with pillars of pale blue marble mosaic, and little nooks and corners
where one could drink cocktails before summoning up the energy to
dive in. It was a very hot summer and the bath was in great demand,
especially after tennis. On one of these occasions we all assembled,
in dressing-gowns of varying gorgeousness, and plunged into the water.
Enter Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She herself was in a tea-gown, having no
intention of bathing. Lying on a couch, she surveyed the splashing
throng. Suddenly, as a pretty girl in a _décolletée_ bathing dress
scrambled up on the diving board the great voice rang out:
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t appear like that before the man you loved!’
I don’t know what happened. I only know that the two never spoke to one
another again.
And yet, when one got her by herself, she was the most fascinating of
creatures. She was, at the time, moving into a little house near by,
and whenever the opportunity occurred, we would go over to assist her
in her task. It is probable that the ‘assistance’ considerably delayed
her entry into possession, for though we had all of us very decided
ideas upon house decoration, we had not the remotest idea of how to
carry them out. I remember standing in a small and dishevelled room for
nearly an hour, while we all argued exactly where a set of the works
of Bernard Shaw (which the author had given her) should be placed.
Finally, with a gesture that would have done credit to an empress,
Mrs. Patrick Campbell swept the whole lot on to the floor, drew from
her pocket the manuscript of a one-act melodrama by Clemence Dane,
and tramped round the room reciting it, her golden voice echoing over
the empty house. She must have quite demoralized the young man who
was putting in a new bath, and she certainly created havoc among the
various vases and oddments with which the floor was strewn.
After that, we decided that we would leave the house to itself for an
hour or two, and go into the village to buy garden implements. I wish
you could have seen Mrs. Patrick Campbell stalking into that provincial
ironmonger’s shop. She stood in the entrance, drawing her furs around
her, swept out her hand and pointed to some extraordinary instrument
covered with knobs and spikes (probably designed for the uprooting of
turnips).
‘What,’ she boomed, ‘is that?’
The man, like a startled rabbit, tried to give her some indication of
its use.
‘Give it to me,’ she cried.
The next thing was a rake. She asked for a r-r-rake, rolling her r’s
and her eyes as though she were asking for some esoteric poison. When
she held the rake at arm’s length she reminded one irresistibly of a
Britannia of the decadence. Choppers, trowels, insecticide, squirting
things--enough to staff a place four times the size of her own--were
all ordered and bundled into the car, so that when eventually we set
out for home we must have looked like a party of _sans-culottes_
departing to arm their local legion.
The actual use of these instruments was never fully discovered. The
rake was of course a simple matter, and was employed with great aplomb
in removing the remaining gravel from the centre of the drive to the
sides, where it served as a very effectual choker of the drains. The
clippers also wrought confusion with the grass borders, and became
caked with earth and grit. But the spiked thing remained a complete
mystery.
I never understood how Mrs. Patrick Campbell wrote her autobiography.
When I saw her it was apparently due at the publishers towards the
end of the next month, although not a word of it had been written. She
would suddenly get up in the middle of a conversation, and rush away to
her room saying, ‘Now, I am going to write.’ But half an hour later she
would invariably be back again, booming at us from the sofa.
This habit of leaving things to the last moment undoubtedly explains,
to a large extent, the fact that her later career has not been marked
with the same triumph as she enjoyed during her earlier years, in spite
of the fact that she is still the superb genius, shining with a dark
radiance that hardly any of her younger rivals possesses.
Does she allow that genius to run to waste? I wonder. She does not
appear to have the capacity for taking pains. Philip Moeller, the
author of _George Sand_, told me that she was anything but word-perfect
in the title-rôle. ‘At the final dress rehearsal,’ he said, ‘she was
sweeping about the stage with the text in her hand, reading it, word by
word. She carried it off somehow, by gagging--magnificent gagging, if
you like--but still, you can’t expect to play a part on those lines.’
A pity, a decided pity. For so fine and sensitive an artist must have
suffered tortures when she first saw inferior artists taking her place.
And when she had to appear at the music-halls it must have been like
putting a queen in a pillory. I once heard a marvellous story of her in
this connection.
It is alleged to have occurred at some London music-hall where--sadly
to relate--she had to share the honours with some performing sea-lions.
