by A. C. Benson
The Vicar made a long pause, and shook his head. I could see that there was something further in his mind which he had decided not to mention. I confess that this strange and tragic story produced an extraordinary effect upon me. For one thing, it was all so darkly mysterious, so full of unexplained hints and suggestions of evil, that it aroused in me a vague terror which made me wish that I had never listened to it. Not so Bendyshe; he was sitting back in his chair, his hands clasped together, looking at the Vicar with gleaming eyes, like a man on the brink of a great discovery.
Then the Vicar turned to me, and said, ‘There, Mr Hartley. I have told you the story at Mr Bendyshe’s request. You may be thinking that it is the sort of tale that had better not be told, and that such a collection of shocking incidents is better forgotten and buried in oblivion. But I have two good reasons for telling you. In the first place, the outline of the story, only greatly exaggerated, is known to and repeated by a good many people in this place, and I should wish you to have a more accurate version of what happened – anything is better than secrecy about such things; and Mr Bendyshe tells me he has a special reason for asking me to relate it to you, which you no doubt know, and of which I approve. I think it ought to be seriously investigated.
‘And then, too, I have a further reason. There are very dark corners in this world of ours, and facts of our existence, which seem inconsistent with any faith in a beneficent and Almighty Creator; and I don’t think it right to ignore them. My own belief – I will speak frankly – is that God is slowly and patiently making a conquest of a world in which there exists – how originated I cannot even guess – a strong element of something atrocious and horrible, which defies Him, and seizes every opportunity of undoing His work. And to my mind, the horror of this story is that it seems like a deliberate attempt to focus this evil power, an attempt which failed, because this malignant influence, as I interpret it, is essentially what is called stupid. It has no principle; it works at details with a laborious persistency – that is where its essential weakness lies; but it ought not to be ignored; it must be met by anyone who comes across it with courage and intelligence. I don’t think that Hugh Faulkner did any very serious or deep-seated harm here, and he certainly did not succeed in making evil attractive. He may have struck a blow at individuals, and I believe that he certainly did – but that is all.
‘And now I must ask you to excuse me, if I say good night. May I have the pleasure of seeing you at the Vicarage, Mr Hartley? You may have some questions to ask about what I have told you. But I have nothing to add, and I may not be in a position to give you an answer.’
The Vicar took his leave, and left on my mind the impression of great simplicity and goodness. He and Bendyshe went to the door together, and stood talking for some little time in low tones.
When Bendyshe came back, he said to me with a curious look, ‘Now what do you think of all that?’
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ I said – ‘at present I’m simply rather stupefied. One goes along making the best of life and thinking the world on the whole a satisfactory and wholesome place; and then comes a tale like this, and one wonders if one has any real idea of what is going on, or of what may be hidden away in the minds of men and women. I wish I had never heard the story.’
‘Oh, come,’ said Bendyshe, ‘don’t say that – it seems to me to have all the elements of a big adventure. I would give anything to get a little more information; but here one only gets the wildest and silliest gossip. I may tell you that I have tried to get on the track of Faulkner’s servant, but I can’t find a trace of him.’
‘I expect he is dead by this time,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Bendyshe; ‘he is not dead. I can say that quite confidently – I have my reasons.’
We sat for some little time together, and I asked Bendyshe one or two disjointed questions. I said, ‘There was one point in what the Vicar said which I did not quite understand. He spoke of Faulkner doing harm to individuals. What did he mean by that?
‘Well,’ said Bendyshe, ‘he meant Hale and Farmer Pratt in the first place; and there are some other cases too, if you care to hear them.’
‘No, I don’t want to hear them,’ I said; ‘but tell me this. Do you, and does the Vicar, really believe that Faulkner had the power of inflicting bodily damage upon these unfortunate men, without using some known human agency? Of course it might be that some mental shock and physical deterioration followed from a fright which—’
But Bendyshe interrupted me. ‘Do I believe it?’ he said. ‘Why, I know it. Faulkner was just as much responsible for their illness as if he had fired a gun at them.’
