Part 1

_THEY RETURN AT EVENING_

_THEY RETURN AT EVENING_

_A BOOK OF GHOST STORIES_

_by H. R. WAKEFIELD_

[Illustration]

_Quality Court Philip Allan & Co., Ltd. London_

_First Edition_ 1928

_Printed in Great Britain by Mackays Ltd., Chatham_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THAT DIETH NOT 9

II OR PERSONS UNKNOWN 49

III “HE COMETH AND HE PASSETH BY” 81

IV PROFESSOR POWNALL’S OVERSIGHT 131

V THE THIRD COACH 157

VI THE RED LODGE 185

VII “AND HE SHALL SING....” 211

VIII THE SEVENTEENTH HOLE AT DUNCASTER 237

IX A PEG ON WHICH TO HANG 263

X AN ECHO 287

THAT DIETH NOT

THAT DIETH NOT

PART I

Well, that’s over! I expected an ordeal and found almost a farce. There is something to be said for being a Local Notable. For example, deferential condolences and preferential treatment (and no awkward questions) from the Coroner when one’s wife is found dead at the bottom of the steps into the garden. With what censorious disdain old Weldon brushed aside the curiosity of Mr. Trench Senior! Now I have prosecuted Trench Junior for poaching three times; consequently Trench Senior does not love me. So I was none too pleased to see him on the Jury. I knew he would be nasty if he saw a chance, and he asked a very nasty and intelligent question. For if she had tripped on the top steps I doubt if she would have fallen so far, and if she had slipped lower down, why such shattering injury? Why indeed! You didn’t deserve such a pulverising rebuke, Mr. Trench, but I’m very glad you got it!

And now that it is all over I can reflect without anxiety. Reflect that I am a murderer and, as such, if I got my deserts, a doomed and execrated pariah. No more loose generalisation was ever made than that whoever commits adultery--and, of course, any other sin or crime--in his heart, is guilty of that offence. Every man of imagination who is tempted commits sins in his heart as often as he is tempted, but not one in ten thousand commits them with his hand. Myriads of men must have played with the idea of killing their wives, but _I killed mine_. Is there no difference? Consult the Shade of Ethel! No, I realise perfectly that I possess a kink which should have resulted in a six-foot drop. That I might never kill again, and that it was only by an acute combination of circumstances that I did so once, is beside the point.

A murderer should die--if he is sane and sober and selfish.

And am I so sure I could never commit another? I am not so sure. I have no remorse. There might be something to be said for a murderer who bitterly repents (though I’d hang him), but as for me--why shouldn’t I murder again if someone again drove me to such an extremity of exasperation?

I rehearse all this--why and to whom? Why, because, murderer though I am, I feel compelled to tell the story of this repulsive episode impartially, and so rid my mind of it and, perhaps, forget it, for, murderer though I am, otherwise I believe myself to be reasonably decent and civilised, and I want to see what sort of defence I can muster. And to whom do I address myself? Well, it has long been a theory of mine--more than that, a profound conviction--that the minds of men are far more complex, bifurcated and stratified than is generally accepted or perceived. There is more than one “I” pervading my consciousness. There is the “I,” the murderer, who is sitting here recalling, sifting and writing down. “I” number one, let us call him; but there is also “I” number two, who is compelled to observe “I” number one. It has been suggested that there is also a “number three” watching “number two,” and so on _ad infinitum_. It may be so, but for me there is a limit set to the terms in the series, and it is fixed at “number two.” I often feel compelled to explain to him the actions of “number one,” though I do not feel he is or wants to be a judge, but just an aloofly interested spectator; in no sense a “conscience,” but poised in another layer of consciousness. It is with such vague precision that this duality works in me. And I want to explain to this watcher just how I came to kill Ethel. He may or may not be particularly interested, but he is in the unfortunate position of being compelled to listen!

