connected with Mrs. Acres, which those words mistily evoked. But next
moment that train of thought was cut short, for the old and sinister
legend about the Gate-house came into my mind as accounting for the
horror of which Madge spoke. In the days of Elizabethan religious
persecutions it had, then newly built, been inhabited by two brothers,
of whom the elder, to whom it belonged, had Mass said there every
Sunday. Betrayed by the younger, he was arrested and racked to death.
Subsequently the younger, in a fit of remorse, hanged himself in the
panelled parlour. Certainly there was a story that the house was
haunted by his strangled apparition dangling from the beams, and the
late tenants of the house (which now had stood vacant for over three
years) had quitted it after a month’s occupation, in consequence, so it
was commonly said, of unaccountable and horrible sights. What was more
likely, then, than that Madge, who from childhood has been intensely
sensitive to occult and psychic phenomena, should have caught, on that
strange wireless receiver which is characteristic of “sensitives,” some
whispered message?
“But you know the story of the house,” I said. “Isn’t it quite possible
that something of that may have reached you? Where did you sit, for
instance? In the panelled parlour?”
She brightened at that.
“Ah, you wise man!” she said. “I never thought of that. That may
account for it all. I hope it does. You shall be left in peace with
your chess for being so brilliant.”
* * * * *
I had occasion half an hour later to go to the post-office, a hundred
yards up the High Street, on the matter of a registered letter which
I wanted to despatch that evening. Dusk was gathering, but the red
glow of sunset still smouldered in the west, sufficient to enable me
to recognise familiar forms and features of passers-by. Just as I came
opposite the post-office there approached from the other direction a
tall, finely built woman, whom, I felt sure, I had never seen before.
Her destination was the same as mine, and I hung on my step a moment
to let her pass in first. Simultaneously I felt that I knew, in some
vague, faint manner, what Madge had meant when she talked about a
“sickness of the soul.” It was no nearer realisation to me than is the
running of a tune in the head to the audible external hearing of it,
and I attributed my sudden recognition of her feeling to the fact that
in all probability my mind had subconsciously been dwelling on what
she had said, and not for a moment did I connect it with any external
cause. And then it occurred to me who, possibly, this woman was....
She finished the transaction of her errand a few seconds before me, and
when I got out into the street again she was a dozen yards down the
pavement, walking in the direction of my house and of the Gate-house.
Opposite my own door I deliberately lingered, and saw her pass down the
steps that led from the road to the entrance of the Gate-house. Even as
I turned into my own door the unbidden reminiscence which had eluded
me before came out into the open, and I cast my net over it. It was
her husband, who, in the inexplicable communication he had left on his
dressing-room table, just before he shot himself, had written “my soul
sickens.” It was odd, though scarcely more than that, for Madge to have
used those identical words.
* * * * *
Charles Alington, my wife’s brother, who arrived next afternoon, is
quite the happiest man whom I have ever come across. The material
world, that perennial spring of thwarted ambition, physical desire,
and perpetual disappointment, is practically unknown to him. Envy,
malice, and all uncharitableness are equally alien, because he does
not want to obtain what anybody else has got, and has no sense of
possession, which is queer, since he is enormously rich. He fears
nothing, he hopes for nothing, he has no abhorrences or affections,
for all physical and nervous functions are in him in the service of an
intense inquisitiveness. He never passed a moral judgment in his life,
he only wants to explore and to know. Knowledge, in fact, is his entire
preoccupation, and since chemists and medical scientists probe and mine
in the world of tinctures and microbes far more efficiently than he
could do, as he has so little care for anything that can be weighed or
propagated, he devotes himself, absorbedly and ecstatically, to that
world that lies about the confines of conscious existence. Anything not
yet certainly determined appeals to him with the call of a trumpet: he
ceases to take an interest in a subject as soon as it shows signs of
assuming a practical and definite status. He was intensely concerned,
for instance, in wireless transmission, until Signor Marconi proved
that it came within the scope of practical science, and then Charles
abandoned it as dull. I had seen him last two months before, when he
was in a great perturbation, since he was speaking at a meeting of
Anglo-Israelites in the morning, to show that the Scone Stone, which
is now in the Coronation Chair at Westminster, was for certain the
pillow on which Jacob’s head had rested when he saw the vision at
Bethel; was addressing the Psychical Research Society in the afternoon
on the subject of messages received from the dead through automatic
script, and in the evening was, by way of a holiday, only listening
to a lecture on reincarnation. None of these things could, as yet, be
definitely proved, and that was why he loved them. During the intervals
when the occult and the fantastic do not occupy him, he is, in spite of
his fifty years and wizened mien, exactly like a schoolboy of eighteen
back on his holidays and brimming with superfluous energy.