‘But how is it possible?’ I said.
‘Ah, I don’t know that,’ said Bendyshe; ‘but that he had the power of doing that sort of thing – at all events in the case, let us say, of people whose moral force was weakened by some indulgence – is incontestable. He didn’t use it often, I admit; he was afraid to do so; but in both of these cases, and in others which I could tell you, he lost all control of himself, and I believe that he let loose against them an undiluted current of evil; and the Vicar believes it too.’
‘But it isn’t rational,’ I said; ‘we don’t believe in witchcraft in the twentieth century.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if we did,’ said Bendyshe grimly. ‘We can’t get rid of facts by calling them irrational.’
I saw that he was getting nettled by the discussion, so I said, ‘Well, I must have time to let all this settle down.’
In a moment the other Bendyshe appeared. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘we mustn’t let this visit of yours degenerate into a series of shocks and explosions. I’ve no right to do that, and if you give me a hint, I will drop my theory for a bit. But I very much hope you will help me look into the matter. We’ll have an easy day tomorrow.’
He accompanied me to my room and said, ‘I hope the story tonight hasn’t made you nervous? Perhaps this will reassure you.’ He showed me, let in beneath the dado-cornice, in the corner by my bed, a little circle looking like the top of a wooden peg, and painted white like the rest of the room. ‘That’s a fancy of mine. My butler, Bartlett, doesn’t sleep in the house – he has a house in the village. And this bell rings in my room – both the other spare bedrooms have it. I put it up when old Ford was staying here, and was taken ill in the night and couldn’t make anyone hear. If you press on that, I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m a very light sleeper!’
‘Oh, I’m not nervous,’ I said. ‘I’m a sound sleeper, and then I’m a rational man.’
Bendyshe smiled at this and said, ‘Yes; that’s just why I want your help. Good night, old man.’
Left to myself that night, I went slowly and deliberately to bed. I felt curiously tired and drowsy after the cataract of varied impressions which I had received during the day; and I was conscious, too, of a growing excitement. The Vicar’s story had done more to arouse this than any of Bendyshe’s semi-scientific theories. The Vicar, I felt, was a man without an axe to grind, and with a certain duty to perform in the world, a desire to illumine the darkness, to extinguish evil. He did not turn his back upon it or ignore it, and his aim was a practical one. Bendyshe, on the other hand, was like a man engaged in research; he simply wanted to arrive at facts. Indeed, there had been moments in the day when I had suspected him of being something very monomaniac; but his friendliness was engaging, and the appeal he had made to me for help had touched me. But help in what? That I could not say.
Just, I imagine, before I slept, I had a curious sensation of something vague and restless in the house, something that faintly jarred my drowsy nerves; it was all a fancy, but I thought dimly that someone, sleeplessly and wearily, was engaged in pacing about, and searching for a thing both secret and momentous, which had been mislaid or hidden. I wondered vaguely if the inquisitive brain of Bendyshe, weighing, considering, discriminating, was having a sort of telepathic effect on my own. The house was absolutely still; the church clock struck
two with a murmur sweet as honey; and then, curiously enough, I had a sensation of great mental ease. If anything was going forward, I was at least in no way concerned in it; the searcher did not wish me ill – my presence there was nothing to him. And then, I suppose, I passed into sleep.
While I dressed in the morning, I could see Bendyshe pacing in the narrow strip of garden that lay beneath my windows, lost in thought. He greeted me when I came downstairs with much effusion. ‘Slept well?’ he said. ‘That’s right. You look very fit and spry. We’ll have a good spin today – we might go to Canterbury perhaps?’ And yet, strange to say, I had an indefinable sense that Bendyshe was in some way disappointed.
