THE ROOM IN THE TOWER
AND OTHER STORIES
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Mills & Boon’s New Novels
_Crown 8vo, 6s. each_
THE LURE. E. S. STEVENS.
THE DAUGHTER OF BRAHMA. I. A. R. WYLIE.
THE ROOM IN THE TOWER. E. F. BENSON.
A BACHELOR’S COMEDY. J. E. BUCKROSE.
THE PALACE OF LOGS. ROBERT BARR.
WHEN GOD LAUGHS. JACK LONDON.
ASHES OF INCENSE. By the AUTHOR OF “MASTERING FLAME.”
HIS FIRST OFFENCE. J. STORER CLOUSTON.
THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE. HUGH WALPOLE.
THE BATTLE. CLAUDE FARRERE.
STORIES WITHOUT TEARS. BARRY PAIN.
THE FRONTIER. MAURICE LEBLANC.
THE MARK. Mrs PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY.
THE GIRL WITH THE BLUE EYES. Lady TROUBRIDGE.
SONS OF STATE. WINIFRED GRAHAM.
ENTER BRIDGET. THOMAS COBB.
THE THORNBUSH NEAR THE DOOR. SOPHIE COLE.
MEN AND DREAMS. MARY E. MANN.
THE WRITTEN LAW. FRANCES G. KNOWLES-FOSTER.
RUTH OF THE ROWLDRICH. Mrs STANLEY WRENCH.
THE PRINCE. T. METCALFE.
THE SILVER MEDALLION. PERCY J. BREBNER.
THE PRINCE AND BETTY. P. G. WODEHOUSE.
ALIENS NEAR OF KIN. N. VERNON.
THE
ROOM IN THE TOWER
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
E. F. BENSON
AUTHOR OF
“THE ANGEL OF PAIN,” “SHEAVES”
SECOND EDITION
MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
49 RUPERT STREET
LONDON W.
_Published 1912_
_Copyright in the United States of America, 1912, by E. F. Benson_
PREFACE
These stories have been written in the hopes of giving some pleasant
qualms to their reader, so that, if by chance, anyone may be occupying
in their perusal a leisure half-hour before he goes to bed when the
night and the house are still, he may perhaps cast an occasional glance
into the corners and dark places of the room where he sits, to make sure
that nothing unusual lurks in the shadow. For this is the avowed object
of ghost-stories and such tales as deal with the dim unseen forces which
occasionally and perturbingly make themselves manifest. The author
therefore fervently wishes his readers a few uncomfortable moments.
Some of those tales have appeared before in various magazines; the
remainder are new. One, the story of “The Man who went too Far,” is the
germ of what subsequently developed into a book called “The Angel of
Pain.”
E. F. BENSON.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE ROOM IN THE TOWER 1
THE DUST-CLOUD 22
GAVON’S EVE 44
THE CONFESSION OF CHARLES LINKWORTH 62
AT ABDUL ALI’S GRAVE 87
THE SHOOTINGS OF ACHNALEISH 107
HOW FEAR DEPARTED FROM THE LONG GALLERY 131
CATERPILLARS 155
THE CAT 169
THE BUS-CONDUCTOR 192
THE MAN WHO WENT TOO FAR 206
BETWEEN THE LIGHTS 241
OUTSIDE THE DOOR 260
THE TERROR BY NIGHT 273
THE OTHER BED 285
THE THING IN THE HALL 302
THE HOUSE WITH THE BRICK-KILN 321
THE ROOM IN THE TOWER
It is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had
at least one experience of an event or a sequence of circumstances which
have come to his mind in sleep being subsequently realised in the
material world. But, in my opinion, so far from this being a strange
thing, it would be far odder if this fulfilment did not occasionally
happen, since our dreams are, as a rule, concerned with people whom we
know and places with which we are familiar, such as might very naturally
occur in the awake and day-lit world. True, these dreams are often
broken into by some absurd and fantastic incident, which puts them out
of court in regard to their subsequent fulfilment, but on the mere
calculation of chances, it does not appear in the least unlikely that a
dream imagined by anyone who dreams constantly should occasionally come
true. Not long ago, for instance, I experienced such a fulfilment of a
dream which seems to me in no way remarkable and to have no kind of
psychical significance. The manner of it was as follows.
A certain friend of mine, living abroad, is amiable enough to write to
me about once in a fortnight. Thus, when fourteen days or thereabouts
have elapsed since I last heard from him, my mind, probably, either
consciously or subconsciously, is expectant of a letter from him. One
night last week I dreamed that as I was going upstairs to dress for
dinner I heard, as I often heard, the sound of the postman’s knock on my
front door, and diverted my direction downstairs instead. There, among
other correspondence, was a letter from him. Thereafter the fantastic
entered, for on opening it I found inside the ace of diamonds, and
scribbled across it in his well-known handwriting, “I am sending you
this for safe custody, as you know it is running an unreasonable risk to
keep aces in Italy.” The next evening I was just preparing to go
upstairs to dress when I heard the postman’s knock, and did precisely as
I had done in my dream. There, among other letters, was one from my
friend. Only it did not contain the ace of diamonds. Had it done so, I
should have attached more weight to the matter, which, as it stands,
seems to me a perfectly ordinary coincidence. No doubt I consciously or
subconsciously expected a letter from him, and this suggested to me my
dream. Similarly, the fact that my friend had not written to me for a
fortnight suggested to him that he should do so. But occasionally it is
not so easy to find such an explanation, and for the following story I
can find no explanation at all. It came out of the dark, and into the
dark it has gone again.
