Читать книгу Mystical Paths - Susan Howatch - Страница 36

‘Whichever language we adopt,’ said my father, ‘it’s safe to say that some very unpleasant forces were on the loose in that room. It’s also safe to say that Mrs Aysgarth was in a highly disturbed state and that you too became disturbed when you found the scene was moving beyond your control.

‘Very well, let’s express ourselves in religious language first. We can say that something was infesting Mrs Aysgarth; we can describe it by a symbol and call it the demon of guilt. When you finally saw how horrific that demon was, your psyche was opened up by your understanding with the result that the demon was tempted to move from Mrs Aysgarth to you. You experienced this demon as a strong pressure on the psyche. However, you then repelled this demonic invasion by calling on the greatest exorcist who ever lived and who we believe is living still; by invoking his name you aligned yourself with his power and succeeded in expelling the demon from the room.

‘So much for the religious language. By the liberal use of important symbols we’ve created a true description of what happened, but there’s another way of expressing the truth and it doesn’t diminish the religious description; it merely complements and confirms it. Let’s now turn to the verbal symbols of psychology.

‘Something was infesting Mrs Aysgarth, we said. We can express that in the other language by saying that she was suffering from a neurosis – obsessed by a sense of guilt. This neurotic guilt is rooted in her unconscious, but has recently begun to break into her conscious mind and lead to an impairment of her health. When you interfered, conducting this séance and subjecting her to psychic manipulation, the control normally exercised by her conscious mind was removed with the result that the darkest and most chaotic emotions began to rise out of the unconscious and manifest themselves in a variety of frightening ways.

‘Mrs Aysgarth may not, medically speaking, have been experiencing a psychotic episode, but I suspect her behaviour had the same effect on you as if you’d been witnessing the behaviour of a violent schizophrenic: you were terrified of what was going to happen next and your terror combined with your guilt that you’d induced such an appalling state of affairs. This made you unusually receptive to the guilt now spewing out of Mrs Aysgarth’s unconscious mind, and when her guilt merged with yours the merger appeared to you as a highly dangerous invasive force. In an instinctive gesture to repel the invasion you invoked the name of Our Lord – which is the point where the two languages meet. The invocation gave you the confidence to regain control; or in other words, the invocation resulted in an outpouring of grace which enabled you to triumph over the evil.’

My father paused for a moment before concluding: ‘So the disaster can be accurately described in both languages and there would appear to be no mystery at all about what happened, but I confess there’s one feature which still puzzles me: Mrs Aysgarth’s guilt. It must have been very extreme to create such a disturbance. Indeed it hints at something grossly abnormal.’

I said cautiously: ‘Afterwards she revealed to me that even though she’d tried her hardest to be a good wife the marriage had been in bad shape.’

‘That would explain the existence of some degree of guilt on her part, certainly, but I’d suspect there was more she wasn’t revealing to you – much more. Tell me, was she difficult to hypnotise?’

‘No, she –’ I stopped. He’d caught me. Clever, cunning old –

‘So you did use hypnosis. I’m outraged, Nicholas, absolutely outraged. I’ve told you time and time again –’

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry –’

‘And how dare you lie to me about it earlier! Did you seriously think you’d take me in? As Father Darcy used to say –’

Here we went again. I knew what was coming. Father Darcy had said to anyone who he judged was making an unsatisfactory confession –

‘– “You’re saying the words you want me to hear but I hear the words you can’t bring yourself to say,”’ quoted my father, and added: ‘You’ve behaved absolutely disgracefully, and when I think that in a few weeks’ time you’ll be ordained I feel quite ill with despair.’

‘I’ll drive over to Starwater straight away – see Father Peters – make my confession –’

‘Yes, do all those things – and in future stay away from poor Mrs Aysgarth, who quite obviously needs medical help as soon as possible. Which reminds me, how did you deal with her once you’d brought her out of the hypnotic state?’

‘Oh, I just talked to her, held her hand for a bit, calmed her down –’ By this time I was on my feet and hurtling from the room.

‘If Father Darcy were here,’ said my father, intuitive powers now working full blast, ‘I think he’d demand a somewhat fuller explanation. In fact if Father Darcy were here –’

But he wasn’t.

I flung open the door and fled.