing they could have done. Great showers of shrapnel burst over them, and the bullets struck down on them in a continuous shower. Some men rose to their feet, and the shrapnel withered them. Suddenly one shell burst over O'Hagan, blotting out all around him in smoke and dust, and brutally jerking his mind to fullest tension. This shell fire was hell! With the crash imagination and fear began to work together in his overworked brain—both at once in the queerest jumbling manner. In a few moments O'Hagan was on his feet running away—racing as if not merely for his life, but his soul.

When O'Hagan's brain cooled and his sight cleared he found himself in the doorway of a little wrecked church. The German shells had gashed and ripped the sides and roof, so that birds flew in and out at will. Hundreds of sparrows chirped in the oak beams above. The shells had pitted, starred and jerked up the blue flagstones in the porch on which O'Hagan stood. Parts of the old church had been shelled nearly level; little twisted fragments of beautiful leaded windows had been swept up in a pile outside with other wreckage. As O'Hagan walked up the aisle a feeling came over him that he knew much of the old place. A quintessence and distillation of peace and comradeship seemed to inhabit the soft gloam of its chancel. He found himself drifting back to past days and seeing dimly in a thin white cloud faces that seemed familiar and yet were unnameable. Then one face stood out distinctly, and O'Hagan watched it with breathless wonder and fascination. He moved closer up to it; he would have given much not to have done so, but he could not help himself—he looked closer, and it was—the face of the monk who had appeared to him once before. When the cloud had cleared a little, the outline of the monk wearing a hood and cowl became visible. Then was there a voice that he identified at once despite the lapse of two years since he had last heard it. "I have been wanting to speak to you, brother, for many hours, but something I cannot explain to mortal man has prevented me." The priest instantly turned round and O'Hagan understood that he meant him to follow. His heart sank at once, and he experienced a sense of dreadful oppression and foreboding, and with a sudden thrill, partly of fear, and partly of curiosity he followed. They passed up the aisle and a perfectly familiar staircase. Then he opened a door, and went in, and at the same moment, sheer unreasoning terror seized him. He was afraid, but did not know why: he was simply afraid. Then like a sudden recollection, when one remembers some trivial adventure of childhood, O'Hagan looked for the old lead coffin. He cast his eyes about with a certain air of proprietorship, and compared the room with the room of his dreams. Nothing had changed. And then, with a sudden start of unexplained dread, he saw that the coffin was in the corner—the same leaden coffin that he knew so well with the same curious greyish light coming from it. There was lettering on the lid.

"What's written there? What's there? Who's there?" he called. He called and continued to call; then another terror, the terror of the sound of his own voice seized him; he did not dare to call again; he whispered. There was something written on the coffin that his mind reeled to entertain. Without quite knowing how he came to be there, O'Hagan found himself bending over the coffin. He read the lettering, and it was:

Hilaire O'Hagan ob. 1696 aetat 35.
Parva domus, magna quies.