All my life I have been a habitual dreamer: the nights are few, that is
to say, when I do not find on awaking in the morning that some mental
experience has been mine, and sometimes, all night long, apparently, a
series of the most dazzling adventures befall me. Almost without
exception these adventures are pleasant, though often merely trivial. It
is of an exception that I am going to speak.
It was when I was about sixteen that a certain dream first came to me,
and this is how it befell. It opened with my being set down at the door
of a big red-brick house, where, I understood, I was going to stay. The
servant who opened the door told me that tea was going on in the garden,
and led me through a low dark-panelled hall, with a large open
fireplace, on to a cheerful green lawn set round with flower beds. There
were grouped about the tea-table a small party of people, but they were
all strangers to me except one, who was a school-fellow called Jack
Stone, clearly the son of the house, and he introduced me to his mother
and father and a couple of sisters. I was, I remember, somewhat
astonished to find myself here, for the boy in question was scarcely
known to me, and I rather disliked what I knew of him: moreover, he had
left school nearly a year before. The afternoon was very hot, and an
intolerable oppression reigned. On the far side of the lawn ran a
red-brick wall, with an iron gate in its centre, outside which stood a
walnut tree. We sat in the shadow of the house opposite a row of long
windows, inside which I could see a table with cloth laid, glimmering
with glass and silver. This garden front of the house was very long, and
at one end of it stood a tower of three stories, which looked to me much
older than the rest of the building.
Before long, Mrs Stone, who, like the rest of the party, had sat in
absolute silence, said to me, “Jack will show you your room: I have
given you the room in the tower.”
Quite inexplicably my heart sank at her words. I felt as if I had known
that I should have the room in the tower, and that it contained
something dreadful and significant. Jack instantly got up, and I
understood that I had to follow him. In silence we passed through the
hall, and mounted a great oak staircase with many corners, and arrived
at a small landing with two doors set in it. He pushed one of these open
for me to enter, and without coming in himself, closed it behind me.
Then I knew that my conjecture had been right: there was something awful
in the room, and with the terror of nightmare growing swiftly and
enveloping me, I awoke in a spasm of terror.
Now that dream or variations on it occurred to me intermittently for
fifteen years. Most often it came in exactly this form, the arrival, the
tea laid out on the lawn, the deadly silence succeeded by that one
deadly sentence, the mounting with Jack Stone up to the room in the
tower where horror dwelt, and it always came to a close in the nightmare
of terror at that which was in the room, though I never saw what it was.
At other times I experienced variations on this same theme.
Occasionally, for instance, we would be sitting at dinner in the
dining-room, into the windows of which I had looked on the first night
when the dream of this house visited me, but wherever we were, there was
the same silence, the same sense of dreadful oppression and foreboding.
And the silence I knew would always be broken by Mrs Stone saying to me,
“Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”
Upon which (this was invariable) I had to follow him up the oak
staircase with many corners, and enter the place that I dreaded more and
more each time that I visited it in sleep. Or, again, I would find
myself playing cards still in silence in a drawing-room lit with immense
chandeliers, that gave a blinding illumination. What the game was I have
no idea; what I remember, with a sense of miserable anticipation, was
that soon Mrs Stone would get up and say to me, “Jack will show you your
room: I have given you the room in the tower.” This drawing-room where
we played cards was next to the dining-room, and, as I have said, was
always brilliantly illuminated, whereas the rest of the house was full
of dusk and shadows. And yet, how often, in spite of those bouquets of
lights, have I not pored over the cards that were dealed me, scarcely
able for some reason to see them. Their designs, too, were strange:
there were no red suits, but all were black, and among them there were
certain cards which were black all over. I hated and dreaded those.
As this dream continued to recur, I got to know the greater part of the
house. There was a smoking-room beyond the drawing-room, at the end of a
passage with a green baize door. It was always very dark there, and as
often as I went there I passed somebody whom I could not see in the
doorway coming out. Curious developments, too, took place in the
characters that peopled the dream as might happen to living persons. Mrs
Stone, for instance, who, when I first saw her, had been black haired,
became grey, and instead of rising briskly, as she had done at first
when she said, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room
in the tower,” got up very feebly, as if the strength was leaving her
limbs. Jack also grew up, and became a rather ill-looking young man,
with a brown moustache, while one of the sisters ceased to appear, and I
understood she was married.
