by A. C. Benson
I was somewhat struck by the interest which Bendyshe seemed to take in the old family. As a rule, the last thing that a new proprietor is interested in is the history of the family he has ousted. But Bendyshe seemed to wish to bring me into touch with the personalities of his predecessors, as though he desired me to draw some inference or to solve some problem. Indeed, when later in the afternoon he took me out and showed me the relics of the old Faulkner mansion, an octagonal turret and a crow-stepped gable, with a fine chimney-stack of moulded bricks, and a great dovecote, all forming part of a rather ramshackle farm, I became even more sure of this, and commented on it. Bendyshe laughed a short laugh, as though partly pleased and partly disconcerted, and said, ‘Yes, don’t you think it would all make rather a picturesque article?’ adding with a smile, ‘You see, if I take you away from your work, I ought to give you some copy in exchange. But don’t let me bore you. I am afraid it is rather a tiresome fancy of mine, to speculate about my predecessors.’
‘Oh, I’m not bored,’ I said – ‘quite the reverse. What I feel is rather that you have some idea in your mind, which you want me to perceive for myself, and that you were, so to speak, inoculating me!’ Bendyshe looked at me sharply, but I somehow saw that he was not displeased.
After tea I read and wrote a little in the library. I felt rather drowsy after a day in the open air, and fell asleep in my chair, but awakened suddenly with a start, and with a strong impression that someone had entered the room softly, and as softly withdrawn. I had, too, a sensation of something chilly in the air, and a faint earthy odour such as one connects with stone-built, underground, airless places. But it was all a momentary fancy; the flower-scented air was blowing in from the garden, and the bell of the church was ringing for Vespers. I got up and went out into the hall, and found Bendyshe with his hat on just going out of the front-door. ‘Was it you who caught me napping just now?’ I said.
Bendyshe gave me one of his quick glances, and said, ‘Well, I thought you might be having forty winks’ – and then added, a little shamefacedly, ‘The fact is, I’m going to church – the Vicar is very good about services and doesn’t get much of a congregation; besides, it makes me feel cosy, as Mrs Carlyle said of the glass of port. Do you care to come?’
‘It isn’t very much in my line,’ I said lightly, ‘but I’ll come with pleasure – it’s all part of the atmosphere; and besides, I shall get into the Vicar’s good graces.’
We sat in the chancel. There were only two other people present, both women. The Vicar, a big, sanguine-faced man with a fine head of silky white hair, read evening prayer with great rapidity but with extreme reverence; and I was pleased to see never once looked in our direction. His reading of the lessons was strangely impressive; the second lesson was a chapter from the Gospel. ‘When the evil spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none …’ He had lowered his voice, and read as though it was a thing almost too terrible to be mentioned, except from a sense of duty. Just before the end of the passage he shut his book and made a slight pause; and then, as though it was his own comment, looking round at us, he added, ‘So the last state of that man is worse than the first.’ And then he began the Nunc Dimittis in a tone of unmistakable relief.
When I got down before dinner, the Vicar and Bendyshe were sitting in the hall, talking in low tones. The Vicar got briskly up, and shook hands with me with great cordiality. His face was full of animation and benevolence. Bendyshe had said something to me about his being much of a mystic; but anything less mystical I had never seen. He was alive to the finger-tips. We had an amusing evening. The Vicar made a remarkably good meal, and told a few excellent stories of a local kind, crisply and shortly, in response to a direct request from Bendyshe. I indulged in some literary gossip, and the Vicar listened to stories about some of the well-known writers of the day with childish avidity and hearty laughter. ‘Excellent, excellent!’ I remember his saying. ‘I have never been able to get on with his books – rather precious, I think? – but I’ll give them another try; I didn’t know the old man had so much blood in him!’
We settled ourselves after dinner in the smoking-room, and as soon as we were alone, Bendyshe said to the Vicar, ‘Now I want you to tell Hartley something about Hugh Faulkner’ – adding to me, ‘that is the man whose portrait as a boy I showed you – and what happened when you came here. I always think it is an extraordinary story. Hartley won’t make capital out of it, you know – he is quite discreet!’
