place in the central chamber, locally called ‘The Cathedral,’ and after
a few more questions I understood.
“‘That was where you were, my friend,’ I said to Murphy; ‘it was where
you were when the bird flew out.’
“He agreed with me, and presently when the woman was gone announced
that he was going to the mine again to see the place. Well, I had no
business to keep him dangling about. I couldn’t walk anywhere myself,
so I advised him not to go on to that platform again, and presently he
took a couple of candles from the sticks and went off. He promised to
be back by four o’clock, and I settled down rather drearily to a pipe
and some old magazines.
“Naturally, I fell sound asleep. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon and the
magazines were dull. I awoke once or twice, and then slept again deeply.
“I was awakened by the woman coming in to ask whether I would have tea;
it was already five o’clock. I told her Yes. I was not in the least
anxious about Murphy; he was a good climber, and therefore neither a
coward nor a fool.
“As tea came in I looked out of the window again and saw him walking up
the path, covered with iron dust, and a moment later I heard his step
in the passage, and he came in.
“Mrs. What’s-her-name had gone out.
“‘Have you had a good time?’ I asked.
“He looked at me very oddly and paused before he answered.
“‘Oh, yes,’ he said; and put his cap and stick in a corner.
“I knew Murphy.
“‘Well, why not?’ I asked him, beginning to pour out tea.
“He looked round at the door, then he sat down without noticing the cup
I pushed across to him.
“‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘I think I am going mad.’
“Well, I forget what I said, but I understood that he was very much
upset about something, and I suppose I said the proper kind of thing
about his not being a damned fool.
“Then he told me his story.”
Mr. Percival looked round at us again, still with that slight twitching
of the lips that seemed to signify amusement.
“Please remember--” he began, and then broke off. “No; I won’t----”
“Well.
“He had gone down the same shaft that we went down in the morning, and
had spent a couple of hours exploring the passages. He had found an
engine-room with tanks and rotten beams in it and rusty chains. He had
found some more lakes, too, full of that extraordinary electric-blue
water; he had disturbed a quantity of bats somewhere else. Then he had
come out again into the central hall, and on looking at his watch had
found it after four o’clock, so he thought he would climb up by the way
we had come in the morning and go straight home.
“It was as he climbed that his odd sensations began. As he went up,
clinging with his hands, he became perfectly certain that he was being
watched. He couldn’t turn round very well, but he looked up as he went
to the opening overhead, but there was nothing there but the dead-blue
sky, and the trees very green against it, and the red rocks curving
away on every side. It was extraordinarily quiet, he said; the pigeons
had not come home from feeding, and he was out of hearing of the
dripping water that I told you of.
“Then he reached the platform and the opening of the path where I had
my fright in the morning, and turned round to look.
“At first he saw nothing peculiar. The rocks up which he had come
fell away at his feet down to the floor of the ‘Cathedral’ and to the
nettles with which he had stung his hands a minute or two before. He
looked around at the galleries overhead and opposite, but there was
nothing there.
“Then he looked across at the platform where he had been in the morning
and where the accident had taken place.
“Let me tell you what this was like. It was about twenty yards in
breadth and ten deep, but lay irregular and filled with tumbled rocks.
It was a little below the level of his eyes, right across the gulf,
and in a straight line would be about fifty or sixty yards away. It
lay under the roof, rather retired, so that no light from the sky fell
directly on to it; it would have been in complete twilight if it hadn’t
been for a smaller shaft above it, which shot down a funnel of bluish
light, exactly like a stage effect. You see, reverend Fathers, it was
very theatrical altogether. That might account, no doubt----”
Mr. Percival broke off again, smiling.
“I am always forgetting,” he said. “Well, we must go back to Murphy.
At first he saw nothing but the rocks and the thick, red dust and the
broken wall behind it. He was very honest, and told me that as he
looked at it he remembered distinctly what the landlady had told us at
lunch. It was on that little stage that the tragedy had happened.
“Then he became aware that something was moving among the rocks, and
he became perfectly certain that people were looking at him; but it
was too dusky to see very clearly at first. Whatever it was was in the
shadows at the back. He fixed his eyes on what was moving. Then this
happened.”
The lawyer stopped again.