Think of it! Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who had swept London off its
feet in _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, having to appear in the unworthy
company of beasts of that nature, which probably eat their young and
sleep all the winter. These animals were apparently incapable of
appreciating true art, for during the whole of her act (which preceded
their own), they made the most appalling noises off stage, booming and
bellowing for food. They were, of course, kept hungry in order that
they might go through their tricks with proper alacrity.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell, according to the story, put up with the
sea-lions for two performances, but after that, she had had enough.
On the following evening she therefore paid an early visit to the
theatre, a strange bundle under her arm. In this bundle was a packet
of succulent fish with which she proceeded to feed the sea-lions one
by one, addressing them, as she did so, in terms of great affection.
After a couple of fish the bellowing ceased, and gave way to contented
licking of lips....
Mrs. Patrick Campbell went through her act in a deathly silence that
night. But when the sea-lions came on, the general impression of the
audience was that it was a very poor show.
* * * * *
I cannot better introduce the other lady who at this time so impressed
me than by quoting a very penetrating sentence that was written about
one of her books by Mr. Middleton Murray. It referred to _Vera_ (by the
authoress of _Elizabeth and Her German Garden_), and he called it ‘A
Wuthering Heights written by a Jane Austen.’
For Lady Russell--if one may be so unkind as to strip from her the mask
of anonymity which she is always so careful to preserve--is just like
that. It is as though she dwelt in an early Victorian drawing-room,
listening to some passionate dialogue of life that was being carried
on outside the window. The voices rise and fall, the rain splashes
against the bright panes, the wind moans and whistles round the stoutly
built walls. Then, there is a lull, and in the silence may be heard the
scratching of her little quill pen, transcribing the violent things
she has heard in a tiny, spidery handwriting, catching the thunder in
a polished phrase. And when she has finished writing, there, on the
paper, is a story as full of tension, fierce and frightening as any
that dwells in the broken, passionate sentences of Emily Brontë.
When one meets her, inevitably she suggests Dresden China, with her
tiny voice, tiny hands, tiny face, tiny manners. And then suddenly,
with a shock, you realize that the Dresden China is hollow, and is
filled with gunpowder. Not that Lady Russell will tell you. You simply
sense it, and stand back a little, wondering.
After I had returned to London, I was trying to endure one of those
dull Septembers which seem to concentrate in themselves all the heat
and stuffiness of a summer that has outstayed its welcome, when
somebody rang up and said, ‘Come to lunch. I want you to meet a very
charming lady.’
I went to lunch, and there were certainly several very charming ladies,
but one knew them all before. Until, twenty minutes late, the door
opened, and a little figure with blue eyes floated across the floor
saying, ‘Du forgive me, will yiu? I feel I must be late.’ And then
everything was changed.
There really ought to be some sort of musical notation for giving the
exact timbre of people’s voices. Lady Russell’s is a delicious voice,
like a dove that has become slightly demoralized by perching too long
on a French hat. Her ‘U’ sounds are startlingly French, and yiu,
pronounced _à la française_, is the only way you can write it. She does
not really talk, she croons aloud. And here again, one comes up against
the Austen-Brontë combination. No other woman could possibly deliver
herself of such remarks in so utterly dulcet a tone.
It was at the time when her (?) book _In the Mountains_ was being so
well reviewed, and there was just enough doubt as to whether she really
had written it to lend piquancy to the discussion.
‘In the Mountains?’ she said. ‘It sounds like a Bliu Guide.’
‘You wrote it--you _know_ you wrote it.’
‘_Yiu_ may know I wrote it. I haven’t even read it.’ But if _yiu_ like
it, it must be improper. So I shan’t read it.’
She swore till the very last that she did not write it.
‘I couldn’t have written it, could I, because I only published a book
last year, and I write terribly slowly. Scratch out all the time. I
want to write a play.’
‘Why don’t you?’
She sighed. ‘It’s so difficult to know what’s going to happen to a
play. Yiu always know with a novel that it will be published, but with
a play yiu never know, du yiu? I once had a play produced and I was so
thrilled that I used to go every night and sit all by myself in the
pit, thinking “What a clever girl am I.” But I think the little man at
the door began to think I must be in love with him and so I stopped.
And so did the play.’
