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“Miss Pendered’s ‘Englishman’ possesses that width of observation
and simplicity of purpose which lift it far above the
average.”--_Daily Telegraph._
(W. L. Courtney in his summary of the best book of the year 1899.) MILLS & BOON, Ltd., 49 Rupert Street, London, W.
MILLS & BOON
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ALL AWRY
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_T.P.’s Weekly._--“So vivid and entertaining that we read on and on
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year.”
_Observer._--“By far the best story Miss Annesley has given us.”
_Globe._--“Miss Annesley has written nothing better than ‘All
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MY ITALIAN YEAR
By RICHARD BAGOT
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_Daily Telegraph._--“It is a thoughtful, knowledgeful book that Mr Bagot
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MILLS & BOON, Ltd., 49 Rupert Street, London, W.
MILLS & BOON’S
SHILLING NOVELS
=THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD.= By E. S. STEVENS. =THE VEIL.= By E. S. STEVENS. =THE RAJAH’S PEOPLE.= By I. A. R. WYLIE. =DOWN OUR STREET.= By J. E. BUCKROSE. =THE PEER’S PROGRESS.= By J. STORER CLOUSTON. =THE PRODIGAL FATHER.= By J. STORER CLOUSTON. =TALES OF KING FIDO.= By J. STORER CLOUSTON. =THE LOVE STORY OF A MORMON.= By WINIFRED GRAHAM. =THE ENEMY OF WOMAN.= By WINIFRED GRAHAM. =MARY.= By WINIFRED GRAHAM. =THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN.= By HORACE W. C. NEWTE. =CALICO JACK=: A Story of the Music Halls. By HORACE W. C. NEWTE. =THE LONELY LOVERS.= By HORACE W. C. NEWTE. =SPARROWS.= The Story of an Unprotected Girl. By HORACE W. C. NEWTE. =CARDILLAC.= By ROBERT BARR. =813= (A new Arsène Lupin Adventure). By MAURICE LEBLANC. =MARY UP AT GAFFRIES.= By S. C. NETHERSOLE. =THE WOMAN WHO FORGOT.= By LADY TROUBRIDGE. =CUMNER’S SON.= By GILBERT PARKER. *=THE BILL-TOPPERS.= By ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE. *=THE QUAKER GIRL.= By HAROLD SIMPSON. *=THE COUNT OF LUXEMBOURG.= By HAROLD SIMPSON. *=THE DOLLAR PRINCESS.= By HAROLD SIMPSON. *=ARSÈNE LUPIN.= By EDGAR JEPSON and MAURICE LEBLANC. *=D’ARCY OF THE GUARDS.= By L. E. SHIPMAN. =PETER PAN= (The Fairy Story of the Play). By G. D. DRENNAN. =BEWARE OF THE DOG.= By Mrs BAILLIE REYNOLDS. =FOR CHURCH AND CHIEFTAIN.= By MAY WYNNE. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - The room in the tower, and other stories |
=THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN JACK.= By MAX PEMBERTON. =THE END AND THE BEGINNING.= By COSMO HAMILTON. =WEE MACGREEGOR.= By J. J. B. =PROOFS BEFORE PULPING.= By BARRY PAIN. =THOMAS HENRY.= By W. PETT RIDGE. * Novels of the Plays. MILLS & BOON, Ltd., 49 Rupert Street, London, W.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
greath depth=> great depth {pg 54}
never pentrate=> never penetrate {pg 184}
clear chalk-streami=> clear chalk-streams {pg 331} | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - The room in the tower, and other stories |
E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images digitized by the
Google Books Library Project (http://books.google.com) and generously made
available by HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
HathiTrust Digital Library. See
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008921437
Transcriber’s note:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE
by
E. F. BENSON . . Author of
“Dodo Wonders,” “Miss Mapp,” “Colin,” etc. :: ::
London: Hutchinson and Co.
Paternoster Row, E.C. Printed in Great Britain
at the Pitman Press, Bath
CONTENTS
PAGE
“AND THE DEAD SPAKE----” 7
THE OUTCAST 37
THE HORROR-HORN 63
MACHAON 83
NEGOTIUM PERAMBULANS 107
AT THE FARMHOUSE 131
INSCRUTABLE DECREES 155
THE GARDENER 177
MR. TILLY’S SÉANCE 199
MRS. AMWORTH 223
IN THE TUBE 247
RODERICK’S STORY 269
“And the Dead Spake----”
“And the Dead Spake----”
There is not in all London a quieter spot, or one, apparently, more
withdrawn from the heat and bustle of life than Newsome Terrace. It is
a cul-de-sac, for at the upper end the roadway between its two lines
of square, compact little residences is brought to an end by a high
brick wall, while at the lower end, the only access to it is through
Newsome Square, that small discreet oblong of Georgian houses, a relic
of the time when Kensington was a suburban village sundered from the
metropolis by a stretch of pastures stretching to the river. Both
square and terrace are most inconveniently situated for those whose
ideal environment includes a rank of taxicabs immediately opposite
their door, a spate of ’buses roaring down the street, and a procession
of underground trains, accessible by a station a few yards away,
shaking and rattling the cutlery and silver on their dining tables. In
consequence Newsome Terrace had come, two years ago, to be inhabited
by leisurely and retired folk or by those who wished to pursue their
work in quiet and tranquillity. Children with hoops and scooters are
phenomena rarely encountered in the Terrace and dogs are equally
uncommon. In front of each of the couple of dozen houses of which the Terrace
is composed lies a little square of railinged garden, in which you
may often see the middle-aged or elderly mistress of the residence
horticulturally employed. By five o’clock of a winter’s evening
the pavements will generally be empty of all passengers except the
policeman, who with felted step, at intervals throughout the night,
peers with his bull’s-eye into these small front gardens, and never
finds anything more suspicious there than an early crocus or an
aconite. For by the time it is dark the inhabitants of the Terrace have
got themselves home, where behind drawn curtains and bolted shutters
they will pass a domestic and uninterrupted evening. No funeral (up to
the time I speak of) had I ever seen leave the Terrace, no marriage
party had strewed its pavements with confetti, and perambulators were
unknown. It and its inhabitants seemed to be quietly mellowing like
bottles of sound wine. No doubt there was stored within them the
sunshine and summer of youth long past, and now, dozing in a cool
place, they waited for the turn of the key in the cellar door, and the
entry of one who would draw them forth and see what they were worth. Yet, after the time of which I shall now speak, I have never
passed down its pavement without wondering whether each house, so
seemingly-tranquil, is not, like some dynamo, softly and smoothly
bringing into being vast and terrible forces, such as those I once
saw at work in the last house at the upper end of the Terrace, the
quietest, you would have said, of all the row. Had you observed it with
continuous scrutiny, for all the length of a summer day, it is quite
possible that you might have only seen issue from it in the morning
an elderly woman whom you would have rightly conjectured to be the
housekeeper, with her basket for marketing on her arm, who returned
an hour later. Except for her the entire day might often pass without
there being either ingress or egress from the door. Occasionally a
middle-aged man, lean and wiry, came swiftly down the pavement, but
his exit was by no means a daily occurrence, and indeed when he did
emerge, he broke the almost universal usage of the Terrace, for his
appearances took place, when such there were, between nine and ten in
the evening. At that hour sometimes he would come round to my house
in Newsome Square to see if I was at home and inclined for a talk a
little later on. For the sake of air and exercise he would then have an
hour’s tramp through the lit and noisy streets, and return about ten,
still pale and unflushed, for one of those talks which grew to have
an absorbing fascination for me. More rarely through the telephone I
proposed that I should drop in on him: this I did not often do, since I
found that if he did not come out himself, it implied that he was busy
with some investigation, and though he made me welcome, I could easily
see that he burned for my departure, so that he might get busy with his
batteries and pieces of tissue, hot on the track of discoveries that
never yet had presented themselves to the mind of man as coming within
the horizon of possibility. My last sentence may have led the reader to guess that I am indeed
speaking of none other than that recluse and mysterious physicist Sir
James Horton, with whose death a hundred half-hewn avenues into the
dark forest from which life comes must wait completion till another
pioneer as bold as he takes up the axe which hitherto none but
himself has been able to wield. Probably there was never a man to whom
humanity owed more, and of whom humanity knew less. He seemed utterly
independent of the race to whom (though indeed with no service of love)
he devoted himself: for years he lived aloof and apart in his house
at the end of the Terrace. Men and women were to him like fossils to
the geologist, things to be tapped and hammered and dissected and
studied with a view not only to the reconstruction of past ages, but
to construction in the future. It is known, for instance, that he made
an artificial being formed of the tissue, still living, of animals
lately killed, with the brain of an ape and the heart of a bullock,
and a sheep’s thyroid, and so forth. Of that I can give no first-hand
account; Horton, it is true, told me something about it, and in his
will directed that certain memoranda on the subject should on his death
be sent to me. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
But on the bulky envelope there is the direction, “Not
to be opened till January, 1925.” He spoke with some reserve and, so I
think, with slight horror at the strange things which had happened on
the completion of this creature. It evidently made him uncomfortable
to talk about it, and for that reason I fancy he put what was then a
rather remote date to the day when his record should reach my eye. Finally, in these preliminaries, for the last five years before the
war, he had scarcely entered, for the sake of companionship, any
house other than his own and mine. Ours was a friendship dating from
school-days, which he had never suffered to drop entirely, but I doubt
if in those years he spoke except on matters of business to half a
dozen other people. He had already retired from surgical practice in
which his skill was unapproached, and most completely now did he avoid
the slightest intercourse with his colleagues, whom he regarded as
ignorant pedants without courage or the rudiments of knowledge. Now
and then he would write an epoch-making little monograph, which he
flung to them like a bone to a starving dog, but for the most part,
utterly absorbed in his own investigations, he left them to grope along
unaided. He frankly told me that he enjoyed talking to me about such
subjects, since I was utterly unacquainted with them. It clarified his
mind to be obliged to put his theories and guesses and confirmations
with such simplicity that anyone could understand them. I well remember his coming in to see me on the evening of the 4th of
August, 1914. “So the war has broken out,” he said, “and the streets are impassable
with excited crowds. Odd, isn’t it? Just as if each of us already was
not a far more murderous battlefield than any which can be conceived
between warring nations.”
“How’s that?” said I. “Let me try to put it plainly, though it isn’t that I want to talk
about. Your blood is one eternal battlefield. It is full of armies
eternally marching and counter-marching. As long as the armies friendly
to you are in a superior position, you remain in good health; if a
detachment of microbes that, if suffered to establish themselves,
would give you a cold in the head, entrench themselves in your mucous
membrane, the commander-in-chief sends a regiment down and drives them
out. He doesn’t give his orders from your brain, mind you--those aren’t
his headquarters, for your brain knows nothing about the landing of the
enemy till they have made good their position and given you a cold.”
He paused a moment. “There isn’t one headquarters inside you,” he said, “there are many. For instance, I killed a frog this morning; at least most people would
say I killed it. But had I killed it, though its head lay in one place
and its severed body in another? Not a bit: I had only killed a piece
of it. For I opened the body afterwards and took out the heart, which
I put in a sterilised chamber of suitable temperature, so that it
wouldn’t get cold or be infected by any microbe. That was about twelve
o’clock to-day. And when I came out just now, the heart was beating
still. It was alive, in fact. That’s full of suggestions, you know. Come and see it.”
The Terrace had been stirred into volcanic activity by the news of war:
the vendor of some late edition had penetrated into its quietude, and
there were half a dozen parlour-maids fluttering about like black and
white moths. But once inside Horton’s door isolation as of an Arctic
night seemed to close round me. He had forgotten his latch-key, but
his housekeeper, then newly come to him, who became so regular and
familiar a figure in the Terrace, must have heard his step, for before
he rang the bell she had opened the door, and stood with his forgotten
latch-key in her hand. “Thanks, Mrs. Gabriel,” said he, and without a sound the door shut
behind us. Both her name and face, as reproduced in some illustrated
daily paper, seemed familiar, rather terribly familiar, but before I
had time to grope for the association, Horton supplied it. “Tried for the murder of her husband six months ago,” he said. “Odd
case. The point is that she is the one and perfect housekeeper. I once
had four servants, and everything was all mucky, as we used to say
at school. Now I live in amazing comfort and propriety with one. She
does everything. She is cook, valet, housemaid, butler, and won’t have
anyone to help her. No doubt she killed her husband, but she planned it
so well that she could not be convicted. She told me quite frankly who
she was when I engaged her.”
Of course I remembered the whole trial vividly now. Her husband, a
morose, quarrelsome fellow, tipsy as often as sober, had, according
to the defence cut his own throat while shaving; according to the
prosecution, she had done that for him. There was the usual discrepancy
of evidence as to whether the wound could have been self-inflicted,
and the prosecution tried to prove that the face had been lathered
after his throat had been cut. So singular an exhibition of forethought
and nerve had hurt rather than helped their case, and after prolonged
deliberation on the part of the jury, she had been acquitted. Yet not
less singular was Horton’s selection of a probable murderess, however
efficient, as housekeeper. He anticipated this reflection. “Apart from the wonderful comfort of having a perfectly appointed and
absolutely silent house,” he said, “I regard Mrs. Gabriel as a sort
of insurance against my being murdered. If you had been tried for
your life, you would take very especial care not to find yourself in
suspicious proximity to a murdered body again: no more deaths in your
house, if you could help it. Come through to my laboratory, and look at
my little instance of life after death.”
Certainly it was amazing to see that little piece of tissue still
pulsating with what must be called life; it contracted and expanded
faintly indeed but perceptibly, though for nine hours now it had been
severed from the rest of the organisation. All by itself it went on
living, and if the heart could go on living with nothing, you would
say, to feed and stimulate its energy, there must also, so reasoned
Horton, reside in all the other vital organs of the body other
independent focuses of life. “Of course a severed organ like that,” he said, “will run down quicker
than if it had the co-operation of the others, and presently I shall
apply a gentle electric stimulus to it. If I can keep that glass bowl
under which it beats at the temperature of a frog’s body, in sterilised
air, I don’t see why it should not go on living. Food--of course
there’s the question of feeding it. Do you see what that opens up in
the way of surgery? Imagine a shop with glass cases containing healthy
organs taken from the dead. Say a man dies of pneumonia. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
He should, as
soon as ever the breath is out of his body, be dissected, and though
they would, of course, destroy his lungs, as they will be full of
pneumococci, his liver and digestive organs are probably healthy. Take
them out, keep them in a sterilised atmosphere with the temperature
at 98·4, and sell the liver, let us say, to another poor devil who has
cancer there. Fit him with a new healthy liver, eh?”
“And insert the brain of someone who has died of heart disease into the
skull of a congenital idiot?” I asked. “Yes, perhaps; but the brain’s tiresomely complicated in its
connections and the joining up of the nerves, you know. Surgery will
have to learn a lot before it fits new brains in. And the brain has got
such a lot of functions. All thinking, all inventing seem to belong to
it, though, as you have seen, the heart can get on quite well without
it. But there are other functions of the brain I want to study first. I’ve been trying some experiments already.”
He made some little readjustment to the flame of the spirit lamp which
kept at the right temperature the water that surrounded the sterilised
receptacle in which the frog’s heart was beating. “Start with the more simple and mechanical uses of the brain,” he said. “Primarily it is a sort of record office, a diary. Say that I rap your
knuckles with that ruler. What happens? The nerves there send a message
to the brain, of course, saying--how can I put it most simply--saying,
‘Somebody is hurting me.’ And the eye sends another, saying ‘I perceive
a ruler hitting my knuckles,’ and the ear sends another, saying ‘I hear
the rap of it.’ But leaving all that alone, what else happens? Why, the
brain records it. It makes a note of your knuckles having been hit.”
He had been moving about the room as he spoke, taking off his coat and
waistcoat and putting on in their place a thin black dressing-gown,
and by now he was seated in his favourite attitude cross-legged on the
hearthrug, looking like some magician or perhaps the afrit which a
magician of black arts had caused to appear. He was thinking intently
now, passing through his fingers his string of amber beads, and talking
more to himself than to me. “And how does it make that note?” he went on. “Why, in the manner in
which phonograph records are made. There are millions of minute dots,
depressions, pockmarks on your brain which certainly record what you
remember, what you have enjoyed or disliked, or done or said. The
surface of the brain anyhow is large enough to furnish writing-paper
for the record of all these things, of all your memories. If the
impression of an experience has not been acute, the dot is not sharply
impressed, and the record fades: in other words, you come to forget it. But if it has been vividly impressed, the record is never obliterated. Mrs. Gabriel, for instance, won’t lose the impression of how she
lathered her husband’s face after she had cut his throat. That’s to
say, if she did it.”
“Now do you see what I’m driving at? Of course you do. There is stored
within a man’s head the complete record of all the memorable things
he has done and said: there are all his thoughts there, and all his
speeches, and, most well-marked of all, his habitual thoughts and the
things he has often said; for habit, there is reason to believe, wears
a sort of rut in the brain, so that the life-principle, whatever it is,
as it gropes and steals about the brain, is continually stumbling into
it. There’s your record, your gramophone plate all ready. What we want,
and what I’m trying to arrive at, is a needle which, as it traces its
minute way over these dots, will come across words or sentences which
the dead have uttered, and will reproduce them. My word, what Judgment
Books! What a resurrection!”
Here in this withdrawn situation no remotest echo of the excitement
which was seething through the streets penetrated; through the open
window there came in only the tide of the midnight silence. But from
somewhere closer at hand, through the wall surely of the laboratory,
there came a low, somewhat persistent murmur. “Perhaps our needle--unhappily not yet invented--as it passed over the
record of speech in the brain, might induce even facial expression,” he
said. “Enjoyment or horror might even pass over dead features. There
might be gestures and movements even, as the words were reproduced
in our gramophone of the dead. Some people when they want to think
intensely walk about: some, there’s an instance of it audible now, talk
to themselves aloud.”
He held up his finger for silence. “Yes, that’s Mrs. Gabriel,” he said. “She talks to herself by the hour
together. She’s always done that, she tells me. I shouldn’t wonder if
she has plenty to talk about.”
It was that night when, first of all, the notion of intense activity
going on below the placid house-fronts of the Terrace occurred to me. None looked more quiet than this, and yet there was seething here
a volcanic activity and intensity of living, both in the man who
sat cross-legged on the floor and behind that voice just audible
through the partition wall. But I thought of that no more, for Horton
began speaking of the brain-gramophone again.... Were it possible to
trace those infinitesimal dots and pockmarks in the brain by some
needle exquisitely fine, it might follow that by the aid of some such
contrivance as translated the pockmarks on a gramophone record into
sound, some audible rendering of speech might be recovered from the
brain of a dead man. It was necessary, so he pointed out to me, that
this strange gramophone record should be new; it must be that of one
lately dead, for corruption and decay would soon obliterate these
infinitesimal markings. He was not of opinion that unspoken thought
could be thus recovered: the utmost he hoped for from his pioneering
work was to be able to recapture actual speech, especially when such
speech had habitually dwelt on one subject, and thus had worn a rut on
that part of the brain known as the speech-centre. “Let me get, for instance,” he said, “the brain of a railway porter,
newly dead, who has been accustomed for years to call out the name
of a station, and I do not despair of hearing his voice through my
gramophone trumpet. Or again, given that Mrs. Gabriel, in all her
interminable conversations with herself, talks about one subject, I
might, in similar circumstances, recapture what she had been constantly
saying. Of course my instrument must be of a power and delicacy still
unknown, one of which the needle can trace the minutest irregularities
of surface, and of which the trumpet must be of immense magnifying
power, able to translate the smallest whisper into a shout. But just as
a microscope will show you the details of an object invisible to the
eye, so there are instruments which act in the same way on sound. Here,
for instance, is one of remarkable magnifying power. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Try it if you
like.”
He took me over to a table on which was standing an electric battery
connected with a round steel globe, out of the side of which sprang a
gramophone trumpet of curious construction. He adjusted the battery,
and directed me to click my fingers quite gently opposite an aperture
in the globe, and the noise, ordinarily scarcely audible, resounded
through the room like a thunderclap. “Something of that sort might permit us to hear the record on a brain,”
he said. * * * * *
After this night my visits to Horton became far more common than they
had hitherto been. Having once admitted me into the region of his
strange explorations, he seemed to welcome me there. Partly, as he had
said, it clarified his own thought to put it into simple language,
partly, as he subsequently admitted, he was beginning to penetrate
into such lonely fields of knowledge by paths so utterly untrodden,
that even he, the most aloof and independent of mankind, wanted some
human presence near him. Despite his utter indifference to the issues
of the war--for, in his regard, issues far more crucial demanded his
energies--he offered himself as surgeon to a London hospital for
operations on the brain, and his services, naturally, were welcomed,
for none brought knowledge or skill like his to such work. Occupied
all day, he performed miracles of healing, with bold and dexterous
excisions which none but he would have dared to attempt. He would
operate, often successfully, for lesions that seemed certainly fatal,
and all the time he was learning. He refused to accept any salary;
he only asked, in cases where he had removed pieces of brain matter,
to take these away, in order by further examination and dissection,
to add to the knowledge and manipulative skill which he devoted to
the wounded. He wrapped these morsels in sterilised lint, and took
them back to the Terrace in a box, electrically heated to maintain
the normal temperature of a man’s blood. His fragment might then, so
he reasoned, keep some sort of independent life of its own, even as
the severed heart of a frog had continued to beat for hours without
connection with the rest of the body. Then for half the night he would
continue to work on these sundered pieces of tissue scarcely dead,
which his operations during the day had given him. Simultaneously, he
was busy over the needle that must be of such infinite delicacy. One evening, fatigued with a long day’s work, I had just heard with a
certain tremor of uneasy anticipation the whistles of warning which
heralded an air-raid, when my telephone bell rang. My servants,
according to custom, had already betaken themselves to the cellar,
and I went to see what the summons was, determined in any case not to
go out into the streets. I recognised Horton’s voice. “I want you at
once,” he said. “But the warning whistles have gone,” said I, “And I don’t like
showers of shrapnel.”
“Oh, never mind that,” said he. “You must come. I’m so excited that I
distrust the evidence of my own ears. I want a witness. Just come.”
He did not pause for my reply, for I heard the click of his receiver
going back into its place. Clearly he assumed that I was coming, and
that I suppose had the effect of suggestion on my mind. I told myself
that I would not go, but in a couple of minutes his certainty that I
was coming, coupled with the prospect of being interested in something
else than air-raids, made me fidget in my chair and eventually go to
the street door and look out. The moon was brilliantly bright, the
square quite empty, and far away the coughings of very distant guns. Next moment, almost against my will, I was running down the deserted
pavements of Newsome Terrace. My ring at his bell was answered by
Horton, before Mrs. Gabriel could come to the door, and he positively
dragged me in. “I shan’t tell you a word of what I am doing,” he said. “I want you to
tell me what you hear. Come into the laboratory.”
The remote guns were silent again as I sat myself, as directed, in a
chair close to the gramophone trumpet, but suddenly through the wall I
heard the familiar mutter of Mrs. Gabriel’s voice. Horton, already busy
with his battery, sprang to his feet. “That won’t do,” he said. “I want absolute silence.”
He went out of the room, and I heard him calling to her. While he was
gone I observed more closely what was on the table. Battery, round
steel globe, and gramophone trumpet were there, and some sort of a
needle on a spiral steel spring linked up with the battery and the
glass vessel, in which I had seen the frog’s heart beat. In it now
there lay a fragment of grey matter. Horton came back in a minute or two, and stood in the middle of the
room listening. “That’s better,” he said. “Now I want you to listen at the mouth of the
trumpet. I’ll answer any questions afterwards.”
With my ear turned to the trumpet, I could see nothing of what he was
doing, and I listened till the silence became a rustling in my ears. Then suddenly that rustling ceased, for it was overscored by a whisper
which undoubtedly came from the aperture on which my aural attention
was fixed. It was no more than the faintest murmur, and though no words
were audible, it had the timbre of a human voice. “Well, do you hear anything?” asked Horton. “Yes, something very faint, scarcely audible.”
“Describe it,” said he. “Somebody whispering.”
“I’ll try a fresh place,” said he. The silence descended again; the mutter of the distant guns was still
mute, and some slight creaking from my shirt front, as I breathed,
alone broke it. And then the whispering from the gramophone trumpet
began again, this time much louder than it had been before--it was
as if the speaker (still whispering) had advanced a dozen yards--but
still blurred and indistinct. More unmistakable, too, was it that the
whisper was that of a human voice, and every now and then, whether
fancifully or not, I thought I caught a word or two. For a moment it
was silent altogether, and then with a sudden inkling of what I was
listening to I heard something begin to sing. Though the words were
still inaudible there was melody, and the tune was “Tipperary.” From
that convolvulus-shaped trumpet there came two bars of it. “And what do you hear now?” cried Horton with a crack of exultation in
his voice. “Singing, singing! That’s the tune they all sang. Fine music
that from a dead man. Encore! you say? Yes, wait a second, and he’ll
sing it again for you. Confound it, I can’t get on to the place. Ah! I’ve got it: listen again.”
Surely that was the strangest manner of song ever yet heard on the
earth, this melody from the brain of the dead. Horror and fascination
strove within me, and I suppose the first for the moment prevailed, for
with a shudder I jumped up. “Stop it!” I said. “It’s terrible.”
His face, thin and eager, gleamed in the strong ray of the lamp which
he had placed close to him. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
His hand was on the metal rod from which
depended the spiral spring and the needle, which just rested on that
fragment of grey stuff which I had seen in the glass vessel. “Yes, I’m going to stop it now,” he said, “or the germs will be getting
at my gramophone record, or the record will get cold. See, I spray it
with carbolic vapour, I put it back into its nice warm bed. It will
sing to us again. But terrible? What do you mean by terrible?”
Indeed, when he asked that I scarcely knew myself what I meant. I had
been witness to a new marvel of science as wonderful perhaps as any
that had ever astounded the beholder, and my nerves--these childish
whimperers--had cried out at the darkness and the profundity. But
the horror diminished, the fascination increased as he quite shortly
told me the history of this phenomenon. He had attended that day and
operated upon a young soldier in whose brain was embedded a piece of
shrapnel. The boy was _in extremis_, but Horton had hoped for the
possibility of saving him. To extract the shrapnel was the only chance,
and this involved the cutting away of a piece of brain known as the
speech-centre, and taking from it what was embedded there. But the hope
was not realised, and two hours later the boy died. It was to this
fragment of brain that, when Horton returned home, he had applied the
needle of his gramophone, and had obtained the faint whisperings which
had caused him to ring me up, so that he might have a witness of this
wonder. Witness I had been, not to these whisperings alone, but to the
fragment of singing. “And this is but the first step on the new road,” said he. “Who knows
where it may lead, or to what new temple of knowledge it may not be the
avenue? Well, it is late: I shall do no more to-night. What about the
raid, by the way?”
To my amazement I saw that the time was verging on midnight. Two hours
had elapsed since he let me in at his door; they had passed like a
couple of minutes. Next morning some neighbours spoke of the prolonged
firing that had gone on, of which I had been wholly unconscious. Week after week Horton worked on this new road of research, perfecting
the sensitiveness and subtlety of the needle, and, by vastly increasing
the power of his batteries, enlarging the magnifying power of his
trumpet. Many and many an evening during the next year did I listen to
voices that were dumb in death, and the sounds which had been blurred
and unintelligible mutterings in the earlier experiments, developed,
as the delicacy of his mechanical devices increased, into coherence
and clear articulation. It was no longer necessary to impose silence
on Mrs. Gabriel when the gramophone was at work, for now the voice we
listened to had risen to the pitch of ordinary human utterance, while
as for the faithfulness and individuality of these records, striking
testimony was given more than once by some living friend of the dead,
who, without knowing what he was about to hear, recognised the tones
of the speaker. More than once also, Mrs. Gabriel, bringing in syphons
and whisky, provided us with three glasses, for she had heard, so she
told us, three different voices in talk. But for the present no fresh
phenomenon occurred: Horton was but perfecting the mechanism of his
previous discovery and, rather grudging the time, was scribbling at a
monograph, which presently he would toss to his colleagues, concerning
the results he had already obtained. And then, even while Horton was on
the threshold of new wonders, which he had already foreseen and spoken
of as theoretically possible, there came an evening of marvel and of
swift catastrophe. I had dined with him that day, Mrs. Gabriel deftly serving the meal
that she had so daintily prepared, and towards the end, as she was
clearing the table for our dessert, she stumbled, I supposed, on a
loose edge of carpet, quickly recovering herself. But instantly Horton
checked some half-finished sentence, and turned to her. “You’re all right, Mrs. Gabriel?” he asked quickly. “Yes, sir, thank you,” said she, and went on with her serving. “As I was saying,” began Horton again, but his attention clearly
wandered, and without concluding his narrative, he relapsed into
silence, till Mrs. Gabriel had given us our coffee and left the room. “I’m sadly afraid my domestic felicity may be disturbed,” he said. “Mrs. Gabriel had an epileptic fit yesterday, and she confessed when
she recovered that she had been subject to them when a child, and since
then had occasionally experienced them.”
“Dangerous, then?” I asked. “In themselves not in the least,” said he. “If she was sitting in
her chair or lying in bed when one occurred, there would be nothing
to trouble about. But if one occurred while she was cooking my dinner
or beginning to come downstairs, she might fall into the fire or
tumble down the whole flight. We’ll hope no such deplorable calamity
will happen. Now, if you’ve finished your coffee, let us go into the
laboratory. Not that I’ve got anything very interesting in the way of
new records. But I’ve introduced a second battery with a very strong
induction coil into my apparatus. I find that if I link it up with my
record, given that the record is a--a fresh one, it stimulates certain
nerve centres. It’s odd, isn’t it, that the same forces which so
encourage the dead to live would certainly encourage the living to die,
if a man received the full current. One has to be careful in handling
it. Yes, and what then? you ask.”
The night was very hot, and he threw the windows wide before he settled
himself cross-legged on the floor. “I’ll answer your question for you,” he said, “though I believe we’ve
talked of it before. Supposing I had not a fragment of brain-tissue
only, but a whole head, let us say, or best of all, a complete corpse,
I think I could expect to produce more than mere speech through the
gramophone. The dead lips themselves perhaps might utter--God! what’s
that?”
From close outside, at the bottom of the stairs leading from the dining
room which we had just quitted to the laboratory where we now sat,
there came a crash of glass followed by the fall as of something heavy
which bumped from step to step, and was finally flung on the threshold
against the door with the sound as of knuckles rapping at it, and
demanding admittance. Horton sprang up and threw the door open, and
there lay, half inside the room and half on the landing outside, the
body of Mrs. Gabriel. Round her were splinters of broken bottles and
glasses, and from a cut in her forehead, as she lay ghastly with face
upturned, the blood trickled into her thick grey hair. Horton was on his knees beside her, dabbing his handkerchief on her
forehead. “Ah! that’s not serious,” he said; “there’s neither vein nor artery
cut. I’ll just bind that up first.”
He tore his handkerchief into strips which he tied together, and made a
dexterous bandage covering the lower part of her forehead, but leaving
her eyes unobscured. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
They stared with a fixed meaningless steadiness,
and he scrutinised them closely. “But there’s worse yet,” he said. “There’s been some severe blow on the
head. Help me to carry her into the laboratory. Get round to her feet
and lift underneath the knees when I am ready. There! Now put your arm
right under her and carry her.”
Her head swung limply back as he lifted her shoulders, and he propped
it up against his knee, where it mutely nodded and bowed, as his leg
moved, as if in silent assent to what we were doing, and the mouth, at
the extremity of which there had gathered a little lather, lolled open. He still supported her shoulders as I fetched a cushion on which to
place her head, and presently she was lying close to the low table on
which stood the gramophone of the dead. Then with light deft fingers he
passed his hands over her skull, pausing as he came to the spot just
above and behind her right ear. Twice and again his fingers groped and
lightly pressed, while with shut eyes and concentrated attention he
interpreted what his trained touch revealed. “Her skull is broken to fragments just here,” he said. “In the middle
there is a piece completely severed from the rest, and the edges of the
cracked pieces must be pressing on her brain.”
Her right arm was lying palm upwards on the floor, and with one hand he
felt her wrist with finger-tips. “Not a sign of pulse,” he said. “She’s dead in the ordinary sense
of the word. But life persists in an extraordinary manner, you may
remember. She can’t be wholly dead: no one is wholly dead in a moment,
unless every organ is blown to bits. But she soon will be dead, if we
don’t relieve the pressure on the brain. That’s the first thing to
be done. While I’m busy at that, shut the window, will you, and make
up the fire. In this sort of case the vital heat, whatever that is,
leaves the body very quickly. Make the room as hot as you can--fetch an
oil-stove, and turn on the electric radiator, and stoke up a roaring
fire. The hotter the room is the more slowly will the heat of life
leave her.”
Already he had opened his cabinet of surgical instruments, and taken
out of it two drawers full of bright steel which he laid on the floor
beside her. I heard the grating chink of scissors severing her long
grey hair, and as I busied myself with laying and lighting the fire
in the hearth, and kindling the oil-stove, which I found, by Horton’s
directions, in the pantry, I saw that his lancet was busy on the
exposed skin. He had placed some vaporising spray, heated by a spirit
lamp close to her head, and as he worked its fizzing nozzle filled the
air with some clean and aromatic odour. Now and then he threw out an
order. “Bring me that electric lamp on the long cord,” he said. “I haven’t
got enough light. Don’t look at what I’m doing if you’re squeamish, for
if it makes you feel faint, I shan’t be able to attend to you.”
I suppose that violent interest in what he was doing overcame any qualm
that I might have had, for I looked quite unflinching over his shoulder
as I moved the lamp about till it was in such a place that it threw its
beam directly into a dark hole at the edge of which depended a flap
of skin. Into this he put his forceps, and as he withdrew them they
grasped a piece of blood-stained bone. “That’s better,” he said, “and the room’s warming up well. But there’s
no sign of pulse yet. Go on stoking, will you, till the thermometer on
the wall there registers a hundred degrees.”
When next, on my journey from the coal-cellar, I looked, two more
pieces of bone lay beside the one I had seen extracted, and presently
referring to the thermometer, I saw that between the oil-stove and
the roaring fire and the electric radiator, I had raised the room to
the temperature he wanted. Soon, peering fixedly at the seat of his
operation, he felt for her pulse again. “Not a sign of returning vitality,” he said, “and I’ve done all I can. There’s nothing more possible that can be devised to restore her.”
As he spoke the zeal of the unrivalled surgeon relaxed, and with a sigh
and a shrug he rose to his feet and mopped his face. Then suddenly the
fire and eagerness blazed there again. “The gramophone!” he said. “The
speech centre is close to where I’ve been working, and it is quite
uninjured. Good heavens, what a wonderful opportunity. She served me
well living, and she shall serve me dead. And I can stimulate the motor
nerve-centre, too, with the second battery. We may see a new wonder
to-night.”
Some qualm of horror shook me. “No, don’t!” I said. “It’s terrible: she’s just dead. I shall go if you
do.”
“But I’ve got exactly all the conditions I have long been wanting,”
said he. “And I simply can’t spare you. You must be witness: I must
have a witness. Why, man, there’s not a surgeon or a physiologist in
the kingdom who would not give an eye or an ear to be in your place
now. She’s dead. I pledge you my honour on that, and it’s grand to be
dead if you can help the living.”
Once again, in a far fiercer struggle, horror and the intensest
curiosity strove together in me. “Be quick, then,” said I. “Ha! That’s right,” exclaimed Horton. “Help me to lift her on to the
table by the gramophone. The cushion too; I can get at the place more
easily with her head a little raised.”
He turned on the battery and with the movable light close beside him,
brilliantly illuminating what he sought, he inserted the needle of the
gramophone into the jagged aperture in her skull. For a few minutes,
as he groped and explored there, there was silence, and then quite
suddenly Mrs. Gabriel’s voice, clear and unmistakable and of the normal
loudness of human speech, issued from the trumpet. “Yes, I always said that I’d be even with him,” came the articulated
syllables. “He used to knock me about, he did, when he came home
drunk, and often I was black and blue with bruises. But I’ll give him a
redness for the black and blue.”
The record grew blurred; instead of articulate words there came from
it a gobbling noise. By degrees that cleared, and we were listening to
some dreadful suppressed sort of laughter, hideous to hear. On and on
it went. “I’ve got into some sort of rut,” said Horton. “She must have laughed a
lot to herself.”
For a long time we got nothing more except the repetition of the words
we had already heard and the sound of that suppressed laughter. Then
Horton drew towards him the second battery. “I’ll try a stimulation of the motor nerve-centres,” he said. “Watch
her face.”
He propped the gramophone needle in position, and inserted into the
fractured skull the two poles of the second battery, moving them about
there very carefully. And as I watched her face, I saw with a freezing
horror that her lips were beginning to move. “Her mouth’s moving,” I cried. “She can’t be dead.”
He peered into her face. “Nonsense,” he said. “That’s only the stimulus from the current. She’s
been dead half an hour. Ah! | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
what’s coming now?”
The lips lengthened into a smile, the lower jaw dropped, and from her
mouth came the laughter we had heard just now through the gramophone. And then the dead mouth spoke, with a mumble of unintelligible words, a
bubbling torrent of incoherent syllables. “I’ll turn the full current on,” he said. The head jerked and raised itself, the lips struggled for utterance,
and suddenly she spoke swiftly and distinctly. “Just when he’d got his razor out,” she said, “I came up behind him,
and put my hand over his face, and bent his neck back over his chair
with all my strength. And I picked up his razor and with one slit--ha,
ha, that was the way to pay him out. And I didn’t lose my head, but I
lathered his chin well, and put the razor in his hand, and left him
there, and went downstairs and cooked his dinner for him, and then an
hour afterwards, as he didn’t come down, up I went to see what kept
him. It was a nasty cut in his neck that had kept him----”
Horton suddenly withdrew the two poles of the battery from her head,
and even in the middle of her word the mouth ceased working, and lay
rigid and open. “By God!” he said. “There’s a tale for dead lips to tell. But we’ll get
more yet.”
Exactly what happened then I never knew. It appeared to me that as he
still leaned over the table with the two poles of the battery in his
hand, his foot slipped, and he fell forward across it. There came a
sharp crack, and a flash of blue dazzling light, and there he lay face
downwards, with arms that just stirred and quivered. With his fall the
two poles that must momentarily have come into contact with his hand
were jerked away again, and I lifted him and laid him on the floor. But
his lips as well as those of the dead woman had spoken for the last
time. The Outcast
The Outcast
When Mrs. Acres bought the Gate-house at Tarleton, which had stood so
long without a tenant, and appeared in that very agreeable and lively
little town as a resident, sufficient was already known about her past
history to entitle her to friendliness and sympathy. Hers had been a
tragic story, and the account of the inquest held on her husband’s
body, when, within a month of their marriage, he had shot himself
before her eyes, was recent enough, and of as full a report in the
papers as to enable our little community of Tarleton to remember and
run over the salient grimness of the case without the need of inventing
any further details--which, otherwise, it would have been quite capable
of doing. Briefly, then, the facts had been as follows. Horace Acres appeared to
have been a heartless fortune-hunter--a handsome, plausible wretch,
ten years younger than his wife. He had made no secret to his friends
of not being in love with her but of having a considerable regard for
her more than considerable fortune. But hardly had he married her than
his indifference developed into violent dislike, accompanied by some
mysterious, inexplicable dread of her. He hated and feared her, and on
the morning of the very day when he had put an end to himself he had
begged her to divorce him; the case he promised would be undefended,
and he would make it indefensible. She, poor soul, had refused to grant
this; for, as corroborated by the evidence of friends and servants,
she was utterly devoted to him, and stated with that quiet dignity
which distinguished her throughout this ordeal, that she hoped that he
was the victim of some miserable but temporary derangement, and would
come to his right mind again. He had dined that night at his club,
leaving his month-old bride to pass the evening alone, and had returned
between eleven and twelve that night in a state of vile intoxication. He had gone up to her bedroom, pistol in hand, had locked the door,
and his voice was heard screaming and yelling at her. Then followed
the sound of one shot. On the table in his dressing-room was found a
half-sheet of paper, dated that day, and this was read out in court. “The horror of my position,” he had written, “is beyond description
and endurance. I can bear it no longer: my soul sickens....” The
jury, without leaving the court, returned the verdict that he had
committed suicide while temporarily insane, and the coroner, at their
request, expressed their sympathy and his own with the poor lady, who,
as testified on all hands, had treated her husband with the utmost
tenderness and affection. For six months Bertha Acres had travelled abroad, and then in the
autumn she had bought Gate-house at Tarleton, and settled down to the
absorbing trifles which make life in a small country town so busy and
strenuous. * * * * *
Our modest little dwelling is within a stone’s throw of the Gate-house;
and when, on the return of my wife and myself from two months in
Scotland, we found that Mrs. Acres was installed as a neighbour, Madge
lost no time in going to call on her. She returned with a series of
pleasant impressions. Mrs. Acres, still on the sunny slope that leads
up to the table-land of life which begins at forty years, was extremely
handsome, cordial, and charming in manner, witty and agreeable, and
wonderfully well dressed. Before the conclusion of her call Madge,
in country fashion, had begged her to dispose with formalities, and,
instead of a frigid return of the call, to dine with us quietly next
day. Did she play bridge? That being so, we would just be a party of
four; for her brother, Charles Alington, had proposed himself for a
visit.... I listened to this with sufficient attention to grasp what Madge was
saying, but what I was really thinking about was a chess-problem which
I was attempting to solve. But at this point I became acutely aware
that her stream of pleasant impressions dried up suddenly, and she
became stonily silent. She shut speech off as by the turn of a tap, and
glowered at the fire, rubbing the back of one hand with the fingers of
another, as is her habit in perplexity. “Go on,” I said. She got up, suddenly restless. “All I have been telling you is literally and soberly true,” she said. “I thought Mrs. Acres charming and witty and good-looking and friendly. What more could you ask from a new acquaintance? And then, after I had
asked her to dinner, I suddenly found for no earthly reason that I very
much disliked her; I couldn’t bear her.”
“You said she was wonderfully well dressed,” I permitted myself to
remark.... If the Queen took the Knight----
“Don’t be silly!” said Madge. “I am wonderfully well dressed too. But behind all her agreeableness and charm and good looks I suddenly
felt there was something else which I detested and dreaded. It’s no
use asking me what it was, because I haven’t the slightest idea. If
I knew what it was, the thing would explain itself. But I felt a
horror--nothing vivid, nothing close, you understand, but somewhere in
the background. Can the mind have a ‘turn,’ do you think, just as the
body can, when for a second or two you suddenly feel giddy? | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
I think it
must have been that--oh! I’m sure it was that. But I’m glad I asked her
to dine. I mean to like her. I shan’t have a ‘turn’ again, shall I?”
“No, certainly not,” I said.... If the Queen refrained from taking the
tempting Knight----
“Oh, do stop your silly chess-problem!” said Madge. “Bite him, Fungus!”
Fungus, so called because he is the son of Humour and Gustavus
Adolphus, rose from his place on the hearthrug, and with a horse laugh
nuzzled against my leg, which is his way of biting those he loves. Then
the most amiable of bull-dogs, who has a passion for the human race,
lay down on my foot and sighed heavily. But Madge evidently wanted to
talk, and I pushed the chessboard away. “Tell me more about the horror,” I said. “It was just horror,” she said--“a sort of sickness of the soul.”... I found my brain puzzling over some vague reminiscence, surely
connected with Mrs. Acres, which those words mistily evoked. But next
moment that train of thought was cut short, for the old and sinister
legend about the Gate-house came into my mind as accounting for the
horror of which Madge spoke. In the days of Elizabethan religious
persecutions it had, then newly built, been inhabited by two brothers,
of whom the elder, to whom it belonged, had Mass said there every
Sunday. Betrayed by the younger, he was arrested and racked to death. Subsequently the younger, in a fit of remorse, hanged himself in the
panelled parlour. Certainly there was a story that the house was
haunted by his strangled apparition dangling from the beams, and the
late tenants of the house (which now had stood vacant for over three
years) had quitted it after a month’s occupation, in consequence, so it
was commonly said, of unaccountable and horrible sights. What was more
likely, then, than that Madge, who from childhood has been intensely
sensitive to occult and psychic phenomena, should have caught, on that
strange wireless receiver which is characteristic of “sensitives,” some
whispered message? “But you know the story of the house,” I said. “Isn’t it quite possible
that something of that may have reached you? Where did you sit, for
instance? In the panelled parlour?”
She brightened at that. “Ah, you wise man!” she said. “I never thought of that. That may
account for it all. I hope it does. You shall be left in peace with
your chess for being so brilliant.”
* * * * *
I had occasion half an hour later to go to the post-office, a hundred
yards up the High Street, on the matter of a registered letter which
I wanted to despatch that evening. Dusk was gathering, but the red
glow of sunset still smouldered in the west, sufficient to enable me
to recognise familiar forms and features of passers-by. Just as I came
opposite the post-office there approached from the other direction a
tall, finely built woman, whom, I felt sure, I had never seen before. Her destination was the same as mine, and I hung on my step a moment
to let her pass in first. Simultaneously I felt that I knew, in some
vague, faint manner, what Madge had meant when she talked about a
“sickness of the soul.” It was no nearer realisation to me than is the
running of a tune in the head to the audible external hearing of it,
and I attributed my sudden recognition of her feeling to the fact that
in all probability my mind had subconsciously been dwelling on what
she had said, and not for a moment did I connect it with any external
cause. And then it occurred to me who, possibly, this woman was....
She finished the transaction of her errand a few seconds before me, and
when I got out into the street again she was a dozen yards down the
pavement, walking in the direction of my house and of the Gate-house. Opposite my own door I deliberately lingered, and saw her pass down the
steps that led from the road to the entrance of the Gate-house. Even as
I turned into my own door the unbidden reminiscence which had eluded
me before came out into the open, and I cast my net over it. It was
her husband, who, in the inexplicable communication he had left on his
dressing-room table, just before he shot himself, had written “my soul
sickens.” It was odd, though scarcely more than that, for Madge to have
used those identical words. * * * * *
Charles Alington, my wife’s brother, who arrived next afternoon, is
quite the happiest man whom I have ever come across. The material
world, that perennial spring of thwarted ambition, physical desire,
and perpetual disappointment, is practically unknown to him. Envy,
malice, and all uncharitableness are equally alien, because he does
not want to obtain what anybody else has got, and has no sense of
possession, which is queer, since he is enormously rich. He fears
nothing, he hopes for nothing, he has no abhorrences or affections,
for all physical and nervous functions are in him in the service of an
intense inquisitiveness. He never passed a moral judgment in his life,
he only wants to explore and to know. Knowledge, in fact, is his entire
preoccupation, and since chemists and medical scientists probe and mine
in the world of tinctures and microbes far more efficiently than he
could do, as he has so little care for anything that can be weighed or
propagated, he devotes himself, absorbedly and ecstatically, to that
world that lies about the confines of conscious existence. Anything not
yet certainly determined appeals to him with the call of a trumpet: he
ceases to take an interest in a subject as soon as it shows signs of
assuming a practical and definite status. He was intensely concerned,
for instance, in wireless transmission, until Signor Marconi proved
that it came within the scope of practical science, and then Charles
abandoned it as dull. I had seen him last two months before, when he
was in a great perturbation, since he was speaking at a meeting of
Anglo-Israelites in the morning, to show that the Scone Stone, which
is now in the Coronation Chair at Westminster, was for certain the
pillow on which Jacob’s head had rested when he saw the vision at
Bethel; was addressing the Psychical Research Society in the afternoon
on the subject of messages received from the dead through automatic
script, and in the evening was, by way of a holiday, only listening
to a lecture on reincarnation. None of these things could, as yet, be
definitely proved, and that was why he loved them. During the intervals
when the occult and the fantastic do not occupy him, he is, in spite of
his fifty years and wizened mien, exactly like a schoolboy of eighteen
back on his holidays and brimming with superfluous energy. I found Charles already arrived when I got home next afternoon, after a
round of golf. He was betwixt and between the serious and the holiday
mood, for he had evidently been reading to Madge from a journal
concerning reincarnation, and was rather severe to me....
“Golf!” he said, with insulting scorn. “What is there to know about
golf? | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
You hit a ball into the air----”
I was a little sore over the events of the afternoon. “That’s just what I don’t do,” I said. “I hit it along the ground!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter where you hit it,” said he. “It’s all subject
to known laws. But the guess, the conjecture: there’s the thrill and
the excitement of life. The charlatan with his new cure for cancer, the
automatic writer with his messages from the dead, the reincarnationist
with his positive assertions that he was Napoleon or a Christian
slave--they are the people who advance knowledge. You have to guess
before you know. Even Darwin saw that when he said you could not
investigate without a hypothesis!”
“So what’s your hypothesis this minute?” I asked. “Why, that we’ve all lived before, and that we’re going to live again
here on this same old earth. Any other conception of a future life
is impossible. Are all the people who have been born and have died
since the world emerged from chaos going to become inhabitants of some
future world? What a squash, you know, my dear Madge! Now, I know
what you’re going to ask me. If we’ve all lived before, why can’t we
remember it? But that’s so simple! If you remembered being Cleopatra,
you would go on behaving like Cleopatra; and what would Tarleton say? Judas Iscariot, too! Fancy knowing you had been Judas Iscariot! You
couldn’t get over it! you would commit suicide, or cause everybody who
was connected with you to commit suicide from their horror of you. Or
imagine being a grocer’s boy who knew he had been Julius Cæsar....
Of course, sex doesn’t matter: souls, as far as I understand, are
sexless--just sparks of life, which are put into physical envelopes,
some male, some female. You might have been King David, Madge and poor
Tony here one of his wives.”
“That would be wonderfully neat,” said I.
Charles broke out into a shout of laughter. “It would indeed,” he said. “But I won’t talk sense any more to you
scoffers. I’m absolutely tired out, I will confess, with thinking. I want to have a pretty lady to come to dinner, and talk to her as
if she was just herself and I myself, and nobody else. I want to win
two-and-sixpence at bridge with the expenditure of enormous thought. I want to have a large breakfast to-morrow and read _The Times_
afterwards, and go to Tony’s club and talk about crops and golf and
Irish affairs and Peace Conferences, and all the things that don’t
matter one straw!”
“You’re going to begin your programme to-night, dear,” said Madge. “A
very pretty lady is coming to dinner, and we’re going to play bridge
afterwards.”
Madge and I were ready for Mrs. Acres when she arrived, but Charles
was not yet down. Fungus, who has a wild adoration for Charles, quite
unaccountable, since Charles has no feelings for dogs, was helping him
to dress, and Madge, Mrs. Acres, and I waited for his appearance. It
was certainly Mrs. Acres whom I had met last night at the door of the
post-office, but the dim light of sunset had not enabled me to see
how wonderfully handsome she was. There was something slightly Jewish
about her profile: the high forehead, the very full-lipped mouth, the
bridged nose, the prominent chin, all suggested rather than exemplified
an Eastern origin. And when she spoke she had that rich softness
of utterance, not quite hoarseness, but not quite of the clear-cut
distinctness of tone which characterises northern nations. Something
southern, something Eastern....
“I am bound to ask one thing,” she said, when, after the usual
greetings, we stood round the fireplace, waiting for Charles--“but have
you got a dog?”
Madge moved towards the bell. “Yes, but he shan’t come down if you dislike dogs,” she said. “He’s
wonderfully kind, but I know----”
“Ah, it’s not that,” said Mrs. Acres. “I adore dogs. But I only wished
to spare your dog’s feelings. Though I adore them, they hate me, and
they’re terribly frightened of me. There’s something anti-canine about
me.”
It was too late to say more. Charles’s steps clattered in the little
hall outside, and Fungus was hoarse and amused. Next moment the door
opened, and the two came in. Fungus came in first. He lolloped in a festive manner into the middle
of the room, sniffed and snored in greeting, and then turned tail. He
slipped and skidded on the parquet outside, and we heard him bundling
down the kitchen stairs. “Rude dog,” said Madge. “Charles, let me introduce you to Mrs. Acres. My brother, Mrs. Acres: Sir Charles Alington.”
* * * * *
Our little dinner-table of four would not permit of separate
conversations, and general topics, springing up like mushrooms, wilted
and died at their very inception. What mood possessed the others I
did not at that time know, but for myself I was only conscious of
some fundamental distaste of the handsome, clever woman who sat on
my right, and seemed quite unaffected by the withering atmosphere. She was charming to the eye, she was witty to the ear, she had grace
and gracefulness, and all the time she was something terrible. But
by degrees, as I found my own distaste increasing, I saw that my
brother-in-law’s interest was growing correspondingly keen. The
“pretty lady” whose presence at dinner he had desired and obtained
was enchaining him--not, so I began to guess, for her charm and her
prettiness, but for some purpose of study, and I wondered whether it
was her beautiful Jewish profile that was confirming to his mind some
Anglo-Israelitish theory, whether he saw in her fine brown eyes the
glance of the seer and the clairvoyante, or whether he divined in her
some reincarnation of one of the famous or the infamous dead. Certainly
she had for him some fascination beyond that of the legitimate charm of
a very handsome woman; he was studying her with intense curiosity. “And you are comfortable in the Gate-house?” he suddenly rapped out at
her, as if asking some question of which the answer was crucial. “Ah! but so comfortable,” she said--“such a delightful atmosphere. I have never known a house that ‘felt’ so peaceful and homelike. Or
is it merely fanciful to imagine that some houses have a sense of
tranquillity about them and others are uneasy and even terrible?”
Charles stared at her a moment in silence before he recollected his
manners. “No, there may easily be something in it, I should say,” he answered. “One can imagine long centuries of tranquillity actually investing a
home with some sort of psychical aura perceptible to those who are
sensitive.”
She turned to Madge. “And yet I have heard a ridiculous story that the house is supposed to
be haunted,” she said. “If it is, it is surely haunted by delightful,
contented spirits.”
Dinner was over. Madge rose. “Come in very soon, Tony,” she said to me, “and let’s get to our
bridge.”
But her eyes said, “Don’t leave me long alone with her.”
Charles turned briskly round when the door had shut. “An extremely interesting woman,” he said. “Very handsome,” said I. “Is she? I didn’t notice. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Her mind, her spirit--that’s what intrigued
me. What is she? What’s behind? Why did Fungus turn tail like that? Queer, too, about her finding the atmosphere of the Gate-house so
tranquil. The late tenants, I remember, didn’t find that soothing touch
about it!”
“How do you account for that?” I asked. “There might be several explanations. You might say that the late
tenants were fanciful, imaginative people, and that the present tenant
is a sensible, matter-of-fact woman. Certainly she seemed to be.”
“Or----” I suggested. He laughed. “Well, you might say--mind, I don’t say so--but you might say that
the--the spiritual tenants of the house find Mrs. Acres a congenial
companion, and want to retain her. So they keep quiet, and don’t upset
the cook’s nerves!”
Somehow this answer exasperated and jarred on me. “What do you mean?” I said. “The spiritual tenant of the house, I
suppose, is the man who betrayed his brother and hanged himself. Why
should he find a charming woman like Mrs. Acres a congenial companion?”
Charles got up briskly. Usually he is more than ready to discuss such
topics, but to-night it seemed that he had no such inclination. “Didn’t Madge tell us not to be long?” he asked. “You know how I run on
if I once get on that subject, Tony, so don’t give me the opportunity.”
“But why did you say that?” I persisted. “Because I was talking nonsense. You know me well enough to be aware
that I am an habitual criminal in that respect.”
* * * * *
It was indeed strange to find how completely both the first impression
that Madge had formed of Mrs. Acres and the feeling that followed so
quickly on its heels were endorsed by those who, during the next week
or two, did a neighbour’s duty to the newcomer. All were loud in praise
of her charm, her pleasant, kindly wit, her good looks, her beautiful
clothes, but even while this _Lob-gesang_ was in full chorus it would
suddenly die away, and an uneasy silence descended, which somehow was
more eloquent than all the appreciative speech. Odd, unaccountable
little incidents had occurred, which were whispered from mouth to
mouth till they became common property. The same fear that Fungus had
shown of her was exhibited by another dog. A parallel case occurred
when she returned the call of our parson’s wife. Mrs. Dowlett had a
cage of canaries in the window of her drawing-room. These birds had
manifested symptoms of extreme terror when Mrs. Acres entered the room,
beating themselves against the wires of their cage, and uttering the
alarm-note.... She inspired some sort of inexplicable fear, over which
we, as trained and civilised human beings, had control, so that we
behaved ourselves. But animals, without that check, gave way altogether
to it, even as Fungus had done. Mrs. Acres entertained; she gave charming little dinner-parties of
eight, with a couple of tables at bridge to follow, but over these
evenings there hung a blight and a blackness. No doubt the sinister
story of the panelled parlour contributed to this. This curious secret dread of her, of which as on that first evening
at my house, she appeared to be completely unconscious differed very
widely in degree. Most people, like myself, were conscious of it,
but only very remotely so, and we found ourselves at the Gate-house
behaving quite as usual, though with this unease in the background. But with a few, and most of all with Madge, it grew into a sort of
obsession. She made every effort to combat it; her will was entirely
set against it, but her struggle seemed only to establish its power
over her. The pathetic and pitiful part was that Mrs. Acres from
the first had taken a tremendous liking to her, and used to drop in
continually, calling first to Madge at the window, in that pleasant,
serene voice of hers, to tell Fungus that the hated one was imminent. Then came a day when Madge and I were bidden to a party at the
Gate-house on Christmas evening. This was to be the last of Mrs.
Acres’s hospitalities for the present, since she was leaving
immediately afterwards for a couple of months in Egypt. So, with this
remission ahead, Madge almost gleefully accepted the bidding. But when
the evening came she was seized with so violent an attack of sickness
and shivering that she was utterly unable to fulfil her engagement. Her
doctor could find no physical trouble to account for this: it seemed
that the anticipation of her evening alone caused it, and here was the
culmination of her shrinking from our kindly and pleasant neighbour. She could only tell me that her sensations, as she began to dress for
the party, were like those of that moment in sleep when somewhere in
the drowsy brain nightmare is ripening. Something independent of her
will revolted at what lay before her....
* * * * *
Spring had begun to stretch herself in the lap of winter when next the
curtain rose on this veiled drama of forces but dimly comprehended and
shudderingly conjectured; but then, indeed, nightmare ripened swiftly
in broad noon. And this was the way of it. Charles Alington had again come to stay with us five days before
Easter, and expressed himself as humorously disappointed to find that
the subject of his curiosity was still absent from the Gate-house. On
the Saturday morning before Easter he appeared very late for breakfast,
and Madge had already gone her ways. I rang for a fresh teapot, and
while this was on its way he took up _The Times_. “I only read the outside page of it,” he said. “The rest is too full of
mere materialistic dullnesses--politics, sports, money-market----”
He stopped, and passed the paper over to me. “There, where I’m pointing,” he said--“among the deaths. The first one.”
What I read was this:
“ACRES, BERTHA. Died at sea, Thursday night, 30th March, and by her
own request buried at sea. (Received by wireless from P. & O. steamer
_Peshawar_. )”
He held out his hand for the paper again, and turned over the leaves. “Lloyd’s,” he said. “The _Peshawar_ arrived at Tilbury yesterday
afternoon. The burial must have taken place somewhere in the English
Channel.”
* * * * *
On the afternoon of Easter Sunday Madge and I motored out to the golf
links three miles away. She proposed to walk along the beach just
outside the dunes while I had my round, and return to the club-house
for tea in two hours’ time. The day was one of most lucid spring: a
warm south-west wind bowled white clouds along the sky, and their
shadows jovially scudded over the sandhills. We had told her of Mrs.
Acres’s death, and from that moment something dark and vague which had
been lying over her mind since the autumn seemed to join this fleet of
the shadows of clouds and leave her in sunlight. We parted at the door
of the club-house, and she set out on her walk. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Half an hour later, as my opponent and I were waiting on the fifth tee,
where the road crosses the links, for the couple in front of us to move
on, a servant from the club-house, scudding along the road, caught
sight of us, and, jumping from his bicycle, came to where we stood. “You’re wanted at the club-house, sir,” he said to me. “Mrs. Carford
was walking along the shore, and she found something left by the tide. A body, sir. ’Twas in a sack, but the sack was torn, and she saw----
It’s upset her very much, sir. We thought it best to come for you.”
I took the boy’s bicycle and went back to the club-house as fast as I
could turn the wheel. I felt sure I knew what Madge had found, and,
knowing that, realised the shock.... Five minutes later she was telling
me her story in gasps and whispers. “The tide was going down,” she said, “and I walked along the high-water
mark.... There were pretty shells; I was picking them up.... And then I
saw it in front of me--just shapeless, just a sack ... and then, as I
came nearer, it took shape; there were knees and elbows. It moved, it
rolled over, and where the head was the sack was torn, and I saw her
face. Her eyes were open, Tony, and I fled.... All the time I felt it
was rolling along after me. Oh, Tony! she’s dead, isn’t she? She won’t
come back to the Gate-house? Do you promise me?... There’s something
awful! I wonder if I guess. The sea gives her up. The sea won’t suffer
her to rest in it.”... The news of the finding had already been telephoned to Tarleton, and
soon a party of four men with a stretcher arrived. There was no doubt
as to the identity of the body, for though it had been in the water
for three days no corruption had come to it. The weights with which at
burial it had been laden must by some strange chance have been detached
from it, and by a chance stranger yet it had drifted to the shore
closest to her home. That night it lay in the mortuary, and the inquest
was held on it next day, though that was a bank-holiday. From there it
was taken to the Gate-house and coffined, and it lay in the panelled
parlour for the funeral on the morrow. Madge, after that one hysterical outburst, had completely recovered
herself, and on the Monday evening she made a little wreath of the
spring-flowers which the early warmth had called into blossom in the
garden, and I went across with it to the Gate-house. Though the news
of Mrs. Acres’s death and the subsequent finding of the body had
been widely advertised, there had been no response from relations or
friends, and as I laid the solitary wreath on the coffin a sense of the
utter loneliness of what lay within seized and encompassed me. And then
a portent, no less, took place before my eyes. Hardly had the freshly
gathered flowers been laid on the coffin than they drooped and wilted. The stalks of the daffodils bent, and their bright chalices closed; the
odour of the wallflowers died, and they withered as I watched.... What
did it mean, that even the petals of spring shrank and were moribund? * * * * *
I told Madge nothing of this; and she, as if through some pang of
remorse, was determined to be present next day at the funeral. No arrival of friends or relations had taken place, and from the
Gate-house there came none of the servants. They stood in the porch as
the coffin was brought out of the house, and even before it was put
into the hearse had gone back again and closed the door. So, at the
cemetery on the hill above Tarleton, Madge and her brother and I were
the only mourners. The afternoon was densely overcast, though we got no rainfall, and
it was with thick clouds above and a sea-mist drifting between the
grave-stones that we came, after the service in the cemetery-chapel, to
the place of interment. And then--I can hardly write of it now--when it
came for the coffin to be lowered into the grave, it was found that by
some faulty measurement it could not descend, for the excavation was
not long enough to hold it. Madge was standing close to us, and at this moment I heard her sob. “And the kindly earth will not receive her,” she whispered. There was awful delay: the diggers must be sent for again, and meantime
the rain had begun to fall thick and tepid. For some reason--perhaps
some outlying feeler of Madge’s obsession had wound a tentacle round
me--I felt that I must know that earth had gone to earth, but I could
not suffer Madge to wait. So, in this miserable pause, I got Charles to
take her home, and then returned. Pick and shovel were busy, and soon the resting-place was ready. The
interrupted service continued, the handful of wet earth splashed on the
coffin-lid, and when all was over I left the cemetery, still feeling,
I knew not why, that all was _not_ over. Some restlessness and want of
certainty possessed me, and instead of going home I fared forth into
the rolling wooded country inland, with the intention of walking off
these bat-like terrors that flapped around me. The rain had ceased, and
a blurred sunlight penetrated the sea-mist which still blanketed the
fields and woods, and for half an hour, moving briskly, I endeavoured
to fight down some fantastic conviction that had gripped my mind in its
claws. I refused to look straight at that conviction, telling myself
how fantastic, how unreasonable it was; but as often as I put out a
hand to throttle it there came the echo of Madge’s words: “The sea will
not suffer her; the kindly earth will not receive her.” And if I could
shut my eyes to that there came some remembrance of the day she died,
and of half-forgotten fragments of Charles’s superstitious belief in
reincarnation. The whole thing, incredible though its component parts
were, hung together with a terrible tenacity. * * * * *
Before long the rain began again, and I turned, meaning to go by the
main-road into Tarleton, which passes in a wide-flung curve some
half-mile outside the cemetery. But as I approached the path through
the fields, which, leaving the less direct route, passes close to the
cemetery and brings you by a steeper and shorter descent into the
town, I felt myself irresistibly impelled to take it. I told myself,
of course, that I wished to make my wet walk as short as possible;
but at the back of my mind was the half-conscious, but none the less
imperative need to know by ocular evidence that the grave by which I
had stood that afternoon had been filled in, and that the body of Mrs. Acres now lay tranquil beneath the soil. My path would be even shorter
if I passed through the graveyard, and so presently I was fumbling in
the gloom for the latch of the gate, and closed it again behind me. Rain was falling now thick and sullenly, and in the bleared twilight I
picked my way among the mounds and slipped on the dripping grass, and
there in front of me was the newly turned earth. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
All was finished: the
grave-diggers had done their work and departed, and earth had gone back
again into the keeping of the earth. It brought me some great lightening of the spirit to know that, and I
was on the point of turning away when a sound of stir from the heaped
soil caught my ear, and I saw a little stream of pebbles mixed with
clay trickle down the side of the mound above the grave: the heavy
rain, no doubt, had loosened the earth. And then came another and yet
another, and with terror gripping at my heart I perceived that this was
no loosening from without, but from within, for to right and left the
piled soil was falling away with the press of something from below. Faster and faster it poured off the grave, and ever higher at the head
of it rose a mound of earth pushed upwards from beneath. Somewhere out
of sight there came the sound as of creaking and breaking wood, and
then through that mound of earth there protruded the end of the coffin. The lid was shattered: loose pieces of the boards fell off it, and from
within the cavity there faced me white features and wide eyes. All this
I saw, while sheer terror held me motionless; then, I suppose, came the
breaking-point, and with such panic as surely man never felt before I
was stumbling away among the graves and racing towards the kindly human
lights of the town below. I went to the parson who had conducted the service that afternoon with
my incredible tale, and an hour later he, Charles Alington, and two
or three men from the undertaker’s were on the spot. They found the
coffin, completely disinterred, lying on the ground by the grave, which
was now three-quarters full of the earth which had fallen back into it. After what had happened it was decided to make no further attempt to
bury it; and next day the body was cremated. * * * * *
Now, it is open to anyone who may read this tale to reject the incident
of this emergence of the coffin altogether, and account for the other
strange happenings by the comfortable theory of coincidence. He can
certainly satisfy himself that one Bertha Acres did die at sea on this
particular Thursday before Easter, and was buried at sea: there is
nothing extraordinary about that. Nor is it the least impossible that
the weights should have slipped from the canvas shroud, and that the
body should have been washed ashore on the coast by Tarleton (why not
Tarleton, as well as any other little town near the coast? ); nor is
there anything inherently significant in the fact that the grave, as
originally dug, was not of sufficient dimensions to receive the coffin. That all these incidents should have happened to the body of a single
individual is odd, but then the nature of coincidence is to be odd. They form a startling series, but unless coincidences are startling
they escape observation altogether. So, if you reject the last incident
here recorded, or account for it by some local disturbance, an
earthquake, or the breaking of a spring just below the grave, you can
comfortably recline on the cushion of coincidence....