“I will tell you the rest,” he said, “in his own words so far as I
remember them.
“‘I was looking at this moving thing,’ he said, ‘which seemed exactly
of the red color of the rocks, when it suddenly came out under the
funnel of light, and I saw it was a man. He was in a rough suit all
iron stained, with a rusty cap, and he had some kind of a pick in his
hand. He stopped first in the centre of the light, with his back turned
to me, and stood there looking. I cannot say that I was consciously
frightened; I honestly do not know what I thought he was. I think that
my whole mind was taken up in watching him.
“‘Then he turned round slowly and I saw his face. Then I became aware
that if he looked at me I should go into hysterics or something of
the sort, and I crouched down as low as I could. But he didn’t look
at me; he was attending to something else, and I could see his face
quite clearly. He had a beard and moustache, rather ragged and rusty;
he was rather pale, but not particularly. I judged him to be about
thirty-five.’ Of course,” went on the lawyer, “Murphy didn’t tell it me
quite as I am telling it to you. He stopped a good deal; he drank a sip
of tea once or twice and changed his feet about.
“Well, he had seen this man’s face very clearly, and described it very
clearly.
“It was the expression that struck him most.
“‘It was a rather amused expression,’ he said; ‘rather pathetic and
rather tender, and he was looking interestedly about at everything--at
the rocks above and beneath; he carried his pick easily in the crook
of his arm. He looked exactly like a man whom I once saw visiting his
home where he had lived as a child.’ (Murphy was very particular about
that, though I don’t believe he was right.) ‘He was smiling a little in
his beard and his eyes were half shut. It was so pathetic that I nearly
went into hysterics then and there,’ said Murphy. ‘I wanted to stand up
and explain that it was all right, but I knew he knew more than I did.
I watched him, I should think, for nearly five minutes; he went to and
fro softly in the thick dust, looking here and there, sometimes in the
shadow and sometimes out of it. I could not have moved for ten thousand
pounds and I could not take my eyes off him.
“‘Then just before the end I did look away from him. I wanted to know
if it was all real, and I looked at the rocks behind and the openings.
Then I saw that there were other people there; at least, there were
things moving of the color of the rocks.
“‘I suppose I made some sound then; I was horribly frightened. At any
rate, the man in the middle turned right round and faced me, and at
that I sank down with the sweat dripping from me, flat on my face, with
my hands over my eyes.
“‘I thought of a hundred thousand things--of the inn and you and the
walk we had had--and I prayed--well, I suppose I prayed. I wanted God
to take me right out of this place. I wanted the rocks to open and let
me through.’”
Mr. Percival stopped. His voice shook with a tiny tremor. He cleared
his throat.
“Well, reverend Fathers, Murphy got up at last and looked about him,
and of course there was nothing there but just the rocks and the dust
and the sky overhead. Then he came away home the shortest way.”
It was a very abrupt ending, and a little sigh ran round the circle.
Monsignor struck a match noisily and kindled his pipe again.
“Thank you very much, sir,” he said briskly.
Mr. Percival cleared his throat again, but before he could speak Father
Brent broke in.
“Now, that is just an instance of what I was saying, Monsignor, the
night we began. May I ask if you really believe that those were the
souls of the miners? Where’s the justice of it? What’s the point?”
Monsignor glanced at the lawyer.
“Have you any theory, sir?” he asked.
Mr. Percival answered without lifting his eyes.
“I think so,” he said shortly; “but I don’t feel in the least dogmatic.”
Father Brent looked at him almost indignantly.
“I should like to hear it,” he said. “If you can square that----”
“I do not square it,” said the lawyer. “Personally I do not believe
they were spirits at all.”
“Oh?”
“No, I do not, though I do not wish to be dogmatic. To my mind it seems
far more likely that this is an instance of Mr. Hudson’s theory--the
American, you know. His idea is that all apparitions are no more than
the result of violent emotions experienced during life. That about the
pathetic expression is all nonsense, I believe.”
“I don’t understand,” said Father Brent.
“Well, these men, killed by the fall of the roof, probably went through
a violent emotion. This would be heightened in some degree by their
loneliness and isolation from the world. This kind of emotion, Mr.