Then it so happened that I was not visited by this dream for six months
or more, and I began to hope, in such inexplicable dread did I hold it,
that it had passed away for good. But one night after this interval I
again found myself being shown out on to the lawn for tea, and Mrs Stone
was not there, while the others were all dressed in black. At once I
guessed the reason, and my heart leaped at the thought that perhaps this
time I should not have to sleep in the room in the tower, and though we
usually all sat in silence, on this occasion the sense of relief made me
talk and laugh as I had never yet done. But even then matters were not
altogether comfortable, for no one else spoke, but they all looked
secretly at each other. And soon the foolish stream of my talk ran dry,
and gradually an apprehension worse than anything I had previously known
gained on me as the light slowly faded.
Suddenly a voice which I knew well broke the stillness, the voice of Mrs
Stone, saying, “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room
in the tower.” It seemed to come from near the gate in the red-brick
wall that bounded the lawn, and looking up, I saw that the grass outside
was sown thick with gravestones. A curious greyish light shone from
them, and I could read the lettering on the grave nearest me, and it
was, “In evil memory of Julia Stone.” And as usual Jack got up, and
again I followed him through the hall and up the staircase with many
corners. On this occasion it was darker than usual, and when I passed
into the room in the tower I could only just see the furniture, the
position of which was already familiar to me. Also there was a dreadful
odour of decay in the room, and I woke screaming.
The dream, with such variations and developments as I have mentioned,
went on at intervals for fifteen years. Sometimes I would dream it two
or three nights in succession; once, as I have said, there was an
intermission of six months, but taking a reasonable average, I should
say that I dreamed it quite as often as once in a month. It had, as is
plain, something of nightmare about it, since it always ended in the
same appalling terror, which so far from getting less, seemed to me to
gather fresh fear every time that I experienced it. There was, too, a
strange and dreadful consistency about it. The characters in it, as I
have mentioned, got regularly older, death and marriage visited this
silent family, and I never in the dream, after Mrs Stone had died, set
eyes on her again. But it was always her voice that told me that the
room in the tower was prepared for me, and whether we had tea out on the
lawn, or the scene was laid in one of the rooms overlooking it, I could
always see her gravestone standing just outside the iron gate. It was
the same, too, with the married daughter; usually she was not present,
but once or twice she returned again, in company with a man, whom I took
to be her husband. He, too, like the rest of them, was always silent.
But, owing to the constant repetition of the dream, I had ceased to
attach, in my waking hours, any significance to it. I never met Jack
Stone again during all those years, nor did I ever see a house that
resembled this dark house of my dream. And then something happened.
I had been in London in this year, up till the end of July, and during
the first week in August went down to stay with a friend in a house he
had taken for the summer months, in the Ashdown Forest district of
Sussex. I left London early, for John Clinton was to meet me at Forest
Row Station, and we were going to spend the day golfing, and go to his
house in the evening. He had his motor with him, and we set off, about
five of the afternoon, after a thoroughly delightful day, for the drive,
the distance being some ten miles. As it was still so early we did not
have tea at the club house, but waited till we should get home. As we
drove, the weather, which up till then had been, though hot, deliciously
fresh, seemed to me to alter in quality, and become very stagnant and
oppressive, and I felt that indefinable sense of ominous apprehension
that I am accustomed to before thunder. John, however, did not share my
views, attributing my loss of lightness to the fact that I had lost both
my matches. Events proved, however, that I was right, though I do not
think that the thunderstorm that broke that night was the sole cause of
my depression.
Our way lay through deep high-banked lanes, and before we had gone very
far I fell asleep, and was only awakened by the stopping of the motor.
And with a sudden thrill, partly of fear but chiefly of curiosity, I
found myself standing in the doorway of my house of dream. We went, I
half wondering whether or not I was dreaming still, through a low
oak-panelled hall, and out on to the lawn, where tea was laid in the
shadow of the house. It was set in flower beds, a red-brick wall, with a
gate in it, bounded one side, and out beyond that was a space of rough
grass with a walnut tree. The façade of the house was very long, and at
one end stood a three-storied tower, markedly older than the rest.
Here for the moment all resemblance to the repeated dream ceased. There
was no silent and somehow terrible family, but a large assembly of
exceedingly cheerful persons, all of whom were known to me. And in spite
of the horror with which the dream itself had always filled me, I felt
nothing of it now that the scene of it was thus reproduced before me.
But I felt the intensest curiosity as to what was going to happen.
Tea pursued its cheerful course, and before long Mrs Clinton got up. And
at that moment I think I knew what she was going to say. She spoke to
me, and what she said was:
“Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”
At that, for half a second, the horror of the dream took hold of me
again. But it quickly passed, and again I felt nothing more than the
most intense curiosity. It was not very long before it was amply
satisfied.
John turned to me.
“Right up at the top of the house,” he said, “but I think you’ll be
comfortable. We’re absolutely full up. Would you like to go and see it
now? By Jove, I believe that you are right, and that we are going to
have a thunderstorm. How dark it has become.”
I got up and followed him. We passed through the hall, and up the
perfectly familiar staircase. Then he opened the door, and I went in.
