There Is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man

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by There Is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man (retail) (epub)


  There was an immense hushed pause. Then, “Arthur, Arthur,” whispered an inexpressively peevish, rasping voice, “is that you? Is that you, Arthur?”

  I can scarcely say why, but the question horribly startled me. No conceivable answer occurred to me. With head craned back, hand clenched on my umbrella, I continued to stare up into the gloom, in this fatuous confrontation.

  “Oh, oh;” the voice croaked. “It is you, is it? That disgusting man!… Go away out. Go away out.”

  Hesitating no longer, I caught open the door and, slamming it behind me, ran out into the garden, under the gigantic old sycamore, and so out at the open gate.

  I found myself half up the village street before I stopped running. The local butcher was sitting in his shop reading a piece of newspaper by the light of a small oil-lamp. I crossed the road and enquired the way to the station. And after he had with minute and needless care directed me, I asked casually if Mr. Arthur Seaton still lived with his aunt at the big house just beyond the village. He poked his head in at the little parlour door.

  “Here's a gentleman enquiring after young Mr. Seaton, Millie,” he said. “He's dead, ain't he?”

  “Why, yes, bless you,” replied a cheerful voice from within. “Dead and buried these three months or more—young Mr. Seaton. And just before he was to be married, don't you remember, Bob?”

  I saw a fair young woman's face peer over the muslin of the little door at me.

  “Thank you,” I replied, “then I go straight on?”

  “That's it, sir; past the pond, bear up the hill a bit to the left, and then there's the station lights before your eyes.”

  We looked intelligently into each other's faces in the beam of the smoky lamp. But not one of the many questions in my mind could I put into words.

  And again I paused irresolutely a few paces further on. It was not, I fancy, merely a foolish apprehension of what the raw-boned butcher might “think” that prevented my going back to see if I could find Seaton's grave in the benighted churchyard. There was precious little use in pottering about in the muddy dark merely to find where he was buried. And yet I felt a little uneasy. My rather horrible thought was that, so far as I was concerned—one of his esteemed few friends—he had never been much better than “buried” in my mind.

  Present at the End

  HR Wakefield

  When Mr. Benchley noticed the rabbit he was for the moment out of sight of the other guns. The rabbit crouched and stared at him for a second or two, and then started to run past him across the ride. Mr. Benchley swung his gun ahead of it and fired. The rabbit somersaulted and then lay kicking. Mr. Benchley went up to it. Some of its fur, cut by the pellets, was shaken on to the pine needles as it kicked. One shot had struck its left eye, which was broken and bleeding. When it saw Mr. Benchley looking hugely over it, it ceased to struggle for a moment, and with its uninjured eye it stared at the other animal who had done this to it. And then it kicked out convulsively once more, trembled through its length, and was dead. Mr. Benchley picked it up by the hind legs and walked on. Before he rejoined the other guns at the edge of the wood he had three other opportunities of making the fur fly, but he did not take them. He could hear the other guns taking theirs to right and left of him. It was a very quiet and coldly radiant October morning. As Mr. Benchley strode along, the rabbit swung as it dangled from his hand, and he saw there was a thin trickle of blood pouring down the white patch below its left eye and dripping to the ground. This somewhat distracted his attention from the beauty of the day. As he came out from the wood, an under-keeper took the rabbit from him and flung it down on a rapidly growing pile of its fellows, many of which had rosy cheeks also. One by one the other guns arrived, refilled their pipes and sat down to rest. After a short consultation between Mr. Benchley's host and his head-keeper it was decided to send the beaters round by the road and into the big field of roots facing them, for the purpose of driving the animal inhabitants of that field towards the guns. Those that were edible would be bombarded, and in certain cases the non-edible—stoats, poaching-cats, owls and so on. The guns spread themselves out, lightly concealed by the hedge bordering the wood. The beaters trudged off and Mr. Benchley lit a cigarette. After ten minutes or so he could see the beaters in the distance forming into line and beginning to move forward. Soon he could hear the tapping of their sticks, and almost immediately a big covey rose and flew hard and low towards the wood. As they neared it they rose to clear it.

  “Bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang!”