I found Charles already arrived when I got home next afternoon, after a
round of golf. He was betwixt and between the serious and the holiday
mood, for he had evidently been reading to Madge from a journal
concerning reincarnation, and was rather severe to me....
“Golf!” he said, with insulting scorn. “What is there to know about
golf? You hit a ball into the air----”
I was a little sore over the events of the afternoon.
“That’s just what I don’t do,” I said. “I hit it along the ground!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter where you hit it,” said he. “It’s all subject
to known laws. But the guess, the conjecture: there’s the thrill and
the excitement of life. The charlatan with his new cure for cancer, the
automatic writer with his messages from the dead, the reincarnationist
with his positive assertions that he was Napoleon or a Christian
slave--they are the people who advance knowledge. You have to guess
before you know. Even Darwin saw that when he said you could not
investigate without a hypothesis!”
“So what’s your hypothesis this minute?” I asked.
“Why, that we’ve all lived before, and that we’re going to live again
here on this same old earth. Any other conception of a future life
is impossible. Are all the people who have been born and have died
since the world emerged from chaos going to become inhabitants of some
future world? What a squash, you know, my dear Madge! Now, I know
what you’re going to ask me. If we’ve all lived before, why can’t we
remember it? But that’s so simple! If you remembered being Cleopatra,
you would go on behaving like Cleopatra; and what would Tarleton say?
Judas Iscariot, too! Fancy knowing you had been Judas Iscariot! You
couldn’t get over it! you would commit suicide, or cause everybody who
was connected with you to commit suicide from their horror of you. Or
imagine being a grocer’s boy who knew he had been Julius Cæsar....
Of course, sex doesn’t matter: souls, as far as I understand, are
sexless--just sparks of life, which are put into physical envelopes,
some male, some female. You might have been King David, Madge and poor
Tony here one of his wives.”
“That would be wonderfully neat,” said I.
Charles broke out into a shout of laughter.
“It would indeed,” he said. “But I won’t talk sense any more to you
scoffers. I’m absolutely tired out, I will confess, with thinking.
I want to have a pretty lady to come to dinner, and talk to her as
if she was just herself and I myself, and nobody else. I want to win
two-and-sixpence at bridge with the expenditure of enormous thought.
I want to have a large breakfast to-morrow and read _The Times_
afterwards, and go to Tony’s club and talk about crops and golf and
Irish affairs and Peace Conferences, and all the things that don’t
matter one straw!”
“You’re going to begin your programme to-night, dear,” said Madge. “A
very pretty lady is coming to dinner, and we’re going to play bridge
afterwards.”
Madge and I were ready for Mrs. Acres when she arrived, but Charles
was not yet down. Fungus, who has a wild adoration for Charles, quite
unaccountable, since Charles has no feelings for dogs, was helping him
to dress, and Madge, Mrs. Acres, and I waited for his appearance. It
was certainly Mrs. Acres whom I had met last night at the door of the
post-office, but the dim light of sunset had not enabled me to see
how wonderfully handsome she was. There was something slightly Jewish
about her profile: the high forehead, the very full-lipped mouth, the
bridged nose, the prominent chin, all suggested rather than exemplified
an Eastern origin. And when she spoke she had that rich softness
of utterance, not quite hoarseness, but not quite of the clear-cut
distinctness of tone which characterises northern nations. Something
southern, something Eastern....
“I am bound to ask one thing,” she said, when, after the usual
greetings, we stood round the fireplace, waiting for Charles--“but have
you got a dog?”
Madge moved towards the bell.
“Yes, but he shan’t come down if you dislike dogs,” she said. “He’s
wonderfully kind, but I know----”
“Ah, it’s not that,” said Mrs. Acres. “I adore dogs. But I only wished
to spare your dog’s feelings. Though I adore them, they hate me, and
they’re terribly frightened of me. There’s something anti-canine about
me.”