* * * * *

I was thirty-one, wanting an heir, an ingenuous lover of beauty, and Ethel was certainly beautiful, and, I thought, a destined mother of robust children. That is why I proposed to her. I am wealthy, “a prominent local figure”; Ethel had an allowance of £40 a year--that is why she accepted me. She was highly intelligent in a debased feminine way, and she never used her brains to better purpose than in her behaviour to me during our engagement. A lovely piece of acting! Quite flawless. Such a lover of the country, adoring children, so docile, unselfish and interested in everything which interested me! What a treasure I believed I was about to acquire! Before the end of our honeymoon I began desperately to doubt it. She let me know quite uncompromisingly that she intended to “social push” with vigour and success. Now I am by nature a recluse, a detester of crowds, a loather of London: I make friends slowly and doubtingly, though most firmly now and again. But I flinch from “acquaintances” and the claims upon one’s time and nerves they entail. It was, therefore, with incredulous dismay that I discovered Ethel was determined that we should spend six months in London and three months in fashionable resorts, and that I was to spend those six months playing the sedulous host and involving myself in an incessant spate of fatuous entertainment. When I had somewhat absorbed this shock I told her that it was the tradition in my family personally to look after the estate during most of the year, that I must work very hard if my book on “The Future of the Novel as an Art Form” was to be ready in time, that I wanted children, and that her programme was impossible. And then I had my first taste of that most wicked temper. Had I faced up to it and fought her, I believe I could have gained a precarious victory, but it was so horrible, so disgusting and intolerable that I gave way. It was a fatal blunder, for she then knew she possessed a most potent weapon against me. I did not capitulate unconditionally, but I felt exasperatedly certain that I should have to renew the battle before I should be able to enforce my side of the bargain.

Well, I agreed to do what she wanted for one year; to take a house in London for the Season and a Villa on the Riviera for the winter. I should have considered this quite reasonable if she had not been granted every opportunity before our marriage to understand what sort of person I am; and if she had not so cunningly and wickedly concealed from me what manner of woman she was. And though it is very plausible to say that my love for her should have made me delighted to please her, that is really vast rubbish, for the deep, dominating characteristics of a man’s temperament can never be changed, while one can love and cease to love and love again.

Though it caused my vitality to droop and drain, I fulfilled my part of the contract. I took a monstrosity in Bruton Street, gave four huge parties, attended dozens of other huge parties, was forced to carry on disjointed chat through _Tristan_ in a box, sit through _Rigoletto_ in a stall, and poison my system in Night Clubs; so learning to despise humanity--or rather that brand of it--as no man should be taught. Had I possessed a constitution which would have allowed me to drink my critical sense to drowsing point, I might have tolerated such a _régime_, but, unfortunately, my grandfather had mortgaged the family liver.

As I withered Ethel bloomed. Her polluted sense of values and her intense social vanity made her revel in this frenetic round of snobbery, this eternal return of jostling, aimless futility.

I was not a success. My temperament nipped me below the arm-pits and dragged me round, the skeleton at the feast, though I never caused any awed hush to fall upon the assembly.

“Arthur, I do wish you’d make an effort to seem to enjoy things,” Ethel once said. “The other night I overheard George Willard say that you were the World’s Worst Flat-tyre at a party. It makes me feel so ashamed and embarrassed.”

“Do you think I care what that chinless, brainless, Bateman-drawing thinks about me?” I replied, knowing I was a fool to argue.

“Well, he’s the son of a Duke,” said Ethel; “and what do you mean by a ‘Bateman-drawing’?”

“Oh, he was a pupil of Rembrandt,” I replied inanely.

“You pretend to know all about Art, but the other day, when Lady Frowse was trying to discuss the Academy with you, you looked absolutely ‘gaga.’”

“Lady Frowse,” I replied, “was quoting verbatim from the notice in the _Times_, which, unfortunately, I had already read.”

Then Ascot, jostle, clothes, and equine interludes--then Cowes, jostle, different clothes and the occasional belching of a decrepit cannon. And then Ethel went off to twitter in butts, and I, thank God, to Paradown and peace.

I made good progress with my book; my intense feeling of release fortunately stimulating my creative energy. I had also plenty of time to think, though nothing very pleasant to think about. I had the most bitter and smarting self-contempt. To think that I could have been such an utter flaming fool as to have ruined my life by a fatuous idealisation of a certain fortuitous combination of pigment, cuticle--and the way the blood shone through it, hair--and the way the light caught it, bones--and the way their envelope draped round them. A perilous privilege, “a sense of beauty.” But had I ruined it? I considered the chances. Ethel was perfectly happy, rapidly stabilising her position amongst the Right People, with my cheque book as her entrenching tool and her temper to animate my fountain pen, with her beauty and her sexlessness and her unscrupulousness to get what she wanted from men and to keep her from ever repaying the debt. What a way to think about one’s wife! Humbug! There was no other way to think about her. No, there would be no co-respondent to encourage and supplicate! And I could do nothing, unless I refused to fill my fountain pen, and I could not do that, for I had only myself to blame, and I was ready to blame myself. At present I could see no hope.

I lived a life of extreme asceticism, feeling feebly that by so doing I was defying and rejecting Ethel. Once I had been fool enough to regard women as mentally almost indistinguishable, and it had been merely by the physical criterion I had separated one from another in my mind. Now that I had been taught to despise the dangerous deceptiveness of eyes and breasts, colouring and curves and all those superficial stimulants which excite the featherless biped man to idealise the featherless biped woman, I realised what I should have known a year before--that I could only love someone with a mind I could respect. “What care I how fair she be, if she’s naught but fair to me?”

