The Silver Chalice (86 page)

“I am sure that angels have been flying about the house. We were not allowed to see them or to hear the rustle of their wings. But they were here.”

Luke had said nothing. His eyes had turned to the window and he had not moved since the light had come and then so quickly subsided. It was clear that his thoughts had gone with it and were fixed on horizons of which they could not conceive.

He turned now, and they could see that a mood of the greatest exultation possessed him.

“I have said many times, and meant it in all humility, that a prophetic tongue has not been given me; and yet when that light was in the sky I was able to see for a brief moment into the future, so brief a moment that there could not be in any language a word to define it. And what I saw brought great happiness to me. I know that all will be well. The Chalice will not be destroyed. The man who has it is torn already with doubts. He feels the sacredness of it and he does not know what to do. He will find himself so troubled in mind that he will desert the cause for which he has been fighting and bring the Chalice back to us. There will come to him a full resolution of all his doubts.”

The voice of the old physician had been kept low, but now it blazed up with passionate conviction.

“Yes, my children, the Chalice will be restored. Tomorrow? In a month? In a year? I do not know. All I could see was that it would be returned to us and that we would be able to keep it in peace. Perhaps, with Jerusalem torn apart and swept with fire, the hands of our enemies will no longer be able to reach us.

“But,” he cried, “that is not all! With that one look which was vouchsafed me I saw far on into the future. The Chalice will be taken away a second time. This will not be due to the machinations of evil men. There will be a flood, an earthquake, a convulsion of nature of some kind; and it will be buried deep down and lie in darkness for a very long time, perhaps for centuries. When it is brought out into the light again, it will be into a far different world. The earth will be peopled with new races, tall men, beardless for the most part, with strange talk on their tongues. There will be great cities and mighty bridges and towers higher than the Tower of Babel. But evil will be loosed and they will fight long and bitter wars with frightening new forces of destruction.

“In such a world as this the little Chalice will look strange and lost and very lonely. But it may be that in this age, when man holds lightning in his hand and rides the sky as Simon the Magician strove to do, it will be needed more than it is needed now.”