They return at evening A book of ghost stories
about to leave when my eye was caught by an individual in clerical
attire who was sauntering down the platform and glancing sharply at
the people upon it. As he drew near he seemed vaguely familiar to me.
Suddenly he saw me, and gave me a quick, meaning look. He passed close
to me, and as he went past he said slowly and distinctly, “There’s more
room in the third coach.”
The third coach! The third coach! And in a flash I saw a third coach
turn to matchwood.
“There’s more room in front, Charity,” I said. “Come along!” The
compartment was packed, and she came readily. Just as we reached the
third coach the whistle went, and I bundled her into a compartment
already filled to the brim. She gave me a venomous glance as the train
pulled out.
And then I looked round for that slightly familiar individual. He was
far down the platform by now, but he turned round, saw me, waved his
hand, and disappeared. As the train was passing out I happened to catch
my reflection in a window glass, and then I knew why he had seemed
familiar, for his face was mine!
I left the station and took a taxi to Pantham Station. During the
hour’s run I was in a state of high excitement.
About a mile from the station we were stopped by a policeman. “You
can’t go down this road,” he said, “there’s been a smash on the line.”
“What train?” I asked anxiously.
“The down Folkestone express.”
“My God!” I cried. “I had a friend in it!”
“Well,” he said, “they’ve got the killed and injured on the side of the
embankment, you’d better go down there; anyway, they want help.”
It wasn’t a pleasant sight. I identified Charity by the remnant of
her watch-garter which was still hanging to what had been her leg.
Then, saying nothing to anyone, I went away. Otherwise she was never
identified.
And then, for some reason or other, I became a clergyman. I don’t
really know why. In fact I think I’ve become that individual who told
me about that third coach.
* * * * *
Here the delicate little script came to an end, and a moment later
Lanton came back.
“Finished?” he asked. “Well, what do you think of it?”
“A very rascally and curious tale,” I replied.
“But the most curious part of it is,” said Lanton, “that there’s not a
word of truth in it.”
“What!”
“The Reverend Wellington Scot was a mild, timid, East End curate. Going
down for a holiday to Folkestone he was in the Pantham disaster, and
hurled from the third coach on to his head. He was unconscious for ten
days, and when he came to he had to come here. He spends every moment
writing that story in notebooks. He completes it twice a week. We read
it carefully to see if his narrative ever changes, but it is always
almost word for word the same. He is very docile and easy to manage so
long as he is allowed to write. For an experiment we took his writing
materials away, whereupon he delivered himself of the most appalling
filth and blasphemy I have ever heard. He never speaks unless he is
spoken to. When he first came in his face was round, chubby, and
ingenuous in expression; it has slowly lengthened, hardened, and its
expression has become cunning, watchful and malevolent. That is the
story of the Reverend Wellington Scot.”
“And the explanation?” I asked.
Lanton shrugged his shoulders.
“How can there be one? I have known somewhat similar cases, though
never so perfect, where some injury to the head has changed the
disposition and to some extent the memory, but, as I say, never to this
extent. As a matter of fact one can find traces of the curate in that
narrative. A quotation from Shelley, a familiarity with strange types,
a distaste for sex and so on, and, of course, the closing sentences;
otherwise he is, as he appears in his story, the precise opposite of
what he actually was. Perhaps you may have missed almost the most
remarkable thing. His description of the accident, as seen in his
vision, is precisely identical with that of the two eye-witnesses of
it, yet, of course, he never could have seen it, and he hasn’t read a
word since he recovered consciousness. I said just now there wasn’t a
word of truth in that narrative, but that in a sense is presumptuous
and unscientific. The fashionable theory to-day is that we each one of
us create our own particular god and our own particular universe--it
is subjectivity’s innings. We certainly create our own truths.
Fortunately in the case of most of us our truth roughly corresponds
with the truth of others. The Reverend Wellington Scot’s violently
diverges, so we have to lock him up. He has been here a year, and I
found he went to a Greyhound Racing Meeting at the White City the night
before the accident. Would you like to see him again?”
“Yes and no. On the whole, yes.”
Lanton took me along a corridor and unlocked a door. The Reverend
Wellington Scot was seated at a table, his face partly shaded by a
reading lamp. He was writing busily, but looked up after a moment and
shot that penetrating glance at me.
“I hope you have everything you want, Mr. Scot,” said Lanton.
“Yes, thank you, sir,” he replied, in the mild, slightly clipped,
slightly sing-song voice of a stage-curate, “but I have one little
question to ask of you, should the words watch-garter be hyphenated, in
your opinion, or not?”
“Hyphenated, I think,” replied Lanton.
“I am much obliged to you, and glad to find that we are in agreement. I
suppose, sir, I shall be here for some little time yet?”
“Oh yes, just for a little while longer,” said Lanton. “Good-night.”
“Good-night, sir,” he replied, his pencil already busy again.
“Poor devil,” I said, as we walked back to Lanton’s study. “Is he
happy?”
“Perfectly,” replied Lanton. “There ought to be a deep truth hidden
somewhere in that fact; and now for a drink.”
