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

The little place was just waking into quiet activity. I found a bustling man taking down shutters from a general shop which was also the post-office, and enquired where Mr Netherby lived. The man told me that he was in lodgings at Treheale – ‘the big house itself, where Farmer Hall lives now; if you go straight along the road,’ he added, ‘you will pass the lodge, and Treheale lies up in the wood.’

I was by this time very tired – it was now nearly seven – but I took up my bag again and walked along a road passing between high hedges. Presently the wood closed in again, and I saw a small plastered lodge with a thatched roof standing on the left among some firs. The gate stood wide open, and the road which led into the wood was grass-grown, though with deep ruts, along which heavy laden carts seemed to have passed recently.

The lodge seemed deserted, and I accordingly struck off into the wood. Presently the undergrowth grew thicker, and huge sprawling laurels rose in all directions. Then the track took a sudden turn; and I saw straight in front of me the front of a large Georgian house of brown stone, with a gravel sweep up to the door, but all overgrown with grass.

I confess that the house displeased me strangely. It was substantial, homely, and large; but the wood came up close to it on all sides, and it seemed to stare at me with its shuttered windows with a look of dumb resentment, like a great creature at bay.

I walked on, and saw that the smoke went up from a chimney to the left. The house, as I came closer, presented a front with a stone portico, crowned with a pediment. To left and right were two wings which were built out in advance from the main part of the house, throwing the door back into the shadow.

I pulled a large handle which hung beside the door, and a dismal bell rang somewhere in the house – rang on and on as if unable to cease; then footsteps came along the floor within, and the door was slowly and reluctantly unbarred.

There stood before me a little pale woman with a timid, downcast air. ‘Does Mr Netherby live here?’ I said.

‘Yes; he lodges here, sir.’

‘Can I see him?’ I said.

‘Well, sir, he is not up yet. Does he expect you?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ I said, faltering; ‘but he will know my name – and I have come a long way to see him.’

The woman raised her eyes and looked at me, and I was aware, by some swift intuition, that I was in the presence of a distressed spirit, labouring under some melancholy prepossession.

‘Will you be here long?’ she asked suddenly.

‘No,’ I said; ‘but I shall have to stay the night, I think. I travelled all last night, and I am very tired; in fact I shall ask to sit down and wait till I can see Mr Netherby.’

She seemed to consider for a moment, and then led me into the house. We entered a fine hall, with stone flags and pillars on each side. There hung, so far as I could see in the half-light, grim and faded portraits on the walls, and there were some indistinct pieces of furniture, like couched beasts, in the corners. We went through a door and down a passage and turned into a large rather bare room, which showed, however, some signs of human habitation. There was a table laid for a meal.

An old piano stood in a corner, and there were a few books lying about; on the walls hung large pictures in tarnished frames. I put down my bag, and sat down by the fire in an old armchair, and almost instantly fell into a drowse. I have an indistinct idea of the woman returning to ask if I would like some breakfast, or wait for Mr Netherby. I said hastily that I would wait, being in the oppressed condition of drowsiness when one’s only idea is to get a respite from the presence of any person, and fell again into a heavy sleep.

I woke suddenly with a start, conscious of a movement in the room. Basil Netherby was standing close beside me, with his back to the fire, looking down at me with a look which I can only say seemed to me to betoken a deep annoyance of spirit. But seeing me awake, there came on to his face a smile of a reluctant and diplomatic kind. I started to my feet, giddy and bewildered, and shook hands.

‘My word,’ he said, ‘you sleep sound, Ward. So you’ve found me out? Well, I’m very glad to see you; but what made you think of coming? and why didn’t you let me know? I would have sent something to meet you.’

I was a good deal nettled at this ungenial address, after the trouble to which I had put myself. I said, ‘Well, really, Basil, I think that is rather strong. Mr Vyvyan called on me yesterday with a letter from you, and some music; and of course I came away at once.’

‘Of course,’ he said, looking on the ground – and then added rather hastily, ‘Now, how did the stuff strike you? I have improved, I think. And it is really very good of you to come off at once to criticise the music – very good of you,’ he said with some emphasis; ‘and, man, you look wretchedly tired – let us have breakfast.’

