This is an essay/homily I wrote for Mockingbird, but it didn’t work out, so I’m posting it here.
Margaret Oliphant Wilson (1828–1897) married her cousin Frank Wilson Oliphant and thus became Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant. But she wrote her novels — more than a hundred of them — and stories and essays as, simply, “Mrs. Oliphant.” Whew.
Today I want to tell you about one of her stories, a ghost story published in 1881 called “The Open Door.” Not only will I tell you about the story, I will basically re-tell it, so every spoiler imaginable is forthcoming. Click that link and read it if you prefer your tales unspoiled.
Our narrator, one Colonel Mortimer, and his family had been living in India, but have now returned to Scotland, to a house they are renting near Edinburgh. It is a relatively modern house, but the ruins of its predecessor stand on the grounds, in a kind of park. One of the Colonel’s children, a boy named Roland, passes through the park each day as he goes to and from school.
One day, when the Colonel is in London, he gets word that Roland is very ill. He rushes back to find the boy in bed, feverish, pale, and very concerned abut something. He says, “Father, there is some one in the park, — some one that has been badly used.” As his father asks him questions about who this might be, Roland says “with a quiver in his voice: ‘suppose it wasn’t — living at all!’”
When his father asks if he means to say that he encountered a ghost, Roland replies,
“It was something — in trouble. Oh, father, in terrible trouble! … Oh, papa, papa, to have to face it night after night, in such terrible, terrible trouble, and never to be able to do it any good! I don’t want to cry; it’s like a baby, I know; but what can I do else? Out there all by itself in the ruin, and nobody to help it! I can’t bear it!”
Now here we should pause to reflect, because this is curious. In tales of the supernatural, the universal theme is: There’s something dangerous out there that wants to harm or kill us. It might seek to do physical harm, or psychological harm, or spiritual harm, but the Thing Out There, whether vampire or werewolf or poltergeist, is malevolent. In this story, by contrast, the Thing Out There is … “in trouble.” Whatever it is, it suffers. And Roland’s illness is really nothing other than an overwhelming compassion for one in need, and an overwhelming regret for his helplessness. Indeed, he has been waiting for his father to come home because he is sure that his father will know what to do — what to do for the one in trouble, “out there all by itself in the ruin, and nobody to help it.”
Colonel Mortimer is fully aware of the strangeness: “It is bad enough to find your child’s mind possessed with the conviction that he had seen, or heard, a ghost; but that he should require you to go instantly and help that ghost was the most bewildering experience that had ever come my way.” But he can’t refuse Roland. He agrees to do what he can.
He asks his coachmen Jarvis — a local man, who has long lived there — to accompany him to the ruins. Jarvis shakes with terror at the very thought, for he knows the place is haunted. It turns out that a ghost, or any ghost-like creature, does not have to threaten in order to terrorize: people are frightened of it simply because it is a ghost. (C. S. Lewis makes this point in the first chapter of Miracles; it’s made in a different way in the greatest of all ghost stories.) Jarvis won’t help. So the Colonel takes a longtime servant as a companion … but once they get to the ruins, and hear the voice of lamentation, the servant collapses and must be helped back to the house.
Colonel Mortimer refuses to give up. Next he takes the local physician, who is certain that the whole business is nonsense, caused by “delusion, … some trick of the echoes or the winds, some phonetic disturbance or other” — a skepticism he clings to even when he hears the wailing voice.
By this point the Colonel is desperate. Roland is still unwell, still grieved about the one “in trouble.” The Colonel must do something that can comfort his son — that can still the voice of pain. For his next visit to the ruins, he recruits a local clergyman, one Dr. Moncrieff. Moncrieff frankly admits that he doesn’t know what could be happening and that even if he did know, he wouldn’t be sure what to do. But, he says, ”I’ll come too; and maybe at the moment the Lord will put into our heads what to do.” Not much of a plan, one might think — and so the Colonel thinks:
This is very old-fashioned phraseology, and a week before, most likely, I should have smiled (though always with kindness) at Dr. Moncrieff’s credulity; but there was a great comfort, whether rational or otherwise I cannot say, in the mere sound of the words.
In any case, he’s glad to have company. The skeptical physician tags along also. When they get to the ruins, they wait; eventually the voice resumes its now-familiar outcry.
And Dr. Moncrieff immediately recognizes the voice. “Willie, Willie! Oh, God preserve us! is it you?” When Colonel Mortimer hears the minister cry out, he runs to him: “He neither saw nor heard me. His whole being seemed absorbed in anxiety and tenderness. He held out his hands, which trembled, but it seemed to me with eagerness, not fear.”
First Dr. Moncrieff speaks to Willie:
”Willie, lad! why come ye here frighting them that know you not? Why came ye not to me? Your mother’s gone with your name on her lips. Do you think she would ever close her door on her own lad? Do ye think the Lord will close the door, ye faint-hearted creature? No! — I forbid ye! I forbid ye! … Cry out no more to man. Go home, ye wandering spirit! go home! Do you hear me? — me that christened ye, that have struggled with ye, that have wrestled for ye with the Lord!”
And then he speaks to Another:
“Lord, take him into Thy everlasting habitations. The mother he cries to is with Thee. Who can open to him but Thee? Lord, when is it too late for Thee, or what is too hard for Thee?”
Suddenly the grieved spirit is gone: to the men standing there, it seems to have rushed through an open door.
And so Roland is healed, because his father did what he believed his father would do: when someone was in trouble, “out there all by itself in the ruin, and nobody to help it,” Colonel Mortimer found help.
The physician is not convinced by what he saw and heard; he is determined to hang on to a purely naturalistic explanation for these phenomena. But he also wants to debate theology with the minister: surely Dr. Moncrieff of the Church of Scotland does not believe in Purgatory, surely he does not believe that anything can happen to affect our spiritual condition once we die, surely —
“Sir,” said the old man again, with a tremor in him which I could feel going over all his frame, “if I saw a friend of mine within the gates of hell, I would not despair but his Father would take him by the hand still, if he cried like yon.”
— that is, if he cried as Willie had cried. It is the misery itself, the infinite longing, that gives Dr. Moncrieff hope.
That Hell exists cannot be doubted if you believe the testimony of Scripture. And though some wise men have doubted whether there is anyone in it, the story of the rich man and Lazarus would seem to indicate at least one occupant. But whatever the general verdict, in any specific case, concerning any one person, may we not hope as Dr. Moncrieff hopes, and on the same grounds?
If you read old novels — as I do — you’ll occasionally come across a certain phrase: “That’s past praying for” — meaning “That’s impossible, even for God.” I’d suggest that you never use that phrase. Better a fool’s hope than no hope. Better to say, along with Dr. Moncrieff, “Lord, when is it too late for Thee, or what is too hard for Thee?”
