The House of Defence v. 1

by E. F. Benson

“Thanks,” he said; “I shall not need you.”

Then the two entered, and Cochrane closed the door gently behind them.

Maud had never yet in her life seen any to whom the great White Presence has drawn near, but now, when she looked at the bed and the face of the man who lay there, she knew that the supreme moment must nearly have come, so unlike life was what she saw. Sandie, the gillie whom she had known so well, with whom year after year she had passed so many pleasant and windy days on the moor or by the brown sparkling river, was barely recognisable. The grey, pallid mask, with skin drawn tight over the protruding bones of the face, was scarcely human. Both upper and lower lips, already growing bluish in tinge, were drawn back, so that in both jaws the teeth were exposed even to the gums, and his eyes, wide open and bright and dry, looked piteously this way and that, with pupils dilated with terror, and the soul, frightened at this dark and lonely journey on which none could be its companion, sought for comfort and reassurement, but sought in vain. It was no delirium of fever that caused that active scrutiny: it was fear and dumb appeal. His hands, thin and white, lay outside the blanket, and they, too, were active, picking at it.

Cochrane had seen that before, and knew what it meant, and he quickly pulled a chair to the bedside, leaving Maud standing.

“Sandie,” he said, “just listen here a minute. You think you are ill, maybe you think you are dying—at least, your mortal mind tells you that—and you’ve let yourself believe it. Now, there’s not an atom of truth in it. Why, man, God is looking after you, and He has sent me here this evening to remind you of that. Your forgetting that has made your poor body sick. That’s all the trouble.”

Maud looked from that mask on the pillow to the man who sat by the bed, and if the one face was dark with the shadow of death that lay over it, the other was so lit and illumined with life that it seemed possible even now that death, for all his grimness and nearness, might have to retreat. Some force, irresistible and radiant, seemed to be challenging him. But as yet she did not dare hope. She could only wait and watch.

Then there was silence. Cochrane took his mind off all else, off poor Sandie even, to abandon himself to the knowledge, the belief in the only Power that healed and lived. Though the evening was cool, the beads of perspiration stood thick on his forehead as he concentrated all his strength, all his power of belief, into the realisation of this. Then, again, after some quarter of an hour, he raised his head, and looked on the glassy, dying face on the pillow, and spoke more eagerly, more insistently than ever.

“How can you be ill if you only realise that there is nothing real in the world except God’s Infinite Love? Fix yourself on that. It’s only sin that makes us able to be afraid, or sick, or in pain. But that isn’t God’s will for you, Sandie, and He won’t have it. It’s that old cheat, the devil, who makes us sin, and who makes us think we are sick. He tells you, too, that you are a poor sinful body. So you are, but you’ve forgotten a big thing about that. God has wiped it all away. Jesus took it, the dear Master took all that, and all sickness, too, on His shoulders. It nearly staggered even Him for a moment.”

He paused again, and for some minutes more was silent, absorbed in the realisation of that which he believed. All the time he seemed absolutely unconscious of Maud’s presence, and in the silence she looked back from him to that which had been but a death’s-head on the pillow, and saw, not exactly to her amazement, but to her intense awe, that a certain change had come over it. It was possible, of course, that her first terrified glance at it had exaggerated the deathliness of it, and that she might in a way have now got used to it. But, in any case, it seemed different. Or, again, the intensity of Mr. Cochrane’s belief in the power to heal those on whom the very shadow of death lay might have infected her, and made her see through the medium of his conviction. Yet it seemed to her that a change was there. She faintly recognised Sandie again—the living Sandie whom she knew, not the dead Sandie whom she had seen when she first entered the room. That gaping, mirthless grin had vanished; his lips were no longer drawn back to the base of the teeth. And surely, half an hour ago, his lips had been nearly blue; now a blood-tinge invaded them again. Also, those poor hands, which had picked and plucked at the blanket, were still. They lay there weak and nerveless, but they no longer picked and clawed. His eyes sought comfort still, but it seemed that they had begun to find it. And was the eclipse, the shadow of death, beginning to pass away from his face? Was the power of Infinite Love, which must be so much stronger than sickness and death, being here and now openly manifested? Or was she but imagining these things in obedience to the suggestion made by that strong, virile mind of the man who sat by the bedside?

From Sandie she looked back to Mr. Cochrane. Soon he raised his eyes again, for through this long silence he had sat with his face buried in his hands; and again he looked at Sandie, and there shone from him a beam so tender and triumphant that his face was transfigured.