I was just about to remonstrate, and to speak about the post-script, when he looked at me suddenly with so peculiar and disagreeable a glance that the words literally stuck in my throat. I thought to myself that perhaps the subject was too painful to enter upon at once, and that he probably wished to tell me at his own time what was in the background.

We breakfasted; and now that I had leisure to look at Basil, I was surprised beyond measure at the change in him. I had seen him last a pale, rather haggard youth, loose-limbed and untidy. I saw before me a strongly-built and firmly-knit man, with a ruddy colour and bronzed cheek. He looked the embodiment of health and well-being. His talk, too, after the first impression of surprise wore off, was extraordinarily cheerful and amusing. Again and again he broke out into loud laughter – not the laughter of an excited or hectic person, but the firm, brisk laugh of a man full to the brim of good spirits and health.

He talked of his work, of the country people that surrounded him, whose peculiarities he seemed to have observed with much relish; he asked me, but without any appearance of interest, what I thought about his work. I tried to tell him what Dr Grierson had said and what I had felt; but I was conscious of being at a strange disadvantage before this genial personality. He laughed loudly at our criticisms. ‘Old Grierson,’ he said, ‘why, he is no better than a clergyman’s widow: he would stop his ears if you read Shakespeare to him. My dear man, I have travelled a long way since I saw you last; I have found my tongue – and what is more, I can say what I mean, and as I mean it. Grierson indeed! I can see him looking shocked, like a pelican with a stomach-ache.’

This was a felicitous though not a courteous description of our friend, but I could find no words to combat it; indeed, Basil’s talk and whole bearing seemed to carry me away like a swift stream and in my wearied condition I found that I could not stand up to this radiant personality.

After breakfast he advised me to have a good sleep and he took me, with some show of solicitude, to a little bedroom which had been got ready for me. He unpacked my things and told me to undress and go to bed, that he had some work to do that he was anxious to finish, and that after luncheon we would have a stroll together.

I was too tired to resist, and fell at once into a deep sleep. I rose a new man; and finding no one in Basil’s room, I strolled out for a moment on to the drive, and presently saw the odd and timid figure of Mrs Hall coming along, in a big white flapping sort of sun-bonnet, with a basket in her hand. She came straight up to me in a curious, resolute sort of way, and it came into my mind that she had come out for the very purpose of meeting me.

I praised the beauty of the place, and said that I supposed she knew it well. ‘Yes,’ she said; adding that she was born in the village and her mother had been as a girl a servant at Treheale. But she went on to tell me that she and her husband had lived till recently at a farm down in the valley, and had only been a year or so in the house itself. Old Mr Heale, the last owner, had died three or four years before, and it had proved impossible to let the house. It seemed that when the trustees gave up all idea of being able to get a tenant, they had offered it to the Halls at a nominal rent, to act as caretakers. She spoke in a cheerless way, with her eyes cast down and with the same strained look as of one carrying a heavy burden. ‘You will have heard of Mr Heale, perhaps?’ she said with a sudden look at me.

‘The old Squire, sir,’ she said; ‘but I think people here are unfair to him. He lived a wild life enough, but he was a kind gentleman in his way – and I have often thought it was not his fault altogether. He married soon after he came into the estate – a Miss Tregaskis from down to St Erne – and they were very happy for a little; but she died after they had been married a couple of years, and they had no child; and then I think Mr Heale shut himself up a good deal among his books – he was a very clever gentleman – and then he got into bad ways; but it was the sorrow in his heart that made him bad – and we must not blame people too much, must we?’ She looked at me with a rather pitiful look.

‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that he tried to forget his grief, and did not choose the best way to do it.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Mrs Hall simply. ‘I think he blamed God for taking away what he loved, instead of trusting Him; and no good comes of that. The people here got to hate him – he used to spoil the young people, sir – you know what I mean – and they were afraid of seeing him about their houses. I remember, sir, as if it were yesterday, seeing him in the lane to St Sibby. He was marching along, very upright, with his white hair – it went white early – and he passed old Mr Miles, the churchwarden, who had been a wild young man too, but he found religion with the Wesleyans, and after that was very hard on everyone.