Our run was uneventful enough. Bendyshe made no allusion to the narrative of the previous evening. I thought, indeed, that he was a little conscience-stricken for having plunged me, so to speak, up to the neck in these dark matters. In fact I do not think he had intended to do so, but his own overpowering interest, in the company of someone whom he thought sympathetic, had run away with him. I felt in a singularly placid mood, and the summer fields, the woodland corners, the hoe-gardens, the hamlets through which we went, worked upon me like some gentle anodyne. We ate our luncheon on the shoulder of a high, upstanding ridge along which the road passed; and I was amazed at Bendyshe’s knowledge of the country. There was hardly a church-tower visible that he could not name, and he was full of local and personal anecdotes which beguiled the time very pleasantly.
We got back for tea, and I then experienced something of a reaction. In spite of the beauty and comfort of the house, there came on me a sense of lurking dreariness which I could not analyse; something was going on there, in the cool rooms, the panelled corridors, which I could not penetrate. I tried to work, I tried to read – Bendyshe had gone off to the village on some friendly errand – and I became aware that I did not wish to be alone. When the dressing-gong sounded, I felt a strong disinclination to leave the room.
Ten minutes later I heard the front door open. Bendyshe’s brisk stride was audible in the hall. This was a relief to me; but instead of coming, as I had expected, to the library, he went quickly upstairs. I decided that I must go too; but just as I got to the head of the stairs, I became aware that someone was coming down the corridor as if from Bendyshe’s room. It was beginning to be dusk, and I could not see the figure very plainly. It was a man, carelessly dressed in an old grey suit of clothes, shuffling along very noiselessly, his head hanging down, with a markedly sullen and dejected air. The face looked healthy but careworn, and it came into my mind that it was some petitioner who had come to make a request of Bendyshe, but who had been decisively and perhaps unceremoniously refused. I said ‘Good evening’ to the man as he passed me, and then I had a real surprise of rather an unpleasant kind, for he took not the slightest notice of me or my salutation, as if he neither heard nor saw me; he shuffled on down the corridor and was swallowed up in the shadow at the head of the stairs. Yet it did not seem to me an intentional rudeness, but rather as if the stranger’s preoccupation was so intense that there was no room in his mind for any other impression.
I went and dressed and was downstairs in the smoking-room when Bendyshe appeared. ‘You’ve had a busy evening,’ I said. ‘And I saw you got caught by a caller on coming in.’
Bendyshe looked at me quickly and interrogatively. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I have endless visitors – there’s nothing I’m not asked to do.’
‘But I expect you can’t always do it,’ I said. ‘I passed your friend in the corridor, and I never saw disappointment so legibly written on anyone’s face as on his – he hadn’t even time to exchange civilities!’
‘You spoke to him?’ said Bendyshe, adding, ‘Poor chap, yes, he has no end of troubles. But what the real trouble is I don’t quite know. So he struck you as disappointed, did he?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘I almost wonder that you had the heart to refuse him. He looked quite worn out, and took no notice whatever of me. I should like to know his history.’
Bendyshe stared at me in silence, and it struck me that I had been impertinent. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘if I have been too inquisitive.’
‘Good Lord, it isn’t that,’ said Bendyshe; ‘but the man doesn’t know what he wants, or at least I don’t know what he wants – I can’t make out, and that’s just the difficulty. And when I find out, then – well, then I shall know what to do.’
Bendyshe was in a very strange mood that evening – so strange that I more than once thought that my half-formed conjecture of the previous night was true. He seemed to be wrestling against the approach of a secret and triumphant mirth. Our talk turned on the ailments of middle-age, and I confessed to being conscious of the necessity of a régime. ‘I don’t believe in taking care of oneself,’ he said – ‘plenty of air, enough exercise, variety, work, plenty of other people’s business, not too much eating and drinking and smoking; and most of all, if you think you can’t do a particular thing or don’t want to, go and do it!’
‘That’s rather Spartan,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Bendyshe; ‘it’s simply this – we have all of us got three at least, or even more, people inside us. There’s the one that admires and enjoys – he’s all right. Then there’s the one that criticises and reflects. Then there’s the animal, which needs to be sensibly and good-humouredly drilled, like a dog or horse, and he’s a patient and serviceable fellow enough. But behind them all, in the little innermost room, there’s the one that fears, and he mustn’t be listened to for a single instant, or he will run the whole show.’