THE RED LODGE
THE RED LODGE
I am writing this from an imperative sense of duty, for I consider
the Red Lodge is a foul death-trap and utterly unfit to be a human
habitation--it has its own proper denizens--and because I know its
owner to be an unspeakable blackguard to allow it so to be used for
his financial advantage. He knows the perils of the place perfectly
well; I wrote him of our experiences, and he didn’t even acknowledge
the letter, and two days ago I saw the ghastly pest-house advertised
in _Country Life_. So anyone who rents the Red Lodge in future will
receive a copy of this document as well as some uncomfortable words
from Sir William, and that scoundrel Wilkes can take what action he
pleases.
I certainly didn’t carry any prejudice against the place down to it
with me: I had been too busy to look over it myself, but my wife
reported extremely favourably--I take her word for most things--and I
could tell by the photographs that it was a magnificent specimen of the
medium-sized Queen Anne house, just the ideal thing for me. Mary said
the garden was perfect, and there was the river for Tim at the bottom
of it. I had been longing for a holiday, and was in the highest spirits
as I travelled down. I have not been in the highest spirits since.
My first vague, faint uncertainty came to me so soon as I had crossed
the threshold. I am a painter by profession, and therefore sharply
responsive to colour tone. Well, it was a brilliantly fine day, the
hall of the Red Lodge was fully lighted, yet it seemed a shade off
the key, as it were, as though I were regarding it through a pair of
slightly darkened glasses. Only a painter would have noticed it, I
fancy.
When Mary came out to greet me, she was not looking as well as I had
hoped, or as well as a week in the country should have made her look.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, but I thought she found it difficult to say so,
and then my eye detected a curious little spot of green on the maroon
rug in front of the fireplace. I picked it up--it seemed like a patch
of river slime.
“I suppose Tim brings those in,” said Mary. “I’ve found several; of
course, he promises he doesn’t.” And then for a moment we were silent,
and a very unusual sense of constraint seemed to set a barrier between
us. I went out into the garden to smoke a cigarette before lunch, and
sat myself down under a very fine mulberry tree.
I wondered if, after all, I had been wise to have left it all to
Mary. There was nothing wrong with the house, of course, but I am
a bit psychic, and I always know the mood or character of a house.
One welcomes you with the tail-writhing enthusiasm of a really nice
dog, makes you at home, and at your ease at once. Others are sullen,
watchful, hostile, with things to hide. They make you feel that you
have obtruded yourself into some curious affairs which are none of your
business. I had never encountered so hostile, aloof, and secretive a
living place as the Red Lodge seemed when I first entered it. Well,
it couldn’t be helped, though it was disappointing; and there was Tim
coming back from his walk, and the luncheon gong. My son seemed a
little subdued and thoughtful, though he looked pretty well, and soon
we were all chattering away with those quick changes of key which occur
when the respective ages of the conversationalists are 40, 33 and 6½,
and after half a bottle of Meursault and a glass of port I began to
think I had been a morbid ass. I was still so thinking when I began my
holiday in the best possible way by going to sleep in an exquisitely
comfortable chair under the mulberry tree. But I have slept better. I
dozed off, but I had a silly impression of being watched, so that I
kept waking up in case there might be someone with his eye on me. I was
lying back, and could just see a window on the second floor framed by a
gap in the leaves, and on one occasion, when I woke rather sharply from
one of these dozes, I thought I saw for a moment a face peering down
at me, and this face seemed curiously flattened against the pane--just
a “carry over” from a dream, I concluded. However, I didn’t feel like
sleeping any more, and began to explore the garden. It was completely
walled in, I found, except at the far end, where there was a door
leading through to a path which, running parallel to the right-hand
wall, led to the river a few yards away. I noticed on this door
several of those patches of green slime for which Tim was supposedly
responsible. It was a dark little corner cut off from the rest of the
garden by two rowan trees, a cool, silent little place I thought it.
And then it was time for Tim’s cricket lesson, which was interrupted
by the arrival of some infernal callers. But they were pleasant people,
as a matter of fact, the Local Knuts, I gathered, who owned the Manor
House; Sir William Prowse and his lady and his daughter. I went for a
walk with him after tea.
“Who had this house before us?” I asked.
“People called Hawker,” he replied. “That was two years ago.”
“I wonder the owner doesn’t live in it,” I said. “It isn’t an expensive
place to keep up.”
Sir William paused as if considering his reply.
“I think he dislikes being so near the river. I’m not sorry, for I
detest the fellow. By the way, how long have you taken it for?”
“Three months,” I replied, “till the end of October.”
“Well, if I can do anything for you I shall be delighted. If you are
in any trouble, come straight to me.” He slightly emphasised the last
sentence.
I rather wondered what sort of trouble Sir William envisaged for me.
Probably he shared the general opinion that artists were quite mad at
times, and that when I had one of my lapses I should destroy the peace
in some manner. However, I was duly grateful.
I was sorry to find Tim didn’t seem to like the river; he appeared
nervous of it, and I determined to help him to overcome this, for the