* * * * *
For myself, I give no explanation of these events, though my
brother-in-law brought forward one with which he himself is perfectly
satisfied. Only the other day he sent me, with considerable jubilation,
a copy of some extracts from a mediæval treatise on the subject of
reincarnation which sufficiently indicates his theory. The original
work was in Latin, which, mistrusting my scholarship, he kindly
translated for me. I transcribe his quotations exactly as he sent them
to me. “We have these certain instances of his reincarnation. In one his
spirit was incarnated in the body of a man; in the other, in that of
a woman, fair of outward aspect, and of a pleasant conversation, but
held in dread and in horror by those who came into more than casual
intercourse with her.... She, it is said, died on the anniversary of
the day on which he hanged himself, after the betrayal, but of this I
have no certain information. What is sure is that, when the time came
for her burial, the kindly earth would receive her not, but though the
grave was dug deep and well it spewed her forth again.... Of the man
in whom his cursed spirit was reincarnated it is said that, being on a
voyage when he died, he was cast overboard with weights to sink him;
but the sea would not suffer him to rest in her bosom, but slipped the
weights from him, and cast him forth again on to the coast.... Howbeit,
when the full time of his expiation shall have come and his deadly
sin forgiven, the corporal body which is the cursed receptacle of his
spirit shall at length be purged with fire, and so he shall, in the
infinite mercy of the Almighty, have rest, and shall wander no more.”
The Horror-Horn
The Horror-Horn
For the past ten days Alhubel had basked in the radiant midwinter
weather proper to its eminence of over 6,000 feet. From rising to
setting the sun (so surprising to those who have hitherto associated
it with a pale, tepid plate indistinctly shining through the murky air
of England) had blazed its way across the sparkling blue, and every
night the serene and windless frost had made the stars sparkle like
illuminated diamond dust. Sufficient snow had fallen before Christmas
to content the skiers, and the big rink, sprinkled every evening, had
given the skaters each morning a fresh surface on which to perform
their slippery antics. Bridge and dancing served to while away the
greater part of the night, and to me, now for the first time tasting
the joys of a winter in the Engadine, it seemed that a new heaven and
a new earth had been lighted, warmed, and refrigerated for the special
benefit of those who like myself had been wise enough to save up their
days of holiday for the winter. But a break came in these ideal conditions: one afternoon the sun grew
vapour-veiled and up the valley from the north-west a wind frozen with
miles of travel over ice-bound hill-sides began scouting through the
calm halls of the heavens. Soon it grew dusted with snow, first in
small flakes driven almost horizontally before its congealing breath
and then in larger tufts as of swansdown. And though all day for a
fortnight before the fate of nations and life and death had seemed
to me of far less importance than to get certain tracings of the
skate-blades on the ice of proper shape and size, it now seemed that
the one paramount consideration was to hurry back to the hotel for
shelter: it was wiser to leave rocking-turns alone than to be frozen in
their quest. I had come out here with my cousin, Professor Ingram, the celebrated
physiologist and Alpine climber. During the serenity of the last
fortnight he had made a couple of notable winter ascents, but this
morning his weather-wisdom had mistrusted the signs of the heavens, and
instead of attempting the ascent of the Piz Passug he had waited to see
whether his misgivings justified themselves. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
So there he sat now in the
hall of the admirable hotel with his feet on the hot-water pipes and
the latest delivery of the English post in his hands. This contained
a pamphlet concerning the result of the Mount Everest expedition, of
which he had just finished the perusal when I entered. “A very interesting report,” he said, passing it to me, “and they
certainly deserve to succeed next year. But who can tell, what that
final six thousand feet may entail? Six thousand feet more when you
have already accomplished twenty-three thousand does not seem much,
but at present no one knows whether the human frame can stand exertion
at such a height. It may affect not the lungs and heart only, but
possibly the brain. Delirious hallucinations may occur. In fact, if I
did not know better, I should have said that one such hallucination had
occurred to the climbers already.”
“And what was that?” I asked. “You will find that they thought they came across the tracks of some
naked human foot at a great altitude. That looks at first sight like
an hallucination. What more natural than that a brain excited and
exhilarated by the extreme height should have interpreted certain marks
in the snow as the footprints of a human being? Every bodily organ
at these altitudes is exerting itself to the utmost to do its work,
and the brain seizes on those marks in the snow and says ‘Yes, I’m
all right, I’m doing my job, and I perceive marks in the snow which
I affirm are human footprints.’ You know, even at this altitude, how
restless and eager the brain is, how vividly, as you told me, you dream
at night. Multiply that stimulus and that consequent eagerness and
restlessness by three, and how natural that the brain should harbour
illusions! What after all is the delirium which often accompanies high
fever but the effort of the brain to do its work under the pressure
of feverish conditions? It is so eager to continue perceiving that it
perceives things which have no existence!”
“And yet you don’t think that these naked human footprints were
illusions,” said I. “You told me you would have thought so, if you had
not known better.”
He shifted in his chair and looked out of the window a moment. The air
was thick now with the density of the big snow-flakes that were driven
along by the squealing north-west gale. “Quite so,” he said. “In all probability the human footprints were
real human footprints. I expect that they were the footprints, anyhow,
of a being more nearly a man than anything else. My reason for saying
so is that I know such beings exist. I have even seen quite near at
hand--and I assure you I did not wish to be nearer in spite of my
intense curiosity--the creature, shall we say, which would make such
footprints. And if the snow was not so dense, I could show you the
place where I saw him.”
He pointed straight out of the window, where across the valley lies
the huge tower of the Ungeheuerhorn with the carved pinnacle of rock
at the top like some gigantic rhinoceros-horn. On one side only, as I
knew, was the mountain practicable, and that for none but the finest
climbers; on the other three a succession of ledges and precipices
rendered it unscalable. Two thousand feet of sheer rock form the tower;
below are five hundred feet of fallen boulders, up to the edge of which
grow dense woods of larch and pine. “Upon the Ungeheuerhorn?” I asked. “Yes. Up till twenty years ago it had never been ascended, and I, like
several others, spent a lot of time in trying to find a route up it. My guide and I sometimes spent three nights together at the hut beside
the Blumen glacier, prowling round it, and it was by luck really that
we found the route, for the mountain looks even more impracticable
from the far side than it does from this. But one day we found a long,
transverse fissure in the side which led to a negotiable ledge; then
there came a slanting ice couloir which you could not see till you got
to the foot of it. However, I need not go into that.”
The big room where we sat was filling up with cheerful groups driven
indoors by this sudden gale and snowfall, and the cackle of merry
tongues grew loud. The band, too, that invariable appanage of tea-time
at Swiss resorts, had begun to tune up for the usual potpourri from the
works of Puccini. Next moment the sugary, sentimental melodies began. “Strange contrast!” said Ingram. “Here are we sitting warm and cosy,
our ears pleasantly tickled with these little baby tunes and outside is
the great storm growing more violent every moment, and swirling round
the austere cliffs of the Ungeheuerhorn: the Horror-Horn, as indeed it
was to me.”
“I want to hear all about it,” I said. “Every detail: make a short
story long, if it’s short. I want to know why it’s _your_ Horror-horn?”
“Well, Chanton and I (he was my guide) used to spend days prowling
about the cliffs, making a little progress on one side and then being
stopped, and gaining perhaps five hundred feet on another side and then
being confronted by some insuperable obstacle, till the day when by
luck we found the route. Chanton never liked the job, for some reason
that I could not fathom. It was not because of the difficulty or danger
of the climbing, for he was the most fearless man I have ever met
when dealing with rocks and ice, but he was always insistent that we
should get off the mountain and back to the Blumen hut before sunset. He was scarcely easy even when we had got back to shelter and locked
and barred the door, and I well remember one night when, as we ate our
supper, we heard some animal, a wolf probably, howling somewhere out in
the night. A positive panic seized him, and I don’t think he closed his
eyes till morning. It struck me then that there might be some grisly
legend about the mountain, connected possibly with its name, and next
day I asked him why the peak was called the Horror-horn. He put the
question off at first, and said that, like the Schreckhorn, its name
was due to its precipices and falling stones; but when I pressed him
further he acknowledged that there was a legend about it, which his
father had told him. There were creatures, so it was supposed, that
lived in its caves, things human in shape, and covered, except for
the face and hands, with long black hair. They were dwarfs in size,
four feet high or thereabouts, but of prodigious strength and agility,
remnants of some wild primeval race. It seemed that they were still
in an upward stage of evolution, or so I guessed, for the story ran
that sometimes girls had been carried off by them, not as prey, and
not for any such fate as for those captured by cannibals, but to be
bred from. Young men also had been raped by them, to be mated with
the females of their tribe. All this looked as if the creatures, as I
said, were tending towards humanity. But naturally I did not believe a
word of it, as applied to the conditions of the present day. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Centuries
ago, conceivably, there may have been such beings, and, with the
extraordinary tenacity of tradition, the news of this had been handed
down and was still current round the hearths of the peasants. As for
their numbers, Chanton told me that three had been once seen together
by a man who owing to his swiftness on skis had escaped to tell the
tale. This man, he averred, was no other than his grandfather, who
had been benighted one winter evening as he passed through the dense
woods below the Ungeheuerhorn, and Chanton supposed that they had
been driven down to these lower altitudes in search of food during
severe winter weather, for otherwise the recorded sights of them
had always taken place among the rocks of the peak itself. They had
pursued his grandfather, then a young man, at an extraordinarily swift
canter, running sometimes upright as men run, sometimes on all-fours
in the manner of beasts, and their howls were just such as that we had
heard that night in the Blumen hut. Such at any rate was the story
Chanton told me, and, like you, I regarded it as the very moonshine
of superstition. But the very next day I had reason to reconsider my
judgment about it. “It was on that day that after a week of exploration we hit on the
only route at present known to the top of our peak. We started as soon
as there was light enough to climb by, for, as you may guess, on very
difficult rocks it is impossible to climb by lantern or moonlight. We hit on the long fissure I have spoken of, we explored the ledge
which from below seemed to end in nothingness, and with an hour’s
step-cutting ascended the couloir which led upwards from it. From there
onwards it was a rock-climb, certainly of considerable difficulty, but
with no heart-breaking discoveries ahead, and it was about nine in the
morning that we stood on the top. We did not wait there long, for that
side of the mountain is raked by falling stones loosened, when the sun
grows hot, from the ice that holds them, and we made haste to pass the
ledge where the falls are most frequent. After that there was the long
fissure to descend, a matter of no great difficulty, and we were at
the end of our work by midday, both of us, as you may imagine, in the
state of the highest elation. “A long and tiresome scramble among the huge boulders at the foot of
the cliff then lay before us. Here the hill-side is very porous and
great caves extend far into the mountain. We had unroped at the base of
the fissure, and were picking our way as seemed good to either of us
among these fallen rocks, many of them bigger than an ordinary house,
when, on coming round the corner of one of these, I saw that which
made it clear that the stories Chanton had told me were no figment of
traditional superstition. “Not twenty yards in front of me lay one of the beings of which he
had spoken. There it sprawled naked and basking on its back with face
turned up to the sun, which its narrow eyes regarded unwinking. In form
it was completely human, but the growth of hair that covered limbs and
trunk alike almost completely hid the sun-tanned skin beneath. But its
face, save for the down on its cheeks and chin, was hairless, and I
looked on a countenance the sensual and malevolent bestiality of which
froze me with horror. Had the creature been an animal, one would have
felt scarcely a shudder at the gross animalism of it; the horror lay in
the fact that it was a man. There lay by it a couple of gnawed bones,
and, its meal finished, it was lazily licking its protuberant lips,
from which came a purring murmur of content. With one hand it scratched
the thick hair on its belly, in the other it held one of these bones,
which presently split in half beneath the pressure of its finger and
thumb. But my horror was not based on the information of what happened
to those men whom these creatures caught, it was due only to my
proximity to a thing so human and so infernal. The peak, of which the
ascent had a moment ago filled us with such elated satisfaction, became
to me an Ungeheuerhorn indeed, for it was the home of beings more awful
than the delirium of nightmare could ever have conceived. “Chanton was a dozen paces behind me, and with a backward wave of
my hand I caused him to halt. Then withdrawing myself with infinite
precaution, so as not to attract the gaze of that basking creature,
I slipped back round the rock, whispered to him what I had seen, and
with blanched faces we made a long detour, peering round every corner,
and crouching low, not knowing that at any step we might not come upon
another of these beings, or that from the mouth of one of these caves
in the mountain-side there might not appear another of those hairless
and dreadful faces, with perhaps this time the breasts and insignia of
womanhood. That would have been the worst of all. “Luck favoured us, for we made our way among the boulders and shifting
stones, the rattle of which might at any moment have betrayed us,
without a repetition of my experience, and once among the trees we ran
as if the Furies themselves were in pursuit. Well now did I understand,
though I dare say I cannot convey, the qualms of Chanton’s mind when he
spoke to me of these creatures. Their very humanity was what made them
so terrible, the fact that they were of the same race as ourselves, but
of a type so abysmally degraded that the most brutal and inhuman of men
would have seemed angelic in comparison.”
The music of the small band was over before he had finished the
narrative, and the chattering groups round the tea-table had dispersed. He paused a moment. “There was a horror of the spirit,” he said, “which I experienced
then, from which, I verily believe, I have never entirely recovered. I saw then how terrible a living thing could be, and how terrible, in
consequence, was life itself. In us all I suppose lurks some inherited
germ of that ineffable bestiality, and who knows whether, sterile as it
has apparently become in the course of centuries, it might not fructify
again. When I saw that creature sun itself, I looked into the abyss
out of which we have crawled. And these creatures are trying to crawl
out of it now, if they exist any longer. Certainly for the last twenty
years there has been no record of their being seen, until we come to
this story of the footprint seen by the climbers on Everest. If that
is authentic, if the party did not mistake the footprint of some bear,
or what not, for a human tread, it seems as if still this bestranded
remnant of mankind is in existence.”
Now, Ingram, had told his story well; but sitting in this warm
and civilised room, the horror which he had clearly felt had not
communicated itself to me in any very vivid manner. Intellectually, I
agreed, I could appreciate his horror, but certainly my spirit felt no
shudder of interior comprehension. “But it is odd,” I said, “that your keen interest in physiology did
not disperse your qualms. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
You were looking, so I take it, at some form
of man more remote probably than the earliest human remains. Did not
something inside you say ‘This is of absorbing significance’?”
He shook his head. “No: I only wanted to get away,” said he. “It was not, as I have told
you, the terror of what according to Chanton’s story, might await us if
we were captured; it was sheer horror at the creature itself. I quaked
at it.”
* * * * *
The snowstorm and the gale increased in violence that night, and I
slept uneasily, plucked again and again from slumber by the fierce
battling of the wind that shook my windows as if with an imperious
demand for admittance. It came in billowy gusts, with strange noises
intermingled with it as for a moment it abated, with flutings and
moanings that rose to shrieks as the fury of it returned. These noises,
no doubt, mingled themselves with my drowsed and sleepy consciousness,
and once I tore myself out of nightmare, imagining that the creatures
of the Horror-horn had gained footing on my balcony and were rattling
at the window-bolts. But before morning the gale had died away, and I
awoke to see the snow falling dense and fast in a windless air. For
three days it continued, without intermission, and with its cessation
there came a frost such as I have never felt before. Fifty degrees were
registered one night, and more the next, and what the cold must have
been on the cliffs of the Ungeheuerhorn I cannot imagine. Sufficient,
so I thought, to have made an end altogether of its secret inhabitants:
my cousin, on that day twenty years ago, had missed an opportunity for
study which would probably never fall again either to him or another. I received one morning a letter from a friend saying that he had
arrived at the neighbouring winter resort of St. Luigi, and proposing
that I should come over for a morning’s skating and lunch afterwards. The place was not more than a couple of miles off, if one took the path
over the low, pine-clad foot-hills above which lay the steep woods
below the first rocky slopes of the Ungeheuerhorn; and accordingly,
with a knapsack containing skates on my back, I went on skis over the
wooded slopes and down by an easy descent again on to St. Luigi. The
day was overcast, clouds entirely obscured the higher peaks though the
sun was visible, pale and unluminous, through the mists. But as the
morning went on, it gained the upper hand, and I slid down into St.
Luigi beneath a sparkling firmament. We skated and lunched, and then,
since it looked as if thick weather was coming up again, I set out
early about three o’clock for my return journey. Hardly had I got into the woods when the clouds gathered thick above,
and streamers and skeins of them began to descend among the pines
through which my path threaded its way. In ten minutes more their
opacity had so increased that I could hardly see a couple of yards in
front of me. Very soon I became aware that I must have got off the
path, for snow-cowled shrubs lay directly in my way, and, casting
back to find it again, I got altogether confused as to direction. But, though progress was difficult, I knew I had only to keep on
the ascent, and presently I should come to the brow of these low
foot-hills, and descend into the open valley where Alhubel stood. So
on I went, stumbling and sliding over obstacles, and unable, owing to
the thickness of the snow, to take off my skis, for I should have sunk
over the knees at each step. Still the ascent continued, and looking at
my watch I saw that I had already been near an hour on my way from St.
Luigi, a period more than sufficient to complete my whole journey. But
still I stuck to my idea that though I had certainly strayed far from
my proper route a few minutes more must surely see me over the top of
the upward way, and I should find the ground declining into the next
valley. About now, too, I noticed that the mists were growing suffused
with rose-colour, and, though the inference was that it must be close
on sunset, there was consolation in the fact that they were there and
might lift at any moment and disclose to me my whereabouts. But the
fact that night would soon be on me made it needful to bar my mind
against that despair of loneliness which so eats out the heart of a man
who is lost in woods or on mountain-side, that, though still there is
plenty of vigour in his limbs, his nervous force is sapped, and he can
do no more than lie down and abandon himself to whatever fate may await
him.... And then I heard that which made the thought of loneliness seem
bliss indeed, for there was a worse fate than loneliness. What I heard
resembled the howl of a wolf, and it came from not far in front of me
where the ridge--was it a ridge?--still rose higher in vestment of
pines. From behind me came a sudden puff of wind, which shook the frozen snow
from the drooping pine-branches, and swept away the mists as a broom
sweeps the dust from the floor. Radiant above me were the unclouded
skies, already charged with the red of the sunset, and in front I
saw that I had come to the very edge of the wood through which I had
wandered so long. But it was no valley into which I had penetrated,
for there right ahead of me rose the steep slope of boulders and rocks
soaring upwards to the foot of the Ungeheuerhorn. What, then, was that
cry of a wolf which had made my heart stand still? I saw. Not twenty yards from me was a fallen tree, and leaning against the
trunk of it was one of the denizens of the Horror-Horn, and it was a
woman. She was enveloped in a thick growth of hair grey and tufted,
and from her head it streamed down over her shoulders and her bosom,
from which hung withered and pendulous breasts. And looking on her
face I comprehended not with my mind alone, but with a shudder of my
spirit, what Ingram had felt. Never had nightmare fashioned so terrible
a countenance; the beauty of sun and stars and of the beasts of the
field and the kindly race of men could not atone for so hellish an
incarnation of the spirit of life. A fathomless bestiality modelled the
slavering mouth and the narrow eyes; I looked into the abyss itself
and knew that out of that abyss on the edge of which I leaned the
generations of men had climbed. What if that ledge crumbled in front of
me and pitched me headlong into its nethermost depths?... In one hand she held by the horns a chamois that kicked and struggled. A blow from its hindleg caught her withered thigh, and with a grunt
of anger she seized the leg in her other hand, and, as a man may pull
from its sheath a stem of meadow-grass, she plucked it off the body,
leaving the torn skin hanging round the gaping wound. Then putting the
red, bleeding member to her mouth she sucked at it as a child sucks a
stick of sweetmeat. Through flesh and gristle her short, brown teeth
penetrated, and she licked her lips with a sound of purring. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Then
dropping the leg by her side, she looked again at the body of the prey
now quivering in its death-convulsion, and with finger and thumb gouged
out one of its eyes. She snapped her teeth on it, and it cracked like a
soft-shelled nut. It must have been but a few seconds that I stood watching her, in
some indescribable catalepsy of terror, while through my brain there
pealed the panic-command of my mind to my stricken limbs “Begone,
begone, while there is time.” Then, recovering the power of my joints
and muscles, I tried to slip behind a tree and hide myself from this
apparition. But the woman--shall I say?--must have caught my stir of
movement, for she raised her eyes from her living feast and saw me. She
craned forward her neck, she dropped her prey, and half rising began to
move towards me. As she did this, she opened her mouth, and gave forth
a howl such as I had heard a moment before. It was answered by another,
but faintly and distantly. Sliding and slipping, with the toes of my skis tripping in the
obstacles below the snow, I plunged forward down the hill between
the pine-trunks. The low sun already sinking behind some rampart of
mountain in the west reddened the snow and the pines with its ultimate
rays. My knapsack with the skates in it swung to and fro on my back,
one ski-stick had already been twitched out of my hand by a fallen
branch of pine, but not a second’s pause could I allow myself to
recover it. I gave no glance behind, and I knew not at what pace my
pursuer was on my track, or indeed whether any pursued at all, for my
whole mind and energy, now working at full power again under the stress
of my panic, was devoted to getting away down the hill and out of the
wood as swiftly as my limbs could bear me. For a little while I heard
nothing but the hissing snow of my headlong passage, and the rustle of
the covered undergrowth beneath my feet, and then, from close at hand
behind me, once more the wolf-howl sounded and I heard the plunging of
footsteps other than my own. The strap of my knapsack had shifted, and as my skates swung to and fro
on my back it chafed and pressed on my throat, hindering free passage
of air, of which, God knew, my labouring lungs were in dire need, and
without pausing I slipped it free from my neck, and held it in the hand
from which my ski-stick had been jerked. I seemed to go a little more
easily for this adjustment, and now, not so far distant, I could see
below me the path from which I had strayed. If only I could reach that,
the smoother going would surely enable me to out-distance my pursuer,
who even on the rougher ground was but slowly overhauling me, and at
the sight of that riband stretching unimpeded downhill, a ray of hope
pierced the black panic of my soul. With that came the desire, keen
and insistent, to see who or what it was that was on my tracks, and
I spared a backward glance. It was she, the hag whom I had seen at
her gruesome meal; her long grey hair flew out behind her, her mouth
chattered and gibbered, her fingers made grabbing movements, as if
already they closed on me. But the path was now at hand, and the nearness of it I suppose made me
incautious. A hump of snow-covered bush lay in my path, and, thinking
I could jump over it, I tripped and fell, smothering myself in snow. I
heard a maniac noise, half scream, half laugh, from close behind, and
before I could recover myself the grabbing fingers were at my neck, as
if a steel vice had closed there. But my right hand in which I held my
knapsack of skates was free, and with a blind back-handed movement I
whirled it behind me at the full length of its strap, and knew that my
desperate blow had found its billet somewhere. Even before I could look
round I felt the grip on my neck relax, and something subsided into the
very bush which had entangled me. I recovered my feet and turned. There she lay, twitching and quivering. The heel of one of my skates
piercing the thin alpaca of the knapsack had hit her full on the
temple, from which the blood was pouring, but a hundred yards away I
could see another such figure coming downwards on my tracks, leaping
and bounding. At that panic rose again within me, and I sped off down
the white smooth path that led to the lights of the village already
beckoning. Never once did I pause in my headlong going: there was no
safety until I was back among the haunts of men. I flung myself against
the door of the hotel, and screamed for admittance, though I had but to
turn the handle and enter; and once more as when Ingram had told his
tale, there was the sound of the band, and the chatter of voices, and
there, too, was he himself, who looked up and then rose swiftly to his
feet as I made my clattering entrance. “I have seen them too,” I cried. “Look at my knapsack. Is there not
blood on it? It is the blood of one of them, a woman, a hag, who tore
off the leg of a chamois as I looked, and pursued me through the
accursed wood. I----”
Whether it was I who spun round, or the room which seemed to spin
round me, I knew not, but I heard myself falling, collapsed on the
floor, and the next time that I was conscious at all I was in bed. There was Ingram there, who told me that I was quite safe, and another
man, a stranger, who pricked my arm with the nozzle of a syringe, and
reassured me....
A day or two later I gave a coherent account of my adventure, and three
or four men, armed with guns, went over my traces. They found the bush
in which I had stumbled, with a pool of blood which had soaked into
the snow, and, still following my ski-tracks, they came on the body
of a chamois, from which had been torn one of its hindlegs and one
eye-socket was empty. That is all the corroboration of my story that I
can give the reader, and for myself I imagine that the creature which
pursued me was either not killed by my blow or that her fellows removed
her body.... Anyhow, it is open to the incredulous to prowl about
the caves of the Ungeheuerhorn, and see if anything occurs that may
convince them. Machaon
Machaon
I was returning at the close of the short winter day from my visit to
St. James’s Hospital, where my old servant Parkes, who had been in my
service for twenty years, was lying. I had sent him there three days
before, not for treatment, but for observation, and this afternoon I
had gone up to London, to hear the doctor’s report on the case. He told
me that Parkes was suffering from an internal tumour, the nature of
which could not be diagnosed for certain, but all the symptoms pointed
directly to its being cancerous. That, however, must not be regarded
as proved; it could only be proved by an exploratory operation to
reveal the nature and the extent of the growth, which must then, if
possible, be excised. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
It might involve, so my old friend Godfrey Symes
told me, certain tissues and would be found to be inoperable, but he
hoped this would not be the case, and that it would be possible to
remove it: removal gave the only chance of recovery. It was fortunate
that the patient had been sent for examination in an early stage, for
thus the chances of success were much greater than if the growth had
been one of long standing. Parkes was not, however, in a fit state to
stand the operation at once; a recuperative week or ten days in bed was
advisable. In these circumstances Symes recommended that he should not
be told at once what lay in front of him. “I can see that he is a nervous fellow,” he said, “and to lie in bed
thinking of what he has got to face will probably undo all the good
that lying in bed will bring to him. You don’t get used to the idea of
being cut open; the more you think about it, the more intolerable it
becomes. If that sort of adventure faced me, I should infinitely prefer
not to be told about it until they came to give me the anæsthetic. Naturally, he will have to consent to the operation, but I shouldn’t
tell him anything about it till the day before. He’s not married, I
think, is he?”
“No: he’s alone in the world,” said I. “He’s been with me twenty years.”
“Yes, I remember Parkes almost as long as I remember you. But that’s
all I can recommend. Of course, if the pain became severe, it might be
better to operate sooner, but at present he suffers hardly at all, and
he sleeps well, so the nurse tells me.”
“And there’s nothing else that you can try for it?” I asked. “I’ll try anything you like, but it will be perfectly useless. I’ll
let him have any quack nostrum you and he wish, as long as it doesn’t
injure his health, or make you put off the operation. There are X-rays
and ultra-violet rays, and violet leaves and radium; there are fresh
cures for cancer discovered every day, and what’s the result? They
only make people put off the operation till it’s no longer possible to
operate. Naturally, I will welcome any further opinion you want.”
Now Godfrey Symes is easily the first authority on this subject, and
has a far higher percentage of cures to his credit than anyone else. “No, I don’t want any fresh opinion,” said I. “Very well, I’ll have him carefully watched. By the way, can’t you stop
in town and dine with me? There are one or two people coming, and among
them a perfectly mad spiritualist who has more messages from the other
world than I ever get on my telephone. Trunk-calls, eh? I wonder where
the exchange is. Do come! You like cranks, I know!”
“I can’t, I’m afraid,” said I. “I’ve a couple of guests coming to stay
with me to-day down in the country. They are both cranks: one’s a
medium.”
He laughed. “Well, I can only offer you one crank, and you’ve got two,” he said. “I
must get back to the wards. I’ll write to you in about a week’s time
or so, unless there’s any urgency which I don’t foresee, and I should
suggest your coming up to tell Parkes. Good-bye.”
I caught my train at Charing Cross with about three seconds to spare,
and we slid clanking out over the bridge through the cold, dense air. Snow had been falling intermittently since morning, and when we got
out of the grime and fog of London, it was lying thickly on field
and hedgerow, retarding by its reflection of such light as lingered
the oncoming of darkness, and giving to the landscape an aloof and
lonely austerity. All day I had felt that drowsiness which accompanies
snowfall, and sometimes, half losing myself in a doze, my mind crept,
like a thing crawling about in the dark, over what Godfrey Symes had
told me. For all these years Parkes, as much friend as servant, had
given me his faithfulness and devotion, and now, in return for that,
all that apparently I could do was to tell him of his plight. It was
clear, from what the surgeon had said, that he expected a serious
disclosure, and I knew from the experience of two friends of mine who
had been in his condition what might be expected of this “exploratory
operation.” Exactly similar had been these cases; there was clear
evidence of an internal growth possibly not malignant, and in each case
the same dismal sequence had followed. The growth had been removed, and
within a couple of months there had been a recrudescence of it. Indeed,
surgery had proved no more than a pruning-knife, which had stimulated
that which the surgeon had hoped to extirpate into swifter activity. And that apparently was the best chance that Symes held out: the rest
of the treatments were but rubbish or quackery....
My mind crawled away towards another subject: probably the two visitors
whom I expected, Charles Hope and the medium whom he was bringing with
him, were in the same train as I, and I ran over in my mind all that
he had told me of Mrs. Forrest. It was certainly an odd story he had
brought me two days before. Mrs. Forrest was a medium of considerable
reputation in psychical circles, and had produced some very
extraordinary book-tests which, by all accounts, seemed inexplicable,
except on a spiritualistic hypothesis, and no imputation of trickery
had, at any rate as yet, come near her. When in trance, she spoke and
wrote, as is invariably the case with mediums, under the direction
of a certain “control”--that is to say, a spiritual and discarnate
intelligence which for the time was in possession of her. But lately
there had been signs that a fresh control had inspired her, the nature
of whom, his name, and his identity was at present unknown. And then
came the following queer incident. Last week only when in trance, and apparently under the direction
of this new control, she began describing in considerable detail a
certain house where the control said that he had work to do. At first
the description aroused no association in Charles Hope’s mind, but as
it went on, it suddenly struck him that Mrs. Forrest was speaking of
my house in Tilling. She gave its general features, its position in a
small town on a hill, its walled-in garden, and then went on to speak
with great minuteness of a rather peculiar feature in the house. She
described a big room built out in the garden a few yards away from
the house itself at right-angles to its front, and approached by half
a dozen stone steps. There was a railing, so she said, on each side
of them, and into the railing were twisted, like snake coils, the
stems of a tree which bore pale mauve flowers. This was all a correct
description of my garden room and the wistaria which writhes in and out
of the railings which line the steps. She then went on to speak of the
interior of the room. At one end was a fireplace, at the other a big
bow-window looking out on to the street and the front of the house, and
there were two other windows opposite each other, in one of which was a
table, while the other, looking out on to the garden, was shadowed by
the tree that twisted itself about the railings. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Book-cases lined the
walls, and there was a big sofa at right-angles to the fire....
Now all this, though it was a perfectly accurate description of a place
that, as far as could be ascertained, Mrs. Forrest had never seen,
might conceivably have been derived from Charles Hope’s mind, since he
knew the room well, having often stayed with me. But the medium added a
detail which could not conceivably have been thus derived, for Charles
believed it to be incorrect. She said that there was a big piano near
the bow-window, while he was sure that there was not. But oddly enough
I had hired a piano only a week or so ago, and it stood in the place
that she mentioned. The “control” then repeated that there was work
for him to do in that house. There was some situation or complication
there in which he could help, and he could “get through” better (that
is, make a clearer communication) if the medium could hold a séance
there. Charles Hope then told the control that he believed he knew
the house that he had been speaking of, and promised to do his best. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Forrest came out of trance, and, as usual, had
no recollection of what had passed. So Charles came to me with the story exactly as I have given it here,
and though I could not think of any situation or complication in which
an unknown control of a medium I had never seen could be of assistance,
the whole thing (and in especial that detail about the piano) was so
odd that I asked him to bring the medium down for a sitting or a series
of sittings. The day of their arrival was arranged, but when three days
ago Parkes had to go into hospital, I was inclined to put them off. But
a neighbour away for a week obligingly lent me a parlour-maid, and I
let the engagement stand. With regard to the situation in which the
control would be of assistance, I can but assure the reader that as far
as I thought about it at all, I only wondered whether it was concerned
with a book on which I was engaged, which dealt (if I could ever
succeed in writing it) with psychical affairs. But at present I could
not get on with it at all. I had made half a dozen beginnings which had
all gone into the waste-paper basket. My guests proved not to have come by the same train as I, but arrived
shortly before dinner-time, and after Mrs. Forrest had gone to her
room, I had a few words with Charles, who told me exactly how the
situation now stood. “I know your caution and your captiousness in these affairs,” he said,
“so I have told Mrs. Forrest nothing about the description she gave
of this house, or of the reason why I asked her to come here. I said
only, as we settled, that you were a great friend of mine and immensely
interested in psychical affairs, but a country-mouse whom it was
difficult to get up to town. But you would be delighted if she would
come down for a few days and give some sittings here.”
“And does she recognise the house, do you think?” I asked. “No sign of it. As I told you, when she comes out of trance she never
seems to have the faintest recollection of what she has said or
written. We shall have a séance, I hope, to-night after dinner.”
“Certainly, if she will,” said I. “I thought we had better hold it in
the garden-room, for that was the place that was so minutely described. It’s quite warm there, central-heating and a fire, and it’s only half a
dozen yards from the house. I’ve had the snow swept from the steps.”
Mrs. Forrest turned out to be a very intelligent woman, well spiced
with humour, gifted with a sane appreciation of the comforts of life,
and most agreeably furnished with the small change of talk. She
was inclined to be stout, but carried herself with briskness, and
neither in body nor mind did she suggest that she was one who held
communication with the unseen: there was nothing wan or occult about
her. Her general outlook on life appeared to be rather materialistic
than otherwise, and she was very interesting on the topic when, about
half-way through dinner, the subject of her mediumship came on the
conversational board. “My gifts, such as they are,” she said, “have nothing to do with this
person who sits eating and drinking and talking to you. She, as Mr.
Hope may have told you, is quite expunged before the subconscious part
of me--that is the latest notion, is it not?--gets into touch with
discarnate intelligences. Until that happens, the door is shut, and
when it is over, the door is shut again, and I have no recollection of
what I have said or written. The control uses my hand and my voice, but
that is all. I know no more about it than a piano on which a tune has
been played.”
“And there is a new control who has lately been using you?” I asked. She laughed. “You must ask Mr. Hope about that,” she said. “I know nothing
whatever of it. He tells me it is so, and he tells me--don’t you, Mr. Hope?--that he hasn’t any idea who or what the new control is. I look
forward to its development; my idea is that the control has to get used
to me, as in learning a new instrument. I assure you I am as eager as
anyone that he should gain facility in communication through me. I
hope, indeed, that we are to have a séance to-night.”
The talk veered again, and I learned that Mrs. Forrest had never been
in Tilling before, and was enchanted with the snowy moonlit glance she
had had of its narrow streets and ancient residences. She liked, too,
the atmosphere of the house: it seemed tranquil and kindly; especially
so was the little drawing-room where we had assembled before dinner. I glanced at Charles. “I had thought of proposing that we should sit in the garden-room,” I
said, “if you don’t mind half a dozen steps in the open. It adjoins the
house.”
“Just as you wish,” she said, “though I think we have excellent
conditions in here without going there.”
This confirmed her statement that she had no idea after she had come
out of trance what she had said, for otherwise she must have recognised
at the mention of the garden-room her own description of it, and when
soon after dinner we adjourned there, it was clear that, unless she
was acting an inexplicable part, the sight of it twanged no chord of
memory. There we made the very simple arrangements to which she was
accustomed. As the procedure in such sittings is possibly unfamiliar to the reader,
I will describe quite shortly what our arrangements were. We had no
idea what form these manifestations--if there were any--might take,
and therefore we, Charles and I, were prepared to record them on the
spot. We three sat round a small table about a couple of yards from
the fire, which was burning brightly; Mrs. Forrest seated herself in
a big armchair. Exactly in front of her on the table were a pencil
and a block of paper in case, as often happened, the manifestation
took the form of automatic script--writing, that is, while in a state
of trance. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Charles and I sat on each side of her, also provided with
pencil and paper in order to take down what she said if and when (as
lawyers say) the control took possession of her. In case materialised
spirits appeared, a phenomenon not as yet seen at her séances, our idea
was to jot down as quickly as possible whatever we saw or thought we
saw. Should there be rappings or movements of furniture, we were to
make similar notes of our impressions. The lamp was then turned down,
so that just a ring of flame encircled the wick, but the firelight was
of sufficient brightness, as we tested before the séance began, to
enable us to write and to see what we had written. The red glow of it
illuminated the room, and it was settled that Charles should note by
his watch the time at which anything occurred. Occasionally, throughout
the séance a bubble of coal-gas caught fire, and then the whole room
started into strong light. I had given orders that my servants should
not interrupt the sitting at all, unless somebody rang the bell from
the garden-room. In that case it was to be answered. Finally, before
the séance began, we bolted all the windows on the inside and locked
the door. We took no other precautions against trickery, though, as a
matter of fact, Mrs. Forrest suggested that she should be tied into her
chair. But in the firelight any movement of hers would be so visible
that we did not adopt this precaution. Charles and I had settled to
read to each other the notes we made during the sitting, and cut out
anything that both of us had not recorded. The accounts, therefore, of
this sitting and of that which followed next day are founded on our
joint evidence. The sitting began. Mrs. Forrest was leaning back at ease with her eyes open and her hands
on the arms of her chair. Then her eyes closed and a violent trembling
seized her. That passed, and shortly afterwards her head fell forward
and her breathing became very rapid. Presently that quieted to normal
pace again, and she began to speak at first in a scarcely audible
whisper and then in a high shrill voice, quite unlike her usual tones. I do not think that in all England there was a more disappointed man
than I during the next half-hour. “Starlight,” it appeared, was in
control, and Starlight was a personage of platitudes. She had been a
nun in the time of Henry VII, and her work was to help those who had
lately passed over. She was very busy and very happy, and was in the
third sphere where they had a great deal of beautiful music. We must
all be good, said Starlight, and it didn’t matter much whether we were
clever or not. Love was the great thing; we had to love each other
and help each other, and death was no more than the gate of life, and
everything would be tremendously jolly.... Starlight, in fact, might be
better described as clap-trap, and I began thinking about Parkes....
And then I ceased to think about Parkes, for the shrill moralities
of Starlight ceased, and Mrs. Forrest’s voice changed again. The
stale facility of her utterance stopped and she began to speak, quite
unintelligibly, in a voice of low baritone range. Charles leaned across
the table and whispered to me. “That’s the new control,” he said. The voice that was speaking stumbled and hesitated: it was like that
of a man trying to express himself in some language which he knew very
imperfectly. Sometimes it stopped altogether, and in one of these
pauses I asked:
“Can you tell us your name?”
There was no reply, but presently I saw Mrs. Forrest’s hand reach
out for the pencil. Charles put it into her fingers and placed the
writing-pad more handily for her. I watched the letters, in capitals,
being traced. They were made hesitatingly, but were perfectly legible. “Swallow,” she wrote, and again “Swallow,” and stopped. “The bird?” I asked. The voice spoke in answer; now I could hear the words, uttered in that
low baritone voice. “No, not a bird,” it said. “Not a bird, but it flies.”
I was utterly at sea; my mind could form no conjecture whatever
as to what was meant. And then the pencil began writing again. “Swallow, swallow,” and then with a sudden briskness of movement, as
if the guiding intelligence had got over some difficulty, it wrote
“Swallow-tail.”
This seemed more abstrusely senseless than ever. The only connection
with swallow-tail in my mind was a swallow-tailed coat, but whoever
heard of a swallow-tailed coat flying? “I’ve got it,” said Charles. “Swallow-tail butterfly. Is it that?”
There came three sudden raps on the table, loud and startling. These
raps, I may explain, in the usual code mean “Yes.” As if to confirm
it the pencil began to write again, and spelled out “Swallow-tail
butterfly.”
“Is that your name?” I asked. There was one rap, which signifies “No,” followed by three, which
means “Yes.” I had not the slightest idea of what it all signified
(indeed it seemed to signify nothing at all), but the sitting had
become extraordinarily interesting if only for its very unexpectedness. The control was trying to establish himself by three methods
simultaneously--by the voice, by the automatic writing, and by rapping. But how a swallow-tail butterfly could assist in some situation which
was now existing in my house was utterly beyond me.... Then an idea
struck me: the swallow-tail butterfly no doubt had a scientific name,
and that we could easily ascertain, for I knew that there was on my
shelves a copy of Newman’s _Butterflies and Moths of Great Britain_, a
sumptuous volume bound in morocco, which I had won as an entomological
prize at school. A moment’s search gave me the book, and by the
firelight I turned up the description of this butterfly in the index. Its scientific name was _Papilio Machaon_. “Is Machaon your name?” I asked. The voice came clear now. “Yes, I am Machaon,” it said. With that came the end of the séance, which had lasted not more than
an hour. Whatever the power was that had made Mrs. Forrest speak
in that male voice and struggle, through that roundabout method of
“swallow, swallow-tail, Machaon,” to establish its identity, it now
began to fail. Mrs. Forrest’s pencil made a few illegible scribbles,
she whispered a few inaudible words, and presently with a stretch and a
sigh she came out of trance. We told her that the name of the control
was established, but apparently Machaon meant nothing to her. She was
much exhausted, and very soon I took her across to the house to go to
bed, and presently rejoined Charles. “Who was Machaon, anyhow?” he asked. “He sounds classical: more in your
line than mine.”
I remembered enough Greek mythology to supply elementary facts, while I
hunted for a particular book about Athens. “Machaon was the son of Asclepios,” I said, “and Asclepios was the
Greek god of healing. He had precincts, hydropathic establishments,
where people went to be cured. The Romans called him Aesculapius.”
“What can he do for you then?” asked Charles. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
“You’re fairly fit,
aren’t you?”
Not till he spoke did a light dawn on me. Though I had been thinking so
much of Parkes that day, I had not consciously made the connection. “But Parkes isn’t,” said I. “Is that possible?”
“By Jove!” said he. I found my book, and turned to the accounts of the precinct of
Asclepios in Athens. “Yes, Asclepios had two sons,” I said--“Machaon and Podaleirios. In
Homeric times he wasn’t a god, but only a physician, and his sons were
physicians too. The myth of his godhead is rather a late one----”
I shut the book. “Best not to read any more,” I said. “If we know all about Asclepios,
we shall possibly be suggesting things to the medium’s mind. Let’s
see what Machaon can tell us about himself, and we can verify it
afterwards.”
It was therefore with no further knowledge than this on the subject
of Machaon that we proposed to hold another séance the next day. All
morning the bitter air had been laden with snow, and now the street
in front of my house, a by-way at the best in the slender traffic of
the town, lay white and untrodden, save on the pavement where a few
passengers had gone by. Mrs. Forrest had not appeared at breakfast, and
from then till lunch-time I sat in the bow-window of the garden-room,
for the warmth of the central heating, of which a stack of pipes was
there installed, and for securing the utmost benefit of light that
penetrated this cowl of snow-laden sky, busy with belated letters. The
drowsiness that accompanies snowfall weighed heavily on my faculties,
but as far as I can assert anything, I can assert that I did not
sleep. From one letter I went on to another, and then for the sixth
or seventh time I tried to open my story. It promised better now
than before, and searching for a word that would not come to my pen,
I happened to look up along the street which lay in front of me. I
expected nothing: I was thinking of nothing but my work; probably I
had looked up like that a dozen times before, and had seen the empty
street, with snow lying thickly on the roadway. But now the roadway was not untenanted. Someone was walking down the
middle of it, and his aspect, incredible though it seemed, was not
startling. Why I was not startled I have no idea: I can only say that
the vision appeared perfectly natural. The figure was that of a young
man, whose hair, black and curly, lay crisply over his forehead. A
large white cloak reaching down to his knees enveloped him, and he
had thrown the end of it over his shoulder. Below his knees his legs
and feet were bare, so too was the arm up to the elbow, with which he
pressed his cloak to him, and there he was walking briskly down the
snowy street. As he came directly below the window where I sat, he
raised his head and looked at me directly, and smiled. And now I saw
his face: there was the low brow, the straight nose, the curved and
sunny mouth, the short chin, and I thought to myself that this was none
other than the Hermes of Praxiteles, he whose statue at Olympia makes
all those who look on it grow young again. There, anyhow, was a boyish
Greek god, stepping blithely and with gay, incomparable grace along
the street, and raising his face to smile at this stolid, middle-aged
man who blankly regarded him. Then with the certainty of one returning
home, he mounted the steps outside the front door, and seemed to pass
into and through it. Certainly he was no longer in the street, and, so
real and solid-seeming had he been to my vision, that I jumped up, ran
across the few steps of garden, and went into the house, and I should
not have been amazed if I had found him standing in the hall. But there
was no one there, and I opened the front door: the snow lay smooth
and untrodden down the centre of the road where he had walked and on
my doorstep. And at that moment the memory of the séance the evening
before, about which up till now I had somehow felt distrustful and
suspicious, passed into the realm of sober fact, for had not Machaon
just now entered my house, with a smile as of recognition on some
friendly mission? We sat again that afternoon by daylight, and now, I must suppose, the
control was more actively and powerfully present, for hardly had Mrs.
Forrest passed into trance than the voice began, louder than it had
been the night before, and far more distinct. He--Machaon I must call
him--seemed to be anxious to establish his identity beyond all doubt,
like some newcomer presenting his credentials, and he began to speak of
the precinct of Asclepios in Athens. Often he hesitated for a word in
English, often he put in a word in Greek, and as he spoke, fragments of
things I had learned when an archæological student in Athens came back
into my mind, and I knew that he was accurately describing the portico
and the temple and the well. All this I toss to the sceptic to growl
and worry over and tear to bits; for certainly it seems possible that
my mind, holding these facts in its subconsciousness, was suggesting
them to the medium’s mind, who thereupon spoke of them and, conveying
them back to me, made me aware that I had known them.... My forgotten
knowledge of these things and of the Greek language came flooding back
on me, as he told us, now half in Greek, and half in English, of the
patients who came to consult the god, how they washed in the sacred
well for purification, and lay down to sleep in the portico. They often
dreamed, and in the interpretation of their dreams, which they told to
the priest next day, lay the indication of the cure. Or sometimes the
god healed more directly, and accompanied by the sacred snake walked
among the sleepers and by his touch made them whole. His temple was
hung with _ex-votos_, the gifts of those whom he had cured. And at
Epidaurus, where was another shrine of his, there were great mural
tablets recording the same....
Then the voice stopped, and as if to prove identity by another means,
the medium drew the pencil and paper to her, and in Greek characters,
unknown apparently to her, she traced the words “Machaon, son of
Asclepios....”
There was a pause, and I asked a direct question, which now had been
long simmering in my mind. “Have you come to help me about Parkes?” I asked. “Can you tell me what
will cure him?”
The pencil began to move again, tracing out characters in Greek. It
wrote [Greek: phengos x], and repeated it. I did not at once guess
what it meant, and asked for an explanation. There was no answer, and
presently the medium stirred, stretched herself and sighed, and came
out of trance. She took up the paper on which she had written. “Did that come through?” she asked. “And what does it mean? I don’t
even know the characters....”
Then suddenly the possible significance of [Greek: phengos x] flashed
on me, and I marvelled at my slowness. [Greek: phengos], a beam of
light, a ray, and the letter [Greek: x], the equivalent of the English
_x_. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
That had come in direct answer to my question as to what would
cure Parkes, and it was without hesitation or delay that I wrote to
Symes. I reminded him that he had said that he had no objection to
any possible remedy, provided it was not harmful, being tried on his
patient, and I asked him to treat him with X-rays. The whole sequence
of events had been so frankly amazing, that I believe the veriest
sceptic would not have done otherwise than I did. Our sittings continued, but after this day we had no further evidence
of this second control. It looked as if the intelligence (even the
most incredulous will allow me, for the sake of convenience, to call
that intelligence Machaon) that had described this room, and told Mrs.
Forrest that he had work to do here, had finished his task. Machaon had
said, or so my interpretation was, that X-rays would cure Parkes. In
justification of this view it is proper to quote from a letter which I
got from Symes a week later. “There is no need for you to come up to break to Parkes that an
operation lies in front of him. In answer to your request, and
without a grain of faith in its success, I treated him with X-rays,
which I assured you were useless. To-day, to speak quite frankly,
I don’t know what to think, for the growth has been steadily
diminishing in size and hardness, and it is perfectly evident that it
is being absorbed and is disappearing. “The treatment through which I put Parkes is that of ----. Here in
this hospital we have had patients to whom it brought no shadow of
benefit. Often it had been continued on these deluded wretches till
any operation which might possibly have been successful was out of
the question owing to the encroachment of the growth. But from the
first dose of the X-rays, Parkes began to get better, the growth was
first arrested, and then diminished. “I am trying to put the whole thing before you with as much
impartiality as I can command. So, on the other side, you must
remember that Parkes’s was never a proved case of cancer. I told
you that it could not be proved till the exploratory operation took
place. All the symptoms pointed to cancer--you see, I am trying to
save my own face--but my diagnosis, though confirmed by ----, may
have been wrong. If he only had what we call a benign tumour, the
case is not so extraordinary; there have been plenty of cases when
a benign tumour has disappeared by absorption or what not. It is
unusual, but by no means unknown. For instance....
“But Parkes’s case was quite different. I certainly believe he had
a cancerous growth, and thought that an operation was inevitable if
his life was to be saved. Even then, the most I hoped for was an
alleviation of pain, as the disease progressed, and a year or two
more, at the most, of life. Instead, I apply another remedy, at
your suggestion, and if he goes on as he has been doing, the growth
will be a nodule in another week or two, and I should expect it to
disappear altogether. Taking everything into consideration, if you
asked me the question whether this X-ray treatment was the cause of
the cure, I should be obliged to say ‘Yes.’ I don’t believe in such
a treatment, but I believe it is curing him. I suppose that it was
suggested to you by a fraudulent, spiritualistic medium in a feigned
trance, who was inspired by Aesculapius or some exploded heathen
deity, for I remember you said you were going down into the country
for some spiritual business....
“Well, Parkes is getting better, and I am so old-fashioned a fellow
that I would sooner a patient of mine got better by incredible
methods, than died under my skilful knife.... Of course, we trained
people know nothing, but we have to act according to the best chances
of our ignorance. I entirely believed that the knife was the only
means of saving the man, and now, when I stand confuted, the only
thing that I can save is my honesty, which I hereby have done. Let me
know, at your leisure, whether you just thought you would, on your
own idea, like me to try X-rays, or whether some faked voice from the
grave suggested it. “Ever yours,
“Godfrey Symes. “P.S.--If it was some beastly voice from the grave, you might tell me
in confidence who the medium was. I want to be fair....”
That is the story; the reader will explain it according to his
temperament. And as I have told Parkes, who is now back with me again,
to look into the garden-room before post-time and take a registered
packet to the office, it is time that I got it ready for him. So here
is the completed packet in manuscript, to be sent to the printer’s. From my window I shall see him go briskly along the street down which
Machaon walked on a snowy morning. Negotium Perambulans....
Negotium Perambulans.... The casual tourist in West Cornwall may just possibly have noticed,
as he bowled along over the bare high plateau between Penzance and
the Land’s End, a dilapidated signpost pointing down a steep lane
and bearing on its battered finger the faded inscription “Polearn
2 miles,” but probably very few have had the curiosity to traverse
those two miles in order to see a place to which their guide-books
award so cursory a notice. It is described there, in a couple of
unattractive lines, as a small fishing village with a church of no
particular interest except for certain carved and painted wooden panels
(originally belonging to an earlier edifice) which form an altar-rail. But the church at St. Creed (the tourist is reminded) has a similar
decoration far superior in point of preservation and interest, and thus
even the ecclesiastically disposed are not lured to Polearn. So meagre
a bait is scarce worth swallowing, and a glance at the very steep lane
which in dry weather presents a carpet of sharp-pointed stones, and
after rain a muddy watercourse, will almost certainly decide him not
to expose his motor or his bicycle to risks like these in so sparsely
populated a district. Hardly a house has met his eye since he left
Penzance, and the possible trundling of a punctured bicycle for half
a dozen weary miles seems a high price to pay for the sight of a few
painted panels. Polearn, therefore, even in the high noon of the tourist season, is
little liable to invasion, and for the rest of the year I do not
suppose that a couple of folk a day traverse those two miles (long ones
at that) of steep and stony gradient. I am not forgetting the postman
in this exiguous estimate, for the days are few when, leaving his
pony and cart at the top of the hill, he goes as far as the village,
since but a few hundred yards down the lane there stands a large
white box, like a sea-trunk, by the side of the road, with a slit for
letters and a locked door. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Should he have in his wallet a registered
letter or be the bearer of a parcel too large for insertion in the
square lips of the sea-trunk, he must needs trudge down the hill and
deliver the troublesome missive, leaving it in person on the owner, and
receiving some small reward of coin or refreshment for his kindness. But such occasions are rare, and his general routine is to take out
of the box such letters as may have been deposited there, and insert
in their place such letters as he has brought. These will be called
for, perhaps that day or perhaps the next, by an emissary from the
Polearn post-office. As for the fishermen of the place, who, in their
export trade, constitute the chief link of movement between Polearn and
the outside world, they would not dream of taking their catch up the
steep lane and so, with six miles farther of travel, to the market at
Penzance. The sea route is shorter and easier, and they deliver their
wares to the pier-head. Thus, though the sole industry of Polearn is
sea-fishing, you will get no fish there unless you have bespoken your
requirements to one of the fishermen. Back come the trawlers as empty
as a haunted house, while their spoils are in the fish-train that is
speeding to London. Such isolation of a little community, continued, as it has been, for
centuries, produces isolation in the individual as well, and nowhere
will you find greater independence of character than among the people
of Polearn. But they are linked together, so it has always seemed
to me, by some mysterious comprehension: it is as if they had all
been initiated into some ancient rite, inspired and framed by forces
visible and invisible. The winter storms that batter the coast, the
vernal spell of the spring, the hot, still summers, the season of rains
and autumnal decay, have made a spell which, line by line, has been
communicated to them, concerning the powers, evil and good, that rule
the world, and manifest themselves in ways benignant or terrible.... I came to Polearn first at the age of ten, a small boy, weak and
sickly, and threatened with pulmonary trouble. My father’s business
kept him in London, while for me abundance of fresh air and a mild
climate were considered essential conditions if I was to grow to
manhood. His sister had married the vicar of Polearn, Richard Bolitho,
himself native to the place, and so it came about that I spent three
years, as a paying guest, with my relations. Richard Bolitho owned
a fine house in the place, which he inhabited in preference to the
vicarage, which he let to a young artist, John Evans, on whom the spell
of Polearn had fallen, for from year’s beginning to year’s end he never
left it. There was a solid roofed shelter, open on one side to the
air, built for me in the garden, and here I lived and slept, passing
scarcely one hour out of the twenty-four behind walls and windows. I was out on the bay with the fisher-folk, or wandering along the
gorse-clad cliffs that climbed steeply to right and left of the deep
combe where the village lay, or pottering about on the pier-head, or
bird’s-nesting in the bushes with the boys of the village. Except on
Sunday and for the few daily hours of my lessons, I might do what I
pleased so long as I remained in the open air. About the lessons there
was nothing formidable; my uncle conducted me through flowering bypaths
among the thickets of arithmetic, and made pleasant excursions into the
elements of Latin grammar, and above all, he made me daily give him an
account, in clear and grammatical sentences, of what had been occupying
my mind or my movements. Should I select to tell him about a walk along
the cliffs, my speech must be orderly, not vague, slip-shod notes of
what I had observed. In this way, too, he trained my observation, for
he would bid me tell him what flowers were in bloom, and what birds
hovered fishing over the sea or were building in the bushes. For that
I owe him a perennial gratitude, for to observe and to express my
thoughts in the clear spoken word became my life’s profession. But far more formidable than my weekday tasks was the prescribed
routine for Sunday. Some dark embers compounded of Calvinism and
mysticism smouldered in my uncle’s soul, and made it a day of terror. His sermon in the morning scorched us with a foretaste of the eternal
fires reserved for unrepentant sinners, and he was hardly less
terrifying at the children’s service in the afternoon. Well do I
remember his exposition of the doctrine of guardian angels. A child,
he said, might think himself secure in such angelic care, but let him
beware of committing any of those numerous offences which would cause
his guardian to turn his face from him, for as sure as there were
angels to protect us, there were also evil and awful presences which
were ready to pounce; and on them he dwelt with peculiar gusto. Well,
too, do I remember in the morning sermon his commentary on the carved
panels of the altar-rails to which I have already alluded. There was
the angel of the Annunciation there, and the angel of the Resurrection,
but not less was there the witch of Endor, and, on the fourth panel,
a scene that concerned me most of all. This fourth panel (he came
down from his pulpit to trace its time-worn features) represented
the lych-gate of the church-yard at Polearn itself, and indeed the
resemblance when thus pointed out was remarkable. In the entry stood
the figure of a robed priest holding up a Cross, with which he faced
a terrible creature like a gigantic slug, that reared itself up in
front of him. That, so ran my uncle’s interpretation, was some evil
agency, such as he had spoken about to us children, of almost infinite
malignity and power, which could alone be combated by firm faith and a
pure heart. Below ran the legend “_Negotium perambulans in tenebris_”
from the ninety-first Psalm. We should find it translated there, “the
pestilence that walketh in darkness,” which but feebly rendered the
Latin. It was more deadly to the soul than any pestilence that can
only kill the body: it was the Thing, the Creature, the Business that
trafficked in the outer Darkness, a minister of God’s wrath on the
unrighteous.... I could see, as he spoke, the looks which the congregation exchanged
with each other, and knew that his words were evoking a surmise, a
remembrance. Nods and whispers passed between them, they understood
to what he alluded, and with the inquisitiveness of boyhood I could
not rest till I had wormed the story out of my friends among the
fisher-boys, as, next morning, we sat basking and naked in the sun
after our bathe. One knew one bit of it, one another, but it pieced
together into a truly alarming legend. In bald outline it was as
follows:
A church far more ancient than that in which my uncle terrified us
every Sunday had once stood not three hundred yards away, on the shelf
of level ground below the quarry from which its stones were hewn. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
The
owner of the land had pulled this down, and erected for himself a house
on the same site out of these materials, keeping, in a very ecstasy of
wickedness, the altar, and on this he dined and played dice afterwards. But as he grew old some black melancholy seized him, and he would have
lights burning there all night, for he had deadly fear of the darkness. On one winter evening there sprang up such a gale as was never before
known, which broke in the windows of the room where he had supped, and
extinguished the lamps. Yells of terror brought in his servants, who
found him lying on the floor with the blood streaming from his throat. As they entered some huge black shadow seemed to move away from him,
crawled across the floor and up the wall and out of the broken window. “There he lay a-dying,” said the last of my informants, “and him
that had been a great burly man was withered to a bag o’ skin, for
the critter had drained all the blood from him. His last breath was
a scream, and he hollered out the same words as parson read off the
screen.”
“_Negotium perambulans in tenebris_,” I suggested eagerly. “Thereabouts. Latin anyhow.”
“And after that?” I asked. “Nobody would go near the place, and the old house rotted and fell in
ruins till three years ago, when along comes Mr. Dooliss from Penzance,
and built the half of it up again. But he don’t care much about such
critters, nor about Latin neither. He takes his bottle of whisky a
day and gets drunk’s a lord in the evening. Eh, I’m gwine home to my
dinner.”
Whatever the authenticity of the legend, I had certainly heard the
truth about Mr. Dooliss from Penzance, who from that day became
an object of keen curiosity on my part, the more so because the
quarry-house adjoined my uncle’s garden. The Thing that walked in
the dark failed to stir my imagination, and already I was so used to
sleeping alone in my shelter that the night had no terrors for me. But
it would be intensely exciting to wake at some timeless hour and hear
Mr. Dooliss yelling, and conjecture that the Thing had got him. But by degrees the whole story faded from my mind, overscored by
the more vivid interests of the day, and, for the last two years of
my out-door life in the vicarage garden, I seldom thought about Mr.
