The Light Invisible

by Robert Hugh Benson

And then he drew out his old, thin, knotted hands, and clasped them outside the rug that lay on the outside of the bed. I laid my own hand upon them.

“You have had a greater gift than that,” I said. “You have known instead the joys of the world.”

He paid no attention to me, but stared mournfully before him, but he did not withdraw his hands.

There came a sudden gust of wind outside; and even in that corner away from the window the candle flames leant over to one side, and then the chimney behind me sighed suddenly.

The priest unclasped his hands, and my own hand fell suddenly on the coverlet. He stretched out his left hand to the window as it still shook, and pointed at it in silence, glaring over my head as he did so.

Almost instinctively I turned to the long low window and looked. But the curtains were drawn over it: they were just stirring and heaving in the draught, but there was nothing to be seen. I could hear the pines tossing and sighing like a troubled sea outside.

Then he broke out into a long wild talk, now in a whisper, and now breaking into something like a scream.

Parker came quickly round from the doorway, where he had been waiting out of sight, and stood behind me, anxious and scared. Sometimes I could not hear what the priest said: he muttered to himself: much of it I could not understand: and some of it I cannot bring myself to write down––so sacred was it––so revealing of his soul’s inner life hidden with Christ in God.

“The sorrows of the world,” he cried again; “they are crying at my window, at the window of a hard old man and a traitorous priest ... betrayed them with a kiss.... Ah! the Holy Innocents who have suffered! Innocents of man and bird and beast and flower; and I went my way or sat at home in the sunshine; and now they come crying to me to pray for them. How little I have prayed!” Then he broke into a torrent of tender prayer for all suffering things. It seemed to me as he prayed as if the wind and the pines were silent. Then he began again:

“Their pale faces look through the glass; no curtains can shut them out. Their thin fingers tap and entreat.... And I have closed my heart at that door and cannot open it to let them in.... There is the face of a dog who has suffered––his teeth are white, but his eyes are glazed and his tongue hangs out.... There is a rose with drenched petals––a rose whom I forgot. See how the wind has battered it.... The sorrows of the world!... There come the souls from under the earth, crying for one to release them and let them go––souls that all men have forgotten, and I, the chief of sinners.... I have lived too much in the sweetness of God and forgotten His sorrows.”