by E. F. Benson
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 anaesthetic. 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
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 overcharges 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 apologise – ’
‘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. 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 po
sthumously (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 tomorrow. 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? 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 inquire 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 kin
dly 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 . . . ’