‘Well, then,’ said the Vicar, ‘I’ll tell you. It was over thirty years ago that Hugh Faulkner – he was a distant cousin of my dear wife – offered me the living through his lawyer. I came down and looked round, but Mr Faulkner was ill, and I could not see him. I was just thirty then, and working in a quiet country curacy; and this gave me exactly what I wanted: more work, and a chance of really getting a hold on a place – and a beautiful church too – and I won’t pretend that a larger income wasn’t some inducement.
‘Well, we settled here; and then bit by bit became aware that things were very wrong indeed in this house. Hugh Faulkner was about forty. His father and mother were both dead. He had been in the Guards, and he had done a good many wild things, and when at last he did something so outrageous that he was summarily told to send in his papers, he came down here. A less courageous man – he had plenty of courage – would have gone abroad for a bit, and waited for the thing to blow over. But he wasn’t that sort. He came down here, and tried to brazen it out. But everyone knew about the scandal, and it was no use. People simply would not meet him, and were out when he called. He was cut and cold-shouldered everywhere. A few of the village people were civil to him; but he couldn’t get servants, no one would accept his invitations. I’ve seen people in the street turn back rather than meet him. He stuck to it for weeks and months; and I tell you, Mr Hartley, my heart bled for that man, though one could neither like him nor trust him: but I couldn’t help admiring him. He generally took no notice, but once or twice he lost his temper. I saw him with my own eyes stop and say something civil to a farmer – Pratt, by name – in the street, and the man pushed by: Faulkner went after him and screamed something into his ear – Pratt wasn’t a very exemplary person, either – and the man went on white and shaking.
‘One day he came to the Vicarage. I should say that I and my wife did see something of him; we went to dine there occasionally, but it was quite intolerable. He used to tell unpleasant stories, not anything to which you could take open exception, but one saw what he meant; and he had an old soldier-servant, a real ruffian, who used to giggle at the sideboard. One day he had come in to tea at the Vicarage, and he looked tired to death. While we were at tea, a neighbouring parson and his wife called. I mentioned Faulkner’s name; they made hasty excuses – they couldn’t stay for tea – they had only looked in. They didn’t say a word to Faulkner, who stood there with his tea-cup looking as if he was on fire within. Then he went up to the parson as he was leaving the room, and said to him in a low voice, “So this is what you do for sinners, Mr Hale? What is your tone with the publicans?” What made it worse was that old Hale had the reputation of being rather too good a judge of wine.
‘Then he said goodbye to us and marched out. I went back with him afterwards and did my best to talk to him. We parsons see some bad things, Mr Hartley, but I never had a worse hour. The man was possessed by devils, not by one only. He was not violent or obscene; he was simply desperate. And he told me, sitting in this very room, what some of his performances had been, and such a catalogue I never heard. However, that is all sub sigillo, you know. He said, I remember, that he had carefully considered whether he could have helped behaving so, and he had decided that he could not help it, and would do just the same again under the same conditions. “You see, I didn’t make myself,” he said.
‘Then he went on to say that once he had left the army he had kept clear of it all, except in one respect; but that the more he put the pillow on his de
sires, the more they peeped round the corner of it. He was quoting Martin Chuzzlewit, I believe? – he was a great reader, I should say – and then he asked me to tell him plainly if I thought he had a chance of putting things straight – “I’m really rather a good-natured man,” he said, with a sort of pathos. “I hardly expect to be liked – but I want to live on decent terms with my neighbours.” I said that it would take time, and it would depend on how he behaved – but that if he spoke to people as he had spoken to Hale at the Vicarage it was of no use expecting things to go better. “But the man was damnably insolent!” he said, “and I won’t take that from anyone.”