It was too late to say more. Charles’s steps clattered in the little
hall outside, and Fungus was hoarse and amused. Next moment the door
opened, and the two came in.
Fungus came in first. He lolloped in a festive manner into the middle
of the room, sniffed and snored in greeting, and then turned tail. He
slipped and skidded on the parquet outside, and we heard him bundling
down the kitchen stairs.
“Rude dog,” said Madge. “Charles, let me introduce you to Mrs. Acres.
My brother, Mrs. Acres: Sir Charles Alington.”
* * * * *
Our little dinner-table of four would not permit of separate
conversations, and general topics, springing up like mushrooms, wilted
and died at their very inception. What mood possessed the others I
did not at that time know, but for myself I was only conscious of
some fundamental distaste of the handsome, clever woman who sat on
my right, and seemed quite unaffected by the withering atmosphere.
She was charming to the eye, she was witty to the ear, she had grace
and gracefulness, and all the time she was something terrible. But
by degrees, as I found my own distaste increasing, I saw that my
brother-in-law’s interest was growing correspondingly keen. The
“pretty lady” whose presence at dinner he had desired and obtained
was enchaining him--not, so I began to guess, for her charm and her
prettiness, but for some purpose of study, and I wondered whether it
was her beautiful Jewish profile that was confirming to his mind some
Anglo-Israelitish theory, whether he saw in her fine brown eyes the
glance of the seer and the clairvoyante, or whether he divined in her
some reincarnation of one of the famous or the infamous dead. Certainly
she had for him some fascination beyond that of the legitimate charm of
a very handsome woman; he was studying her with intense curiosity.
“And you are comfortable in the Gate-house?” he suddenly rapped out at
her, as if asking some question of which the answer was crucial.
“Ah! but so comfortable,” she said--“such a delightful atmosphere.
I have never known a house that ‘felt’ so peaceful and homelike. Or
is it merely fanciful to imagine that some houses have a sense of
tranquillity about them and others are uneasy and even terrible?”
Charles stared at her a moment in silence before he recollected his
manners.
“No, there may easily be something in it, I should say,” he answered.
“One can imagine long centuries of tranquillity actually investing a
home with some sort of psychical aura perceptible to those who are
sensitive.”
She turned to Madge.
“And yet I have heard a ridiculous story that the house is supposed to
be haunted,” she said. “If it is, it is surely haunted by delightful,
contented spirits.”
Dinner was over. Madge rose.
“Come in very soon, Tony,” she said to me, “and let’s get to our
bridge.”
But her eyes said, “Don’t leave me long alone with her.”
Charles turned briskly round when the door had shut.
“An extremely interesting woman,” he said.
“Very handsome,” said I.
“Is she? I didn’t notice. Her mind, her spirit--that’s what intrigued
me. What is she? What’s behind? Why did Fungus turn tail like that?
Queer, too, about her finding the atmosphere of the Gate-house so
tranquil. The late tenants, I remember, didn’t find that soothing touch
about it!”
“How do you account for that?” I asked.
“There might be several explanations. You might say that the late
tenants were fanciful, imaginative people, and that the present tenant
is a sensible, matter-of-fact woman. Certainly she seemed to be.”
“Or----” I suggested.
He laughed.
“Well, you might say--mind, I don’t say so--but you might say that
the--the spiritual tenants of the house find Mrs. Acres a congenial
companion, and want to retain her. So they keep quiet, and don’t upset
the cook’s nerves!”
Somehow this answer exasperated and jarred on me.
“What do you mean?” I said. “The spiritual tenant of the house, I
suppose, is the man who betrayed his brother and hanged himself. Why
should he find a charming woman like Mrs. Acres a congenial companion?”
Charles got up briskly. Usually he is more than ready to discuss such
topics, but to-night it seemed that he had no such inclination.
“Didn’t Madge tell us not to be long?” he asked. “You know how I run on
if I once get on that subject, Tony, so don’t give me the opportunity.”
“But why did you say that?” I persisted.
“Because I was talking nonsense. You know me well enough to be aware
that I am an habitual criminal in that respect.”