Hudson suggests, has a power of saturating material surroundings, which
under certain circumstances would once more, like a photograph, give
off an image of the agent. In this instance, too, the absence of other
human visitors would give this materialized emotion a chance, so to
speak, of surviving; there would be very few cross-currents to confuse
it. And finally, Murphy was alone; his receptive faculties would be
stimulated by that fact, and all that he saw, in my belief, was the
psychical wave left by these men in dying.”
“Oh! Did you tell him so?”
“I did not. Murphy is a violent man.”
I looked up at Monsignor, and saw him nodding emphatically to himself.
XIII
_My Own Tale_
I must confess that I was a little taken aback on my last evening
before leaving for England when Monsignor Maxwell turned on me suddenly
at supper and exclaimed aloud that I had not yet contributed a story.
I protested that I had none; that I was a prosaic person; that there
was some packing to be done; that my business was to write down the
stories of other people; that I had my living to make and could not be
liberal with my slender store; that it was a layman’s function to sit
at holy and learned priests’ feet, not to presume to inform them on any
subject under the sun.
But it was impossible to resist; it was pointed out to me that I had
listened on false pretences if I had not intended to do my share,
that telling a story did not hinder my printing it. And, as a final
argument, it was declared that unless I occupied the chair that night
all present withdrew the leave that had already been given to me to
print their stories on my return to England.
There was nothing, therefore, to be done; and as I had already
considered the possibility of the request, I did not occupy an unduly
long time in pretending to remember what I had to say.
When I was seated upstairs and the fire had been poked according to the
ritual and the matches had gone round, and buckled shoes protruded side
by side with elastic-ankled boots, I began.
“This is a very unsatisfactory story,” I said, “because it has no
explanation of any kind. It is quite unlike Mr. Percival’s. You will
see that even theorizing is useless when I have come to the end. It
is simply a series of facts that I have to relate; facts that have no
significance except one that is supernatural, but it is utterly out of
the question even to guess at that significance.
“It is unsatisfactory, too, for a second reason, and that is, that it
is on such very hackneyed lines. It is simply one more instance of that
very dreamy class of phenomena, named ‘haunted houses,’ except that
there is no ghost in it. Its only claim to interest is, as I have said,
the complete futility of any attempt to explain it.”
This was rather a pompous exordium, I felt, but thought it best not to
raise expectations too high, and I was therefore deliberately dull.
“Sixteen years ago from last summer I was in France. I had left school,
where I had labored two hours a week at French for four years, and
gone away in order to learn it in six weeks. This I accomplished very
tolerably, in company with five other boys and an English tutor. Our
general adventures are not relevant, but toward the end of our stay we
went over one Sunday from Portrieux in order to see a French château
about three miles away.
“It was a really glorious June day, hot and fresh and exhilarating, and
we lunched delightfully in the woods with a funny, fat little French
count and his wife, who came with us from the hotel. It is impossible
to imagine less uncanny circumstances or companions.
“After lunch we all went cheerfully to the house, whose chimneys we had
seen among the trees.
“I know nothing about the dates of houses, but the sort of impression I
got of this house was that it was about three hundred years old; but it
may equally have been four, or two. I did not know then and do not know
now anything about it except its name, which I will not tell you; and
its owner’s name, which I will not tell you either, and--and something
else that I will tell you. We will call the owner, if you please, Comte
Jean Marie the First. The house is built in two courts, the right-hand
court, through which we entered, was then used as a farm-yard; and
I should think it probable that it is still so used. This court was
exceedingly untidy. There was a large manure heap in the centre, and
the servants’ quarters to our right looked miserably cared for. There
was a cart or two with shafts turned up, near the sheds that were built
against the wall opposite the gate; and there was a sleepy old dog with
bleared eyes that looked at us intensely from his kennel door.
“Our French friend went across to the servants’ cottages with his
moustache sticking out on either side of his face; and presently came
back with two girls and the keys. There was no objection, he exclaimed
dramatically, to our seeing the house!
“The girls went before us, and unlocked the iron gate that led to the
second court; and we went through after them.