‘It was the first time they had met since Mr Miles had become serious; and Mr Heale stopped in his pleasant way, and held out his hand to Mr Miles; who put his hands behind him and said something – I was close to them – which I could not quite catch, but it was about fellowship with the works of darkness; and then Mr Miles turned and went on his way; and Mr Heale stood looking after him with a curious smile on his face – and I have pitied him ever since. Then he turned and saw me; he always took notice of me – I was a girl then; and he said to me, “There, Mary, you see that. I am not good enough, it seems, for Mr Miles. Well, I don’t blame him; but remember, child, that the religion which makes a man turn his back on an old friend is not a good religion”; but I could see he was distressed, though he spoke quietly – and as I went on he gave a sigh which somehow stays in my mind. Perhaps sir, you would like to look at his picture; he was painted at the same time as Mrs Heale in the first year of their marriage.’

I said I should like to see it, and we turned to the house. She led me to a little room that seemed like a study. There was a big bookcase full of books, mostly of a scientific kind; and there was a large kneehole table much dotted with inkspots. ‘It was here,’ she said, ‘he used to work, hour after hour.’ On the wall hung a pair of pictures – one, that of a young woman, hardly more than a girl, with a delightful expression, both beautiful and good. She was dressed in some white material, and there was a glimpse of sunlit fields beyond.

Then I turned to the portrait of Mr Heale. It represented a young man in a claret-coloured coat, very slim and upright. It showed a face of great power, a big forehead, clear-cut features, and a determined chin, with extraordinarily bright large eyes; evidently the portrait of a man of great physical and mental force, who would do whatever he took in his hand with all his might. It was very finely painted, with a dark background of woods against a stormy sky.

I was immensely struck by the picture; and not less by the fact that there was an extraordinary though indefinable likeness to Mrs Hall herself. I felt somehow that she perceived that I had noticed this, for she made as though to leave the room. I could not help the inference that I was compelled to draw. I lingered for a moment looking at the portrait, which was so lifelike as to give an almost painful sense of the presence of a third person in the room. But Mrs Hall went out, and I understood that I was meant to follow her.

She led the way into their own sitting-room, and then with some agitation she turned to me. ‘I understand that you are an old friend of Mr Netherby’s, sir,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said; ‘he is my greatest friend.’

‘Could you persuade him, sir, to leave this place?’ she went on. ‘You will think it a strange thing to say – and I am glad enough to have a lodger, and I like Mr Netherby – but do you think it is a good thing for a young gentleman to live so much alone?’

I saw that nothing was to be gained by reticence, so I said, ‘Now, Mrs Hall, I think we had better speak plainly. I am, I confess, anxious about Mr Netherby. I don’t mean that he is not well, for I have never seen him look better; but I think that there is something going on which I don’t wholly understand.’

She looked at me suddenly with a quick look, and then, as if deciding that I was to be trusted, she said in a low voice, ‘Yes, sir, that is it; this house is not like the other houses. Mr Heale – how shall I say it? – was a very determined gentleman, and he used to say that he would never leave the house – and – you will think it very strange that I should speak thus to a stranger – I don’t think he has left it.’

We stood for a moment silent, and I knew that she had spoken the truth. While we thus stood, I can only say what I felt – I became aware that we were not alone; the sun was bright on the woods outside, the clock ticked peacefully in a corner, but there was something unseen all about us which lay very heavily on my mind. Mrs Hall put out her hands in a deprecating way, and then said in a low and hurried voice, ‘He would do no harm to me, sir – we are too near for that’ – she looked up at me, and I nodded; ‘but I can’t help it, can I, if he is different with other people? Now, Mr Hall is not like that, sir – he is a plain good man, and would think what I am saying no better than madness; but as sure as there is a God in Heaven, Mr Heale is here – and though he is too fine a gentleman to take advantage of my talk, yet he liked to command other people, and went his own way too much.’

While she spoke, the sense of oppression which I had felt a moment before drew off all of a sudden; and it seemed again as though we were alone.