Ethel came down at the end of October, her waist heavy with social scalps. A title had the same effect on her as the sound of a hunting horn on a pack of hounds. It gave her a delicious sense of excitement and well-being. When on one occasion she was addressed by a Minor Royalty for one thrilling moment, I believed she was about to die of joy. And, bitterly as she learned to loathe me, I am certain the fact she was loathing the current number of one of the oldest baronetcies in England gave her a soothing sense of social pride.

I had been working very hard on a delicate and highly contentious section of my book, and was inclined to be irritable and “on edge.” Luckily at first Ethel was fairly amenable. For one thing, she had the Riviera to which to look forward, for another she was learning to ride, an art which she had been instructed was a necessary accomplishment for an English Gentlewoman. She learned quickly, and looked as nearly palatable as any Gentlewoman can when topped by a silk hat. The servants hated her, for her attitude towards them veered from touchy insolence to obviously insincere blandishments, and that they disliked both variants they showed most definitely though courteously.

As a Local Notable it was my duty to introduce Ethel to those of my neighbours and friends she had not already met in London, and for this purpose I gave a series of week-end parties. The fact that I do not puncture or pursue the fauna of Wiltshire by any of the traditional methods has not prevented me from being on most excellent terms with my neighbours. I think I can say I have worked pretty hard at those often tiresome jobs which the occupation of a prominent local position entail. I am regarded as a bit of a freak--as was my father before me, but my idiosyncrasies give them something to talk about, and there is a “Dear Oldness” about their references to me which mark the absence or passing of criticism. I was curious to observe how my good friends would regard my good lady. Well, the Elderly Ladies Who Knew, knew she was not quite a lady. The young women envied her clothes and looks, but I do not think they envied _me_. The men behaved in a robustly gallant manner towards her, partly out of consideration to me and partly because her beauty was within limits overwhelming. But I think they reserved judgment. A few fledglings fell in love with her and they _did_ envy me. How I should have rejoiced to have settled some money on her and danced at her wedding to one of them!

She played her part rather well, but that which has fundamental flaws betrays itself inevitably by superficial cracks. Her breaks were not shattering, but they were palpable, and not one of them went by the Elderly Ladies Who Knew. She was quite unconscious of them. I usually said nothing, but I had to protest against one. She had repeated with the eager placid certainty of the natural scandal-monger a scabrous little rumour about the morals of Lady Pount’s niece in the presence of her Aunt. While undressing, I suggested that the study of Debrett should not be pursued too academically, and that the art of knowing Who is Who should be an applied art, in so much as it might prevent awkward pauses in the hour of anecdote. And I gave as an instance the choice little canard she had repeated that evening. At which she lost her temper uneasily.

“I can’t remember all those people! How was I to know they were related? It’s true, anyway, and I think she ought to be shown up, it’s disgusting.”

“Nothing,” I said, “is worth an awkward pause, not even the exposure of notorious evil-livers. Some people have a sixth sense for knowing how to avoid them. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

A short but violent scene ensued.

So we scrambled along the broad, well mile-stoned path to mutual hostility. I made occasional half-hearted attempts to persuade myself that Ethel was other than she was. She felt, when she inspected her wardrobe and my broad acres and stable, and all those joys which I had brought into her life, that there were sufficiently compensating “Betters” for the “Worse.”

And then it was time for the Riviera, its boomed beauty, its bloody brood. What a region! I have cruised the Mediterranean fairly extensively, and it is no Sea for me. What merits the Southern Latins may once have possessed is a matter of opinion; that they retain any to-day seems to me untenable. A breed of pimps, parasites and horse-torturers, the choicest surviving examples of that _cretin_ civilisation which is Catholicism’s legacy to the world. And it has always seemed to me that members of races vastly their intellectual and moral superiors become debased and degraded when brought in contact with them, though I know the region attracts the worst.

Ethel was so happy. She changed her clothes at intervals during the day, and made the acquaintance of a Grand-Duke, who was accompanied by a selection from his harem. Her delight in this encounter was so unconcealed that the nobleman for some time believed that she was anxious to be enrolled in his service! She “adored” the Casino. I took one look at those tables. A vice is known by the company it collects. There must be something to be said for opium. It makes glad the heart of Chinks, it induced _The Ancient Mariner_, and made De Quincey immortal. Booze has many excellent songs, Boris Goudonov, and missed partridges to its credit. Even murder can point to detective stories--the favourite literature of our Great Ones, and the support of hangmen’s families. But gambling has nothing to justify its existence unless it be Revolver Smith’s dividends and A New Use for Old Piano Cases. My absence from this Rouge et Noir midden didn’t matter, for Ethel had many friends who considered it a Green Baize Paradise.