And at that moment sheer unreasoning terror again possessed me. I did
not know for certain what I feared: I simply feared. Then like a sudden
recollection, when one remembers a name which has long escaped the
memory, I knew what I feared. I feared Mrs Stone, whose grave with the
sinister inscription, “In evil memory,” I had so often seen in my dream,
just beyond the lawn which lay below my window. And then once more the
fear passed so completely that I wondered what there was to fear, and I
found myself, sober and quiet and sane, in the room in the tower, the
name of which I had so often heard in my dream, and the scene of which
was so familiar.
I looked round it with a certain sense of proprietorship, and found that
nothing had been changed from the dreaming nights in which I knew it so
well. Just to the left of the door was the bed, lengthways along the
wall, with the head of it in the angle. In a line with it was the
fireplace and a small bookcase; opposite the door the outer wall was
pierced by two lattice-paned windows, between which stood the
dressing-table, while ranged along the fourth wall was the washing-stand
and a big cupboard. My luggage had already been unpacked, for the
furniture of dressing and undressing lay orderly on the wash-stand and
toilet-table, while my dinner clothes were spread out on the coverlet of
the bed. And then, with a sudden start of unexplained dismay, I saw that
there were two rather conspicuous objects which I had not seen before in
my dreams: one a life-sized oil-painting of Mrs Stone, the other a
black-and-white sketch of Jack Stone, representing him as he had
appeared to me only a week before in the last of the series of these
repeated dreams, a rather secret and evil-looking man of about thirty.
His picture hung between the windows, looking straight across the room
to the other portrait, which hung at the side of the bed. At that I
looked next, and as I looked I felt once more the horror of nightmare
seize me.
It represented Mrs Stone as I had seen her last in my dreams: old and
withered and white haired. But in spite of the evident feebleness of
body, a dreadful exuberance and vitality shone through the envelope of
flesh, an exuberance wholly malign, a vitality that foamed and frothed
with unimaginable evil. Evil beamed from the narrow, leering eyes; it
laughed in the demon-like mouth. The whole face was instinct with some
secret and appalling mirth; the hands, clasped together on the knee,
seemed shaking with suppressed and nameless glee. Then I saw also that
it was signed in the left-hand bottom corner, and wondering who the
artist could be, I looked more closely, and read the inscription, “Julia
Stone by Julia Stone.”
There came a tap at the door, and John Clinton entered.
“Got everything you want?” he asked.
“Rather more than I want,” said I, pointing to the picture.
He laughed.
“Hard-featured old lady,” he said. “By herself, too, I remember. Anyhow
she can’t have flattered herself much.”
“But don’t you see?” said I. “It’s scarcely a human face at all. It’s
the face of some witch, of some devil.”
He looked at it more closely.
“Yes; it isn’t very pleasant,” he said. “Scarcely a bedside manner, eh?
Yes; I can imagine getting the nightmare if I went to sleep with that
close by my bed. I’ll have it taken down if you like.”
“I really wish you would,” I said.
He rang the bell, and with the help of a servant we detached the
picture and carried it out on to the landing, and put it with its face
to the wall.
“By Jove, the old lady is a weight,” said John, mopping his forehead. “I
wonder if she had something on her mind.”
The extraordinary weight of the picture had struck me too. I was about
to reply, when I caught sight of my own hand. There was blood on it, in
considerable quantities, covering the whole palm.
“I’ve cut myself somehow,” said I.
John gave a little startled exclamation.
“Why, I have too,” he said.
Simultaneously the footman took out his handkerchief and wiped his hand
with it. I saw that there was blood also on his handkerchief.
John and I went back into the tower room and washed the blood off; but
neither on his hand nor on mine was there the slightest trace of a
scratch or cut. It seemed to me that, having ascertained this, we both,
by a sort of tacit consent, did not allude to it again. Something in my
case had dimly occurred to me that I did not wish to think about. It was
but a conjecture, but I fancied that I knew the same thing had occurred
to him.
The heat and oppression of the air, for the storm we had expected was
still undischarged, increased very much after dinner, and for some time
most of the party, among whom were John Clinton and myself, sat outside
on the path bounding the lawn, where we had had tea. The night was
absolutely dark, and no twinkle of star or moon ray could penetrate the
pall of cloud that overset the sky. By degrees our assembly thinned, the
women went up to bed, men dispersed to the smoking or billiard room, and
by eleven o’clock my host and I were the only two left. All the evening
I thought that he had something on his mind, and as soon as we were
alone he spoke.
“The man who helped us with the picture had blood on his hand, too, did
you notice?” he said. “I asked him just now if he had cut himself, and
he said he supposed he had, but that he could find no mark of it. Now
where did that blood come from?”
By dint of telling myself that I was not going to think about it, I had
succeeded in not doing so, and I did not want, especially just at
bedtime, to be reminded of it.
“I don’t know,” said I, “and I don’t really care so long as the picture
of Mrs Julia Stone is not by my bed.”
He got up.
“But it’s odd,” he said. “Ha! Now you’ll see another odd thing.”