  Mr. Benchley got a beautiful right and left and he could hear the birds’ bodies crash into the trees behind him. The root field was well stocked and he was kept very busy for the next quarter of an hour. And he was so occupied with events over-head that he had no time to attend to two hares, which, dazed by the din ahead of them, hesitated for a moment at the edge of the roots, and then with their ears back dashed wildly past him. When it was all over and the beaters were mopping their brows, the attention of Mr. Benchley was attracted by a fluttering sound just behind him. This he discovered was being made by a hen partridge with a broken wing and leg, which was attempting unsuccessfully to adjust itself to its altered circumstances. When Mr. Benchley went up to it, it paid little attention to the person who had necessitated this adjustment, but continued to flutter and roll itself over on to its side, and, when this hurt, roll back again. Mr. Benchley picked it up and struck its head twice against his right boot. Not hard enough, obviously, for it continued to writhe in his hand.

  “Not often you have to do that, Mr. Benchley,’ said a voice. He looked up and there was his host's rather pretty flapper daughter. He smiled back at her rather uncertainly, and again struck the bird's head against his toe. It became inert in his hand. The girl took it from him, and he wiped the blood from his boot with a handful of grass. It was then time for lunch, which was eaten in a barn near by. A rough count proved that the morning's work had been reasonably successful. The number of hares seen and shot surprised his host. “Too damned many of ’em,” he declared. Mr. Benchley agreed with him, but remarked very emphatically that he derived little amusement from killing them.

  “No more do I,” agreed someone. “Too much target. All right for anyone who can shoot, but the bad shots are always back-ending them, and even if they're stopped, they scream, and I don't like that sound a little bit.” And he patted his retriever's rump affectionately.

  “All the same,” said the host, “there are too many of ’em. So shoot all you can.”

  Presently they moved off to Pearson's spinney, one of the finest pheasant shoots in the country. Mr. Benchley spent the next half-hour dexterously picking those gloriously high birds out of the sky, and hearing the pleasant plump with which they met the ground. His mind was disconnectedly busy with a certain problem, but he continued to load and fire with the virtuosity born of forty years’ practice and training. The flapper, who had heard many tales of his prowess, watched him with bright-eyed enthusiasm, and she never forgot having seen him kill fifty-eight pheasants stone dead with his first seventy cartridges. Mr. Benchley was only vaguely aware of her presence, and it was a sudden sight of her dark blue jumper which made him a shade late on a hare which dashed out straight in front of him and swung left for cover. It began to drag its hind legs and scream. It managed to pull itself into the heart of a thick thorn bush, and, though Mr. Benchley could hear it well enough, he could not at first catch sight of it. Presently, however, he saw it move and gave it the left barrel. It died at once and he left it there. He jerked out the empty cases, but did not reload. It was near the end of the drive, and when the beaters came up he went to his host and told him he had gun-headache and wouldn't shoot any more.

  “All right,” said his host; “give your gun to someone to carry back, and if you want tea or a drink, Jenkins will get it for you. There are some aspirins in my medicine chest if you want them. We'll knock off in about another hour.”

  Mr. Benchley was rather silent du
ring dinner, and pleading a violent headache, went early to bed. He left for London the next morning.

  A month later the organising secretary of a certain society for protecting the interests of animals was going through his letters. Eventually he opened one, the contents of which seemed to cause him surprise. He got up and went to the next room, which was occupied by the publicity manager.

  “Dick,” he said, “I've got a note here from a bloke named Mr.

  Benchley. I seem to have heard of him. Who is he?”

  “A famous Mass Murderer,” replied the person addressed. “He's put an end to nearly everything which flies, swims and runs, and in most cases in vast quantities. He once killed a thousand grouse in a day—or a million—some charming record or other— one of the five best shots in England, in every sense of the word—a Bloody Man, I imagine. What the devil does he want with us?”

  The publicity manager was a person of intolerant views and intemperate utterance.

  “He says he would like to see someone connected with this outfit,” replied the secretary. “Let's look him up in Who's Who.” He fetched that encyclopaedia of mediocrity and read out:

  “Benchley, Robert Aloysius. Born in 1870. Eldest son of (We'll skip that). Educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. He took a first in Greats, by Jove! Founded firm of R. A. Benchley & Co., Limited. Recreations: shooting, fishing, golf. Address: 43 Brook Crescent, W.1.—Well, he's less verbose and full of himself than most of them.”

  “Does he mention how many grouse he once killed in a day?” asked the manager. “Recreations: mangling birds, beasts, fishes and golf balls. Imagine confessing to it! What he wants to bother with us for I cannot conceive, said the duchess. But go and see him.”