Suddenly--(this was after lunch)--‘Let’s write a play _now_.’
‘What sort of a play?’
‘A play with heaps and heaps of tiny scenes, all lasting only about
five minutes. With Bach fugues in between. Beautifully lit. Tiny
tragedies. Tiny comedies. Like the things that happen in one’s life.
Some of the plays might be silent. And then--oh, _du_ lets’--and then
after each funny little emotion, one would always have the fugue to
recall one back to life.’
It sounds a fascinating idea, and I wish she would do it. Perhaps she
will. So that if ever a unique entertainment by an anonymous writer is
produced in London, of the type sketched above, you will know who is
responsible for it.
Lady Russell has her own way of administering criticism to bad
writers--the sort of way which makes one swear never to do it again.
In one of my novels, which she had read, there comes a passage of a
very lurid and foolish nature, where a villainous vicar strikes an
adventuress across the face. One develops fairly quickly, and I knew,
almost as soon as the book was published, that this passage was rotten
stuff. I met Lady Russell shortly after she read it and she said, ‘I
_du_ like your book. And I _loved_ the bad old man who hit the girl on
the mouth.’ Silence. Utter silence. And then a laugh. I went straight
home and threw that silly novel into the fire.
But that is not nearly so damning as she can be. I shall never forget
my thrill of delight when I heard of her quite classic rebuke to one of
the world’s most tiresome women. The scene had better remain veiled in
mystery, but one can say that she had several amusing people staying
with her. There suddenly arrived in the neighbourhood Lady --, who, as
everybody who knows her will tell you, will go miles in any weather
to be near a celebrity. She was full of her latest discovery, a very
decorative young soldier, who had won far more than his share of medals
in the war. Lady -- talked about him till everybody felt inclined to
scream: how she had lunched with him in Paris, how he had done this,
that and the other. ‘And do you know,’ she added, in a vibrating voice,
‘he was wounded in sixteen places!’
Lady Russell looked at her with a plaintive smile. ‘I didn’t know men
_had_ so many places,’ she said.
It would be interesting to know what she really thought of life, or
failing that, what she really thought of her own work, but very few
people have ever managed to get behind the mask of anonymity, and they
all come back with different stories of what they have seen. One thing
I do know, and that is that _Vera_ _had_ to be written. The terrible
brute of a man, the feeling of suspense which hangs over the pages like
a menace--they were as inevitable as a human birth.
‘Did you like writing that book?’ I asked her once.
‘I hated it,’ she said, in a whisper. And then, looking down at the
floor, ‘Isn’t he a brute? An absolute brute? Have you ever known
anybody so horrible?’ She shuddered as though she were talking of a
very real person.
Whatever one may say of her, the fact remains that she occupies a
place in modern literature that is unique, because to the public she
is only a pen, and not a person. When they think of anybody like
Sheila Kaye-Smith, they call to mind bobbed hair, black eyebrows, and
a cottage on the Sussex downs. When they think (as they apparently
sometimes do) of Hall Caine, they call up visions of a beard, private
suites at the Savoy, and countless mysterious legends of his doings
in the Isle of Man. When they hear of Stephen McKenna it is always
with the knowledge that he has either just been to or returned from
the West Indies and is either going or has gone to some party or other
in London. But they never think at all of Lady Russell, because they
simply do not know she exists. They are caught up in the fascination of
her work, they wonder for a moment what manner of man or woman produced
it. And all they have to guide them is a blank title-page.
CHAPTER NINE
In which We Meet a Ghost
At this point in the narrative it seems fitting to introduce a
spiritual element which, up to the moment, has not been very noticeable.
You may have seen, two Christmases ago, a sensational article in the
_Weekly Dispatch_, by one Lord St. Audries, telling of a ghostly
midnight adventure which he had experienced with two friends in a
Devonshire house. The article made something of a sensation at the
time. The _Daily Mail_ devoted a leading article to the subject,
and many American papers quoted it in full. The full story of that
adventure, however, has never been told. And since the two other
conspirators mentioned in the article were my brother and myself, it
seems that the time has now come when the true story of that very
remarkable evening may be told in full.
