<SPAN name="chap75"></SPAN>
<h3> CHAPTER LXXV. </h3>
<h3> THE PORCH OF HADES. </h3>
<p>When Arctura woke from her unnatural sleep, she lay a while without
thought, then began to localize herself. The last place she recalled
was the inn where they had tea: she must have been there taken ill, she
thought, and was now in a room of the same. It was quite dark: they
might have left a light by her! She lay comfortably enough, but had a
suspicion that the place was not over clean, and was glad to find
herself not undrest. She turned on her side: something pulled her by
the wrist. She must have a bracelet on, and it was entangled in the
coverlet! She tried to unclasp it, but could not: which of her
bracelets could it be? There was something attached to it!—a chain—a
thick chain! How odd! What could it mean? She lay quiet, slowly waking
to fuller consciousness.—Was there not a strange air, a dull odour in
the room? Undefined as it was, she had smelt it before, and not long
since!—It was the smell of the lost chapel!—But that was at home in
the castle! she had left it two days before! Was she going out of her
mind?</p>
<p>The dew of agony burst from her forehead. She would have started up,
but was pulled hard by the wrist! She cried on God.—Yes, she was lying
on the very spot where that heap of woman-dust had lain! she was
manacled with the same ring from which that woman's arm had wasted—the
decay of centuries her slow redeemer! Her being recoiled so wildly from
the horror, that for a moment she seemed on the edge of madness. But
madness is not the sole refuge from terror! Where the door of the
spirit has once been opened wide to God, there is he, the present help
in time of trouble! With him in the house, it is not only that we need
fear nothing, but that is there which in its own being and nature casts
out fear. God and fear cannot be together. It is a God far off that
causes fear. "In thy presence is fulness of joy." Such a sense of
absolute helplessness overwhelmed Arctura that she felt awake in her an
endless claim upon the protection of her original, the source of her
being. And what sooner would any father have of his children than
action on such claim! God is always calling us as his children, and
when we call him as our father, then, and not till then, does he begin
to be satisfied. And with that there fell upon Arctura a kind of sleep,
which yet was not sleep; it was a repose such as perhaps is the sleep
of a spirit.</p>
<p>Again the external began to intrude. She pictured to herself what the
darkness was hiding. Her feelings when first she came down into the
place returned on her memory. The tide of terror began again to rise.
It rose and rose, and threatened to become monstrous. She reasoned with
herself: had she not been brought in safety through its first and most
dangerous inroad?—but reason could not outface terror. It was fear,
the most terrible of all terrors, that she feared. Then again woke her
faith: if the night hideth not from him, neither does the darkness of
fear!</p>
<p>It began to thunder, first with a low distant muttering roll, then with
a loud and near bellowing. Was it God coming to her? Some are strangely
terrified at thunder; Arctura had the child's feeling that it was God
that thundered: it comforted her as with the assurance that God was
near. As she lay and heard the great organ of the heavens, its voice
seemed to grow articulate; God was calling to her, and saying, "Here I
am, my child! be not afraid!"</p>
<p>Then she began to reason with herself that the worst that could happen
to her was to lie there till she died of hunger, and that could not be
so very bad! And therewith across the muttering thunder came a wail of
the ghost-music. She started: had she not heard it a hundred times
before, as she lay there in the dark alone? Was she only now for the
first time waking up to it—she, the lady they had shut up there to
die—where she had lain for ages, with every now and then that sound of
the angels singing, far above her in the blue sky?</p>
<p>She was beginning to wander. She reasoned with herself, and dismissed
the fancy; but it came and came again, mingled with real memories,
mostly of the roof, and Donal.</p>
<p>By and by she fell asleep, and woke in a terror which seemed to have
been growing in her sleep. She sat up, and stared into the dark. >From
where stood the altar, seemed to rise and approach her a form of deeper
darkness. She heard nothing, saw nothing, but something was there. It
came nearer. It was but a fancy; she knew it; but the fancy assumed to
be: the moment she gave way, and acknowledged it, that moment it would
have the reality it had been waiting for, and clasp her in its
skeleton-arms! She cried aloud, but it only came nearer; it was about
to seize her!</p>
<p>A sudden, divine change!—her fear was gone, and in its place a sense
of absolute safety: there was nothing in all the universe to be afraid
of! It was a night of June, with roses, roses everywhere! Glory be to
the Father! But how was it? Had he sent her mother to think her full of
roses? Why her mother? God himself is the heart of every rose that ever
bloomed! She would have sung aloud for joy, but no voice came; she
could not utter a sound. What a thing this would be to tell Donal
Grant! This poor woman cried, and God heard her, and saved her out of
all her distresses! The father had come to his child! The cry had gone
from her heart into his!</p>
<p>If she died there, would Donal come one day and find her? No! No! She
would speak to him in a dream, and beg him not to go near the place!
She would not have him see her lie like that he and she standing
together had there looked upon!</p>
<p>With that came Donal's voice, floated and rolled in music and thunder.
It came from far away; she did not know whether she fancied or really
heard it. She would have responded with a great cry, but her voice
vanished in her throat. Her joy was such that she remembered nothing
more.</p>
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