police had not yet been apprised, we decided to cut scandal down in
its roots and to transfer the body in a trusty cab to the College. I
will never forget our solemn progression through the half-awakening
streets of Cambridge with the corpse sitting between us bolt upright,
or our arrival at the front gate, which as a rule was only swung open
for the Master or the Sovereign--but which was opened full to admit
the cab driven by a discreet cabman. As soon as we had laid the body
in his rooms we availed ourselves of one of our mediæval privileges
to hold the inquest within our own walls. But the police heard
rumours, or perhaps the five pounds we gave the discreet cabman led
to indiscretions on his part in a public-house, for the scandalised
Borough endeavoured to lay sacrilegious hands upon the rights of the
College, and demanded the body. Evidence was given that the deceased
had returned to the College late the previous night, and presumably
had died within academic walls. This, of course, was the curious part
of the story. The porter was certain that he had heard the bell at
two because it coincided with the striking of the bell in Great St.
Mary’s Church, and also that he had admitted a tall gentleman whose
name he had omitted to take. There he was at fault. The rest of the
College (and we were very small in numbers then) were prepared to
swear that they were within the walls of the College before midnight,
and finally there was my affirmation that I actually saw the deceased
cross the court that night. The Magistrates and police were a good
deal troubled, but they had no evidence and only rumours on the other
side. The porter’s evidence carried the most weight. The word of the
Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity might be doubted and even the oath
of the Regius Professor of Law might be found to be unsound, but the
statement of the Head Porter of St. Zacchaeus stood.
“We held the inquest in the College precincts, and had no difficulty
in returning a verdict of heart failure, which was the medical truth.
But the wings of scandal began to beat round our academic calm, and it
was thought better that the friend of the deceased, who was perhaps
answerable for leading him into temptation in the beginning, should go
down from the University as quickly and as quietly as the body of his
poor friend.... He went, and disappeared. A quarter of a century later
he presented the great West window to the College as a peace offering
to the living and a secret memorial to the dead. Remembering the
circumstances which I have told you in outline, and not forgetting the
remarkable vision which I saw in the College court, you may be able to
guess for the first time why the subjects in the window were chosen.”
There was a deep silence at the High Table, and the shadows of fifty
years seemed to descend upon the gas-lit court and to fill the hall
even into the recesses of the great gilded lanterns rising out of the
roof. In the distance the outline of the chapel darkened the very
night, and I was only sorry that I should have to wait till morning in
order to gaze at the coloured glass in the West window with a thrill
and a wonder that I had never yet thought possible in contemplating a
religious or symbolic object. I could not help asking the Master whose
was the mediæval mind that had dared choose the subjects. “I chose
them,” he said simply.
A SAINT
The first time that I was really impressed by the possibility of
supernatural power working outside the common or beaten path of
materialism was in a Devon country-house. I always believed material
things or ordinary events could be affected by the spirit, for instance
that it was quite useful to pray for or against rain, and that a fine
afternoon generally rewarded the Vicar’s prayers before a Bazaar or
School-treat. But that quite extraordinary things were liable to happen
out of the blue because of unseen and unknown forces used to be beyond
my reasonable expectation. It is not so with me now.
I was staying in a beautiful but nameless old Manor House in
Devonshire, cut off from road and rail. The only approach was down a
breakneck hill, a kind of gravelly toboggan run into the smiling valley
below. Coombes of red, red terracotta earth enclosed the landscape
and over the hill-tops floated a glimpse of distant sea. A Devonshire
coombe is a pretty piece of landscape pretending to be a switchback
railway. It was spring, and spring in Devon gives a springier feeling
than anywhere else in England, whether it is the beauty of the Devonian
maids or the wonderful red colour of the earth.
The Manor House was Tudor, dating from the time when Englishmen took up
home, beer and bowls and gave up Castles, archery and the San Graal.
It was built on monastic ground and had passed through the hands of a
succession of families, each of which had fulfilled the curse attached
to Abbey lands by slowly extinguishing their seed and silver and cellar
through the several and appropriate means of drink, debauch and lawyers.