* * * * *
It was indeed strange to find how completely both the first impression
that Madge had formed of Mrs. Acres and the feeling that followed so
quickly on its heels were endorsed by those who, during the next week
or two, did a neighbour’s duty to the newcomer. All were loud in praise
of her charm, her pleasant, kindly wit, her good looks, her beautiful
clothes, but even while this _Lob-gesang_ was in full chorus it would
suddenly die away, and an uneasy silence descended, which somehow was
more eloquent than all the appreciative speech. Odd, unaccountable
little incidents had occurred, which were whispered from mouth to
mouth till they became common property. The same fear that Fungus had
shown of her was exhibited by another dog. A parallel case occurred
when she returned the call of our parson’s wife. Mrs. Dowlett had a
cage of canaries in the window of her drawing-room. These birds had
manifested symptoms of extreme terror when Mrs. Acres entered the room,
beating themselves against the wires of their cage, and uttering the
alarm-note.... She inspired some sort of inexplicable fear, over which
we, as trained and civilised human beings, had control, so that we
behaved ourselves. But animals, without that check, gave way altogether
to it, even as Fungus had done.
Mrs. Acres entertained; she gave charming little dinner-parties of
eight, with a couple of tables at bridge to follow, but over these
evenings there hung a blight and a blackness. No doubt the sinister
story of the panelled parlour contributed to this.
This curious secret dread of her, of which as on that first evening
at my house, she appeared to be completely unconscious differed very
widely in degree. Most people, like myself, were conscious of it,
but only very remotely so, and we found ourselves at the Gate-house
behaving quite as usual, though with this unease in the background.
But with a few, and most of all with Madge, it grew into a sort of
obsession. She made every effort to combat it; her will was entirely
set against it, but her struggle seemed only to establish its power
over her. The pathetic and pitiful part was that Mrs. Acres from
the first had taken a tremendous liking to her, and used to drop in
continually, calling first to Madge at the window, in that pleasant,
serene voice of hers, to tell Fungus that the hated one was imminent.
Then came a day when Madge and I were bidden to a party at the
Gate-house on Christmas evening. This was to be the last of Mrs.
Acres’s hospitalities for the present, since she was leaving
immediately afterwards for a couple of months in Egypt. So, with this
remission ahead, Madge almost gleefully accepted the bidding. But when
the evening came she was seized with so violent an attack of sickness
and shivering that she was utterly unable to fulfil her engagement. Her
doctor could find no physical trouble to account for this: it seemed
that the anticipation of her evening alone caused it, and here was the
culmination of her shrinking from our kindly and pleasant neighbour.
She could only tell me that her sensations, as she began to dress for
the party, were like those of that moment in sleep when somewhere in
the drowsy brain nightmare is ripening. Something independent of her
will revolted at what lay before her....
* * * * *
Spring had begun to stretch herself in the lap of winter when next the
curtain rose on this veiled drama of forces but dimly comprehended and
shudderingly conjectured; but then, indeed, nightmare ripened swiftly
in broad noon. And this was the way of it.
Charles Alington had again come to stay with us five days before
Easter, and expressed himself as humorously disappointed to find that
the subject of his curiosity was still absent from the Gate-house. On
the Saturday morning before Easter he appeared very late for breakfast,
and Madge had already gone her ways. I rang for a fresh teapot, and
while this was on its way he took up _The Times_.
“I only read the outside page of it,” he said. “The rest is too full of
mere materialistic dullnesses--politics, sports, money-market----”
He stopped, and passed the paper over to me.
“There, where I’m pointing,” he said--“among the deaths. The first one.”
What I read was this:
“ACRES, BERTHA. Died at sea, Thursday night, 30th March, and by her
own request buried at sea. (Received by wireless from P. & O. steamer
_Peshawar_.)”
He held out his hand for the paper again, and turned over the leaves.
“Lloyd’s,” he said. “The _Peshawar_ arrived at Tilbury yesterday
afternoon. The burial must have taken place somewhere in the English
Channel.”
* * * * *
On the afternoon of Easter Sunday Madge and I motored out to the golf
links three miles away. She proposed to walk along the beach just
outside the dunes while I had my round, and return to the club-house
for tea in two hours’ time. The day was one of most lucid spring: a
warm south-west wind bowled white clouds along the sky, and their
shadows jovially scudded over the sandhills. We had told her of Mrs.
