Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “She wants to know about the boy whose hair is in the locket. He is not a boy now. He is, according to earth’s eyes, a grown man. There is a D; I see a D. Not Dick, not David. There is a Y. It is Denys. Not Saint Denys, not French. English Denys — Denys Bristow.”

  He paused a moment, and heard Mrs. Gardner whisper:

  “Yes; that is right.”

  Waghorn gave vent to Mentu’s jovial laugh. “She says it is right,” he said. “How should not Mentu be right? Perhaps Mentu is right, too, when he says that Denys is her brother? Yes; that is Margaret Bristow who sits here, though not Margaret Bristow now. Margaret—”

  Waghorn saw the name quite clearly, but yet he hesitated. It was not Gardner at all. Then it struck him for the first time that nothing was more likely than that Mrs. Gardner had adopted a pseudonym. He went on:

  “Margaret Forsyth is Denys’s sister. Margaret wants to know about Denys. Denys is coming. He will be here in a moment. He has spoken of his sister before. He did not call her Margaret. He called her Q — he called her Queenie. Will Queenie speak?”

  Waghorn felt the trembling of her hand; he heard her twice try to speak, but she was unable to control the trembling in her voice.

  “Can Denys speak to me?” she said in a whisper. “Can he really come here?”

  Up to this moment Waghorn had been enjoying himself immensely, for after the days in which he had been unable to get into touch with this rare and marvellous gifts of consciousness-reading, it was blissful to find his mastery again, and, besieged with the images which Margaret Forsyth’s contact revealed to him, he had been producing them in Mentu’s impressive voice, revelling in his restored powers. Her mind lay open to him like a book; he could read where he liked on pages familiar to her and on pages which had remained long unturned. But at this moment, as sudden as some qualm of sickness, he was aware of a startling change in the quality of his perceptions. Fresh knowledge of Denys Bristow came into his mind, but he felt that it was coming not from her, but from some other source. Some odd buzzing sang in his ears, as when an anaesthetic begins to take effect, and opening his eyes, he thought he saw a strange patch of light, inconsistent with the faint illumination of the red lamp, hovering over his breast. At the same moment he heard, though dimly, for his head was full of confused noise, the violent rapping of the electric hammer, and already only half conscious, felt an impotent irritation with his sister for employing these tricks. He struggled with the oncoming of the paralysis that was swiftly invading his mind and his physical being, but he struggled in vain, and next moment, overwhelmed with the onrush of a huge, enveloping blackness, he lost consciousness altogether. The trance that he had often simulated had invaded him, and he knew nothing more.

  He came to himself again, with the feeling that he had been recalled from some vast distance. Still unable to move, he sat listening to the quick panting of his own breath before he realized what the noise was. His face, from which the sweat poured in streams, rested on something cold and hard, and presently, when he opened his eyes, he saw that his head had fallen forward upon the table. He felt utterly exhausted and yet somehow strangely satisfied. Some amazing thing had happened.

  Then as he recovered himself he began to remember that he had been reading Mrs. Gardner’s, or Mrs. Forsyth’s mind when some power external to himself took possession of him, and on his left he heard Julia’s voice speaking very familiar words.

  “He is coming out of his trance,” she said. “He will be himself again in a moment now.”

  With a sense of great weariness he raised his head, disengaged his hands from those of the two women, and sank back in his chair.

  “Draw back the curtains,” he said to Julia, “and open the window. I am suffocating.”

  She did as he told her, and he saw the red rays of the sun near to its setting pour into the room, while the breeze of sunset refreshed the air. On his right still sat Mrs. Forsyth, wiping her eyes, and smiling at him; and having opened the window, Julia came back to the table, looking at him with a curious, anxious intentness.

  Then Mrs. Forsyth spoke.

  “It has been too marvellous,” she said. “I cannot thank you enough. I will do exactly as you, or, rather, Denys, told me about the test; and if it is right, I will certainly leave my house to-morrow, taking my servants with me. It was so like Denys to think of them, too.”

  To Waghorn this meant nothing whatever; she might have been speaking Hebrew to him. But Julia, as she often did, answered for him.

  “My brother knows nothing of what happened in his trance,” she said.

  Mrs. Forsyth got up.

  “I will go straight home,” she said. “I feel sure that I shall find just what Denys described. May I telephone to you about it at once?”

  “Yes, pray do,” said Julia. “We shall be most anxious to hear.”

  Richard got up to show her out, but having regained his feet, he staggered, and collapsed into his chair again. Mrs. Forsyth would not hear of his attempting to move just yet, and Julia, having taken her to the door, returned to her brother. It was usual for him, when the sitting was over, to feign great exhaustion, but the realism of his acting to-day had almost deceived her into thinking that something not yet experienced in their séances had occurred. Besides, he had said such strange, detailed, and extraordinary things. He was still where she had left him, and there could be no reason, now that they were alone, to keep up this feigned languor.

