Ghosts in the House: Tales of Terror by A. C. Benson and R. H. Benson

By the time that my coffee had arrived, the Father Rector had run dry of conversation and I could see that he was relieved when I joined in.

In a few minutes I was telling Mr Percival about the symposium we had formed for the relating of preternatural adventures; and I presently asked him whether he had ever had any experience of the kind.

He shook his head.

‘I have not,’ he said in his virile voice; ‘my business takes my time.’

‘I wish you had been with us earlier,’ put in the Rector. ‘I think you would have been interested.’

‘I am sure of it,’ he said. ‘I remember once – but you know, Father, frankly I am something of a sceptic.’

‘You remember—?’ I suggested.

He smiled very pleasantly with eyes and mouth.

‘Yes, Mr Benson; I was once next door to such a story. A friend of mine saw something; but I was not with him at the moment.’

‘Well; we thought we had finished last night,’ I said, ‘but do you think you would be too tired to entertain us this evening?’

‘I shall be delighted to tell the story,’ he said easily. ‘But indeed I am a sceptic in this matter; I cannot dress it up.’

‘We want the naked fact,’ I said.

I went sight-seeing with him that day; and found him extremely intelligent and at the same time accurate. The two virtues do not run often together; and I felt confident that whatever he chose to tell us would be salient and true. I felt, too, that he would need few questions to draw him out; he would say what there was to be said unaided.

When we had taken our places that night, he began by again apologising for his attitude of mind.

‘I do not know, Reverend Fathers,’ he said, ‘what are your own theories in this matter; but it appears to me that if what seems to be preternatural can possibly be brought within the range of the natural, one is bound scientifically to treat it in that way. Now in this story of mine – for I will give you a few words of explanation first in order to prejudice your minds as much as possible – in this story the whole matter might be accounted for by the imagination. My friend who saw what he saw was under rather theatrical circumstances, and he is an Irishman. Besides that, he knew the history of the place in which he was; and he was quite alone. On the other hand, he has never had an experience of the kind before or since; he is perfectly truthful, and he saw what he saw in moderate daylight. I give you these facts first, and I think you would be perfectly justified in thinking they account for everything. As for my own theory, which is not quite that, I have no idea whether you will agree or disagree with it. I do not say that my judgment is the only sensible one, or anything offensive like that. I merely state what I feel I am bound to accept for the present.’

There was a murmur of assent. Then he crossed his legs, leaned back and began:

‘In my first summer after I was called to the Bar I went down South Wales for a holiday with another man who had been with me at Oxford. His name was Murphy: he is a J.P. now, in Ireland, I think. I cannot think why we went to South Wales; but there it is: we did.

‘We took the train to Cardiff; sent on our luggage up the Taff Valley to an inn of which I cannot remember the name; but it was close to where Lord Bute has a vineyard. Then we walked up to Llandaff, saw St Tylo’s tomb; and went on again to this village.

‘Next morning we thought we would look about us before going on; and we went out for a stroll. It was one of the most glorious mornings I ever remember, quite cloudless and very hot; and we went up through woods to get a breeze at the top of the hill.

‘We found that the whole place was full of iron mines, disused now, as the iron is richer further up the country; but I can tell you that they enormously improved the interest of the place. We found shaft after shaft, some protected and some not, but mostly overgrown with bushes, so we had to walk carefully. We had passed half-a-dozen, I should think, before the thought of going down one of them occurred to Murphy.

‘Well, we got down one at last; though I rather wished for a rope once or twice; and I think it was one of the most extraordinary sights I have ever seen. You know perhaps what the cave of a demon-king is like, in the first act of a pantomime. Well, it was like that. There was a kind of blue light that poured down the shafts, refracted from surface to surface; so that the sky was invisible. On all sides passages ran into total darkness; huge reddish rocks stood out fantastically everywhere in the pale light; there was a sound of water falling into a pool from a great height and presently, striking matches as we went, we came upon a couple of lakes of marvellously clear blue water through which we could see the heads of ladders emerging from other black holes of unknown depth below.

‘We found our way out after a while into what appeared to be the central hall of the mine. Here we saw plain daylight again, for there was an immense round opening at the top, from the edges of which curved away the sides of the shaft, forming a huge circular chamber.

‘Imagine the Albert Hall roofless; or better still, imagine Saint Peter’s with the top half of the dome removed. Of course it was far smaller; but it gave an impression of great size; and it could not have been less than two hundred feet from the edge, over which we saw the trees against the sky, to the tumbled dusty rocky floor where we stood.

‘I can only describe it as being like a great, burnt-out hell in the Inferno. Red dust lay everywhere, escape seemed impossible; and vast crags and galleries, with the mouths of passages showing high up, marked by iron bars and chains, jutted out here and there.

‘We amused ourselves here for some time, by climbing up the sides, calling to one another, for the whole place was full of echoes, rolling down stones from some of the upper ledges: but I nearly ended my days there.

‘I was standing on a path, about seventy feet up, leaning against the wall. It was a path along which feet must have gone a thousand times when the mine was in working order; and I was watching Murphy who was just emerging on to a platform opposite me, on the other side of the gulf.

‘I put my hand behind me to steady myself; and the next instant very nearly fell forward over the edge at the violent shock to my nerves given by a wood-pigeon who burst out of a hole, brushing my hand as he passed. I gripped on, however, and watched the bird soar out across space, and then up and out at the opening; and then I became aware that my knees were beginning to shake. So I stumbled along, and threw myself down on the little platform on to which the passage led.

‘I suppose I had been more startled than I knew; for I tripped as I went forward; and knocked my knee rather sharply on a stone. I felt for an instant quite sick with the pain on the top of jangling nerves; and lay there saying what I am afraid I ought not to have said.

