Night Terrors

by E. F. Benson

  ‘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. 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. Goodbye: 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. 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

  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 a
dvocated 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 churchyard, now disused, are many gravestones 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. 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.