  “Dick,” she said, “what’s the matter? And what happened? I couldn’t understand you at all. Why did you say all those things?”

  He stirred and sat up.

  “I’m better,” he said. “And it is you who have to tell me what happened. I remember up to a certain point, and after that I lost consciousness completely. I remember thinking you were rocking the table, and I told you not to.”

  “Yes; but I wasn’t rocking it. I thought you were.”

  “Well, it was neither of us, then,” said he. “I was vexed because Mrs. Gardner — Mrs. Forsyth had said she didn’t want that sort of thing, and I was reading her as I never read any one before. I told her about the locket and the black hair, I got her brother’s name, I got her name and her nickname Queenie. Then she asked if Denys could really come, and at that moment something began to take possession of me. I think I saw a light as usual over my breast, and I think I heard a tremendous rapping.

  Did you do either of those, or did they really happen?”

  Julia stared at him for a moment in silence.

  “I did neither of those,” she said; “but they happened. You must have pressed the breast-pocket switch and trod on the switch of the hammer.”

  He opened his coat.

  “I had not got the breast-pocket switch,” he said, “and I certainly did not tread on the hammer-switch.” Julia moved her chair a little closer to him.

  “The hammer did not sound right,” she said. “It was ten times louder than I have ever heard, and the light was quite different somehow. It was much brighter. I could see everything in the room quite distinctly. Go on, Dick.”

  “I can’t. That’s all I know until I came to, leaning over the table and bathed in perspiration. Tell me what happened.”

  “Dick, do you swear that is true?” she asked. “Certainly I do. Go on.”

  “The light grew, and then faded again to a glimmer,” she said, “and then suddenly you began to talk in a different voice: it wasn’t Mentu any longer. Mrs. Forsyth recognized it instantly, and I thought what wonderful luck it was that you should have hit on a voice that was like her brother’s. Then it and she had a long talk; it must have lasted half an hour. They reminded each other how Denys had come to live with her and her husband on their father’s death. He was only eighteen at the time and still at school. He was killed in a street accident, being run over by a bicycle two days before her birthday. All this was correct, and I thought I never heard you mind-reading so clearly and quickly; you hardly paused at all.”

  Jul
ia was silent a moment.

  “Dick, don’t you really know what followed?” she asked.

  “Not in the smallest degree,” he said.

  “Well, I thought you had gone mad,” she said. “Mrs. Forsyth asked for a test, something that was not known to her, and never had been known to her, and you gave it instantly. You laughed, Denys laughed, the voice that spoke laughed, and told her to look behind the row of books beside the bed in the room that was still known as Denys’s room, and she would find tucked away a little cardboard box with a gold safety-pin set with a pearl. He had bought it for her birthday present, and had hidden it there till the day came. He was killed, as I told you, two days before. And she, half sobbing, half laughing, said, ‘O Denys, how deliciously secretive you used to be!’”

  “And is that what she is going to telephone about?” asked Waghorn.

  “Yes, Dick. What made you say all that?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you. I didn’t know I said it. And was that all? She said something about leaving her house to-morrow and taking the servants. What did that mean?”

  “You got very much distressed. You told her she was in danger. You said—” Julia paused again.

  “You said there was something coming, fire from the clouds, and a rending. You said her country house, which I gathered was down somewhere near Epping, would be burst open by the fire from the clouds tomorrow night. You made her promise to leave it and take the servants with her. You said her husband was away, which again is the case. And she asked if you meant Zeppelins, and you said you did.”

  Waghorn suddenly got up.

  You meant,’ ‘you said,’ ‘you did,’” he cried. “What if it’s ‘he meant,’ ‘he said,’ ‘he did’?”

  “It’s impossible,” she said.

  “Good Lord! What’s impossible?” he asked. “What if I really am that which I have so long pretended to be? What if I am a medium, one who is the mysterious bridge between the quick and the dead? I’m frightened, but I’m bound to say I’m horribly interested. All that you tell me I said when I was in trance never came out of Mrs. Forsyth’s mind. It wasn’t there. She didn’t know about the pearl pin; she had never known it. Nor had I ever known it. Where did it come from, then? Only one person knew, the boy who died ten years ago.”

  “It yet remains to be seen whether it is true,” said she. “We shall know in an hour or two, for she is motoring straight down to her house in the country.”

  “And if it turns out to be true, who was talking?” said he.

  The sunset faded into the dusk of the clear May evening, and the two still sat there waiting for the telephone to inform them whether the door which, as Waghorn had said, had seemed so often ajar, and never quite closed, was now thrown open, and light and intelligence from another world had shone on his unconscious mind. Presently the tinkling summons came, and with an eager curiosity, below which lurked that fear of the unknown, the dim, mysterious land into which all human creatures pass across the closed frontier, he went to hear what news awaited him.