Dooliss and the possible fate that might await him for his temerity in
living in the place where that Thing of darkness had done business. Occasionally I saw him over the garden fence, a great yellow lump of
a man, with slow and staggering gait, but never did I set eyes on him
outside his gate, either in the village street or down on the beach. He interfered with none, and no one interfered with him. If he wanted
to run the risk of being the prey of the legendary nocturnal monster,
or quietly drink himself to death, it was his affair. My uncle, so I
gathered, had made several attempts to see him when first he came to
live at Polearn, but Mr. Dooliss appeared to have no use for parsons,
but said he was not at home and never returned the call. * * * * *
After three years of sun, wind, and rain, I had completely outgrown
my early symptoms and had become a tough, strapping youngster of
thirteen. I was sent to Eton and Cambridge, and in due course ate my
dinners and became a barrister. In twenty years from that time I was
earning a yearly income of five figures, and had already laid by in
sound securities a sum that brought me dividends which would, for
one of my simple tastes and frugal habits, supply me with all the
material comforts I needed on this side of the grave. The great prizes
of my profession were already within my reach, but I had no ambition
beckoning me on, nor did I want a wife and children, being, I must
suppose, a natural celibate. In fact there was only one ambition which
through these busy years had held the lure of blue and far-off hills to
me, and that was to get back to Polearn, and live once more isolated
from the world with the sea and the gorse-clad hills for play-fellows,
and the secrets that lurked there for exploration. The spell of it had
been woven about my heart, and I can truly say that there had hardly
passed a day in all those years in which the thought of it and the
desire for it had been wholly absent from my mind. Though I had been in
frequent communication with my uncle there during his lifetime, and,
after his death, with his widow who still lived there, I had never
been back to it since I embarked on my profession, for I knew that if
I went there, it would be a wrench beyond my power to tear myself away
again. But I had made up my mind that when once I had provided for my
own independence, I would go back there not to leave it again. And yet
I did leave it again, and now nothing in the world would induce me to
turn down the lane from the road that leads from Penzance to the Land’s
End, and see the sides of the combe rise steep above the roofs of the
village and hear the gulls chiding as they fish in the bay. One of the
things invisible, of the dark powers, leaped into light, and I saw it
with my eyes. The house where I had spent those three years of boyhood had been left
for life to my aunt, and when I made known to her my intention of
coming back to Polearn, she suggested that, till I found a suitable
house or found her proposal unsuitable, I should come to live with her. “The house is too big for a lone old woman,” she wrote, “and I have
often thought of quitting and taking a little cottage sufficient for me
and my requirements. But come and share it, my dear, and if you find
me troublesome, you or I can go. You may want solitude--most people in
Polearn do--and will leave me. Or else I will leave you: one of the
main reasons of my stopping here all these years was a feeling that I
must not let the old house starve. Houses starve, you know, if they
are not lived in. They die a lingering death; the spirit in them grows
weaker and weaker, and at last fades out of them. Isn’t this nonsense
to your London notions?...”
Naturally I accepted with warmth this tentative arrangement, and on an
evening in June found myself at the head of the lane leading down to
Polearn, and once more I descended into the steep valley between the
hills. Time had stood still apparently for the combe, the dilapidated
signpost (or its successor) pointed a rickety finger down the lane,
and a few hundred yards farther on was the white box for the exchange
of letters. Point after remembered point met my eye, and what I saw
was not shrunk, as is often the case with the revisited scenes of
childhood, into a smaller scale. There stood the post-office, and there
the church and close beside it the vicarage, and beyond, the tall
shrubberies which separated the house for which I was bound from the
road, and beyond that again the grey roofs of the quarry-house damp and
shining with the moist evening wind from the sea. All was exactly as I
remembered it, and, above all, that sense of seclusion and isolation. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Somewhere above the tree-tops climbed the lane which joined the main
road to Penzance, but all that had become immeasurably distant. The
years that had passed since last I turned in at the well-known gate
faded like a frosty breath, and vanished in this warm, soft air. There
were law-courts somewhere in memory’s dull book which, if I cared to
turn the pages, would tell me that I had made a name and a great income
there. But the dull book was closed now, for I was back in Polearn, and
the spell was woven around me again. And if Polearn was unchanged, so too was Aunt Hester, who met me at the
door. Dainty and china-white she had always been, and the years had
not aged but only refined her. As we sat and talked after dinner she
spoke of all that had happened in Polearn in that score of years, and
yet somehow the changes of which she spoke seemed but to confirm the
immutability of it all. As the recollection of names came back to me, I
asked her about the quarry-house and Mr. Dooliss, and her face gloomed
a little as with the shadow of a cloud on a spring day. “Yes, Mr. Dooliss,” she said, “poor Mr. Dooliss, how well I remember
him, though it must be ten years and more since he died. I never wrote
to you about it, for it was all very dreadful, my dear, and I did not
want to darken your memories of Polearn. Your uncle always thought that
something of the sort might happen if he went on in his wicked, drunken
ways, and worse than that, and though nobody knew exactly what took
place, it was the sort of thing that might have been anticipated.”
“But what more or less happened, Aunt Hester?” I asked. “Well, of course I can’t tell you everything, for no one knew it. But
he was a very sinful man, and the scandal about him at Newlyn was
shocking. And then he lived, too, in the quarry-house.... I wonder
if by any chance you remember a sermon of your uncle’s when he got
out of the pulpit and explained that panel in the altar-rails, the
one, I mean, with the horrible creature rearing itself up outside the
lych-gate?”
“Yes, I remember perfectly,” said I. “Ah. It made an impression on you, I suppose, and so it did on all who
heard him, and that impression got stamped and branded on us all when
the catastrophe occurred. Somehow Mr. Dooliss got to hear about your
uncle’s sermon, and in some drunken fit he broke into the church and
smashed the panel to atoms. He seems to have thought that there was
some magic in it, and that if he destroyed that he would get rid of
the terrible fate that was threatening him. For I must tell you that
before he committed that dreadful sacrilege he had been a haunted man:
he hated and feared darkness, for he thought that the creature on the
panel was on his track, but that as long as he kept lights burning
it could not touch him. But the panel, to his disordered mind, was
the root of his terror, and so, as I said, he broke into the church
and attempted--you will see why I said ‘attempted’--to destroy it. It
certainly was found in splinters next morning, when your uncle went
into church for matins, and knowing Mr. Dooliss’s fear of the panel,
he went across to the quarry-house afterwards and taxed him with its
destruction. The man never denied it; he boasted of what he had done. There he sat, though it was early morning, drinking his whisky. “‘I’ve settled your Thing for you,’ he said, ‘and your sermon too. A
fig for such superstitions.’
“Your uncle left him without answering his blasphemy, meaning to go
straight into Penzance and give information to the police about this
outrage to the church, but on his way back from the quarry-house he
went into the church again, in order to be able to give details about
the damage, and there in the screen was the panel, untouched and
uninjured. And yet he had himself seen it smashed, and Mr. Dooliss had
confessed that the destruction of it was his work. But there it was,
and whether the power of God had mended it or some other power, who
knows?”
This was Polearn indeed, and it was the spirit of Polearn that made me
accept all Aunt Hester was telling me as attested fact. It had happened
like that. She went on in her quiet voice. “Your uncle recognised that some power beyond police was at work, and
he did not go to Penzance or give information about the outrage, for
the evidence of it had vanished.”
A sudden spate of scepticism swept over me. “There must have been some mistake,” I said. “It hadn’t been broken....”
She smiled. “Yes, my dear, but you have been in London so long,” she said. “Let
me, anyhow, tell you the rest of my story. That night, for some reason,
I could not sleep. It was very hot and airless; I dare say you will
think that the sultry conditions accounted for my wakefulness. Once and
again, as I went to the window to see if I could not admit more air, I
could see from it the quarry-house, and I noticed the first time that
I left my bed that it was blazing with lights. But the second time I
saw that it was all in darkness, and as I wondered at that, I heard a
terrible scream, and the moment afterwards the steps of someone coming
at full speed down the road outside the gate. He yelled as he ran;
‘Light, light!’ he called out. ‘Give me light, or it will catch me!’ It
was very terrible to hear that, and I went to rouse my husband, who was
sleeping in the dressing-room across the passage. He wasted no time,
but by now the whole village was aroused by the screams, and when he
got down to the pier he found that all was over. The tide was low, and
on the rocks at its foot was lying the body of Mr. Dooliss. He must
have cut some artery when he fell on those sharp edges of stone, for
he had bled to death, they thought, and though he was a big burly man,
his corpse was but skin and bones. Yet there was no pool of blood round
him, such as you would have expected. Just skin and bones as if every
drop of blood in his body had been sucked out of him!”
She leaned forward. “You and I, my dear, know what happened,” she said, “or at least
can guess. God has His instruments of vengeance on those who bring
wickedness into places that have been holy. Dark and mysterious are His
ways.”
Now what I should have thought of such a story if it had been told me
in London I can easily imagine. There was such an obvious explanation:
the man in question had been a drunkard, what wonder if the demons of
delirium pursued him? But here in Polearn it was different. “And who is in the quarry-house now?” I asked. “Years ago the
fisher-boys told me the story of the man who first built it and of his
horrible end. And now again it has happened. Surely no one has ventured
to inhabit it once more?”
I saw in her face, even before I asked that question, that somebody had
done so. “Yes, it is lived in again,” said she, “for there is no end to the
blindness.... I don’t know if you remember him. He was tenant of the
vicarage many years ago.”
“John Evans,” said I. “Yes. Such a nice fellow he was too. Your uncle was pleased to get so
good a tenant. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
And now----”
She rose. “Aunt Hester, you shouldn’t leave your sentences unfinished,” I said. She shook her head. “My dear, that sentence will finish itself,” she said. “But what a time
of night! I must go to bed, and you too, or they will think we have to
keep lights burning here through the dark hours.”
* * * * *
Before getting into bed I drew my curtains wide and opened all the
windows to the warm tide of the sea air that flowed softly in. Looking
out into the garden I could see in the moonlight the roof of the
shelter, in which for three years I had lived, gleaming with dew. That,
as much as anything, brought back the old days to which I had now
returned, and they seemed of one piece with the present, as if no gap
of more than twenty years sundered them. The two flowed into one like
globules of mercury uniting into a softly shining globe, of mysterious
lights and reflections. Then, raising my eyes a little, I saw against
the black hill-side the windows of the quarry-house still alight. Morning, as is so often the case, brought no shattering of my illusion. As I began to regain consciousness, I fancied that I was a boy again
waking up in the shelter in the garden, and though, as I grew more
widely awake, I smiled at the impression, that on which it was based
I found to be indeed true. It was sufficient now as then to be here,
to wander again on the cliffs, and hear the popping of the ripened
seed-pods on the gorse-bushes; to stray along the shore to the
bathing-cove, to float and drift and swim in the warm tide, and bask
on the sand, and watch the gulls fishing, to lounge on the pier-head
with the fisher-folk, to see in their eyes and hear in their quiet
speech the evidence of secret things not so much known to them as
part of their instincts and their very being. There were powers and
presences about me; the white poplars that stood by the stream that
babbled down the valley knew of them, and showed a glimpse of their
knowledge sometimes, like the gleam of their white underleaves; the
very cobbles that paved the street were soaked in it.... All that I
wanted was to lie there and grow soaked in it too; unconsciously, as
a boy, I had done that, but now the process must be conscious. I must
know what stir of forces, fruitful and mysterious, seethed along the
hill-side at noon, and sparkled at night on the sea. They could be
known, they could even be controlled by those who were masters of the
spell, but never could they be spoken of, for they were dwellers in the
innermost, grafted into the eternal life of the world. There were dark
secrets as well as these clear, kindly powers, and to these no doubt
belonged the _negotium perambulans in tenebris_ which, though of deadly
malignity, might be regarded not only as evil, but as the avenger of
sacrilegious and impious deeds.... All this was part of the spell of
Polearn, of which the seeds had long lain dormant in me. But now they
were sprouting, and who knew what strange flower would unfold on their
stems? It was not long before I came across John Evans. One morning, as I lay
on the beach, there came shambling across the sand a man stout and
middle-aged with the face of Silenus. He paused as he drew near and
regarded me from narrow eyes. “Why, you’re the little chap that used to live in the parson’s garden,”
he said. “Don’t you recognise me?”
I saw who it was when he spoke: his voice, I think, instructed me, and
recognising it, I could see the features of the strong, alert young man
in this gross caricature. “Yes, you’re John Evans,” I said. “You used to be very kind to me: you
used to draw pictures for me.”
“So I did, and I’ll draw you some more. Been bathing? That’s a risky
performance. You never know what lives in the sea, nor what lives on
the land for that matter. Not that I heed them. I stick to work and
whisky. God! I’ve learned to paint since I saw you, and drink too for
that matter. I live in the quarry-house, you know, and it’s a powerful
thirsty place. Come and have a look at my things if you’re passing. Staying with your aunt, are you? I could do a wonderful portrait of
her. Interesting face; she knows a lot. People who live at Polearn get
to know a lot, though I don’t take much stock in that sort of knowledge
myself.”
I do not know when I have been at once so repelled and interested. Behind the mere grossness of his face there lurked something which,
while it appalled, yet fascinated me. His thick lisping speech had the
same quality. And his paintings, what would they be like?... “I was just going home,” I said. “I’ll gladly come in, if you’ll allow
me.”
He took me through the untended and overgrown garden into the house
which I had never yet entered. A great grey cat was sunning itself in
the window, and an old woman was laying lunch in a corner of the cool
hall into which the door opened. It was built of stone, and the carved
mouldings let into the walls, the fragments of gargoyles and sculptured
images, bore testimony to the truth of its having been built out of
the demolished church. In one corner was an oblong and carved wooden
table littered with a painter’s apparatus and stacks of canvases leaned
against the walls. He jerked his thumb towards a head of an angel that was built into the
mantelpiece and giggled. “Quite a sanctified air,” he said, “so we tone it down for the
purposes of ordinary life by a different sort of art. Have a drink? No? Well, turn over some of my pictures while I put myself to rights.”
He was justified in his own estimate of his skill: he could paint (and
apparently he could paint anything), but never have I seen pictures
so inexplicably hellish. There were exquisite studies of trees, and
you knew that something lurked in the flickering shadows. There was a
drawing of his cat sunning itself in the window, even as I had just now
seen it, and yet it was no cat but some beast of awful malignity. There
was a boy stretched naked on the sands, not human, but some evil thing
which had come out of the sea. Above all there were pictures of his
garden overgrown and jungle-like, and you knew that in the bushes were
presences ready to spring out on you....
“Well, do you like my style?” he said as he came up, glass in hand. (The tumbler of spirits that he held had not been diluted.) “I try to
paint the essence of what I see, not the mere husk and skin of it, but
its nature, where it comes from and what gave it birth. There’s much
in common between a cat and a fuchsia-bush if you look at them closely
enough. Everything came out of the slime of the pit, and it’s all going
back there. I should like to do a picture of you some day. I’d hold the
mirror up to Nature, as that old lunatic said.”
After this first meeting I saw him occasionally throughout the months
of that wonderful summer. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Often he kept to his house and to his
painting for days together, and then perhaps some evening I would find
him lounging on the pier, always alone, and every time we met thus the
repulsion and interest grew, for every time he seemed to have gone
farther along a path of secret knowledge towards some evil shrine
where complete initiation awaited him.... And then suddenly the end
came. I had met him thus one evening on the cliffs while the October sunset
still burned in the sky, but over it with amazing rapidity there spread
from the west a great blackness of cloud such as I have never seen for
denseness. The light was sucked from the sky, the dusk fell in ever
thicker layers. He suddenly became conscious of this. “I must get back as quick as I can,” he said. “It will be dark in a few
minutes, and my servant is out. The lamps will not be lit.”
He stepped out with extraordinary briskness for one who shambled and
could scarcely lift his feet, and soon broke out into a stumbling run. In the gathering darkness I could see that his face was moist with the
dew of some unspoken terror. “You must come with me,” he panted, “for so we shall get the lights
burning the sooner. I cannot do without light.”
I had to exert myself to the full to keep up with him, for terror
winged him, and even so I fell behind, so that when I came to the
garden gate, he was already half-way up the path to the house. I saw
him enter, leaving the door wide, and found him fumbling with matches. But his hand so trembled that he could not transfer the light to the
wick of the lamp. “But what’s the hurry about?” I asked. Suddenly his eyes focused themselves on the open door behind me, and he
jumped from his seat beside the table which had once been the altar of
God, with a gasp and a scream. “No, no!” he cried. “Keep it off!...”
I turned and saw what he had seen. The Thing had entered and now was
swiftly sliding across the floor towards him, like some gigantic
caterpillar. A stale phosphorescent light came from it, for though the
dusk had grown to blackness outside, I could see it quite distinctly in
the awful light of its own presence. From it too there came an odour
of corruption and decay, as from slime that has long lain below water. It seemed to have no head, but on the front of it was an orifice of
puckered skin which opened and shut and slavered at the edges. It was
hairless, and slug-like in shape and in texture. As it advanced its
fore-part reared itself from the ground, like a snake about to strike,
and it fastened on him....
At that sight, and with the yells of his agony in my ears, the panic
which had struck me relaxed into a hopeless courage, and with palsied,
impotent hands I tried to lay hold of the Thing. But I could not:
though something material was there, it was impossible to grasp it;
my hands sunk in it as in thick mud. It was like wrestling with a
nightmare. I think that but a few seconds elapsed before all was over. The screams
of the wretched man sank to moans and mutterings as the Thing fell
on him: he panted once or twice and was still. For a moment longer
there came gurglings and sucking noises, and then it slid out even as
it had entered. I lit the lamp which he had fumbled with, and there
on the floor he lay, no more than a rind of skin in loose folds over
projecting bones. At the Farmhouse
At the Farmhouse
The dusk of a November day was falling fast when John Aylsford came
out of his lodging in the cobbled street and started to walk briskly
along the road which led eastwards by the shore of the bay. He had been
at work while the daylight served him, and now, when the gathering
darkness weaned him from his easel, he was accustomed to go out for air
and exercise and cover half a dozen miles before he returned to his
solitary supper. To-night there were but few folk abroad, and those scudded along before
the strong south-westerly gale which had roared and raged all day, or,
leaning forward, beat their way against it. No fishing-boats had put
forth on that maddened sea, but had lain moored behind the quay-wall,
tossing uneasily with the backwash of the great breakers that swept
by the pier-head. The tide was low now, and they rested on the sandy
beach, black blots against the smooth wet surface which sombrely
reflected the last flames in the west. The sun had gone down in a wrack
of broken and flying clouds, angry and menacing with promise of a wild
night to come. For many days past, at this hour John Aylsford had started eastwards
for his tramp along the rough coast road by the bay. The last high
tide had swept shingle and sand over sections of it, and fragments of
seaweed, driven by the wind, bowled along the ruts. The heavy boom of
the breakers sounded sullenly in the dusk, and white towers of foam
appearing and disappearing showed how high they leaped over the reefs
of rock beyond the headland. For half a mile or so, slanting himself
against the gale he pursued this road, then turned up a narrow muddy
lane sunk deep between the banks on either side of it. It ran steeply
uphill, dipped down again, and joined the main road inland. Having
arrived at the junction, John Aylsford went eastwards no more, but
turned his steps to the west, arriving, half an hour after he had set
out, on the top of the hill above the village he had quitted, though
five minutes’ ascent would have taken him from his lodgings to the spot
where he now stood looking down on the scattered lights below him. The
wind had blown all wayfarers indoors, and now in front of him the road
that crossed this high and desolate table-land, sprinkled here and
there with lonely cottages and solitary farms, lay empty and greyly
glimmering in the wind-swept darkness, not more than faintly visible. Many times during this past month had John Aylsford made this long
detour, starting eastwards from the village and coming back by a wide
circuit, and now, as on these other occasions, he paused in the black
shelter of the hedge through which the wind hissed and whistled,
crouching there in the shadow as if to make sure that none had followed
him, and that the road in front lay void of passengers, for he had no
mind to be observed by any on these journeyings. And as he paused he
let his hate blaze up, warming him for the work the accomplishment of
which alone could enable him to recapture any peace or profit from
life. To-night he was determined to release himself from the millstone
which for so many years had hung round his neck, drowning him in bitter
waters. From long brooding over the idea of the deed, he had quite
ceased to feel any horror of it. The death of that drunken slut was not
a matter for qualms or uneasiness; the world would be well rid of her,
and he more than well. No spark of tenderness for the handsome fisher-girl who once had been
his model and for twenty years had been his wife pierced the blackness
of his purpose. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Just here it was that he had seen her first when on a
summer holiday he had lodged with a couple of friends in the farmhouse
towards which his way now lay. She was coming up the hill with the
late sunset gilding her face, and, breathing quickly from the ascent,
had leaned on the wall close by with a smile and a glance for the
young man. She had sat to him, and the autumn brought the sequel to
the summer in his marriage. He had bought from her uncle the little
farmhouse where he had lodged, adding to its modest accommodation a
studio and a bedroom above it, and there he had seen the flicker of
what had never been love, die out, and over the cold ashes of its
embers the poisonous lichen of hatred spread fast. Early in their
married life she had taken to drink, and had sunk into a degradation of
soul and body that seemed bottomless, dragging him with her, down and
down, in the grip of a force that was hardly human in its malignity. Often during the wretched years that followed he had tried to leave
her; he had offered to settle the farm on her and make adequate
provision for her, but she had clung to the possession of him, not,
it would seem, from any affection for him, but for a reason exactly
opposite, namely, that her hatred of him fed and glutted itself on the
sight of his ruin. It was as if, in obedience to some hellish power,
she set herself to spoil his life, his powers, his possibilities, by
tying him to herself. And by the aid of that power, so sometimes he had
thought, she enforced her will on him, for, plan as he might to cut the
whole dreadful business and leave the wreck behind him, he had never
been able to consolidate his resolve into action. There, but a few
miles away, was the station from which ran the train that would bear
him out of this ancient western kingdom, where the beliefs in spells
and superstitions grew rank as the herbage in that soft enervating air,
and set him in the dry hard light of cities. The way lay open, but he
could not take it; something unseen and potent, of grim inflexibility,
held him back.... He had passed no one on his way here, and satisfied now that in the
darkness he could proceed without fear of being recognised if a chance
wayfarer came from the direction in which he was going, he left the
shelter of the hedge, and struck out into the stormy sea of that
stupendous gale. Even as a man in the grip of imminent death sees his
past life spread itself out in front of him for his final survey before
the book is closed, so now, on the brink of the new life from which the
deed on which he was determined alone separated him, John Aylsford, as
he battled his advance through this great tempest, turned over page
after page of his own wretched chronicles, feeling already strangely
detached from them; it was as if he read the sordid and enslaved annals
of another, wondering at them, half-pitying, half-despising him who had
allowed himself to be bound so long in this ruinous noose. Yes; it had been just that, a noose drawn ever tighter round his neck,
while he choked and struggled all unavailingly. But there was another
noose which should very soon now be drawn rapidly and finally tight,
and the drawing of that in his own strong hands would free him. As he
dwelt on that for a moment, his fingers stroked and patted the hank of
whipcord that lay white and tough in his pocket. A noose, a knot drawn
quickly taut, and he would have paid her back with justice and swifter
mercy for the long strangling which he had suffered. Voluntarily and eagerly at the beginning had he allowed her to slip the
noose about him, for Ellen Trenair’s beauty in those days, so long past
and so everlastingly regretted, had been enough to ensnare a man. He
had been warned at the time, by hint and half-spoken suggestion, that
it was ill for a man to mate with a girl of that dark and ill-famed
family, or for a woman to wed a boy in whose veins ran the blood of
Jonas Trenair, once Methodist preacher, who learned on one All-Hallows’
Eve a darker gospel than he had ever preached before. What had happened
to the girls who had married into that dwindling family, now all
but extinct? One, before her marriage was a year old, had gone off
her head, and now, a withered and ancient crone, mowed and gibbered
about the streets of the village, picking garbage from the gutter and
munching it in her toothless jaws. Another, Ellen’s own mother, had
been found hanging from the banister of her stairs, stark and grim. Then there was young Frank Pencarris, who had wed Ellen’s sister. He had sunk into an awful melancholy, and sat tracing on sheets of
paper the visions that beset his eyes, headless shapes, and foaming
mouths, and the images of the spawn of hell.... John Aylsford, in those
early days, had laughed to scorn these old-wife tales of spells and
sorceries: they belonged to ages long past, whereas fair Ellen Trenair
was of the lovely present, and had lit desire in his heart which she
alone could assuage. He had no use, in the brightness of her eye, for
such shadows and superstitions; her beams dispelled them. Bitter and black as midnight had his enlightenment been, darkening
through dubious dusks till the mirk of the pit itself enveloped him. His laughter at the notion that in this twentieth century spells and
sorceries could survive, grew silent on his lips. He had seen the
cattle of a neighbour who had offended one whom it was wiser not to
cross, dwindle and pine, though there were rich pastures for their
grazing, till the rib-bones stuck out like the timbers of stranded
wrecks. He had seen the spring on another farm run dry at lambing-time
because the owner, sceptic like himself, had refused that bounty, which
all prudent folk paid to the wizard of Mareuth, who, like Ellen, was of
the blood of Jonas Trenair. From scorn and laughter he had wavered to
an uneasy wonder, and from wonder his mind had passed to the conviction
that there were powers occult and terrible which strove in darkness and
prevailed, secrets and spells that could send disease on man and beast,
dark incantations, known to few, which could maim and cripple, and of
these few his wife was one. His reason revolted, but some conviction,
deeper than reason, held its own. To such a view it seemed that the
deed he contemplated was no crime, but rather an act of obedience to
the ordinance “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And the sense of
detachment was over that, even as over the memories that oozed up in
his mind. Somebody--not he--who had planned everything very carefully
was in the next hour going to put an end to his bondage. So the years had passed, he floundering ever deeper in the slough into
which he was plunged, out of which while she lived he could never
emerge. For the last year, she, wearying of his perpetual presence at
the farm, had allowed him to take a lodging in the village. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
She did
not loose her hold over him, for the days were few on which she did
not come with demands for a handful of shillings to procure her the
raw spirits which alone could slake her thirst. Sometimes as he sat
at work there in the north room looking on to the small garden-yard,
she would come lurching up the path, with her bloated crimson face set
on the withered neck, and tap at his window with fingers shrivelled
like bird’s claws. Body and limbs were no more than bones over which
the wrinkled skin was stretched, but her face bulged monstrously with
layers of fat. He would give her whatever he had about him, and if
it was not enough, she would plant herself there, grinning at him
and wheedling him, or with screams and curses threatening him with
such fate as he had known to overtake those who crossed her will. But
usually he gave her enough to satisfy her for that day and perhaps the
next, for thus she would the more quickly drink herself to death. Yet
death seemed long in coming.... He remembered well how first the notion of killing her came into his
head, just a little seed, small as that of mustard, which lay long
in barrenness. Only the bare idea of it was there, like an abstract
proposition. Then imperceptibly in the fruitful darkness of his mind,
it must have begun to sprout, for presently a tendril, still soft and
white, prodded out into the daylight. He almost pushed it back again,
for fear that she, by some divining art, should probe his purpose. But when next she came for supplies, he saw no gleam of surmise in
her red-rimmed eyes, and she took her money and went her way, and
his purpose put forth another leaf, and the stem of it grew sappy. All autumn through it had flourished, and grown tree-like, and fresh
ideas, fresh details, fresh precautions, flocked there like building
birds and made it gay with singing. He sat under the shadow of it and
listened with brightening hopes to their song; never had there been
such peerless melody. They knew their tunes now, there was no need for
any further rehearsal. He began to wonder how soon he would be back on the road again, with
face turned from this buffeting wind, and on his way home. His business
would not take him long; the central deed of it would be over in a
couple of minutes, and he did not anticipate delay about the setting
to work on it, for by seven o’clock of the evening, as well he knew,
she was usually snoring in the oblivion of complete drunkenness,
and even if she was not as far gone as that, she would certainly be
incapable of any serious resistance. After that, a quarter of an hour
more would finish the job, and he would leave the house secure already
from any chance of detection. Night after night during these last ten
days he had been up here, peering from the darkness into the lighted
room where she sat, then listening for her step on the stairs as
she stumbled up to bed, or hearing her snorings as she slept in her
chair below. The out-house, he knew, was well stocked with paraffin;
he needed no further apparatus than the whipcord and the matches he
carried with him. Then back he would go along the exact route by which
he had come, re-entering the village again from the eastwards, in which
direction he had set out. This walk of his was now a known and established habit; half the
village during the last week or two had seen him every evening set
forth along the coast road, for a tramp in the dusk when the light
failed for his painting, and had seen him come back again as they hung
about and smoked in the warm dusk, a couple of hours later. None knew
of his detour to the main road which took him westwards again above
the village and so to the stretch of bleak upland along which now he
fought his way against the gale. Always round about the hour of eight
he had entered the village again from the other side, and had stopped
and chatted with the loiterers. To-night, no later than was usual, he
would come up the cobbled road again, and give “good night” to any who
lingered there outside the public-house. In this wild wind it was not
likely that there would be such, and if so, no matter; he had been seen
already setting forth on his usual walk by the coast of the bay, and
if none outside saw him return, none could see the true chart of his
walk. By eight he should be back to his supper, there would be a soused
herring for him, and a cut of cheese, and the kettle would be singing
on the hob for his hot whisky-toddy. He would have a keen edge for the
enjoyment of them to-night; he would drink long healths to the damned
and the dead. Not till to-morrow, probably, would the news of what had
happened reach him, for the farmhouse lay lonely and sheltered by the
wood of firs. However high might mount the beacon of its blazing, it
would scarcely, screened by the tall trees, light up the western sky,
and be seen from the village nestling below the steep hill-crest. By now John Aylsford had come to the fir wood which bordered the road
on the left, and, as he passed into its shelter, cut off from him the
violence of the gale. All its branches were astir with the sound of
some vexed, overhead sea, and the trunks that upheld them creaked and
groaned in the fury of the tempest. Somewhere behind the thick scud
of flying cloud the moon must have risen, for the road glimmered more
visibly, and the tossing blackness of the branches was clear enough
against the grey tumult overhead. Behind the tempest she rode in serene
skies, and in the murderous clarity of his mind he likened himself to
her. Just for half an hour more he would still grope and scheme and
achieve in this hurly-burly, and then, like a balloon released, soar
through the clouds and find serenity. A couple of hundred yards now
would take him round the corner of the wood; from there the miry lane
led from the high-road to the farm. He hastened rather than retarded his going as he drew near, for the
wood, though it roared with the gale, began to whisper to him of
memories. Often in that summer before his marriage had he strayed
out at dusk into it, certain that before he had gone many paces he
would see a shadow flitting towards him through the firs, or hear the
crack of dry twigs in the stillness. Here was their tryst; she would
come up from the village with the excuse of bringing fish to the
farmhouse, after the boats had come in, and deserting the high-road
make a short cut through the wood. Like some distant blink of lightning
the memory of those evenings quivered distantly on his mind, and he
quickened his step. The years that followed had killed and buried
those recollections, but who knew what stirring of corpses and dry
bones might not yet come to them if he lingered there? He fingered the
whipcord in his pocket, and launched out, beyond the trees, into the
full fury of the gale. The farmhouse was near now and in full view, a black blot against
the clouds. A beam of light shone from an uncurtained window on the
ground-floor, and the rest was dark. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Even thus had he seen it for many
nights past, and well knew what sight would greet him as he stole up
nearer. And even so it was to-night, for there she sat in the studio he
had built, betwixt table and fireplace with the bottle near her, and
her withered hands stretched out to the blaze, and the huge bloated
face swaying on her shoulders. Beside her to-night were the wrecked
remains of a chair, and the first sight that he caught of her was to
show her feeding the fire with the broken pieces of it. It had been too
troublesome to bring fresh logs from the store of wood; to break up a
chair was the easier task. She stirred and sat more upright, then reached out for the bottle that
stood beside her, and drank from the mouth of it. She drank and licked
her lips and drank again, and staggered to her feet, tripping on the
edge of the hearthrug. For the moment that seemed to anger her, and
with clenched teeth and pointing finger she mumbled at it; then once
more she drank, and lurching forward, took the lamp from the table. With it in her hand she shuffled to the door, and the room was left to
the flickering firelight. A moment afterwards, the bedroom window above
sprang into light, an oblong of bright illumination. As soon as that appeared he crept round the house to the door. He
gently turned the handle of it, and found it unlocked. Inside was a
small passage entrance, on the left of which ascended the stairs to
the bedroom above the studio. All was silent there, but from where he
stood he could see that the door into the bedroom was open, for a shaft
of light from the lamp she had carried up with her was shed on to the
landing there.... Everything was smoothing itself out to render his
course most easy. Even the gale was his friend, for it would be bellows
for the fire. He slipped off his shoes, leaving them on the mat, and
drew the whipcord from his pocket. He made a noose in it, and began to
ascend the stairs. They were well-built of seasoned oak, and no creak
betrayed his advancing footfall. At the top he paused, listening for any stir of movement within, but
there was nothing to be heard but the sound of heavy breathing from
the bed that lay to the left of the door and out of sight. She had
thrown herself down there, he guessed, without undressing, leaving
the lamp to burn itself out. He could see it through the open door
already beginning to flicker; on the wall behind it were a couple of
water-colours, pictures of his own, one of the little walled garden by
the farm, the other of the pinewood of their tryst. Well he remembered
painting them: she would sit by him as he worked with prattle and
singing. He looked at them now quite detachedly; they seemed to him
wonderfully good, and he envied the artist that fresh, clean skill. Perhaps he would take them down presently and carry them away with him. Very softly now he advanced into the room, and looking round the corner
of the door, he saw her, sprawling and fully dressed on the broad
bed. She lay on her back, eyes closed and mouth open, her dull grey
hair spread over the pillow. Evidently she had not made the bed that
day, for she lay stretched on the crumpled back-turned blankets. A
hair-brush was on the floor beside her; it seemed to have fallen from
her hand. He moved quickly towards her. * * * * *
He put on his shoes again when he came to the foot of the stairs,
carrying the lamp with him and the two pictures which he had taken down
from the wall, and went into the studio. He set the lamp on the table
and drew down the blinds, and his eye fell on the half-empty whisky
bottle from which he had seen her drinking. Though his hand was quite
steady and his mind composed and tranquil, there was yet at the back
of it some impression that was slowly developing, and a good dose of
spirits would no doubt expunge that. He drank half a tumbler of it raw
and undiluted, and though it seemed no more than water in his mouth,
he soon felt that it was doing its work and sponging away from his
mind the picture that had been outlining itself there. In a couple
of minutes he was quite himself again, and could afford to wonder
and laugh at the illusion, for it was no less than that, which had
been gaining on him. For though he could distinctly remember drawing
the noose tight, and seeing the face grow black, and struggling with
the convulsive movements of those withered limbs that soon lay quiet
again, there had sprung up in his mind some unaccountable impression
that what he had left there huddled on the bed was not just the bundle
of withered limbs and strangled neck, but the body of a young girl,
smooth of skin and golden of hair, with mouth that smiled drowsily. She had been asleep when he came in, and now was half-awake, and was
stirring and stretching herself. In what dim region of his mind that
image had formed itself, he had no idea; all he cared about now was
that his drink had shattered it again, and he could proceed with order
and method to make all secure. Just one drop more first: how lucky it
was that this morning he had been liberal with his money when she came
to the village, for he would have been sorry to have gone without that
fillip to his nerves. He looked at his watch, and saw to his satisfaction that it was still
only a little after seven o’clock. Half an hour’s walking, with this
gale to speed his steps, would easily carry him from door to door,
round the detour which approached the village from the east, and a
quarter of an hour, so he reckoned, would be sufficient to accomplish
thoroughly what remained to be done here. He must not hurry and thus
overlook some precaution needful for his safety, though, on the other
hand, he would be glad to be gone from the house as soon as might
be, and he proceeded to set about his work without delay. There was
brushwood and fire-kindling to be brought in from the wood-shed in
the yard, and he made three journeys, returning each time with his
arms full, before he had brought in what he judged to be sufficient. Most of this he piled in a loose heap in the studio; with the rest he
ascended once more to the bedroom above and made a heap of it there in
the middle of the floor. He took the curtains down from the windows,
for they would make a fine wick for the paraffin, and stuffed them into
the pile. Before he left, he looked once more at what lay on the bed,
and marvelled at the illusion which the whisky had dispelled, and as
he looked, the sense that he was free mounted and bubbled in his head. The thing seemed scarcely human at all; it was a monster from which he
had delivered himself, and now, with the thought of that to warm him,
he was no longer eager to get through with his work and be gone, for
it was all part of that act of riddance which he had accomplished, and
he gloried in it. Soon, when all was ready, he would come back once
more and soak the fuel and set light to it, and purge with fire the
corruption that lay humped on the bed. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
The fury of the gale had increased with nightfall, and as he went
downstairs again he heard the rattle of loosened tiles on the roof, and
the crash as they shattered themselves on the cobbles of the yard. At
that a sudden misgiving made his breath to catch in his throat, as he
pictured to himself some maniac blast falling on the house and crashing
in the walls that now trembled and shuddered. Supposing the whole
house fell, even if he escaped with his life from the toppling ruin,
what would his life be worth? There would be search made in the fallen
débris to find the body of her who lay strangled with the whipcord
round her neck, and he pictured to himself the slow, relentless march
of justice. He had bought whipcord only yesterday at a shop in the
village, insisting on its strength and toughness ... would it be wiser
now, this moment, to untie the noose and take it back with him or add
it to his brushwood?... He paused on the staircase, pondering that; but
his flesh quaked at the thought, and master of himself though he had
been during those few struggling minutes, he distrusted his power of
making himself handle once more that which could struggle no longer. But even as he tried to screw his courage to the point, the violence
of the squall passed, and the shuddering house braced itself again. He need not fear that; the gale was his friend that would blow on the
flames, not his enemy. The blasts that trumpeted overhead were the
voices of the allies who had come to aid him. All was arranged then upstairs for the pouring of the paraffin and the
lighting of the pyre; it remained but to make similar dispositions in
the studio. He would stay to feed the flames till they raged beyond all
power of extinction; and now he began to plan the line of his retreat. There were two doors in the studio: one by the fireplace which opened
on to the little garden; the other gave into the passage entrance from
which mounted the stairs and so to the door through which he had come
into the house. He decided to use the garden-door for his exit; but
when he came to open it, he found that the key was stiff in the rusty
lock, and did not yield to his efforts. There was no use in wasting
time over that; it made no difference through which door he finally
emerged, and he began piling up his heap of wood at that end of the
room. The lamp was burning low; but the fire, which only so few minutes
ago she had fed with a broken chair, shone brightly, and a flaming
ember from it would serve to set light to his conflagration. There was
a straw mat in front of it, which would make fine kindling, and with
these two fires, one in the bedroom upstairs and the other here, there
would be no mistake about the incineration of the house and all that
it contained. His own crime, if crime it was, would perish, too, and
all evidence thereof, victim and whipcord, and the very walls of the
house of sin and hate. It was a great deed and a fine adventure, and
as the liquor he had drunk began to circulate more buoyantly through
his veins, he gloried at the thought of the approaching consummation. He would slip out of the sordid tragedy of his past life, as from a
discarded garment that he threw into the bonfire he would soon kindle. All was ready now for the soaking of the fuel he had piled with the
paraffin, and he went out to the shed in the yard where the barrel
stood. A big tin ewer stood beside it, which he filled and carried
indoors. That would be sufficient for the soaking of the pile upstairs,
and fetching the smoky and flickering lamp from the studio, he went
up again, and like a careful gardener watering some bed of choice
blossoms, he sprinkled and poured till his ewer was empty. He gave
but one glance to the bed behind him, where the huddled thing lay
so quietly, and as he turned, lamp in hand, to go down again, the
draught that came in through the window against which the gale blew,
extinguished it. A little blue flame of burning vapour rose in the
chimney and went out; so, having no further use for it, he pitched it
on to the pile of soaked material. As he left the room he thought he
heard some small stir of movement behind him, but he told himself that
it was but something slipping in the heap he had built there. Again he went out into the storm. The clouds that scudded overhead were
thinner now, though the gale blew not less fiercely, and the blurred,
watery moonlight was brighter. Once for a moment, as he approached
the shed, he caught sight of the full orb plunging madly among the
streaming vapours; then she was hidden again behind the wrack. Close in
front of him were the fir trees of the wood where those sweet trysts
had been held, and once again the vision of her as she had been broke
into his mind and the queer conviction that it was no withered and
bloated hag, who lay on the bed upstairs but the fair, comely limbs
and the golden head. It was even more vivid now, and he made haste to
get back to the studio, where he would find the trusty medicine that
had dispelled that vision before. He would have to make two journeys
at least with his tin ewer before he transported enough oil to feed
the larger pyre below, and so, to save time, he took the barrel off
its stand, and rolled it along the path and into the house. He paused
at the foot of the stairs, listening to hear if anything stirred, but
all was silent. Whatever had slipped up there was steady again; from
outside only came the squeal and bellow of the wind. The studio was brightly but fitfully lit by the flames on the hearth;
at one moment a noonday blazed there, the next but the last smoulder of
some red sunset. It was easier to decant from the barrel into his ewer
than carry the heavy keg and sprinkle from it, and once and once again
he filled and emptied it. One more application would be sufficient,
and after that he could let what remained trickle out on to the floor. But by some awkward movement he managed to spill a splash of it down
the front of his trousers: he must be sure, therefore (how quickly his
brain responded with counsels of precautions), to have some accident
with his lamp when he came in to his supper, which should account for
this little misadventure. Or, probably, the wind through which he would
presently be walking would dry it before he reached the village. So, for the last time with matches ready in his hand, he mounted the
stairs to set light to the fuel piled in the room above. His second
dose of whisky sang in his head, and he said to himself, smiling at
the humour of the notion, “She always liked a fire in her bedroom; she
shall have it now.” That seemed a very comical idea, and it dwelt in
his head as he struck the match which should light it for her. Then,
still grinning, he gave one glance to the bed, and the smile died on
his face, and the wild cymbals of panic crashed in his brain. The bed
was empty; no huddled shape lay there. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Distraught with terror, he thrust the match into the soaked pile and
the flame flared up. Perhaps the body had rolled off the bed. It must,
in any case, be here somewhere, and when once the room was alight there
would be nothing more to fear. High rose the smoky flame, and banging
the door, he leaped down the stairs to set light to the pile below and
be gone from the house. Yet, whatever monstrous miracle his eye had
assured him of, it could not be that she still lived and had left the
place where she lay, for she had ceased to breathe when the noose was
tight round her neck, and her fight for life and air had long been
stilled. But, if by some hideous witchcraft, she was not dead, it would
soon be over now with her in the stupefaction of the smoke and the
scorching flames. Let be; the door was shut and she within, for him it
remained to be finished with the business, and flee from the house of
terror, lest he leave the sanity of his soul behind him. The red glare from the hearth in the studio lit his steps down the
passage from the stairway, and already he could hear from above the
dry crack and snap from the fire that prospered there. As he shuffled
in, he held his hands to his head, as if pressing the brain back into
its cool case, from which it seemed eager to fly out into the welter
of storm and fire and hideous imagination. If he could only control
himself for a few moments more, all would be done and he would escape
from this disordered haunted place into the night and the gale, leaving
behind him the blaze that would burn away all perilous stuff. Again
the flames broke out in the embers on the hearth, bravely burning,
and he took from the heart of the glare a fragment on which the fire
was bursting into yellow flowers. He heeded not the scorching of his
hand, for it was but for a moment that he held it, and then plunged it
into the pile that dripped with the oil he had poured on it. A tower
of flame mounted, licking the rafters of the low ceiling, then died
away as if suffocated by its own smoke, but crept onwards, nosing its
way along till it reached the straw mat, which blazed fiercely. That
blaze kindled the courage in him; whatever trick his imagination had
played on him just now, he had nothing to fear except his own terror,
which now he mastered again, for nothing real could ever escape from
the conflagration, and it was only the real that he feared. Spells and
witchcrafts and superstitions, such as for the last twenty years had
battened on him, were all enclosed in that tight-drawn noose. It was time to be gone, for all was safe now, and the room was growing
to oven-heat. But as he picked his way across the floor over which
runnels of flames from the split barrel were beginning to spread this
way and that, he heard from above the sound of a door unlatched, and
footsteps light and firm tapped on the stairs. For one second the sheer
catalepsy of panic seized him, but he recovered his control, and with
hands that groped through the thick smoke he found the door. At that
moment the fire shot up in a blaze of blinding flame, and there in the
doorway stood Ellen. It was no withered body and bloated face that
confronted him, but she with whom he had trysted in the wood, with the
bloom of eternal youth upon her, and the smooth soft hand, on which
was her wedding-ring, pointed at him. It was in vain that he called on himself to rush forward out of that
torrid and suffocating air. The front door was open, he had but to pass
her and speed forth safe into the night. But no power from his will
reached his limbs; his will screamed to him, “Go, go! Push by her: it
is but a phantom which you fear!” but muscle and sinew were in mutiny,
and step by step he retreated before that pointing finger and the
radiant shape that advanced on him. The flames that flickered over the
floor had discovered the paraffin he had spilt, and leaped up his leg. Just one spot in his brain retained lucidity from the encompassing
terror. Somewhere behind that barrier of fire there was the second
door into the garden. He had but cursorily attempted to unlock its
rusty wards; now, surely, the knowledge that there alone was escape
would give strength to his hand. He leaped backwards through the
flames, still with eyes fixed on her who ever advanced in time with
his retreat, and turning, wrestled and strove with the key. Something
snapped in his hand, and there still in the keyhole was the bare shaft. Holding his breath, for the heat scorched his throat, he groped towards
where he knew was the window through which he had first seen her that
night. The flames licked fiercely round it, but there, beneath his
hand, was the hasp, and he threw it open. At that the wind poured in as
through the nozzle of a plied bellows, and Death rose high and bright
around him. Through the flames, as he sank to the floor, a face radiant
with revenge smiled on him. Inscrutable Decrees
Inscrutable Decrees
I had found nothing momentous in the more august pages of _The Times_
that morning, and so, just because I was lazy and unwilling to embark
on a host of businesses that were waiting for me, I turned to the first
page and, beginning with the seventh column, pondered profoundly over
“Situations Vacant,” and hoped that the “Gentlewoman fond of games,”
who desired the position of governess, would find the very thing to
suit her. I glanced at the notices of lectures to be delivered under
the auspices of various learned societies, and was thankful that I had
not got to give or to listen to any of them. I debated over “Business
Opportunities”; I vainly tried to conjecture clues to mysterious
“Personal” paragraphs, and, still pursuing my sideways, crab-fashion
course, came to “Deaths Continued.”
There, with a shock of arrest, I saw that Sybil Rorke, widow of the
late Sir Ernest Rorke, had died at Torquay, suddenly, at the age of
thirty-two. It seemed strange that there should be only this bare
announcement concerning a woman who at one time had been so well-known
and dazzling a figure; and turning to the obituary notices, I found
that my inattentive skimming had overlooked a paragraph there of
appreciation and regret. She had died during her sleep, and it was
announced that an inquest would be held. My laziness then had been
of some use, for Archie Rorke, distant cousin but successor to Sir
Ernest’s estates and title, was arriving that evening to spend a few
country days with me, and I was glad to have known this before he came. How it would affect him, or whether, indeed, it would affect him at
all, I had no idea. What a mysterious affair it had been! No one, I supposed, knew the
history of it except he, now that Lady Rorke was dead. If anyone knew,
it should have been myself, and yet Archie, my oldest friend, whose
best man I was to have been, had never opened his lips to a syllable of
explanation. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
I knew, in fact, no whit more than the whole world knew,
namely, that a year after Sir Ernest Rorke’s death the engagement of
his widow to the new baronet, Sir Archibald Rorke, was made public,
and that within a fortnight of the date fixed for the wedding it was
laconically announced that the marriage would not take place. When,
on seeing that, I rang Archie up on the telephone, I was told that
he had already left London, and he wrote to me a few days later from
Lincote--the place in Hampshire, which he had inherited from his
cousin--saying that he had nothing to tell me about the breaking off
of his engagement beyond the fact that it was true. The whole--he had
written a word and carefully erased it--episode was now an excised leaf
from his life. He was proposing to stay down at Lincote alone for a
month or so, and would then turn on to the new page. Lady Rorke, so I heard, had also left London immediately and passed
the summer in Italy. Then she took a furnished house in Torquay, where
she lived for the remainder of the year which intervened between
the breaking off of her engagement and her death. She cut herself
completely off from all her friends--and no woman, surely, ever
commanded a larger host of them--saw nobody, seldom went outside her
house and garden, and observed the same unbroken silence as did Archie
about what had happened. And now, with all her youth and charm and
beauty, she had gone down dumb into the Great Silence. With the prospect of seeing Archie that evening it was no wonder that
the thought of Lady Rorke ran all day in my head like a tune heard
long ago which now recalled itself to my mind in scattered staves of
melody. Meetings and talks with her, phrase by phrase, reconstructed
themselves, and as these memories grew definite and complete I found
that, even as before, when I was actually experiencing them, there
lurked underneath the gay rhythms and joyousness something _macabre_
and mysterious. To-day that was accentuated, whereas before when I
listened for it, trying to isolate it from the rest and so perhaps
dispel it, it was always overscored by some triumphant crescendo: her
presence diverted eye and ear alike. Yet such a simile halts; perhaps,
still in simile, I shall more accurately define this underlying
“something” by saying that her presence was like some gorgeous
rose-bush, full of flowers, and sun, and sweetness; then, even as one
admired and applauded and inhaled, one saw that among its buds and
blossoms there emerged the spikes of some other plant, bitter and
poisonous, but growing from the same soil as the rose, and intertwined
with it. But immediately a fresh glory met your eye, a fresh fragrance
enchanted you. As I rummaged among my memories of her, certain scenes which
significantly illustrated this curiously vivid impression stirred and
made themselves manifest to me, and now they were not broken in upon
by her presence. One such occurred on the first evening that I ever
met her, which was in the summer before the death of her husband. The
moment that she entered the room where we were waiting before dinner
for her arrival, the stale, sultry air of a June evening grew fresh
and effervescent; never have I come across so radiant and infectious a
vitality. She was tall and big, with the splendour of the Juno-type,
and though she was then close on thirty, the iridescence of girlhood
was still hers. Without effort she Pied-pipered a rather stodgy party
to dance to her flutings, she caused everyone to become silly and
pleased and full of laughter. At her bidding we indulged in ridiculous
games, dumb-crambo, and what not, and after that the carpet was rolled
up and we capered to the strains of a gramophone. And then the incident
occurred. I was standing with her, for a breath of air, on the balcony outside
the drawing-room windows which faced the park. She had just made a
great curtsey to a slip of the moon that rose above the trees and had
borrowed a shilling of me in order to turn it. “No, I can’t swear that I believe in moon-luck,” she said, “but after
all it does no harm, and, in case it’s true, you can’t afford to make
an enemy of her. Ah, what’s that?”
A thrush, attracted by the lights inside, had flown between us, dashed
itself against the window, and now lay fluttering on the ground at our
feet. Instantly she was all pity and tenderness. She picked up the
bird, examined it, and found that its wing was broken. “Ah, poor thing!” she said. “Look, its wing-bone is snapped; the end
protrudes. And how terrified it is! What are we to do?”
It was clear that the kindest thing to do would be to put the bird
out of its pain, but when I suggested that, she took a step back from
me, and covered it with her other hand. Her eyes gleamed, her mouth
smiled, and I saw the tip of her tongue swiftly pass over her lips as
if licking them. “No, that would be a terrible thing to do,” she said. “I shall take it
home with me ever so carefully, and watch over it. I am afraid it is
badly hurt. But it may live.”
Suddenly--perhaps it was that swift licking of her lips that suggested
the thought to me--I felt instinctively that she was not so much
pitiful as pleased. She stood there with eyes fixed on it, as it feebly
struggled in her hands. And then her face clouded; over its brightness there came a look of
displeasure, of annoyance. “I’m afraid it is dying,” she said. “Its poor frightened eyes are
closing.”
The bird fluttered once more, then its legs stretched themselves
stiffly out, and it lay still. She tossed it out of her hands on to the
paved balcony, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “What a fuss over a bird,” she said. “It was silly of it to fly
against the glass. But I have too soft a heart; I cannot bear that the
poor creatures should die. Let us go in and have one more romp. Oh,
here is your shilling; I hope it will have brought me good luck. And
then I must get home. My husband--do you know him?--always sits up till
I get back, and he will scold me for being so late!”
There, then, was my first meeting with her, and there, too, were the
spikes of the poisonous plant pushing up among the magnificence of her
roses. And yet, so I thought to myself then, and so I think to myself
now, I perhaps was utterly wrong about it all, in thus attributing to
her a secret glee of which she was wholly incapable. So, with a certain
effort I wiped the impression I had received off my mind, determining
to consider myself quite mistaken. But, involuntarily, my mind as if
to justify itself in having delineated such a picture, proceeded to
delineate another. Very shortly after that first meeting I received from her a charming
note, asking me to dine with her on a date not far distant. I
telephoned a delighted acceptance, for, indeed, I wanted then, even
as I did this morning, to convince myself that I was wholly in error
concerning my interpretation of that incident concerning the thrush. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Though I hold that no man has the right to accept the hospitality
offered by one he does not like, in all points except one I admired
and liked Lady Rorke immensely and wished to get rid of that one. So
I gratefully accepted, and then hurried out on a dismal and overdue
visit to the dentist’s. In the waiting-room was a girl of about twelve,
with a hand nursing a rueful face, and from time to time she stifled
a sob of pain or apprehension. I was just wondering whether it would
be a breach of waiting-room etiquette to attempt to administer comfort
or supply diversion, when the door opened and in came Lady Rorke. She
laughed delightfully when she saw me. “Hurrah! You’re another occupant of the condemned cell,” she said, “and
very soon we shall both be sent for to the scaffold. I can’t describe
to you what a coward I am about it. Why haven’t we got beaks like
birds?----”
Her glance fell on the forlorn little figure by the window, with the
rueful face and the wet eyes. “Why, here’s another of us,” she said. “And have they sent you to the
dentist’s all alone, my dear?”
“Y--yes.”
“How horrid of them!” said Lady Rorke. “They’ve sent me alone, too,
and I think it’s most unfeeling. But you shan’t be alone, anyhow, I’ll
come in with you, and sit by you, if you like that, and box the man’s
ears for him if he hurts you. Or shall you and I set on him, as soon
as we’ve got him by himself, and take out all his teeth one after the
other? Just to teach him to be a dentist.”
A faint smile began the break through the clouds. “Oh, will you come in with me?” she asked. “I shan’t mind nearly so
much, then. It’s--it’s got to come out, you know, and I mayn’t have
gas.”
Just the same gleam of a smile as I had seen on Lady Rorke’s face once
before quivered there now, a light not of pity, surely. “Ah, but it won’t ache any more after that,” she said, “and after all,
it is so soon over. You’ll just open your mouth as if you were going to
put the largest of all strawberries into it, and you’ll hold tight on
to my hand, and the dentist takes up something which you needn’t look
at----”
There was a want of tact in the vividness of this picture, and the
child began to sob again. “Oh, don’t, don’t!” she cried. Again the door opened, and she clung to Lady Rorke. “Oh, I know it’s for me!” she wailed. Lady Rorke bent over her, scanning her terrified face. “Come along, my dear,” she said, “and it will be over in no time. You’ll be back here again before this gentleman can count a hundred,
and he’ll have all his troubles in front of him still.”
Again this morning I tried to expunge from that picture, so trivial and
yet so vivid to me, the sinister something which seemed to connect it
with the incident about the thrush, and, leaving it, my mind strayed
on over other reminiscences of Lady Rorke. Before the season was over
I had got to know her well, and the better I knew her the more I
marvelled at that many-petalled vitality, which never ceased unfolding
itself. She entertained largely, and had that crowning gift of a good
hostess, namely, that she enjoyed her own parties quite enormously. She
was a very fine horsewoman, and after being up till dawn at some dance,
she would be in the Row by half-past eight on a peculiarly vicious mare
to whom she seemed to pay only the most cursory attention. She had a
good knowledge of music, she dressed amazingly, she was charming to her
meagre little husband, playing piquet with him by the hour (which was
the only thing, apart from herself, that he cared about), and if in
this modern democratic London there could be said to be a queen, there
is no doubt who that season would have worn the crown. Less publicly,
she was a great student of the psychical and occult, and I remembered
hearing that she was herself possessed of very remarkable mediumistic
gifts. But to me that was a matter of hearsay, for I never was present
at any séance of hers. Yet through the triumphant music of her pageant, there sounded, to
my ears at least, fragments of a very ugly tune. It was not only in
these two instances of its emergence that I heard it, it was chiefly
and most persistently audible in her treatment of Archie Rorke, her
husband’s cousin. Everyone knew, for none could help knowing, that
he was desperately in love with her, and it is impossible to imagine
that she alone was ignorant of it. It is, no doubt, the instinct
of many women to fan a passion which they do not share, and which
they have no intention of indulging, just as the male instinct is to
gratify a passion that he does not really feel, but there are limits
to mercilessness. She was not “cruel to be kind”; she was kind to be
demoniacally cruel. She had him always by her; she gave him those
little touches and comrade-like licences which meant nothing to her,
but crazed him with thirst; she held the glass close to his lips
and then tilted it up and showed it him empty. The more charitable
explanation was that she, perhaps, knew that her husband could not
live long, and that she intended to marry Archie, and such, so it
subsequently appeared, her intentions were. But when I saw her feeding
him with husks and putting an empty glass to his lips, nothing, to
my mind, could account for her treatment of him except a rapture of
cruelty at the sight of his aching. And somehow, awfully and aptly,
that seemed to fit in with the affair of the thrush, and the meeting
with the forlorn child in the dentist’s waiting-room. Yet ever, through
that gruesome twilight, there blazed forth her charm and her beauty and
the beam of her joyous vitality, and I would cudgel myself for my nasty
interpretations. It was early in the spring of next year that I was spending a week-end
with her and her husband at Lincote. She had suggested my coming down
on Saturday morning before the party assembled later in the day, and
at lunch I was alone with her husband and her. Sir Ernest was very
silent; he looked ill and haggard, and, in fact, hardly spoke a word
except when suddenly he turned to the butler and said, “Has anything
been heard of the child yet?” He was told that there was no news, and
subsided into silence again. I thought that some queer shadow as of
suspense or anxiety crossed Lady Rorke’s face at the question; but
on the answer, it cleared off again, and, as if to sweep the subject
wholly away, she asked me if I could tolerate a saunter with her
through the woods till her guests arrived. Out she came like some splendid Diana of the Forests, and like the
goddess’s was the swift, swinging pace of her saunter. Spring all round
was riotous in blossom and bird-song; it was just that ecstatic moment
of the year when the hounds of spring have run winter to death, and as
we gained the high ridge of down above the woods she stopped and threw
her arms wide. “Oh, the sense of spring!” she cried. “The daffodils, and the west
wind, and the shadows of the clouds. How I wish I could take the
whole lot into my arms and hug them. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Miracles are flowering every
moment now in the country, while the only miracle in London is the
mud. What sunshine, what air! Drink them in, for they are the one
divine medicine. One wants that medicine sometimes, for there are sad
things and terrible things all round us, pain and anguish, and decay. Yet I suppose that even those call out the splendour of fortitude
or endurance. Even when one looks on a struggle which one knows is
hopeless, it warms the heart to see it.”
The gleam that shone from her paled, her arms dropped, and she moved
on. Then, soft of voice and soft of eye, she spoke again. “Such a sad thing happened here two days ago,” she said. “A small
girl--now what was her name? Yes--Ellen Davenport--brought a note from
the village up to the house. I was out, so she left it, and started, it
is supposed, to go back home. She has not been seen since. Descriptions
of her were circulated in all the villages for miles round; but, as
you heard at lunch, there has been no news of her, and the copses and
coverts in the park have been searched, but with no result. And yet out
of that comes splendour. I went to see her mother yesterday, bowed down
with grief, but she won’t give up hope. ‘If it is God’s will,’ she said
to me, ‘we shall find my Ellen alive; and if we find her dead, it will
be God’s will, too.’”
She paused. “But I didn’t ask you down here to moan over tragedies,” she said. “I wanted you after all your weeks in town to come and have a
spring-cleaning. Doesn’t the wind take the dust out of you, like one of
those sucking-machines which you put on to carpets? And the sun! Make a
sponge of yourself and soak it up till you’re dripping with it.”
For a couple of miles, at the least, we kept along this high ridge of
down, and the larks were springing from the grass, vocal with song
uncongealed, as they aspired and sank again, dropping at last dumb
and spent with rapture. Then we descended steeply, through the woods
and glades of the park, past thickets of catkinned sallows, and of
willows with soft moleskin buttons, and in the hollows the daffodils
were dancing, and the herbs of the springtime were pushing up through
the brittle withered stuff of the winter. Then, passing along the one
street of the red-tiled village, in which my companion pointed me out
the house where the poor vanished girl had lived, we turned homewards
across the grass and joined the road again at the bottom of the great
lake that lies below the terraced gardens of the house. This lake was artificial, made a hundred years ago by the erection of a
huge dam across the dip of the valley, so that the stream which flowed
down it was thereby confined and must needs form this sheet of water
before it found outlet again through the sluices. At the centre the dam
is some twenty-five feet in height, and by the side of the road which
crosses it clumps of rhododendrons lean out over the deep water. The
margin on the side towards the lake is reinforced with concrete, now
mossy and overgrown with herbage, and the face of it, burrows down
to the level of the bottom of the dam through four fathoms of dusky
water. The lake was high and the overflow poured sonorously through the
sluices, and the sun in the west made broken rainbows in the foam of
its outpouring. As we paused there a moment, my companion seemed the incarnation of the
sights and sounds that went to the spell of the spring; singing larks
and dancing daffodils, west wind and rain-bowed foam and, no less, the
dark, deep water, were all distilled into her radiant vitality. “And now for the house again,” she said, going briskly up the steep
slope. “Is it inhospitable of me to wish that no one was coming except,
of course, our delightful Archie? A houseful brings London into the
country, and we shall talk scandal and stir up mud instead of watching
miracles.”
Another faint memory of her lingered somewhere in the dusk, and I
groped for it, as one gropes in slime for the roots of a water-plant,
and pulled it out. A notorious murderer had been guillotined that
morning in France, and in some Sunday paper next day there was a
brutal, brilliant, inexcusable little sketch of his being led out
between guards for the final scene at dawn outside the prison at
Versailles. And, as I wrote my name in Lady Rorke’s visitors’ book
on Monday morning, I spilt a blot of ink on the page and hastily
had recourse to the blotting-pad on her writing-table in order to
minimize the disfigurement. Inside it was this unpardonable picture,
cut out and put away, and I thought of the thrush and the dentist’s
waiting-room----
A month afterwards her husband died, after three weeks of intolerable
torment. The doctor insisted on his having two trained nurses, but
Lady Rorke never left him. She was present at the painful dressings
of the wound from the operation that only prolonged the misery of his
existence, and even slept on the sofa of the room where he lay. * * * * *
Archie Rorke arrived that evening. He let me know at once that he had
seen the announcement of Lady Rorke’s death, and said no more about
it till later, when he and I were left alone over the fire in the
smoking-room. He looked round to see that the door was shut behind the
last bedgoer of my little party, and then turned to me. “I’ve got to tell you something,” he said. “It’ll take half an hour, so
to-morrow will do if you want to be off.”
“But I don’t,” said I. He pulled himself together from his sprawling sunkenness in his chair. “Very well,” he said. “What I want to tell you is the story of the
breaking-off of my engagement with Sybil. I have often wanted to do so
before, but while she was alive, as you will presently see, I could
tell nobody. I shall ask you, when you know everything, whether you
think I could have done otherwise. And please do not interrupt me till
I have finished, unless there is something you don’t understand, for it
won’t be very easy to get through with it. But I think I can make it
intelligible.”
He was silent a moment, and I saw his face working and twitching. “I must tell somebody,” he said, “and I choose you, unless you mind it
awfully. But I simply can’t bear it alone any more.”
“Go on, then, old boy,” I said. “I’m glad you chose me, do you know. And I won’t interrupt.”
Archie spoke. “A week or two only before our marriage was to have taken place,” he
said, “I went down to Lincote for a couple of days. I had had the house
done up and re-decorated, and now the work was finished and I wanted to
see that all was in order. Nothing could be worthy of Sybil, but--well,
you can guess, more or less, what my feelings were. “For a week before there had been very heavy rains, and the lake--you
know it--below the garden was very high, higher than I had ever seen
it: the water poured over the road across the dam which leads to the
village. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Under the weight and press of it a great crack had appeared
in the concrete with which it is faced, and there was danger of the
dam being carried away. If that happened the whole lake would have
been suddenly released and no end of damage might have been done. It
was therefore necessary to draw off the water as fast as possible to
relieve the pressure and repair the crack. This was done by means of
big siphons. For two days we had them working, but the crack seemed
to extend right to the foundations of the dam, and before it could be
repaired all the water in the lake would have to be drawn off. I was
just leaving for town, when the foreman came up to the house to tell me
that they had found something there. In the ooze and mud at the base
of the dam, twenty-five feet below water-level, they had come upon the
body of a young girl.”