The Manor was inhabited by what are known as Devon worthies, which
means folk who are worthier of Devon than other folk, or perhaps that
Devon is worthier of them. Every day I wandered out between showers.
As a matter of fact I had hit the comparative lull between the vernal
deluges and the summer rainy season. It was delicious though wet work
watching the patches of gorse, which clung like the rags of a golden
fleece to the hill-sides, while the white bloom of the bird-cherry
trees lay on the twig-tops like a late snowstorm that had forgotten
itself and dried instead of melting in the sun. The harebells ran
like blue ink through the wood-bottoms. An occasional bee-orchis
sanguified the hedge, like a bluebell whose stalk had been soaked and
its leaf spotted with red wine, though from closer it looked like a
purple-hooded cobra in the green grass; and splotches of delicate
primrose never ceased to advertise the purity and colour of Devonshire
cream.
The house was in the possession of the hereditary Lord of the Manor,
Sir Petronille Pawkins, Bart., a very robust and pugnacious gentleman
with the usual collateral relationship with Sir Francis Drake, a
violent temper behind his shirt and plenty of good wine in his cellar.
All were in evidence during the party. His mother, the Dowager Lady
Pawkins, had never been put out to grass, and had subsided into a
rather cheery kind of housekeeper. Certainly she took the place of the
pale silent wife everywhere except in the Oratory. The old lady came of
Catholic stock and, though frankly she had taken to drink, she had not
lost the Faith, which she had handed on to her rowdy son. The terrible
undercurrent and possible moral of this story will excuse my saying
anything so brutal about a lady who is dead and, I am certain, now with
the Blest.
She lived in the house, rather terrorising the wax-pale wife. The
Dowager had a reputation for enjoying the cellar as much as her son,
so that the two hostesses were a great contrast. The Dowager was fat,
cheerful and, to my regret, generally tipsy. She had married the last
Baronet as a convent girl and, beyond adding a modern Chapel and a
Catholic heir to the family, gave no further example of piety. The
beautiful Flemish tapestry in the drawing-room of the adoring Magi was
an heirloom, not an evidence of devotion.
She was mixing cocktails for the guests before dinner when I arrived.
She explained that this domestic duty fell to her because the present
Lady of the Manor did not approve of drinking at all, and was always
trying to induce Sir Petronille to take the pledge. This Sir Petronille
declined to do on the curious grounds that his father had died of drink
and that he owed something to his memory. She too was of Catholic
stock, from some forgotten sanctuary behind the Fens. She was young and
preferred to leave the brunt of entertainment to her mother-in-law.
They were too unlike for any rivalry to rise between them. She reminded
me of a candle burning away in the daylight to an unseen flame. Life
itself was hardly apparent in her eyes, which seemed to look backwards
into her inner self and not upon the wicked world into which she had
been given in marriage.
The house party was various. As they sat round the dinner table the
first night, I could not help dividing them into the two categories of
Bottles and Barrels. It is an amusing game to play with oneself at a
dull dinner party. In the first place so many people are shaped like
a Barrel or a Bottle. And so often the mental contents are similar.
Bores are simply empty barrels, except (what is worse) when they are
overflowing ones. Social bottles seldom run to more than conversational
soda-water. Very rare is the sparkling vintage, and it is one that
needs to be deftly uncorked. I am afraid the Dowager was a typical
barrel. The human bottles did not strike me as worth tapping, even Sir
Petronille. There were two talkative Americans who could only have been
tolerated under the rule of Trappists and even then might have proved
unbearable to the Trappists. They were rather like people who had
stepped out of books with very little to say worth putting back into
books. Their flow of soul was as soda water without the water. There
were some neighbours who provided the news of Exeter and even from as
far as Torquay, which is the English Deauville, only more so. And there
were a few literary men and a budding politician from London who talked
rubbish. Naturally we pattered the Metropolitan movies, a cursory
list of which may help to date this story twenty years hence. We said
all there was to be said about Wembley, about the Labour Parties, the
Opposition Parties and Lady Colefax parties; about Steve Donoghue’s
riding; about the Rodeo riding; and Lord Dudley’s marriage.