‘Then Murphy came up when I called; and we made our way together through one of the sloping shafts; and came out on to the hillside among the trees.’

Mr Percival paused; his lips twitched a moment with amusement.

‘I am afraid I must recall my promise,’ he said. ‘I told you all this because I was anxious to give a reason for the feeling I had about the mine, and which I am bound to mention. I felt I never wanted to see the place again – yet in spite of what followed, I do not necessarily attribute my feelings to anything but the shock and the pain that I had had. You understand that?’

His bright eyes ran round our faces.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Monsignor sharply, ‘go on please, Mr Percival.’

‘Well then!’

The lawyer uncrossed his legs and replaced them the other way.

‘During lunch we told the landlady where we had been; and she begged us not to go there again. I told her that she might rest easy: my knee was beginning to swell. It was a wretched beginning to a walking tour.

‘It was not that, she said; but there had been a bad accident there. Four men had been killed there twenty years before by a fall of rock. That had been the last straw on the top of ill-success; and the mine had been abandoned.

‘We inquired as to the details; and it seemed that the accident had taken 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 to 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 qualified 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 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 colour 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 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 rather an 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 colour 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 and under certain circumstances, would once more, like a phonograph, give off an image of the agent. In this instance, too, the absence of other human visitors would give this materialised 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.

THE TRAVELLER

R.H. Benson

‘I am amazed, not that the Traveller returns from that Bourne, but that he returns so seldom.’

The Pilgrims’ Way

On one of these evenings as we sat together after dinner in front of the wide open fireplace in the central room of the house, we began to talk on that old subject – the relation of Science to Faith.

‘It is no wonder,’ said the priest, ‘if their conclusions appear to differ, to shallow minds who think that the last words are being said on both sides; because their standpoints are so different. The scientific view is that you are not justified in committing yourself one inch ahead of your intellectual evidence: the religious view is that in order to find out anything worth knowing your faith must always be a little in advance of your evidence; you must advance en échelon. There is the principle of our Lord’s promises. “Act as if it were true, and light will be given.” The scientist on the other hand says, “Do not presume to commit yourself until light is given.” The difference between the methods lies, of course, in the fact that Religion admits the heart and the whole man to the witness-box, while Science only admits the head – scarcely even the senses. Yet surely the evidence of experience is on the side of Religion. Every really great achievement is inspired by motives of the heart, and not of the head; by feeling and passion, not by a calculation of probabilities. And so are the mysteries of God unveiled by those who carry them first by assault; “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence; and the violent take it by force.”

‘For example,’ he continued after a moment, ‘the scientific view of haunted houses is that there is no evidence for them beyond that which may be accounted for by telepathy, a kind of thought-reading. Yet if you can penetrate that veneer of scientific thought that is so common now, you find that by far the larger part of mankind still believes in them. Practically not one of us really accepts the scientific view as an adequate one.’

‘Have you ever had an experience of that kind yourself?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ said the priest, smiling, ‘you are sure you will not laugh at it? There is nothing commoner than to think such things a subject for humour; and that I cannot bear. Each such story is sacred to one person at the very least, and therefore should be to all reverent people.’

I assured him that I would not treat his story with disrespect.

‘Well,’ he answered, ‘I do not think you will, and I will tell you. It only happened a very few years ago. This was how it began:

‘A friend of mine was, and is still, in charge of a church in Kent, which I will not name; but it is within twenty miles of Canterbury. The district fell into Catholic hands a good many years ago. I received a telegram, in this house, a day or two before Christmas, from my friend, saying that he had been suddenly seized with a very bad attack of influenza, which was devastating Kent at that time; and asking me to come down, if possible at once, and take his place over Christmas. I had only lately given up active work, owing to growing infirmity, but it was impossible to resist this appeal; so Parker packed my things and we went together by the next train.

‘I found my friend really ill, and quite incapable of doing anything; so I assured him that I could manage perfectly, and that he need not be anxious.

‘On the next day, a Wednesday, and Christmas Eve, I went down to the little church to hear confessions. It was a beautiful old church, though tiny, and full of interesting things: the old altar had been set up again; there was a rood-loft with a staircase leading on to it; and an awmbry on the north of the sanctuary had been fitted up as a receptacle for the Most Holy Sacrament, instead of the old hanging pyx. One of the most interesting discoveries made in the church was that of the old confessional. In the lower half of the rood-screen, on the south side, a square hole had been found, filled up with an insertion of oak; but an antiquarian of the Alcuin Club, whom my friend had asked to examine the church, declared that this without doubt was the place where in pre-Reformation times confessions were heard. So it had been restored, and put to its ancient use; and now on this Christmas Eve I sat within the chancel in the dim fragrant light, while penitents came and knelt outside the screen on the single step, and made their confessions through the old opening.

‘I know this is a great platitude, but I never can look at a piece of old furniture without a curious thrill at a thing that has been so much saturated with human emotion; but, above all that I have ever seen, I think that this old confessional moved me. Through that little opening had come so many thousands of sins, great and little, weighted with sorrow; and back again, in Divine exchange for those burdens, had returned the balm of the Saviour’s blood. “Behold! a door opened in heaven,” through which that strange commerce of sin and grace may be carried on – grace pressed down and running over, given into the bosom in exchange for sin! O bonum commercium!’

The priest was silent for a moment, his eyes glowing. Then he went on.

‘Well, Christmas Day and the three following festivals passed away very happily. On the Sunday night after service, as I came out of the vestry, I saw a child waiting. She told me, when I asked her if she wanted me, that her father and others of her family wished to make their confessions on the following evening about six o’clock. They had had influenza in the house, and had not been able to come out before; but the father was going to work next day, as he was so much better, and would come, if it pleased me, and some of his children to make their confessions in the evening and their communions the following morning.