  The secretary thereupon rang up 43 Brook Crescent, and was told that Mr. Benchley would be glad to see him at half-past three that afternoon.

  Precisely at that hour the secretary was shown into a large, quietly furnished, sedately appointed room, and Mr. Benchley got up to greet him.

  “It's very good of you to come,” he said.

  The secretary found himself not quite at his ease. For one thing he was somewhat taken aback by Mr. Benchley's appearance. He had expected to find a hearty, rubicund, confident Mass Murderer; instead he saw before him a pale, soft-voiced neurasthenic. Well, perhaps not so bad as that, but he looked ill and strained about the eyes, and he had some nervous tricks—staring so hard at his boot—and then that occasional and discomforting sudden throwing up of his hands towards his head, a very noticeable and obviously involuntary trick, though he half controlled it.

  “I imagine,” said Mr. Benchley, “that you are very curious as to my reasons for asking you to come to-day. You probably know me, if you know me at all, as the incarnation of a kind of cruelty; that is badly phrased, but you know what I mean, a blood-sportsman to adapt an epithet of Shaw's. So I have been, but the past tense is appropriate, for I do not intend to merit that epithet ever again.”

  As he said this his hands once again jumped towards his head, were controlled and brought down again. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

  “Officially at least, we do not attack or concern ourselves with fishing, shooting or hunting.” Replied the secretary guardedly. “Many of our members shoot, fish and hunt.”

  “I know that,” said Mr. Benchley, staring fixedly at the toe of his shoe. “All the same I have fired my last shot exactly a month ago. Do you have many cases of so sudden a conversion?”

  “I've known quite a few,” answered the secretary. “In fact in a little way I am such a case myself; I shot when I was young and enjoyed it.”

  “Have you ever in a sense enjoyed anything more?”

  “In a limited sense, no.”

  “Then why did you give it up?”

  “Well,” said the secretary, “I found that the memory of the movements and sounds made by the animals I had wounded remained with me. I used to dream of them. But besides that, I suppose I grew up sensitively as it were.” He would have expanded this remark slightly if it had not been for the fact that Mr. Benchley threw his hands up again, which distracted him.

  “I believe,” said Mr. Benchley, “ that the sensitiveness to which you refer is an unchallengeable symptom of intellectual, and to some extent, moral superiority. Highly sensitive people are ahead of their time. A general quickening of sensitiveness in a race is equivalent to a general refinement of its civilisation. One day, it may be, to kill an animal for amusement will be considered an act of flagrant indecency, as serious an offence as wearing a white tie with a dinner jacket. As a matter of fact my conversion was not quite as abrupt as it seems. My father shot all his life, and I killed my first rabbit when I was twelve. It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. But I can recall certain more or less short-lived premonitions that it wouldn't always seem so natural. Every now and again I felt disgusted and uncertain, and these occasions became more and more frequent until that day a month ago. On that day I had certain experiences, experiences I had had before, but they suddenly seemed vile and harrowing, unendurable, intolerable. As a result of them I had a mild form of nervous breakdown. I have been in the doctor's hands for the last month—I am better now, but not entirely cured, I'm afraid. It sounds an absurd question, but can you see any mark, any stain of any kind on the toe of my right shoe?” He pushed it forward.

  The secretary made rather a business of deciding this point, for he was not feeling too comfortable. “None whatever,” he replied with great emphasis, after a close scrutiny.

  “I thought not,” replied Mr. Benchley; “it is simply that I have been a little worried about my eyesight since that trouble a month ago. I quite realise,” he continued, “that it would probably split your society from top to bottom if it attempted to tackle the shooting-hunting problem, and the money I am going to give it will be given unconditionally. At the same time I should prefer that some of it at least was expended in furthering the following causes. I will put all this in writing, of course.

  “Firstly: To put pressure on the Government to bring in a Bill making it compulsory for all drivers of horse vehicles to pass an examination in horse-mastership before they are allowed to drive. “Secondly: I should like a certain percentage of this money devoted to the discovery of a humane trap for rabbits.

  “Thirdly: To inquire temperately and impartially into the vivisection question.

  “Fourthly: To put pressure on the Government, by arousing public opinion, concerning the export overseas of old horses. Any money within reason you want for rest-homes for such horses will be forthcoming.