A dog of his, an Irish terrier by breed, had come out of the house as we
talked. The door behind us into the hall was open, and a bright oblong
of light shone across the lawn to the iron gate which led on to the
rough grass outside, where the walnut tree stood. I saw that the dog
had all his hackles up, bristling with rage and fright; his lips were
curled back from his teeth, as if he was ready to spring at something,
and he was growling to himself. He took not the slightest notice of his
master or me, but stiffly and tensely walked across the grass to the
iron gate. There he stood for a moment, looking through the bars and
still growling. Then of a sudden his courage seemed to desert him: he
gave one long howl, and scuttled back to the house with a curious
crouching sort of movement.
“He does that half-a-dozen times a day,” said John. “He sees something
which he both hates and fears.”
I walked to the gate and looked over it. Something was moving on the
grass outside, and soon a sound which I could not instantly identify
came to my ears. Then I remembered what it was: it was the purring of a
cat. I lit a match, and saw the purrer, a big blue Persian, walking
round and round in a little circle just outside the gate, stepping high
and ecstatically, with tail carried aloft like a banner. Its eyes were
bright and shining, and every now and then it put its head down and
sniffed at the grass.
I laughed.
“The end of that mystery, I am afraid,” I said. “Here’s a large cat
having Walpurgis night all alone.”
“Yes, that’s Darius,” said John. “He spends half the day and all night
there. But that’s not the end of the dog mystery, for Toby and he are
the best of friends, but the beginning of the cat mystery. What’s the
cat doing there? And why is Darius pleased, while Toby is
terror-stricken?”
At that moment I remembered the rather horrible detail of my dreams when
I saw through the gate, just where the cat was now, the white tombstone
with the sinister inscription. But before I could answer the rain began,
as suddenly and heavily as if a tap had been turned on, and
simultaneously the big cat squeezed through the bars of the gate, and
came leaping across the lawn to the house for shelter. Then it sat in
the doorway, looking out eagerly into the dark. It spat and struck at
John with its paw, as he pushed it in, in order to close the door.
Somehow, with the portrait of Julia Stone in the passage outside, the
room in the tower had absolutely no alarm for me, and as I went to bed,
feeling very sleepy and heavy, I had nothing more than interest for the
curious incident about our bleeding hands, and the conduct of the cat
and dog. The last thing I looked at before I put out my light was the
square empty space by my bed where the portrait had been. Here the paper
was of its original full tint of dark red: over the rest of the walls it
had faded. Then I blew out my candle and instantly fell asleep.
My awaking was equally instantaneous, and I sat bolt upright in bed
under the impression that some bright light had been flashed in my face,
though it was now absolutely pitch dark. I knew exactly where I was, in
the room which I had dreaded in dreams, but no horror that I ever felt
when asleep approached the fear that now invaded and froze my brain.
Immediately after a peal of thunder crackled just above the house, but
the probability that it was only a flash of lightning which awoke me
gave no reassurance to my galloping heart. Something I knew was in the
room with me, and instinctively I put out my right hand, which was
nearest the wall, to keep it away. And my hand touched the edge of a
picture-frame hanging close to me.
I sprang out of bed, upsetting the small table that stood by it, and I
heard my watch, candle, and matches clatter on to the floor. But for the
moment there was no need of light, for a blinding flash leaped out of
the clouds, and showed me that by my bed again hung the picture of Mrs
Stone. And instantly the room went into blackness again. But in that
flash I saw another thing also, namely a figure that leaned over the end
of my bed, watching me. It was dressed in some close-clinging white
garment, spotted and stained with mould, and the face was that of the
portrait.
Overhead the thunder cracked and roared, and when it ceased and the
deathly stillness succeeded, I heard the rustle of movement coming
nearer me, and, more horrible yet, perceived an odour of corruption and
decay. And then a hand was laid on the side of my neck, and close beside
my ear I heard quick-taken, eager breathing. Yet I knew that this thing,
though it could be perceived by touch, by smell, by eye and by ear, was
still not of this earth, but something that had passed out of the body
and had power to make itself manifest. Then a voice, already familiar to
me, spoke.
“I knew you would come to the room in the tower,” it said. “I have been
long waiting for you. At last you have come. To-night I shall feast;
before long we will feast together.”
And the quick breathing came closer to me; I could feel it on my neck.
At that the terror, which I think had paralyzed me for the moment, gave
way to the wild instinct of self-preservation. I hit wildly with both
arms, kicking out at the same moment, and heard a little animal-squeal,
and something soft dropped with a thud beside me. I took a couple of
steps forward, nearly tripping up over whatever it was that lay there,
and by the merest good-luck found the handle of the door. In another
second I ran out on the landing, and had banged the door behind me.
Almost at the same moment I heard a door open somewhere below, and John
Clinton, candle in hand, came running upstairs.
“What is it?” he said. “I sleep just below you, and heard a noise as
if--Good heavens, there’s blood on your shoulder.”
I stood there, so he told me afterwards, swaying from side to side,
white as a sheet, with the mark on my shoulder as if a hand covered with
blood had been laid there.