It was the last party that the unexpected might be expected to
happen. But good port covers much ordinary conversation, whereas
_vin ordinaire_ is difficult to conceal with the brightest chat. We
had reached the stage between the first and second glass of port when
the servants suddenly disappeared apparently with a scuffle. Our host
followed with an oath. Something had gone wrong below stairs. We would
have carried on polite conversation until relieved, had not a drift of
pungent smoke crossed the doorway. We left the room and hurried to the
staircase in time to hear an alarm of fire. The customary scenes at an
English country-house fire followed. The unselfish shifted furniture.
The selfish shifted for themselves. The budding politician assumed a
mediæval helmet and gave loud and continued orders from the stairs with
some such caption in his mind’s eye for the next day’s _Mirror_ as
“Young statesman acts as fireman!” The men servants stood in different
corners of the library, which was found to be in flames, discharging
Minimax squirts at each other. The chemicals slowly changed the colour
of their livery, but not the stolid cast of their countenances. The
ladies rushed up and down stairs impaled on the dilemma of saving the
hats in their rooms or leaving their evening wraps in the hall. The
rest of the party brought buckets and jugs of water which did as much
damage to the carpets as the Minimax to the shelves and curtains. But
true to its classical derivative the Minimax minimised the maximum of
fire. Amid much hissing and smoking the flame was quenched and the
damaged furniture carried into the garden, to wit: a gutted sofa, two
charred chairs and a stinking carpet. Everybody congratulated each
other on delivery from atrocious death, a telephone call was sent to
the Insurance Company, and beer was provided for the expected and
expectant firemen of the neighbouring Borough, who arrived in the
early morning.
During the rest of that evening the fire supplied an agreeably
thrilling note to the conversation. The escape of the party was
celebrated with duplication and even multiplication of the port wine.
The Americans were shocked and then delighted and even unpersuaded to
uphold the reputation of a dry country against the enticements of a
drinking Baronet and a wet spring. Lady Pawkins was terribly upset,
whether by the fire or the drinking. She hardly appeared at all during
the next three days, leaving the house affairs almost entirely to her
mother-in-law.
It was remembered that Sir Petronille had only remarked that the smoke
had spoilt the port left on the table, and that it was a damnable
nuisance the fire had not started a quarter of an hour later. The
insurance agent arrived and a cheque for damages was paid. All was as
it should be. Sir Petronille’s wife looked a little paler, and nothing
happened for three days....
We were returning to tea in the late afternoon when we found the
servants extinguishing a fire in an empty bedroom. There was nothing
but smoke and smell left by the time we arrived. It was a horrible
nuisance. Our host’s oaths took the sheepish grins off the servants’
faces. The insurance agent arrived again and re-estimated damages.
It was curious that there had been no grate fire in the room, but it
was generously attributed by the agent to forgotten cigarette ends.
Everybody looked at each other foolishly, and then somebody blurted
out that it was only the ladies who smoked cigarettes. The men smoked
cigars and pipes. The agent bowed and smiled; “I have no doubt some
lady was forgetful,” he suggested. He was anxious to turn the incident
into a good advertisement for the company. “But they don’t smoke
in empty bedrooms!” shouted the Dowager. The agent bowed again and
withdrew with his report. There was a general laugh, I don’t know why.
A second fire was excessively unlucky, and the only consolation which
could be offered to the host was that he had surely exhausted his share
of bad luck for a life-time. That evening the party kept sober and,
when towards ten o’clock the butler entered and with a very scared
face reported that a third fire had just been extinguished in the
Chapel itself, the party resembled so many aldermen and church-wardens
proceeding to view the site of municipal disaster.
It turned out to be a slight outbreak and only a few smouldering
hangings had to be removed. It was promptly attributed to one of the
altar candles or to the blue light which Lady Pawkins kept burning
before the statue of the Lourdes Madonna, now generally taking the
place of the mediæval Mother and Child in the shrines of the Catholic
community. But it was proved that no candle had been lit since Mass
was said on the previous Sunday, and that only the supernatural could
have caused the hangings to be ignited from the lamp. Lady Pawkins had
been in the Chapel until just before the dinner gong, so all scent was
once more at fault. There was no scent in fact except the obvious and
unpleasant smell of burnt cloth.