It was the first week in June when Peter--as it is shorter to call
him--came down, and it was in the third week in June that the thing
happened. In case you might imagine that the atmosphere of my home
was favourable to ghosts, it is necessary to state that we had lived,
during those two intervening weeks, the most distressingly healthy of
lives. Most of my morning had been spent in wrestling with the foreign
policy of Queen Elizabeth or the political theories of Mr. Aristotle,
a task that was not made any the more pleasant by the thud, thud of
tennis balls which came from the lawns below. But in the afternoon we
would always set out together, sometimes to motor up to Dartmoor and
picnic in heather, but more often down to the sea, where we bathed,
and spent the long hot afternoons lazing about on the beach.
One Sunday--the last Sunday of Peter’s visit--we all went to evensong.
It was a glorious evening when, at about seven o’clock, we came out
of church, and we decided to walk home, taking the short cut by the
road over the hill. This road, I may say, runs straight from the
church, past various houses, until it reaches the gates which guard the
approach to our own home.
A full moon hung over the hills--a little pale in the fresh light of
dusk--and after we had been walking a few minutes, Peter stopped,
looked over a wall and said:
‘What a fearful house.’
We looked with him. It was a house which I will call Weir. It had been
untenanted for nearly thirty years and was falling to rack and ruin.
The roof had long ago disappeared, the paint was peeling from the
faded green shutters, and as we looked a bat flew out of one of the
second-story windows, showing that the glass had also vanished.
‘Why has it been allowed to get like that?’ asked Peter.
‘Haunted,’ said my brother. ‘At least, that’s the legend.’ And then he
told him how nobody could ever live in it, how strange sounds, screams
and the pattering of hurried feet were heard by passers-by, how it was
narrated that in years gone by there had been a terrible murder there,
in fact, all the usual things which are told in Christmas numbers of
popular magazines.
Peter interrupted him.
‘I’m for going in,’ he said.
‘What on earth for? You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’
‘No. Nor disbelieve in them. But, it would be rather fun.’
And that was how it began, and how we found ourselves, three hours
later, walking back over the road by which we had come.
The road was quite deserted, for the town went to bed at early hours,
and as we swung along, wearing our flannels, for it was a hot night,
I took a certain interest in the state of mind of my two companions.
My brother was, frankly, a little on edge. He had a candle in one
pocket, and a crucifix in the other, to meet the respective powers of
darkness with which we might be confronted. Peter was just--how shall
I say?--alert. He had had experiences which might be described as
psychical in the past, and he was more or less prepared for anything
that might happen. And I was just enjoying the whole thing, quite
confident that we should see nothing at all, but none the less amused
by the possibility that, perhaps, if we were lucky....
We clambered over the wall, for the gate was locked, walked down some
steps, through some bushes, and round to the front of the house. It
stood about thirty yards back from the road, and the main grounds
stretched out in front. As it was built on sloping ground, the tangled
grass and shrubberies in front were on a level with the basement,
through which we had to enter. The first floor was on a level with the
road behind us.
It was an absolutely still night, so still that the poplar trees
behind us were etched against the moon in a motionless trelliswork of
silver leaves.
‘Come on,’ said Peter. We decided to enter the house through one of
the windows in front of us. The glass was broken, and there was no
difficulty in raising the sash. We opened the window and as soon as
we had done so, it fell down again with a bang. The sash had long ago
rotted.
‘Give me your stick,’ said my brother. ‘I’ll prop this thing up. We
might have to come out in a hurry, and we don’t want to crash into a
lot of broken glass.’
I gave him the stick, and he wedged the window firmly into position. It
is lucky that he did so.
We clambered in one by one, groping our way in the semi-darkness.
As soon as the candle was lit, a room of indescribable melancholy
flickered into view. The plaster had fallen in great lumps from the
ceiling, so that we walked with a crunching noise that echoed all over
the house. Wooden boxes and planks strewed the floor. The wall-paper
had almost all peeled from the walls, though some of it still clung in
strips, like pieces of decaying skin.
‘Where?’ said Peter.
‘Upstairs, I think--don’t you?’
‘Right.’
We spoke in whispers, as though afraid of disturbing something that
might be lying asleep above, and one by one made our way up a narrow
twisting staircase that led into the main hall.