“It’s in there,” I said, pointing. “She, you know. The portrait is in
there, too, hanging up on the place we took it from.”
At that he laughed.
“My dear fellow, this is mere nightmare,” he said.
He pushed by me, and opened the door, I standing there simply inert with
terror, unable to stop him, unable to move.
“Phew! What an awful smell,” he said.
Then there was silence; he had passed out of my sight behind the open
door. Next moment he came out again, as white as myself, and instantly
shut it.
“Yes, the portrait’s there,” he said, “and on the floor is a thing--a
thing spotted with earth, like what they bury people in. Come away,
quick, come away.”
How I got downstairs I hardly know. An awful shuddering and nausea of
the spirit rather than of the flesh had seized me, and more than once he
had to place my feet upon the steps, while every now and then he cast
glances of terror and apprehension up the stairs. But in time we came
to his dressing-room on the floor below, and there I told him what I
have here described.
* * * * *
The sequel can be made short; indeed, some of my readers have perhaps
already guessed what it was, if they remember that inexplicable affair
of the churchyard at West Fawley, some eight years ago, where an attempt
was made three times to bury the body of a certain woman who had
committed suicide. On each occasion the coffin was found in the course
of a few days again protruding from the ground. After the third attempt,
in order that the thing should not be talked about, the body was buried
elsewhere in unconsecrated ground. Where it was buried was just outside
the iron gate of the garden belonging to the house where this woman had
lived. She had committed suicide in a room at the top of the tower in
that house. Her name was Julia Stone.
Subsequently the body was again secretly dug up, and the coffin was
found to be full of blood.
THE DUST-CLOUD
The big French windows were open on to the lawn, and, dinner being over,
two or three of the party who were staying for the week at the end of
August with the Combe-Martins had strolled out on to the terrace to look
at the sea, over which the moon, large and low, was just rising and
tracing a path of pale gold from horizon to shore, while others, less
lunar of inclination, had gone in search of bridge or billiards. Coffee
had come round immediately after dessert, and the end of dinner,
according to the delectable custom of the house, was as informal as the
end of breakfast. Every one, that is to say, remained or went away,
smoked, drank port or abstained, according to his personal tastes. Thus,
on this particular evening it so happened that Harry Combe-Martin and I
were very soon left alone in the dining-room, because we were talking
unmitigated motor “shop,” and the rest of the party (small wonder) were
bored with it, and had left us. The shop was home-shop, so to speak, for
it was almost entirely concerned with the manifold perfections of the
new six-cylinder Napier which my host in a moment of extravagance, which
he did not in the least regret, had just purchased; in which, too, he
proposed to take me over to lunch at a friend’s house near Hunstanton on
the following day. He observed with legitimate pride that an early start
would not be necessary as the distance was only eighty miles and there
were no police traps.
“Queer things these big motors are,” he said, relapsing into
generalities as we rose to go. “Often I can scarcely believe that my new
car is merely a machine. It seems to me to possess an independent life
of its own. It is really much more like a thoroughbred with a
wonderfully fine mouth.”
“And the moods of a thoroughbred?” I asked.
“No; it’s got an excellent temper, I’m glad to say. It doesn’t mind
being checked, or even stopped, when it’s going its best. Some of these
big cars can’t stand that. They get sulky--I assure you it is literally
true--if they are checked too often.”
He paused on his way to ring the bell. “Guy Elphinstone’s car, for
instance,” he said: “it was a bad-tempered brute, a violent, vicious
beast of a car.”
“What make?” I asked.
“Twenty-five horse-power Amédée. They are a fretful strain of car; too
thin, not enough bone--and bone is very good for the nerves. The brute
liked running over a chicken or a rabbit, though perhaps it was less the
car’s ill-temper than Guy’s, poor chap. Well, he paid for it--he paid
to the uttermost farthing. Did you know him?”
“No; but surely I have heard the name. Ah, yes, he ran over a child, did
he not?”
“Yes,” said Harry, “and then smashed up against his own park gates.”
“Killed, wasn’t he?”
“Oh yes, killed instantly, and the car just a heap of splinters. There’s
an odd story about it, I’m told, in the village: rather in your line.”
“Ghosts?” I asked.
“Yes, the ghost of his motor-car. Seems almost too up-to-date, doesn’t
it?”
“And what’s the story?” I demanded.
“Why, just this. His place was outside the village of Bircham, ten miles
out from Norwich; and there’s a long straight bit of road there--that’s
where he ran over the child--and a couple of hundred yards farther on, a
rather awkward turn into the park gates. Well, a month or two ago, soon
after the accident, one old gaffer in the village swore he had seen a
motor there coming full tilt along the road, but without a sound, and it
disappeared at the lodge gates of the park, which were shut. Soon after
another said he had heard a motor whirl by him at the same place,
followed by a hideous scream, but he saw nothing.”
“The scream is rather horrible,” said I.
“Ah, I see what you mean! I only thought of his syren. Guy had a syren
on his exhaust, same as I have. His had a dreadful frightened sort of
wail, and always made me feel creepy.”