He gripped the arms of his chair tight. Little did he know that I was
horribly aware of what he was going to tell me next. “About a month before my cousin Ernest’s death,” he said, “a mysterious
affair happened in the village. A girl named Ellen Davenport had
disappeared. She came up one afternoon to the house with a note,
and was never seen again, dead or alive. Her disappearance was now
explained. A chain of beads round the neck and various fragments of
clothing established, beyond any doubt, the identity of what they had
found at the bottom of the lake. I waited for the inquest, telegraphing
to Sybil that business had detained me, and then returned to town, not
intending to tell her what that business was, for our marriage was
close at hand and it was not a topic one would choose. She was very
superstitious, you know, and I thought that it would shock her. That
she would feel it to be unlucky and ill-omened. So I said nothing to
her. “Sybil had extraordinary mediumistic powers. She did not often exercise
them and she never would give a séance to any one she did not know
extremely well, for she believed that people brought with them the
spiritual influences with which they were surrounded, and that there
was the possibility of very evil intelligences being set free. But she
had sat several times with me, and I had witnessed some very remarkable
manifestations. Her procedure was to put herself, by abstraction of
her mind, into a state of trance, and spirits of the dead who were
connected with the sitters could then communicate through her. On
one occasion my mother, whom she had never seen, and who died many
years ago, spoke through her and told me certain facts which Sybil
could not have known, and which I did not know. But an old friend of
my mother’s, still alive, told me that they were correct. They were
of an exceedingly private nature. Sybil also, so she told me, could
produce materialisations, but up till now I had never seen any. A
remarkable thing about her mediumship was that she would sometimes
regain consciousness from her trance while still these communications
were being made, and she knew what was going on. She could hear herself
speak and be mentally aware of what she was saying. On the occasion,
for instance, of which I have told you, when my mother spoke to me she
was in this state. The same thing occurred at the sitting of which I
shall now speak. “That night, on my return to London, she and I dined alone. I felt a
very strong desire, for which I could not account, that she should
hold a sitting--just herself and me--and she consented. We sat in her
room, with a shaded lamp, but there was sufficient illumination for me
to see her quite distinctly, for her face was towards the light. There
was a small table in front of us covered with a dark cloth. She sat
close to it, in a high chair, composed herself, and almost immediately
went into trance. Her head fell forward and by her slow breathing and
her absolute immobility I knew she was unconscious. For a long time
we sat there in silence, and I began to think that we should get no
manifestations at all, and that the sitting, as sometimes was the case,
would be a failure; but then I saw that something was happening.”
His hands, with which he gripped the arms of his chair, were trembling. Twice he tried to speak, but it was not till the third attempt that he
mastered himself. “There was forming a mist above the table,” he said. “It was slightly
luminous and it spread upwards, pillar-shaped, in height between
two and three feet. Then I saw that below the outlying skeins of it
something was materialising. It moulded itself into human shape, rising
waist-high from the table, and presently shoulders and arms and neck
and head were visible, and features began to outline themselves. For
some time it remained vague and fluid, swaying backwards and forwards a
little; then very quickly it solidified, and there, close in front of
me, was the half-figure of a young girl. The eyes were still closed,
but now they opened. Round her neck was a chain of beads just such as I
had seen laid by the body that had been found in the lake. And then I
spoke to her, asking her who she was, though I already knew. “Her answer was no more than a whisper, but quite distinct. “‘Ellen Davenport,’ she said. “A disordered terror seized me. Yet perhaps this little white figure,
with its wide-gazing eyes, was some hallucination, something that had
no objective existence at all. All day the thought of the poor kiddie
whose remains I had seen taken out of the ooze at the bottom of the
lake had been vivid in my mind, and I tried to think that what I saw
was no more than some strange projection of my thought. And yet I
felt it was not so; it was independent of myself. And why was it made
manifest, and on what errand had it come? I had pressed Sybil to give
me this séance, and God knows what I would have given not to have done
so! For one thing I was thankful, namely, that she was in unconscious
trance. Perhaps the phantom would fade again before she came out of it. “And then I heard a stir of movement from the chair where she sat, and,
turning, I saw that she had raised her head. Her eyes were open and on
her face such a mask of terror as I have never known human being could
wear. Recognition was there, too; I saw that Sybil knew who the phantom
was. “The figure that palely gleamed above the table turned its head towards
her, and once more the white lips opened. “‘Yes, I am Ellen Davenport,’ she said. “The whisper grew louder. “‘You might have saved me,’ she said, ‘or you might have tried to save
me; but you watched me struggling till I sank.’
“And then the apparition vanished. It did not die away; it was there
clear and distinct one moment, at the next it was gone. Sybil and I
were sitting alone in her room with the low-burning lamp, and the
silence sang in my ears. “I got up and turned on the switch that kindled the electric lights,
and knew that something within me had grown cold and that something
had snapped. She still sat where she was, not looking at me at all,
but blankly in front of her. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
She said no word of denial in answer to
the terrible accusation that had been uttered. And I think I was glad
of that, for there are times when it is not only futility to deny, but
blasphemy. For my part, I could neither look at her nor speak to her. I
remember holding out my hands to the empty grate, as if there had been
a fire burning there. And standing there I heard her rise, and drearily
wondered what she would say and knew how useless it would be. And then
I heard the whisper of her dress on the carpet and the noise of the
door opening and shutting, and when I turned I found that I was alone
in the room. Presently I let myself out of the house.”
There was a long pause, but I did not break it, for I felt he had not
quite finished. “I had loved her with my whole heart,” he said, “and she knew it. Perhaps that was why I never attempted to see her again and why she did
not attempt to see me. That little white figure would always have been
with us, for she could not deny the reality of it and the truth of that
which it had spoken. That’s my story, then. You needn’t even tell me if
you think I could have done differently, for I knew I couldn’t. And she
couldn’t.”
He rose. “I see there is to be an inquest,” he said. “I hope they will find
that she killed herself. It will mean, won’t it, that her remorse was
unbearable. And that’s atonement.”
He moved towards the door. “Inscrutable decrees,” he said. The Gardener
The Gardener
Two friends of mine, Hugh Grainger and his wife, had taken for a
month of Christmas holiday the house in which we were to witness such
strange manifestations, and when I received an invitation from them to
spend a fortnight there I returned them an enthusiastic affirmative. Well already did I know that pleasant heathery country-side, and most
intimate was my acquaintance with the subtle hazards of its most
charming golf-links. Golf, I was given to understand, was to occupy the
solid day for Hugh and me, so that Margaret should never be obliged to
set her hand to the implements with which the game, so detestable to
her, was conducted.... I arrived there while yet the daylight lingered, and as my hosts were
out, I took a ramble round the place. The house and garden stood on a
plateau facing south; below it were a couple of acres of pasture that
sloped down to a vagrant stream crossed by a foot-bridge, by the side
of which stood a thatched cottage with a vegetable patch surrounding
it. A path ran close past this across the pasture from a wicket-gate in
the garden, conducted you over the foot-bridge, and, so my remembered
sense of geography told me, must constitute a short cut to the links
that lay not half a mile beyond. The cottage itself was clearly on
the land of the little estate, and I at once supposed it to be the
gardener’s house. What went against so obvious and simple a theory was
that it appeared to be untenanted. No wreath of smoke, though the
evening was chilly, curled from its chimneys, and, coming closer, I
fancied it had that air of “waiting” about it which we so often conjure
into unused habitations. There it stood, with no sign of life whatever
about it, though ready, as its apparently perfect state of repair
seemed to warrant, for fresh tenants to put the breath of life into it
again. Its little garden, too, though the palings were neat and newly
painted, told the same tale; the beds were untended and unweeded, and
in the flower-border by the front door was a row of chrysanthemums,
which had withered on their stems. But all this was but the impression
of a moment, and I did not pause as I passed it, but crossed the
foot-bridge and went on up the heathery slope that lay beyond. My
geography was not at fault, for presently I saw the club-house just
in front of me. Hugh no doubt would be just about coming in from his
afternoon round, and so we would walk back together. On reaching the
club-house, however, the steward told me that not five minutes before
Mrs. Grainger had called in her car for her husband, and I therefore
retraced my steps by the path along which I had already come. But
I made a detour, as a golfer will, to walk up the fairway of the
seventeenth and eighteenth holes just for the pleasure of recognition,
and looked respectfully at the yawning sandpit which so inexorably
guards the eighteenth green, wondering in what circumstances I should
visit it next, whether with a step complacent and superior, knowing
that my ball reposed safely on the green beyond, or with the heavy
footfall of one who knows that laborious delving lies before him. The light of the winter evening had faded fast, and when I crossed
the foot-bridge on my return the dusk had gathered. To my right, just
beside the path, lay the cottage, the whitewashed walls of which
gleamed whitely in the gloaming; and as I turned my glance back from
it to the rather narrow plank which bridged the stream I thought I
caught out of the tail of my eye some light from one of its windows,
which thus disproved my theory that it was untenanted. But when I
looked directly at it again I saw that I was mistaken: some reflection
in the glass of the red lines of sunset in the west must have deceived
me, for in the inclement twilight it looked more desolate than ever. Yet I lingered by the wicket gate in its low palings, for though all
exterior evidence bore witness to its emptiness, some inexplicable
feeling assured me, quite irrationally, that this was not so, and that
there was somebody there. Certainly there was nobody visible, but, so
this absurd idea informed me, he might be at the back of the cottage
concealed from me by the intervening structure, and, still oddly, still
unreasonably, it became a matter of importance to my mind to ascertain
whether this was so or not, so clearly had my perceptions told me that
the place was empty, and so firmly had some conviction assured me
that it was tenanted. To cover my inquisitiveness, in case there was
someone there, I could inquire whether this path was a short cut to
the house at which I was staying, and, rather rebelling at what I was
doing, I went through the small garden, and rapped at the door. There
was no answer, and, after waiting for a response to a second summons,
and having tried the door and found it locked, I made the circuit of
the house. Of course there was no one there, and I told myself that I
was just like a man who looks under his bed for a burglar and would be
beyond measure astonished if he found one. My hosts were at the house when I arrived, and we spent a cheerful two
hours before dinner in such desultory and eager conversation as is
proper between friends who have not met for some time. Between Hugh
Grainger and his wife it is always impossible to light on a subject
which does not vividly interest one or other of them, and golf,
politics, the needs of Russia, cooking, ghosts, the possible victory
over Mount Everest, and the income tax were among the topics which we
passionately discussed. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
With all these plates spinning, it was easy
to whip up any one of them, and the subject of spooks generally was
lighted upon again and again. “Margaret is on the high road to madness,” remarked Hugh on one of
these occasions, “for she has begun using planchette. If you use
planchette for six months, I am told, most careful doctors will
conscientiously certify you as insane. She’s got five months more
before she goes to Bedlam.”
“Does it work?” I asked. “Yes, it says most interesting things,” said Margaret. “It says things
that never entered my head. We’ll try it to-night.”
“Oh, not to-night,” said Hugh. “Let’s have an evening off.”
Margaret disregarded this. “It’s no use asking planchette questions,” she went on, “because there
is in your mind some sort of answer to them. If I ask whether it will
be fine to-morrow, for instance, it is probably I--though indeed I
don’t mean to push--who makes the pencil say ‘yes.’”
“And then it usually rains,” remarked Hugh. “Not always: don’t interrupt. The interesting thing is to let the
pencil write what it chooses. Very often it only makes loops and
curves--though they may mean something--and every now and then a word
comes, of the significance of which I have no idea whatever, so I
clearly couldn’t have suggested it. Yesterday evening, for instance,
it wrote ‘gardener’ over and over again. Now what did that mean? The
gardener here is a Methodist with a chin-beard. Could it have meant
him? Oh, it’s time to dress. Please don’t be late, my cook is so
sensitive about soup.”
We rose, and some connection of ideas about “gardener” linked itself up
in my mind. “By the way, what’s that cottage in the field by the foot-bridge?” I
asked. “Is that the gardener’s cottage?”
“It used to be,” said Hugh. “But the chin-beard doesn’t live there: in
fact nobody lives there. It’s empty. If I was owner here, I should put
the chin-beard into it, and take the rent off his wages. Some people
have no idea of economy. Why did you ask?”
I saw Margaret was looking at me rather attentively. “Curiosity,” I said. “Idle curiosity.”
“I don’t believe it was,” said she. “But it was,” I said. “It was idle curiosity to know whether the
house was inhabited. As I passed it, going down to the club-house, I
felt sure it was empty, but coming back I felt so sure that there was
someone there that I rapped at the door, and indeed walked round it.”
Hugh had preceded us upstairs, as she lingered a little. “And there was no one there?” she asked. “It’s odd: I had just the same
feeling as you about it.”
“That explains planchette writing ‘gardener’ over and over again,” said
I. “You had the gardener’s cottage on your mind.”
“How ingenious!” said Margaret. “Hurry up and dress.”
A gleam of strong moonlight between my drawn curtains when I went up
to bed that night led me to look out. My room faced the garden and
the fields which I had traversed that afternoon, and all was vividly
illuminated by the full moon. The thatched cottage with its white walls
close by the stream was very distinct, and once more, I suppose, the
reflection of the light on the glass of one of its windows made it
appear that the room was lit within. It struck me as odd that twice
that day this illusion should have been presented to me, but now a yet
odder thing happened. Even as I looked the light was extinguished. The morning did not at all bear out the fine promise of the clear
night, for when I woke the wind was squealing, and sheets of rain from
the south-west were dashed against my panes. Golf was wholly out of the
question, and, though the violence of the storm abated a little in the
afternoon, the rain dripped with a steady sullenness. But I wearied
of indoors, and, since the two others entirely refused to set foot
outside, I went forth mackintoshed to get a breath of air. By way of
an object in my tramp, I took the road to the links in preference to
the muddy short cut through the fields, with the intention of engaging
a couple of caddies for Hugh and myself next morning, and lingered
awhile over illustrated papers in the smoking-room. I must have read
for longer than I knew, for a sudden beam of sunset light suddenly
illuminated my page, and looking up, I saw that the rain had ceased,
and that evening was fast coming on. So instead of taking the long
detour by the road again, I set forth homewards by the path across
the fields. That gleam of sunset was the last of the day, and once
again, just as twenty-four hours ago, I crossed the foot-bridge in the
gloaming. Till that moment, as far as I was aware, I had not thought
at all about the cottage there, but now in a flash the light I had
seen there last night, suddenly extinguished, recalled itself to my
mind, and at the same moment I felt that invincible conviction that
the cottage was tenanted. Simultaneously in these swift processes of
thought I looked towards it, and saw standing by the door the figure of
a man. In the dusk I could distinguish nothing of his face, if indeed
it was turned to me, and only got the impression of a tallish fellow,
thickly built. He opened the door, from which there came a dim light as
of a lamp, entered, and shut it after him. So then my conviction was right. Yet I had been distinctly told that
the cottage was empty: who, then, was he that entered as if returning
home? Once more, this time with a certain qualm of fear, I rapped on
the door, intending to put some trivial question; and rapped again,
this time more drastically, so that there could be no question that my
summons was unheard. But still I got no reply, and finally I tried the
handle of the door. It was locked. Then, with difficulty mastering an
increasing terror, I made the circuit of the cottage, peering into each
unshuttered window. All was dark within, though but two minutes ago I
had seen the gleam of light escape from the opened door. Just because some chain of conjecture was beginning to form itself in
my mind, I made no allusion to this odd adventure, and after dinner
Margaret, amid protests from Hugh, got out the planchette which had
persisted in writing “gardener.” My surmise was, of course, utterly
fantastic, but I wanted to convey no suggestion of any sort to
Margaret.... For a long time the pencil skated over her paper making
loops and curves and peaks like a temperature chart, and she had begun
to yawn and weary over her experiment before any coherent word emerged. And then, in the oddest way, her head nodded forward and she seemed to
have fallen asleep. Hugh looked up from his book and spoke in a whisper to me. “She fell asleep the other night over it,” he said. Margaret’s eyes were closed, and she breathed the long, quiet breaths
of slumber, and then her hand began to move with a curious firmness. Right across the big sheet of paper went a level line of writing, and
at the end her hand stopped with a jerk, and she woke. She looked at the paper. “Hullo,” she said. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
“Ah, one of you has been playing a trick on me!”
We assured her that this was not so, and she read what she had written. “Gardener, gardener,” it ran. “I am the gardener. I want to come in. I
can’t find her here.”
“O Lord, that gardener again!” said Hugh. Looking up from the paper, I saw Margaret’s eyes fixed on mine, and
even before she spoke I knew what her thought was. “Did you come home by the empty cottage?” she asked. “Yes: why?”
“Still empty?” she said in a low voice. “Or--or anything else?”
I did not want to tell her just what I had seen--or what, at any rate,
I thought I had seen. If there was going to be anything odd, anything
worth observation, it was far better that our respective impressions
should not fortify each other. “I tapped again, and there was no answer,” I said. Presently there was a move to bed: Margaret initiated it, and after she
had gone upstairs Hugh and I went to the front door to interrogate the
weather. Once more the moon shone in a clear sky, and we strolled out
along the flagged path that fronted the house. Suddenly Hugh turned
quickly and pointed to the angle of the house. “Who on earth is that?” he said. “Look! There! He has gone round the
corner.”
I had but the glimpse of a tallish man of heavy build. “Didn’t you see him?” asked Hugh. “I’ll just go round the house, and
find him; I don’t want anyone prowling round us at night. Wait here,
will you, and if he comes round the other corner ask him what his
business is.”
Hugh had left me, in our stroll, close by the front door which was
open, and there I waited until he should have made his circuit. He had
hardly disappeared when I heard, quite distinctly, a rather quick but
heavy footfall coming along the paved walk towards me from the opposite
direction. But there was absolutely no one to be seen who made this
sound of rapid walking. Closer and closer to me came the steps of the
invisible one, and then with a shudder of horror I felt somebody unseen
push by me as I stood on the threshold. That shudder was not merely of
the spirit, for the touch of him was that of ice on my hand. I tried to
seize this impalpable intruder, but he slipped from me, and next moment
I heard his steps on the parquet of the floor inside. Some door within
opened and shut, and I heard no more of him. Next moment Hugh came
running round the corner of the house from which the sound of steps had
approached. “But where is he?” he asked. “He was not twenty yards in front of me--a
big, tall fellow.”
“I saw nobody,” I said. “I heard his step along the walk, but there was
nothing to be seen.”
“And then?” asked Hugh. “Whatever it was seemed to brush by me, and go into the house,” said I. There had certainly been no sound of steps on the bare oak stairs, and
we searched room after room through the ground floor of the house. The
dining-room door and that of the smoking-room were locked, that into
the drawing-room was open, and the only other door which could have
furnished the impression of an opening and a shutting was that into the
kitchen and servants’ quarters. Here again our quest was fruitless;
through pantry and scullery and boot-room and servants’ hall we
searched, but all was empty and quiet. Finally we came to the kitchen,
which too was empty. But by the fire there was set a rocking-chair, and
this was oscillating to and fro as if someone, lately sitting there,
had just quitted it. There it stood gently rocking, and this seemed to
convey the sense of a presence, invisible now, more than even the sight
of him who surely had been sitting there could have done. I remember
wanting to steady it and stop it, and yet my hand refused to go forth
to it. What we had seen, and in especial what we had not seen, would have been
sufficient to furnish most people with a broken night, and assuredly I
was not among the strong-minded exceptions. Long I lay wide-eyed and
open-eared, and when at last I dozed I was plucked from the borderland
of sleep by the sound, muffled but unmistakable, of someone moving
about the house. It occurred to me that the steps might be those of
Hugh conducting a lonely exploration, but even while I wondered a tap
came at the door of communication between our rooms, and, in answer to
my response, it appeared that he had come to see whether it was I thus
uneasily wandering. Even as we spoke the step passed my door, and the
stairs leading to the floor above creaked to its ascent. Next moment
it sounded directly above our heads in some attics in the roof. “Those are not the servants’ bedrooms,” said Hugh. “No one sleeps
there. Let us look once more: it must be somebody.”
With lit candles we made our stealthy way upstairs, and just when we
were at the top of the flight, Hugh, a step ahead of me, uttered a
sharp exclamation. “But something is passing by me!” he said, and he clutched at the empty
air. Even as he spoke, I experienced the same sensation, and the moment
afterwards the stairs below us creaked again, as the unseen passed down. All night long that sound of steps moved about the passages, as if
someone was searching the house, and as I lay and listened that message
which had come through the pencil of the planchette to Margaret’s
fingers occurred to me. “I want to come in. I cannot find her here.”... Indeed someone had come in, and was sedulous in his search. He was the
gardener, it would seem. But what gardener was this invisible seeker,
and for whom did he seek? Even as when some bodily pain ceases it is difficult to recall with
any vividness what the pain was like, so next morning, as I dressed, I
found myself vainly trying to recapture the horror of the spirit which
had accompanied these nocturnal adventures. I remembered that something
within me had sickened as I watched the movements of the rocking-chair
the night before and as I heard the steps along the paved way outside,
and by that invisible pressure against me knew that someone had entered
the house. But now in the sane and tranquil morning, and all day
under the serene winter sun, I could not realise what it had been. The
presence, like the bodily pain, had to be there for the realisation of
it, and all day it was absent. Hugh felt the same; he was even disposed
to be humorous on the subject. “Well, he’s had a good look,” he said, “whoever he is, and whomever
he was looking for. By the way, not a word to Margaret, please. She
heard nothing of these perambulations, nor of the entry of--of whatever
it was. Not gardener, anyhow: who ever heard of a gardener spending
his time walking about the house? If there were steps all over the
potato-patch, I might have been with you.”
Margaret had arranged to drive over to have tea with some friends of
hers that afternoon, and in consequence Hugh and I refreshed ourselves
at the club-house after our game, and it was already dusk when for the
third day in succession I passed homewards by the whitewashed cottage. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
But to-night I had no sense of it being subtly occupied; it stood
mournfully desolate, as is the way of untenanted houses, and no light
nor semblance of such gleamed from its windows. Hugh, to whom I had
told the odd impressions I had received there, gave them a reception as
flippant as that which he had accorded to the memories of the night,
and he was still being humorous about them when we came to the door of
the house. “A psychic disturbance, old boy,” he said. “Like a cold in the head. Hullo, the door’s locked.”
He rang and rapped, and from inside came the noise of a turned key and
withdrawn bolts. “What’s the door locked for?” he asked his servant who opened it. The man shifted from one foot to the other. “The bell rang half an hour ago, sir,” he said, “and when I came to
answer it there was a man standing outside, and----”
“Well?” asked Hugh. “I didn’t like the looks of him, sir,” he said, “and I asked him his
business. He didn’t say anything, and then he must have gone pretty
smartly away, for I never saw him go.”
“Where did he seem to go?” asked Hugh, glancing at me. “I can’t rightly say, sir. He didn’t seem to go at all. Something
seemed to brush by me.”
“That’ll do,” said Hugh rather sharply. * * * * *
Margaret had not come in from her visit, but when soon after the crunch
of the motor wheels was heard Hugh reiterated his wish that nothing
should be said to her about the impression which now, apparently, a
third person shared with us. She came in with a flush of excitement on
her face. “Never laugh at my planchette again,” she said. “I’ve heard the most
extraordinary story from Maud Ashfield--horrible, but so frightfully
interesting.”
“Out with it,” said Hugh. “Well, there was a gardener here,” she said. “He used to live at that
little cottage by the foot-bridge, and when the family were up in
London he and his wife used to be caretakers and live here.”
Hugh’s glance and mine met: then he turned away. I knew, as certainly
as if I was in his mind, that his thoughts were identical with my own. “He married a wife much younger than himself,” continued Margaret, “and
gradually he became frightfully jealous of her. And one day in a fit
of passion he strangled her with his own hands. A little while after
someone came to the cottage, and found him sobbing over her, trying to
restore her. They went for the police, but before they came he had cut
his own throat. Isn’t it all horrible? But surely it’s rather curious
that the planchette said Gardener. ‘I am the gardener. I want to come
in. I can’t find her here.’ You see I knew nothing about it. I shall do
planchette again to-night. Oh dear me, the post goes in half an hour,
and I have a whole budget to send. But respect my planchette for the
future, Hughie.”
We talked the situation out when she had gone, but Hugh, unwillingly
convinced and yet unwilling to admit that something more than
coincidence lay behind that “planchette nonsense,” still insisted that
Margaret should be told nothing of what we had heard and seen in the
house last night, and of the strange visitor who again this evening, so
we must conclude, had made his entry. “She’ll be frightened,” he said, “and she’ll begin imagining things. As
for the planchette, as likely as not it will do nothing but scribble
and make loops. What’s that? Yes: come in!”
There had come from somewhere in the room one sharp, peremptory rap. I
did not think it came from the door, but Hugh, when no response replied
to his words of admittance, jumped up and opened it. He took a few
steps into the hall outside, and returned. “Didn’t you hear it?” he asked. “Certainly. No one there?”
“Not a soul.”
Hugh came back to the fireplace and rather irritably threw a cigarette
which he had just lit into the fender. “That was rather a nasty jar,” he observed; “and if you ask me whether
I feel comfortable, I can tell you I never felt less comfortable in my
life. I’m frightened, if you want to know, and I believe you are too.”
I hadn’t the smallest intention of denying this, and he went on. “We’ve got to keep a hand on ourselves,” he said. “There’s nothing so
infectious as fear, and Margaret mustn’t catch it from us. But there’s
something more than our fear, you know. Something has got into the
house and we’re up against it. I never believed in such things before. Let’s face it for a minute. _What_ is it anyhow?”
“If you want to know what I think it is,” said I, “I believe it to be
the spirit of the man who strangled his wife and then cut his throat. But I don’t see how it can hurt us. We’re afraid of our own fear
really.”
“But we’re up against it,” said Hugh. “And what will it do? Good
Lord, if I only knew what it would do I shouldn’t mind. It’s the not
knowing.... Well, it’s time to dress.”
* * * * *
Margaret was in her highest spirits at dinner. Knowing nothing of
the manifestations of that presence which had taken place in the
last twenty-four hours, she thought it absorbingly interesting that
her planchette should have “guessed” (so ran her phrase) about the
gardener, and from that topic she flitted to an equally interesting
form of patience for three which her friend had showed her, promising
to initiate us into it after dinner. This she did, and, not knowing
that we both above all things wanted to keep planchette at a distance,
she was delighted with the success of her game. But suddenly she
observed that the evening was burning rapidly away, and swept the cards
together at the conclusion of a hand. “Now just half an hour of planchette,” she said. “Oh, mayn’t we play one more hand?” asked Hugh. “It’s the best game
I’ve seen for years. Planchette will be dismally slow after this.”
“Darling, if the gardener will only communicate again, it won’t be
slow,” said she. “But it is such drivel,” said Hugh. “How rude you are! Read your book, then.”
Margaret had already got out her machine and a sheet of paper, when
Hugh rose. “Please don’t do it to-night, Margaret,” he said. “But why? You needn’t attend.”
“Well, I ask you not to, anyhow,” said he. Margaret looked at him closely. “Hughie, you’ve got something on your mind,” she said. “Out with it. I
believe you’re nervous. You think there is something queer about. What
is it?”
I could see Hugh hesitating as to whether to tell her or not, and I
gathered that he chose the chance of her planchette inanely scribbling. “Go on, then,” he said. Margaret hesitated: she clearly did not want to vex Hugh, but his
insistence must have seemed to her most unreasonable. “Well, just ten minutes,” she said, “and I promise not to think of
gardeners.”
She had hardly laid her hand on the board when her head fell forward,
and the machine began moving. I was sitting close to her, and as it
rolled steadily along the paper the writing became visible. “I have come in,” it ran, “but still I can’t find her. Are you hiding
her? | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
I will search the room where you are.”
What else was written but still concealed underneath the planchette I
did not know, for at that moment a current of icy air swept round the
room, and at the door, this time unmistakably, came a loud, peremptory
knock. Hugh sprang to his feet. “Margaret, wake up,” he said, “something is coming!”
The door opened, and there moved in the figure of a man. He stood just
within the door, his head bent forward, and he turned it from side to
side, peering, it would seem, with eyes staring and infinitely sad,
into every corner of the room. “Margaret, Margaret,” cried Hugh again. But Margaret’s eyes were open too; they were fixed on this dreadful
visitor. “Be quiet, Hughie,” she said below her breath, rising as she spoke. The
ghost was now looking directly at her. Once the lips above the thick,
rust-coloured beard moved, but no sound came forth, the mouth only
moved and slavered. He raised his head, and, horror upon horror, I saw
that one side of his neck was laid open in a red, glistening gash....
For how long that pause continued, when we all three stood stiff and
frozen in some deadly inhibition to move or speak, I have no idea: I
suppose that at the utmost it was a dozen seconds. Then the spectre
turned, and went out as it had come. We heard his steps pass along the
parqueted floor; there was the sound of bolts withdrawn from the front
door, and with a crash that shook the house it slammed to. “It’s all over,” said Margaret. “God have mercy on him!”
* * * * *
Now the reader may put precisely what construction he pleases on
this visitation from the dead. He need not, indeed, consider it to
have been a visitation from the dead at all, but say that there had
been impressed on the scene, where this murder and suicide happened,
some sort of emotional record, which in certain circumstances could
translate itself into images visible and invisible. Waves of ether,
or what not, may conceivably retain the impress of such scenes; they
may be held, so to speak, in solution, ready to be precipitated. Or he may hold that the spirit of the dead man indeed made itself
manifest, revisiting in some sort of spiritual penance and remorse
the place where his crime was committed. Naturally, no materialist
will entertain such an explanation for an instant, but then there is
no one so obstinately unreasonable as the materialist. Beyond doubt
a dreadful deed was done there, and Margaret’s last utterance is not
inapplicable. Mr. Tilly’s Séance
Mr. Tilly’s Séance
Mr. Tilly had only the briefest moment for reflection, when, as he
slipped and fell on the greasy wood pavement at Hyde Park Corner, which
he was crossing at a smart trot, he saw the huge traction-engine with
its grooved ponderous wheels towering high above him. “Oh, dear! oh, dear!” he said petulantly, “it will certainly crush me
quite flat, and I shan’t be able to be at Mrs. Cumberbatch’s séance! Most provoking! A-ow!”
The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the first half of his
horrid anticipations was thoroughly fulfilled. The heavy wheels passed
over him from head to foot and flattened him completely out. Then the
driver (too late) reversed his engine and passed over him again, and
finally lost his head, whistled loudly and stopped. The policeman on
duty at the corner turned quite faint at the sight of the catastrophe,
but presently recovered sufficiently to hold up the traffic, and ran to
see what on earth could be done. It was all so much “up” with Mr. Tilly
that the only thing possible was to get the hysterical engine-driver
to move clear. Then the ambulance from the hospital was sent for, and
Mr. Tilly’s remains, detached with great difficulty from the road (so
firmly had they been pressed into it), were reverently carried away
into the mortuary....
Mr. Tilly during this had experienced one moment’s excruciating pain,
resembling the severest neuralgia as his head was ground beneath the
wheel, but almost before he realised it, the pain was past, and he
found himself, still rather dazed, floating or standing (he did not
know which) in the middle of the road. There had been no break in
his consciousness; he perfectly recollected slipping, and wondered
how he had managed to save himself. He saw the arrested traffic, the
policeman with white wan face making suggestions to the gibbering
engine-driver, and he received the very puzzling impression that the
traction engine was all mixed up with him. He had a sensation of
red-hot coals and boiling water and rivets all around him, but yet no
feeling of scalding or burning or confinement. He was, on the contrary,
extremely comfortable, and had the most pleasant consciousness of
buoyancy and freedom. Then the engine puffed and the wheels went round,
and immediately, to his immense surprise, he perceived his own crushed
remains, flat as a biscuit, lying on the roadway. He identified them
for certain by his clothes, which he had put on for the first time that
morning, and one patent leather boot which had escaped demolition. “But what on earth has happened?” he said. “Here am I, and yet that
poor pressed flower of arms and legs is me--or rather I--also. And how
terribly upset the driver looks. Why, I do believe that I’ve been run
over! It did hurt for a moment, now I come to think of it.... My good
man, where are you shoving to? Don’t you see me?”
He addressed these two questions to the policeman, who appeared to walk
right through him. But the man took no notice, and calmly came out
on the other side: it was quite evident that he did not see him, or
apprehend him in any way. Mr. Tilly was still feeling rather at sea amid these unusual
occurrences, and there began to steal into his mind a glimpse of the
fact which was so obvious to the crowd which formed an interested but
respectful ring round his body. Men stood with bared heads; women
screamed and looked away and looked back again. “I really believe I’m dead,” said he. “That’s the only hypothesis which
will cover the facts. But I must feel more certain of it before I do
anything. Ah! Here they come with the ambulance to look at me. I must
be terribly hurt, and yet I don’t feel hurt. I should feel hurt surely
if I was hurt. I must be dead.”
Certainly it seemed the only thing for him to be, but he was far from
realising it yet. A lane had been made through the crowd for the
stretcher-bearers, and he found himself wincing when they began to
detach him from the road. “Oh, do take care!” he said. “That’s the sciatic nerve protruding there
surely, isn’t it? A-ow! No, it didn’t hurt after all. My new clothes,
too: I put them on to-day for the first time. What bad luck! Now you’re
holding my leg upside down. Of course all my money comes out of my
trouser pocket. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
And there’s my ticket for the séance; I must have that:
I may use it after all.”
He tweaked it out of the fingers of the man who had picked it up, and
laughed to see the expression of amazement on his face as the card
suddenly vanished. That gave him something fresh to think about, and
he pondered for a moment over some touch of association set up by it. “I have it,” he thought. “It is clear that the moment I came into
connection with that card, it became invisible. I’m invisible myself
(of course to the grosser sense), and everything I hold becomes
invisible. Most interesting! That accounts for the sudden appearances
of small objects at a séance. The spirit has been holding them, and as
long as he holds them they are invisible. Then he lets go, and there’s
the flower or the spirit-photograph on the table. It accounts, too, for
the sudden disappearances of such objects. The spirit has taken them,
though the scoffers say that the medium has secreted them about his
person. It is true that when searched he sometimes appears to have done
so; but, after all, that may be a joke on the part of the spirit. Now,
what am I to do with myself.... Let me see, there’s the clock. It’s
just half-past ten. All this has happened in a few minutes, for it was
a quarter past when I left my house. Half-past ten now: what does that
mean exactly? I used to know what it meant, but now it seems nonsense. Ten what? Hours, is it? What’s an hour?”
This was very puzzling. He felt that he used to know what an hour and a
minute meant, but the perception of that, naturally enough, had ceased
with his emergence from time and space into eternity. The conception
of time was like some memory which, refusing to record itself on the
consciousness, lies perdu in some dark corner of the brain, laughing at
the efforts of the owner to ferret it out. While he still interrogated
his mind over this lapsed perception, he found that space as well as
time, had similarly grown obsolete for him, for he caught sight of his
friend Miss Ida Soulsby, whom he knew was to be present at the séance
for which he was bound, hurrying with bird-like steps down the pavement
opposite. Forgetting for the moment that he was a disembodied spirit,
he made the effort of will which in his past human existence would have
set his legs in pursuit of her, and found that the effort of will alone
was enough to place him at her side. “My dear Miss Soulsby,” he said, “I was on my way to Mrs. Cumberbatch’s
house when I was knocked down and killed. It was far from unpleasant, a
moment’s headache----”
So far his natural volubility had carried him before he recollected
that he was invisible and inaudible to those still closed in by the
muddy vesture of decay, and stopped short. But though it was clear
that what he said was inaudible to Miss Soulsby’s rather large
intelligent-looking ears, it seemed that some consciousness of his
presence was conveyed to her finer sense, for she looked suddenly
startled, a flush rose to her face, and he heard her murmur, “Very odd. I wonder why I received so vivid an impression of dear Teddy.”
That gave Mr. Tilly a pleasant shock. He had long admired the lady,
and here she was alluding to him in her supposed privacy as “dear
Teddy.” That was followed by a momentary regret that he had been
killed: he would have liked to have been possessed of this information
before, and have pursued the primrose path of dalliance down which it
seemed to lead. (His intentions, of course, would, as always, have
been strictly honourable: the path of dalliance would have conducted
them both, if she consented, to the altar, where the primroses would
have been exchanged for orange blossom.) But his regret was quite
short-lived; though the altar seemed inaccessible, the primrose path
might still be open, for many of the spiritualistic circle in which he
lived were on most affectionate terms with their spiritual guides and
friends who, like himself, had passed over. From a human point of view
these innocent and even elevating flirtations had always seemed to him
rather bloodless; but now, looking on them from the far side, he saw
how charming they were, for they gave him the sense of still having
a place and an identity in the world he had just quitted. He pressed
Miss Ida’s hand (or rather put himself into the spiritual condition of
so doing), and could vaguely feel that it had some hint of warmth and
solidity about it. This was gratifying, for it showed that though he
had passed out of the material plane, he could still be in touch with
it. Still more gratifying was it to observe that a pleased and secret
smile overspread Miss Ida’s fine features as he gave this token of his
presence: perhaps she only smiled at her own thoughts, but in any case
it was he who had inspired them. Encouraged by this, he indulged in
a slightly more intimate token of affection, and permitted himself a
respectful salute, and saw that he had gone too far, for she said to
herself, “Hush, hush!” and quickened her pace, as if to leave these
amorous thoughts behind. He felt that he was beginning to adjust himself to the new conditions
in which he would now live, or, at any rate, was getting some sort
of inkling as to what they were. Time existed no more for him, nor
yet did space, since the wish to be at Miss Ida’s side had instantly
transported him there, and with a view to testing this further he
wished himself back in his flat. As swiftly as the change of scene in
a cinematograph show he found himself there, and perceived that the
news of his death must have reached his servants, for his cook and
parlour-maid with excited faces, were talking over the event. “Poor little gentleman,” said his cook. “It seems a shame it does. He
never hurt a fly, and to think of one of those great engines laying him
out flat. I hope they’ll take him to the cemetery from the hospital: I
never could bear a corpse in the house.”
The great strapping parlour-maid tossed her head. “Well, I’m not sure that it doesn’t serve him right,” she observed. “Always messing about with spirits he was, and the knockings and
concertinas was awful sometimes when I’ve been laying out supper in
the dining-room. Now perhaps he’ll come himself and visit the rest of
the loonies. But I’m sorry all the same. A less troublesome little
gentleman never stepped. Always pleasant, too, and wages paid to the
day.”
These regretful comments and encomiums were something of a shock to Mr.
Tilly. He had imagined that his excellent servants regarded him with a
respectful affection, as befitted some sort of demigod, and the rôle of
the poor little gentleman was not at all to his mind. This revelation
of their true estimate of him, although what they thought of him could
no longer have the smallest significance, irritated him profoundly. “I never heard such impertinence,” he said (so he thought) quite out
loud, and still intensely earth-bound, was astonished to see that
they had no perception whatever of his presence. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
He raised his voice,
replete with extreme irony, and addressed his cook. “You may reserve your criticism on my character for your saucepans,” he
said. “They will no doubt appreciate them. As regards the arrangements
for my funeral, I have already provided for them in my will, and do not
propose to consult your convenience. At present----”
“Lor’!” said Mrs. Inglis, “I declare I can almost hear his voice, poor
little fellow. Husky it was, as if he would do better by clearing his
throat. I suppose I’d best be making a black bow to my cap. His lawyers
and what not will be here presently.”
Mr. Tilly had no sympathy with this suggestion. He was immensely
conscious of being quite alive, and the idea of his servants behaving
as if he were dead, especially after the way in which they had spoken
about him, was very vexing. He wanted to give them some striking
evidence of his presence and his activity, and he banged his hand
angrily on the dining-room table, from which the breakfast equipage
had not yet been cleared. Three tremendous blows he gave it, and was
rejoiced to see that his parlour-maid looked startled. Mrs. Inglis’s
face remained perfectly placid. “Why, if I didn’t hear a sort of rapping sound,” said Miss Talton. “Where did it come from?”
“Nonsense! You’ve the jumps, dear,” said Mrs. Inglis, picking up a
remaining rasher of bacon on a fork, and putting it into her capacious
mouth. Mr. Tilly was delighted at making any impression at all on either of
these impercipient females. “Talton!” he called at the top of his voice. “Why, what’s that?” said Talton. “Almost hear his voice, do you say,
Mrs. Inglis? I declare I did hear his voice then.”
“A pack o’ nonsense, dear,” said Mrs. Inglis placidly. “That’s a prime
bit of bacon, and there’s a good cut of it left. Why, you’re all of a
tremble! It’s your imagination.”
Suddenly it struck Mr. Tilly that he might be employing himself much
better than, with such extreme exertion, managing to convey so slight
a hint of his presence to his parlour-maid, and that the séance at
the house of the medium, Mrs. Cumberbatch, would afford him much
easier opportunities of getting through to the earth-plane again. He
gave a couple more thumps to the table and, wishing himself at Mrs.
Cumberbatch’s, nearly a mile away, scarcely heard the faint scream
of Talton at the sound of his blows before he found himself in West
Norfolk Street. He knew the house well, and went straight to the drawing-room, which
was the scene of the séances he had so often and so eagerly attended. Mrs. Cumberbatch, who had a long spoon-shaped face, had already pulled
down the blinds, leaving the room in total darkness except for the
glimmer of the night-light which, under a shade of ruby-glass, stood
on the chimney-piece in front of the coloured photograph of Cardinal
Newman. Round the table were seated Miss Ida Soulsby, Mr. and Mrs.
Meriott (who paid their guineas at least twice a week in order to
consult their spiritual guide Abibel and received mysterious advice
about their indigestion and investments), and Sir John Plaice, who was
much interested in learning the details of his previous incarnation
as a Chaldean priest, completed the circle. His guide, who revealed
to him his sacerdotal career, was playfully called Mespot. Naturally
many other spirits visited them, for Miss Soulsby had no less than
three guides in her spiritual household, Sapphire, Semiramis, and Sweet
William, while Napoleon and Plato were not infrequent guests. Cardinal
Newman, too, was a great favourite, and they encouraged his presence
by the singing in unison of “Lead, kindly Light”: he could hardly ever
resist that....
Mr. Tilly observed with pleasure that there was a vacant seat by the
table which no doubt had been placed there for him. As he entered, Mrs.
Cumberbatch peered at her watch. “Eleven o’clock already,” she said, “and Mr. Tilly is not here yet. I
wonder what can have kept him. What shall we do, dear friends? Abibel
gets very impatient sometimes if we keep him waiting.”
Mr. and Mrs. Meriott were getting impatient too, for he terribly wanted
to ask about Mexican oils, and she had a very vexing heartburn. “And Mespot doesn’t like waiting either,” said Sir John, jealous for
the prestige of his protector, “not to mention Sweet William.”
Miss Soulsby gave a little silvery laugh. “Oh, but my Sweet William’s so good and kind,” she said; “besides, I
have a feeling, quite a psychic feeling, Mrs. Cumberbatch, that Mr.
Tilly is very close.”
“So I am,” said Mr. Tilly. “Indeed, as I walked here,” continued Miss Soulsby, “I felt that Mr.
Tilly was somewhere quite close to me. Dear me, what’s that?”
Mr. Tilly was so delighted at being sensed, that he could not resist
giving a tremendous rap on the table, in a sort of pleased applause. Mrs. Cumberbatch heard it too. “I’m sure that’s Abibel come to tell us that he is ready,” she said. “I
know Abibel’s knock. A little patience, Abibel. Let’s give Mr. Tilly
three minutes more and then begin. Perhaps, if we put up the blinds,
Abibel will understand we haven’t begun.”
This was done, and Miss Soulsby glided to the window, in order
to make known Mr. Tilly’s approach, for he always came along the
opposite pavement and crossed over by the little island in the river
of traffic. There was evidently some lately published news, for the
readers of early editions were busy, and she caught sight of one of
the advertisement-boards bearing in large letters the announcement
of a terrible accident at Hyde Park Corner. She drew in her breath
with a hissing sound and turned away, unwilling to have her psychic
tranquillity upset by the intrusion of painful incidents. But Mr.
Tilly, who had followed her to the window and saw what she had seen,
could hardly restrain a spiritual whoop of exultation. “Why, it’s all about me!” he said. “Such large letters, too. Very
gratifying. Subsequent editions will no doubt contain my name.”
He gave another loud rap to call attention to himself, and Mrs.
Cumberbatch, sitting down in her antique chair which had once belonged
to Madame Blavatsky, again heard. “Well, if that isn’t Abibel again,” she said. “Be quiet, naughty. Perhaps we had better begin.”
She recited the usual invocation to guides and angels, and leaned
back in her chair. Presently she began to twitch and mutter, and
shortly afterwards with several loud snorts, relapsed into cataleptic
immobility. There she lay, stiff as a poker, a port of call, so to
speak, for any voyaging intelligence. With pleased anticipation Mr.
Tilly awaited their coming. How gratifying if Napoleon, with whom he
had so often talked, recognised him and said, “Pleased to see you, Mr.
Tilly. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
I perceive you have joined us....” The room was dark except for
the ruby-shaded lamp in front of Cardinal Newman, but to Mr. Tilly’s
emancipated perceptions the withdrawal of mere material light made no
difference, and he idly wondered why it was generally supposed that
disembodied spirits like himself produced their most powerful effects
in the dark. He could not imagine the reason for that, and, what
puzzled him still more, there was not to his spiritual perception any
sign of those colleagues of his (for so he might now call them) who
usually attended Mrs. Cumberbatch’s séances in such gratifying numbers. Though she had been moaning and muttering a long time now, Mr. Tilly
was in no way conscious of the presence of Abibel and Sweet William
and Sapphire and Napoleon. “They ought to be here by now,” he said to
himself. But while he still wondered at their absence, he saw to his amazed
disgust that the medium’s hand, now covered with a black glove, and
thus invisible to ordinary human vision in the darkness, was groping
about the table and clearly searching for the megaphone-trumpet which
lay there. He found that he could read her mind with the same ease,
though far less satisfaction, as he had read Miss Ida’s half an hour
ago, and knew that she was intending to apply the trumpet to her own
mouth and pretend to be Abibel or Semiramis or somebody, whereas she
affirmed that she never touched the trumpet herself. Much shocked at
this, he snatched up the trumpet himself, and observed that she was not
in trance at all, for she opened her sharp black eyes, which always
reminded him of buttons covered with American cloth, and gave a great
gasp. “Why, Mr. Tilly!” she said. “On the spiritual plane too!”
The rest of the circle was now singing “Lead, kindly Light” in order to
encourage Cardinal Newman, and this conversation was conducted under
cover of the hoarse crooning voices. But Mr. Tilly had the feeling that
though Mrs. Cumberbatch saw and heard him as clearly as he saw her, he
was quite imperceptible to the others. “Yes, I’ve been killed,” he said, “and I want to get into touch with
the material world. That’s why I came here. But I want to get into
touch with other spirits too, and surely Abibel or Mespot ought to be
here by this time.”
He received no answer, and her eyes fell before his like those of a
detected charlatan. A terrible suspicion invaded his mind. “What? Are you a fraud, Mrs. Cumberbatch?” he asked. “Oh, for shame! Think of all the guineas I have paid you.”
“You shall have them all back,” said Mrs. Cumberbatch. “But don’t tell
of me.”
She began to whimper, and he remembered that she often made that sort
of sniffling noise when Abibel was taking possession of her. “That usually means that Abibel is coming,” he said, with withering
sarcasm. “Come along, Abibel: we’re waiting.”
“Give me the trumpet,” whispered the miserable medium. “Oh, please give
me the trumpet!”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Tilly indignantly. “I would
sooner use it myself.”
She gave a sob of relief. “Oh do, Mr. Tilly!” she said. “What a wonderful idea! It will be
most interesting to everybody to hear you talk just after you’ve been
killed and before they know. It would be the making of me! And I’m
not a fraud, at least not altogether. I do have spiritual perceptions
sometimes; spirits do communicate through me. And when they won’t come
through it’s a dreadful temptation to a poor woman to--to supplement
them by human agency. And how could I be seeing and hearing you now,
and be able to talk to you--so pleasantly, I’m sure--if I hadn’t
super-normal powers? You’ve been killed, so you assure me, and yet I
can see and hear you quite plainly. Where did it happen, may I ask, if
it’s not a painful subject?”
“Hyde Park Corner, half an hour ago,” said Mr. Tilly. “No, it only hurt
for a moment, thanks. But about your other suggestion----”
While the third verse of “Lead, kindly Light” was going on, Mr. Tilly
applied his mind to this difficult situation. It was quite true that
if Mrs. Cumberbatch had no power of communication with the unseen
she could not possibly have seen him. But she evidently had, and had
heard him too, for their conversation had certainly been conducted
on the spirit-plane, with perfect lucidity. Naturally, now that he
was a genuine spirit, he did not want to be mixed up in fraudulent
mediumship, for he felt that such a thing would seriously compromise
him on the other side, where, probably, it was widely known that Mrs.
Cumberbatch was a person to be avoided. But, on the other hand, having
so soon found a medium through whom he could communicate with his
friends, it was hard to take a high moral view, and say that he would
have nothing whatever to do with her. “I don’t know if I trust you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have a moment’s
peace if I thought that you would be sending all sorts of bogus
messages from me to the circle, which I wasn’t responsible for at all. You’ve done it with Abibel and Mespot. How can I know that when I don’t
choose to communicate through you, you won’t make up all sorts of
piffle on your own account?”
She positively squirmed in her chair. “Oh, I’ll turn over a new leaf,” she said. “I will leave all that sort
of thing behind me. And I am a medium. Look at me! Aren’t I more real
to you than any of the others? Don’t I belong to your plane in a way
that none of the others do? I may be occasionally fraudulent, and I can
no more get Napoleon here than I can fly, but I’m genuine as well. Oh,
Mr. Tilly, be indulgent to us poor human creatures! It isn’t so long
since you were one of us yourself.”
The mention of Napoleon, with the information that Mrs. Cumberbatch had
never been controlled by that great creature, wounded Mr. Tilly again. Often in this darkened room he had held long colloquies with him, and
Napoleon had given him most interesting details of his life on St.
Helena, which, so Mr. Tilly had found, were often borne out by Lord
Rosebery’s pleasant volume _The Last Phase_. But now the whole thing
wore a more sinister aspect, and suspicion as solid as certainty bumped
against his mind. “Confess!” he said. “Where did you get all that Napoleon talk from? You
told us you had never read Lord Rosebery’s book, and allowed us to look
through your library to see that it wasn’t there. Be honest for once,
Mrs. Cumberbatch.”
She suppressed a sob. “I will,” she said. “The book was there all the time. I put it into
an old cover called ‘Elegant Extracts....’ But I’m not wholly a fraud. We’re talking together, you a spirit and I a mortal female. They can’t
hear us talk. But only look at me, and you’ll see.... You can talk to
them through me, if you’ll only be so kind. I don’t often get in touch
with a genuine spirit like yourself.”
Mr. Tilly glanced at the other sitters and then back to the medium,
who, to keep the others interested, was making weird gurgling noises
like an undervitalised siphon. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Certainly she was far clearer to him
than were the others, and her argument that she was able to see and
hear him had great weight. And then a new and curious perception came
to him. Her mind seemed spread out before him like a pool of slightly
muddy water, and he figured himself as standing on a header-board
above it, perfectly able, if he chose, to immerse himself in it. The
objection to so doing was its muddiness, its materiality; the reason
for so doing was that he felt that then he would be able to be heard by
the others, possibly to be seen by them, certainly to come into touch
with them. As it was, the loudest bangs on the table were only faintly
perceptible. “I’m beginning to understand,” he said. “Oh, Mr. Tilly! Just jump in like a kind good spirit,” she said. “Make
your own test-conditions. Put your hand over my mouth to make sure that
I’m not speaking, and keep hold of the trumpet.”
“And you’ll promise not to cheat any more?” he asked. “Never!”
He made up his mind. “All right then,” he said, and, so to speak, dived into her mind. He experienced the oddest sensation. It was like passing out of some
fine, sunny air into the stuffiest of unventilated rooms. Space and
time closed over him again: his head swam, his eyes were heavy. Then,
with the trumpet in one hand, he laid the other firmly over her mouth. Looking round, he saw that the room seemed almost completely dark, but
that the outline of the figures sitting round the table had vastly
gained in solidity. “Here I am!” he said briskly. Miss Soulsby gave a startled exclamation. “That’s Mr. Tilly’s voice!” she whispered. “Why, of course it is,” said Mr. Tilly. “I’ve just passed over at Hyde
Park Corner under a traction engine....”
He felt the dead weight of the medium’s mind, her conventional
conceptions, her mild, unreal piety pressing in on him from all sides,
stifling and confusing him. Whatever he said had to pass through muddy
water....
“There’s a wonderful feeling of joy and lightness,” he said. “I can’t
tell you of the sunshine and happiness. We’re all very busy and active,
helping others. And it’s such a pleasure, dear friends, to be able to
get into touch with you all again. Death is not death: it is the gate
of life....”
He broke off suddenly. “Oh, I can’t stand this,” he said to the medium. “You make me talk such
twaddle. Do get your stupid mind out of the way. Can’t we do anything
in which you won’t interfere with me so much?”
“Can you give us some spirit lights round the room?” suggested Mrs.
Cumberbatch in a sleepy voice. “You have come through beautifully, Mr.
Tilly. It’s too dear of you!”
“You’re sure you haven’t arranged some phosphorescent patches already?”
asked Mr. Tilly suspiciously. “Yes, there are one or two near the chimney-piece,” said Mrs.
Cumberbatch, “but none anywhere else. Dear Mr. Tilly, I swear there are
not. Just give us a nice star with long rays on the ceiling!”
Mr. Tilly was the most good-natured of men, always willing to help
an unattractive female in distress, and whispering to her, “I shall
require the phosphorescent patches to be given into my hands after the
séance,” he proceeded, by the mere effort of his imagination, to light
a beautiful big star with red and violet rays on the ceiling. Of course
it was not nearly as brilliant as his own conception of it, for its
light had to pass through the opacity of the medium’s mind, but it was
still a most striking object, and elicited gasps of applause from the
company. To enhance the effect of it he intoned a few very pretty lines
about a star by Adelaide Anne Procter, whose poems had always seemed to
him to emanate from the topmost peak of Parnassus. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Tilly!” whispered the medium. “It was lovely! Would
a photograph of it be permitted on some future occasion, if you would
be so kind as to reproduce it again?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Tilly irritably. “I want to get out. I’m
very hot and uncomfortable. And it’s all so cheap.”
“Cheap?” ejaculated Mrs. Cumberbatch. “Why, there’s not a medium in
London whose future wouldn’t be made by a real genuine star like that,
say, twice a week.”
“But I wasn’t run over in order that I might make the fortune of
mediums,” said Mr. Tilly. “I want to go: it’s all rather degrading. And I want to see something of my new world. I don’t know what it’s
like yet.”
“Oh, but, Mr. Tilly,” said she. “You told us lovely things about it,
how busy and happy you were.”
“No, I didn’t. It was you who said that, at least it was you who put it
into my head.”
Even as he wished, he found himself emerging from the dull waters of
Mrs. Cumberbatch’s mind. “There’s the whole new world waiting for me,” he said. “I must go and
see it. I’ll come back and tell you, for it must be full of marvellous
revelations....”
Suddenly he felt the hopelessness of it. There was that thick fluid
of materiality to pierce, and, as it dripped off him again, he began
to see that nothing of that fine rare quality of life which he had
just begun to experience, could penetrate these opacities. That was
why, perhaps, all that thus came across from the spirit-world, was so
stupid, so banal. They, of whom he now was one, could tap on furniture,
could light stars, could abound with commonplace, could read as in a
book the mind of medium or sitters, but nothing more. They had to pass
into the region of gross perceptions, in order to be seen of blind eyes
and be heard of deaf ears. Mrs. Cumberbatch stirred. “The power is failing,” she said, in a deep voice, which Mr. Tilly felt
was meant to imitate his own. “I must leave you now, dear friends----”
He felt much exasperated. “The power isn’t failing,” he shouted. “It wasn’t I who said that.”
But he had emerged too far, and perceived that nobody except the medium
heard him. “Oh, don’t be vexed, Mr. Tilly,” she said. “That’s only a formula. But
you’re leaving us very soon. Not time for just one materialisation? They are more convincing than anything to most inquirers.”
“Not one,” said he. “You don’t understand how stifling it is even to
speak through you and make stars. But I’ll come back as soon as I find
there’s anything new that I can get through to you. What’s the use of
my repeating all that stale stuff about being busy and happy? They’ve
been told that often enough already. Besides, I have got to see if it’s
true. Good-bye: don’t cheat any more.”
He dropped his card of admittance to the séance on the table and heard
murmurs of excitement as he floated off. * * * * *
The news of the wonderful star, and the presence of Mr. Tilly at
the séance within half an hour of his death, which at the time was
unknown to any of the sitters, spread swiftly through spiritualistic
circles. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
The Psychical Research Society sent investigators to take
independent evidence from all those present, but were inclined to
attribute the occurrence to a subtle mixture of thought-transference
and unconscious visual impression, when they heard that Miss Soulsby
had, a few minutes previously, seen a news-board in the street outside
recording the accident at Hyde Park Corner. This explanation was rather
elaborate, for it postulated that Miss Soulsby, thinking of Mr. Tilly’s
non-arrival, had combined that with the accident at Hyde Park Corner,
and had probably (though unconsciously) seen the name of the victim on
another news-board and had transferred the whole by telepathy to the
mind of the medium. As for the star on the ceiling, though they could
not account for it, they certainly found remains of phosphorescent
paint on the panels of the wall above the chimney-piece, and came
to the conclusion that the star had been produced by some similar
contrivance. So they rejected the whole thing, which was a pity, since,
for once, the phenomena were absolutely genuine. Miss Soulsby continued to be a constant attendant at Mrs. Cumberbatch’s
séance, but never experienced the presence of Mr. Tilly again. On
that the reader may put any interpretation he pleases. It looks to me
somewhat as if he had found something else to do. Mrs. Amworth
Mrs. Amworth
The village of Maxley, where, last summer and autumn, these strange
events took place, lies on a heathery and pine-clad upland of Sussex. In all England you could not find a sweeter and saner situation. Should the wind blow from the south, it comes laden with the spices
of the sea; to the east high downs protect it from the inclemencies
of March; and from the west and north the breezes which reach it
travel over miles of aromatic forest and heather. The village itself
is insignificant enough in point of population, but rich in amenities
and beauty. Half-way down the single street, with its broad road and
spacious areas of grass on each side, stands the little Norman Church
and the antique graveyard long disused: for the rest there are a
dozen small, sedate Georgian houses, red-bricked and long-windowed,
each with a square of flower-garden in front, and an ampler strip
behind; a score of shops, and a couple of score of thatched cottages
belonging to labourers on neighbouring estates, complete the entire
cluster of its peaceful habitations. The general peace, however, is
sadly broken on Saturdays and Sundays, for we lie on one of the main
roads between London and Brighton and our quiet street becomes a
race-course for flying motor-cars and bicycles. A notice just outside
the village begging them to go slowly only seems to encourage them to
accelerate their speed, for the road lies open and straight, and there
is really no reason why they should do otherwise. By way of protest,
therefore, the ladies of Maxley cover their noses and mouths with
their handkerchiefs as they see a motor-car approaching, though, as
the street is asphalted, they need not really take these precautions
against dust. But late on Sunday night the horde of scorchers has
passed, and we settle down again to five days of cheerful and leisurely
seclusion. Railway strikes which agitate the country so much leave us
undisturbed because most of the inhabitants of Maxley never leave it at
all. I am the fortunate possessor of one of these small Georgian houses,
and consider myself no less fortunate in having so interesting and
stimulating a neighbour as Francis Urcombe, who, the most confirmed
of Maxleyites, has not slept away from his house, which stands just
opposite to mine in the village street, for nearly two years, at which
date, though still in middle life, he resigned his Physiological
Professorship at Cambridge University and devoted himself to the study
of those occult and curious phenomena which seem equally to concern the
physical and the psychical sides of human nature. Indeed his retirement
was not unconnected with his passion for the strange uncharted places
that lie on the confines and borders of science, the existence of
which is so stoutly denied by the more materialistic minds, for he
advocated that all medical students should be obliged to pass some sort
of examination in mesmerism, and that one of the tripos papers should
be designed to test their knowledge in such subjects as appearances
at time of death, haunted houses, vampirism, automatic writing, and
possession. “Of course they wouldn’t listen to me,” ran his account of the matter,
“for there is nothing that these seats of learning are so frightened
of as knowledge, and the road to knowledge lies in the study of things
like these. The functions of the human frame are, broadly speaking,
known. They are a country, anyhow, that has been charted and mapped
out. But outside that lie huge tracts of undiscovered country, which
certainly exist, and the real pioneers of knowledge are those who, at
the cost of being derided as credulous and superstitious, want to push
on into those misty and probably perilous places. I felt that I could
be of more use by setting out without compass or knapsack into the
mists than by sitting in a cage like a canary and chirping about what
was known. Besides, teaching is very bad for a man who knows himself
only to be a learner: you only need to be a self-conceited ass to
teach.”
Here, then, in Francis Urcombe, was a delightful neighbour to one
who, like myself, has an uneasy and burning curiosity about what he
called the “misty and perilous places”; and this last spring we had a
further and most welcome addition to our pleasant little community,
in the person of Mrs. Amworth, widow of an Indian civil servant. Her husband had been a judge in the North-West Provinces, and after
his death at Peshawar she came back to England, and after a year in
London found herself starving for the ampler air and sunshine of the
country to take the place of the fogs and griminess of town. She had,
too, a special reason for settling in Maxley, since her ancestors up
till a hundred years ago had long been native to the place, and in
the old church-yard, now disused, are many grave-stones bearing her
maiden name of Chaston. Big and energetic, her vigorous and genial
personality speedily woke Maxley up to a higher degree of sociality
than it had ever known. Most of us were bachelors or spinsters or
elderly folk not much inclined to exert ourselves in the expense and
effort of hospitality, and hitherto the gaiety of a small tea-party,
with bridge afterwards and goloshes (when it was wet) to trip home in
again for a solitary dinner, was about the climax of our festivities. But Mrs. Amworth showed us a more gregarious way, and set an example
of luncheon-parties and little dinners, which we began to follow. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
On
other nights when no such hospitality was on foot, a lone man like
myself found it pleasant to know that a call on the telephone to Mrs.
Amworth’s house not a hundred yards off, and an inquiry as to whether
I might come over after dinner for a game of piquet before bed-time,
would probably evoke a response of welcome. There she would be, with a
comrade-like eagerness for companionship, and there was a glass of port
and a cup of coffee and a cigarette and a game of piquet. She played
the piano, too, in a free and exuberant manner, and had a charming
voice and sang to her own accompaniment; and as the days grew long
and the light lingered late, we played our game in her garden, which
in the course of a few months she had turned from being a nursery for
slugs and snails into a glowing patch of luxuriant blossoming. She
was always cheery and jolly; she was interested in everything, and in
music, in gardening, in games of all sorts was a competent performer. Everybody (with one exception) liked her, everybody felt her to bring
with her the tonic of a sunny day. That one exception was Francis
Urcombe; he, though he confessed he did not like her, acknowledged that
he was vastly interested in her. This always seemed strange to me, for
pleasant and jovial as she was, I could see nothing in her that could
call forth conjecture or intrigued surmise, so healthy and unmysterious
a figure did she present. But of the genuineness of Urcombe’s interest
there could be no doubt; one could see him watching and scrutinising
her. In matter of age, she frankly volunteered the information that she
was forty-five; but her briskness, her activity, her unravaged skin,
her coal-black hair, made it difficult to believe that she was not
adopting an unusual device, and adding ten years on to her age instead
of subtracting them. Often, also, as our quite unsentimental friendship ripened, Mrs.