In this hall we paused, undetermined where to go next. Right before us
was the front door, and on the left, the two principal rooms of the
house. Both of their doors were open, and through them one caught sight
of a floor on to which the moonlight poured abundantly. To the right
was a corridor leading to some rooms that were shrouded in darkness.
Just by us was the continuation of the staircase, which in the old
days had led up to the rooms above, but which now led (after turning a
corner beyond which we could not see) straight up to the sky.
We began to make a tour of the house, and chose, firstly, one of the
big rooms on the left. There was hardly any need for a candle here,
since the moonlight was so brilliant, but we took it for the sake of
dark corners. We found absolutely nothing. Only a big, silent room,
looking out on to the garden, with a single cupboard, which was empty.
A most prosaic room it must have been in daylight, and even now, there
was nothing particularly alarming about it.
‘So far, so good,’ said my brother.
‘Let’s try the other room now,’ I said.
I went outside, and stood in the hall, waiting for them to follow.
I was not feeling ‘creepy,’ although I should not in the least mind
admitting it. As a matter of fact, I was rather disappointed that
nothing had happened. I stood there waiting, looking into the darkness
of the corridor on the right.
And then suddenly, the first alarm. It was not in the least the most
important thing that happened that night, but since it happened to me,
I take a particular interest in it.
As I stood there, I was thinking in the odd, inconsequent way in which
one does think, of an essay which I had been writing that morning, when
suddenly I thought--‘I am thinking very slowly. My brain does not seem
to be working properly.’ And then, with a thrill of dismay I realized
that exactly the same physical process was taking place in my head as
takes place on those dreary occasions when I have been forced to have
an anæsthetic. The left side of the brain starts to be covered with
a black film (almost like the shutter of a camera), which gradually
closes over, from left to right. While this is going on I can think
perfectly clearly with the right side. Thought and consciousness do not
cease until the film has closed completely over. Then, everything is
blackness.
This was now happening to me, but with two differences. The film was
spreading over my brain far more quickly, and the agent which was
responsible for it was not anæsthetic but a force which I can only
describe as a form of suction, coming very distinctly from a room down
the corridor on the right.
‘Hullo! What’s up?’
I saw them standing before me. With every effort of concentration, I
managed to say, in an absurdly stilted voice: ‘The candle. Quick, the
candle. Outside.’ I found the candle placed in my hand. My feet carried
me downstairs, I half fell to the window, and then--the film closed
over.
A minute later I found myself sitting up on the grass, feeling
absolutely normal again, though strangely tired. What had happened? It
was exceedingly difficult to say. Nothing--and yet, everything. All I
knew was, that here in the garden I was safe. But inside....
‘I wish to goodness you wouldn’t go in again,’ I said.
However, they were now more determined than ever to make a thorough
investigation, and after waiting to see that I was all right, they
clambered once more through the window.
Not one corner, not one crevice of that house did they leave
unexamined. It was a very simple house to explore, because apart from
the fact that the only possible entrance was by this particular window,
the rooms themselves were square and stoutly built, and there were
but few cupboards, and absolutely no mysterious closets or any other
contrivances which might be thought to harbour ‘ghosts,’ or even,
failing a ghost, a harmless tramp.
They spent about twenty-five minutes over their examination, and came
out reporting that they had been everywhere--including the little room
from which I had felt the ‘influence,’ and had found absolutely nothing.
‘And now,’ said Peter, ‘I’m going in _alone_.’
‘Alone? Good Lord, man, haven’t you had enough of this business?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I believe Paul’s an “anti-influence.” Sort of
lightning conductor. He keeps them off. Perhaps it’s the crucifix,’ he
laughed. ‘Anyway, you remember that nothing happened to you until you
went out in the hall away from him. And nothing happened to me, perhaps
because we were together all the time.’
We tried to persuade him not to go. But he insisted, and we let him go
in on the condition that he should take the candle, and that we should
whistle to him every few minutes, while he would whistle back, to show
that he was still there.
Once more, for the third time, he went into that house, while we sat
down on the grass and listened to the sound of his footsteps as he
clambered up the stairs. We heard him walk across the hall and sit
down, as I judged, on the bottom of the steps, waiting. Then there came
a faint whistle, and we whistled back.
Silence. We whistled again, and the answering echo sounded clearly.
Another whistle, another answer. And so the minutes passed away.
Then--terror!