“Now we had heard at the hotel that the family lived in Paris; but we
were not prepared for the dreadful desolation of that inner court. The
living part of the house was on our left; and what had once been a lawn
to our right; but the house was discolored and weather-stained; the
green paint of the closed shutters and door was cracked and blistered;
and the lawn resembled a wilderness; the grass was long and rank;
there were rose-trees trailing along the edge and across the path; and
a sun-dial on the lawn reminded me strangely of a drunken man petrified
in the middle of a stagger. All this, of course, was what was to be
expected in an adventure of this kind. It would do for a Christmas
number.
“But it was not our business to criticize; and after a moment or two,
we followed the girls who had unlocked the front door and were waiting
for us to enter.
“One of them had gone before to open the shutters.
“It was not a large house, in spite of its name, and we had soon looked
through the lower rooms of it. They, too, were what you would expect;
the floors were beeswaxed; there were tables and chairs of a tolerable
antiquity; a little damask on the walls and so on. But what astonished
us was the fact that none of the furniture was covered up, or even
moved aside; and the dust lay, I should say, half an inch thick on
every horizontal surface. I heard the Frenchman crying on his God in
an undertone--as is the custom of Gauls--” (I bowed a little to Father
Meuron)--“and finally he burst out with a question as to why the rooms
were in this state.
“The girl looked at him stolidly. She was a stout, red-faced girl.
“‘It is by the Count’s orders,’ she said.
“‘And does the Count not come here?’ he asked.
“‘No, sir.’
“Then we all went upstairs. One of the girls had preceded us again and
was sitting with her hand on a door to usher us in.
“‘See here is the room the most splendid!’ she said; and threw the door
open.
“It was certainly the room the most splendid. It was a great
bed-chamber hung with tapestry; there were some excellent chairs with
carved legs; a splendid gold-framed mirror tilted forward over the
carved mantle-piece; and, above all, and standing out from the wall
opposite the window was a great four-posted bed, with an elaborately
carved head to it, and heavy curtains hanging from the canopy.
“But what surprised us more than anything that we had yet seen, was the
sight of the bed. Except for the dust that lay on it, it might have
been slept in the night before. There were actually damask sheets upon
it, thrown back, and two pillows. All gray with dust. These were not
arranged but tumbled about, as a bed is in the morning before it is
made.
“As I was looking at this, I heard a boy cry out from the washing-stand.
“‘Why, it has had water in it,’ he said.
“This did not sound exceptional for a basin, but we all crowded round
to look; and it was perfectly true; there was a gray film round the
interior of it; and when he had disturbed it as a boy would with
his finger we could see the flowered china beneath. The line came
two-thirds of the way up the sides of the basin. It must have been
partly filled with water a long while ago, which gradually evaporated,
leaving its mark in the dust that must have collected there week after
week.
“The Frenchman lost his patience at that.
“‘My sacred something!’ he said, ‘why is the room like this?’
“The same girl who had answered him before, answered him again in the
same words. She was standing by the mantle-piece watching us.
“‘It is the Count’s orders,’ she said stolidly.
“‘It is by the Count’s orders that the bed is not made?’ snapped the
man.
“‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl simply.
“Well, that did not content the Frenchman. He exhibited a couple of
francs and began to question.
“This is the story that he got out of her. She told it quite simply.
“The last time that Count Jean Marie had come to the place, it had been
for his honeymoon. He had come down from Paris with his bride. They had
dined together downstairs, very happily and gaily; and had slept in
the room in which we were at this moment. A message had been sent out
for the carriage early next morning; and the couple had driven away
with their trunks leaving their servants behind. They had not returned,
but a message had come down from Paris that the house was to be closed.
It appeared that the servants who had been left behind had had orders
that nothing was to be tidied; even the bed was not to be made; the
rooms were to be locked up, and left as they were.
“The Frenchman had hardly been able to restrain himself as he heard
this unconvincing story; though his wife shook him by the shoulders at
each violent gesture that he made, and at the end he had put a torrent
of questions.
“‘Were they frightened then?’
“‘I do not know, sir.’
“‘I mean the bride and bridegroom, fool!’
“‘I do not know, sir.’
“‘Sacred name!--and--and--why do you not know?’
“‘I have never seen any of them, sir.’
“‘Not seen them! Why you said just now----’
“‘Yes, sir; but I was not born then. It was thirty years ago.’
* * * * *
“I do not think I have ever seen people so bewildered as we all were.