Amworth would ring me up and propose her advent. If I was busy writing,
I was to give her, so we definitely bargained, a frank negative, and
in answer I could hear her jolly laugh and her wishes for a successful
evening of work. Sometimes, before her proposal arrived, Urcombe would
already have stepped across from his house opposite for a smoke and a
chat, and he, hearing who my intending visitor was, always urged me
to beg her to come. She and I should play our piquet, said he, and
he would look on, if we did not object, and learn something of the
game. But I doubt whether he paid much attention to it, for nothing
could be clearer than that, under that penthouse of forehead and thick
eyebrows, his attention was fixed not on the cards, but on one of the
players. But he seemed to enjoy an hour spent thus, and often, until
one particular evening in July, he would watch her with the air of a
man who has some deep problem in front of him. She, enthusiastically
keen about our game, seemed not to notice his scrutiny. Then came that
evening, when, as I see in the light of subsequent events, began the
first twitching of the veil that hid the secret horror from my eyes. I
did not know it then, though I noticed that thereafter, if she rang up
to propose coming round, she always asked not only if I was at leisure,
but whether Mr. Urcombe was with me. If so, she said, she would not
spoil the chat of two old bachelors, and laughingly wished me good
night. Urcombe, on this occasion, had been with me for some half-hour
before Mrs. Amworth’s appearance, and had been talking to me about
the mediæval beliefs concerning vampirism, one of those borderland
subjects which he declared had not been sufficiently studied before
it had been consigned by the medical profession to the dust-heap of
exploded superstitions. There he sat, grim and eager, tracing, with
that pellucid clearness which had made him in his Cambridge days so
admirable a lecturer, the history of those mysterious visitations. In
them all there were the same general features: one of those ghoulish
spirits took up its abode in a living man or woman, conferring
supernatural powers of bat-like flight and glutting itself with
nocturnal blood-feasts. When its host died it continued to dwell in the
corpse, which remained undecayed. By day it rested, by night it left
the grave and went on its awful errands. No European country in the
Middle Ages seemed to have escaped them; earlier yet, parallels were to
be found, in Roman and Greek and in Jewish history. “It’s a large order to set all that evidence aside as being moonshine,”
he said. “Hundreds of totally independent witnesses in many ages
have testified to the occurrence of these phenomena, and there’s no
explanation known to me which covers all the facts. And if you feel
inclined to say ‘Why, then, if these are facts, do we not come across
them now?’ there are two answers I can make you. One is that there
were diseases known in the Middle Ages, such as the black death, which
were certainly existent then and which have become extinct since, but
for that reason we do not assert that such diseases never existed. Just as the black death visited England and decimated the population
of Norfolk, so here in this very district about three hundred years
ago there was certainly an outbreak of vampirism, and Maxley was the
centre of it. My second answer is even more convincing, for I tell you
that vampirism is by no means extinct now. An outbreak of it certainly
occurred in India a year or two ago.”
At that moment I heard my knocker plied in the cheerful and peremptory
manner in which Mrs. Amworth is accustomed to announce her arrival, and
I went to the door to open it. “Come in at once,” I said, “and save me from having my blood curdled. Mr. Urcombe has been trying to alarm me.”
Instantly her vital, voluminous presence seemed to fill the room. “Ah, but how lovely!” she said. “I delight in having my blood curdled. Go on with your ghost-story, Mr. Urcombe. I adore ghost-stories.”
I saw that, as his habit was, he was intently observing her. “It wasn’t a ghost-story exactly,” said he. “I was only telling our
host how vampirism was not extinct yet. I was saying that there was an
outbreak of it in India only a few years ago.”
There was a more than perceptible pause, and I saw that, if Urcombe was
observing her, she on her side was observing him with fixed eye and
parted mouth. Then her jolly laugh invaded that rather tense silence. “Oh, what a shame!” she said. “You’re not going to curdle my blood
at all. Where did you pick up such a tale, Mr. Urcombe? I have lived
for years in India and never heard a rumour of such a thing. Some
story-teller in the bazaars must have invented it: they are famous at
that.”
I could see that Urcombe was on the point of saying something further,
but checked himself. “Ah! very likely that was it,” he said. But something had disturbed our usual peaceful sociability that night,
and something had damped Mrs. Amworth’s usual high spirits. She had no
gusto for her piquet, and left after a couple of games. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
Urcombe had
been silent too, indeed he hardly spoke again till she departed. “That was unfortunate,” he said, “for the outbreak of--of a very
mysterious disease, let us call it, took place at Peshawar, where she
and her husband were. And----”
“Well?” I asked. “He was one of the victims of it,” said he. “Naturally I had quite
forgotten that when I spoke.”
The summer was unreasonably hot and rainless, and Maxley suffered much
from drought, and also from a plague of big black night-flying gnats,
the bite of which was very irritating and virulent. They came sailing
in of an evening, settling on one’s skin so quietly that one perceived
nothing till the sharp stab announced that one had been bitten. They
did not bite the hands or face, but chose always the neck and throat
for their feeding-ground, and most of us, as the poison spread, assumed
a temporary goitre. Then about the middle of August appeared the first
of those mysterious cases of illness which our local doctor attributed
to the long-continued heat coupled with the bite of these venomous
insects. The patient was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, the son of
Mrs. Amworth’s gardener, and the symptoms were an anæmic pallor and a
languid prostration, accompanied by great drowsiness and an abnormal
appetite. He had, too, on his throat two small punctures where, so Dr.
Ross conjectured, one of these great gnats had bitten him. But the odd
thing was that there was no swelling or inflammation round the place
where he had been bitten. The heat at this time had begun to abate, but
the cooler weather failed to restore him, and the boy, in spite of the
quantity of good food which he so ravenously swallowed, wasted away to
a skin-clad skeleton. I met Dr. Ross in the street one afternoon about this time, and in
answer to my inquiries about his patient he said that he was afraid
the boy was dying. The case, he confessed, completely puzzled him:
some obscure form of pernicious anæmia was all he could suggest. But
he wondered whether Mr. Urcombe would consent to see the boy, on
the chance of his being able to throw some new light on the case,
and since Urcombe was dining with me that night, I proposed to Dr.
Ross to join us. He could not do this, but said he would look in
later. When he came, Urcombe at once consented to put his skill at
the other’s disposal, and together they went off at once. Being thus
shorn of my sociable evening, I telephoned to Mrs. Amworth to know if
I might inflict myself on her for an hour. Her answer was a welcoming
affirmative, and between piquet and music the hour lengthened itself
into two. She spoke of the boy who was lying so desperately and
mysteriously ill, and told me that she had often been to see him,
taking him nourishing and delicate food. But to-day--and her kind eyes
moistened as she spoke--she was afraid she had paid her last visit. Knowing the antipathy between her and Urcombe, I did not tell her that
he had been called into consultation; and when I returned home she
accompanied me to my door, for the sake of a breath of night air, and
in order to borrow a magazine which contained an article on gardening
which she wished to read. “Ah, this delicious night air,” she said, luxuriously sniffing in the
coolness. “Night air and gardening are the great tonics. There is
nothing so stimulating as bare contact with rich mother earth. You are
never so fresh as when you have been grubbing in the soil--black hands,
black nails, and boots covered with mud.” She gave her great jovial
laugh. “I’m a glutton for air and earth,” she said. “Positively I look forward
to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind earth all round
me. No leaden caskets for me--I have given explicit directions. But
what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one can’t have everything. The magazine? A thousand thanks, I will faithfully return it. Good
night: garden and keep your windows open, and you won’t have anæmia.”
“I always sleep with my windows open,” said I.
I went straight up to my bedroom, of which one of the windows looks
out over the street, and as I undressed I thought I heard voices
talking outside not far away. But I paid no particular attention, put
out my lights, and falling asleep plunged into the depths of a most
horrible dream, distortedly suggested no doubt, by my last words with
Mrs. Amworth. I dreamed that I woke, and found that both my bedroom
windows were shut. Half-suffocating I dreamed that I sprang out of
bed, and went across to open them. The blind over the first was drawn
down, and pulling it up I saw, with the indescribable horror of
incipient nightmare, Mrs. Amworth’s face suspended close to the pane
in the darkness outside, nodding and smiling at me. Pulling down the
blind again to keep that terror out, I rushed to the second window on
the other side of the room, and there again was Mrs. Amworth’s face. Then the panic came upon me in full blast; here was I suffocating in
the airless room, and whichever window I opened Mrs. Amworth’s face
would float in, like those noiseless black gnats that bit before one
was aware. The nightmare rose to screaming point, and with strangled
yells I awoke to find my room cool and quiet with both windows open
and blinds up and a half-moon high in its course, casting an oblong
of tranquil light on the floor. But even when I was awake the horror
persisted, and I lay tossing and turning. I must have slept long before
the nightmare seized me, for now it was nearly day, and soon in the
east the drowsy eyelids of morning began to lift. I was scarcely downstairs next morning--for after the dawn I slept
late--when Urcombe rang up to know if he might see me immediately. He
came in, grim and preoccupied, and I noticed that he was pulling on a
pipe that was not even filled. “I want your help,” he said, “and so I must tell you first of all
what happened last night. I went round with the little doctor to see
his patient, and found him just alive, but scarcely more. I instantly
diagnosed in my own mind what this anæmia, unaccountable by any other
explanation, meant. The boy is the prey of a vampire.”
He put his empty pipe on the breakfast-table, by which I had just
sat down, and folded his arms, looking at me steadily from under his
overhanging brows. “Now about last night,” he said. “I insisted that he should be moved
from his father’s cottage into my house. As we were carrying him on a
stretcher, whom should we meet but Mrs. Amworth? She expressed shocked
surprise that we were moving him. Now why do you think she did that?”
With a start of horror, as I remembered my dream that night before, I
felt an idea come into my mind so preposterous and unthinkable that I
instantly turned it out again. “I haven’t the smallest idea,” I said. “Then listen, while I tell you about what happened later. I put out
all light in the room where the boy lay, and watched. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
One window was
a little open, for I had forgotten to close it, and about midnight I
heard something outside, trying apparently to push it farther open. I
guessed who it was--yes, it was full twenty feet from the ground--and
I peeped round the corner of the blind. Just outside was the face of
Mrs. Amworth and her hand was on the frame of the window. Very softly I
crept close, and then banged the window down, and I think I just caught
the tip of one of her fingers.”
“But it’s impossible,” I cried. “How could she be floating in the air
like that? And what had she come for? Don’t tell me such----”
Once more, with closer grip, the remembrance of my nightmare seized me. “I am telling you what I saw,” said he. “And all night long, until it
was nearly day, she was fluttering outside, like some terrible bat,
trying to gain admittance. Now put together various things I have told
you.”
He began checking them off on his fingers. “Number one,” he said: “there was an outbreak of disease similar to
that which this boy is suffering from at Peshawar, and her husband
died of it. Number two: Mrs. Amworth protested against my moving the
boy to my house. Number three: she, or the demon that inhabits her
body, a creature powerful and deadly, tries to gain admittance. And add
this, too: in mediæval times there was an epidemic of vampirism here
at Maxley. The vampire, so the accounts run, was found to be Elizabeth
Chaston ... I see you remember Mrs. Amworth’s maiden name. Finally, the
boy is stronger this morning. He would certainly not have been alive if
he had been visited again. And what do you make of it?”
There was a long silence, during which I found this incredible horror
assuming the hues of reality. “I have something to add,” I said, “which may or may not bear on it. You say that the--the spectre went away shortly before dawn.”
“Yes.”
I told him of my dream, and he smiled grimly. “Yes, you did well to awake,” he said. “That warning came from your
subconscious self, which never wholly slumbers, and cried out to you
of deadly danger. For two reasons, then, you must help me: one to save
others, the second to save yourself.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “I want you first of all to help me in watching this boy, and ensuring
that she does not come near him. Eventually I want you to help me in
tracking the thing down, in exposing and destroying it. It is not
human: it is an incarnate fiend. What steps we shall have to take I
don’t yet know.”
It was now eleven of the forenoon, and presently I went across to his
house for a twelve-hour vigil while he slept, to come on duty again
that night, so that for the next twenty-four hours either Urcombe or
myself was always in the room where the boy, now getting stronger
every hour, was lying. The day following was Saturday and a morning
of brilliant, pellucid weather, and already when I went across to his
house to resume my duty the stream of motors down to Brighton had
begun. Simultaneously I saw Urcombe with a cheerful face, which boded
good news of his patient, coming out of his house, and Mrs. Amworth,
with a gesture of salutation to me and a basket in her hand, walking up
the broad strip of grass which bordered the road. There we all three
met. I noticed (and saw that Urcombe noticed it too) that one finger of
her left hand was bandaged. “Good morning to you both,” said she. “And I hear your patient is doing
well, Mr. Urcombe. I have come to bring him a bowl of jelly, and to sit
with him for an hour. He and I are great friends. I am overjoyed at his
recovery.”
Urcombe paused a moment, as if making up his mind, and then shot out a
pointing finger at her. “I forbid that,” he said. “You shall not sit with him or see him. And
you know the reason as well as I do.”
I have never seen so horrible a change pass over a human face as that
which now blanched hers to the colour of a grey mist. She put up her
hand as if to shield herself from that pointing finger, which drew the
sign of the cross in the air, and shrank back cowering on to the road. There was a wild hoot from a horn, a grinding of brakes, a shout--too
late--from a passing car, and one long scream suddenly cut short. Her
body rebounded from the roadway after the first wheel had gone over it,
and the second followed. It lay there, quivering and twitching, and was
still. She was buried three days afterwards in the cemetery outside Maxley,
in accordance with the wishes she had told me that she had devised
about her interment, and the shock which her sudden and awful death
had caused to the little community began by degrees to pass off. To
two people only, Urcombe and myself, the horror of it was mitigated
from the first by the nature of the relief that her death brought;
but, naturally enough, we kept our own counsel, and no hint of what
greater horror had been thus averted was ever let slip. But, oddly
enough, so it seemed to me, he was still not satisfied about something
in connection with her, and would give no answer to my questions on
the subject. Then as the days of a tranquil mellow September and
the October that followed began to drop away like the leaves of the
yellowing trees, his uneasiness relaxed. But before the entry of
November the seeming tranquillity broke into hurricane. I had been dining one night at the far end of the village, and about
eleven o’clock was walking home again. The moon was of an unusual
brilliance, rendering all that it shone on as distinct as in some
etching. I had just come opposite the house which Mrs. Amworth had
occupied, where there was a board up telling that it was to let, when I
heard the click of her front gate, and next moment I saw, with a sudden
chill and quaking of my very spirit, that she stood there. Her profile,
vividly illuminated, was turned to me, and I could not be mistaken in
my identification of her. She appeared not to see me (indeed the shadow
of the yew hedge in front of her garden enveloped me in its blackness)
and she went swiftly across the road, and entered the gate of the
house directly opposite. There I lost sight of her completely. My breath was coming in short pants as if I had been running--and now
indeed I ran, with fearful backward glances, along the hundred yards
that separated me from my house and Urcombe’s. It was to his that my
flying steps took me, and next minute I was within. “What have you come to tell me?” he asked. “Or shall I guess?”
“You can’t guess,” said I. “No; it’s no guess. She has come back and you have seen her. Tell me
about it.”
I gave him my story. “That’s Major Pearsall’s house,” he said. “Come back with me there at
once.”
“But what can we do?” I asked. “I’ve no idea. That’s what we have got to find out.”
A minute later, we were opposite the house. When I had passed it
before, it was all dark; now lights gleamed from a couple of windows
upstairs. Even as we faced it, the front door opened, and next moment
Major Pearsall emerged from the gate. He saw us and stopped. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
“I’m on my way to Dr. Ross,” he said quickly. “My wife has been taken
suddenly ill. She had been in bed an hour when I came upstairs, and
I found her white as a ghost and utterly exhausted. She had been to
sleep, it seemed---- but you will excuse me.”
“One moment, Major,” said Urcombe. “Was there any mark on her throat?”
“How did you guess that?” said he. “There was: one of those beastly
gnats must have bitten her twice there. She was streaming with blood.”
“And there’s someone with her?” asked Urcombe. “Yes, I roused her maid.”
He went off, and Urcombe turned to me. “I know now what we have to do,”
he said. “Change your clothes, and I’ll join you at your house.”
“What is it?” I asked. “I’ll tell you on our way. We’re going to the cemetery.”
* * * * *
He carried a pick, a shovel, and a screwdriver when he rejoined me, and
wore round his shoulders a long coil of rope. As we walked, he gave me
the outlines of the ghastly hour that lay before us. “What I have to tell you,” he said, “will seem to you now too fantastic
for credence, but before dawn we shall see whether it outstrips
reality. By a most fortunate happening, you saw the spectre, the
astral body, whatever you choose to call it, of Mrs. Amworth, going on
its grisly business, and therefore, beyond doubt, the vampire spirit
which abode in her during life animates her again in death. That is
not exceptional--indeed, all these weeks since her death I have been
expecting it. If I am right, we shall find her body undecayed and
untouched by corruption.”
“But she has been dead nearly two months,” said I. “If she had been dead two years it would still be so, if the vampire
has possession of her. So remember: whatever you see done, it will be
done not to her, who in the natural course would now be feeding the
grasses above her grave, but to a spirit of untold evil and malignancy,
which gives a phantom life to her body.”
“But what shall I see done?” said I. “I will tell you. We know that now, at this moment, the vampire clad in
her mortal semblance is out; dining out. But it must get back before
dawn, and it will pass into the material form that lies in her grave. We must wait for that, and then with your help I shall dig up her
body. If I am right, you will look on her as she was in life, with the
full vigour of the dreadful nutriment she has received pulsing in her
veins. And then, when dawn has come, and the vampire cannot leave the
lair of her body, I shall strike her with this”--and he pointed to his
pick--“through the heart, and she, who comes to life again only with
the animation the fiend gives her, she and her hellish partner will be
dead indeed. Then we must bury her again, delivered at last.”
We had come to the cemetery, and in the brightness of the moonshine
there was no difficulty in identifying her grave. It lay some twenty
yards from the small chapel, in the porch of which, obscured by shadow,
we concealed ourselves. From there we had a clear and open sight of
the grave, and now we must wait till its infernal visitor returned
home. The night was warm and windless, yet even if a freezing wind had
been raging I think I should have felt nothing of it, so intense was
my preoccupation as to what the night and dawn would bring. There was
a bell in the turret of the chapel, that struck the quarters of the
hour, and it amazed me to find how swiftly the chimes succeeded one
another. The moon had long set, but a twilight of stars shone in a clear sky,
when five o’clock of the morning sounded from the turret. A few minutes
more passed, and then I felt Urcombe’s hand softly nudging me; and
looking out in the direction of his pointing finger, I saw that the
form of a woman, tall and large in build, was approaching from the
right. Noiselessly, with a motion more of gliding and floating than
walking, she moved across the cemetery to the grave which was the
centre of our observation. She moved round it as if to be certain
of its identity, and for a moment stood directly facing us. In the
greyness to which now my eyes had grown accustomed, I could easily see
her face, and recognise its features. She drew her hand across her mouth as if wiping it, and broke into a
chuckle of such laughter as made my hair stir on my head. Then she
leaped on to the grave, holding her hands high above her head, and inch
by inch disappeared into the earth. Urcombe’s hand was laid on my arm,
in an injunction to keep still, but now he removed it. “Come,” he said. With pick and shovel and rope we went to the grave. The earth was light
and sandy, and soon after six struck we had delved down to the coffin
lid. With his pick he loosened the earth round it, and, adjusting the
rope through the handles by which it had been lowered, we tried to
raise it. This was a long and laborious business, and the light had
begun to herald day in the east before we had it out, and lying by the
side of the grave. With his screwdriver he loosed the fastenings of
the lid, and slid it aside, and standing there we looked on the face
of Mrs. Amworth. The eyes, once closed in death, were open, the cheeks
were flushed with colour, the red, full-lipped mouth seemed to smile. “One blow and it is all over,” he said. “You need not look.”
Even as he spoke he took up the pick again, and, laying the point of it
on her left breast, measured his distance. And though I knew what was
coming I could not look away.... He grasped the pick in both hands, raised it an inch or two for the
taking of his aim, and then with full force brought it down on her
breast. A fountain of blood, though she had been dead so long, spouted
high in the air, falling with the thud of a heavy splash over the
shroud, and simultaneously from those red lips came one long, appalling
cry, swelling up like some hooting siren, and dying away again. With
that, instantaneous as a lightning flash, came the touch of corruption
on her face, the colour of it faded to ash, the plump cheeks fell in,
the mouth dropped. “Thank God, that’s over,” said he, and without pause slipped the coffin
lid back into its place. Day was coming fast now, and, working like men possessed, we lowered
the coffin into its place again, and shovelled the earth over it.... The birds were busy with their earliest pipings as we went back to
Maxley. In the Tube
In the Tube
“It’s a convention,” said Anthony Carling cheerfully, “and not a very
convincing one. Time, indeed! There’s no such thing as Time really; it
has no actual existence. Time is nothing more than an infinitesimal
point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity. At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed
to believe that we are travelling. There’s a roar in our ears and a
darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us. But before we came
into the tunnel we existed for ever in an infinite sunlight, and after
we have got through it we shall exist in an infinite sunlight again. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
So why should we bother ourselves about the confusion and noise and
darkness which only encompass us for a moment?”
For a firm-rooted believer in such immeasurable ideas as these, which
he punctuated with brisk application of the poker to the brave sparkle
and glow of the fire, Anthony has a very pleasant appreciation of the
measurable and the finite, and nobody with whom I have acquaintance has
so keen a zest for life and its enjoyments as he. He had given us this
evening an admirable dinner, had passed round a port beyond praise,
and had illuminated the jolly hours with the light of his infectious
optimism. Now the small company had melted away, and I was left with
him over the fire in his study. Outside the tattoo of wind-driven sleet
was audible on the window-panes, over-scoring now and again the flap
of the flames on the open hearth, and the thought of the chilly blasts
and the snow-covered pavement in Brompton Square, across which, to
skidding taxicabs, the last of his other guests had scurried, made my
position, resident here till to-morrow morning, the more delicately
delightful. Above all there was this stimulating and suggestive
companion, who, whether he talked of the great abstractions which were
so intensely real and practical to him, or of the very remarkable
experiences which he had encountered among these conventions of time
and space, was equally fascinating to the listener. “I adore life,” he said. “I find it the most entrancing plaything. It’s
a delightful game, and, as you know very well, the only conceivable
way to play a game is to treat it extremely seriously. If you say to
yourself, ‘It’s only a game,’ you cease to take the slightest interest
in it. You have to know that it’s only a game, and behave as if it
was the one object of existence. I should like it to go on for many
years yet. But all the time one has to be living on the true plane as
well, which is eternity and infinity. If you come to think of it, the
one thing which the human mind cannot grasp is the finite, not the
infinite, the temporary, not the eternal.”
“That sounds rather paradoxical,” said I. “Only because you’ve made a habit of thinking about things that seem
bounded and limited. Look it in the face for a minute. Try to imagine
finite Time and Space, and you find you can’t. Go back a million
years, and multiply that million of years by another million, and you
find that you can’t conceive of a beginning. What happened before
that beginning? Another beginning and another beginning? And before
that? Look at it like that, and you find that the only solution
comprehensible to you is the existence of an eternity, something that
never began and will never end. It’s the same about space. Project
yourself to the farthest star, and what comes beyond that? Emptiness? Go on through the emptiness, and you can’t imagine it being finite and
having an end. It must needs go on for ever: that’s the only thing
you can understand. There’s no such thing as before or after, or
beginning or end, and what a comfort that is! I should fidget myself
to death if there wasn’t the huge soft cushion of eternity to lean
one’s head against. Some people say--I believe I’ve heard you say it
yourself--that the idea of eternity is so tiring; you feel that you
want to stop. But that’s because you are thinking of eternity in terms
of Time, and mumbling in your brain, ‘And after that, and after that?’
Don’t you grasp the idea that in eternity there isn’t any ‘after,’
any more than there is any ‘before’? It’s all one. Eternity isn’t a
quantity: it’s a quality.”
Sometimes, when Anthony talks in this manner, I seem to get a glimpse
of that which to his mind is so transparently clear and solidly
real, at other times (not having a brain that readily envisages
abstractions) I feel as though he was pushing me over a precipice,
and my intellectual faculties grasp wildly at anything tangible or
comprehensible. This was the case now, and I hastily interrupted. “But there is a ‘before’ and ‘after,’” I said. “A few hours ago you
gave us an admirable dinner, and after that--yes, after--we played
bridge. And now you are going to explain things a little more clearly
to me, and after that I shall go to bed----”
He laughed. “You shall do exactly as you like,” he said, “and you shan’t be a slave
to Time either to-night or to-morrow morning. We won’t even mention
an hour for breakfast, but you shall have it in eternity whenever you
awake. And as I see it is not midnight yet, we’ll slip the bonds of
Time, and talk quite infinitely. I will stop the clock, if that will
assist you in getting rid of your illusion, and then I’ll tell you a
story, which to my mind, shows how unreal so-called realities are; or,
at any rate, how fallacious are our senses as judges of what is real
and what is not.”
“Something occult, something spookish?” I asked, pricking up my ears,
for Anthony has the strangest clairvoyances and visions of things
unseen by the normal eye. “I suppose you might call some of it occult,” he said, “though there’s
a certain amount of rather grim reality mixed up in it.”
“Go on; excellent mixture,” said I. He threw a fresh log on the fire. “It’s a longish story,” he said. “You may stop me as soon as you’ve
had enough. But there will come a point for which I claim your
consideration. You, who cling to your ‘before’ and ‘after,’ has it
ever occurred to you how difficult it is to say _when_ an incident
takes place? Say that a man commits some crime of violence, can we
not, with a good deal of truth, say that he really commits that crime
when he definitely plans and determines upon it, dwelling on it with
gusto? The actual commission of it, I think we can reasonably argue,
is the mere material sequel of his resolve: he is guilty of it when he
makes that determination. When, therefore, in the term of ‘before’ and
‘after,’ does the crime truly take place? There is also in my story a
further point for your consideration. For it seems certain that the
spirit of a man, after the death of his body, is obliged to re-enact
such a crime, with a view, I suppose we may guess, to his remorse and
his eventual redemption. Those who have second sight have seen such
re-enactments. Perhaps he may have done his deed blindly in this life;
but then his spirit re-commits it with its spiritual eyes open, and
able to comprehend its enormity. So, shall we view the man’s original
determination and the material commission of his crime only as preludes
to the real commission of it, when with eyes unsealed he does it and
repents of it?... That all sounds very obscure when I speak in the
abstract, but I think you will see what I mean, if you follow my tale. Comfortable? Got everything you want? Here goes, then.”
He leaned back in his chair, concentrating his mind, and then spoke:
“The story that I am about to tell you,” he said, “had its beginning
a month ago, when you were away in Switzerland. It reached its
conclusion, so I imagine, last night. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
I do not, at any rate, expect to
experience any more of it. Well, a month ago I was returning late on
a very wet night from dining out. There was not a taxi to be had, and
I hurried through the pouring rain to the tube-station at Piccadilly
Circus, and thought myself very lucky to catch the last train in this
direction. The carriage into which I stepped was quite empty except
for one other passenger, who sat next the door immediately opposite
to me. I had never, to my knowledge, seen him before, but I found my
attention vividly fixed on him, as if he somehow concerned me. He was
a man of middle age, in dress-clothes, and his face wore an expression
of intense thought, as if in his mind he was pondering some very
significant matter, and his hand which was resting on his knee clenched
and unclenched itself. Suddenly he looked up and stared me in the face,
and I saw there suspicion and fear, as if I had surprised him in some
secret deed. “At that moment we stopped at Dover Street, and the conductor threw
open the doors, announced the station and added, ‘Change here for Hyde
Park Corner and Gloucester Road.’ That was all right for me since
it meant that the train would stop at Brompton Road, which was my
destination. It was all right apparently, too, for my companion, for he
certainly did not get out, and after a moment’s stop, during which no
one else got in, we went on. I saw him, I must insist, after the doors
were closed and the train had started. But when I looked again, as we
rattled on, I saw that there was no one there. I was quite alone in the
carriage. “Now you may think that I had had one of those swift momentary dreams
which flash in and out of the mind in the space of a second, but I did
not believe it was so myself, for I felt that I had experienced some
sort of premonition or clairvoyant vision. A man, the semblance of
whom, astral body or whatever you may choose to call it, I had just
seen, would sometime sit in that seat opposite to me, pondering and
planning.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why should it have been the astral body of a
living man which you thought you had seen? Why not the ghost of a dead
one?”
“Because of my own sensations. The sight of the spirit of someone dead,
which has occurred to me two or three times in my life, has always been
accompanied by a physical shrinking and fear, and by the sensation of
cold and of loneliness. I believed, at any rate, that I had seen a
phantom of the living, and that impression was confirmed, I might say
proved, the next day. For I met the man himself. And the next night, as
you shall hear, I met the phantom again. We will take them in order. “I was lunching, then, the next day with my neighbour Mrs. Stanley:
there was a small party, and when I arrived we waited but for the final
guest. He entered while I was talking to some friend, and presently at
my elbow I heard Mrs. Stanley’s voice--
“‘Let me introduce you to Sir Henry Payle,’ she said. “I turned and saw my _vis-à-vis_ of the night before. It was quite
unmistakably he, and as we shook hands he looked at me I thought with
vague and puzzled recognition. “‘Haven’t we met before, Mr. Carling?’ he said. ‘I seem to
recollect----’
“For the moment I forgot the strange manner of his disappearance from
the carriage, and thought that it had been the man himself whom I had
seen last night. “‘Surely, and not so long ago,’ I said. ‘For we sat opposite each other
in the last tube-train from Piccadilly Circus yesterday night.’
“He still looked at me, frowning, puzzled, and shook his head. “‘That can hardly be,’ he said. ‘I only came up from the country this
morning.’
“Now this interested me profoundly, for the astral body, we are told,
abides in some half-conscious region of the mind or spirit, and has
recollections of what has happened to it, which it can convey only very
vaguely and dimly to the conscious mind. All lunch-time I could see his
eyes again and again directed to me with the same puzzled and perplexed
air, and as I was taking my departure he came up to me. “‘I shall recollect some day,’ he said, ‘where we met before, and I
hope we may meet again. Was it not----?’--and he stopped. ‘No: it has
gone from me,’ he added.”
The log that Anthony had thrown on the fire was burning bravely now,
and its high-flickering flame lit up his face. “Now, I don’t know whether you believe in coincidences as chance
things,” he said, “but if you do, get rid of the notion. Or if you
can’t at once, call it a coincidence that that very night I again
caught the last train on the tube going westwards. This time, so far
from my being a solitary passenger, there was a considerable crowd
waiting at Dover Street, where I entered, and just as the noise of the
approaching train began to reverberate in the tunnel I caught sight of
Sir Henry Payle standing near the opening from which the train would
presently emerge, apart from the rest of the crowd. And I thought to
myself how odd it was that I should have seen the phantom of him at
this very hour last night and the man himself now, and I began walking
towards him with the idea of saying, ‘Anyhow, it is in the tube that we
meet to-night.’... And then a terrible and awful thing happened. Just
as the train emerged from the tunnel he jumped down on to the line in
front of it, and the train swept along over him up the platform. “For a moment I was stricken with horror at the sight, and I remember
covering my eyes against the dreadful tragedy. But then I perceived
that, though it had taken place in full sight of those who were
waiting, no one seemed to have seen it except myself. The driver,
looking out from his window, had not applied his brakes, there was no
jolt from the advancing train, no scream, no cry, and the rest of the
passengers began boarding the train with perfect nonchalance. I must
have staggered, for I felt sick and faint with what I had seen, and
some kindly soul put his arm round me and supported me into the train. He was a doctor, he told me, and asked if I was in pain, or what ailed
me. I told him what I thought I had seen, and he assured me that no
such accident had taken place. “It was clear then to my own mind that I had seen the second act, so
to speak, in this psychical drama, and I pondered next morning over
the problem as to what I should do. Already I had glanced at the
morning paper, which, as I knew would be the case, contained no mention
whatever of what I had seen. The thing had certainly not happened, but
I knew in myself that it would happen. The flimsy veil of Time had been
withdrawn from my eyes, and I had seen into what you would call the
future. In terms of Time of course it was the future, but from my point
of view the thing was just as much in the past as it was in the future. It existed, and waited only for its material fulfilment. The more I
thought about it, the more I saw that I could do nothing.”
I interrupted his narrative. “You did nothing?” I exclaimed. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
“Surely you might have taken some step
in order to try to avert the tragedy.”
He shook his head. “What step precisely?” he said. “Was I to go to Sir Henry and
tell him that once more I had seen him in the tube in the act of
committing suicide? Look at it like this. Either what I had seen was
pure illusion, pure imagination, in which case it had no existence or
significance at all, or it was actual and real, and essentially it had
happened. Or take it, though not very logically, somewhere between
the two. Say that the idea of suicide, for some cause of which I knew
nothing, had occurred to him or would occur. Should I not, if that was
the case, be doing a very dangerous thing, by making such a suggestion
to him? Might not the fact of my telling him what I had seen put
the idea into his mind, or, if it was already there, confirm it and
strengthen it? ‘It’s a ticklish matter to play with souls,’ as Browning
says.”
“But it seems so inhuman not to interfere in any way,” said I, “not to
make any attempt.”
“What interference?” asked he. “What attempt?”
The human instinct in me still seemed to cry aloud at the thought of
doing nothing to avert such a tragedy, but it seemed to be beating
itself against something austere and inexorable. And cudgel my brain
as I would, I could not combat the sense of what he had said. I had no
answer for him, and he went on. “You must recollect, too,” he said, “that I believed then and believe
now that the thing had happened. The cause of it, whatever that was,
had begun to work, and the effect, in this material sphere, was
inevitable. That is what I alluded to when, at the beginning of my
story, I asked you to consider how difficult it was to say when an
action took place. You still hold that this particular action, this
suicide of Sir Henry, had not yet taken place, because he had not
yet thrown himself under the advancing train. To me that seems a
materialistic view. I hold that in all but the endorsement of it, so to
speak, it had taken place. I fancy that Sir Henry, for instance, now
free from the material dusks, knows that himself.”
Exactly as he spoke there swept through the warm lit room a current of
ice-cold air, ruffling my hair as it passed me, and making the wood
flames on the hearth to dwindle and flare. I looked round to see if the
door at my back had opened, but nothing stirred there, and over the
closed window the curtains were fully drawn. As it reached Anthony, he
sat up quickly in his chair and directed his glance this way and that
about the room. “Did you feel that?” he asked. “Yes: a sudden draught,” I said. “Ice-cold.”
“Anything else?” he asked. “Any other sensation?”
I paused before I answered, for at the moment there occurred to me
Anthony’s differentiation of the effects produced on the beholder by
a phantasm of the living and the apparition of the dead. It was the
latter which accurately described my sensations now, a certain physical
shrinking, a fear, a feeling of desolation. But yet I had seen nothing. “I felt rather creepy,” I said. As I spoke I drew my chair rather closer to the fire, and sent a swift
and, I confess, a somewhat apprehensive scrutiny round the walls of the
brightly lit room. I noticed at the same time that Anthony was peering
across to the chimney-piece, on which, just below a sconce holding two
electric lights, stood the clock which at the beginning of our talk he
had offered to stop. The hands I noticed pointed to twenty-five minutes
to one. “But you saw nothing?” he asked. “Nothing whatever,” I said. “Why should I? What was there to see? Or
did you----”
“I don’t think so,” he said. Somehow this answer got on my nerves, for the queer feeling which had
accompanied that cold current of air had not left me. If anything it
had become more acute. “But surely you know whether you saw anything or not?” I said. “One can’t always be certain,” said he. “I say that I don’t think I
saw anything. But I’m not sure, either, whether the story I am telling
you was quite concluded last night. I think there may be a further
incident. If you prefer it, I will leave the rest of it, as far as I
know it, unfinished till to-morrow morning, and you can go off to bed
now.”
His complete calmness and tranquillity reassured me. “But why should I do that?” I asked. Again he looked round on the bright walls. “Well, I think something entered the room just now,” he said, “and
it may develop. If you don’t like the notion, you had better go. Of
course there’s nothing to be alarmed at; whatever it is, it can’t hurt
us. But it is close on the hour when on two successive nights I saw
what I have already told you, and an apparition usually occurs at the
same time. Why that is so, I cannot say, but certainly it looks as if
a spirit that is earth-bound is still subject to certain conventions,
the conventions of time for instance. I think that personally I shall
see something before long, but most likely you won’t. You’re not such a
sufferer as I from these--these delusions----”
I was frightened and knew it, but I was also intensely interested, and
some perverse pride wriggled within me at his last words. Why, so I
asked myself, shouldn’t I see whatever was to be seen?... “I don’t want to go in the least,” I said. “I want to hear the rest of
your story.”
“Where was I, then? Ah, yes: you were wondering why I didn’t do
something after I saw the train move up to the platform, and I said
that there was nothing to be done. If you think it over, I fancy you
will agree with me.... A couple of days passed, and on the third
morning I saw in the paper that there had come fulfilment to my vision. Sir Henry Payle, who had been waiting on the platform of Dover Street
Station for the last train to South Kensington, had thrown himself in
front of it as it came into the station. The train had been pulled up
in a couple of yards, but a wheel had passed over his chest, crushing
it in and instantly killing him. “An inquest was held, and there emerged at it one of those dark stories
which, on occasions like these, sometimes fall like a midnight shadow
across a life that the world perhaps had thought prosperous. He had
long been on bad terms with his wife, from whom he had lived apart,
and it appeared that not long before this he had fallen desperately in
love with another woman. The night before his suicide he had appeared
very late at his wife’s house, and had a long and angry scene with
her in which he entreated her to divorce him, threatening otherwise
to make her life a hell to her. She refused, and in an ungovernable
fit of passion he attempted to strangle her. There was a struggle, and
the noise of it caused her manservant to come up, who succeeded in
over-mastering him. Lady Payle threatened to proceed against him for
assault with the intention to murder her. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
With this hanging over his
head, the next night, as I have already told you, he committed suicide.”
He glanced at the clock again, and I saw that the hands now pointed to
ten minutes to one. The fire was beginning to burn low and the room
surely was growing strangely cold. “That’s not quite all,” said Anthony, again looking round. “Are you
sure you wouldn’t prefer to hear it to-morrow?”
The mixture of shame and pride and curiosity again prevailed. “No: tell me the rest of it at once,” I said. Before speaking, he peered suddenly at some point behind my chair,
shading his eyes. I followed his glance, and knew what he meant by
saying that sometimes one could not be sure whether one saw something
or not. But was that an outlined shadow that intervened between me and
the wall? It was difficult to focus; I did not know whether it was near
the wall or near my chair. It seemed to clear away, anyhow, as I looked
more closely at it. “You see nothing?” asked Anthony. “No: I don’t think so,” said I. “And you?”
“I think I do,” he said, and his eyes followed something which was
invisible to mine. They came to rest between him and the chimney-piece. Looking steadily there, he spoke again. “All this happened some weeks ago,” he said, “when you were out in
Switzerland, and since then, up till last night, I saw nothing further. But all the time I was expecting something further. I felt that, as
far as I was concerned, it was not all over yet, and last night, with
the intention of assisting any communication to come through to me
from--from beyond, I went into the Dover Street tube-station at a few
minutes before one o’clock, the hour at which both the assault and
the suicide had taken place. The platform when I arrived on it was
absolutely empty, or appeared to be so, but presently, just as I began
to hear the roar of the approaching train, I saw there was the figure
of a man standing some twenty yards from me, looking into the tunnel. He had not come down with me in the lift, and the moment before he had
not been there. He began moving towards me, and then I saw who it was,
and I felt a stir of wind icy-cold coming towards me as he approached. It was not the draught that heralds the approach of a train, for it
came from the opposite direction. He came close up to me, and I saw
there was recognition in his eyes. He raised his face towards me and
I saw his lips move, but, perhaps in the increasing noise from the
tunnel, I heard nothing come from them. He put out his hand, as if
entreating me to do something, and with a cowardice from which I cannot
forgive myself, I shrank from him, for I knew, by the sign that I have
told you, that this was one from the dead, and my flesh quaked before
him, drowning for the moment all pity and all desire to help him, if
that was possible. Certainly he had something which he wanted of me,
but I recoiled from him. And by now the train was emerging from the
tunnel, and next moment, with a dreadful gesture of despair, he threw
himself in front of it.”
As he finished speaking he got up quickly from his chair, still looking
fixedly in front of him. I saw his pupils dilate, and his mouth worked. “It is coming,” he said. “I am to be given a chance of atoning for
my cowardice. There is nothing to be afraid of: I must remember that
myself....”
As he spoke there came from the panelling above the chimney-piece one
loud shattering crack, and the cold wind again circled about my head. I found myself shrinking back in my chair with my hands held in front
of me as instinctively I screened myself against something which I knew
was there but which I could not see. Every sense told me that there was
a presence in the room other than mine and Anthony’s, and the horror of
it was that I could not see it. Any vision, however terrible, would, I
felt, be more tolerable than this clear certain knowledge that close to
me was this invisible thing. And yet what horror might not be disclosed
of the face of the dead and the crushed chest.... But all I could see,
as I shuddered in this cold wind, was the familiar walls of the room,
and Anthony standing in front of me stiff and firm, making, as I knew,
a call on his courage. His eyes were focused on something quite close
to him, and some semblance of a smile quivered on his mouth. And then
he spoke again. “Yes, I know you,” he said. “And you want something of me. Tell me,
then, what it is.”
There was absolute silence, but what was silence to my ears could not
have been so to his, for once or twice he nodded, and once he said,
“Yes: I see. I will do it.” And with the knowledge that, even as there
was someone here whom I could not see, so there was speech going on
which I could not hear, this terror of the dead and of the unknown
rose in me with the sense of powerlessness to move that accompanies
nightmare. I could not stir, I could not speak. I could only strain my
ears for the inaudible and my eyes for the unseen, while the cold wind
from the very valley of the shadow of death streamed over me. It was
not that the presence of death itself was terrible; it was that from
its tranquillity and serene keeping there had been driven some unquiet
soul unable to rest in peace for whatever ultimate awakening rouses the
countless generations of those who have passed away, driven, no less,
from whatever activities are theirs, back into the material world from
which it should have been delivered. Never, until the gulf between the
living and the dead was thus bridged, had it seemed so immense and so
unnatural. It is possible that the dead may have communication with
the living, and it was not that exactly that so terrified me, for such
communication, as we know it, comes voluntarily from them. But here was
something icy-cold and crime-laden, that was chased back from the peace
that would not pacify it. And then, most horrible of all, there came a change in these unseen
conditions. Anthony was silent now, and from looking straight and
fixedly in front of him, he began to glance sideways to where I sat and
back again, and with that I felt that the unseen presence had turned
its attention from him to me. And now, too, gradually and by awful
degrees I began to see.... There came an outline of shadow across the chimney-piece and the panels
above it. It took shape: it fashioned itself into the outline of a
man. Within the shape of the shadow details began to form themselves,
and I saw wavering in the air, like something concealed by haze, the
semblance of a face, stricken and tragic, and burdened with such a
weight of woe as no human face had ever worn. Next, the shoulders
outlined themselves, and a stain livid and red spread out below them,
and suddenly the vision leaped into clearness. There he stood, the
chest crushed in and drowned in the red stain, from which broken ribs,
like the bones of a wrecked ship, protruded. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
The mournful, terrible
eyes were fixed on me, and it was from them, so I knew, that the bitter
wind proceeded....
Then, quick as the switching off of a lamp, the spectre vanished, and
the bitter wind was still, and opposite to me stood Anthony, in a
quiet, bright-lit room. There was no sense of an unseen presence any
more; he and I were then alone, with an interrupted conversation still
dangling between us in the warm air. I came round to that, as one comes
round after an anæsthetic. It all swam into sight again, unreal at
first, and gradually assuming the texture of actuality. “You were talking to somebody, not to me,” I said. “Who was it? What
was it?”
He passed the back of his hand over his forehead, which glistened in
the light. “A soul in hell,” he said. Now it is hard ever to recall mere physical sensations, when they
have passed. If you have been cold and are warmed, it is difficult to
remember what cold was like: if you have been hot and have got cool,
it is difficult to realise what the oppression of heat really meant. Just so, with the passing of that presence, I found myself unable to
recapture the sense of the terror with which, a few moments ago only,
it had invaded and inspired me. “A soul in hell?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
He moved about the room for a minute or so, and then came and sat on
the arm of my chair. “I don’t know what you saw,” he said, “or what you felt, but there has
never in all my life happened to me anything more real than what these
last few minutes have brought. I have talked to a soul in the hell of
remorse, which is the only possible hell. He knew, from what happened
last night, that he could perhaps establish communication through me
with the world he had quitted, and he sought me and found me. I am
charged with a mission to a woman I have never seen, a message from the
contrite.... You can guess who it is....”
He got up with a sudden briskness. “Let’s verify it anyhow,” he said. “He gave me the street and the
number. Ah, there’s the telephone book! Would it be a coincidence
merely if I found that at No. 20 in Chasemore Street, South Kensington,
there lived a Lady Payle?”
He turned over the leaves of the bulky volume. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. Roderick’s Story
Roderick’s Story
My powers of persuasion at first seemed quite ineffectual; I could
not induce my friend Roderick Cardew to strike his melancholy tent in
Chelsea, and (leaving it struck) steal away like the Arabs and spend
this month of spring with me at my newly acquired house at Tilling to
observe the spell of April’s wand making magic in the country. I seemed
to have brought out all the arguments of which I was master; he had
been very ill, and his doctor recommended a clearer air with as mild a
climate as he could conveniently attain; he loved the great stretches
of drained marsh-land which lay spread like a pool of verdure round the
little town; he had not seen my new home which made a breach in the
functions of hospitality, and he really could not be expected to object
to his host, who, after all, was one of his oldest friends. Besides (to
leave no stone unturned) as he regained his strength he could begin to
play golf again, and it entailed, as he well remembered, a very mild
exertion for him to keep me in my proper position in such a pursuit. At last there was some sign of yielding. “Yes. I should like to see the marsh and the big sky once more,” he
said. A rather sinister interpretation of his words “once more,” made a
sudden flashed signal of alarm in my mind. It was utterly fanciful, no
doubt, but that had better be extinguished first. “Once more?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“I always say ‘once more,’” he said. “It’s greedy to ask for too much.”
The very fact that he fenced so ingeniously deepened my suspicion. “That won’t do,” I said. “Tell me, Roddie.”
He was silent a moment. “I didn’t intend to,” he said, “for there can be no use in it. But
if you insist, as apparently you mean to do, I may as well give in. It’s what you think; ‘once more’ will very likely be the most. But you
mustn’t fuss about it; I’m not going to. No proper person fusses about
death; that’s a train which we are all sure to catch. It always waits
for you.”
I have noticed that when one learns tidings of that sort, one feels,
almost immediately, that one has known them a long time. I felt so now. “Go on,” I said. “Well, that’s about all there is. I’ve had sentence of death passed
upon me, and it will probably be carried out, I’m delighted to say, in
the French fashion. In France, you know, they don’t tell you when you
are to be executed till a few minutes before. It is likely that I shall
have even less than that, so my doctor informs me. A second or two will
be all I shall get. Congratulate me, please.”
I thought it over for a moment. “Yes, heartily,” I said. “I want to know a little more though.”
“Well, my heart’s all wrong, quite unmendably so. Heart-disease! Doesn’t it sound romantic? In mid-Victorian romance, heroes and
heroines alone die of heart-disease. But that’s by the way. The fact
is that I may die at any time without a moment’s warning. I shall give
a couple of gasps, so he told me when I insisted on knowing details,
and that’ll be all. Now, perhaps, you understand why I was unwilling
to come and stay with you. I don’t want to die in your house; I think
it’s dreadfully bad manners to die in other people’s houses. I long
to see Tilling again, but I think I shall go to an hotel. Hotels are
fair game, for the management over-charges those who live there to
compensate themselves for those who die there. But it would be rude of
me to die in your house; it might entail a lot of bother for you, and I
couldn’t apologize----”
“But I don’t mind your dying in my house,” I said. “At least you see
what I mean----”
He laughed. “I do, indeed,” he said. “And you couldn’t give a warmer assurance of
friendship. But I couldn’t come and stay with you in my present plight
without telling you what it was, and yet I didn’t mean to tell you. But
there we are now. Think again; reconsider your decision.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Come and die in my house by all means, if you’ve
got to. I would much sooner you lived there: your dying will, in any
case, annoy me immensely. But it would annoy me even more to know that
you had done it in some beastly hotel among plush and looking-glasses. You shall have any bedroom you like. And I want you dreadfully to see
my house, which is adorable.... O Roddie, what a bore it all is!”
It was impossible to speak or to think differently. I knew well how
trivial a matter death was to my friend, and I was not sure that at
heart I did not agree with him. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
We were quite at one, too, in that
we had so often gossiped about death with cheerful conjecture and
interested surmise based on the steady assurance that something of new
and delightful import was to follow, since neither of us happened to be
of that melancholy cast of mind that can envisage annihilation. I had
promised, in case I was the first to embark on the great adventure, to
do my best to “get through,” and give him some irrefutable proof of the
continuance of my existence, just by way of endorsement of our belief,
and he had given a similar pledge, for it appeared to us both, that,
whatever the conditions of the future might turn out to be, it would
be impossible when lately translated there, not to be still greatly
concerned with what the present world still held for us in ties of
love and affection. I laughed now to remember how he had once imagined
himself begging to be excused for a few minutes, directly after death,
and saying to St. Peter: “May I keep your Holiness waiting for a minute
before you finally lock me into Heaven or Hell with those beautiful
keys? I won’t be a minute, but I do want so much to be a ghost, and
appear to a friend of mine who is on the look-out for such a visit. If
I find I can’t make myself visible I will come back at once.... Oh,
_thank_ you, your Holiness.”
So we agreed that I should run the risk of his dying in my house, and
promised not to make any reproaches posthumously (as far as he was
concerned) in case he did so. He on his side promised not to die if he
could possibly help it, and next week or so he would come down to me in
the heart of the country that he loved, and see April at work. “And I haven’t told you anything about my house yet,” I said. “It’s
right at the top of the hill, square and Georgian and red-bricked. A
panelled hall, dining-room and panelled sitting-room downstairs, and
more panelled rooms upstairs. And there’s a garden with a lawn, and
a high brick wall round it, and there is a big garden room, full of
books, with a bow-window looking down the cobbled street. Which bedroom
will you have? Do you like looking on to the garden or on to the
street? You may even have my room if you like.”
He looked at me a moment with eager attention. “I’ll have the square
panelled bedroom that looks out on to the garden, please,” he said. “It’s the second door on the right when you stand at the top of the
stairs.”
“But how do you know?” I asked. “Because I’ve been in the house before, once only, three years ago,”
he said. “Margaret Alton took it furnished and lived there for a year
or so. She died there, and I was with her. And if I had known that
this was your house, I should never have dreamed of hesitating whether
I should accept your invitation. I should have thrown my good manners
about not dying in other people’s houses to the winds. But the moment
you began to describe the garden and garden-room I knew what house it
was. I have always longed to go there again. When may I come, please? Next week is too far ahead. You’re off there this afternoon, aren’t
you?”
I rose: the clock warned me that it was time for me to go to the
station. “Yes. Come this afternoon,” I suggested. “Come with me.”
“I wish I could, but I take that to mean that it will suit you if I
come to-morrow. For I certainly will. Good Lord! To think of your
having got just that house! It ought to be a wonderfully happy one,
for I saw---- But I’ll tell you about that perhaps when I’m there. But
don’t ask me to: I’ll tell you if and when I can, as the lawyers say. Are you really off?”
I was really off, for I had no time to spare, but before I got to the
door he spoke again. “Of course, the room I have chosen was _the_ room,” he said, and there
was no need for me to ask what he meant by _the_ room. * * * * *
I knew no more than the barest and most public outline of that affair,
distant now by the space of many years, but, so I conceived, ever green
in Roderick’s heart, and, as my train threaded its way through the
gleams of this translucent spring evening, I retraced this outline as
far as I knew it. It was the one thing of which Roderick never spoke
(even now he was not sure that he could manage to tell me the end of
it), and I had to rummage in my memory for the reconstruction of the
half-obliterated lines. Margaret--her maiden-name would not be conjured back into memory--had
been an extremely beautiful girl when Roderick first met her, and, not
without encouragement, he had fallen head over ears in love with her. All seemed to be going well with his wooing, he had the air of a happy
lover, when there appeared on the scene that handsome and outrageous
fellow, Richard Alton. He was the heir to his uncle’s barony and his
really vast estates, and the girl, when he proceeded to lay siege, very
soon capitulated. She may have fallen in love with him, for he was
an attractive scamp, but the verdict at the time was that it was her
ambition, not her heart, that she indulged. In any case, there was the
end of Roderick’s wooing, and before the year was out she had married
the other. I remembered seeing her once or twice in London about this time,
splendid and brilliant, of a beauty that dazzled, with the world
very much at her feet. She bore him two sons; she succeeded to a
great position; and then with the granting of her heart’s desire, the
leanness withal followed. Her husband’s infidelities were numerous and
notorious; he treated her with a subtle cruelty that just kept on the
right side of the law, and, finally, seeking his freedom, he deserted
her, and openly lived with another woman. Whether it was pride that
kept her from divorcing him, or whether she still loved him (if she
had ever done so) and was ready to take him back, or whether it was
out of revenge that she refused to have done with him legally, was an
affair of which I knew nothing. Calamity followed on calamity; first
one and then the other of her sons was killed in the European War, and
I remembered having heard that she was the victim of some malignant and
disfiguring disease, which caused her to lead a hermit life, seeing
nobody. It was now three years or so since she had died. Such, with the addition that she had died in my house, and that
Roderick had been with her, was the sum of my meagre knowledge, which
might or might not, so he had intimated, be supplemented by him. He
arrived next day, having motored down from London for the avoidance
of fatigue, and certainly as we sat after dinner that night in the
garden-room, he had avoided it very successfully, for never had I seen
him more animated. “Oh, I have been so right to come here,” he said, “for I feel steeped
in tranquillity and content. There’s such a tremendous sense of
Margaret’s presence here, and I never knew how much I wanted it. Perhaps that is purely subjective, but what does that matter so long as
I feel it? | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
How a scene soaks into the place where it has been enacted;
my room, which you know was her room, is alive with her. I want nothing
better than to be here, prowling and purring over the memory of the
last time, which was the only one, that I was here. Yes, just that; and
I know how odd you must think it. But it’s true, it was here that I saw
her die, and instead of shunning the place, I bathe myself in it. For
it was one of the happiest hours of my life.”
“Because----” I began. “No; not because it gave her release, if that’s in your mind,” he said. “It’s because I saw----”
He broke off, and remembering his stipulation that I should ask him
nothing, but that he would tell me “if and when” he could, I put no
question to him. His eyes were dancing with the sparkle of fire that
burned on the hearth, for though April was here, the evenings were
still chilly, and it was not the fire that gave them their light, but
a joyousness that was as bright as glee, and as deep as happiness. “No, I’m not going on with that now,” he said, “though I expect I
shall before my days are out. At present I shall leave you wondering
why a place that should hold such mournful memories for me, is such a
well-spring. And as I am not for telling you about me, let me enquire
about you. Bring yourself up to date; what have you been doing, and
much more important, what have you been thinking about?”
“My doings have chiefly been confined to settling into this house,” I
said. “I’ve been pulling and pushing furniture into places where it
wouldn’t go, and cursing it.”
He looked round the room. “It doesn’t seem to bear you any grudge,” he said. “It looks contented. And what else?”
“In the intervals, when I couldn’t push and curse any more,” I said,
“I’ve been writing a few spook stories. All about the borderland, which
I love as much as you do.”
He laughed outright. “Do you, indeed?” he said. “Then it’s no use my saying that it is quite
impossible. But I should like to know your views on the borderland.”
I pointed to a sheaf of typewritten stuff that littered my table. “Them’s my sentiments,” I said, “and quite at your service.”
“Good; then I’ll take them to bed with me when I go, if you’ll allow
me. I’ve always thought that you had a pretty notion of the creepy,
but the mistake that you make is to imagine that creepiness is
characteristic of the borderland. No doubt there are creepy things
there, but so there are everywhere, and a thunder-storm is far more
terrifying than an apparition. And when you get really close to
the borderland, you see how enchanting it is, and how vastly more
enchanting the other side must be. I got right on to the borderland
once, here in this house, as I shall probably tell you, and I never
saw so happy and kindly a place. And without doubt I shall soon be
careering across it in my own person. That’ll be, as we’ve often
determined, wildly interesting, and it will have the solemnity of a
first night at a new play about it. There’ll be the curtain close
in front of you, and presently it will be raised, and you will see
something you never saw before. How well, on the whole, the secret has
been kept, though from time to time little bits of information, little
scraps of dialogue, little descriptions of scenery have leaked out. Enthrallingly interesting; one wonders how they will come into the
great new drama.”
“You don’t mean the sort of thing that mediums tell us?” I asked. “Of course I don’t. I hate the sloshy--really there’s no other word for
it, and why should there be, since that word fits so admirably--the
sloshy utterances of the ordinary high-class, beyond-suspicion medium
at half a guinea a sitting, who asks if there’s anybody present who
once knew a Charles, or if not Charles, Thomas or William. Naturally
somebody has known a Charles, Thomas or William who has passed over,
and is the son, brother, father or cousin of a lady in black. So
when she claims Thomas, he tells her that he is very busy and happy,
helping people.... O Lord, what rot! I went to one such séance a month
ago, just before I was taken ill, and the medium said that Margaret
wanted to get into touch with somebody. Two of us claimed Margaret,
but Margaret chose me and said she was the spirit of my wife. Wife,
you know! You must allow that this was a very unfortunate shot. When I
said that I was unmarried, Margaret said that she was my mother, whose
name was Charlotte. Oh dear, oh dear! Well, I shall go to bed with joy,
bringing your spooks with me....”
“Sheaves,” said I. “Yes, but aren’t they the sheaves? Isn’t one’s gleaning of sheaves in
this world what they call spooks? That is, the knowledge of what one
takes across?”
“I don’t understand one word,” said I. “But you must understand. All the knowledge--worth anything--which
you or I have collected here, is the beginning of the other life. We
toil and moil, and make our gleanings and our harvestings, and all our
decent efforts help us to realize what the real harvest is. Surely we
shall take with us exactly that which we have reaped....”
After he had gone up to bed I sat trying to correct the errors of a
typist, but still between me and the pages there dwelt that haunting
sense of all that we did here being only the grist for what was to
come. Our achievements were rewarded, so he seemed to say, by a
glimpse. And those glimpses--so I tried to follow him--were the hints
that had leaked out of the drama for which the curtain was twitching. Was that it? Roderick came down to breakfast next morning, superlatively frank and
happy. “I didn’t read a single line of your stories,” he said. “When I got
into my bedroom I was so immeasurably content that I couldn’t risk
getting interested in anything else. I lay awake a long time, pinching
myself in order to prolong my sheer happiness, but the flesh was weak,
and at last, from sheer happiness, I slept and probably snored. Did
you hear me? I hope not. And then sheer happiness dictated my dreams,
though I don’t know what they were, and the moment I was called I got
up, because ... because I didn’t want to miss anything. Now, to be
practical again, what are you doing this morning?”
“I was intending to play golf,” I said, “unless----”
“There isn’t an ‘unless,’ if you mean Me. My plan made itself for me,
and I intend--this is my plan--to drive out with you, and sit in the
hollow by the fourth tee, and read your stories there. There’s a great
south-westerly wind, like a celestial housemaid, scouring the skies,
and I shall be completely sheltered there, and in the intervals of my
reading, I shall pleasantly observe the unsuccessful efforts of the
golfers to carry the big bunker. I can’t personally play golf any more,
but I shall enjoy seeing other people attempting to do it.”
“And no prowling or purring?” I asked. “Not this morning. That’s all right: it’s there. It’s so much all right
that I want to be active in other directions. Sitting in a windless
hollow is about the range of my activities. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
I say that for fear that
you should.”
I found a match when we arrived at the club-house, and Roderick
strolled away to the goal of his observations. Half an hour afterwards
I found him watching with criminally ecstatic joy the soaring drives
that, in the teeth of the great wind, were arrested and blown back into
the unholiest bunker in all the world or the low clever balls that
never rose to the height of the shored-up cliff of sand. The couple
in front of my partner and me were sarcastic dogs, and bade us wait
only till they had delved themselves over the ridge, and then we might
follow as soon as we chose. After violent deeds in the bunker they
climbed over the big dune, thirty yards beyond which lay the green on
which they would now be putting. As soon as they had disappeared, Roderick snatched my driver from my
hand. “I can’t bear it,” he said. “I must hit a ball again. Tee it low,
caddie.... No, no tee at all.”
He hit a superb shot, just high enough to carry the ridge, and not so
high that it caught the opposing wind and was stopped towards the end
of its flight. He gave a loud croak of laughter. “That’ll teach them not to insult my friend,” he said. “It must have
been pitched right among their careful puttings. And now I shall read
his ghost-stories.”
I have recorded this athletic incident because better than any analysis
of his attitude towards life and death it conveys just what that
attitude was. He knew perfectly well that any swift exertion might be
fatal to him, but he wanted to hit a golf ball again as sweetly and as
hard as it could be hit. He had done it: he had scored off death. And
as I went on my way I felt perfectly confident that if, with that brisk
free effort, he had fallen dead on the tee, he would have thought it
well worth while, provided only that he had made that irreproachable
shot. While alive, he proposed to partake in the pleasures of life,
amongst which he had always reckoned that of hitting golf balls, not
caring, though he liked to be alive, whether the immediate consequence
was death, just because he did not in the least object to being dead. The choice was of such little consequence.... The history of that I was
to know that evening. The stories which Roderick had taken to read were designed to be of
an uncomfortable type: one concerned a vampire, one an elemental, the
third the reincarnation of a certain execrable personage, and as we sat
in the garden-room after tea, he with these pages on his knees, I had
the pleasure of seeing him give hasty glances round, as he read, as if
to assure himself that there was nothing unusual in the dimmer corners
of the room.... I liked that; he was doing as I intended that a reader
should. Before long he came to the last page. “And are you intending to make a book of them?” he asked. “What are the
other stories like?”
“Worse,” said I, with the complacency of the horror-monger. “Then--did you ask for criticism? I shall give it in any case--you will
make a book that not only is inartistic, all shadows and no light, but
a false book. Fiction can be false, you know, inherently false. You
play godfather to your stories, you see: you tell them in the first
person, those at least that I have read, and that, though it need not
be supposed that those experiences were actually yours, yet gives a
sort of guarantee that you believe the borderland of which you write to
be entirely terrible. But it isn’t: there are probably terrors there--I
think for instance that I believe in elemental spirits, of some ghastly
kind--but I am sure that I believe that the borderland, for the most
part, is almost inconceivably delightful. I’ve got the best of reasons
for believing that.”
“I’m willing to be convinced,” said I. Again, as he looked at the fire, his eye sparkled, not with the
reflected flame, but with the brightness of some interior vision. “Well, there’s an hour yet before dinner,” he said, “and my story won’t
take half of that. It’s about my previous experience of this house;
what I saw, in fact, in the room which I now occupy. It was because of
that, naturally, that I wanted the same room again. Here goes, then. “For the twenty years of Margaret’s married life,” he said, “I never
saw her except quite accidentally and casually. Casually, like that,
I had seen her at theatres and what not with her two boys whom thus I
knew by sight. But I had never spoken to either of them, nor, after her
marriage, to their mother. I knew, as all the world knew, that she had
a terrible life, but circumstances being what they were, I could not
bring myself to her notice, the more so because she made no sign or
gesture of wanting me. But I am sure that no day passed on which I did
not long to be able to show her that my love and sympathy were hers. Only, so I thought, I had to know that she wanted them. “I heard, of course, of the death of her sons. They were both killed
in France within a few days of each other; one was eighteen, the other
nineteen. I wrote to her then formally, so long had we been strangers,
and she answered formally. After that, she took this house, where she
lived alone. A year later, I was told that she had now for some months
been suffering from a malignant and disfiguring disease. “I was in London, strolling down Piccadilly when my companion mentioned
it, and I at once became aware that I must go to see her, not to-morrow
or soon, but now. It is difficult to describe the quality of that
conviction, or tell you how instinctive and over-mastering it was. There are some things which you can’t help doing, not exactly because
you desire to do them, but because they must be done. If, for instance,
you are in the middle of the road, and see a motor coming towards you
at top-speed, you have to step to the side of the road, unless you
deliberately choose to commit suicide. It was just like that; unless I
intended to commit a sort of spiritual suicide there was no choice. “A few hours later I was at your door here, asked to see her, and was
told that she was desperately ill and could see nobody. But I got her
maid to take the message that I was here, and presently her nurse came
down to tell me that she would see me. I should find Margaret, she
said, wearing a veil so as to conceal from me the dreadful ravages
which the disease had inflicted on her face, and the scars of the two
operations which she had undergone. Very likely she would not speak to
me, for she had great difficulty in speaking at all, and in any case
I was not to stay for more than a few minutes. Probably she could not
live many hours: I had only just come in time. And at that moment I
wished I had done anything rather than come here, for though instinct
had driven me here, yet instinct now recoiled with unspeakable horror. The flesh wars against the spirit, you know, and under its stress I
now suggested that it was better perhaps that I should not see her.... | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
But the nurse merely said again that Margaret wished to see me, and
guessing perhaps the cause of my unwillingness, ‘Her face will be quite
invisible,’ she added. ‘There will be nothing to shock you.’