‘Well, we argued on, and then I tried to go a step farther – that’s my trade, you know – and I wanted to see if the man felt any kind of regret for any of the things he had done. He was quieter by that time, but he told me plainly to remember that I was not in my Sunday school. I nearly lost my temper at that, but I saw that it wouldn’t do to back out. So I said that I was there to help him if I could, but that I could do nothing unless I knew more or less what his feeling was. “It’s like calling in a doctor,” I said, “and then keeping back some of your symptoms.”
‘And then, Mr Hartley, I had a look for the first and last time of my life into the soul of a very bad man. He told me that he regretted it, in a way, because he didn’t like the consequences. But that if there were no consequences, he would not even regret it. One phrase of his I remember, “Why, I think no more of doing this and that than you think about taking a cup of tea!” He went on to say that when certain temptations came to him, he had no choice – “I really don’t think I am quite responsible,” he said; “there is nothing in my mind that even wishes to resist.” And as to feeling the need of forgiveness either from the people he had wronged or Almighty God, the idea seemed simply laughable to him; and I will only say this, that for the first and only time in my life I felt like doubting the power of God. And then at last I got away. I may add that for a month or two afterwards I was really ill. I could not sleep; I could not get the man’s face out of my mind.
‘And then there came a worse complication. Pratt, the farmer to whom Faulkner had spoken in the street, had an accident and was thrown out of his dog-cart; and Hale had a sort of stroke and was ill for some time. And this I think made matters hopeless. You know what sort of things people say, and underneath all our civilisation there’s a great deal of the ugliest old superstition left.
‘After that Faulkner shut himself up altogether, except that he would ride or walk in the early summer mornings before people were about. In winter he hardly ever left the house; and what went on here I don’t know – I don’t like to think. He read a great deal, he did some gardening. I went to see him from time to time, but he would never talk freely again. He used to ask a few questions, and sometimes told me stories about his boyhood, things his mother had said to him – he had a curious kind of affection for her – the tricks he had played on his father; he seemed to me like a man in a dream. He also took to speculating on the Stock Exchange, and lost a lot of money. The only person who stuck to him was the old soldier-servant. They lived in three or four rooms, did their own cooking, smoked and drank together, and the house got into a filthy state. But nothing happened; he didn’t die, he was never ill, he simply lived on. Once or twice old friends came to see him; and I remember one man – a retired Colonel, I believe – whom I met, leaving the house in haste, looking very much perturbed. He came up and spoke to me, said he had been to see his old friend Faulkner – they had been subalterns together – and he had been very much shocked, “though I’m not very particular,” he added. Then he suddenly said, “Tell me, is he mad?” “Not in the least,” I said. “Then, good God,” said the Colonel, “why doesn’t the man shoot himself?” – and he went off straight to the station.
‘Now, for more than ten years things went on – think what that means – the garden was all overgrown with bushes and brambles, with a path through to a plot where they grew vegetables; and in front the shrubs grew over the lower windows, and most of the upper windows were broken. But it shows what a strange thing human nature is, Mr Hartley, for I believe the people here were rather proud of it than otherwise, though there was once an ugly demonstration. The old soldier-servant used to be seen about – he did the shopping, and he was rather a feature of the place. And strange to say, I got rather to like the man. He had been a real ruffian, I expect, but the way that man stuck to poor Hugh – it was heroic. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for him, and he simply worshipped him. I used to wonder what would happen to Hugh if he died.
‘I still went in at times to see Hugh, and I believe he was glad to see me, though when he was in a bad mood he used to ask me all kinds of ingenious and bewildering questions about religious matters which I could not answer; but as a rule I don’t think he was even very consciously unhappy. They lived by a routine, and Hugh used to talk mysteriously of his experiments – I never quite knew what he meant, but nothing very good, I fear. And then there were stories – at one time the garden was thought to be full of great black birds; and at another there were supposed to be creatures which grunted and snorted about among the bushes, and screamed out sharply at night. There were said to be curious mounds in the garden, like earth thrown out from burrows. Sometimes the windows were lighted up, and music was heard; and a man was said to have been seen going up the wall at the back like a fly. But I never saw anything myself, except for the fact that the house seemed to me sometimes to be full of smells – bitter, suffocating smells, like nothing on earth; and at times appeared full of shadows, gliding blacknesses, like mist or smoke. But I daresay all these things had some explanation.