“And is that all the story?” I asked: “that one old man thought he saw a
noiseless motor, and another thought he heard an invisible one?”
Harry flicked the ash off his cigarette into the grate. “Oh dear no!” he
said. “Half a dozen of them have seen something or heard something. It
is quite a heavily authenticated yarn.”
“Yes, and talked over and edited in the public-house,” I said.
“Well, not a man of them will go there after dark. Also the lodge-keeper
gave notice a week or two after the accident. He said he was always
hearing a motor stop and hoot outside the lodge, and he was kept running
out at all hours of the night to see what it was.”
“And what was it?”
“It wasn’t anything. Simply nothing there. He thought it rather uncanny,
anyhow, and threw up a good post. Besides, his wife was always hearing a
child scream, and while her man toddled out to the gate she would go and
see whether the kids were all right. And the kids themselves----”
“Ah, what of them?” I asked.
“They kept coming to their mother, asking who the little girl was who
walked up and down the road and would not speak to them or play with
them.”
“It’s a many-sided story,” I said. “All the witnesses seem to have heard
and seen different things.”
“Yes, that is just what to my mind makes the yarn so good,” he said.
“Personally I don’t take much stock in spooks at all. But given that
there are such things as spooks, and given that the death of the child
and the death of Guy have caused spooks to play about there, it seems to
me a very good point that different people should be aware of different
phenomena. One hears the car, another sees it, one hears the child
scream, another sees the child. How does that strike you?”
This, I am bound to say, was a new view to me, and the more I thought of
it the more reasonable it appeared. For the vast majority of mankind
have all those occult senses by which is perceived the spiritual world
(which, I hold, is thick and populous around us), sealed up, as it were;
in other words, the majority of mankind never hear or see a ghost at
all. Is it not, then, very probable that of the remainder--those, in
fact, to whom occult experiences have happened or can happen--few should
have every sense unsealed, but that some should have the unsealed ear,
others the unsealed eye--that some should be clairaudient, others
clairvoyant?
“Yes, it strikes me as reasonable,” I said. “Can’t you take me over
there?”
“Certainly! If you will stop till Friday I’ll take you over on
Thursday. The others all go that day, so that we can get there after
dark.”
I shook my head. “I can’t stop till Friday, I’m afraid,” I said. “I must
leave on Thursday. But how about to-morrow? Can’t we take it on the way
to or from Hunstanton?”
“No; it’s thirty miles out of our way. Besides, to be at Bircham after
dark means that we shouldn’t get back here till midnight. And as host to
my guests----”
“Ah! things are only heard and seen after dark, are they?” I asked.
“That makes it so much less interesting. It is like a séance where all
lights are put out.”
“Well, the accident happened at night,” he said. “I don’t know the
rules, but that may have some bearing on it, I should think.”
I had one question more in the back of my mind, but I did not like to
ask it. At least, I wanted information on this subject without appearing
to ask for it.
“Neither do I know the rules of motors,” I said; “and I don’t understand
you when you say that Guy Elphinstone’s machine was an irritable,
cross-grained brute, that liked running over chickens and rabbits. But I
think you subsequently said that the irritability may have been the
irritability of its owner. Did he mind being checked?”
“It made him blind-mad if it happened often,” said Harry. “I shall never
forget a drive I had with him once: there were hay-carts and
perambulators every hundred yards. It was perfectly ghastly; it was like
being with a madman. And when we got inside his gate, his dog came
running out to meet him. He did not go an inch out of his course: it was
worse than that--he went for it, just grinding his teeth with rage. I
never drove with him again.”
He stopped a moment, guessing what might be in my mind. “I say, you
mustn’t think--you mustn’t think----” he began.
“No, of course not,” said I.
Harry Combe-Martin’s house stood close to the weather-eaten, sandy
cliffs of the Suffolk shore, which are being incessantly gnawed away by
the hunger of the insatiable sea. Fathoms deep below it, and now many
hundred yards out, lies what was once the second port in England; but
now of the ancient town of Dunwich, and of its seven great churches,
nothing remains but one, and that ruinous and already half destroyed by
the falling cliff and the encroachments of the sea. Foot by foot, it too
is disappearing, and of the graveyard which surrounded it more than half
is gone, so that from the face of the sandy cliff on which it stands
there stick out like straws in glass, as Dante says, the bones of those
who were once committed there to the kindly and stable earth.