‘Mrs Hall,’ I said, ‘you are a good woman; these things are very dark to me, and though I have heard of such things in stories, I never expected to meet them in the world. But I will try what I can do to get my friend away, though he is a wilful fellow, and I think he will go his own way too.’ While I spoke I heard Basil’s voice outside calling me, and I took Mrs Hall’s hand in my own. She pressed it, and gave me a very kind, sad look. And so I went out.

We lunched together, Basil and I, off simple fare; he pointed with an air of satisfaction to the score which he had brought into the room, written out with wonderful precision. ‘Just finished,’ he said, ‘and you shall hear it later on; but now we will go and look round the place. Was there ever such luck as to get a harbourage like this? I have been here two months and feel like staying for ever. The place is in Chancery. Old Heale of Treheale, the last of the stock – a rare old blackguard – died here. They tried to let the house, and failed, and put Farmer Hall in at last. The whole place belongs to a girl ten years old. It is a fine house – we will look at that tomorrow; but today we will walk round outside. By the way, how long can you stay?’

‘I must get back on Friday at latest,’ I said. ‘I have a choir practice and a lesson on Saturday.’

Basil looked at me with a good-natured smile. ‘A pretty poor business, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I would rather pick oakum myself. Here I live in a fine house, for next to nothing, and write, write, write – there’s a life for a man.’

‘Don’t you find it lonely?’ said I.

‘Lonely?’ said Basil, laughing loud. ‘Not a bit of it. What do I want with a pack of twaddlers all about me? I tread a path among the stars – and I have the best of company, too.’ He stopped and broke off suddenly.

‘I should have thought Mrs Hall very enlivening company,’ I said. ‘By the way, what an odd-looking woman! She seems as if she were frightened.’

At that innocent remark Basil looked at me suddenly with the same expression of indefinable anger that I had seen in his face at our first meeting; but he said nothing for a moment. Then he resumed, ‘No, I want no company but myself and my thoughts. I tell you, Ward, if you had done as I have done, opened a door into the very treasure-house of music, and had only just to step in and carry away as much as one can manage at a time, you wouldn’t want company.’

I could make no reply to this strange talk; and he presently took me out. I was astonished at the beauty of the place. The ground fell sharply at the back, and there was a terrace with a view over a little valley, with pasture-fields at the bottom, crowned with low woods – beyond, a wide prospect over uplands, which lost themselves in the haze. The day was still and clear; and we could hear the running of the stream below, the cooing of doves and the tinkling of a sheepbell. To the left of the house lay large stables and barns, which were in the possession of the farmer.

We wandered up and down by paths and lanes, sometimes through the yellowing woods, sometimes on open ground, the most perfect views bursting upon us on every side, everything lying in a rich still peace, which came upon my tired and bewildered mind like soft music.

In the course of our walk we suddenly came upon a churchyard surrounded by a low wall; at the farther end, beyond the graves, stood a small church consisting of two aisles, with a high perpendicular tower. ‘St Sibby,’ said Basil, ‘whether he or she I know not, but no doubt a very estimable person. You would like to look at this? The church is generally open.’

We went up a gravel path and entered the porch; the door was open, and there was an odd, close smell in the building. It was a very plain place, with the remains of a rood-loft, and some ancient woodwork; but the walls were mildewed and green and the place looked neglected.

‘Vyvyan is a good fellow,’ said Basil, looking round, ‘but he is single-handed here; the Rector is an invalid and lives at Penzance, and Vyvyan has a wretched stipend. Look here, Leonard; here is the old Heale vault.’ He led me into a little chapel near the tower, which opened on to the church by a single arch. The place was very dark; but I could see a monument or two of an ancient type and some brasses. There were a couple of helmets on iron supports and the remains of a mouldering banner. But just opposite to us was a tall modern marble monument on the wall. ‘That is old Heale’s monument,’ said Basil, ‘with a long, pious inscription by the old rector. Just look at it – did you ever see such vandalism?’