I mooned about aimlessly, did a little work, pretended at dropsical meals that I was having a good time, and then one day decided I could stick no more of it. So I informed Ethel and quelled the inevitable typhoon by reminding her she was there at my expense and that she could stay there _alone_ at my expense if she chose, otherwise we’d both return to England at my expense. This syllogistic presentation of the case impressed her, and I returned alone.

On the journey home I had an opportunity for coolly regarding things in themselves, with particular reference to my marriage. By then I knew for certain that Ethel would never leave me of her own accord. She had everything she wanted, a title, money to burn, a circle of sycophants, a husband she could dominate. Could she? I supposed so, for the dread of scenes is the beginning and end of feminine domination in the case of men of my type, weak, introspective, with sensitive ears and a tantalising tolerance. I say _tantalising_ because, were I asked to prescribe for the matrimonial troubles of others, I should be cool, hard, a rationalist, a regarder of facts in the face. I should prescribe for those in my state a drastic, cauteristic remedy, and feel confident of its efficacy. “No sentimentalist need apply” I should inscribe on my brass plate.

“Physician, heal thyself,” the hardest of all hard sayings! But this is how I should prescribe in a case such as mine. “Force a divorce, you will never be happy. You know her chief concern is money, settle some on her. Living with her seems the Devil, well, take him by the horns.”

Perfectly sound, common sense itself, but I couldn’t do it.

A week after getting back I received a cable, “Returning immediately. Ethel.”

This unexpected announcement filled me with a vague excitement. What had she been up to? Something which might lead to a solution--a dissolution? I enjoyed twenty-four hours of such straw-clutching, and then she arrived, and, as was her wont, went straight and viciously to the point. “I’m going to have a baby, and I won’t have a baby. You’ve got to help me. It’ll spoil everything. I don’t care how much you want it. Tell me someone to go to.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” I replied. “Certainly I want you to have a child, and you’ll be much happier. Now, Ethel, be unselfish about this!”

“Happier! Unselfish! I like that. You don’t have to spend nine foul months, be cut out of everything, and probably have your figure ruined. I refuse to argue about it. Will you help me?”

“No, I won’t,” I said.

She said no more, but in ten minutes she was on her way to London.

I heard nothing more from her for a fortnight, and then one evening she came back. She went straight to her room, refused to see me, and dined in bed.

However, I went up to her after dinner.

She was shaking with anger, and her eyes were those of a trapped lynx.

“I told you I didn’t want to see you, but now you’re here let me tell you this, I will _never_ bear your child.”

I think it was then, when I saw her hatred for me, that I first knew I hated her, and I suppose the murderer in me first woke to life.

She was as good as her word. She had a miscarriage two weeks later, and became quite light-hearted again. One day she came into my dressing-room when I was shaving to tell me that, as she was not quite fit enough to hunt, she was going up to London, and had taken a suite at Claridge’s. And then I received the worst shock of my life. She bent down for a moment to smell a bowl of roses on the dressing table. I had my razor in my hand, and for a moment I believed I could not restrain myself from cutting that lovely throat. With an agonising effort of self-control, I flung the razor on the floor. Ethel glanced up quickly, and, I suppose, partially understood the look in my face, for she put her hands to her eyes and ran from the room. She went up to London after breakfast, leaving me to my thoughts.

For the rest of the day I could not control my nerves nor stay still for a moment, for my brain continually forced that hideous picture before my eyes. I could see her writhing on the carpet, the blood gushing from her throat. And that night, each time I fell into an uneasy doze, it came as a fleeting dream vision more vivid and more vile. I knew I was receiving a most urgent warning, that my subconsciousness was telling me that inevitably, if I continued to see her, one day I should kill her.

The next morning I met Margaret Pascal. It was the only time I have figured in one of those coy sexual situations beloved by the authors of scenarios, for I found her embraced by barbed wire in Far Wood. After I had disentangled her and noticed the lovely junction of her legs and feet, we began a vague little talk. I told her my name. “This is all yours then,” she said. “Was I trespassing?”

“Technically, yes,” I replied. “But please commit the offence as often as you like.”

“I am staying with the Franks,” she said, “and was just wandering about. As a matter of fact, I adore birds, and there’s a shrike’s larder in that thorn just there, and I wanted to examine the grisly little feast.”