“I went in alone: Margaret was propped up in bed with pillows, so that
she sat nearly upright, and over her head was a dark veil through which
I could see nothing whatever. Her right hand lay on the coverlet, and
as I seated myself by her bedside, where the nurse had put a chair for
me, Margaret advanced her hand towards me, shyly, hesitatingly, as if
not sure that I would take it. But it was a sign, a gesture.”
He paused, his face beaming and radiant with the light of that memory. “I am speaking of things unspeakable,” he said. “I can no more convey
to you all that meant than by a mere enumeration of colours can I steep
your soul in the feeling of a sunset.... So there I sat, with her hand
covered and clasped in mine. I had been told that very likely she would
not speak, and for myself there was no word in the world which would
not be dross in the gold of that silence. “And then from behind her veil there came a whisper. “‘I couldn’t die without seeing you,’ she said. ‘I was sure you would
come. I’ve one thing to say to you. I loved you, and I tried to choke
my love. And for years, my dear, I have been reaping the harvest of
what I did. I tried to kill love, but it was so much stronger than I. And now the harvest is gathered. I have suffered cruelly, you know, but
I bless every pang of it. I needed it all....’
“Only a few minutes before, I had quaked at the thought of seeing her. But now I could not suffer that the veil should cover her face. “‘Put up your veil, darling,’ I said. ‘I must see you.’
“‘No, no,’ she whispered. ‘I should horrify you. I am terrible.’
“‘You can’t be terrible to me,’ I said. ‘I am going to lift it.’
“I raised her veil. And what did I see? I might have known, I think: I
might have guessed that at this moment, supreme and perfect, I should
see with vision. “There was no scar or ravage of disease or disfigurement there. She was
far lovelier than she had ever been, and on her face there shone the
dawn of the everlasting day. She had shed all that was perishable and
subject to decay, and her immortal spirit was manifested to me, purged
and punished if you will, but humble and holy. There was granted to my
frail mortal sight the power of seeing truly; it was permitted to me to
be with her beyond the bounds of mortality....
“And then, even as I was lost in an amazement of love and wonder, I
saw we were not alone in the room. Two boys, whom I recognized, were
standing at the other side of the bed, looking at her. It seemed
utterly natural that they should be there. “‘We’ve been allowed to come for you, mother darling,’ said one. ‘Get
up.’
“She turned her face to them. “‘Ah, my dears,’ she said. ‘How lovely of you. But just one moment.’
“She bent over towards me and kissed me. “‘Thank you for coming, Roderick,’ she said. ‘Good-bye, just for a
little while.’
“At that my power of sight--my power of true sight--failed. Her head
fell back on the pillows and turned over on one side. For one second,
before I let the veil drop over it again, I had a glimpse of her face,
marred and cruelly mutilated. I saw that, I say, but never then nor
afterwards could I remember it. It was like a terrible dream, which
utterly fades on the awaking. Then her hand, which had been clasping
mine, in that moment of her farewell slackened its hold, and dropped on
to the bed. She had just moved away, somewhere out of sight, with her
two boys to look after her.”
He paused. “That’s all,” he said. “And do you wonder that I chose that room? How
I hope that she will come for me.”
My room was next to Roderick’s, the head of his bed being just opposite
the head of mine on the other side of the wall. That night I had
undressed, lain down, and had just put out my light, when I heard a
sharp tap just above me. I thought it was some fortuitous noise, as of
a picture swinging in a draught, but the moment after it was repeated,
and it struck me that it was perhaps a summons from Roderick who wanted
something. Still quite unalarmed, I got out of bed, and, candle in
hand, went to his door. I knocked, but receiving no answer, opened it
an inch or two. “Did you want anything?” I asked, and, again receiving no answer, I
went in. His lights were burning, and he was sitting up in bed. He did not
appear to see me or be conscious of my presence, and his eyes were
fixed on some point a few feet away in front of him. His mouth smiled,
and in his eyes was just such a joy as I had seen there when he told me
his story. Then, leaning on his arm, he moved as if to rise. “Oh, Margaret, my dear....” he cried. He drew a couple of short breaths, and fell back. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE PITMAN PRESS, BATH
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. | Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic) - Visible and Invisible |
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
by Ambrose Bierce
THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION, 1988
I
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down
into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his
back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack
fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties
supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his
executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a
sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short
remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform
of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the
bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support,” that is
to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on
the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural
position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to
be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center
of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking
that traversed it. Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran
straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was
lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other
bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle slope topped with a
stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single
embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon
commanding the bridge. Midway up the slope between the bridge and fort
were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at “parade
rest,” the butts of their rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining
slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon
the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of
his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man
moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The
sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to
adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing
the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary
who when he comes announced is to be received with formal
manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the
code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference. The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about
thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from
his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a
straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark
hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of
his well fitting frock coat. He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but
no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly
expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was
in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal
military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and
gentlemen are not excluded. The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside
and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The
sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately
behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements
left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the
same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The
end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a
fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain;
it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former
the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man
go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his
judgement as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor
his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,”
then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing
madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his
attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it
appeared to move! What a sluggish stream! He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and
children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding
mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the
soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became
conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his
dear ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a
sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s
hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered
what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by— it seemed
both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death
knell. He awaited each new stroke with impatience and—he knew not
why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer;
the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds
increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust
of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of
his watch. He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could
free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring
into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming
vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My
home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones
are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were
flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the
captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside. II
Peyton Farquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly
respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave
owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and
ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious
nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from
taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous
campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the
inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the
larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That
opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in wartime. Meanwhile he did what he could. | Bierce, Ambrose - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
No service was too humble for him to
perform in the aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to
undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at
heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much
qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous
dictum that all is fair in love and war. One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench
near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the
gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy
to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water
her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news
from the front. “The Yanks are repairing the railroads,” said the man, “and are getting
ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put
it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has
issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any
civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or
trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.”
“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked. “About thirty miles.”
“Is there no force on this side of the creek?”
“Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single
sentinel at this end of the bridge.”
“Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the
picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar,
smiling, “what could he accomplish?”
The soldier reflected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I
observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of
driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now
dry and would burn like tinder.”
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked
her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later,
after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the
direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout. III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost
consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was
awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure
upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant
agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of
his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well defined
lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid
periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to
an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing
but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sensations were
unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was
already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He
was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he
was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung
through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all
at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with
the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and
all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that
the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no
additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already
suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at
the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his
eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how
distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became
fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow
and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it
with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and
drowned,” he thought, “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be
shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.”
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist
apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle
his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without
interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what
superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell
away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each
side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first
one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it
away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of
a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these
words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by
the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly;
his brain was on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly,
gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole
body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his
disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water
vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He
felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest
expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs
engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a
shriek! He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were,
indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful
disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that
they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples
upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked
at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the
leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them:
the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching
their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the
dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that
danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’
wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars which had
lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along
beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water. He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the
visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point,
and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the
captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in
silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated,
pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire;
the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible,
their forms gigantic. | Bierce, Ambrose - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly
within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He
heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at
his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The
man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his
own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye
and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all
famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed. A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was
again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of
a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him
and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued
all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although
no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread
significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the
lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly
and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and
enforcing tranquility in the men—with what accurately measured interval
fell those cruel words:
“Company!… Attention!… Shoulder arms!… Ready!… Aim!… Fire!”
Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his
ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of the
volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal,
singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched
him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and
he snatched it out. As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been
a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther downstream—nearer
to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal
ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the
barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two
sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually. The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming
vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and
legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning:
“The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a
second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has
probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I
cannot dodge them all!”
An appalling splash within two yards of him was followed by a loud,
rushing sound, DIMINUENDO, which seemed to travel back through the air
to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to
its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him,
blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he
heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an
instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond. “They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use
a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will
apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun.”
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and
men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their
colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity
of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few moments he
was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the
stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed
him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of
one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and
audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could
think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon
the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their
arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange roseate
light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in
their branches the music of AEolian harps. He had not wish to perfect
his escape—he was content to remain in that enchanting spot until
retaken. A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head
roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random
farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and
plunged into the forest. All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The
forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not
even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a
region. There was something uncanny in the revelation. By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished. The thought of his
wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him
in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight
as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no
dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human
habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on
both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a
lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in
the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in
strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order
which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was
full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he
distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue. His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly
swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had
bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His
tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it
forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf
had carpeted the untraveled avenue—he could no longer feel the roadway
beneath his feet! Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking,
for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a
delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it,
and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have
traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the
wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife,
looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet
him. | Bierce, Ambrose - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of
ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how
beautiful she is! He springs forwards with extended arms. As he is
about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck;
a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock
of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence! Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently | Bierce, Ambrose - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
Transcribed from the 1918 Boni and Liveright’s “Can Such Things Be?”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Public domain cover]
PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES
By
Ambrose Bierce
CONTENTS
THE WAYS OF GHOSTS PAGE
PRESENT AT A HANGING 327
A COLD GREETING 331
A WIRELESS MESSAGE 335
AN ARREST 340
SOLDIER-FOLK
A MAN WITH TWO LIVES 345
THREE AND ONE ARE ONE 350
A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE 356
TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS 361
SOME HAUNTED HOUSES
THE ISLE OF PINES 369
A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT 377
A VINE ON A HOUSE 383
AT OLD MAN ECKERT’S 389
THE SPOOK HOUSE 393
THE OTHER LODGERS 400
THE THING AT NOLAN 405
THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD 415
AN UNFINISHED RACE 419
CHARLES ASHMORE’S TRAIL 421
THE WAYS OF GHOSTS
_My peculiar relation to the writer of the following narratives is such
that I must ask the reader to overlook the absence of explanation as to
how they came into my possession_. _Withal_, _my knowledge of him is so
meager that I should rather not undertake to say if he were himself
persuaded of the truth of what he relates_; _certainly such inquiries as
I have thought it worth while to set about have not in every instance
tended to confirmation of the statements made_. _Yet his style_, _for
the most part devoid alike of artifice and art_, _almost baldly simple
and direct_, _seems hardly compatible with the disingenuousness of a
merely literary intention_; _one would call it the manner of one more
concerned for the fruits of research than for the flowers of expression_. _In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim to attention by
giving them something of an orderly arrangement_, _I have conscientiously
refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction as
I may have felt myself able to bestow_, _which would not only have been
impertinent_, _even if pleasing_, _but would have given me a somewhat
closer relation to the work than I should care to have and to avow_.—_A. B._
PRESENT AT A HANGING
AN old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected
by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission
to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more
common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with
considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country by
all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely upon the country
people for hospitality. This brought him into relation with queer
characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous in their methods
of making a living, murder being an acceptable means to that end. It
occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen
purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and
never could be traced beyond. This was so in the case of “old man
Baker,” as he was always called. (Such names are given in the western
“settlements” only to elderly persons who are not esteemed; to the
general disrepute of social unworth is affixed the special reproach of
age.) A peddler came to his house and none went away—that is all that
anybody knew. Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well known in
that part of the country, was driving by Baker’s farm one night. It was
not very dark: there was a bit of moon somewhere above the light veil of
mist that lay along the earth. Mr. Cummings, who was at all times a
cheerful person, was whistling a tune, which he would occasionally
interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse. As he
came to a little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the figure of a man
standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty
forest. The man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy
stick—obviously an itinerant peddler. His attitude had in it a
suggestion of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker. Mr. Cummings
reined in his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave him a pleasant
salutation and invited him to a seat in the vehicle—“if you are going my
way,” he added. The man raised his head, looked him full in the face,
but neither answered nor made any further movement. The minister, with
good-natured persistence, repeated his invitation. At this the man threw
his right hand forward from his side and pointed downward as he stood on
the extreme edge of the bridge. Mr. Cummings looked past him, over into
the ravine, saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man
again. He had disappeared. The horse, which all this time had been
uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror and
started to run away. Before he had regained control of the animal the
minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along. He looked
back and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the same attitude
as when he had first observed it. Then for the first time he was
conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his
willing horse would go. On arriving at home he related his adventure to his family, and early the
next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White Corwell and Abner
Raiser, returned to the spot. They found the body of old man Baker
hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge, immediately
beneath the spot where the apparition had stood. A thick coating of
dust, slightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge, but
the only footprints were those of Mr. Cummings’ horse. In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose, friable earth of the
slope below it, disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered by the
action of water and frost. They were identified as those of the lost
peddler. At the double inquest the coroner’s jury found that Daniel
Baker died by his own hand while suffering from temporary insanity, and
that Samuel Morritz was murdered by some person or persons to the jury
unknown. A COLD GREETING
THIS is a story told by the late Benson Foley of San Francisco:
“In the summer of 1881 I met a man named James H. Conway, a resident of
Franklin, Tennessee. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
He was visiting San Francisco for his health,
deluded man, and brought me a note of introduction from Mr. Lawrence
Barting. I had known Barting as a captain in the Federal army during the
civil war. At its close he had settled in Franklin, and in time became,
I had reason to think, somewhat prominent as a lawyer. Barting had
always seemed to me an honorable and truthful man, and the warm
friendship which he expressed in his note for Mr. Conway was to me
sufficient evidence that the latter was in every way worthy of my
confidence and esteem. At dinner one day Conway told me that it had been
solemnly agreed between him and Barting that the one who died first
should, if possible, communicate with the other from beyond the grave, in
some unmistakable way—just how, they had left (wisely, it seemed to me)
to be decided by the deceased, according to the opportunities that his
altered circumstances might present. “A few weeks after the conversation in which Mr. Conway spoke of this
agreement, I met him one day, walking slowly down Montgomery street,
apparently, from his abstracted air, in deep thought. He greeted me
coldly with merely a movement of the head and passed on, leaving me
standing on the walk, with half-proffered hand, surprised and naturally
somewhat piqued. The next day I met him again in the office of the
Palace Hotel, and seeing him about to repeat the disagreeable performance
of the day before, intercepted him in a doorway, with a friendly
salutation, and bluntly requested an explanation of his altered manner. He hesitated a moment; then, looking me frankly in the eyes, said:
“‘I do not think, Mr. Foley, that I have any longer a claim to your
friendship, since Mr. Barting appears to have withdrawn his own from
me—for what reason, I protest I do not know. If he has not already
informed you he probably will do so.’
“‘But,’ I replied, ‘I have not heard from Mr. Barting.’
“‘Heard from him!’ he repeated, with apparent surprise. ‘Why, he is
here. I met him yesterday ten minutes before meeting you. I gave you
exactly the same greeting that he gave me. I met him again not a quarter
of an hour ago, and his manner was precisely the same: he merely bowed
and passed on. I shall not soon forget your civility to me. Good
morning, or—as it may please you—farewell.’
“All this seemed to me singularly considerate and delicate behavior on
the part of Mr. Conway. “As dramatic situations and literary effects are foreign to my purpose I
will explain at once that Mr. Barting was dead. He had died in Nashville
four days before this conversation. Calling on Mr. Conway, I apprised
him of our friend’s death, showing him the letters announcing it. He was
visibly affected in a way that forbade me to entertain a doubt of his
sincerity. “‘It seems incredible,’ he said, after a period of reflection. ‘I
suppose I must have mistaken another man for Barting, and that man’s cold
greeting was merely a stranger’s civil acknowledgment of my own. I
remember, indeed, that he lacked Barting’s mustache.’
“‘Doubtless it was another man,’ I assented; and the subject was never
afterward mentioned between us. But I had in my pocket a photograph of
Barting, which had been inclosed in the letter from his widow. It had
been taken a week before his death, and was without a mustache.”
A WIRELESS MESSAGE
IN the summer of 1896 Mr. William Holt, a wealthy manufacturer of
Chicago, was living temporarily in a little town of central New York, the
name of which the writer’s memory has not retained. Mr. Holt had had
“trouble with his wife,” from whom he had parted a year before. Whether
the trouble was anything more serious than “incompatibility of temper,”
he is probably the only living person that knows: he is not addicted to
the vice of confidences. Yet he has related the incident herein set down
to at least one person without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is now
living in Europe. One evening he had left the house of a brother whom he was visiting, for
a stroll in the country. It may be assumed—whatever the value of the
assumption in connection with what is said to have occurred—that his mind
was occupied with reflections on his domestic infelicities and the
distressing changes that they had wrought in his life. Whatever may have been his thoughts, they so possessed him that he
observed neither the lapse of time nor whither his feet were carrying
him; he knew only that he had passed far beyond the town limits and was
traversing a lonely region by a road that bore no resemblance to the one
by which he had left the village. In brief, he was “lost.”
Realizing his mischance, he smiled; central New York is not a region of
perils, nor does one long remain lost in it. He turned about and went
back the way that he had come. Before he had gone far he observed that
the landscape was growing more distinct—was brightening. Everything was
suffused with a soft, red glow in which he saw his shadow projected in
the road before him. “The moon is rising,” he said to himself. Then he
remembered that it was about the time of the new moon, and if that
tricksy orb was in one of its stages of visibility it had set long
before. He stopped and faced about, seeking the source of the rapidly
broadening light. As he did so, his shadow turned and lay along the road
in front of him as before. The light still came from behind him. That
was surprising; he could not understand. Again he turned, and again,
facing successively to every point of the horizon. Always the shadow was
before—always the light behind, “a still and awful red.”
Holt was astonished—“dumfounded” is the word that he used in telling
it—yet seems to have retained a certain intelligent curiosity. To test
the intensity of the light whose nature and cause he could not determine,
he took out his watch to see if he could make out the figures on the
dial. They were plainly visible, and the hands indicated the hour of
eleven o’clock and twenty-five minutes. At that moment the mysterious
illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an almost blinding splendor,
flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars and throwing the
monstrous shadow of himself athwart the landscape. In that unearthly
illumination he saw near him, but apparently in the air at a considerable
elevation, the figure of his wife, clad in her night-clothing and holding
to her breast the figure of his child. Her eyes were fixed upon his with
an expression which he afterward professed himself unable to name or
describe, further than that it was “not of this life.”
The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness, in which, however,
the apparition still showed white and motionless; then by insensible
degrees it faded and vanished, like a bright image on the retina after
the closing of the eyes. A peculiarity of the apparition, hardly noted
at the time, but afterward recalled, was that it showed only the upper
half of the woman’s figure: nothing was seen below the waist. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute, for gradually all
objects of his environment became again visible. In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering the village at a
point opposite to that at which he had left it. He soon arrived at the
house of his brother, who hardly knew him. He was wild-eyed, haggard,
and gray as a rat. Almost incoherently, he related his night’s
experience. “Go to bed, my poor fellow,” said his brother, “and—wait. We shall hear
more of this.”
An hour later came the predestined telegram. Holt’s dwelling in one of
the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire. Her escape cut off by
the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window, her child in her
arms. There she had stood, motionless, apparently dazed. Just as the
firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor had given way, and she was
seen no more. The moment of this culminating horror was eleven o’clock and twenty-five
minutes, standard time. AN ARREST
HAVING murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a
fugitive from justice. From the county jail where he had been confined
to await his trial he had escaped by knocking down his jailer with an
iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the outer door, walking
out into the night. The jailer being unarmed, Brower got no weapon with
which to defend his recovered liberty. As soon as he was out of the town
he had the folly to enter a forest; this was many years ago, when that
region was wilder than it is now. The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and as
Brower had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of the
land, he was, naturally, not long in losing himself. He could not have
said if he were getting farther away from the town or going back to it—a
most important matter to Orrin Brower. He knew that in either case a
posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would soon be on his track
and his chance of escape was very slender; but he did not wish to assist
in his own pursuit. Even an added hour of freedom was worth having. Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there before
him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the gloom. It
was too late to retreat: the fugitive felt that at the first movement
back toward the wood he would be, as he afterward explained, “filled with
buckshot.” So the two stood there like trees, Brower nearly suffocated
by the activity of his own heart; the other—the emotions of the other are
not recorded. A moment later—it may have been an hour—the moon sailed into a patch of
unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible embodiment of Law lift
an arm and point significantly toward and beyond him. He understood. Turning his back to his captor, he walked submissively away in the
direction indicated, looking to neither the right nor the left; hardly
daring to breathe, his head and back actually aching with a prophecy of
buckshot. Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged; that was
shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had coolly
killed his brother-in-law. It is needless to relate them here; they came
out at his trial, and the revelation of his calmness in confronting them
came near to saving his neck. But what would you have?—when a brave man
is beaten, he submits. So they pursued their journey jailward along the old road through the
woods. Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head: just once, when
he was in deep shadow and he knew that the other was in moonlight, he
looked backward. His captor was Burton Duff, the jailer, as white as
death and bearing upon his brow the livid mark of the iron bar. Orrin
Brower had no further curiosity. Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but deserted;
only the women and children remained, and they were off the streets. Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way. Straight up to the
main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy iron
door, pushed it open without command, entered and found himself in the
presence of a half-dozen armed men. Then he turned. Nobody else
entered. On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff. SOLDIER-FOLK
A MAN WITH TWO LIVES
HERE is the queer story of David William Duck, related by himself. Duck
is an old man living in Aurora, Illinois, where he is universally
respected. He is commonly known, however, as “Dead Duck.”
“In the autumn of 1866 I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth
Infantry. My company was one of those stationed at Fort Phil Kearney,
commanded by Colonel Carrington. The country is more or less familiar
with the history of that garrison, particularly with the slaughter by the
Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and officers—not one
escaping—through disobedience of orders by its commander, the brave but
reckless Captain Fetterman. When that occurred, I was trying to make my
way with important dispatches to Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn. As
the country swarmed with hostile Indians, I traveled by night and
concealed myself as best I could before daybreak. The better to do so, I
went afoot, armed with a Henry rifle and carrying three days’ rations in
my haversack. “For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the darkness a
narrow cañon leading through a range of rocky hills. It contained many
large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the hills. Behind one of
these, in a clump of sage-brush, I made my bed for the day, and soon fell
asleep. It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, though in fact it
was near midday, when I was awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet
striking the bowlder just above my body. A band of Indians had trailed
me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an
execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside
above. The smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my
feet than he was off his and rolling down the declivity. Then I ran in a
stooping posture, dodging among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm of
bullets from invisible enemies. The rascals did not rise and pursue,
which I thought rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that
they had to deal with only one man. The reason for their inaction was
soon made clear. I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the
limit of my run—the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a cañon. It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute
of vegetation. In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in a pen. Pursuit was needless; they had only to wait. “They waited. For two days and nights, crouching behind a rock topped
with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back, suffering
agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance, I fought the
fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke of their rifles,
as they did at that of mine. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
Of course, I did not dare to close my eyes
at night, and lack of sleep was a keen torture. “I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew was to be my last. I remember, rather indistinctly, that in my desperation and delirium I
sprang out into the open and began firing my repeating rifle without
seeing anybody to fire at. And I remember no more of that fight. “The next thing that I recollect was my pulling myself out of a river
just at nightfall. I had not a rag of clothing and knew nothing of my
whereabouts, but all that night I traveled, cold and footsore, toward the
north. At daybreak I found myself at Fort C. F. Smith, my destination,
but without my dispatches. The first man that I met was a sergeant named
William Briscoe, whom I knew very well. You can fancy his astonishment
at seeing me in that condition, and my own at his asking who the devil I
was. “‘Dave Duck,’ I answered; ‘who should I be?’
“He stared like an owl. “‘You do look it,’ he said, and I observed that he drew a little away
from me. ‘What’s up?’ he added. “I told him what had happened to me the day before. He heard me through,
still staring; then he said:
“‘My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck I ought to inform you that I
buried you two months ago. I was out with a small scouting party and
found your body, full of bullet-holes and newly scalped—somewhat
mutilated otherwise, too, I am sorry to say—right where you say you made
your fight. Come to my tent and I’ll show you your clothing and some
letters that I took from your person; the commandant has your
dispatches.’
“He performed that promise. He showed me the clothing, which I
resolutely put on; the letters, which I put into my pocket. He made no
objection, then took me to the commandant, who heard my story and coldly
ordered Briscoe to take me to the guardhouse. On the way I said:
“‘Bill Briscoe, did you really and truly bury the dead body that you
found in these togs?’
“‘Sure,’ he answered—‘just as I told you. It was Dave Duck, all right;
most of us knew him. And now, you damned impostor, you’d better tell me
who you are.’
“‘I’d give something to know,’ I said. “A week later, I escaped from the guardhouse and got out of the country
as fast as I could. Twice I have been back, seeking for that fateful
spot in the hills, but unable to find it.”
THREE AND ONE ARE ONE
IN the year 1861 Barr Lassiter, a young man of twenty-two, lived with his
parents and an elder sister near Carthage, Tennessee. The family were in
somewhat humble circumstances, subsisting by cultivation of a small and
not very fertile plantation. Owning no slaves, they were not rated among
“the best people” of their neighborhood; but they were honest persons of
good education, fairly well mannered and as respectable as any family
could be if uncredentialed by personal dominion over the sons and
daughters of Ham. The elder Lassiter had that severity of manner that so
frequently affirms an uncompromising devotion to duty, and conceals a
warm and affectionate disposition. He was of the iron of which martyrs
are made, but in the heart of the matrix had lurked a nobler metal,
fusible at a milder heat, yet never coloring nor softening the hard
exterior. By both heredity and environment something of the man’s
inflexible character had touched the other members of the family; the
Lassiter home, though not devoid of domestic affection, was a veritable
citadel of duty, and duty—ah, duty is as cruel as death! When the war came on it found in the family, as in so many others in that
State, a divided sentiment; the young man was loyal to the Union, the
others savagely hostile. This unhappy division begot an insupportable
domestic bitterness, and when the offending son and brother left home
with the avowed purpose of joining the Federal army not a hand was laid
in his, not a word of farewell was spoken, not a good wish followed him
out into the world whither he went to meet with such spirit as he might
whatever fate awaited him. Making his way to Nashville, already occupied by the Army of General
Buell, he enlisted in the first organization that he found, a Kentucky
regiment of cavalry, and in due time passed through all the stages of
military evolution from raw recruit to experienced trooper. A right good
trooper he was, too, although in his oral narrative from which this tale
is made there was no mention of that; the fact was learned from his
surviving comrades. For Barr Lassiter has answered “Here” to the
sergeant whose name is Death. Two years after he had joined it his regiment passed through the region
whence he had come. The country thereabout had suffered severely from
the ravages of war, having been occupied alternately (and simultaneously)
by the belligerent forces, and a sanguinary struggle had occurred in the
immediate vicinity of the Lassiter homestead. But of this the young
trooper was not aware. Finding himself in camp near his home, he felt a natural longing to see
his parents and sister, hoping that in them, as in him, the unnatural
animosities of the period had been softened by time and separation. Obtaining a leave of absence, he set foot in the late summer afternoon,
and soon after the rising of the full moon was walking up the gravel path
leading to the dwelling in which he had been born. Soldiers in war age rapidly, and in youth two years are a long time. Barr Lassiter felt himself an old man, and had almost expected to find
the place a ruin and a desolation. Nothing, apparently, was changed. At
the sight of each dear and familiar object he was profoundly affected. His heart beat audibly, his emotion nearly suffocated him; an ache was in
his throat. Unconsciously he quickened his pace until he almost ran, his
long shadow making grotesque efforts to keep its place beside him. The house was unlighted, the door open. As he approached and paused to
recover control of himself his father came out and stood bare-headed in
the moonlight. “Father!” cried the young man, springing forward with outstretched
hand—“Father!”
The elder man looked him sternly in the face, stood a moment motionless
and without a word withdrew into the house. Bitterly disappointed,
humiliated, inexpressibly hurt and altogether unnerved, the soldier
dropped upon a rustic seat in deep dejection, supporting his head upon
his trembling hand. But he would not have it so: he was too good a
soldier to accept repulse as defeat. He rose and entered the house,
passing directly to the “sitting-room.”
It was dimly lighted by an uncurtained east window. On a low stool by
the hearthside, the only article of furniture in the place, sat his
mother, staring into a fireplace strewn with blackened embers and cold
ashes. He spoke to her—tenderly, interrogatively, and with hesitation,
but she neither answered, nor moved, nor seemed in any way surprised. True, there had been time for her husband to apprise her of their guilty
son’s return. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
He moved nearer and was about to lay his hand upon her
arm, when his sister entered from an adjoining room, looked him full in
the face, passed him without a sign of recognition and left the room by a
door that was partly behind him. He had turned his head to watch her,
but when she was gone his eyes again sought his mother. She too had left
the place. Barr Lassiter strode to the door by which he had entered. The moonlight
on the lawn was tremulous, as if the sward were a rippling sea. The
trees and their black shadows shook as in a breeze. Blended with its
borders, the gravel walk seemed unsteady and insecure to step on. This
young soldier knew the optical illusions produced by tears. He felt them
on his cheek, and saw them sparkle on the breast of his trooper’s jacket. He left the house and made his way back to camp. The next day, with no very definite intention, with no dominant feeling
that he could rightly have named, he again sought the spot. Within a
half-mile of it he met Bushrod Albro, a former playfellow and schoolmate,
who greeted him warmly. “I am going to visit my home,” said the soldier. The other looked at him rather sharply, but said nothing. “I know,” continued Lassiter, “that my folks have not changed, but—”
“There have been changes,” Albro interrupted—“everything changes. I’ll
go with you if you don’t mind. We can talk as we go.”
But Albro did not talk. Instead of a house they found only fire-blackened foundations of stone,
enclosing an area of compact ashes pitted by rains. Lassiter’s astonishment was extreme. “I could not find the right way to tell you,” said Albro. “In the fight
a year ago your house was burned by a Federal shell.”
“And my family—where are they?”
“In Heaven, I hope. All were killed by the shell.”
A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE
CONNECTING Readyville and Woodbury was a good, hard turnpike nine or ten
miles long. Readyville was an outpost of the Federal army at
Murfreesboro; Woodbury had the same relation to the Confederate army at
Tullahoma. For months after the big battle at Stone River these outposts
were in constant quarrel, most of the trouble occurring, naturally, on
the turnpike mentioned, between detachments of cavalry. Sometimes the
infantry and artillery took a hand in the game by way of showing their
good-will. One night a squadron of Federal horse commanded by Major Seidel, a
gallant and skillful officer, moved out from Readyville on an uncommonly
hazardous enterprise requiring secrecy, caution and silence. Passing the infantry pickets, the detachment soon afterward approached
two cavalry videttes staring hard into the darkness ahead. There should
have been three. “Where is your other man?” said the major. “I ordered Dunning to be here
to-night.”
“He rode forward, sir,” the man replied. “There was a little firing
afterward, but it was a long way to the front.”
“It was against orders and against sense for Dunning to do that,” said
the officer, obviously vexed. “Why did he ride forward?”
“Don’t know, sir; he seemed mighty restless. Guess he was skeered.”
When this remarkable reasoner and his companion had been absorbed into
the expeditionary force, it resumed its advance. Conversation was
forbidden; arms and accouterments were denied the right to rattle. The
horses’ tramping was all that could be heard and the movement was slow in
order to have as little as possible of that. It was after midnight and
pretty dark, although there was a bit of moon somewhere behind the masses
of cloud. Two or three miles along, the head of the column approached a dense
forest of cedars bordering the road on both sides. The major commanded a
halt by merely halting, and, evidently himself a bit “skeered,” rode on
alone to reconnoiter. He was followed, however, by his adjutant and
three troopers, who remained a little distance behind and, unseen by him,
saw all that occurred. After riding about a hundred yards toward the forest, the major suddenly
and sharply reined in his horse and sat motionless in the saddle. Near
the side of the road, in a little open space and hardly ten paces away,
stood the figure of a man, dimly visible and as motionless as he. The
major’s first feeling was that of satisfaction in having left his
cavalcade behind; if this were an enemy and should escape he would have
little to report. The expedition was as yet undetected. Some dark object was dimly discernible at the man’s feet; the officer
could not make it out. With the instinct of the true cavalryman and a
particular indisposition to the discharge of firearms, he drew his saber. The man on foot made no movement in answer to the challenge. The
situation was tense and a bit dramatic. Suddenly the moon burst through
a rift in the clouds and, himself in the shadow of a group of great oaks,
the horseman saw the footman clearly, in a patch of white light. It was
Trooper Dunning, unarmed and bareheaded. The object at his feet resolved
itself into a dead horse, and at a right angle across the animal’s neck
lay a dead man, face upward in the moonlight. “Dunning has had the fight of his life,” thought the major, and was about
to ride forward. Dunning raised his hand, motioning him back with a
gesture of warning; then, lowering the arm, he pointed to the place where
the road lost itself in the blackness of the cedar forest. The major understood, and turning his horse rode back to the little group
that had followed him and was already moving to the rear in fear of his
displeasure, and so returned to the head of his command. “Dunning is just ahead there,” he said to the captain of his leading
company. “He has killed his man and will have something to report.”
Right patiently they waited, sabers drawn, but Dunning did not come. In
an hour the day broke and the whole force moved cautiously forward, its
commander not altogether satisfied with his faith in Private Dunning. The expedition had failed, but something remained to be done. In the little open space off the road they found the fallen horse. At a
right angle across the animal’s neck face upward, a bullet in the brain,
lay the body of Trooper Dunning, stiff as a statue, hours dead. Examination disclosed abundant evidence that within a half-hour the cedar
forest had been occupied by a strong force of Confederate infantry—an
ambuscade. TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS
IN the spring of the year 1862 General Buell’s big army lay in camp,
licking itself into shape for the campaign which resulted in the victory
at Shiloh. It was a raw, untrained army, although some of its fractions
had seen hard enough service, with a good deal of fighting, in the
mountains of Western Virginia, and in Kentucky. The war was young and
soldiering a new industry, imperfectly understood by the young American
of the period, who found some features of it not altogether to his
liking. Chief among these was that essential part of discipline,
subordination. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating fallacy
that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority is not
easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his “green and
salad days” is among the worst known. That is how it happened that one
of Buell’s men, Private Bennett Story Greene, committed the indiscretion
of striking his officer. Later in the war he would not have done that;
like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would have “seen him damned” first. But
time for reformation of his military manners was denied him: he was
promptly arrested on complaint of the officer, tried by court-martial and
sentenced to be shot. “You might have thrashed me and let it go at that,” said the condemned
man to the complaining witness; “that is what you used to do at school,
when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good as you. Nobody saw me
strike you; discipline would not have suffered much.”
“Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that,” said the lieutenant. “Will you forgive me? That is what I came to see you about.”
There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door of the
guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained that the time
allowed for the interview had expired. The next morning, when in the
presence of the whole brigade Private Greene was shot to death by a squad
of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley turned his back upon the sorry
performance and muttered a prayer for mercy, in which himself was
included. A few weeks afterward, as Buell’s leading division was being ferried over
the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant’s beaten army, night was
coming on, black and stormy. Through the wreck of battle the division
moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the enemy, who had withdrawn a
little to reform his lines. But for the lightning the darkness was
absolute. Never for a moment did it cease, and ever when the thunder did
not crack and roar were heard the moans of the wounded among whom the men
felt their way with their feet, and upon whom they stumbled in the gloom. The dead were there, too—there were dead a-plenty. In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance had
paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle, and
skirmishers had been thrown forward, word was passed along to call the
roll. The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley’s company stepped to the
front and began to name the men in alphabetical order. He had no written
roll, but a good memory. The men answered to their names as he ran down
the alphabet to G.
“Gorham.”
“Here!”
“Grayrock.”
“Here!”
The sergeant’s good memory was affected by habit:
“Greene.”
“Here!”
The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable! A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from an
electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident. The
sergeant paled and paused. The captain strode quickly to his side and
said sharply:
“Call that name again.”
Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field
of curiosity concerning the Unknown. “Bennett Greene.”
“Here!”
All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line
turned and squarely confronted each other. “Once more,” commanded the inexorable investigator, and once more came—a
trifle tremulously—the name of the dead man:
“Bennett Story Greene.”
“Here!”
At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond
the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of an
approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly,
punctuating as with a full stop the captain’s exclamation, “What the
devil does it mean?”
Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear. “It means this,” he said, throwing open his coat and displaying a visibly
broadening stain of crimson on his breast. His knees gave way; he fell
awkwardly and lay dead. A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the
congested front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not
again under fire. Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions,
ever again signify his presence at one. SOME HAUNTED HOUSES
THE ISLE OF PINES
FOR many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old man
named Herman Deluse. Very little was known of his history, for he would
neither speak of it himself nor suffer others. It was a common belief
among his neighbors that he had been a pirate—if upon any better evidence
than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses, and ancient flintlock
pistols, no one knew. He lived entirely alone in a small house of four
rooms, falling rapidly into decay and never repaired further than was
required by the weather. It stood on a slight elevation in the midst of
a large, stony field overgrown with brambles, and cultivated in patches
and only in the most primitive way. It was his only visible property,
but could hardly have yielded him a living, simple and few as were his
wants. He seemed always to have ready money, and paid cash for all his
purchases at the village stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two
or three times at the same place until after the lapse of a considerable
time. He got no commendation, however, for this equitable distribution
of his patronage; people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual
attempt to conceal his possession of so much money. That he had great
hoards of ill-gotten gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling
was not reasonably to be doubted by any honest soul conversant with the
facts of local tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of
things. On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead body
was discovered on the 10th, and physicians testified that death had
occurred about twenty-four hours previously—precisely how, they were
unable to say; for the _post-mortem_ examination showed every organ to be
absolutely healthy, with no indication of disorder or violence. According to them, death must have taken place about noonday, yet the
body was found in bed. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was that he
“came to his death by a visitation of God.” The body was buried and the
public administrator took charge of the estate. A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known about the
dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises
by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded. The administrator
locked up the house against the time when the property, real and
personal, should be sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, the
expenses of the sale. The night of November 20 was boisterous. A furious gale stormed across
the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet. Great trees
were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
So wild a night
had never been known in all that region, but toward morning the storm had
blown itself out of breath and day dawned bright and clear. At about
eight o’clock that morning the Rev. Henry Galbraith, a well-known and
highly esteemed Lutheran minister, arrived on foot at his house, a mile
and a half from the Deluse place. Mr. Galbraith had been for a month in
Cincinnati. He had come up the river in a steamboat, and landing at
Gallipolis the previous evening had immediately obtained a horse and
buggy and set out for home. The violence of the storm had delayed him
over night, and in the morning the fallen trees had compelled him to
abandon his conveyance and continue his journey afoot. “But where did you pass the night?” inquired his wife, after he had
briefly related his adventure. “With old Deluse at the ‘Isle of Pines,’” {372} was the laughing reply;
“and a glum enough time I had of it. He made no objection to my
remaining, but not a word could I get out of him.”
Fortunately for the interests of truth there was present at this
conversation Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, a lawyer and _littérateur_ of
Columbus, the same who wrote the delightful “Mellowcraft Papers.”
Noting, but apparently not sharing, the astonishment caused by Mr.
Galbraith’s answer this ready-witted person checked by a gesture the
exclamations that would naturally have followed, and tranquilly inquired:
“How came you to go in there?”
This is Mr. Maren’s version of Mr. Galbraith’s reply:
“I saw a light moving about the house, and being nearly blinded by the
sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put up my horse
in the old rail stable, where it is now. I then rapped at the door, and
getting no invitation went in without one. The room was dark, but having
matches I found a candle and lit it. I tried to enter the adjoining
room, but the door was fast, and although I heard the old man’s heavy
footsteps in there he made no response to my calls. There was no fire on
the hearth, so I made one and laying [_sic_] down before it with my
overcoat under my head, prepared myself for sleep. Pretty soon the door
that I had tried silently opened and the old man came in, carrying a
candle. I spoke to him pleasantly, apologizing for my intrusion, but he
took no notice of me. He seemed to be searching for something, though
his eyes were unmoved in their sockets. I wonder if he ever walks in his
sleep. He took a circuit a part of the way round the room, and went out
the same way he had come in. Twice more before I slept he came back into
the room, acting precisely the same way, and departing as at first. In
the intervals I heard him tramping all over the house, his footsteps
distinctly audible in the pauses of the storm. When I woke in the
morning he had already gone out.”
Mr. Maren attempted some further questioning, but was unable longer to
restrain the family’s tongues; the story of Deluse’s death and burial
came out, greatly to the good minister’s astonishment. “The explanation of your adventure is very simple,” said Mr. Maren. “I
don’t believe old Deluse walks in his sleep—not in his present one; but
you evidently dream in yours.”
And to this view of the matter Mr. Galbraith was compelled reluctantly to
assent. Nevertheless, a late hour of the next night found these two gentlemen,
accompanied by a son of the minister, in the road in front of the old
Deluse house. There was a light inside; it appeared now at one window
and now at another. The three men advanced to the door. Just as they
reached it there came from the interior a confusion of the most appalling
sounds—the clash of weapons, steel against steel, sharp explosions as of
firearms, shrieks of women, groans and the curses of men in combat! The
investigators stood a moment, irresolute, frightened. Then Mr. Galbraith
tried the door. It was fast. But the minister was a man of courage, a
man, moreover, of Herculean strength. He retired a pace or two and
rushed against the door, striking it with his right shoulder and bursting
it from the frame with a loud crash. In a moment the three were inside. Darkness and silence! The only sound was the beating of their hearts. Mr. Maren had provided himself with matches and a candle. With some
difficulty, begotten of his excitement, he made a light, and they
proceeded to explore the place, passing from room to room. Everything
was in orderly arrangement, as it had been left by the sheriff; nothing
had been disturbed. A light coating of dust was everywhere. A back door
was partly open, as if by neglect, and their first thought was that the
authors of the awful revelry might have escaped. The door was opened,
and the light of the candle shone through upon the ground. The expiring
effort of the previous night’s storm had been a light fall of snow; there
were no footprints; the white surface was unbroken. They closed the door
and entered the last room of the four that the house contained—that
farthest from the road, in an angle of the building. Here the candle in
Mr. Maren’s hand was suddenly extinguished as by a draught of air. Almost immediately followed the sound of a heavy fall. When the candle
had been hastily relighted young Mr. Galbraith was seen prostrate on the
floor at a little distance from the others. He was dead. In one hand
the body grasped a heavy sack of coins, which later examination showed to
be all of old Spanish mintage. Directly over the body as it lay, a board
had been torn from its fastenings in the wall, and from the cavity so
disclosed it was evident that the bag had been taken. Another inquest was held: another _post-mortem_ examination failed to
reveal a probable cause of death. Another verdict of “the visitation of
God” left all at liberty to form their own conclusions. Mr. Maren
contended that the young man died of excitement. A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT
HENRY SAYLOR, who was killed in Covington, in a quarrel with Antonio
Finch, was a reporter on the Cincinnati _Commercial_. In the year 1859 a
vacant dwelling in Vine street, in Cincinnati, became the center of a
local excitement because of the strange sights and sounds said to be
observed in it nightly. According to the testimony of many reputable
residents of the vicinity these were inconsistent with any other
hypothesis than that the house was haunted. Figures with something
singularly unfamiliar about them were seen by crowds on the sidewalk to
pass in and out. No one could say just where they appeared upon the open
lawn on their way to the front door by which they entered, nor at exactly
what point they vanished as they came out; or, rather, while each
spectator was positive enough about these matters, no two agreed. They
were all similarly at variance in their descriptions of the figures
themselves. Some of the bolder of the curious throng ventured on several
evenings to stand upon the doorsteps to intercept them, or failing in
this, get a nearer look at them. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
These courageous men, it was said, were
unable to force the door by their united strength, and always were hurled
from the steps by some invisible agency and severely injured; the door
immediately afterward opening, apparently of its own volition, to admit
or free some ghostly guest. The dwelling was known as the Roscoe house,
a family of that name having lived there for some years, and then, one by
one, disappeared, the last to leave being an old woman. Stories of foul
play and successive murders had always been rife, but never were
authenticated. One day during the prevalence of the excitement Saylor presented himself
at the office of the _Commercial_ for orders. He received a note from
the city editor which read as follows: “Go and pass the night alone in
the haunted house in Vine street and if anything occurs worth while make
two columns.” Saylor obeyed his superior; he could not afford to lose
his position on the paper. Apprising the police of his intention, he effected an entrance through a
rear window before dark, walked through the deserted rooms, bare of
furniture, dusty and desolate, and seating himself at last in the parlor
on an old sofa which he had dragged in from another room watched the
deepening of the gloom as night came on. Before it was altogether dark
the curious crowd had collected in the street, silent, as a rule, and
expectant, with here and there a scoffer uttering his incredulity and
courage with scornful remarks or ribald cries. None knew of the anxious
watcher inside. He feared to make a light; the uncurtained windows would
have betrayed his presence, subjecting him to insult, possibly to injury. Moreover, he was too conscientious to do anything to enfeeble his
impressions and unwilling to alter any of the customary conditions under
which the manifestations were said to occur. It was now dark outside, but light from the street faintly illuminated
the part of the room that he was in. He had set open every door in the
whole interior, above and below, but all the outer ones were locked and
bolted. Sudden exclamations from the crowd caused him to spring to the
window and look out. He saw the figure of a man moving rapidly across
the lawn toward the building—saw it ascend the steps; then a projection
of the wall concealed it. There was a noise as of the opening and
closing of the hall door; he heard quick, heavy footsteps along the
passage—heard them ascend the stairs—heard them on the uncarpeted floor
of the chamber immediately overhead. Saylor promptly drew his pistol, and groping his way up the stairs
entered the chamber, dimly lighted from the street. No one was there. He heard footsteps in an adjoining room and entered that. It was dark
and silent. He struck his foot against some object on the floor, knelt
by it, passed his hand over it. It was a human head—that of a woman. Lifting it by the hair this iron-nerved man returned to the half-lighted
room below, carried it near the window and attentively examined it. While so engaged he was half conscious of the rapid opening and closing
of the outer door, of footfalls sounding all about him. He raised his
eyes from the ghastly object of his attention and saw himself the center
of a crowd of men and women dimly seen; the room was thronged with them. He thought the people had broken in. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, coolly, “you see me under suspicious
circumstances, but”—his voice was drowned in peals of laughter—such
laughter as is heard in asylums for the insane. The persons about him
pointed at the object in his hand and their merriment increased as he
dropped it and it went rolling among their feet. They danced about it
with gestures grotesque and attitudes obscene and indescribable. They
struck it with their feet, urging it about the room from wall to wall;
pushed and overthrew one another in their struggles to kick it; cursed
and screamed and sang snatches of ribald songs as the battered head
bounded about the room as if in terror and trying to escape. At last it
shot out of the door into the hall, followed by all, with tumultuous
haste. That moment the door closed with a sharp concussion. Saylor was
alone, in dead silence. Carefully putting away his pistol, which all the time he had held in his
hand, he went to a window and looked out. The street was deserted and
silent; the lamps were extinguished; the roofs and chimneys of the houses
were sharply outlined against the dawn-light in the east. He left the
house, the door yielding easily to his hand, and walked to the
_Commercial_ office. The city editor was still in his office—asleep. Saylor waked him and said: “I have been at the haunted house.”
The editor stared blankly as if not wholly awake. “Good God!” he cried,
“are you Saylor?”
“Yes—why not?” The editor made no answer, but continued staring. “I passed the night there—it seems,” said Saylor. “They say that things were uncommonly quiet out there,” the editor said,
trifling with a paper-weight upon which he had dropped his eyes, “did
anything occur?”
“Nothing whatever.”
A VINE ON A HOUSE
ABOUT three miles from the little town of Norton, in Missouri, on the
road leading to Maysville, stands an old house that was last occupied by
a family named Harding. Since 1886 no one has lived in it, nor is anyone
likely to live in it again. Time and the disfavor of persons dwelling
thereabout are converting it into a rather picturesque ruin. An observer
unacquainted with its history would hardly put it into the category of
“haunted houses,” yet in all the region round such is its evil
reputation. Its windows are without glass, its doorways without doors;
there are wide breaches in the shingle roof, and for lack of paint the
weatherboarding is a dun gray. But these unfailing signs of the
supernatural are partly concealed and greatly softened by the abundant
foliage of a large vine overrunning the entire structure. This vine—of a
species which no botanist has ever been able to name—has an important
part in the story of the house. The Harding family consisted of Robert Harding, his wife Matilda, Miss
Julia Went, who was her sister, and two young children. Robert Harding
was a silent, cold-mannered man who made no friends in the neighborhood
and apparently cared to make none. He was about forty years old, frugal
and industrious, and made a living from the little farm which is now
overgrown with brush and brambles. He and his sister-in-law were rather
tabooed by their neighbors, who seemed to think that they were seen too
frequently together—not entirely their fault, for at these times they
evidently did not challenge observation. The moral code of rural
Missouri is stern and exacting. Mrs. Harding was a gentle, sad-eyed woman, lacking a left foot. At some time in 1884 it became known that she had gone to visit her
mother in Iowa. That was what her husband said in reply to inquiries,
and his manner of saying it did not encourage further questioning. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
She
never came back, and two years later, without selling his farm or
anything that was his, or appointing an agent to look after his
interests, or removing his household goods, Harding, with the rest of the
family, left the country. Nobody knew whither he went; nobody at that
time cared. Naturally, whatever was movable about the place soon
disappeared and the deserted house became “haunted” in the manner of its
kind. One summer evening, four or five years later, the Rev. J. Gruber, of
Norton, and a Maysville attorney named Hyatt met on horseback in front of
the Harding place. Having business matters to discuss, they hitched
their animals and going to the house sat on the porch to talk. Some
humorous reference to the somber reputation of the place was made and
forgotten as soon as uttered, and they talked of their business affairs
until it grew almost dark. The evening was oppressively warm, the air
stagnant. Presently both men started from their seats in surprise: a long vine that
covered half the front of the house and dangled its branches from the
edge of the porch above them was visibly and audibly agitated, shaking
violently in every stem and leaf. “We shall have a storm,” Hyatt exclaimed. Gruber said nothing, but silently directed the other’s attention to the
foliage of adjacent trees, which showed no movement; even the delicate
tips of the boughs silhouetted against the clear sky were motionless. They hastily passed down the steps to what had been a lawn and looked
upward at the vine, whose entire length was now visible. It continued in
violent agitation, yet they could discern no disturbing cause. “Let us leave,” said the minister. And leave they did. Forgetting that they had been traveling in opposite
directions, they rode away together. They went to Norton, where they
related their strange experience to several discreet friends. The next
evening, at about the same hour, accompanied by two others whose names
are not recalled, they were again on the porch of the Harding house, and
again the mysterious phenomenon occurred: the vine was violently agitated
while under the closest scrutiny from root to tip, nor did their combined
strength applied to the trunk serve to still it. After an hour’s
observation they retreated, no less wise, it is thought, than when they
had come. No great time was required for these singular facts to rouse the
curiosity of the entire neighborhood. By day and by night crowds of
persons assembled at the Harding house “seeking a sign.” It does not
appear that any found it, yet so credible were the witnesses mentioned
that none doubted the reality of the “manifestations” to which they
testified. By either a happy inspiration or some destructive design, it was one day
proposed—nobody appeared to know from whom the suggestion came—to dig up
the vine, and after a good deal of debate this was done. Nothing was
found but the root, yet nothing could have been more strange! For five or six feet from the trunk, which had at the surface of the
ground a diameter of several inches, it ran downward, single and
straight, into a loose, friable earth; then it divided and subdivided
into rootlets, fibers and filaments, most curiously interwoven. When
carefully freed from soil they showed a singular formation. In their
ramifications and doublings back upon themselves they made a compact
network, having in size and shape an amazing resemblance to the human
figure. Head, trunk and limbs were there; even the fingers and toes were
distinctly defined; and many professed to see in the distribution and
arrangement of the fibers in the globular mass representing the head a
grotesque suggestion of a face. The figure was horizontal; the smaller
roots had begun to unite at the breast. In point of resemblance to the human form this image was imperfect. At
about ten inches from one of the knees, the _cilia_ forming that leg had
abruptly doubled backward and inward upon their course of growth. The
figure lacked the left foot. There was but one inference—the obvious one; but in the ensuing
excitement as many courses of action were proposed as there were
incapable counselors. The matter was settled by the sheriff of the
county, who as the lawful custodian of the abandoned estate ordered the
root replaced and the excavation filled with the earth that had been
removed. Later inquiry brought out only one fact of relevancy and significance:
Mrs. Harding had never visited her relatives in Iowa, nor did they know
that she was supposed to have done so. Of Robert Harding and the rest of his family nothing is known. The house
retains its evil reputation, but the replanted vine is as orderly and
well-behaved a vegetable as a nervous person could wish to sit under of a
pleasant night, when the katydids grate out their immemorial revelation
and the distant whippoorwill signifies his notion of what ought to be
done about it. AT OLD MAN ECKERT’S
PHILIP ECKERT lived for many years in an old, weather-stained wooden
house about three miles from the little town of Marion, in Vermont. There must be quite a number of persons living who remember him, not
unkindly, I trust, and know something of the story that I am about to
tell. “Old Man Eckert,” as he was always called, was not of a sociable
disposition and lived alone. As he was never known to speak of his own
affairs nobody thereabout knew anything of his past, nor of his relatives
if he had any. Without being particularly ungracious or repellent in
manner or speech, he managed somehow to be immune to impertinent
curiosity, yet exempt from the evil repute with which it commonly
revenges itself when baffled; so far as I know, Mr. Eckert’s renown as a
reformed assassin or a retired pirate of the Spanish Main had not reached
any ear in Marion. He got his living cultivating a small and not very
fertile farm. One day he disappeared and a prolonged search by his neighbors failed to
turn him up or throw any light upon his whereabouts or whyabouts. Nothing indicated preparation to leave: all was as he might have left it
to go to the spring for a bucket of water. For a few weeks little else
was talked of in that region; then “old man Eckert” became a village tale
for the ear of the stranger. I do not know what was done regarding his
property—the correct legal thing, doubtless. The house was standing,
still vacant and conspicuously unfit, when I last heard of it, some
twenty years afterward. Of course it came to be considered “haunted,” and the customary tales
were told of moving lights, dolorous sounds and startling apparitions. At one time, about five years after the disappearance, these stories of
the supernatural became so rife, or through some attesting circumstances
seemed so important, that some of Marion’s most serious citizens deemed
it well to investigate, and to that end arranged for a night session on
the premises. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
The parties to this undertaking were John Holcomb, an
apothecary; Wilson Merle, a lawyer, and Andrus C. Palmer, the teacher of
the public school, all men of consequence and repute. They were to meet
at Holcomb’s house at eight o’clock in the evening of the appointed day
and go together to the scene of their vigil, where certain arrangements
for their comfort, a provision of fuel and the like, for the season was
winter, had been already made. Palmer did not keep the engagement, and after waiting a half-hour for him
the others went to the Eckert house without him. They established
themselves in the principal room, before a glowing fire, and without
other light than it gave, awaited events. It had been agreed to speak as
little as possible: they did not even renew the exchange of views
regarding the defection of Palmer, which had occupied their minds on the
way. Probably an hour had passed without incident when they heard (not without
emotion, doubtless) the sound of an opening door in the rear of the
house, followed by footfalls in the room adjoining that in which they
sat. The watchers rose to their feet, but stood firm, prepared for
whatever might ensue. A long silence followed—how long neither would
afterward undertake to say. Then the door between the two rooms opened
and a man entered. It was Palmer. He was pale, as if from excitement—as pale as the others
felt themselves to be. His manner, too, was singularly distrait: he
neither responded to their salutations nor so much as looked at them, but
walked slowly across the room in the light of the failing fire and
opening the front door passed out into the darkness. It seems to have been the first thought of both men that Palmer was
suffering from fright—that something seen, heard or imagined in the back
room had deprived him of his senses. Acting on the same friendly impulse
both ran after him through the open door. But neither they nor anyone
ever again saw or heard of Andrus Palmer! This much was ascertained the next morning. During the session of
Messrs. Holcomb and Merle at the “haunted house” a new snow had fallen to
a depth of several inches upon the old. In this snow Palmer’s trail from
his lodging in the village to the back door of the Eckert house was
conspicuous. But there it ended: from the front door nothing led away
but the tracks of the two men who swore that he preceded them. Palmer’s
disappearance was as complete as that of “old man Eckert” himself—whom,
indeed, the editor of the local paper somewhat graphically accused of
having “reached out and pulled him in.”
THE SPOOK HOUSE
ON the road leading north from Manchester, in eastern Kentucky, to
Booneville, twenty miles away, stood, in 1862, a wooden plantation house
of a somewhat better quality than most of the dwellings in that region. The house was destroyed by fire in the year following—probably by some
stragglers from the retreating column of General George W. Morgan, when
he was driven from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio river by General Kirby
Smith. At the time of its destruction, it had for four or five years
been vacant. The fields about it were overgrown with brambles, the
fences gone, even the few negro quarters, and out-houses generally,
fallen partly into ruin by neglect and pillage; for the negroes and poor
whites of the vicinity found in the building and fences an abundant
supply of fuel, of which they availed themselves without hesitation,
openly and by daylight. By daylight alone; after nightfall no human
being except passing strangers ever went near the place. It was known as the “Spook House.” That it was tenanted by evil spirits,
visible, audible and active, no one in all that region doubted any more
than he doubted what he was told of Sundays by the traveling preacher. Its owner’s opinion of the matter was unknown; he and his family had
disappeared one night and no trace of them had ever been found. They
left everything—household goods, clothing, provisions, the horses in the
stable, the cows in the field, the negroes in the quarters—all as it
stood; nothing was missing—except a man, a woman, three girls, a boy and
a babe! It was not altogether surprising that a plantation where seven
human beings could be simultaneously effaced and nobody the wiser should
be under some suspicion. One night in June, 1859, two citizens of Frankfort, Col. J. C. McArdle, a
lawyer, and Judge Myron Veigh, of the State Militia, were driving from
Booneville to Manchester. Their business was so important that they
decided to push on, despite the darkness and the mutterings of an
approaching storm, which eventually broke upon them just as they arrived
opposite the “Spook House.” The lightning was so incessant that they
easily found their way through the gateway and into a shed, where they
hitched and unharnessed their team. They then went to the house, through
the rain, and knocked at all the doors without getting any response. Attributing this to the continuous uproar of the thunder they pushed at
one of the doors, which yielded. They entered without further ceremony
and closed the door. That instant they were in darkness and silence. Not a gleam of the lightning’s unceasing blaze penetrated the windows or
crevices; not a whisper of the awful tumult without reached them there. It was as if they had suddenly been stricken blind and deaf, and McArdle
afterward said that for a moment he believed himself to have been killed
by a stroke of lightning as he crossed the threshold. The rest of this
adventure can as well be related in his own words, from the Frankfort
_Advocate_ of August 6, 1876:
“When I had somewhat recovered from the dazing effect of the transition
from uproar to silence, my first impulse was to reopen the door which I
had closed, and from the knob of which I was not conscious of having
removed my hand; I felt it distinctly, still in the clasp of my fingers. My notion was to ascertain by stepping again into the storm whether I had
been deprived of sight and hearing. I turned the doorknob and pulled
open the door. It led into another room! “This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish light, the source of
which I could not determine, making everything distinctly visible, though
nothing was sharply defined. Everything, I say, but in truth the only
objects within the blank stone walls of that room were human corpses. In
number they were perhaps eight or ten—it may well be understood that I
did not truly count them. They were of different ages, or rather sizes,
from infancy up, and of both sexes. All were prostrate on the floor,
excepting one, apparently a young woman, who sat up, her back supported
by an angle of the wall. A babe was clasped in the arms of another and
older woman. A half-grown lad lay face downward across the legs of a
full-bearded man. One or two were nearly naked, and the hand of a young
girl held the fragment of a gown which she had torn open at the breast. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
The bodies were in various stages of decay, all greatly shrunken in face
and figure. Some were but little more than skeletons. “While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle and still
holding open the door, by some unaccountable perversity my attention was
diverted from the shocking scene and concerned itself with trifles and
details. Perhaps my mind, with an instinct of self-preservation, sought
relief in matters which would relax its dangerous tension. Among other
things, I observed that the door that I was holding open was of heavy
iron plates, riveted. Equidistant from one another and from the top and
bottom, three strong bolts protruded from the beveled edge. I turned the
knob and they were retracted flush with the edge; released it, and they
shot out. It was a spring lock. On the inside there was no knob, nor
any kind of projection—a smooth surface of iron. “While noting these things with an interest and attention which it now
astonishes me to recall I felt myself thrust aside, and Judge Veigh, whom
in the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings I had altogether
forgotten, pushed by me into the room. ‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ‘do
not go in there! Let us get out of this dreadful place!’
“He gave no heed to my entreaties, but (as fearless a gentleman as lived
in all the South) walked quickly to the center of the room, knelt beside
one of the bodies for a closer examination and tenderly raised its
blackened and shriveled head in his hands. A strong disagreeable odor
came through the doorway, completely overpowering me. My senses reeled;
I felt myself falling, and in clutching at the edge of the door for
support pushed it shut with a sharp click! “I remember no more: six weeks later I recovered my reason in a hotel at
Manchester, whither I had been taken by strangers the next day. For all
these weeks I had suffered from a nervous fever, attended with constant
delirium. I had been found lying in the road several miles away from the
house; but how I had escaped from it to get there I never knew. On
recovery, or as soon as my physicians permitted me to talk, I inquired
the fate of Judge Veigh, whom (to quiet me, as I now know) they
represented as well and at home. “No one believed a word of my story, and who can wonder? And who can
imagine my grief when, arriving at my home in Frankfort two months later,
I learned that Judge Veigh had never been heard of since that night? I
then regretted bitterly the pride which since the first few days after
the recovery of my reason had forbidden me to repeat my discredited story
and insist upon its truth. “With all that afterward occurred—the examination of the house; the
failure to find any room corresponding to that which I have described;
the attempt to have me adjudged insane, and my triumph over my
accusers—the readers of the _Advocate_ are familiar. After all these
years I am still confident that excavations which I have neither the
legal right to undertake nor the wealth to make would disclose the secret
of the disappearance of my unhappy friend, and possibly of the former
occupants and owners of the deserted and now destroyed house. I do not
despair of yet bringing about such a search, and it is a source of deep
grief to me that it has been delayed by the undeserved hostility and
unwise incredulity of the family and friends of the late Judge Veigh.”
Colonel McArdle died in Frankfort on the thirteenth day of December, in
the year 1879. THE OTHER LODGERS
“IN order to take that train,” said Colonel Levering, sitting in the
Waldorf-Astoria hotel, “you will have to remain nearly all night in
Atlanta. That is a fine city, but I advise you not to put up at the
Breathitt House, one of the principal hotels. It is an old wooden
building in urgent need of repairs. There are breaches in the walls that
you could throw a cat through. The bedrooms have no locks on the doors,
no furniture but a single chair in each, and a bedstead without
bedding—just a mattress. Even these meager accommodations you cannot be
sure that you will have in monopoly; you must take your chance of being
stowed in with a lot of others. Sir, it is a most abominable hotel. “The night that I passed in it was an uncomfortable night. I got in late
and was shown to my room on the ground floor by an apologetic night-clerk
with a tallow candle, which he considerately left with me. I was worn
out by two days and a night of hard railway travel and had not entirely
recovered from a gunshot wound in the head, received in an altercation. Rather than look for better quarters I lay down on the mattress without
removing my clothing and fell asleep. “Along toward morning I awoke. The moon had risen and was shining in at
the uncurtained window, illuminating the room with a soft, bluish light
which seemed, somehow, a bit spooky, though I dare say it had no uncommon
quality; all moonlight is that way if you will observe it. Imagine my
surprise and indignation when I saw the floor occupied by at least a
dozen other lodgers! I sat up, earnestly damning the management of that
unthinkable hotel, and was about to spring from the bed to go and make
trouble for the night-clerk—him of the apologetic manner and the tallow
candle—when something in the situation affected me with a strange
indisposition to move. I suppose I was what a story-writer might call
‘frozen with terror.’ For those men were obviously all dead! “They lay on their backs, disposed orderly along three sides of the room,
their feet to the walls—against the other wall, farthest from the door,
stood my bed and the chair. All the faces were covered, but under their
white cloths the features of the two bodies that lay in the square patch
of moonlight near the window showed in sharp profile as to nose and chin. “I thought this a bad dream and tried to cry out, as one does in a
nightmare, but could make no sound. At last, with a desperate effort I
threw my feet to the floor and passing between the two rows of clouted
faces and the two bodies that lay nearest the door, I escaped from the
infernal place and ran to the office. The night-clerk was there, behind
the desk, sitting in the dim light of another tallow candle—just sitting
and staring. He did not rise: my abrupt entrance produced no effect upon
him, though I must have looked a veritable corpse myself. It occurred to
me then that I had not before really observed the fellow. He was a
little chap, with a colorless face and the whitest, blankest eyes I ever
saw. He had no more expression than the back of my hand. His clothing
was a dirty gray. “‘Damn you!’ I said; ‘what do you mean?’