Three fires within four days was incomprehensible indeed. Either
it was an amazing coincidence, and by the law of chances could not
possibly recur, or it was the work of a firebug--more politely called
a pyromaniac. There must be somebody in the house with a Freudian
fancy for setting random fire to the furniture in broad daylight.
Even so, it was impossible to strike a cause. The staff was old and
warranted. Many had been reared under the family they served. A fire
in the Manor House was unheard of. Guests and servants were anxious
equally to prove alibis for themselves. The odd thing was that nobody
had been alone when any of the fires had started, except Lady Pawkins
praying in the Oratory; and the Oratory fire occurred while she was
out. It was more than strange. That evening the ladies were as voluble
as the men were thoughtful. The budding politician said he owed it to
his constituents not to expose himself to suffocation in his bed. The
Americans rehearsed endlessly the great fire in Boston, the greater
fire in Chicago and the greatest of all in San Francisco. And there was
talk of the disaster to the _General Slocum_ and much other cheerful
and appertaining matter.
Nobody slept that night, and the gentlemen took turns to patrol
the passages. Nothing happened, nor during the next day, which was
a Saturday. There arrived detectives from one of the great London
agencies, and a Benedictine priest from the neighbouring monastery, who
came regularly to hear the confessions of the Ladies Pawkins. On this
occasion only the younger of the two was available. I regret to say
that the Dowager had, under the strain of three fires, become amusingly
drunk. I watched the younger woman pass into the Oratory and kneel,
paler-faced than ever. An hour later the monk passed out of the house.
She had apparently made up for the absence of other penitents, but what
on earth, I thought, could she have had to tell her confessor? But,
then, there are more things in Heaven and earth than.... Most of her
time was spent in the chapel praying, and the hours spared from her
devotions were lavished on the comfort of her guests. Her hospitality
was humble rather than brilliant. She was found one morning making her
mother-in-law’s bed, and nobody had any doubt of the unseen hands that
changed and rearranged the flowers in the rooms every afternoon. She
lived in the house, but she hardly seemed to be of the house party. Yet
she was indefatigable at every meal and in her care for the guests. For
their vinal welfare alone she showed indifference, if not abhorrence.
And, like most model hostesses, she made no attempt to add to the
gaiety of the party, though she never allowed a trace of tiredness
or boredom to cross her face. But her smile was worth more than much
laughter from the drunken.
Meantime the sleuth-hounds had arrived--one in the impenetrable
disguise of a valet, who spent long mornings and discreet evenings
brushing the threads out of our evening trousers. Another was ambushed
as literary adviser to Sir Petronille Pawkins, and it was given out
that the Baronet, who was almost illiterate, intended editing some
chapters of his very obscure family history. While we ate, they sought
clues and found them not. The sole result of their search was the
finding of a number of private letters in coat pockets, which letters
were surrendered to those least intended to see them. A number of
unpaid bills, addressed to the Dowager Lady Pawkins, were handed
by mistake to Lady Pawkins. And a letter from an Inebriates’ Home,
directed to Sir Petronille, gave the Dowager the shock of her life.
She, poor soul, had remained in a very intoxicated state owing to
reaction from the incendiarism. I surprised her one evening mumbling
to herself. It was a long rigmarole about trying to fight it (I presume
she meant the firebug), about her failure and what a disgrace it was,
and finally how good Alice was (Alice was the daughter-in-law). “She
won’t give in. She’ll beat it,” and the old lady burst into hysterics.
The local police carried out a portentous investigation of footprints
and thumbmarks to substantiate a theory of malicious arson from
without. The local constable found and rightly measured the inspector’s
bootmark in the garden clay, and the inspector found a finger-print on
a window-pane a few hours later which might or might not have been the
constable’s. The clues discovered by means of the house party would
have filled a shelf in the Scotland Yard museum.