I drew near – then I saw that the monument had been defaced in a hideous and horrible way. There were deep dints in the marble, like the marks of a hammer; and there were red stains over the inscription, which reminded me in a dreadful way of the stains on the letter given me by Vyvyan.

‘Good Heavens!’ I said, ‘what inconceivable brutality! Who on earth did this?’

‘That’s just what no one can find out,’ said Basil, smiling. ‘But the inscription was rather too much, I confess – look at this: “who discharged in an exemplary way the duties of a landowner and a Christian”. Old Heale’s ideas of the duties of a landowner was to screw as much as he could out of his farmers – and he had, moreover, some old ideas, which we may call feudal, about his relations with the more attractive of his tenants: he was a cheerful old boy – and as to the Christian part of it, well, he had about as much of that, I gather, as you take up on a two-pronged fork. Still, they might have left the old man alone. I daresay he sleeps sound enough in spite of it all.’ He stamped his foot on the pavement as he did so, which returned a hollow sound. ‘Are you inside?’ said Basil, laughingly; ‘perhaps not at home?’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ I said to Basil, whose levity seemed to me disgusting. ‘Certainly not, my boy,’ he said, ‘if you don’t like it. I daresay the old man can look after himself.’ And so we left the church.

We returned home about four o’clock. Basil left me on the terrace and went into the house to interview Mrs Hall on the subject of dinner. I hung for a time over the balustrade, but, getting chilly and still not feeling inclined to go in, I strolled to the farther end of the terrace, which ran up to the wood. On reaching the end, I found a stone seat; and behind it, between two yews, a little dark sinister path led into the copse.

I do not know exactly what feeling it was which drew me to enter upon the exploration of the place; the path was slippery and overgrown with moss, and the air of the shrubbery into which it led was close and moist, full of the breath of rotting leaves. The path ran with snakelike windings, so that at no point was it possible to see more than a few feet ahead. Above, the close boughs held hands as if to screen the path from the light. Then the path suddenly took a turn to the left and went straight to the house.

Two yews flanked the way and a small flight of granite steps, slimy and mildewed, led up to a little door in the corner of the house – a door which had been painted brown, like the colour of the stone, and which was let into its frame so as to be flush with the wall. The upper part of it was pierced with a couple of apertures like eyes filled with glass to give light to the passage within. The steps had evidently not been trodden for many months, even years; but upon the door, near the keyhole, were odd marks looking as if scratched by the hoofs of some beast – a goat, I thought – as if the door had been impatiently struck by something awaiting entrance there.

I do not know what was the obsession which fell on me at the sight of this place. A cold dismay seemed to spring from the dark and clutch me; there are places which seem so soaked, as it were, in malign memories that they give out a kind of spiritual aroma of evil. I have seen in my life things which might naturally seem to produce in the mind associations of terror and gloom. I have seen men die; I have seen a man writhe in pain on the ground from a mortal injury; but I never experienced anything like the thrill of horror which passed through my shuddering mind at the sight of the little door with its dark eye-holes.

I went in chilly haste down the path and came out upon the terrace, looking out over the peaceful woods. The sun was now setting in the west among cloud-fiords and bays of rosy light. But the thought of the dark path lying like a snake among the thickets dwelt in my mind and poisoned all my senses.

Presently I heard the voice of Basil call me cheerfully from the corner of the house. We went in. A simple meal was spread for us, half tea, half dinner, to which we did full justice. But afterwards, though Basil was fuller than ever, so it seemed to me, of talk and laughter, I was seized with so extreme a fatigue that I drowsed off several times in the course of our talk, till at last he laughingly ordered me to bed.

I slept profoundly. When I awoke, it was a bright day. My curtains had been drawn, and the materials for my toilette arranged while I slept. I dressed hastily and hurried down, to find Basil awaiting me.

That morning we gave up to exploring the house. It was a fine old place, full from end to end of the evidences of long and ancestral habitation. The place was full of portraits. There was a great old dining-room – Basil had had the whole house unshuttered for my inspection – a couple of large drawing-rooms, long passages, bedrooms, all full of ancient furniture and pictures, as if the family life had been suddenly suspended. I noticed that he did not take me to the study, but led me upstairs.