“Just the same, I was shaking like a leaf in the wind and did not
recognize my own voice. “The night-clerk rose, bowed (apologetically) and—well, he was no longer
there, and at that moment I felt a hand laid upon my shoulder from
behind. Just fancy that if you can! | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
Unspeakably frightened, I turned
and saw a portly, kind-faced gentleman, who asked:
“‘What is the matter, my friend?’
“I was not long in telling him, but before I made an end of it he went
pale himself. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘are you telling the truth?’
“I had now got myself in hand and terror had given place to indignation. ‘If you dare to doubt it,’ I said, ‘I’ll hammer the life out of you!’
“‘No,’ he replied, ‘don’t do that; just sit down till I tell you. This
is not a hotel. It used to be; afterward it was a hospital. Now it is
unoccupied, awaiting a tenant. The room that you mention was the
dead-room—there were always plenty of dead. The fellow that you call the
night-clerk used to be that, but later he booked the patients as they
were brought in. I don’t understand his being here. He has been dead a
few weeks.’
“‘And who are you?’ I blurted out. “‘Oh, I look after the premises. I happened to be passing just now, and
seeing a light in here came in to investigate. Let us have a look into
that room,’ he added, lifting the sputtering candle from the desk. “‘I’ll see you at the devil first!’ said I, bolting out of the door into
the street. “Sir, that Breathitt House, in Atlanta, is a beastly place! Don’t you
stop there.”
“God forbid! Your account of it certainly does not suggest comfort. By
the way, Colonel, when did all that occur?”
“In September, 1864—shortly after the siege.”
THE THING AT NOLAN
TO the south of where the road between Leesville and Hardy, in the State
of Missouri, crosses the east fork of May Creek stands an abandoned
house. Nobody has lived in it since the summer of 1879, and it is fast
going to pieces. For some three years before the date mentioned above,
it was occupied by the family of Charles May, from one of whose ancestors
the creek near which it stands took its name. Mr. May’s family consisted of a wife, an adult son and two young girls. The son’s name was John—the names of the daughters are unknown to the
writer of this sketch. John May was of a morose and surly disposition, not easily moved to
anger, but having an uncommon gift of sullen, implacable hate. His
father was quite otherwise; of a sunny, jovial disposition, but with a
quick temper like a sudden flame kindled in a wisp of straw, which
consumes it in a flash and is no more. He cherished no resentments, and
his anger gone, was quick to make overtures for reconciliation. He had a
brother living near by who was unlike him in respect of all this, and it
was a current witticism in the neighborhood that John had inherited his
disposition from his uncle. One day a misunderstanding arose between father and son, harsh words
ensued, and the father struck the son full in the face with his fist. John quietly wiped away the blood that followed the blow, fixed his eyes
upon the already penitent offender and said with cold composure, “You
will die for that.”
The words were overheard by two brothers named Jackson, who were
approaching the men at the moment; but seeing them engaged in a quarrel
they retired, apparently unobserved. Charles May afterward related the
unfortunate occurrence to his wife and explained that he had apologized
to the son for the hasty blow, but without avail; the young man not only
rejected his overtures, but refused to withdraw his terrible threat. Nevertheless, there was no open rupture of relations: John continued
living with the family, and things went on very much as before. One Sunday morning in June, 1879, about two weeks after what has been
related, May senior left the house immediately after breakfast, taking a
spade. He said he was going to make an excavation at a certain spring in
a wood about a mile away, so that the cattle could obtain water. John
remained in the house for some hours, variously occupied in shaving
himself, writing letters and reading a newspaper. His manner was very
nearly what it usually was; perhaps he was a trifle more sullen and
surly. At two o’clock he left the house. At five, he returned. For some reason
not connected with any interest in his movements, and which is not now
recalled, the time of his departure and that of his return were noted by
his mother and sisters, as was attested at his trial for murder. It was
observed that his clothing was wet in spots, as if (so the prosecution
afterward pointed out) he had been removing blood-stains from it. His
manner was strange, his look wild. He complained of illness, and going
to his room took to his bed. May senior did not return. Later that evening the nearest neighbors were
aroused, and during that night and the following day a search was
prosecuted through the wood where the spring was. It resulted in little
but the discovery of both men’s footprints in the clay about the spring. John May in the meantime had grown rapidly worse with what the local
physician called brain fever, and in his delirium raved of murder, but
did not say whom he conceived to have been murdered, nor whom he imagined
to have done the deed. But his threat was recalled by the brothers
Jackson and he was arrested on suspicion and a deputy sheriff put in
charge of him at his home. Public opinion ran strongly against him and
but for his illness he would probably have been hanged by a mob. As it
was, a meeting of the neighbors was held on Tuesday and a committee
appointed to watch the case and take such action at any time as
circumstances might seem to warrant. On Wednesday all was changed. From the town of Nolan, eight miles away,
came a story which put a quite different light on the matter. Nolan
consisted of a school house, a blacksmith’s shop, a “store” and a
half-dozen dwellings. The store was kept by one Henry Odell, a cousin of
the elder May. On the afternoon of the Sunday of May’s disappearance Mr.
Odell and four of his neighbors, men of credibility, were sitting in the
store smoking and talking. It was a warm day; and both the front and the
back door were open. At about three o’clock Charles May, who was well
known to three of them, entered at the front door and passed out at the
rear. He was without hat or coat. He did not look at them, nor return
their greeting, a circumstance which did not surprise, for he was
evidently seriously hurt. Above the left eyebrow was a wound—a deep gash
from which the blood flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and
neck and saturating his light-gray shirt. Oddly enough, the thought
uppermost in the minds of all was that he had been fighting and was going
to the brook directly at the back of the store, to wash himself. Perhaps there was a feeling of delicacy—a backwoods etiquette which
restrained them from following him to offer assistance; the court
records, from which, mainly, this narrative is drawn, are silent as to
anything but the fact. They waited for him to return, but he did not
return. Bordering the brook behind the store is a forest extending for six miles
back to the Medicine Lodge Hills. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
As soon as it became known in the
neighborhood of the missing man’s dwelling that he had been seen in Nolan
there was a marked alteration in public sentiment and feeling. The
vigilance committee went out of existence without the formality of a
resolution. Search along the wooded bottom lands of May Creek was
stopped and nearly the entire male population of the region took to
beating the bush about Nolan and in the Medicine Lodge Hills. But of the
missing man no trace was found. One of the strangest circumstances of this strange case is the formal
indictment and trial of a man for murder of one whose body no human being
professed to have seen—one not known to be dead. We are all more or less
familiar with the vagaries and eccentricities of frontier law, but this
instance, it is thought, is unique. However that may be, it is of record
that on recovering from his illness John May was indicted for the murder
of his missing father. Counsel for the defense appears not to have
demurred and the case was tried on its merits. The prosecution was
spiritless and perfunctory; the defense easily established—with regard to
the deceased—an _alibi_. If during the time in which John May must have
killed Charles May, if he killed him at all, Charles May was miles away
from where John May must have been, it is plain that the deceased must
have come to his death at the hands of someone else. John May was acquitted, immediately left the country, and has never been
heard of from that day. Shortly afterward his mother and sisters removed
to St. Louis. The farm having passed into the possession of a man who
owns the land adjoining, and has a dwelling of his own, the May house has
ever since been vacant, and has the somber reputation of being haunted. One day after the May family had left the country, some boys, playing in
the woods along May Creek, found concealed under a mass of dead leaves,
but partly exposed by the rooting of hogs, a spade, nearly new and
bright, except for a spot on one edge, which was rusted and stained with
blood. The implement had the initials C. M. cut into the handle. This discovery renewed, in some degree, the public excitement of a few
months before. The earth near the spot where the spade was found was
carefully examined, and the result was the finding of the dead body of a
man. It had been buried under two or three feet of soil and the spot
covered with a layer of dead leaves and twigs. There was but little
decomposition, a fact attributed to some preservative property in the
mineral-bearing soil. Above the left eyebrow was a wound—a deep gash from which blood had
flowed, covering the whole left side of the face and neck and saturating
the light-gray shirt. The skull had been cut through by the blow. The
body was that of Charles May. But what was it that passed through Mr. Odell’s store at Nolan? “MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES”
THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD
ONE morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six miles
from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on the veranda
of his dwelling. Immediately in front of the house was a lawn, perhaps
fifty yards in extent between the house and public road, or, as it was
called, the “pike.” Beyond this road lay a close-cropped pasture of some
ten acres, level and without a tree, rock, or any natural or artificial
object on its surface. At the time there was not even a domestic animal
in the field. In another field, beyond the pasture, a dozen slaves were
at work under an overseer. Throwing away the stump of a cigar, the planter rose, saying: “I forgot
to tell Andrew about those horses.” Andrew was the overseer. Williamson strolled leisurely down the gravel walk, plucking a flower as
he went, passed across the road and into the pasture, pausing a moment as
he closed the gate leading into it, to greet a passing neighbor, Armour
Wren, who lived on an adjoining plantation. Mr. Wren was in an open
carriage with his son James, a lad of thirteen. When he had driven some
two hundred yards from the point of meeting, Mr. Wren said to his son: “I
forgot to tell Mr. Williamson about those horses.”
Mr. Wren had sold to Mr. Williamson some horses, which were to have been
sent for that day, but for some reason not now remembered it would be
inconvenient to deliver them until the morrow. The coachman was directed
to drive back, and as the vehicle turned Williamson was seen by all
three, walking leisurely across the pasture. At that moment one of the
coach horses stumbled and came near falling. It had no more than fairly
recovered itself when James Wren cried: “Why, father, what has become of
Mr. Williamson?”
It is not the purpose of this narrative to answer that question. Mr. Wren’s strange account of the matter, given under oath in the course
of legal proceedings relating to the Williamson estate, here follows:
“My son’s exclamation caused me to look toward the spot where I had seen
the deceased [_sic_] an instant before, but he was not there, nor was he
anywhere visible. I cannot say that at the moment I was greatly
startled, or realized the gravity of the occurrence, though I thought it
singular. My son, however, was greatly astonished and kept repeating his
question in different forms until we arrived at the gate. My black boy
Sam was similarly affected, even in a greater degree, but I reckon more
by my son’s manner than by anything he had himself observed. [This
sentence in the testimony was stricken out.] As we got out of the
carriage at the gate of the field, and while Sam was hanging [_sic_] the
team to the fence, Mrs. Williamson, with her child in her arms and
followed by several servants, came running down the walk in great
excitement, crying: ‘He is gone, he is gone! O God! what an awful
thing!’ and many other such exclamations, which I do not distinctly
recollect. I got from them the impression that they related to something
more—than the mere disappearance of her husband, even if that had
occurred before her eyes. Her manner was wild, but not more so, I think,
than was natural under the circumstances. I have no reason to think she
had at that time lost her mind. I have never since seen nor heard of Mr.
Williamson.”
This testimony, as might have been expected, was corroborated in almost
every particular by the only other eye-witness (if that is a proper
term)—the lad James. Mrs. Williamson had lost her reason and the
servants were, of course, not competent to testify. The boy James Wren
had declared at first that he _saw_ the disappearance, but there is
nothing of this in his testimony given in court. None of the field hands
working in the field to which Williamson was going had seen him at all,
and the most rigorous search of the entire plantation and adjoining
country failed to supply a clew. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
The most monstrous and grotesque
fictions, originating with the blacks, were current in that part of the
State for many years, and probably are to this day; but what has been
here related is all that is certainly known of the matter. The courts
decided that Williamson was dead, and his estate was distributed
according to law. AN UNFINISHED RACE
JAMES BURNE WORSON was a shoemaker who lived in Leamington, Warwickshire,
England. He had a little shop in one of the by-ways leading off the road
to Warwick. In his humble sphere he was esteemed an honest man, although
like many of his class in English towns he was somewhat addicted to
drink. When in liquor he would make foolish wagers. On one of these too
frequent occasions he was boasting of his prowess as a pedestrian and
athlete, and the outcome was a match against nature. For a stake of one
sovereign he undertook to run all the way to Coventry and back, a
distance of something more than forty miles. This was on the 3d day of
September in 1873. He set out at once, the man with whom he had made the
bet—whose name is not remembered—accompanied by Barham Wise, a linen
draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer, I think, following in a light
cart or wagon. For several miles Worson went on very well, at an easy gait, without
apparent fatigue, for he had really great powers of endurance and was not
sufficiently intoxicated to enfeeble them. The three men in the wagon
kept a short distance in the rear, giving him occasional friendly “chaff”
or encouragement, as the spirit moved them. Suddenly—in the very middle
of the roadway, not a dozen yards from them, and with their eyes full
upon him—the man seemed to stumble, pitched headlong forward, uttered a
terrible cry and vanished! He did not fall to the earth—he vanished
before touching it. No trace of him was ever discovered. After remaining at and about the spot for some time, with aimless
irresolution, the three men returned to Leamington, told their
astonishing story and were afterward taken into custody. But they were
of good standing, had always been considered truthful, were sober at the
time of the occurrence, and nothing ever transpired to discredit their
sworn account of their extraordinary adventure, concerning the truth of
which, nevertheless, public opinion was divided, throughout the United
Kingdom. If they had something to conceal, their choice of means is
certainly one of the most amazing ever made by sane human beings. CHARLES ASHMORE’S TRAIL
THE family of Christian Ashmore consisted of his wife, his mother, two
grown daughters, and a son of sixteen years. They lived in Troy, New
York, were well-to-do, respectable persons, and had many friends, some of
whom, reading these lines, will doubtless learn for the first time the
extraordinary fate of the young man. From Troy the Ashmores moved in
1871 or 1872 to Richmond, Indiana, and a year or two later to the
vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, where Mr. Ashmore bought a farm and lived
on it. At some little distance from the farmhouse was a spring with a
constant flow of clear, cold water, whence the family derived its supply
for domestic use at all seasons. On the evening of the 9th of November in 1878, at about nine o’clock,
young Charles Ashmore left the family circle about the hearth, took a tin
bucket and started toward the spring. As he did not return, the family
became uneasy, and going to the door by which he had left the house, his
father called without receiving an answer. He then lighted a lantern and
with the eldest daughter, Martha, who insisted on accompanying him, went
in search. A light snow had fallen, obliterating the path, but making
the young man’s trail conspicuous; each footprint was plainly defined. After going a little more than half-way—perhaps seventy-five yards—the
father, who was in advance, halted, and elevating his lantern stood
peering intently into the darkness ahead. “What is the matter, father?” the girl asked. This was the matter: the trail of the young man had abruptly ended, and
all beyond was smooth, unbroken snow. The last footprints were as
conspicuous as any in the line; the very nail-marks were distinctly
visible. Mr. Ashmore looked upward, shading his eyes with his hat held
between them and the lantern. The stars were shining; there was not a
cloud in the sky; he was denied the explanation which had suggested
itself, doubtful as it would have been—a new snowfall with a limit so
plainly defined. Taking a wide circuit round the ultimate tracks, so as
to leave them undisturbed for further examination, the man proceeded to
the spring, the girl following, weak and terrified. Neither had spoken a
word of what both had observed. The spring was covered with ice, hours
old. Returning to the house they noted the appearance of the snow on both
sides of the trail its entire length. No tracks led away from it. The morning light showed nothing more. Smooth, spotless, unbroken, the
shallow snow lay everywhere. Four days later the grief-stricken mother herself went to the spring for
water. She came back and related that in passing the spot where the
footprints had ended she had heard the voice of her son and had been
eagerly calling to him, wandering about the place, as she had fancied the
voice to be now in one direction, now in another, until she was exhausted
with fatigue and emotion. Questioned as to what the voice had said, she was unable to tell, yet
averred that the words were perfectly distinct. In a moment the entire
family was at the place, but nothing was heard, and the voice was
believed to be an hallucination caused by the mother’s great anxiety and
her disordered nerves. But for months afterward, at irregular intervals
of a few days, the voice was heard by the several members of the family,
and by others. All declared it unmistakably the voice of Charles
Ashmore; all agreed that it seemed to come from a great distance,
faintly, yet with entire distinctness of articulation; yet none could
determine its direction, nor repeat its words. The intervals of silence
grew longer and longer, the voice fainter and farther, and by midsummer
it was heard no more. If anybody knows the fate of Charles Ashmore it is probably his mother. She is dead. * * * * *
SCIENCE TO THE FRONT
In connection with this subject of “mysterious disappearance”—of which
every memory is stored with abundant example—it is pertinent to note the
belief of Dr. Hem, of Leipsic; not by way of explanation, unless the
reader may choose to take it so, but because of its intrinsic interest as
a singular speculation. | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
This distinguished scientist has expounded his
views in a book entitled “Verschwinden und Seine Theorie,” which has
attracted some attention, “particularly,” says one writer, “among the
followers of Hegel, and mathematicians who hold to the actual existence
of a so-called non-Euclidean space—that is to say, of space which has
more dimensions than length, breadth, and thickness—space in which it
would be possible to tie a knot in an endless cord and to turn a rubber
ball inside out without ‘a solution of its continuity,’ or in other
words, without breaking or cracking it.”
Dr. Hem believes that in the visible world there are void places—_vacua_,
and something more—holes, as it were, through which animate and inanimate
objects may fall into the invisible world and be seen and heard no more. The theory is something like this: Space is pervaded by luminiferous
ether, which is a material thing—as much a substance as air or water,
though almost infinitely more attenuated. All force, all forms of energy
must be propagated in this; every process must take place in it which
takes place at all. But let us suppose that cavities exist in this
otherwise universal medium, as caverns exist in the earth, or cells in a
Swiss cheese. In such a cavity there would be absolutely nothing. It
would be such a vacuum as cannot be artificially produced; for if we pump
the air from a receiver there remains the luminiferous ether. Through
one of these cavities light could not pass, for there would be nothing to
bear it. Sound could not come from it; nothing could be felt in it. It
would not have a single one of the conditions necessary to the action of
any of our senses. In such a void, in short, nothing whatever could
occur. Now, in the words of the writer before quoted—the learned doctor
himself nowhere puts it so concisely: “A man inclosed in such a closet
could neither see nor be seen; neither hear nor be heard; neither feel
nor be felt; neither live nor die, for both life and death are processes
which can take place only where there is force, and in empty space no
force could exist.” Are these the awful conditions (some will ask) under
which the friends of the lost are to think of them as existing, and
doomed forever to exist? Baldly and imperfectly as here stated, Dr. Hem’s theory, in so far as it
professes to be an adequate explanation of “mysterious disappearances,”
is open to many obvious objections; to fewer as he states it himself in
the “spacious volubility” of his book. But even as expounded by its
author it does not explain, and in truth is incompatible with some
incidents of, the occurrences related in these memoranda: for example,
the sound of Charles Ashmore’s voice. It is not my duty to indue facts
and theories with affinity. A.B. FOOTNOTES | Bierce, Ambrose - Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories |
Produced by Paul J. Hollander. HTML version by Al Haines. THE PARENTICIDE CLUB
by
Ambrose Bierce
CONTENTS
My Favorite Murder
Oil of Dog
An Imperfect Conflagration
The Hypnotist
MY FAVORITE MURDER
Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I
was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In
charging the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that
it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called
upon to explain away. At this, my attorney rose and said:
"May it please your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by
comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's
previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his later offense
(if offense it may be called) something in the nature of tender
forbearance and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling ferocity of the former assassination was indeed
inconsistent with any hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not
been for the fact that the honorable judge before whom he was tried
was the president of a life insurance company that took risks on
hanging, and in which my client held a policy, it is hard to see how
he could decently have been acquitted. If your Honor would like to
hear about it for instruction and guidance of your Honor's mind, this
unfortunate man, my client, will consent to give himself the pain of
relating it under oath." The district attorney said: "Your Honor, I object. Such a statement
would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is
closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three
years ago, in the spring of 1881." "In a statutory sense," said the judge, "you are right, and in the
Court of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your
favor. But not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled." "I except," said the district attorney. "You cannot do that," the judge said. "I must remind you that in
order to take an exception you must first get this case transferred
for a time to the Court of Exceptions on a formal motion duly
supported by affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor
in office was denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the prisoner." The customary oath having been administered, I made the following
statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the
comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he
made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply
instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the court, without a stain
upon my reputation:
"I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich., of honest and reputable
parents, one of whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in my
later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near
Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency and prospered beyond
the dreams of avarice. He was a reticent, saturnine man then, though
his increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of his
disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad
event for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a
genuine hilarity. "Four years after we had set up the road agency an itinerant preacher
came along, and having no other way to pay for the night's lodging
that we gave him, favored us with an exhortation of such power that,
praise God, we were all converted to religion. My father at once sent
for his brother, the Hon. William Ridley of Stockton, and on his
arrival turned over the agency to him, charging him nothing for the
franchise nor plant--the latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a
sawed-off shotgun, and an assortment of masks made out of flour sacks. The family then moved to Ghost Rock and opened a dance house. It was
called 'The Saints' Rest Hurdy-Gurdy,' and the proceedings each night
began with prayer. It was there that my now sainted mother, by her
grace in the dance, acquired the _sobriquet_ of 'The Bucking Walrus.' "In the fall of '75 I had occasion to visit Coyote, on the road to
Mahala, and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other
passengers. About three miles beyond Nigger Head, persons whom I
identified as my Uncle William and his two sons held up the stage. Finding nothing in the express box, they went through the passengers. I acted a most honorable part in the affair, placing myself in line
with the others, holding up my hands and permitting myself to be
deprived of forty dollars and a gold watch. From my behavior no one
could have suspected that I knew the gentlemen who gave the
entertainment. A few days later, when I went to Nigger Head and asked
for the return of my money and watch my uncle and cousins swore they
knew nothing of the matter, and they affected a belief that my father
and I had done the job ourselves in dishonest violation of commercial
good faith. Uncle William even threatened to retaliate by starting an
opposition dance house at Ghost Rock. As 'The Saints' Rest' had
become rather unpopular, I saw that this would assuredly ruin it and
prove a paying enterprise, so I told my uncle that I was willing to
overlook the past if he would take me into the scheme and keep the
partnership a secret from my father. This fair offer he rejected, and
I then perceived that it would be better and more satisfactory if he
were dead. "My plans to that end were soon perfected, and communicating them to
my dear parents I had the gratification of receiving their approval. My father said he was proud of me, and my mother promised that
although her religion forbade her to assist in taking human life I
should have the advantage of her prayers for my success. As a
preliminary measure looking to my security in case of detection I made
an application for membership in that powerful order, the Knights of
Murder, and in due course was received as a member of the Ghost Rock
commandery. On the day that my probation ended I was for the first
time permitted to inspect the records of the order and learn who
belonged to it--all the rites of initiation having been conducted in
masks. Fancy my delight when, in looking over the roll of membership,
I found the third name to be that of my uncle, who indeed was junior
vice-chancellor of the order! Here was an opportunity exceeding my
wildest dreams--to murder I could add insubordination and treachery. It was what my good mother would have called 'a special Providence.' "At about this time something occurred which caused my cup of joy,
already full, to overflow on all sides, a circular cataract of bliss. Three men, strangers in that locality, were arrested for the stage
robbery in which I had lost my money and watch. They were brought to
trial and, despite my efforts to clear them and fasten the guilt upon
three of the most respectable and worthy citizens of Ghost Rock,
convicted on the clearest proof. The murder would now be as wanton
and reasonless as I could wish. | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
"One morning I shouldered my Winchester rifle, and going over to my
uncle's house, near Nigger Head, asked my Aunt Mary, his wife, if he
were at home, adding that I had come to kill him. My aunt replied
with her peculiar smile that so many gentlemen called on that errand
and were afterward carried away without having performed it that I
must excuse her for doubting my good faith in the matter. She said I
did not look as if I would kill anybody, so, as a proof of good faith
I leveled my rifle and wounded a Chinaman who happened to be passing
the house. She said she knew whole families that could do a thing of
that kind, but Bill Ridley was a horse of another color. She said,
however, that I would find him over on the other side of the creek in
the sheep lot; and she added that she hoped the best man would win. "My Aunt Mary was one of the most fair-minded women that I have ever
met. "I found my uncle down on his knees engaged in skinning a sheep. Seeing that he had neither gun nor pistol handy I had not the heart to
shoot him, so I approached him, greeted him pleasantly and struck him
a powerful blow on the head with the butt of my rifle. I have a very
good delivery and Uncle William lay down on his side, then rolled over
on his back, spread out his fingers and shivered. Before he could
recover the use of his limbs I seized the knife that he had been using
and cut his hamstrings. You know, doubtless, that when you sever the
_tendo Achillis_ the patient has no further use of his leg; it is just
the same as if he had no leg. Well, I parted them both, and when he
revived he was at my service. As soon as he comprehended the
situation, he said:
"'Samuel, you have got the drop on me and can afford to be generous. I have only one thing to ask of you, and that is that you carry me to
the house and finish me in the bosom of my family.' "I told him I thought that a pretty reasonable request and I would do
so if he would let me put him into a wheat sack; he would be easier to
carry that way and if we were seen by the neighbors _en route_ it
would cause less remark. He agreed to that, and going to the barn I
got a sack. This, however, did not fit him; it was too short and much
wider than he; so I bent his legs, forced his knees up against his
breast and got him into it that way, tying the sack above his head. He was a heavy man and I had all that I could do to get him on my
back, but I staggered along for some distance until I came to a swing
that some of the children had suspended to the branch of an oak. Here
I laid him down and sat upon him to rest, and the sight of the rope
gave me a happy inspiration. In twenty minutes my uncle, still in the
sack, swung free to the sport of the wind. "I had taken down the rope, tied one end tightly about the mouth of
the bag, thrown the other across the limb and hauled him up about five
feet from the ground. Fastening the other end of the rope also about
the mouth of the sack, I had the satisfaction to see my uncle
converted into a large, fine pendulum. I must add that he was not
himself entirely aware of the nature of the change that he had
undergone in his relation to the exterior world, though in justice to
a good man's memory I ought to say that I do not think he would in any
case have wasted much of my time in vain remonstrance. "Uncle William had a ram that was famous in all that region as a
fighter. It was in a state of chronic constitutional indignation. Some deep disappointment in early life had soured its disposition and
it had declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would butt
anything accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of
its military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its methods
that of a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in
mid-air, cleaving the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic
curve and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle of
incidence to make the most of its velocity and weight. Its momentum,
calculated in foot-tons, was something incredible. It had been seen
to destroy a four year old bull by a single impact upon that animal's
gnarly forehead. No stone wall had ever been known to resist its
downward swoop; there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would
splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy honors in the
dust. This irascible and implacable brute--this incarnate
thunderbolt--this monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in
the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest and glory. It was with a view to summoning it forth to the field of honor that I
suspended its master in the manner described. "Having completed my preparations, I imparted to the avuncular
pendulum a gentle oscillation, and retiring to cover behind a
contiguous rock, lifted up my voice in a long rasping cry whose
diminishing final note was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing
cat, which emanated from the sack. Instantly that formidable sheep
was upon its feet and had taken in the military situation at a glance. In a few moments it had approached, stamping, to within fifty yards
of the swinging foeman, who, now retreating and anon advancing, seemed
to invite the fray. Suddenly I saw the beast's head drop earthward as
if depressed by the weight of its enormous horns; then a dim, white,
wavy streak of sheep prolonged itself from that spot in a generally
horizontal direction to within about four yards of a point immediately
beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply upward, and before it had
faded from my gaze at the place whence it had set out I heard a horrid
thump and a piercing scream, and my poor uncle shot forward, with a
slack rope higher than the limb to which he was attached. Here the
rope tautened with a jerk, arresting his flight, and back he swung in
a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram had fallen, a
heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and horns, but pulling itself
together and dodging as its antagonist swept downward it retired at
random, alternately shaking its head and stamping its fore-feet. When
it had backed about the same distance as that from which it had
delivered the assault it paused again, bowed its head as if in prayer
for victory and again shot forward, dimly visible as before--a
prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations, ending with a
sharp ascension. Its course this time was at a right angle to its
former one, and its impatience so great that it struck the enemy
before he had nearly reached the lowest point of his arc. In
consequence he went flying round and round in a horizontal circle
whose radius was about equal to half the length of the rope, which I
forgot to say was nearly twenty feet long. His shrieks, _crescendo_
in approach and _diminuendo_ in recession, made the rapidity of his
revolution more obvious to the ear than to the eye. He had evidently
not yet been struck in a vital spot. | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
His posture in the sack and the
distance from the ground at which he hung compelled the ram to operate
upon his lower extremities and the end of his back. Like a plant that
has struck its root into some poisonous mineral, my poor uncle was
dying slowly upward. "After delivering its second blow the ram had not again retired. The
fever of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated
with the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who in his rage forgets his
skill and fights ineffectively at half-arm's length, the angry beast
endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he
passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in striking him feebly,
but more frequently overthrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as
the impetus was exhausted and the man's circles narrowed in scope and
diminished in speed, bringing him nearer to the ground, these tactics
produced better results, eliciting a superior quality of screams,
which I greatly enjoyed. "Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended
hostilities and walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its
great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and
slowly munching it. It seemed to have tired of war's alarms and
resolved to beat the sword into a plowshare and cultivate the arts of
peace. Steadily it held its course away from the field of fame until
it had gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. There it
stopped and stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and
apparently half asleep. I observed, however, an occasional slight
turn of its head, as if its apathy were more affected than real. "Meantime Uncle William's shrieks had abated with his motion, and
nothing was heard from him but long, low moans, and at long intervals
my name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear. Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done
to him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When Death comes cloaked in
mystery he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle's
oscillations diminished, and finally he hung motionless. I went to
him and was about to give him the _coup de grace_, when I heard and
felt a succession of smart shocks which shook the ground like a series
of light earthquakes, and turning in the direction of the ram, saw a
long cloud of dust approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and
alarming effect! At a distance of some thirty yards away it stopped
short, and from the near end of it rose into the air what I at first
thought a great white bird. Its ascent was so smooth and easy and
regular that I could not realize its extraordinary celerity, and was
lost in admiration of its grace. To this day the impression remains
that it was a slow, deliberate movement, the ram--for it was that
animal--being upborne by some power other than its own impetus, and
supported through the successive stages of its flight with infinite
tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress through the air
with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast with my former
terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the noble animal
sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its fore-feet
thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of a
soaring heron. "At a height of forty or fifty feet, as fond recollection presents it
to view, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant
stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the
relative position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and
steeper course with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me
with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle
almost squarely on the top of the head! So frightful was the impact
that not only the man's neck was broken, but the rope too; and the
body of the deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to pulp
beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep! The concussion
stopped all the clocks between Lone Hand and Dutch Dan's, and
Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in matters seismic, who
happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained that the vibrations
were from north to southwest. "Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of artistic atrocity
my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled." OIL OF DOG
My name is Boffer Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the
humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog-oil and
my mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church,
where she disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boyhood I was trained to
habits of industry; I not only assisted my father in procuring dogs
for his vats, but was frequently employed by my mother to carry away
the debris of her work in the studio. In performance of this duty I
sometimes had need of all my natural intelligence for all the law
officers of the vicinity were opposed to my mother's business. They
were not elected on an opposition ticket, and the matter had never
been made a political issue; it just happened so. My father's
business of making dog-oil was, naturally, less unpopular, though the
owners of missing dogs sometimes regarded him with suspicion, which
was reflected, to some extent, upon me. My father had, as silent
partners, all the physicians of the town, who seldom wrote a
prescription which did not contain what they were pleased to designate
as _Ol. can._ It is really the most valuable medicine ever
discovered. But most persons are unwilling to make personal
sacrifices for the afflicted, and it was evident that many of the
fattest dogs in town had been forbidden to play with me--a fact which
pained my young sensibilities, and at one time came near driving me to
become a pirate. Looking back upon those days, I cannot but regret, at times, that by
indirectly bringing my beloved parents to their death I was the author
of misfortunes profoundly affecting my future. One evening while passing my father's oil factory with the body of a
foundling from my mother's studio I saw a constable who seemed to be
closely watching my movements. Young as I was, I had learned that a
constable's acts, of whatever apparent character, are prompted by the
most reprehensible motives, and I avoided him by dodging into the
oilery by a side door which happened to stand ajar. I locked it at
once and was alone with my dead. My father had retired for the night. The only light in the place came from the furnace, which glowed a
deep, rich crimson under one of the vats, casting ruddy reflections on
the walls. Within the cauldron the oil still rolled in indolent
ebullition, occasionally pushing to the surface a piece of dog. Seating myself to wait for the constable to go away, I held the naked
body of the foundling in my lap and tenderly stroked its short, silken
hair. Ah, how beautiful it was! | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
Even at that early age I was
passionately fond of children, and as I looked upon this cherub I
could almost find it in my heart to wish that the small, red wound
upon its breast--the work of my dear mother--had not been mortal. It had been my custom to throw the babes into the river which nature
had thoughtfully provided for the purpose, but that night I did not
dare to leave the oilery for fear of the constable. "After all," I
said to myself, "it cannot greatly matter if I put it into this
cauldron. My father will never know the bones from those of a puppy,
and the few deaths which may result from administering another kind of
oil for the incomparable _ol. can._ are not important in a population
which increases so rapidly." In short, I took the first step in crime
and brought myself untold sorrow by casting the babe into the
cauldron. The next day, somewhat to my surprise, my father, rubbing his hands
with satisfaction, informed me and my mother that he had obtained the
finest quality of oil that was ever seen; that the physicians to whom
he had shown samples had so pronounced it. He added that he had no
knowledge as to how the result was obtained; the dogs had been treated
in all respects as usual, and were of an ordinary breed. I deemed it
my duty to explain--which I did, though palsied would have been my
tongue if I could have foreseen the consequences. Bewailing their
previous ignorance of the advantages of combining their industries, my
parents at once took measures to repair the error. My mother removed
her studio to a wing of the factory building and my duties in
connection with the business ceased; I was no longer required to
dispose of the bodies of the small superfluous, and there was no need
of alluring dogs to their doom, for my father discarded them
altogether, though they still had an honorable place in the name of
the oil. So suddenly thrown into idleness, I might naturally have
been expected to become vicious and dissolute, but I did not. The
holy influence of my dear mother was ever about me to protect me from
the temptations which beset youth, and my father was a deacon in a
church. Alas, that through my fault these estimable persons should
have come to so bad an end! Finding a double profit in her business, my mother now devoted herself
to it with a new assiduity. She removed not only superfluous and
unwelcome babes to order, but went out into the highways and byways,
gathering in children of a larger growth, and even such adults as she
could entice to the oilery. My father, too, enamored of the superior
quality of oil produced, purveyed for his vats with diligence and
zeal. The conversion of their neighbors into dog-oil became, in
short, the one passion of their lives--an absorbing and overwhelming
greed took possession of their souls and served them in place of a
hope in Heaven--by which, also, they were inspired. So enterprising had they now become that a public meeting was held and
resolutions passed severely censuring them. It was intimated by the
chairman that any further raids upon the population would be met in a
spirit of hostility. My poor parents left the meeting broken-hearted,
desperate and, I believe, not altogether sane. Anyhow, I deemed it
prudent not to enter the oilery with them that night, but slept
outside in a stable. At about midnight some mysterious impulse caused me to rise and peer
through a window into the furnace-room, where I knew my father now
slept. The fires were burning as brightly as if the following day's
harvest had been expected to be abundant. One of the large cauldrons
was slowly "walloping" with a mysterious appearance of self-restraint,
as if it bided its time to put forth its full energy. My father was
not in bed; he had risen in his night clothes and was preparing a
noose in a strong cord. From the looks which he cast at the door of
my mother's bedroom I knew too well the purpose that he had in mind. Speechless and motionless with terror, I could do nothing in
prevention or warning. Suddenly the door of my mother's apartment was
opened, noiselessly, and the two confronted each other, both
apparently surprised. The lady, also, was in her night clothes, and
she held in her right hand the tool of her trade, a long,
narrow-bladed dagger. She, too, had been unable to deny herself the last profit which the
unfriendly action of the citizens and my absence had left her. For
one instant they looked into each other's blazing eyes and then sprang
together with indescribable fury. Round and round, the room they
struggled, the man cursing, the woman shrieking, both fighting like
demons--she to strike him with the dagger, he to strangle her with his
great bare hands. I know not how long I had the unhappiness to
observe this disagreeable instance of domestic infelicity, but at
last, after a more than usually vigorous struggle, the combatants
suddenly moved apart. My father's breast and my mother's weapon showed evidences of contact. For another instant they glared at each other in the most unamiable
way; then my poor, wounded father, feeling the hand of death upon him,
leaped forward, unmindful of resistance, grasped my dear mother in his
arms, dragged her to the side of the boiling cauldron, collected all
his failing energies, and sprang in with her! In a moment, both had
disappeared and were adding their oil to that of the committee of
citizens who had called the day before with an invitation to the
public meeting. Convinced that these unhappy events closed to me every avenue to an
honorable career in that town, I removed to the famous city of
Otumwee, where these memoirs are written with a heart full of remorse
for a heedless act entailing so dismal a commercial disaster. AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION
Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made
a deep impression on me at the time. This was before my marriage,
while I was living with my parents in Wisconsin. My father and I were
in the library of our home, dividing the proceeds of a burglary which
we had committed that night. These consisted of household goods
mostly, and the task of equitable division was difficult. We got on
very well with the napkins, towels and such things, and the silverware
was parted pretty nearly equally, but you can see for yourself that
when you try to divide a single music-box by two without a remainder
you will have trouble. It was that music-box which brought disaster
and disgrace upon our family. If we had left it my poor father might
now be alive. It was a most exquisite and beautiful piece of workmanship--inlaid
with costly woods and carven very curiously. It would not only play a
great variety of tunes, but would whistle like a quail, bark like a
dog, crow every morning at daylight whether it was wound up or not,
and break the Ten Commandments. | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
It was this last mentioned
accomplishment that won my father's heart and caused him to commit the
only dishonorable act of his life, though possibly he would have
committed more if he had been spared: he tried to conceal that
music-box from me, and declared upon his honor that he had not taken
it, though I know very well that, so far as he was concerned, the
burglary had been undertaken chiefly for the purpose of obtaining it. My father had the music-box hidden under his cloak; we had worn cloaks
by way of disguise. He had solemnly assured me that he did not take
it. I knew that he did, and knew something of which he was evidently
ignorant; namely, that the box would crow at daylight and betray him
if I could prolong the division of profits till that time. All
occurred as I wished: as the gaslight began to pale in the library and
the shape of the windows was seen dimly behind the curtains, a long
cock-a-doodle-doo came from beneath the old gentleman's cloak,
followed by a few bars of an aria from _Tannhauser_, ending with a
loud click. A small hand-axe, which we had used to break into the
unlucky house, lay between us on the table; I picked it up. The old
man seeing that further concealment was useless took the box from
under his cloak and set it on the table. "Cut it in two if you prefer
that plan," said he; "I tried to save it from destruction." He was a passionate lover of music and could himself play the
concertina with expression and feeling. I said: "I do not question the purity of your motive: it would be
presumptuous of me to sit in judgment on my father. But business is
business, and with this axe I am going to effect a dissolution of our
partnership unless you will consent in all future burglaries to wear a
bell-punch." "No," he said, after some reflection, "no, I could not do that; it
would look like a confession of dishonesty. People would say that you
distrusted me." I could not help admiring his spirit and sensitiveness; for a moment I
was proud of him and disposed to overlook his fault, but a glance at
the richly jeweled music-box decided me, and, as I said, I removed the
old man from this vale of tears. Having done so, I was a trifle
uneasy. Not only was he my father--the author of my being--but the
body would be certainly discovered. It was now broad daylight and my
mother was likely to enter the library at any moment. Under the
circumstances, I thought it expedient to remove her also, which I did. Then I paid off all the servants and discharged them. That afternoon I went to the chief of police, told him what I had done
and asked his advice. It would be very painful to me if the facts
became publicly known. My conduct would be generally condemned; the
newspapers would bring it up against me if ever I should run for
office. The chief saw the force of these considerations; he was
himself an assassin of wide experience. After consulting with the
presiding judge of the Court of Variable Jurisdiction he advised me to
conceal the bodies in one of the bookcases, get a heavy insurance on
the house and burn it down. This I proceeded to do. In the library was a book-case which my father had recently purchased
of some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size
something like the old-fashioned "ward-robes" which one sees in
bed-rooms without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's
night-dress. It had glass doors. I had recently laid out my parents
and they were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I stood them in this
book-case, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and
tacked some curtains over the glass doors. The inspector from the
insurance office passed a half-dozen times before the case without
suspicion. That night, after getting my policy, I set fire to the house and
started through the woods to town, two miles away, where I managed to
be found about the time the excitement was at its height. With cries
of apprehension for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush and
arrived at the fire some two hours after I had kindled it. The whole
town was there as I dashed up. The house was entirely consumed, but
in one end of the level bed of glowing embers, bolt upright and
uninjured, was that book-case! The curtains had burned away, exposing
the glass-doors, through which the fierce, red light illuminated the
interior. There stood my dear father "in his habit as he lived," and
at his side the partner of his joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them
was singed, their clothing was intact. On their heads and throats the
injuries which in the accomplishment of my designs I had been
compelled to inflict were conspicuous. As in the presence of a
miracle, the people were silent; awe and terror had stilled every
tongue. I was myself greatly affected. Some three years later, when the events herein related had nearly
faded from my memory, I went to New York to assist in passing some
counterfeit United States bonds. Carelessly looking into a furniture
store one day, I saw the exact counterpart of that book-case. "I
bought it for a trifle from a reformed inventor," the dealer
explained. "He said it was fireproof, the pores of the wood being
filled with alum under hydraulic pressure and the glass made of
asbestos. I don't suppose it is really fireproof--you can have it at
the price of an ordinary book-case." "No," I said, "if you cannot warrant it fireproof I won't take
it"--and I bade him good morning. I would not have had it at any price: it revived memories that were
exceedingly disagreeable. THE HYPNOTIST
By those of my friends who happen to know that I sometimes amuse
myself with hypnotism, mind reading and kindred phenomena, I am
frequently asked if I have a clear conception of the nature of
whatever principle underlies them. To this question I always reply
that I neither have nor desire to have. I am no investigator with an
ear at the key-hole of Nature's workshop, trying with vulgar curiosity
to steal the secrets of her trade. The interests of science are as
little to me as mine seem to have been to science. Doubtless the phenomena in question are simple enough, and in no way
transcend our powers of comprehension if only we could find the clew;
but for my part I prefer not to find it, for I am of a singularly
romantic disposition, deriving more gratification from mystery than
from knowledge. It was commonly remarked of me when I was a child
that my big blue eyes appeared to have been made rather to look into
than look out of--such was their dreamful beauty, and in my frequent
periods of abstraction, their indifference to what was going on. In
those peculiarities they resembled, I venture to think, the soul which
lies behind them, always more intent upon some lovely conception which
it has created in its own image than concerned about the laws of
nature and the material frame of things. | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
All this, irrelevant and
egotistic as it may seem, is related by way of accounting for the
meagreness of the light that I am able to throw upon a subject that
has engaged so much of my attention, and concerning which there is so
keen and general a curiosity. With my powers and opportunities,
another person might doubtless have an explanation for much of what I
present simply as narrative. My first knowledge that I possessed unusual powers came to me in my
fourteenth year, when at school. Happening one day to have forgotten
to bring my noon-day luncheon, I gazed longingly at that of a small
girl who was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine and
she seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment of hesitancy she
came forward in an absent kind of way and without a word surrendered
her little basket with its tempting contents and walked away. Inexpressibly pleased, I relieved my hunger and destroyed the basket. After that I had not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself: that
little girl was my daily purveyor; and not infrequently in satisfying
my simple need from her frugal store I combined pleasure and profit by
constraining her attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer
of the viands, which eventually I consumed to the last fragment. The
girl was always persuaded that she had eaten all herself; and later in
the day her tearful complaints of hunger surprised the teacher,
entertained the pupils, earned for her the sobriquet of Greedy-Gut and
filled me with a peace past understanding. A disagreeable feature of this otherwise satisfactory condition of
things was the necessary secrecy: the transfer of the luncheon, for
example, had to be made at some distance from the madding crowd, in a
wood; and I blush to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges
entailed by the situation. As I was (and am) naturally of a frank and
open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the
reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new
regime I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I
finally adopted to free myself from the consequences of my own powers
excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part of it
which consisted in the death of the girl was severely condemned, but
it is hardly pertinent to the scope of this narrative. For some years afterward I had little opportunity to practice
hypnotism; such small essays as I made at it were commonly barren of
other recognition than solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet;
sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing better than the
cat-o'-nine-tails. It was when I was about to leave the scene of
these small disappointments that my one really important feat was
performed. I had been called into the warden's office and given a suit of
civilian's clothing, a trifling sum of money and a great deal of
advice, which I am bound to confess was of a much better quality than
the clothing. As I was passing out of the gate into the light of
freedom I suddenly turned and looking the warden gravely in the eye,
soon had him in control. "You are an ostrich," I said. At the post-mortem examination the stomach was found to contain a
great quantity of indigestible articles mostly of wood or metal. Stuck fast in the esophagus and constituting, according to the
Coroner's jury, the immediate cause of death, one door-knob. I was by nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into
the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not
help remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from
the niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons;
and I knew of no reason to think they had reformed. On the road between Succotash Hill and South Asphyxia is a little open
field which once contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's Place,
where that gentleman used to murder travelers for a living. The death
of Mr. Gilstrap and the diversion of nearly all the travel to another
road occurred so nearly at the same time that no one has ever been
able to say which was cause and which effect. Anyhow, the field was
now a desolation and the Place had long been burned. It was while
going afoot to South Asphyxia, the home of my childhood, that I found
both my parents on their way to the Hill. They had hitched their team
and were eating luncheon under an oak tree in the center of the field. The sight of the luncheon called up painful memories of my school
days and roused the sleeping lion in my breast. Approaching the
guilty couple, who at once recognized me, I ventured to suggest that I
share their hospitality. "Of this cheer, my son," said the author of my being, with
characteristic pomposity, which age had not withered, "there is
sufficient for but two. I am not, I hope, insensible to the
hunger-light in your eyes, but--"
My father has never completed that sentence; what he mistook for
hunger-light was simply the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In a few
seconds he was at my service. A few more sufficed for the lady, and
the dictates of a just resentment could be carried into effect. "My
former father," I said, "I presume that it is known to you that you
and this lady are no longer what you were?" "I have observed a certain subtle change," was the rather dubious
reply of the old gentleman; "it is perhaps attributable to age." "It is more than that," I explained; "it goes to character--to
species. You and the lady here are, in truth, two broncos--wild
stallions both, and unfriendly." "Why, John," exclaimed my dear mother, "you don't mean to say that I
am--"
"Madam," I replied, solemnly, fixing my eyes again upon hers, "you
are." Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips when she dropped upon her
hands and knees, and backing up to the old man squealed like a demon
and delivered a vicious kick upon his shin! An instant later he was
himself down on all-fours, headed away from her and flinging his feet
at her simultaneously and successively. With equal earnestness but
inferior agility, because of her hampering body-gear, she plied her
own. Their flying legs crossed and mingled in the most bewildering
way; their feet sometimes meeting squarely in midair, their bodies
thrust forward, falling flat upon the ground and for a moment
helpless. On recovering themselves they would resume the combat,
uttering their frenzy in the nameless sounds of the furious brutes
which they believed themselves to be--the whole region rang with their
clamor! Round and round they wheeled, the blows of their feet falling
"like lightnings from the mountain cloud." They plunged and reared
backward upon their knees, struck savagely at each other with awkward
descending blows of both fists at once, and dropped again upon their
hands as if unable to maintain the upright position of the body. Grass and pebbles were torn from the soil by hands and feet; clothing,
hair, faces inexpressibly defiled with dust and blood. | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
Wild,
inarticulate screams of rage attested the delivery of the blows;
groans, grunts and gasps their receipt. Nothing more truly military
was ever seen at Gettysburg or Waterloo: the valor of my dear parents
in the hour of danger can never cease to be to me a source of pride
and gratification. At the end of it all two battered, tattered,
bloody and fragmentary vestiges of mortality attested the solemn fact
that the author of the strife was an orphan. Arrested for provoking a breach of the peace, I was, and have ever
since been, tried in the Court of Technicalities and Continuances
whence, after fifteen years of proceedings, my attorney is moving
heaven and earth to get the case taken to the Court of Remandment for
New Trials. Such are a few of my principal experiments in the mysterious force or
agency known as hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could be | Bierce, Ambrose - The Parenticide Club |
Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.) DAY AND NIGHT STORIES
BY
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
Author _of_ "Ten Minute Stories," "Julius Le Vallon,"
"The Wave," etc. [Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO. Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE TRYST 1
II. THE TOUCH OF PAN 16
III. THE WINGS OF HORUS 41
IV. INITIATION 66
V. A DESERT EPISODE 94
VI. THE OTHER WING 112
VII. THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM 134
VIII. CAIN'S ATONEMENT 145
IX. AN EGYPTIAN HORNET 154
X. BY WATER 162
XI. H. S. H. 171
XII. A BIT OF WOOD 187
XIII. A VICTIM OF HIGHER SPACE 192
XIV. TRANSITION 216
XV. THE TRADITION 223
DAY AND NIGHT STORIES
I
THE TRYST
"_Je suis la première au rendez-vous. Je vous attends._"
As he got out of the train at the little wayside station he remembered
the conversation as if it had been yesterday, instead of fifteen years
ago--and his heart went thumping against his ribs so violently that he
almost heard it. The original thrill came over him again with all its
infinite yearning. He felt it as he had felt it _then_--not with that
tragic lessening the interval had brought to each repetition of its
memory. Here, in the familiar scenery of its birth, he realised with
mingled pain and wonder that the subsequent years had not destroyed,
but only dimmed it. The forgotten rapture flamed back with all the
fierce beauty of its genesis, desire at white heat. And the shock of
the abrupt discovery shattered time. Fifteen years became a negligible
moment; the crowded experiences that had intervened seemed but a dream. The farewell scene, the conversation on the steamer's deck, were
clear as of the day before. He saw the hand holding her big hat that
fluttered in the wind, saw the flowers on the dress where the long coat
was blown open a moment, recalled the face of a hurrying steward who
had jostled them; he even heard the voices--his own and hers:
"Yes," she said simply; "I promise you. You have my word. I'll wait----"
"Till I come back to find you," he interrupted. Steadfastly she repeated his actual words, then added: "Here; at
home--that is." "I'll come to the garden gate as usual," he told her, trying to smile. "I'll knock. You'll open the gate--as usual--and come out to me." These words, too, she attempted to repeat, but her voice failed, her
eyes filled suddenly with tears; she looked into his face and nodded. It was just then that her little hand went up to hold the hat on--he
saw the very gesture still. He remembered that he was vehemently
tempted to tear his ticket up there and then, to go ashore with her,
to stay in England, to brave all opposition--when the siren roared its
third horrible warning ... and the ship put out to sea. * * * * *
Fifteen years, thick with various incident, had passed between them
since that moment. His life had risen, fallen, crashed, then risen
again. He had come back at last, fortune won by a lucky coup--at
thirty-five; had come back to find her, come back, above all, to keep
his word. Once every three months they had exchanged the brief letter
agreed upon: "I am well; I am waiting; I am happy; I am unmarried. Yours----." For his youthful wisdom had insisted that no "man" had the
right to keep "any woman" too long waiting; and she, thinking that
letter brave and splendid, had insisted likewise that he was free--if
freedom called him. They had laughed over this last phrase in their
agreement. They put five years as the possible limit of separation. By then he would have won success, and obstinate parents would have
nothing more to say. But when the five years ended he was "on his uppers" in a western
mining town, and with the end of ten in sight those uppers, though
changed, were little better, apparently, than patched and mended. And
it was just then, too, that the change which had been stealing over
him betrayed itself. He realised it abruptly, a sense of shame and
horror in him. The discovery was made unconsciously--it disclosed
itself. He was reading her letter as a labourer on a Californian fruit
farm: "Funny she doesn't marry--some one else!" he heard himself say. The words were out before he knew it, and certainly before he could
suppress them. They just slipped out, startling him into the truth;
and he knew instantly that the thought was fathered in him by a hidden
wish.... He was older. He had lived. It was a memory he loved. Despising himself in a contradictory fashion--both vaguely and
fiercely--he yet held true to his boyhood's promise. He did not
write and offer to release her, as he knew they did in stories. He
persuaded himself that he meant to keep his word. There was this fine,
stupid, selfish obstinacy in his character. In any case, she would
misunderstand and think he wanted to set free--himself. "Besides--I'm
still--awfully fond of her," he asserted. And it was true; only the
love, it seemed, had gone its way. Not that another woman took it; he
kept himself clean, held firm as steel. The love, apparently, just
faded of its own accord; her image dimmed, her letters ceased to
thrill, then ceased to interest him. Subsequent reflection made him realise other details about himself. In the interval he had suffered hardships, had learned the uncertainty
of life that depends for its continuance on a little food, but that
food often hard to come by, and had seen so many others go under that
he held it more cheaply than of old. The wandering instinct, too, had
caught him, slowly killing the domestic impulse; he lost his desire for
a settled place of abode, the desire for children of his own, lost the
desire to marry at all. Also--he reminded himself with a smile--he had
lost other things: the expression of youth _she_ was accustomed to and
held always in her thoughts of him, two fingers of one hand, his hair! He wore glasses, too. The gentlemen-adventurers of life get scarred
in those wild places where he lived. He saw himself a rather battered
specimen well on the way to middle age. There was confusion in his mind, however, _and_ in his heart: a
struggling complex of emotions that made it difficult to know exactly
what he did feel. The dominant clue concealed itself. Feelings shifted. A single, clear determinant did not offer. He was an honest fellow. "I can't quite make it out," he said. "What is it I really feel? And
why?" His motive seemed confused. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
To keep the flame alight for ten long
buffeting years was no small achievement; better men had succumbed in
half the time. Yet something in him still held fast to the girl as with
a band of steel that _would_ not let her go entirely. Occasionally
there came strong reversions, when he ached with longing, yearning,
hope; when he loved her again; remembered passionately each detail of
the far-off courtship days in the forbidden rectory garden beyond the
small, white garden gate. Or was it merely the image and the memory he
loved "again"? He hardly knew himself. He could not tell. That "again"
puzzled him. It was the wrong word surely.... He still wrote the
promised letter, however; it was so easy; those short sentences could
not betray the dead or dying fires. One day, besides, he would return
and claim her. He meant to keep his word. And he had kept it. Here he was, this calm September afternoon, within
three miles of the village where he first had kissed her, where the
marvel of first love had come to both; three short miles between him
and the little white garden gate of which at this very moment she was
intently thinking, and behind which some fifty minutes later she would
be standing, waiting for him.... He had purposely left the train at an earlier station; he would walk
over in the dusk, climb the familiar steps, knock at the white gate
in the wall as of old, utter the promised words, "I have come back to
find you," enter, and--keep his word. He had written from Mexico a week
before he sailed; he had made careful, even accurate calculations: "In
the dusk, on the sixteenth of September, I shall come and knock," he
added to the usual sentences. The knowledge of his coming, therefore,
had been in her possession seven days. Just before sailing, moreover,
he had heard from her--though not in answer, naturally. She was well;
she was happy; she was unmarried; she was waiting. And now, as by some magical process of restoration--possible to deep
hearts only, perhaps, though even by them quite inexplicable--the state
of first love had blazed up again in him. In all its radiant beauty it
lit his heart, burned unextinguished in his soul, set body and mind
on fire. The years had merely veiled it. It burst upon him, captured,
overwhelmed him with the suddenness of a dream. He stepped from the
train. He met it in the face. It took him prisoner. The familiar trees
and hedges, the unchanged countryside, the "field-smells known in
infancy," all these, with something subtly added to them, rolled back
the passion of his youth upon him in a flood. No longer was he bound
upon what he deemed, perhaps, an act of honourable duty; it was love
that drove him, as it drove him fifteen years before. And it drove
him with the accumulated passion of desire long forcibly repressed;
almost as if, out of some fancied notion of fairness to the girl, he
had deliberately, yet still unconsciously, said "No" to it; that _she_
had not faded, but that he had decided, "_I_ must forget her." That
sentence: "Why doesn't she marry--some one else?" had not betrayed
change in himself. It surprised another motive: "It's not fair to--her!" His mind worked with a curious rapidity, but worked within one circle
only. The stress of sudden emotion was extraordinary. He remembered a
thousand things--yet, chief among them, those occasional reversions
when he had felt he "loved her again." Had he not, after all, deceived
himself? Had she ever really "faded" at all? Had he not felt he ought
to let her fade--release her that way? And the change in himself?--that
sentence on the Californian fruit-farm--what did they mean? Which had
been true, the fading or the love? The confusion in his mind was hopeless, but, as a matter of fact,
he did not think at all: he only _felt_. The momentum, besides, was
irresistible, and before the shattering onset of the sweet revival he
did not stop to analyse the strange result. He knew certain things, and
cared to know no others: that his heart was leaping, his blood running
with the heat of twenty, that joy recaptured him, that he must see,
hear, touch her, hold her in his arms--and marry her. For the fifteen
years had crumbled to a little thing, and at thirty-five he felt
himself but twenty, rapturously, deliciously in love. He went quickly, eagerly down the little street to the inn, still
feeling only, not thinking anything. The vehement uprush of the old
emotion made reflection of any kind impossible. He gave no further
thought to those long years "out there," when her name, her letters,
the very image of her in his mind, had found him, if not cold, at
least without keen response. All that was forgotten as though it had
not been. The steadfast thing in him, this strong holding to a promise
which had never wilted, ousted the recollection of fading and decay
that, whatever caused them, certainly _had_ existed. And this steadfast
thing now took command. This enduring quality in his character led
him. It was only towards the end of the hurried tea he first received
the singular impression--vague, indeed, but undeniably persistent--the
strange impression that he was _being_ led. Yet, though aware of this, he did not pause to argue or reflect. The emotional displacement in him, of course, had been more than
considerable: there had been upheaval, a change whose abruptness was
even dislocating, fundamental in a sense he could not estimate--shock. Yet he took no count of anything but the one mastering desire to get to
her as soon as possible, knock at the small, white garden gate, hear
her answering voice, see the low wooden door swing open--take her. There was joy and glory in his heart, and a yearning sweet delight. At
this very moment she was expecting him. And he--had come. Behind these positive emotions, however, there lay concealed all
the time others that were of a negative character. Consciously, he
was not aware of them, but they were there; they revealed their
presence in various little ways that puzzled him. He recognised them
absentmindedly, as it were; did not analyse or investigate them. For, through the confusion upon his faculties, rose also a certain
hint of insecurity that betrayed itself by a slight hesitancy or
miscalculation in one or two unimportant actions. There was a touch
of melancholy, too, a sense of something lost. It lay, perhaps, in
that tinge of sadness which accompanies the twilight of an autumn day,
when a gentler, mournful beauty veils a greater beauty that is past. Some trick of memory connected it with a scene of early boyhood, when,
meaning to see the sunrise, he overslept, and, by a brief half-hour,
was just--too late. He noted it merely, then passed on; he did not
understand it; he hurried all the more, this hurry the only sign that
it _was_ noted. "I must be quick," flashed up across his strongly
positive emotions. And, due to this hurry, possibly, were the slight miscalculations
that he made. They were very trivial. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
He rang for sugar, though the
bowl stood just before his eyes, yet when the girl came in he forgot
completely what he rang for--and inquired instead about the evening
trains to London. And, when the time-table was laid before him, he
examined it without intelligence, then looked up suddenly into the
maid's face with a question about flowers. Were there flowers to be had
in the village anywhere? What kind of flowers? "Oh, a bouquet or a"--he
hesitated, searching for a word that tried to present itself, yet was
not the word _he_ wanted to make use of--"or a wreath--of some sort?" he finished. He took the very word he did not want to take. In several
things he did and said, this hesitancy and miscalculation betrayed
themselves--such trivial things, yet significant in an elusive way that
he disliked. There was sadness, insecurity somewhere in them. And he
resented them, aware of their existence only because they qualified
his joy. There was a whispered "No" floating somewhere in the dusk. Almost--he felt disquiet. He hurried, more and more eager to be off
upon his journey--the final part of it. Moreover, there were other signs of an odd miscalculation--dislocation,
perhaps, properly speaking--in him. Though the inn was familiar from
his boyhood days, kept by the same old couple, too, he volunteered
no information about himself, nor asked a single question about the
village he was bound for. He did not even inquire if the rector--her
father--still were living. And when he left he entirely neglected the
gilt-framed mirror above the mantelpiece of plush, dusty pampas-grass
in waterless vases on either side. It did not matter, apparently,
whether he looked well or ill, tidy or untidy. He forgot that when
his cap was off the absence of thick, accustomed hair must alter him
considerably, forgot also that two fingers were missing from one hand,
the right hand, the hand that she would presently clasp. Nor did it
occur to him that he wore glasses, which must change his expression
and add to the appearance of the years he bore. None of these obvious
and natural things seemed to come into his thoughts at all. He was
in a hurry to be off. He did not think. But, though his mind may not
have noted these slight betrayals with actual sentences, his attitude,
nevertheless, expressed them. This was, it seemed, the _feeling_ in
him: "What could such details matter to her _now_? Why, indeed, should
he give to them a single thought? It was himself she loved and waited
for, not separate items of his external, physical image." As well think
of the fact that she, too, must have altered--outwardly. It never once
occurred to him. Such details were of To-day.... He was only impatient
to come to her quickly, very quickly, instantly, if possible. He
hurried. There was a flood of boyhood's joy in him. He paid for his tea, giving
a tip that was twice the price of the meal, and set out gaily and
impetuously along the winding lane. Charged to the brim with a sweet
picture of a small, white garden gate, the loved face close behind it,
he went forward at a headlong pace, singing "Nancy Lee" as he used to
sing it fifteen years before. With action, then, the negative sensations hid themselves, obliterated
by the positive ones that took command. The former, however, merely lay
concealed; they waited. Thus, perhaps, does vital emotion, overlong
restrained, denied, indeed, of its blossoming altogether, take revenge. Repressed elements in his psychic life asserted themselves, selecting,
as though naturally, a dramatic form. The dusk fell rapidly, mist rose in floating strips along the meadows
by the stream; the old, familiar details beckoned him forwards, then
drove him from behind as he went swiftly past them. He recognised
others rising through the thickening air beyond; they nodded, peered,
and whispered; sometimes they almost sang. And each added to his inner
happiness; each brought its sweet and precious contribution, and built
it into the reconstructed picture of the earlier, long-forgotten
rapture. It was an enticing and enchanted journey that he made,
something impossibly blissful in it, something, too, that seemed
curiously--inevitable. For the scenery had not altered all these years, the details of the
country were unchanged, everything he saw was rich with dear and
precious association, increasing the momentum of the tide that carried
him along. Yonder was the stile over whose broken step he had helped
her yesterday, and there the slippery plank across the stream where
she looked above her shoulder to ask for his support; he saw the
very bramble bushes where she scratched her hand, a-blackberrying,
the day before ... and, finally, the weather-stained signpost, "To
the Rectory." It pointed to the path through the dangerous field
where Farmer Sparrow's bull provided such a sweet excuse for holding,
leading--protecting her. From the entire landscape rose a steam of
recent memory, each incident alive, each little detail brimmed with its
cargo of fond association. He read the rough black lettering on the crooked arm--it was rather
faded, but he knew it too well to miss a single letter--and hurried
forward along the muddy track; he looked about him for a sign of Farmer
Sparrow's bull; he even felt in the misty air for the little hand that
he might take and lead her into safety. The thought of her drew him on
with such irresistible anticipation that it seemed as if the cumulative
drive of vanished and unsated years evoked the tangible phantom almost. He actually felt it, soft and warm and clinging in his own, that was no
longer incomplete and mutilated. Yet it was not he who led and guided now, but, more and more, he who
was being led. The hint had first betrayed its presence at the inn;
it now openly declared itself. It had crossed the frontier into a
positive sensation. Its growth, swiftly increasing all this time, had
accomplished itself; he had ignored, somehow, both its genesis and
quick development; the result he plainly recognised. She was expecting
him, indeed, but it was more than expectation; there was calling in
it--she summoned him. Her thought and longing reached him along that
old, invisible track love builds so easily between true, faithful
hearts. All the forces of her being, her very voice, came towards him
through the deepening autumn twilight. He had not noticed the curious
physical restoration in his hand, but he was vividly aware of this more
magical alteration--that _she_ led and guided him, drawing him ever
more swiftly towards the little, white garden gate where she stood at
this very moment, waiting. Her sweet strength compelled him; there was
this new touch of something irresistible about the familiar journey,
where formerly had been delicious yielding only, shy, tentative
advance. He realised it--inevitable. His footsteps hurried, faster and ever faster; so deep was the
allurement in his blood, he almost ran. He reached the narrow, winding
lane, and raced along it. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
He knew each bend, each angle of the holly
hedge, each separate incident of ditch and stone. He could have plunged
blindfold down it at top speed. The familiar perfumes rushed at
him--dead leaves and mossy earth and ferns and dock leaves, bringing
the bewildering currents of strong emotion in him all together as in
a rising wave. He saw, then, the crumbling wall, the cedars topping
it with spreading branches, the chimneys of the rectory. On his right
bulked the outline of the old, grey church; the twisted, ancient yews,
the company of gravestones, upright and leaning, dotting the ground
like listening figures. But he looked at none of these. For, on his
left, he already saw the five rough steps of stone that led from the
lane towards a small, white garden gate. That gate at last shone before
him, rising through the misty air. He reached it. He stopped dead a moment. His heart, it seemed, stopped too, then took
to violent hammering in his brain. There was a roaring in his mind, and
yet a marvellous silence--just behind it. Then the roar of emotion died
away. There was utter stillness. This stillness, silence, was all about
him. The world seemed preternaturally quiet. But the pause was too brief to measure. For the tide of emotion had
receded only to come on again with redoubled power. He turned, leaped
forward, clambered impetuously up the rough stone steps, and flung
himself, breathless and exhausted, against the trivial barrier that
stood between his eyes and--hers. In his wild, half violent impatience,
however, he stumbled. That roaring, too, confused him. He fell forward,
it seemed, for twilight had merged in darkness, and he misjudged the
steps, the distances he yet knew so well. For a moment, certainly, he
lay at full length upon the uneven ground against the wall; the steps
had tripped him. And then he raised himself and knocked. His right hand
struck upon the small, white garden gate. Upon the two lost fingers he
felt the impact. "I am here," he cried, with a deep sound in his throat
as though utterance was choked and difficult. "I have come back--to
find you." For a fraction of a second he waited, while the world stood still and
waited with him. But there was no delay. Her answer came at once: "I am
well.... I am happy.... I am waiting." And the voice was dear and marvellous as of old. Though the words
were strange, reminding him of something dreamed, forgotten, lost,
it seemed, he did not take special note of them. He only wondered
that she did not open instantly that he might see her. Speech could
follow, but sight came surely first! There was this lightning-flash
of disappointment in him. Ah, she was lengthening out the marvellous
moment, as often and often she had done before. It was to tease him
that she made him wait. He knocked again; he pushed against the
unyielding surface. For he noticed that it was unyielding; and there
was a depth in the tender voice that he could not understand. "Open!" he cried again, but louder than before. "I have come back to
find you!" And as he said it the mist struck cold and thick against his
face. But her answer froze his blood. "I cannot open." And a sudden anguish of despair rose over him; the sound of her voice
was strange; in it was faintness, distance--as well as depth. It seemed
to echo. Something frantic seized him then--the panic sense. "Open, open! Come out to me!" he tried to shout. His voice failed
oddly; there was no power in it. Something appalling struck him between
the eyes. "For God's sake, open. I'm waiting here! Open, and come out
to me!" The reply was muffled by distance that already seemed increasing; he
was conscious of freezing cold about him--in his heart. "I cannot open. You must come in to me. I'm here and--waiting--always." He knew not exactly then what happened, for the cold grew deeper and
the icy mist was in his throat. No words would come. He rose to his
knees, and from his knees to his feet. He stooped. With all his force
he knocked again; in a blind frenzy of despair he hammered and beat
against the unyielding barrier of the small, white garden gate. He
battered it till the skin of his knuckles was torn and bleeding--the
first two fingers of a hand already mutilated. He remembers the torn
and broken skin, for he noticed in the gloom that stains upon the
gate bore witness to his violence; it was not till afterwards that
he remembered the other fact--that the hand had already suffered
mutilation, long, long years ago. The power of sound was feebly in
him; he called aloud; there was no answer. He tried to scream, but the
scream was muffled in his throat before it issued properly; it was a
nightmare scream. As a last resort he flung himself bodily upon the
unyielding gate, with such precipitate violence, moreover, that his
face struck against its surface. From the friction, then, along the whole length of his cheek he knew
that the surface was not smooth. Cold and rough that surface was; but
also--it was not of wood. Moreover, there was writing on it he had not
seen before. How he deciphered it in the gloom, he never knew. The
lettering was deeply cut. Perhaps he traced it with his fingers; his
right hand certainly lay stretched upon it. He made out a name, a date,
a broken verse from the Bible, and the words, "died peacefully." The
lettering was sharply cut with edges that were new. For the date was of
a week ago; the broken verse ran, "When the shadows flee away ..." and
the small, white garden gate was unyielding because it was of--stone. * * * * *
At the inn he found himself staring at a table from which the tea
things had not been cleared away. There was a railway time-table in
his hands, and his head was bent forwards over it, trying to decipher
the lettering in the growing twilight. Beside him, still fingering a
shilling, stood the serving-girl; her other hand held a brown tray
with a running dog painted upon its dented surface. It swung to and
fro a little as she spoke, evidently continuing a conversation her
customer had begun. For she was giving information--in the colourless,
disinterested voice such persons use:
"We all went to the funeral, sir, all the country people went. The
grave was her father's--the family grave...." Then, seeing that her
customer was too absorbed in the time-table to listen further, she said
no more but began to pile the tea things on to the tray with noisy
clatter. Ten minutes later, in the road, he stood hesitating. The signal at
the station just opposite was already down. The autumn mist was rising. He looked along the winding road that melted away into the distance,
then slowly turned and reached the platform just as the London train
came in. He felt very old--too old to walk six miles....