Nevertheless, there were comic variations in the house-party life, and
people became quite amusing against the tragic background, though a
certain amount of discreet panic took place. Fear of the unknown hushed
the rowdiness of the party. The second fire had sobered them. After the
third few dared to take their normal rest. It was obvious to material
minds that, if fire could break out on a sofa or among hangings for no
reason during the daytime, it might do so during the night-time for a
better reason. Nobody cares to be roasted in bed, so we broke the party
into night patrols and relieved one another in watching the passages
and hunting for the most likely places for the spontaneous combustion
to occur which had been solemnly adduced by one of the theorists. The
leader of each watch was armed with the dinner-gong, on which he was
urged to sound the alarm. The next night was unquiet. The alarm was
given on two occasions, needlessly. One of the Americans dropped a
lighted cigarette into his bed, while trying to keep awake until his
time for watch. He promptly gave the alarm himself, and the presence
of half the household was required to satisfy his conscience that by
sitting on the sparks he had averted a catastrophe. The second alarm
was caused by the officer of the early morning watch tripping on the
stairs and falling, gong and all, to the bottom. The next morning
the representative of the Fire Insurance arrived and, after making
investigations on his own account, announced that the Insurance Company
had decided not to renew the policy as they were convinced that the
fires could not be accidental. He was convinced that fire had been
ignited, especially in the case of the chapel curtains, by the use of
paraffin or petrol. For the rest of that day everybody searched for
combustibles. But during this time no oil had been permitted in the
house, and even a box of firelighters, thanks to their specific name,
had been buried in the garden.
There was, of course, nothing to talk about at meals except these
strange happenings. The Devon Worthies could rake up no analogy
except rick-burning, and were inclined to lay the trouble to gipsies
or poachers, whom they classed with Bolshevists as the enemies of
all mankind. The Americans continued to talk with consummate fluency
about the San Francisco fire, with variations on the Boston fire
and the great Chicago fire, which was traced to an Irish widow’s
cow. The servants became so alarmed that they would only work in
pairs. Everything was done to facilitate the work of the detectives.
Their finds continued to be irrelevant, to say the least of it. They
discovered a secret staircase, which had been walled up a century
previously. They also discovered a cupboard full of empty bottles, to
which cupboard no member of the family could or would produce a key.
The next discovery was mine.
I was sitting in the drawing-room studying the Literary Supplement to
_Vogue_, when suddenly I saw the old Flemish tapestry of the Adoration
of the Magi stretched across the wall move! There was no draught
or motion of the air at the time. I thought it must be an ocular
delusion caused by my glasses. Nobody was pulling or even touching the
tapestry. But the threads in its texture were moving and wriggling like
ashen-coloured worms. The nimbus above the Virgin’s head was trembling
and crackling and the white elbow of her arm was twisting and slowly
blackening in front of my eyes. It was all happening in perfect silence
and for no apparent cause. That was the terror of it, and I dragged
myself out of my chair and forced myself to examine the tapestry
closer. The woof was crisping and crumbling under the action of intense
heat, though it was not yet on actual fire. I stared in a foolish and
fascinated sort of way until the sudden spurt of pungent smell roused
me to what senses were left to me, and I began feebly sounding the
alarm. At this moment Lady Pawkins came down the stairs and entered the
room. When I pointed out what was happening, she became deathly white
and rang the bell three times, the concerted signal for a fire in any
part of the house. Detectives and servants arrived almost immediately
and quickly extinguished the sparks running through the threads of the
tapestry before beginning an exhaustive inquiry, of which I was the
chief butt. The tapestry was handled, fingered and almost dissected.
All my words were taken down, and I was even searched for matches, but
in vain. I did not describe, a very curious sensation which had been
growing upon me, which was the ridiculous idea that Lady Pawkins was
somehow responsible for what had happened. The official theory was that
the oriel glass had acted like a magnifying glass in setting fire to
the tapestry.
After this, the atmosphere in the house became not only serious but
rather strained. It was like living in a crematorium with no honourable
chance of escape, a crematorium in charge of unseen and probably insane
attendants. Were we the victims of an abominable practical joke? Or was
there an invisible criminal or an unknown madman amongst the guests?
We had stopped suspecting the wretched servants. We grew more inclined
to look round among ourselves. Everybody laid what had happened to his
neighbour, but how to associate one iota of proof with any individual
was a hopeless difficulty. In vain, mental traps were set and the most
innocently seeming inveiglements devised. Nobody gave himself away by
deed or word or thought.