“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.”