II
THE TOUCH OF PAN
1
An idiot, Heber understood, was a person in whom intelligence had been
arrested--instinct acted, but not reason. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
A lunatic, on the other hand,
was some one whose reason had gone awry--the mechanism of the brain
was injured. The lunatic was out of relation with his environment; the
idiot had merely been delayed _en route_. Be that as it might, he knew at any rate that a lunatic was not to
be listened to, whereas an idiot--well, the one he fell in love with
certainly had the secret of some instinctual knowledge that was not
only joy, but a kind of sheer natural joy. Probably it was that sheer
natural joy of living that reason argues to be untaught, degraded. In any case--at thirty--he married her instead of the daughter of
a duchess he was engaged to. They lead to-day that happy, natural,
vagabond life called idiotic, unmindful of that world the majority of
reasonable people live only to remember. Though born into an artificial social clique that made it difficult,
Heber had always loved the simple things. Nature, especially, meant
much to him. He would rather see a woodland misty with bluebells than
all the châteaux on the Loire; the thought of a mountain valley in the
dawn made his feet lonely in the grandest houses. Yet in these very
houses was his home established. Not that he under-estimated worldly
things--their value was too obvious--but that it was another thing he
wanted. Only he did not know precisely _what_ he wanted until this
particular idiot made it plain. Her case was a mild one, possibly; the title bestowed by implication
rather than by specific mention. Her family did not say that she was
imbecile or half-witted, but that she "was not all there" they probably
did say. Perhaps she saw men as trees walking, perhaps she saw through
a glass darkly. Heber, who had met her once or twice, though never
yet to speak to, did not analyse her degree of sight, for in him,
personally, she woke a secret joy and wonder that almost involved a
touch of awe. The part of her that was not "all there" dwelt in an
"elsewhere" that he longed to know about. He wanted to share it with
her. She seemed aware of certain happy and desirable things that reason
and too much thinking hide. He just felt this instinctively without analysis. The values they set
upon the prizes of life were similar. Money to her was just stamped
metal, fame a loud noise of sorts, position nothing. Of people she was
aware as a dog or bird might be aware--they were kind or unkind. Her
parents, having collected much metal and achieved position, proceeded
to make a loud noise of sorts with some success; and since she did
not contribute, either by her appearance or her tastes, to their
ambitions, they neglected her and made excuses. They were ashamed of
her existence. Her father in particular justified Nietzsche's shrewd
remark that no one with a loud voice can listen to subtle thoughts. She was, perhaps, sixteen--for, though she looked it, eighteen or
nineteen was probably more in accord with her birth certificate. Her
mother was content, however, that she should dress the lesser age,
preferring to tell strangers that she was childish, rather than admit
that she was backward. "You'll never marry at all, child, much less marry as you might," she
said, "if you go about with that rabbit expression on your face. That's
not the way to catch a nice young man of the sort we get down to stay
with us now. Many a chorus-girl with less than you've got has caught
them easily enough. Your sister's done well. Why not do the same? There's nothing to be shy or frightened about." "But I'm not shy or frightened, mother. I'm bored. I mean _they_ bore
me." It made no difference to the girl; she was herself. The bored
expression in the eyes--the rabbit, not-all-there expression--gave
place sometimes to another look. Yet not often, nor with anybody. It
was this other look that stirred the strange joy in the man who fell in
love with her. It is not to be easily described. It was very wonderful. Whether sixteen or nineteen, she then looked--a thousand. * * * * *
The house-party was of that up-to-date kind prevalent in Heber's
world. Husbands and wives were not asked together. There was a cynical
disregard of the decent (not the stupid) conventions that savoured
of abandon, perhaps of decadence. He only went himself in the hope
of seeing the backward daughter once again. Her millionaire parents
afflicted him, the smart folk tired him. Their peculiar affectation of
a special language, their strange belief that they were of importance,
their treatment of the servants, their calculated self-indulgence, all
jarred upon him more than usual. At bottom he heartily despised the
whole vapid set. He felt uncomfortable and out of place. Though not a
prig, he abhorred the way these folk believed themselves the climax of
fine living. Their open immorality disgusted him, their indiscriminate
love-making was merely rather nasty; he watched the very girl he was at
last to settle down with behaving as the tone of the clique expected
over her final fling--and, bored by the strain of so much "modernity,"
he tried to get away. Tea was long over, the sunset interval invited,
he felt hungry for trees and fields that were not self-conscious--and
he escaped. The flaming June day was turning chill. Dusk hovered over
the ancient house, veiling the pretentious new wing that had been
added. And he came across the idiot girl at the bend of the drive,
where the birch trees shivered in the evening wind. His heart gave a
leap. She was leaning against one of the dreadful statues--it was a
satyr--that sprinkled the lawn. Her back was to him; she gazed at a
group of broken pine trees in the park beyond. He paused an instant,
then went on quickly, while his mind scurried to recall her name. They
were within easy speaking range. "Miss Elizabeth!" he cried, yet not too loudly lest she might vanish
as suddenly as she had appeared. She turned at once. Her eyes and lips
were smiling welcome at him without pretence. She showed no surprise. "You're the first one of the lot who's said it properly," she
exclaimed, as he came up. "Everybody calls me Elizabeth instead of
Elspeth. It's idiotic. They don't even take the trouble to get a name
right." "It is," he agreed. "Quite idiotic." He did not correct her. Possibly
he had said Elspeth after all--the names were similar. Her perfectly
natural voice was grateful to his ear, and soothing. He looked at
her all over with an open admiration that she noticed and, without
concealment, liked. She was very untidy, the grey stockings on her
vigorous legs were torn, her short skirt was spattered with mud. Her nut-brown hair, glossy and plentiful, flew loose about neck
and shoulders. In place of the usual belt she had tied a coloured
handkerchief round her waist. She wore no hat. What she had been doing
to get in such a state, while her parents entertained a "distinguished"
party, he did not know, but it was not difficult to guess. Climbing
trees or riding bareback and astride was probably the truth. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
Yet
her dishevelled state became her well, and the welcome in her face
delighted him. She remembered him, she was glad. He, too, was glad,
and a sense both happy and reckless stirred in his heart. "Like a wild
animal," he said, "you come out in the dusk----"
"To play with my kind," she answered in a flash, throwing him a glance
of invitation that made his blood go dancing. He leaned against the statue a moment, asking himself why this young
Cinderella of a parvenu family delighted him when all the London
beauties left him cold. There was a lift through his whole being as
he watched her, slim and supple, grace shining through the untidy
modern garb--almost as though she wore no clothes. He thought of a
panther standing upright. Her poise was so alert--one arm upon the
marble ledge, one leg bent across the other, the hip-line showing like
a bird's curved wing. Wild animal or bird, flashed across his mind:
something untamed and natural. Another second, and she might leap
away--or spring into his arms. It was a deep, stirring sensation in him that produced the mental
picture. "Pure and natural," a voice whispered with it in his heart,
"as surely as _they_ are just the other thing!" And the thrill struck
with unerring aim at the very root of that unrest he had always known
in the state of life to which he was called. She made it natural,
clean, and pure. This girl and himself were somehow kin. The primitive
thing broke loose in him. In two seconds, while he stood with her beside the vulgar statue,
these thoughts passed through his mind. But he did not at first give
utterance to any of them. He spoke more formally, although laughter,
due to his happiness, lay behind:
"They haven't asked you to the party, then? Or you don't care about it? Which is it?" "Both," she said, looking fearlessly into his face. "But I've been here
ten minutes already. Why were you so long?" This outspoken honesty was hardly what he expected, yet in another
sense he was not surprised. Her eyes were very penetrating, very
innocent, very frank. He felt her as clean and sweet as some young
fawn that asks plainly to be stroked and fondled. He told the truth:
"I couldn't get away before. I had to play about and----" when she
interrupted with impatience:
"_They_ don't really want you," she exclaimed scornfully. "I do." And, before he could choose one out of the several answers that rushed
into his mind, she nudged him with her foot, holding it out a little so
that he saw the shoelace was unfastened. She nodded her head towards
it, and pulled her skirt up half an inch as he at once stooped down. "And, anyhow," she went on as he fumbled with the lace, touching her
ankle with his hand, "you're going to marry one of them. I read it in
the paper. It's idiotic. You'll be miserable." The blood rushed to his head, but whether owing to his stooping or to
something else, he could not say. "I only came--I only accepted," he said quickly, "because I wanted to
see _you_ again." "Of course. I made mother ask you." He did an impulsive thing. Kneeling as he was, he bent his head a
little lower and suddenly kissed the soft grey stocking--then stood
up and looked her in the face. She was laughing happily, no sign of
embarrassment in her anywhere, no trace of outraged modesty. She just
looked very pleased. "I've tied a knot that won't come undone in a hurry----" he began,
then stopped dead. For as he said it, gazing into her smiling face,
another expression looked forth at him from the two big eyes of
hazel. Something rushed from his heart to meet it. It may have been
that playful kiss, it may have been the way she took it; but, at any
rate, there was a strength in the new emotion that made him unsure of
who he was and of whom he looked at. He forgot the place, the time,
his own identity and hers. The lawn swept from beneath his feet, the
English sunset with it. He forgot his host and hostess, his fellow
guests, even his father's name and his own into the bargain. He was
carried away upon a great tide, the girl always beside him. He left the
shore-line in the distance, already half forgotten, the shore-line of
his education, learning, manners, social point of view--everything to
which his father had most carefully brought him up as the scion of an
old-established English family. This girl had torn up the anchor. Only
the anchor had previously been loosened a little by his own unconscious
and restless efforts....
Where was she taking him to? Upon what island would they land? "I'm younger than you--a good deal," she broke in upon his rushing
mood. "But that doesn't matter a bit, does it? We're about the same age
really." With the happy sound of her voice the extraordinary sensation
passed--or, rather, it became normal. But that it had lasted an
appreciable time was proved by the fact that they had left the statue
on the lawn, the house was no longer visible behind them, and they were
walking side by side between the massive rhododendron clumps. They
brought up against a five-barred gate into the park. They leaned upon
the topmost bar, and he felt her shoulder touching his--edging into
it--as they looked across to the grove of pines. "I feel absurdly young," he said without a sign of affectation, "and
yet I've been looking for you a thousand years and more." The afterglow lit up her face; it fell on her loose hair and tumbled
blouse, turning them amber red. She looked not only soft and comely,
but extraordinarily beautiful. The strange expression haunted the deep
eyes again, the lips were a little parted, the young breast heaving
slightly, joy and excitement in her whole presentment. And as he
watched her he knew that all he had just felt was due to her close
presence, to her atmosphere, her perfume, her physical warmth and
vigour. It had emanated directly from her being. "Of course," she said, and laughed so that he felt her breath upon his
face. He bent lower to bring his own on a level, gazing straight into
her eyes that were fixed upon the field beyond. They were clear and
luminous as pools of water, and in their centre, sharp as a photograph,
he saw the reflection of the pine grove, perhaps a hundred yards
away. With detailed accuracy he saw it, empty and motionless in the
glimmering June dusk. Then something caught his eye. He examined the picture more closely. He drew slightly nearer. He almost touched her face with his own,
forgetting for a moment whose were the eyes that served him for a
mirror. For, looking intently thus, it seemed to him that there was
a movement, a passing to and fro, a stirring as of figures among the
trees.... Then suddenly the entire picture was obliterated. She had
dropped her lids. He heard her speaking--the warm breath was again upon
his face:
"In the heart of that wood dwell I." His heart gave another leap--more violent than the first--for the
wonder and beauty of the sentence caught him like a spell. There was
a lilt and rhythm in the words that made it poetry. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
She laid emphasis
upon the pronoun and the nouns. It seemed the last line of some
delicious runic verse:
"In the _heart_ of the _wood_--dwell _I_...."
And it flashed across him: That living, moving, inhabited pine wood
was her thought. It was thus she saw it. Her nature flung back to a
life she understood, a life that needed, claimed her. The ostentatious
and artificial values that surrounded her, she denied, even as the
distinguished house-party of her ambitious, masquerading family
neglected her. Of course she was unnoticed by them, just as a swallow
or a wild-rose were unnoticed. He knew her secret then, for she had told it to him. It was his own
secret too. They were akin, as the birds and animals were akin. They
belonged together in some free and open life, natural, wild, untamed. That unhampered life was flowing about them now, rising, beating with
delicious tumult in her veins and his, yet innocent as the sunlight and
the wind--because it was as freely recognised. "Elspeth!" he cried, "come, take me with you! We'll go at once. Come--hurry--before we forget to be happy, or remember to be wise
again----!" His words stopped half-way towards completion, for a perfume floated
past him, born of the summer dusk, perhaps, yet sweet with a
penetrating magic that made his senses reel with some remembered joy. No flower, no scented garden bush delivered it. It was the perfume of
young, spendthrift life, sweet with the purity that reason had not yet
stained. The girl moved closer. Gathering her loose hair between her
fingers, she brushed his cheeks and eyes with it, her slim, warm body
pressing against him as she leaned over laughingly. "In the darkness," she whispered in his ear; "when the moon puts the
house upon the statue!" And he understood. Her world lay behind the vulgar, staring day. He
turned. He heard the flutter of skirts--just caught the grey stockings,
swift and light, as they flew behind the rhododendron masses. And she
was gone. He stood a long time, leaning upon that five-barred gate.... It
was the dressing-gong that recalled him at length to what seemed the
present. By the conservatory door, as he went slowly in, he met his
distinguished cousin--who was helping the girl he himself was to marry
to enjoy her "final fling." He looked at his cousin. He realised
suddenly that he was merely vicious. There was no sun and wind, no
flowers--there was depravity only, lust instead of laughter, excitement
in place of happiness. It was calculated, not spontaneous. His mind was
in it. Without joy it was. He was not natural. "Not a girl in the whole lot fit to look at," he exclaimed with peevish
boredom, excusing himself stupidly for his illicit conduct. "I'm
off in the morning." He shrugged his blue-blooded shoulders. "These
millionaires! Their shooting's all right, but their mixum-gatherum
week-ends--bah!" His gesture completed all he had to say about this one
in particular. He glanced sharply, nastily, at his companion. "_You_
look as if you'd found something!" he added, with a suggestive grin. "Or have you seen the ghost that was paid for with the house?" And he
guffawed and let his eyeglass drop. "Lady Hermione will be asking for
an explanation--eh?" "Idiot!" replied Heber, and ran upstairs to dress for dinner. But the word was wrong, he remembered, as he closed his door. It was
lunatic he had meant to say, yet something more as well. He saw the
smart, modern philanderer somehow as a beast. 2
It was nearly midnight when he went up to bed, after an evening of
intolerable amusement. The abandoned moral attitude, the common
rudeness, the contempt of all others but themselves, the ugly jests,
the horseplay of tasteless minds that passed for gaiety, above all the
shamelessness of the women that behind the cover of fine breeding aped
emancipation, afflicted him to a boredom that touched desperation. He understood now with a clarity unknown before. As with his cousin,
so with these. They took life, he saw, with a brazen effrontery they
thought was freedom, while yet it was life that they denied. He felt
vampired and degraded; spontaneity went out of him. The fact that
the geography of bedrooms was studied openly seemed an affirmation
of vice that sickened him. Their ways were nauseous merely. He
escaped--unnoticed. He locked his door, went to the open window, and looked out into the
night--then started. For silver dressed the lawn and park, the shadow
of the building lay dark across the elaborate garden, and the moon, he
noticed, was just high enough to put the house upon the statue. The
chimney-stacks edged the pedestal precisely. "Odd!" he exclaimed. "Odd that I should come at the very moment----!" then smiled as he realised how his proposed adventure would be
misinterpreted, its natural innocence and spirit ruined--if he were
seen. "And some one would be sure to see me on a night like this. There
are couples still hanging about in the garden." And he glanced at the
shrubberies and secret paths that seemed to float upon the warm June
air like islands. He stood for a moment framed in the glare of the electric light, then
turned back into the room; and at that instant a low sound like a
bird-call rose from the lawn below. It was soft and flutey, as though
some one played two notes upon a reed, a piping sound. He had been
seen, and she was waiting for him. Before he knew it, he had made an
answering call, of oddly similar kind, then switched the light out. Three minutes later, dressed in simpler clothes, with a cap pulled over
his eyes, he reached the back lawn by means of the conservatory and the
billiard-room. He paused a moment to look about him. There was no one,
although the lights were still ablaze. "I am an idiot," he chuckled to
himself. "I'm acting on instinct!" He ran. The sweet night air bathed him from head to foot; there was strength
and cleansing in it. The lawn shone wet with dew. He could almost smell
the perfume of the stars. The fumes of wine, cigars and artificial
scent were left behind, the atmosphere exhaled by civilisation, by
heavy thoughts, by bodies overdressed, unwisely stimulated--all, all
forgotten. He passed into a world of magical enchantment. The hush of
the open sky came down. In black and white the garden lay, brimmed full
with beauty, shot by the ancient silver of the moon, spangled with the
stars' old-gold. And the night wind rustled in the rhododendron masses
as he flew between them. In a moment he was beside the statue, engulfed now by the shadow of
the building, and the girl detached herself silently from the blur of
darkness. Two arms were flung about his neck, a shower of soft hair
fell on his cheek with a heady scent of earth and leaves and grass, and
the same instant they were away together at full speed--towards the
pine wood. Their feet were soundless on the soaking grass. They went
so swiftly that they made a whir of following wind that blew her hair
across his eyes. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
And the sudden contrast caused a shock that put a blank, perhaps,
upon his mind, so that he lost the standard of remembered things. For
it was no longer merely a particular adventure; it seemed a habit
and a natural joy resumed. It was not new. He knew the momentum of
an accustomed happiness, mislaid, it may be, but certainly familiar. They sped across the gravel paths that intersected the well-groomed
lawn, they leaped the flower-beds, so laboriously shaped in mockery,
they clambered over the ornamental iron railings, scorning the easier
five-barred gate into the park. The longer grass then shook the dew
in soaking showers against his knees. He stooped, as though in some
foolish effort to turn up something, then realised that his legs, of
course, were bare. _Her_ garment was already high and free, for she,
too, was barelegged like himself. He saw her little ankles, wet and
shining in the moonlight, and flinging himself down, he kissed them
happily, plunging his face into the dripping, perfumed grass. Her
ringing laughter mingled with his own, as she stooped beside him the
same instant; her hair hung in a silver cloud; her eyes gleamed through
its curtain into his; then, suddenly, she soaked her hands in the heavy
dew and passed them over his face with a softness that was like the
touch of some scented southern wind. "Now you are anointed with the Night," she cried. "No one will know
you. You are forgotten of the world. Kiss me!" "We'll play for ever and ever," he cried, "the eternal game that was
old when the world was yet young," and lifting her in his arms he
kissed her eyes and lips. There was some natural bliss of song and
dance and laughter in his heart, an elemental bliss that caught them
together as wind and sunlight catch the branches of a tree. She leaped
from the ground to meet his swinging arms. He ran with her, then tossed
her off and caught her neatly as she fell. Evading a second capture,
she danced ahead, holding out one shining arm that he might follow. Hand in hand they raced on together through the clean summer moonlight. Yet there remained a smooth softness as of fur against his neck and
shoulders, and he saw then that she wore skins of tawny colour that
clung to her body closely, that he wore them too, and that her skin,
like his own, was of a sweet dusky brown. Then, pulling her towards him, he stared into her face. She suffered
the close gaze a second, but no longer, for with a burst of sparkling
laughter again she leaped into his arms, and before he shook her free
she had pulled and tweaked the two small horns that hid in the thick
curly hair behind, and just above, the ears. And that wilful tweaking turned him wild and reckless. That touch ran
down him deep into the mothering earth. He leaped and ran and sang with
a great laughing sound. The wine of eternal youth flushed all his veins
with joy, and the old, old world was young again with every impulse of
natural happiness intensified with the Earth's own foaming tide of life. From head to foot he tingled with the delight of Spring, prodigal with
creative power. Of course he could fly the bushes and fling wild across
the open! Of course the wind and moonlight fitted close and soft about
him like a skin! Of course he had youth and beauty for playmates, with
dancing, laughter, singing, and a thousand kisses! For he and she were
natural once again. They were free together of those long-forgotten
days when "Pan leaped through the roses in the month of June...!" With the girl swaying this way and that upon his shoulders, tweaking
his horns with mischief and desire, hanging her flying hair before
his eyes, then bending swiftly over again to lift it, he danced to
join the rest of their companions in the little moonlit grove of pines
beyond....
3
They rose somewhat pointed, perhaps, against the moonlight, those
English pines--more with the shape of cypresses, some might have
thought. A stream gushed down between their roots, there were mossy
ferns, and rough grey boulders with lichen on them. But there was
no dimness, for the silver of the moon sprinkled freely through the
branches like the faint sunlight that it really was, and the air ran
out to meet them with a heady fragrance that was wiser far than wine. The girl, in an instant, was whirled from her perch on his shoulders
and caught by a dozen arms that bore her into the heart of the jolly,
careless throng. Whisht! Whew! Whir! She was gone, but another, fairer
still, was in her place, with skins as soft and knees that clung as
tightly. Her eyes were liquid amber, grapes hung between her little
breasts, her arms entwined about him, smoother than marble, and as
cool. She had a crystal laugh. But he flung her off, so that she fell plump among a group of bigger
figures lolling against a twisted root and roaring with a jollity that
boomed like wind through the chorus of a song. They seized her, kissed
her, then sent her flying. They were happier with their glad singing. They held stone goblets, red and foaming, in their broad-palmed hands. "The mountains lie behind us!" cried a figure dancing past. "We are
come at last into our valley of delight. Grapes, breasts, and rich red
lips! Ho! Ho! It is time to press them that the juice of life may run!" He waved a cluster of ferns across the air and vanished amid a cloud of
song and laughter. "It is ours. Use it!" answered a deep, ringing voice. "The valleys are
our own. No climbing now!" And a wind of echoing cries gave answer from
all sides. "Life! Life! Life! Abundant, flowing over--use it, use it!" A troop of nymphs rushed forth, escaped from clustering arms and lips
they yet openly desired. He chased them in and out among the waving
branches, while she who had brought him ever followed, and sped past
him and away again. He caught three gleaming soft brown bodies, then
fell beneath them, smothered, bubbling with joyous laughter--next freed
himself and, while they sought to drag him captive again, escaped and
raced with a leap upon a slimmer, sweeter outline that swung up--only
just in time--upon a lower bough, whence she leaned down above him with
hanging net of hair and merry eyes. A few feet beyond his reach, she
laughed and teased him--the one who had brought him in, the one he ever
sought, and who for ever sought him too.... It became a riotous glory of wild children who romped and played with
an impassioned glee beneath the moon. For the world was young and they,
her happy offspring, glowed with the life she poured so freely into
them. All intermingled, the laughing voices rose into a foam of song
that broke against the stars. The difficult mountains had been climbed
and were forgotten. Good! Then, enjoy the luxuriant, fruitful valley
and be glad! And glad they were, brimful with spontaneous energy,
natural as birds and animals that obeyed the big, deep rhythm of a
simpler age--natural as wind and innocent as sunshine. Yet, for all the untamed riot, there was a lift of beauty pulsing
underneath. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
Even when the wildest abandon approached the heat of orgy,
when the recklessness appeared excess--there hid that marvellous touch
of loveliness which makes the natural sacred. There was coherence,
purpose, the fulfilling of an exquisite law: there was worship. The
form it took, haply, was strange as well as riotous, yet in its
strangeness dreamed innocence and purity, and in its very riot flamed
that spirit which is divine. For he found himself at length beside her once again; breathless and
panting, her sweet brown limbs aglow from the excitement of escape
denied; eyes shining like a blaze of stars, and pulses beating with
tumultuous life--helpless and yielding against the strength that pinned
her down between the roots. His eyes put mastery on her own. She looked
up into his face, obedient, happy, soft with love, surrendered with the
same delicious abandon that had swept her for a moment into other arms. "You caught me in the end," she sighed. "I only played awhile." "I hold you for ever," he replied, half wondering at the rough power in
his voice. It was here the hush of worship stole upon her little face, into her
obedient eyes, about her parted lips. She ceased her wilful struggling. "Listen!" she whispered. "I hear a step upon the glades beyond. The
iris and the lily open; the earth is ready, waiting; we must be ready
too! _He_ is coming!" He released her and sprang up; the entire company rose too. All stood,
all bowed the head. There was an instant's subtle panic, but it was
the panic of reverent awe that preludes a descent of deity. For a wind
passed through the branches with a sound that is the oldest in the
world and so the youngest. Above it there rose the shrill, faint piping
of a little reed. Only the first, true sounds were audible--wind and
water--the tinkling of the dewdrops as they fell, the murmur of the
trees against the air. This was the piping that they heard. And in the
hush the stars bent down to hear, the riot paused, the orgy passed and
died. The figures waited, kneeling then with one accord. They listened
with--the Earth. "He comes.... He comes ..." the valley breathed about them. There was a footfall from far away, treading across a world unruined
and unstained. It fell with the wind and water, sweetening the valley
into life as it approached. Across the rivers and forests it came
gently, tenderly, but swiftly and with a power that knew majesty. "He comes.... He comes...!" rose with the murmur of the wind and
water from the host of lowered heads. The footfall came nearer, treading a world grown soft with worship. It reached the grove. It entered. There was a sense of intolerable
loveliness, of brimming life, of rapture. The thousand faces lifted
like a cloud. They heard the piping close. And so He came. But He came with blessing. With the stupendous Presence there was joy,
the joy of abundant, natural life, pure as the sunlight and the wind. He passed among them. There was great movement--as of a forest shaking,
as of deep water falling, as of a cornfield swaying to the wind, yet
gentle as of a harebell shedding its burden of dew that it has held
too long because of love. He passed among them, touching every head. The great hand swept with tenderness each face, lingered a moment on
each beating heart. There was sweetness, peace, and loveliness; but
above all, there was--life. He sanctioned every natural joy in them and
blessed each passion with his power of creation.... Yet each one saw
him differently: some as a wife or maiden desired with fire, some as
a youth or stalwart husband, others as a figure veiled with stars or
cloaked in luminous mist, hardly attainable; others, again--the fewest
these, not more than two or three--as that mysterious wonder which
tempts the heart away from known familiar sweetness into a wilderness
of undecipherable magic without flesh and blood....
To two, in particular, He came so near that they could feel his breath
of hills and fields upon their eyes. He touched them with both mighty
hands. He stroked the marble breasts, He felt the little hidden horns
... and, as they bent lower so that their lips met together for an
instant, He took her arms and twined them about the curved, brown neck
that she might hold him closer still....
Again a footfall sounded far away upon an unruined world ... and He was
gone--back into the wind and water whence He came. The thousand faces
lifted; all stood up; the hush of worship still among them. There was a
quiet as of the dawn. The piping floated over woods and fields, fading
into silence. All looked at one another.... And then once more the
laughter and the play broke loose. 4
"We'll go," she cried, "and peep upon that other world where life
hangs like a prison on their eyes!" And, in a moment, they were across
the soaking grass, the lawn and flower-beds, and close to the walls
of the heavy mansion. He peered in through a window, lifting her up
to peer in with him. He recognised the world to which outwardly he
belonged; he understood; a little gasp escaped him; and a slight shiver
ran down the girl's body into his own. She turned her eyes away. "See,"
she murmured in his ear, "it's ugly, it's not natural. They feel guilty
and ashamed. There is no innocence!" She saw the men; it was the women
that he saw chiefly. Lolling ungracefully, with a kind of boldness that asserted
independence, the women smoked their cigarettes with an air of
invitation they sought to conceal and yet showed plainly. He saw
his familiar world in nakedness. Their backs were bare, for all the
elaborate clothes they wore; they hung their breasts uncleanly; in
their eyes shone light that had never known the open sun. Hoping they
were alluring and desirable, they feigned a guilty ignorance of that
hope. They all pretended. Instead of wind and dew upon their hair, he
saw flowers grown artificially to ape wild beauty, tresses without
lustre borrowed from the slums of city factories. He watched them
manoeuvring with the men; heard dark sentences; caught gestures half
delivered whose meaning should just convey that glimpse of guilt they
deemed to increase pleasure. The women were calculating, but nowhere
glad; the men experienced, but nowhere joyous. Pretended innocence lay
cloaked with a veil of something that whispered secretly, clandestine,
ashamed, yet with a brazen air that laid mockery instead of sunshine in
their smiles. Vice masqueraded in the ugly shape of pleasure; beauty
was degraded into calculated tricks. They were not natural. They knew
not joy. "The forward ones, the civilised!" she laughed in his ear, tweaking his
horns with energy. "_We_ are the backward!" "Unclean," he muttered, recalling a catchword of the world he gazed
upon. They were the civilised! They were refined and educated--advanced. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
Generations of careful breeding, mate cautiously selecting mate,
laid the polish of caste upon their hands and faces where gleamed
ridiculous, untaught jewels--rings, bracelets, necklaces hanging
absurdly from every possible angle. "But--they are dressed up--for fun," he exclaimed, more to himself than
to the girl in skins who clung to his shoulders with her naked arms. "_Un_dressed!" she answered, putting her brown hand in play across his
eyes. "Only they have forgotten even that!" And another shiver passed
through her into him. He turned and hid his face against the soft skins
that touched his cheek. He kissed her body. Seizing his horns, she
pressed him to her, laughing happily. "Look!" she whispered, raising her head again; "they're coming out." And he saw that two of them, a man and a girl, with an interchange
of secret glances, had stolen from the room and were already by the
door of the conservatory that led into the garden. It was his wife to
be--and his distinguished cousin. "Oh, Pan!" she cried in mischief. The girl sprang from his arms and
pointed. "We will follow them. We will put natural life into their
little veins!" "Or panic terror," he answered, catching the yellow panther skin and
following her swiftly round the building. He kept in the shadow, though
she ran full into the blaze of moonlight. "But they can't see us,"
she called, looking over her shoulder a moment. "They can only feel
our presence, perhaps." And, as she danced across the lawn, it seemed
a moonbeam slipped from a sapling birch tree that the wind curved
earthwards, then tossed back against the sky. Keeping just ahead, they led the pair, by methods known instinctively
to elemental blood yet not translatable--led them towards the little
grove of waiting pines. The night wind murmured in the branches; a bird
woke into a sudden burst of song. These sounds were plainly audible. But four little pointed ears caught other, wilder notes behind the wind
and music of the bird--the cries and ringing laughter, the leaping
footsteps and the happy singing of their merry kin within the wood. And the throng paused then amid the revels to watch the "civilised"
draw near. They presently reached the trees, halted, looked about them,
hesitated a moment--then, with a hurried movement as of shame and fear
lest they be caught, entered the zone of shadow. "Let's go in here," said the man, without music in his voice. "It's dry
on the pine needles, and we can't be seen." He led the way; she picked
up her skirts and followed over the strip of long wet grass. "Here's a
log all ready for us," he added, sat down, and drew her into his arms
with a sigh of satisfaction. "Sit on my knee; it's warmer for your
pretty figure." He chuckled; evidently they were on familiar terms,
for though she hesitated, pretending to be coy, there was no real
resistance in her, and she allowed the ungraceful roughness. "But are
we _quite_ safe? Are you sure?" she asked between his kisses. "What does it matter, even if we're not?" he replied, establishing her
more securely on his knees. "But, as a matter of fact, we're safer here
than in my own house." He kissed her hungrily. "By Jove, Hermione, but
you're divine," he cried passionately, "divinely beautiful. I love you
with every atom of my being--with my soul." "Yes, dear, I know--I mean, I know you do, but----"
"But what?" he asked impatiently. "Those detectives----"
He laughed. Yet it seemed to annoy him. "My wife is a beast, isn't
she?--to have me watched like that," he said quickly. "They're everywhere," she replied, a sudden hush in her tone. She
looked at the encircling trees a moment, then added bitterly: "I hate
her, simply _hate_ her." "I love you," he cried, crushing her to him, "that's all that matters
now. Don't let's waste time talking about the rest." She contrived to
shudder, and hid her face against his coat, while he showered kisses on
her neck and hair. And the solemn pine trees watched them, the silvery moonlight fell on
their faces, the scent of new-mown hay went floating past. "I love you with my very soul," he repeated with intense conviction. "I'd do anything, give up anything, bear anything--just to give you a
moment's happiness. I swear it--before God!" There was a faint sound among the trees behind them, and the girl sat
up, alert. She would have scrambled to her feet, but that he held her
tight. "What the devil's the matter with you to-night?" he asked in a
different tone, his vexation plainly audible. "You're as nervy as if
_you_ were being watched, instead of me." She paused before she answered, her finger on her lip. Then she said
slowly, hushing her voice a little:
"Watched! That's exactly what I did feel. I've felt it ever since we
came into the wood." "Nonsense, Hermione. It's too many cigarettes." He drew her back into
his arms, forcing her head up so that he could kiss her better. "I suppose it is nonsense," she said, smiling. "It's gone now, anyhow." He began admiring her hair, her dress, her shoes, her pretty ankles,
while she resisted in a way that proved her practice. "It's not _me_
you love," she pouted, yet drinking in his praise. She listened to his
repeated assurances that he loved her with his "soul" and was prepared
for any sacrifice. "I feel so safe with you," she murmured, knowing the moves in the game
as well as he did. She looked up guiltily into his face, and he looked
down with a passion that he thought perhaps was joy. "You'll be married before the summer's out," he said, "and all the
thrill and excitement will be over. Poor Hermione!" She lay back in his
arms, drawing his face down with both hands, and kissing him on the
lips. "You'll have more of him than you can do with--eh? As much as you
care about, anyhow." "I shall be much more free," she whispered. "Things will be easier. And
I've got to marry some one----"
She broke off with another start. There was a sound again behind them. The man heard nothing. The blood in his temples pulsed too loudly,
doubtless. "Well, what is it this time?" he asked sharply. She was peering into the wood, where the patches of dark shadow and
moonlit spaces made odd, irregular patterns in the air. A low branch
waved slightly in the wind. "Did you hear that?" she asked nervously. "Wind," he replied, annoyed that her change of mood disturbed his
pleasure. "But something moved----"
"Only a branch. We're quite alone, quite safe, I tell you," and
there was a rasping sound in his voice as he said it. "Don't be so
imaginative. I can take care of you." She sprang up. The moonlight caught her figure, revealing its exquisite
young curves beneath the smother of the costly clothing. Her hair had
dropped a little in the struggle. The man eyed her eagerly, making a
quick, impatient gesture towards her, then stopped abruptly. He saw the
terror in her eyes. "Oh, hark! What's that?" she whispered in a startled voice. She put her
finger up. "Oh, let's go back. I don't like this wood. I'm frightened." | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
"Rubbish," he said, and tried to catch her by the waist. "It's safer in the house--my room--or yours----" She broke off again. "There it is--don't you hear? It's a footstep!" Her face was whiter
than the moon. "I tell you it's the wind in the branches," he repeated gruffly. "Oh,
come on, _do_. We were just getting jolly together. There's nothing to
be afraid of. Can't you believe me?" He tried to pull her down upon his
knee again with force. His face wore an unpleasant expression that was
half leer, half grin. But the girl stood away from him. She continued to peer nervously about
her. She listened. "You give me the creeps," he exclaimed crossly, clawing at her waist
again with passionate eagerness that now betrayed exasperation. His
disappointment turned him coarse. The girl made a quick movement of escape, turning so as to look in
every direction. She gave a little scream. "That _was_ a step. Oh, oh, it's close beside us. I heard it. We're
being watched!" she cried in terror. She darted towards him, then
shrank back. He did not try to touch her this time. "Moonshine!" he growled. "You've spoilt my--spoilt our chance with your
silly nerves." But she did not hear him apparently. She stood there shivering as with
sudden cold. "There! I saw it again. I'm sure of it. Something went past me through
the air." And the man, still thinking only of his own pleasure frustrated, got
up heavily, something like anger in his eyes. "All right," he said
testily; "if you're going to make a fuss, we'd better go. The house
_is_ safer, possibly, as you say. You know my room. Come along!" Even
that risk he would not take. He loved her with his "soul." They crept stealthily out of the wood, the girl slightly in front of
him, casting frightened backward glances. Afraid, guilty, ashamed, with
an air as though they had been detected, they stole back towards the
garden and the house, and disappeared from view. And a wind rose suddenly with a rushing sound, poured through the wood
as though to cleanse it, swept out the artificial scent and trace of
shame, and brought back again the song, the laughter, and the happy
revels. It roared across the park, it shook the windows of the house,
then sank away as quickly as it came. The trees stood motionless again,
guarding their secret in the clean, sweet moonlight that held the world
in dream until the dawn stole up and sunshine took the earth with joy. III
THE WINGS OF HORUS
Binovitch had the bird in him somewhere: in his features, certainly,
with his piercing eye and hawk-like nose; in his movements, with
his quick way of flitting, hopping, darting; in the way he perched
on the edge of a chair; in the manner he pecked at his food; in his
twittering, high-pitched voice as well; and, above all, in his mind. He skimmed all subjects and picked their heart out neatly, as a bird
skims lawn or air to snatch its prey. He had the bird's-eye view of
everything. He loved birds and understood them instinctively; could
imitate their whistling notes with astonishing accuracy. Their one
quality he had not was poise and balance. He was a nervous little man;
he was neurasthenic. And he was in Egypt by doctor's orders. Such imaginative, unnecessary ideas he had! Such uncommon beliefs! "The old Egyptians," he said laughingly, yet with a touch of solemn
conviction in his manner, "were a great people. Their consciousness was
different from ours. The bird idea, for instance, conveyed a sense of
deity to them--of bird deity, that is: they had sacred birds--hawks,
ibis, and so forth--and worshipped them." And he put his tongue out as
though to say with challenge, "Ha, ha!" "They also worshipped cats and crocodiles and cows," grinned Palazov. Binovitch seemed to dart across the table at his adversary. His eyes
flashed; his nose pecked the air. Almost one could imagine the beating
of his angry wings. "Because everything alive," he half screamed, "was a symbol of some
spiritual power to them. Your mind is as literal as a dictionary and
as incoherent. Pages of ink without connected meaning! Verb always in
the infinitive! If you were an old Egyptian, you--you"--he flashed and
spluttered, his tongue shot out again, his keen eyes blazed--"you might
take all those words and spin them into a great interpretation of life,
a cosmic romance, as they did. Instead, you get the bitter, dead taste
of ink in your mouth, and spit it over us like that"--he made a quick
movement of his whole body as a bird that shakes itself--"in empty
phrases." Khilkoff ordered another bottle of champagne, while Vera, his sister,
said half nervously, "Let's go for a drive; it's moonlight." There
was enthusiasm at once. Another of the party called the head waiter
and told him to pack food and drink in baskets. It was only eleven
o'clock. They would drive out into the desert, have a meal at two in
the morning, tell stories, sing, and see the dawn. It was in one of those cosmopolitan hotels in Egypt which attract the
ordinary tourists as well as those who are doing a "cure," and all
these Russians were ill with one thing or another. All were ordered
out for their health, and all were the despair of their doctors. They
were as unmanageable as a bazaar and as incoherent. Excess and bed were
their routine. They lived, but none of them got better. Equally, none
of them got angry. They talked in this strange personal way without a
shred of malice or offence. The English, French, and Germans in the
hotel watched them with remote amazement, referring to them as "that
Russian lot." Their energy was elemental. They never stopped. They
merely disappeared when the pace became too fast, then reappeared again
after a day or two, and resumed their "living" as before. Binovitch,
despite his neurasthenia, was the life of the party. He was also a
special patient of Dr. Plitzinger, the famous psychiatrist, who took
a peculiar interest in his case. It was not surprising. Binovitch was
a man of unusual ability and of genuine, deep culture. But there was
something more about him that stimulated curiosity. There was this
striking originality. He said and did surprising things. "I could fly if I wanted to," he said once when the airmen came to
astonish the natives with their biplanes over the desert, "but without
all that machinery and noise. It's only a question of believing and
understanding----"
"Show us!" they cried. "Let's see you fly!" "He's got it! He's off again! One of his impossible moments." These occasions when Binovitch let himself go always proved wildly
entertaining. He said monstrously incredible things as though he
really did believe them. They loved his madness, for it gave them new
sensations. "It's only levitation, after all, this flying," he exclaimed, shooting
out his tongue between the words, as his habit was when excited; "and
what is levitation but a power of the air? None of you can hang an
orange in space for a second, with all your scientific knowledge; but
the moon is always levitated perfectly. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
And the stars. D'you think they
swing on wires? What raised the enormous stones of ancient Egypt? D'you
really believe it was heaped-up sand and ropes and clumsy leverage
and all our weary and laborious mechanical contrivances? Bah! It was
levitation. It was the powers of the air. Believe in those powers,
and gravity becomes a mere nursery trick--true where it is, but true
nowhere else. To know the fourth dimension is to step out of a locked
room and appear instantly on the roof or in another country altogether. To know the powers of the air, similarly, is to annihilate what you
call weight--and fly." "Show us, show us!" they cried, roaring with delighted laughter. "It's a question of belief," he repeated, his tongue appearing and
disappearing like a pointed shadow. "It's in the heart; the power of
the air gets into your whole being. Why should I show you? Why should I
ask my deity to persuade your scoffing little minds by any miracle? For
it is deity, I tell you, and nothing else. I _know_ it. Follow one idea
like that, as I follow my bird idea--follow it with the impetus and
undeviating concentration of a projectile--and you arrive at power. You
know deity--the bird idea of deity, that is. _They_ knew that. The old
Egyptians knew it." "Oh, show us, show us!" they shouted impatiently, wearied of his
nonsense-talk. "Get up and fly! Levitate yourself, as they did! Become
a star!" Binovitch turned suddenly very pale, and an odd light shone in his keen
brown eyes. He rose slowly from the edge of the chair where he was
perched. Something about him changed. There was silence instantly. "I _will_ show you," he said calmly, to their intense amazement; "not
to convince your disbelief, but to prove it to myself. For the powers
of the air are with me here. I believe. And Horus, great falcon-headed
symbol, is my patron god." The suppressed energy in his voice and manner was indescribable. There
was a sense of lifting, upheaving power about him. He raised his arms;
his face turned upward; he inflated his lungs with a deep, long breath,
and his voice broke into a kind of singing cry, half prayer, half chant:
"O Horus,
Bright-eyed deity of wind,
[1]Feather my soul
Though earth's thick air,
To know thy awful swiftness----"
[1] The Russian is untranslatable. The phrase means, "Give my
life wings." He broke off suddenly. He climbed lightly and swiftly upon the nearest
table--it was in a deserted card-room, after a game in which he had
lost more pounds than there are days in the year--and leaped into the
air. He hovered a second, spread his arms and legs in space, appeared
to float a moment, then buckled, rushed down and forward, and dropped
in a heap upon the floor, while every one roared with laughter. But the laughter died out quickly, for there was something in his wild
performance that was peculiar and unusual. It was uncanny, not quite
natural. His body had seemed, as with Mordkin and Nijinski, literally
to hang upon the air a moment. For a second he gave the distressing
impression of overcoming gravity. There was a touch in it of that faint
horror which appals by its very vagueness. He picked himself up unhurt,
and his face was as grave as a portrait in the academy, but with a new
expression in it that everybody noticed with this strange, half-shocked
amazement. And it was this expression that extinguished the claps of
laughter as wind that takes away the sound of bells. Like many ugly
men, he was an inimitable actor, and his facial repertory was endless
and incredible. But this was neither acting nor clever manipulation
of expressive features. There was something in his curious Russian
physiognomy that made the heart beat slower. And that was why the
laughter died away so suddenly. "You ought to have flown farther," cried some one. It expressed what
all had felt. "Icarus didn't drink champagne," another replied, with a laugh; but
nobody laughed with him. "You went too near to Vera," said Palazov, "and passion melted the
wax." But his face twitched oddly as he said it. There was something he
did not understand, and so heartily disliked. The strange expression on the features deepened. It was arresting
in a disagreeable, almost in a horrible, way. The talk stopped dead;
all stared; there was a feeling of dismay in everybody's heart,
yet unexplained. Some lowered their eyes, or else looked stupidly
elsewhere; but the women of the party felt a kind of fascination. Vera,
in particular, could not move her sight away. The joking reference to
his passionate admiration for her passed unnoticed. There was a general
and individual sense of shock. And a chorus of whispers rose instantly:
"Look at Binovitch! What's happened to his face?" "He's changed--he's changing!" "God! Why he looks like a--bird!" But no one laughed. Instead, they chose the names of birds--hawk,
eagle, even owl. The figure of a man leaning against the edge of the
door, watching them closely, they did not notice. He had been passing
down the corridor, had looked in unobserved, and then had paused. He
had seen the whole performance. He watched Binovitch narrowly, now with
calm, discerning eyes. It was Dr Plitzinger, the great psychiatrist. For Binovitch had picked himself up from the floor in a way that was
oddly self-possessed, and precluded the least possibility of the
ludicrous. He looked neither foolish nor abashed. He looked surprised,
but also he looked half angry and half frightened. As some one had
said, he "ought to have flown farther." That was the incredible
impression his acrobatics had produced--incredible, yet somehow actual. This uncanny idea prevailed, as at a séance where nothing genuine is
expected to happen, and something genuine, after all, does happen. There was no pretence in this: Binovitch had flown. And now he stood there, white in the face--with terror and with
anger white. He looked extraordinary, this little, neurasthenic
Russian, but he looked at the same time half terrific. Another thing,
not commonly experienced by men, was in him, breaking out of him,
affecting _directly_ the minds of his companions. His mouth opened;
blood and fury shone in his blazing eyes; his tongue shot out like an
ant-eater's, though even in that the comic had no place. His arms were
spread like flapping wings, and his voice rose dreadfully:
"He failed me, he failed me!" he tried to bellow. "Horus, my
falcon-headed deity, my power of the air, deserted me! Hell take him! Hell burn his wings and blast his piercing sight! Hell scorch him into
dust for his false prophecies! I curse him--I curse Horus!" The voice that should have roared across the silent room emitted,
instead, this high-pitched, bird-like scream. The added touch of sound,
the reality it lent, was ghastly. Yet it was marvellously done and
acted. The entire thing was a bit of instantaneous inspiration--his
voice, his words, his gestures, his whole wild appearance. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
Only--here
was the reality that caused the sense of shock--the expression on
his altered features was genuine. _That_ was not assumed. There was
something new and alien in him, something cold and difficult to human
life, something alert and swift and cruel, of another element than
earth. A strange, rapacious grandeur had leaped upon the struggling
features. The face looked hawk-like. And he came forward suddenly and sharply toward Vera, whose fixed,
staring eyes had never once ceased watching him with a kind of
anxious and devouring pain in them. She was both drawn and beaten
back. Binovitch advanced on tiptoe. No doubt he still was acting,
still pretending this mad nonsense that he worshipped Horus, the
falcon-headed deity of forgotten days, and that Horus had failed him in
his hour of need; but somehow there was just a hint of too much reality
in the way he moved and looked. The girl, a little creature, with
fluffy golden hair, opened her lips; her cigarette fell to the floor;
she shrank back; she looked for a moment like some smaller, coloured
bird trying to escape from a great pursuing hawk; she screamed. Binovitch, his arms wide, his bird-like face thrust forward, had
swooped upon her. He leaped. Almost he caught her. No one could say exactly what happened. Play, become suddenly and
unexpectedly too real, confuses the emotions. The change of key was
swift. From fun to terror is a dislocating jolt upon the mind. Some
one--it was Khilkoff, the brother--upset a chair; everybody spoke at
once; everybody stood up. An unaccountable feeling of disaster was in
the air, as with those drinkers' quarrels that blaze out from nothing,
and end in a pistol-shot and death, no one able to explain clearly how
it came about. It was the silent, watching figure in the doorway who
saved the situation. Before any one had noticed his approach, there he
was among the group, laughing, talking, applauding--between Binovitch
and Vera. He was vigorously patting his patient on the back, and his
voice rose easily above the general clamour. He was a strong, quiet
personality; even in his laughter there was authority. And his laughter
now was the only sound in the room, as though by his mere presence
peace and harmony were restored. Confidence came with him. The noise
subsided; Vera was in her chair again. Khilkoff poured out a glass of
wine for the great man. "The Czar!" said Plitzinger, sipping his champagne, while all stood
up, delighted with his compliment and tact. "And to your opening
night with the Russian ballet," he added quickly a second toast, "or
to your first performance at the Moscow Théâtre des Arts!" Smiling
significantly, he glanced at Binovitch; he clinked glasses with him. Their arms were already linked, but it was Palazov who noticed that
the doctor's fingers seemed rather tight upon the creased black coat. All drank, looking with laughter, yet with a touch of respect, toward
Binovitch, who stood there dwarfed beside the stalwart Austrian, and
suddenly as meek and subdued as any mole. Apparently the abrupt change
of key had taken his mind successfully off something else. "Of course--'The Fire-Bird,'" exclaimed the little man, mentioning the
famous Russian ballet. "The very thing!" he exclaimed. "For _us_," he
added, looking with devouring eyes at Vera. He was greatly pleased. He began talking vociferously about dancing and the rationale of
dancing. They told him he was an undiscovered master. He was delighted. He winked at Vera and touched her glass again with his. "We'll make
our début together," he cried. "We'll begin at Covent Garden, in
London. I'll design the dresses and the posters 'The Hawk and the
Dove!' _Magnifique!_ I in dark grey, and you in blue and gold! Ah,
dancing, you know, is sacred. The little self is lost, absorbed. It is
ecstasy, it is divine. And dancing in air--the passion of the birds
and stars--ah! they are the movements of the gods. You know deity that
way--by living it." He went on and on. His entire being had shifted with a leap upon this
new subject. The idea of realising divinity by dancing it absorbed
him. The party discussed it with him as though nothing else existed
in the world, all sitting now and talking eagerly together. Vera
took the cigarette he offered her, lighting it from his own; their
fingers touched; he was as harmless and normal as a retired diplomat
in a drawing-room. But it was Plitzinger whose subtle manoeuvring
had accomplished the change so cleverly, and it was Plitzinger who
presently suggested a game of billiards, and led him off, full now of
a fresh enthusiasm for cannons, balls, and pockets, into another room. They departed arm in arm, laughing and talking together. Their departure, it seemed, made no great difference at first. Vera's
eyes watched him out of sight, then turned to listen to Baron Minski,
who was describing with gusto how he caught wolves alive for coursing
purposes. The speed and power of the wolf, he said, was impossible to
realise; the force of their awful leap, the strength of their teeth,
which could bite through metal stirrup-fastenings. He showed a scar on
his arm and another on his lip. He was telling truth, and everybody
listened with deep interest. The narrative lasted perhaps ten minutes
or more, when Minski abruptly stopped. He had come to an end; he looked
about him; he saw his glass, and emptied it. There was a general pause. Another subject did not at once present itself. Sighs were heard;
several fidgeted; fresh cigarettes were lighted. But there was no sign
of boredom, for where one or two Russians are gathered together there
is always life. They produce gaiety and enthusiasm as wind produces
waves. Like great children, they plunge whole-heartedly into whatever
interest presents itself at the moment. There is a kind of uncouth
gambolling in their way of taking life. It seems as if they are always
fighting that deep, underlying, national sadness which creeps into
their very blood. "Midnight!" then exclaimed Palazov, abruptly, looking at his watch;
and the others fell instantly to talking about that watch, admiring
it and asking questions. For the moment that very ordinary timepiece
became the centre of observation. Palazov mentioned the price. "It
never stops," he said proudly, "not even under water." He looked up at
everybody, challenging admiration. And he told how, at a country house,
he made a bet that he would swim to a certain island in the lake, and
won the bet. He and a girl were the winners, but as it was a horse they
had bet, he got nothing out of it for himself, giving the horse to her. It was a genuine grievance in him. One felt he could have cried as he
spoke of it. "But the watch went all the time," he said delightedly,
holding the gun-metal object in his hand to show, "and I was twelve
minutes in the water with my clothes on." Yet this fragmentary talk was nothing but pretence. The sound of
clicking billiard-balls was audible from the room at the end of the
corridor. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |
There was another pause. The pause, however, was intentional. It was not vacuity of mind or absence of ideas that caused it. There
was another subject, an unfinished subject that each member of the
group was still considering. Only no one cared to begin about it
till at last, unable to resist the strain any longer, Palazov turned
to Khilkoff, who was saying he would take a "whisky-soda," as the
champagne was too sweet, and whispered something beneath his breath;
whereupon Khilkoff, forgetting his drink, glanced at his sister,
shrugged his shoulders, and made a curious grimace. "He's all right
now"--his reply was just audible--"he's with Plitzinger." He cocked his
head sidewise to indicate that the clicking of the billiard-balls still
was going on. The subject was out: all turned their heads; voices hummed and buzzed;
questions were asked and answered or half answered; eyebrows were
raised, shoulders shrugged, hands spread out expressively. There came
into the atmosphere a feeling of presentiment, of mystery, of things
half understood; primitive, buried instinct stirred a little, the kind
of racial dread of vague emotions that might gain the upper hand if
encouraged. They shrank from looking something in the face, while yet
this unwelcome influence drew closer round them all. They discussed
Binovitch and his astonishing performance. Pretty little Vera listened
with large and troubled eyes, though saying nothing. The Arab waiter
had put out the lights in the corridor, and only a solitary cluster
burned now above their heads, leaving their faces in shadow. In the
distance the clicking of the billiard-balls still continued. "It was not play; it was real," exclaimed Minski vehemently. "I can
catch wolves," he blurted; "but birds--ugh!--and human birds!" He was
half inarticulate. He had witnessed something he could not understand,
and it had touched instinctive terror in him. "It was the way he
leaped that put the wolf first into my mind, only it was not a wolf at
all." The others agreed and disagreed. "It was play at first, but it
was reality at the end," another whispered; "and it was no animal he
mimicked, but a bird, and a bird of prey at that!" Vera thrilled. In the Russian woman hides that touch of savagery which
loves to be caught, mastered, swept helplessly away, captured utterly
and deliciously by the one strong enough to do it thoroughly. She left
her chair and sat down beside an older woman in the party, who took
her arm quietly at once. Her little face wore a perplexed expression,
mournful, yet somehow wild. It was clear that Binovitch was not
indifferent to her. "It's become an _idée fixe_ with him," this older woman said. "The
bird idea lives in his mind. He lives it in his imagination. Ever
since that time at Edfu, when he pretended to worship the great stone
falcons outside the temple--the Horus figures--he's been full of it." She stopped. The way Binovitch had behaved at Edfu was better left
unmentioned at the moment, perhaps. A slight shiver ran round the
listening group, each one waiting for some one else to focus their
emotion, and so explain it by saying the convincing thing. Only no one
ventured. Then Vera abruptly gave a little jump. "Hark!" she exclaimed, in a staccato whisper, speaking for the first
time. She sat bolt upright. She was listening. "Hark!" she repeated. "There it is again, but nearer than before. It's coming closer. I
hear it." She trembled. Her voice, her manner, above all her great
staring eyes, startled everybody. No one spoke for several seconds; all
listened. The clicking of the billiard-balls had ceased. The halls and
corridors lay in darkness, and gloom was over the big hotel. Everybody
was in bed. "Hear what?" asked the older woman soothingly, yet with a perceptible
quaver in her voice, too. She was aware that the girl's arm shook upon
her own. "Do you not hear it, too?" the girl whispered. All listened without speaking. All watched her paling face. Something
wonderful, yet half terrible, seemed in the air about them. There was a
dull murmur, audible, faint, remote, its direction hard to tell. It had
come suddenly from nowhere. They shivered. That strange racial thrill
again passed into the group, unwelcome, unexplained. It was aboriginal;
it belonged to the unconscious primitive mind, half childish, half
terrifying. "_What_ do you hear?" her brother asked angrily--the irritable anger of
nervous fear. "When he came at me," she answered very low, "I heard it first. I hear
it now again. Listen! He's coming." And at that minute, out of the dark mouth of the corridor, emerged two
human figures, Plitzinger and Binovitch. Their game was over: they
were going up to bed. They passed the open door of the card-room. But Binovitch was being half dragged, half restrained, for he was
apparently attempting to run down the passage with flying, dancing
leaps. He bounded. It was like a huge bird trying to rise for flight,
while his companion kept him down by force upon the earth. As they
entered the strip of light, Plitzinger changed his own position,
placing himself swiftly between his companion and the group in the dark
corner of the room. He hurried Binovitch along as though he sheltered
him from view. They passed into the shadows down the passage. They
disappeared. And every one looked significantly, questioningly, at his
neighbour, though at first saying no word. It seemed that a curious
disturbance of the air had followed them audibly. Vera was the first to open her lips. "You heard it _then_," she said
breathlessly, her face whiter than the ceiling. "Damn!" exclaimed her brother furiously. "It was wind against the
outside walls--wind in the desert. The sand is driving." Vera looked at him. She shrank closer against the side of the older
woman, whose arm was tight about her. "It was _not_ wind," she whispered simply. She paused. All waited
uneasily for the completion of her sentence. They stared into her face
like peasants who expected a miracle. "Wings," she whispered. "It was the sound of enormous wings." * * * * *
And at four o'clock in the morning, when they all returned exhausted
from their excursion into the desert, little Binovitch was sleeping
soundly and peacefully in his bed. They passed his door on tiptoe. But he did not hear them. He was dreaming. His spirit was at Edfu,
experiencing with that ancient deity who was master of all flying life
those strange enjoyments upon which his own troubled human heart was
passionately set. Safe with that mighty falcon whose powers his lips
had scorned a few hours before, his soul, released in vivid dream, went
sweetly flying. It was amazing, it was gorgeous. He skimmed the Nile
at lightning speed. Dashing down headlong from the height of the great
Pyramid, he chased with faultless accuracy a little dove that sought
vainly to hide from his terrific pursuit beneath the palm trees. | Blackwood, Algernon - Day and Night Stories |