“And the stone? That too ...?!”
“The ... day ... after ... tomorrow”, the whisper came as if from a great distance. The Angel had become a faint wisp and the child at the window seemed to my eye translucent, like milky glass. It hung in the air, lifeless as a scrap of silk. Then it sank back into the landscape, floated as greenish, shimmering mist to the ground and became a patch of meadow.
That was my first meeting with the Angel of the West Window.
After such favour, can fate hold any torment in store for me? Blest be the night of the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.
We sat together for a long time and talked ecstatically of the wondrous occurrence. As if it were the greatest treasure in the world, I clutched Bartlett Greene’s – no, no: the Angel’s coal crystal as a constant reminder that I had been found worthy of a miracle. My heart was full to bursting when I remembered the Angel’s promise: The day after tomorrow!
Kelley lay in a deep sleep until the dawn appeared in a sky flushed red, as if smeared with blood from wounded clouds. In silence, shuffling like a weary old man, he went down the stairs without one glance at the rest of us.
How wrong is the common cry: Beware of him who bears the brand! I felt this as I watched the man with the ears cut off disappear down the stairs. “He is an instrument of providence and ... I took him, my brother, for ... a criminal. – – – I will practice humility”, I resolved. Practice humility ... and be worthy of the stone! – –
One strange fact I learnt from Jane: I had assumed the Angel had stood with its back to her. To my surprise she told me that the face had been turned towards her the whole time, just as it had been turned towards me. She had heard what it had said, just as I had. Price spent his time trying to fathom how the miracle of the return of the coal had happened and what were the hidden laws behind it. He thought things were probably different than we, with our dull senses, supposed; perhaps they were not physical objects but visible manifestations of some unknown force. I did not listen to him! My heart was too full.
Talbot was silent. Perhaps he was thinking of his dead child.
Months, many months have passed and the records I have kept of the angelic conferences have gradually expanded to fill fat tomes. Despair comes over me when I look at them. Hopes, hopes – the consuming fire of expectation all those never-ending days! Still no certainty, still no fulfilment. It is the old torment renewed! The cup I have already tasted to the lees! Will it come to it that I must exclaim, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?! So be it; but can I then hope to achieve the regenerate body? There has been no end to the promises of the Angel of the West Window – nor to the doubts that gnaw at me like the worm in the bud. At every conjuration, night after night during the period of the waning moon, sometimes with my friends, sometimes alone with Kelley and my wife Jane, the glittering promises are repeated, assuring me that untold wealth and above all knowledge and the secret of the Stone are ever more surely, ever more nearly mine. During the time of the waxing moon I count the hours and minutes until we start our seances again; the waiting wears on me and drains me of all energy. Time becomes a vampire, sucking the life force from my blood, and the maddening notion that awful, invisible beings are fattening themselves on it has me in its talons; I cry out in prayer to free myself from it, but in vain. I repeat my vow that I will never desire riches, and yet at the same time all my hope is fixed on Mammon, for daily my wealth melts away like ice in the sun. It is as if Fate would prove that I cannot keep my vow, as if it would force me, yes, force me to break it. Has almighty God given the Devil power to make me an oath-breaker? Or is the God whom we men believe in Himself a ... no I will put that thought from me, I will not let it take shape in words, I will not write it down: my scalp tingles!
And once more I conjure the spirits, time after time, in sitting after sitting, sparing no effort nor expense, forgetting the morrow: forgetting health, duties, reputation and wealth, I continue to invoke the insatiable Angel, my patron, my tireless benefactor, to plead with Him, to sacrifice hopes and heart’s blood to Him. The book wherein I keep the record of these meetings becomes an oracle of mockery when I pore over it with burning eyes in sleepless nights, looking for errors I have made, seeking for conditions I can put the next time to give me the power to win the gifts of the fiery Green Angel, even if it cost the last drop of blood from a weary heart. I keep watch with feverish eyes and halting pulse, weary unto death, praying and searching until I begin to lose my faith in God. For days after such vigils I lack the strength and the will to examine the book of St. Dunstan, and Kelley heaps reproaches on me, that I am delaying the enterprise and endangering its success.
Nights on end then are spent in prayer to my God until my knees ache and bleed, I do penance, I tear my garments in remorse, I make