Acres’s death, and from that moment something dark and vague which had
been lying over her mind since the autumn seemed to join this fleet of
the shadows of clouds and leave her in sunlight. We parted at the door
of the club-house, and she set out on her walk.
Half an hour later, as my opponent and I were waiting on the fifth tee,
where the road crosses the links, for the couple in front of us to move
on, a servant from the club-house, scudding along the road, caught
sight of us, and, jumping from his bicycle, came to where we stood.
“You’re wanted at the club-house, sir,” he said to me. “Mrs. Carford
was walking along the shore, and she found something left by the tide.
A body, sir. ’Twas in a sack, but the sack was torn, and she saw----
It’s upset her very much, sir. We thought it best to come for you.”
I took the boy’s bicycle and went back to the club-house as fast as I
could turn the wheel. I felt sure I knew what Madge had found, and,
knowing that, realised the shock.... Five minutes later she was telling
me her story in gasps and whispers.
“The tide was going down,” she said, “and I walked along the high-water
mark.... There were pretty shells; I was picking them up.... And then I
saw it in front of me--just shapeless, just a sack ... and then, as I
came nearer, it took shape; there were knees and elbows. It moved, it
rolled over, and where the head was the sack was torn, and I saw her
face. Her eyes were open, Tony, and I fled.... All the time I felt it
was rolling along after me. Oh, Tony! she’s dead, isn’t she? She won’t
come back to the Gate-house? Do you promise me?... There’s something
awful! I wonder if I guess. The sea gives her up. The sea won’t suffer
her to rest in it.”...
The news of the finding had already been telephoned to Tarleton, and
soon a party of four men with a stretcher arrived. There was no doubt
as to the identity of the body, for though it had been in the water
for three days no corruption had come to it. The weights with which at
burial it had been laden must by some strange chance have been detached
from it, and by a chance stranger yet it had drifted to the shore
closest to her home. That night it lay in the mortuary, and the inquest
was held on it next day, though that was a bank-holiday. From there it
was taken to the Gate-house and coffined, and it lay in the panelled
parlour for the funeral on the morrow.
Madge, after that one hysterical outburst, had completely recovered
herself, and on the Monday evening she made a little wreath of the
spring-flowers which the early warmth had called into blossom in the
garden, and I went across with it to the Gate-house. Though the news
of Mrs. Acres’s death and the subsequent finding of the body had
been widely advertised, there had been no response from relations or
friends, and as I laid the solitary wreath on the coffin a sense of the
utter loneliness of what lay within seized and encompassed me. And then
a portent, no less, took place before my eyes. Hardly had the freshly
gathered flowers been laid on the coffin than they drooped and wilted.
The stalks of the daffodils bent, and their bright chalices closed; the
odour of the wallflowers died, and they withered as I watched.... What
did it mean, that even the petals of spring shrank and were moribund?
* * * * *
I told Madge nothing of this; and she, as if through some pang of
remorse, was determined to be present next day at the funeral.
No arrival of friends or relations had taken place, and from the
Gate-house there came none of the servants. They stood in the porch as
the coffin was brought out of the house, and even before it was put
into the hearse had gone back again and closed the door. So, at the
cemetery on the hill above Tarleton, Madge and her brother and I were
the only mourners.
The afternoon was densely overcast, though we got no rainfall, and
it was with thick clouds above and a sea-mist drifting between the
grave-stones that we came, after the service in the cemetery-chapel, to
the place of interment. And then--I can hardly write of it now--when it
came for the coffin to be lowered into the grave, it was found that by
some faulty measurement it could not descend, for the excavation was
not long enough to hold it.
Madge was standing close to us, and at this moment I heard her sob.
“And the kindly earth will not receive her,” she whispered.
There was awful delay: the diggers must be sent for again, and meantime
the rain had begun to fall thick and tepid. For some reason--perhaps
some outlying feeler of Madge’s obsession had wound a tentacle round
me--I felt that I must know that earth had gone to earth, but I could
not suffer Madge to wait. So, in this miserable pause, I got Charles to
take her home, and then returned.