This was entirely unexpected. The Frenchman’s jaw dropped; he licked
his lips once or twice; and turned away. We all stood perfectly still a
moment, and then we went out.”
I indulged myself with a pause just here. I was enjoying myself more
than I thought I should. I had not told the story for some while; and
had forgotten what a good one it was. Besides, it had the advantage of
being perfectly true. Then I went on again with a pleased consciousness
of faces turned to me and black-ended cigarettes.
“I must tell you this,” I said. “I was relieved to get out of the
room. It is sixteen years ago now; and I may have embroidered on
my sensations; but my impression is that I had been just a little
uncomfortable even before the girl’s story. I don’t think that I felt
that there was any presence there, or anything of that kind. It was
rather the opposite; it was the feeling of an extraordinary emptiness.”
“Like a Catholic Cathedral in Protestant hands,” put in a voice.
I nodded at the zealous, convert-making Father Brent.
“It was very like that,” I said, “and had, too, the same kind of pathos
and terror that one feels in the presence of a child’s dead body. It
is unnaturally empty, and yet significant; and one does not quite know
what it signifies.”
I paused again.
“Well, reverend Fathers, that is the first Act. We went back to
Portrieux; we made enquiries and got no answer. All shrugged their
shoulders, and said that they did not know. There were no tales of the
bride’s hair turning white in the night, or of any curse or ghost or
noises or lights. It was just as I have told you. Then we went back to
England; and the curtain came down.
“Now generally such curtains have no resurrection. I suppose we have
all had fifty experiences of First Acts; and we do not know to this day
whether the whole play is a comedy or a tragedy; or even whether the
play has been written at all.”
“Do not be modern and allusive, Mr. Benson,” said Monsignor.
“I beg your pardon, Monsignor, I will not. I forgot myself. Well, here
is the Second Act. There are only two, and this is a much shorter one.
“Nine years later I was in Paris, staying in the Rue Picot with some
Americans. A French friend of theirs was to be married to a man; and
I went to the wedding at the Madeleine. It was--well, it was like
all other weddings at the Madeleine. No description can be adequate
to the appearance of the officiating clergyman and the altar and the
bridesmaids and the French gentlemen with polished boots and butterfly
ties, and the conversation, and the gaiety, and the general impression
of a confectioner’s shop and a milliner’s and a salon and a holy
church. I observed the bride and bridegroom and forgot their names for
the twentieth time, and exchanged some remarks in the sacristy with
a leader of society who looked like a dissipated priest; with my eyes
starting out of my head in my anxiety not to commit a _solécisme_ or a
_barbarisme_. And then we went home again.
“On the way home we discussed the honeymoon. The pair were going down
to a country house in Brittany. I enquired the name of it; and, of
course, it was the château I had visited nine years before. It had
been lent them by Count Jean Marie the Second. The gentleman resided
in England, I heard, in order to escape the conscription; he was a
connection of the bride’s; and was about thirty years of age.
“Well, of course, I was interested; and made enquiries and related my
adventure. The Americans were mildly interested, too, but not excited.
Thirty-nine years is ancient history to that energetic nation.” (I
bowed to Father Jenks, before I remembered that he was a Canadian;
and then pretending that I had not I went on quickly, and missed a
dramatic opportunity.) “But two days afterward they were excited. One
of the girls came into déjeuner, and said that she had met the bride
and bridegroom dining together in the Bois. They had seemed perfectly
well; and had saluted her politely. It seemed that they had come back
to Paris after one night at the château, exactly as another bride and
bridegroom had done thirty-nine years before.
“Before I finish let me sum up the situation.
“In neither case was there apparently any shocking incident, and yet
something had been experienced that broke up plans and sent away
immediately from a charming house and country two pairs of persons who
had deliberately formed the intention of living there for a while. In
both cases the persons in question had come back to Paris.
“I need hardly say that I managed to call with my friends upon the
bride and bridegroom, and, at the risk of being impertinent, asked the
bride point-blank why they had changed their plans and come back to
town.
“She looked at me without a trace of horror in her eyes, and smiled a
little.
“‘It was _triste_,’ she said; ‘a little _triste_. We thought we would
come away; we desired crowds.’”
I paused again.