‘I never thought of it like that,’ said I; ‘yet I’m sure you are right. But which is the one that wills?’
‘Oh, they all do that,’ said Bendyshe, laughing; ‘it’s a kind of board. The point is that the right man should have the casting vote.’ And then he was again overtaken by his tendency to laughter, and laughed unreservedly. I suppose that he detected some annoyance in my face, for he suddenly stopped. ‘Forgive me,’ he said; ‘I have a fit of the giggles sometimes, and it is bad manners. But I have been lucky today. I have made some progress – more than I expected.’
After dinner we had a game of piquet, and went up to bed about midnight. As we came out at the head of the stairs, Bendyshe said, ‘Was it here you met my poor friend? Which way did he go?’
‘Down the stairs,’ said I; ‘but I lost sight of him.’
‘Ah, he ought to have gone down the backstairs,’ said Bendyshe, ‘but I suppose he forgot. Hullo, what’s this?’ He turned sharply round. The door leading into the unfurnished bedroom was open, and the moon shone in, showing the boarded floor and the clean-cut panelling. ‘Who the devil did that?’ said Bendyshe very irritably. ‘Here, come in – let’s have a look. Has there been someone prowling about, I wonder?’ He led the way into the room, but I felt an insupportable reluctance to enter it. ‘I must have this place locked up,’ said Bendyshe, half to himself. ‘Hullo, this is all quite new.’
I followed him into the room, suddenly feeling the need of company. He was bending down, looking at something on the floor. ‘The wet must have got through,’ said Bendyshe to himself. I drew nearer, and saw that a quantity of plaster had fallen from the ceiling; up above an irregular square opening appeared; but what, I confess, gave me a shudder of dismay was that the plaster on the floor had a strange resemblance to the shape of a prostrate figure. I saw at once that it was a merely accidental likeness, and even as I looked Bendyshe with his foot swept the débris together.
He took me to my room and said a few friendly words. I saw that he wished to obliterate the impression caused by his merriment. I went to bed, and, contrary to all my expectations, for the evening had been an agitating one, I slept profoundly. But before I slept, I half determined that I would not prolong my stay. Bendyshe was behaving very oddly; but then I thought of the Vicar, and I decided that as he had asked me to his house, I would go and consult him; and this brought me a sense of relief.
The m
orning turned out insufferably hot. Bendyshe was very cheerful and pleasant at breakfast. He said he had directed that some chairs should be taken out into the shade of the sycamores. ‘The verandah is a bit stuffy,’ he said, ‘when the wind is in the north.’ He had got down a parcel of books from town, new books which he thought might interest me. And when we went out there was a table, and two chairs, and an irresistible heap of neat volumes of all shapes and sizes. We sat mostly in silence; occasionally Bendyshe went off to the house, and twice at least he was summoned by the butler to see a caller. ‘I lead a dog’s life,’ he said, laughing – ‘plenty of fleas!’
I had again become immersed in my book, when a sudden exclamation from Bendyshe, betraying a poignant and acute emotion, made me look up. He was leaning forwards, his gaze bent on the front of the house. At the closed window of the unfurnished bedroom, plainly visible, and indeed made curiously luminous by the sunlight, a man was standing looking out into the garden. He was, so far as I could judge, an elderly man, with a shock of grey hair, and a curiously blurred and puffy face, red and bloated. He was dressed in a sort of apron, dirty white, showing arms bare to the elbow. ‘Who’s that? What’s that?’ said Bendyshe in indescribable agitation. It seemed to me so unnecessary and unaccountable an excitement, that I said, ‘Well, if you ask me, I should say it was the plasterer come to repair the ceiling.’
‘You’re right – you’re right,’ said Bendyshe, with a gesture of intense relief. ‘Of course, I forgot – I mentioned it to Bartlett – but I didn’t expect him today. I imagined – well, I don’t know what I did imagine.’ He got up from his chair and went hurriedly to the house.