E. F. Benson

“ He can certainly satisfy himself that one Bertha Acres did die at sea on this particular Thursday, and was buried at sea; there is nothing extraordinary about that. Nor is it the least impossible that the weights should have slipped from the canvas shroud, and that the body should have been washed ashore on the coast by Tarleton—why not Tarleton, as well as any other little town near the coast?—nor is there anything inherently impossible in the fact that the grave, as originally dug, was not of sufficient dimensions to receive the coffin. ”

“ It was odd, though scarcely more than that, for Madge to have used those identical words.
Charles Alington, my wife’s brother, who arrived next afternoon, is quite the happiest man whom I have ever come across. The material world, that perennial spring of thwarted ambition, physical desire and perpetual disappointment, is practically unknown to him. Envy, malice, and all uncharitableness are equally alien, because he does not want to obtain what anybody else has got, and has no sense of possession, which is queer, since he is enormously rich. ”

“ Mrs. Acres entertained. She gave charming little dinner parties of eight, with a couple of tables at bridge, to follow, but over these evenings there hung a blight and a blackness. No doubt the sinister story of the paneled parlor contributed to this.
This curious secret dread of her, of which, as on that first evening at my house, she appeared to be completely unconscious, differed very widely in degree. Most people, like myself, were conscious of it, but only very remotely so, and we found ourselves at the Gatehouse behaving quite as usual, though with this uneasiness in the background. ”

“ For six months Bertha Acres had traveled abroad, and then in the autumn she had bought the Gatehouse at Tarleton, and settled down to the pleasant and absorbing trifles which make life in a small country town so busy and strenuous.
Our modest little dwelling is within a stone’s throw of the Gatehouse, and when, on the return of my wife and myself from two months in Scotland, we found that Mrs. Acres was installed as a neighbor, Madge lost no time in going to call on her. ”

“ Dinner was over; Madge rose.
“Come in very soon, Tony,” she said to me, “and let’s get to our bridge.”
But her eyes said: “Don’t leave me long alone with her.”
Charles turned briskly round when the door had shut.
“An extremely interesting woman,” he said.
“Very handsome,” said I.
“Is she? I didn’t notice. Her mind, her spirit, that’s what intrigued me. What is she? What’s behind? Why did Fungus turn tail like that? Queer, too, about her finding the atmosphere of the Gatehouse so tranquil. The late tenants, I remember, didn’t find that soothing touch about it!” ”

“ In one his spirit was incarnated in the body of a man, in the other, in that of a woman, fair of outward aspect, and of a pleasant conversation, but held in dread and in horror by those who came into more than casual intercourse with her. ”

“ Mrs. Acres, still on the sunny slope that leads up to the table-land of life which begins at forty years, was extremely handsome, cordial and charming in manner, witty and agreeable, and wonderfully well-dressed. Before the conclusion of her call Madge, in country fashion, had begged her to dispense with formalities, and instead of a frigid return of the call, to dine with us quietly next day. Did she play bridge? That being so, we would just be a party of four, for her brother, Charles Alington, had proposed himself for a visit. ”

“ Acres charming and witty and good-looking and friendly. What more could you ask from a new acquaintance? And then, after I had asked her to dinner, I suddenly found, for no earthly reason, that I very much disliked her. I couldn’t bear her.”
“You said she was wonderfully well-dressed,” I permitted myself to remark. “If the queen took the knight—”
“Don’t be silly,” said Madge. “I am wonderfully well-dressed, too. But behind all her agreeableness and charm and good looks I suddenly felt there was something else, which I detested and dreaded. ”

“ Acres a congenial companion, and want to retain her. So they keep quiet, and don’t upset the cook’s nerves!”
Somehow this answer exasperated and jarred on me.
“What do you mean?” I said. “The spiritual tenant of the house, I suppose, is the man who betrayed his brother and hanged himself. Why should he find a charming woman like Mrs. Acres a congenial companion?”
Charles got up briskly. Usually he is more than ready to discuss such topics, but to-night it seemed that he had no such inclination.
“Didn’t Madge tell us not to be long?” he asked. ”

“ None of these things could, as yet, be definitely proved, and that was why he loved them. The intervals when the occult and the fantastic does not occupy him he is, in spite of his fifty years and wizened mien, exactly like a schoolboy of eighteen, back on his holidays and brimming with superfluous energy.
I found Charles already arrived when I got home next afternoon, after a round of golf. He was betwixt and between the serious and the holiday mood, for he had evidently been reading to Madge from a journal concerning reincarnation, and was rather severe to me. ”

“ Knowledge, in fact, is his entire preoccupation; and since chemists and medical scientists probe and mine in the world of tinctures and microbes far more efficiently than he could do, since he has so little care for anything that can be weighed or propagated, he devotes himself absorbed and ecstatically to that world that lies about the confines of conscious existence. ”

“ Oh, Tony, she’s dead, isn’t she? She won’t come back to the Gatehouse? Do you promise me? There’s something awful! I wonder if I guess. The sea gives her up. The sea won’t suffer her to rest in it—”
The news of the finding had already been telephoned to Tarleton, and soon a party of four men with a stretcher arrived. There was no doubt as to the identity of the body, for though it had been in the water for three days, no corruption had come to it. ”

“ I asked.
“There might be several explanations. You might say that the late tenants were fanciful imaginative people, and that the present tenant is a sensible, matter-of-fact woman. Certainly she seemed to be.” ”

“ He fears nothing, he hopes for nothing, he has no abhorrences or affections, for all physical and nervous functions are in him in the service of an intense infinitiveness.
He never passed a moral judgment in his life; he only wants to explore and to know. ”

“ Something Southern, something Eastern.
“I am bound to ask one thing,” she said when, after the usual greetings, we stood round the fireplace, waiting for Charles. “Have you got a dog?”
Madge moved toward the bell.
“Yes, but he shan’t come down if you dislike dogs,” she said. “He’s wonderfully kind, but I know—”
“Ah, it’s not that,” said Mrs. Acres. “I adore dogs. But I only wished to spare your dog’s feelings. Though I adore them, they hate me and they’re terribly frightened of me. There’s something anticanine about me.” ”