Whether it was the remembrance of this rather grim spectacle as I had
seen it that afternoon, or whether Harry’s story had caused some
trouble in my brain, or whether it was merely that the keen bracing air
of this place, to one who had just come from the sleepy languor of the
Norfolk Broads, kept me sleepless, I do not know; but, anyhow, the
moment I put out my light that night and got into bed, I felt that all
the footlights and gas-jets in the internal theatre of my mind sprang
into flame, and that I was very vividly and alertly awake. It was in
vain that I counted a hundred forwards and a hundred backwards, that I
pictured to myself a flock of visionary sheep coming singly through a
gap in an imaginary hedge, and tried to number their monotonous and
uniform countenances, that I played noughts and crosses with myself,
that I marked out scores of double lawn-tennis courts,--for with each
repetition of these supposedly soporific exercises I only became more
intensely wakeful. It was not in remote hope of sleep that I continued
to repeat these weary performances long after their inefficacy was
proved to the hilt, but because I was strangely unwilling in this
timeless hour of the night to think about those protruding relics of
humanity; also I quite distinctly did not desire to think about that
subject with regard to which I had, a few hours ago, promised Harry that
I would not make it the subject of reflection. For these reasons I
continued during the black hours to practise these narcotic exercises of
the mind, knowing well that if I paused on the tedious treadmill my
thoughts, like some released spring, would fly back to rather gruesome
subjects. I kept my mind, in fact, talking loud to itself, so that it
should not hear what other voices were saying.
Then by degrees these absurd mental occupations became impossible; my
mind simply refused to occupy itself with them any longer; and next
moment I was thinking intently and eagerly, not about the bones
protruding from the gnawed section of sand-cliff, but about the subject
I had said I would not dwell upon. And like a flash it came upon me why
Harry had bidden me not think about it. Surely in order that I should
not come to the same conclusion as he had come to.
Now the whole question of “haunt”--haunted spots, haunted houses, and so
forth--has always seemed to me to be utterly unsolved, and to be neither
proved nor disproved to a satisfactory degree. From the earliest times,
certainly from the earliest known Egyptian records, there has been a
belief that the scene of a crime is often revisited, sometimes by the
spirit of him who has committed it--seeking rest, we must suppose, and
finding none; sometimes, and more inexplicably, by the spirit of his
victim, crying perhaps, like the blood of Abel, for vengeance. And
though the stories of these village gossips in the alehouse about
noiseless visions and invisible noises were all as yet unsifted and
unreliable, yet I could not help wondering if they (such as they were)
pointed to something authentic and to be classed under this head of
appearances. But more striking than the yarns of the gaffers seemed to
me the questions of the lodge-keeper’s children. How should children
have imagined the figure of a child that would not speak to them or play
with them? Perhaps it was a real child, a sulky child. Yes--perhaps. But
perhaps not. Then after this preliminary skirmish I found myself
settling down to the question that I had said I would not think about;
in other words, the possible origin of these phenomena interested me
more than the phenomena themselves. For what exactly had Guy
Elphinstone, that savage driver, done? Had or had not the death of the
child been entirely an accident, a thing (given he drove a motor at all)
outside his own control? Or had he, irritated beyond endurance at the
checks and delays of the day, not pulled up when it was just possible he
might have, but had run over the child as he would have run over a
rabbit or a hen, or even his own dog? And what, in any case, poor
wretched brute, must have been his thoughts in that terrible instant
that intervened between the child’s death and his own, when a moment
later he smashed into the closed gates of his own lodge? Was remorse
his--bitter, despairing contrition? That could hardly have been so; or
else surely, knowing only for certain that he had knocked a child down,
he would have stopped; he would have done his best, whatever that might
be, to repair the irreparable harm. But he had not stopped: he had gone
on, it seemed, at full speed, for on the collision the car had been
smashed into matchwood and steel shavings. Again, with double force, had
this dreadful thing been a complete accident, he would have stopped. So
then--most terrible question of all--had he, after making murder, rushed
on to what proved to be his own death, filled with some hellish glee at
what he had done? Indeed, as in the churchyard on the cliff, bones of
the buried stuck starkly out into the night.
* * * * *
The pale tired light of earliest morning had turned the window-blinds
into glimmering squares before I slept; and when I woke, the servant who
called me was already rattling them briskly up on their rollers, and
letting the calm serenity of the August day stream into the room.
Through the open windows poured in sunlight and sea-wind, the scent of
flowers and the song of birds; and each and all were wonderfully
reassuring, banishing the hooded forms that had haunted the night, and I
thought of the disquietude of the dark hours as a traveller may think of
the billows and tempests of the ocean over which he has safely
journeyed, unable, now that they belong to the limbo of the past, to
recall his qualms and tossings with any vivid uneasiness. Not without a
feeling of relief, too, did I dwell on the knowledge that I was
definitely not going to visit this equivocal spot. Our drive to-day, as
Harry had said, would not take us within thirty miles of it, and
to-morrow I but went to the station and away. Though a thorough-paced
seeker after truth might, no doubt, have regretted that the laws of time
and space did not permit him to visit Bircham after the sinister dark
had fallen, and test whether for him there was visible or audible truth
in the tales of the village gossips, I was conscious of no such regret.
Bircham and its fables had given me a very bad night, and I was
perfectly aware that I did not in the least want to go near it, though
yesterday I had quite truthfully said I should like to do so. In this
brightness, too, of sun and sea-wind I felt none of the _malaise_ at my
waking moments which a sleepless night usually gives me; I felt
particularly well, particularly pleased to be alive, and also, as I have
said, particularly content not to be going to Bircham. I was quite
satisfied to leave my curiosity unsatisfied.
* * * * *