Odile always came into my bedroom before I was up in the morning. It was her function to waken me, and then to gossip with me while she opened the green Venetian blinds, tightly closed the windows against the noxious air of morning, laid out linen, and prepared my bath in an adjoining room. Her thin, motherly face was the first thing I saw when I wakened; always smiling, no matter if things had gone well or ill, always ready to tell me a story if that were needed to put me in a good humour. “All well, Odile?” “Ja, mynheer, except that the Germans half killed a policeman in front of the house last night. He screamed horribly, mynheer.” Such was a typical morning’s news.
She petted me outrageously, and, although she never summoned courage to assert it to my face, among the servants below-stairs she gave herself airs and boldly called me her bébé. I confided to her my love affairs in return for which small flatteries she embroidered my handkerchiefs, criticised my unstarched American shirts, doped me faithfully whenever I fell ill, and protested eloquently against the perils of too frequent bathing. Daily baths might be healthy in America; they were certainly unhealthy in Belgium, said Odile.
The tale of what happened to Father Guido comes back to me in fragments. Perhaps Odile did not tell it to me at all. Perhaps she told it when I was too sleepy to remember. In any event, I cannot now tell how much is hers and how much my own. The words, alas! are mine, in any case.
“Nay, Odile, I am listening. Tell me about Father Guido.”
“He was a holy priest, a canon in his monastery, but he doubted God’s promise of the bliss of heaven!”
“Dreadful!”
“Yes, wasn’t it, mynheer? So he died, and his soul ran up the air as on a stair. And now listen! The soul of Father Guido stopped for breath and wheezed hard. It was not used to running. It stood stark naked in the sunlight just three meters above the bell-tower of the monastery where he had lived and served God twenty-seven years. The garden looked very sheltered and inviting. You must know that Father Guido loved gardening, mynheer. The soul could see his favourite mulberry tree, and acolytes in gray gowns walking beneath, meditating. One of the acolytes lifted a hand and stole a berry. ‘Rogue!’ the soul thought. It was about to walk down into the garden and remonstrate with the thief when suddenly it leaped into the air as if a wasp had stung it. The heavy monastery bell just below it clanged like an explosion. Bang! went the bell; then again, bang! and after a pause, again, bang! ‘Some one is dead,’ thought the soul. It licked its lips thoughtfully. They tasted damp and oily. And suddenly it remembered—that was the oil of extreme unction. ‘I am dead,’ said the soul of Father Guido with resignation, ‘and on my way to bliss—I hope.’
“The soul began to climb up long vistas of air, but abruptly it stopped. ‘My God, I’m stark naked!’ it thought; ‘stark naked, and the eye of all the world is on me.’ Not once since Father Guido donned his habit had he been unclothed in public. But the waste of air about the poor soul offered no shelter, and there was no returning the way it had come. Its chest heaved with sorrow and its eyes peered everywhere, above, below, beside it; but nothing—not even a summer cloud—came near to give it shelter. ‘I’m thin and withered and I’ve a belly like a tun,’ the soul said bitterly, and it slapped its thin shanks as it ran, and breathed hard.
“A hawk circled in space, and the soul turned and climbed in the direction of the swinging bird. It got within two meters of the hawk and hailed him in Flemish—for all the birds understand Flemish, mynheer—but the hawk sailed by unheeding, its eye on the distant earth. Father Guido’s soul was disappointed. ‘But if I can’t be heard or seen, it doesn’t much matter about my clothes,’ it said, and climbed on slowly.
“The high air grew very cold, but the exertions of the soul kept it in a healthy perspiration. It gathered strength and agility as it climbed; it seemed to leap from hilltop to hilltop of the atmosphere, and below it earth fell away like a ball dropped into a well. A shadow came crawling from the east, devouring the earth as Father Guido’s soul watched and climbed; the shadow floated like pitch over all the world, silently, swiftly eating everything. It reached the centre of the world. It devoured the monastery and went on, gathering all things into its mouth. Long afterward the sun dropped out of sight, and darkness leaped upon the soul high in air and cloaked it in freezing night.