  “That will do for a start, and now I will give you a cheque.” He went to his bureau and fetched it.

  When the secretary saw the figures his eyes grew wide and he began to utter fervent expressions of gratitude, to which Mr. Benchley put, almost rudely, an immediate stop.

  When the secretary was out in the street again, he set off whistling and swinging his cane. “That old bird gave me the ‘willies’ for some reason or other,” he said to himself. “There's something slightly ‘dunno-what’ about him. Who cares! It's his money we want! He seems extremely tame. I can imagine him allowing a really fierce snipe to bite his ear. Who cares! It's his money we want!”

  After he had left, Mr. Benchley opened and shut his right hand many times, and he did this to convince himself that he no longer had the sensation that he was gripping something warm and feathered which writhed slightly whenever his nails met his palm.

  A few days later his drawing-room was transformed into a highly efficient office, with a secretary and three plain but serviceable typists, all of whom were kept exceedingly busy. After they had been at it for three weeks the first-fruits of their labours were seen in the shape of a column long letter to The Times signed by their employer. In this he had the cool nerve to suggest that, as a result of many years’ desultory, and a few weeks concentrated, examination of the subject, he had come to the conclusion that the utilitarian arguments for h
unting and shooting were completely fallacious. He himself had shot all his life, though he had not given up doing so, but he realised he had shot simply and solely because he had found killing animals amusing; obeying a potent, savage impulse. Many people, he believed, salved their consciences when they inflicted gross pain on animals by reflecting that, “someone had got to do it.” In his opinion no one had got to do it. And an elaborately documented argument followed.

  This bombshell started one of the most heated and copious controversies in the history of Press debate, for this discordant chatter spread from The Times and ripped out over the length and breadth of the British Isles, and wherever two or three were gathered together, the introduction of this tinder topic made for fiery dissension. Mr. Benchley's former friends shook compassionate fists in protest. “The poor old dotard! Incipient senile decay! Nervous breakdown! Blood pressure! Piffling sentimentality! Hopeless bunk!” Such were the exclamatory refutations with which they repudiated such sloppy heresy. Yet he did not lack adherents, and the skirmish swirled into a battle, and the battle surged into a campaign. Mr. Benchley's post-bag was worthy of a film-star's, though he had few requests for signed photographs; but every communication which deserved one received a courteous, if usually and necessarily a controversial, reply. He had always had the capacity to write concisely; now controlled passion lent him a style, so that his short contributions to sympathetic weekly papers were well worthy of their polished company. These little papers usually took the form of impressionist sketches of incidents he had witnessed during his sporting career; vignettes of animals’ terror and pain, very often. Sometimes they were dispassionate little studies of the psychology of those responsible for that terror and pain. One and all made a curious impression of authenticity, and many of great horror and distress.

  Throughout all this time Mr. Benchley kept himself entirely aloof from his fellow-men. His former friends had no more wish to meet him than he had to meet them. And he was in no mood to make new friends. He worked ten hours a day, making up for much lost time. He left his business to his partner. The secretary dined with him once a week to report progress and plan schemes for the future. He became gradually acclimatised to his host's eccentricities, for which he made St. Vitus responsible. Mr. Benchley still continued at intervals most fixedly and urgently to regard certain apparently blank spots on the wall of the table-cloth, and once in a while he flung his hands up to his head, but he no longer seemed so unnecessarily preoccupied with the toe of his shoe. St. Vitus had yielded a point. He had observed correctly, the explanation being that Mr. Benchley no longer was compelled to accept the fact that he could see a small splashed globe of blood on the toe of his shoe. This visual relief coincided with the patenting of an efficient humane rabbit trap and the initiation of a campaign to make its use compulsory. The bitter controversy started by Mr. Benchley's letters gradually died down as he had realised it would, but it left, nevertheless, certain permanent results, revealed, not so much by a perceptible but probably temporary decrease in the number of those who hunted and shot, as in a general intensification of that uncertainty and unease which had always troubled humane persons at the thought of at what expense they took their pleasure, a slight moving of the waters of sensitive perception. He was ahead of his time, but his teaching was not merely ridiculed. It was frantically assailed by some, its sincerity was grudgingly conceded by others, it was fervently welcomed as a potent aperient for the bowels of compassion by those who had long laboured in the same cause against apparently hopeless odds.

 

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