‘But I must bring my story to an end – and I must add that though I never quite gave up trying to get hold of something in Hugh’s mind and heart that I could pull on, and though I said many prayers for him, it all was a total failure; but I somehow became aware of a change of atmosphere about the house, about Hugh himself. I had generally had the feeling as if some struggle was going on somewhere out of sight, or even as though one were watched by something that would like to make a spring if it dared. Hugh himself was less violent and quieter; it seemed like exhaustion.
‘One night, about the end of April (I was alone then, for my dear wife had died the year before; and I must tell you that in one of the last talks we had, she said to me, “Don’t give Hugh up – I think there is something coming to him,” but she could not explain), I was working late when I heard someone tapping at the door, quietly and insistently; and I found it was Hugh’s servant. He wanted me to come and see Hugh at once. “Did he send for me?” I said. “No, sir – but I’m frightened about him. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep – he sits watching something.” The man kept moistening his lips as he spoke and then broke out, “Come and see if you can help him.”
‘I went off at once; and when we got into the house I knew that there was something very wrong indeed. There was a silence that appalled me – I have never experienced such a silence; and though it was a warm night, the house was deadly cold. But worse still, there seemed something holding us back which required pushing into. I fought my way upstairs; but the old servant gave up, sat down on the bottom step and watched me. There was one solitary candle in the hall, which flickered and cast hideous shadows.
‘I went straight into Hugh’s room – the room at the top of the stairs. I found him stretched fully dressed upon his bed, his eyes closed, and making motions with his hands as if he were trying to thrust something away. His brow was horribly puckered and his face seemed swollen and congested. I went up and took his hand, and he gave a kind of moan or wail – the sort of cry a hare gives when a keeper takes hold of it. “Don’t be afraid,” I said; “it’s only me. John, you know!” At this he sat up and opened his eyes. “The dream,” he said, “the dream – it’s closing in on me!” Then he said to me in a faint voice, “Surely it’s enough? – it’s all empty and dark – it’s draining my lif
e away!” Then he turned to me and said, “Where have I been?” I knew well enough. It isn’t only a name, Mr Hartley, it’s a very real thing – the most real thing but one in the world. Then he said to me, “Fifteen years of hell, John – does anything deserve that?” I hardly knew what I was saying then, for the cold that I had felt on the stairs was gathering in, thicker than ever. But I said – the words were given me somehow, “Perhaps you have done your punishment, Hugh; it’s over and done.” He shook his head and lay down again; and I just knelt down and said the last prayers, and in the middle he gave one shudder, which went through him from head to foot, and I knew he was gone.
‘Yes, I know what you would like to ask me, Mr Hartley, and my answer is that I don’t know. He was gone, but something else was gone too. The servant came running up the stairs, and looked in. I beckoned to him. He came and knelt down by me, and I finished the prayers; and when I had finished, he took my hand and pressed it; and then he took Hugh in his arms and stroked his face. I left them there, and went away a wiser man, I hope.
‘The family lawyer came down, and he and I made a search for documents to no purpose. He had kept some papers in a despatch-box that was always near him; but this was missing, and could not be found. There was nothing to throw light on the matter, except that the servant said that he had lately been strange in manner and apathetic, and that he had lost his appetite; and I will only add that there was an inquest. I told my tale with reservations, and they called it natural death. I didn’t hesitate to bury him in the churchyard, and there he lies; but no one came to the funeral. And the Bishop sent for me to enquire into the circumstances; but when I had finished the story, as much as it was fit for a Bishop to hear, he told me frankly that he had meant to suggest to me to resign my living, but that now he had altered his mind, and that I must on no account leave the place. I never saw a man in such a state of what we will call godly embarrassment. And the next Sunday I made my flock a little sermon on “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” and gave them a bit of my mind. And, strange to say, I have never had any trouble to speak of since.’