  “Trunk call,” said the operator, and he listened.

  Soon the voice came through.

  “Mr. Waghorn?” it said.

  “Yes.”

  “I have found the box in exactly the place described. It contained what we had been told it would contain. I shall leave the house, taking all the servants away, to-morrow.”

  Two mornings later the papers contained news of a Zeppelin raid during the night on certain Eastern counties. The details given were vague and meagre, and no names of towns or villages where bombs had been dropped were vouchsafed to the public. But later in the day private information came to Waghorn that Forsyth Hall, near Epping, had been completely wrecked. No lives, luckily, were lost, for the house was empty.

  CAT STORIES

  PUSS-CAT

  IT was during the month of May some nine years ago that the beginning of the events that concerned Puss-cat took place. I was living at the time on the green outskirts of a country town, and my dining room at the back of the house opened on to a small garden framed in brick walls some five feet high. Breakfasting there one morning, I saw a large black and white cat, with a sharp but serious face, observing me with studied attention. Now at the time there was an interregnum, and my house was without a mistress (in the shape of a cat), and it at once struck me that I was being interviewed by this big and pleasing stranger, to see if I would do. So, since there is nothing that a prospective mistress likes less than premature familiarity on the part of the householder whom she may be thinking of engaging, I took no direct notice of the cat, but continued to eat my breakfast carefully and tidily. After a short inspection, the cat quietly withdrew without once looking back, and I supposed that I was dismissed, or that she had decided, after all, to keep on her present household.

  In that I proved to be mistaken: she had only gone away to think about it, and next morning, and for several mornings after that, I was subjected to the same embarrassing but not unfriendly scrutiny, after which she took a stroll round the garden to see if there were any flower-beds that would do to make ambushes in, and a convenient tree or two to climb should emergencies arise. On the fourth day, as far as I remember, I committed an error, and half-way through breakfast went out into the garden, to attempt to get on more familiar terms. The cat regarded me for a few moments with pained surprise, and went away; but after I had gone in again, she decided to overlook it, for she returned to her former place, and continued to observe. Next morning she made up her mind, jumped down from the wall, trotted across the grass, entered the dining-room, and, arranging herself in a great hurry round one hindleg, which she put up in the air like a flagstaff, proceeded to make her morning toilet. That, as I knew quite well, meant that she thought I would give satisfaction, and I was therefore permitted to enter upon my duties at once. So I put down a saucer of milk for her, which she very obligingly disposed of. Then she went and sat by the door, and said “A-a-a-a,” to show that she wished the door to be opened for her, so that she might inspect the rest of the house. So I called down the kitchen stairs, “There is come a cat, who I think means to stop. Don’t fuss her.” In this manner the real Puss-cat — though I did not know that — entered the house.

  Now here I must make a short defence for my share in these things. I might, by a hasty judgment, be considered to have stolen her who soon became Puss-cat’s mamma, but anyone who has any real knowledge of cats will be aware that I did nothing of the kind. Puss-cat’s mamma was clearly dissatisfied with her last household and had, without the least doubt, made up her mind to leave them all and take on a fresh lot of servants; and if a cat makes up her mind about anything, no power on earth except death, or permanent confinement in a room where neither doors nor windows are ever opened, will stop her taking the contemplated step. If her last (unknown) household killed her, or permanently shut her up, of course, she could not engage fresh people, but short of that they were powerless to keep her. You may cajole or bully a dog into doing what you want, but no manner of persuasion will cause a cat to deviate one hair’s breadth from the course she means to pursue. If I had driven her away she would have gone to another house, but never back to her own. For though we may own dogs and horses and other animals, it is a great mistake to think that we own cats. Cats employ us, and if we give satisfaction they may go so far as to adopt us. Besides, Puss-cat’s mamma did not, as it turned out, mean to stay with me altogether: she only wanted quiet lodgings for a time.

  So our new mistress went discreetly downstairs and inspected kitchen, scullery, and pantry. She spent some time in the scullery, so I was told, and felt rather doubtful. But she quite liked the new gas-stove in the kitchen, and singed her tail at it, as nobody had told her that lunch was a-cooking. Also she found a mouse-hole below the wainscoting, which appeared to decide her (for, as we soon found out, she liked work), and she trotted upstairs again and sat outside the drawing-room door till somebody opened it for her. I happened to be inside, with’ J
ill, a young lady of the fox-terrier breed, and, of course, did not know that Puss-cat’s mamma was waiting. Eventually I came out and saw her sitting there. Jill saw her, too, and eagerly ran up to her only to talk, not to fight, for Jill likes cats. But Puss-cat’s mamma did not know that, so, just in case, she slapped Jill smartly first on one side the head, and then on the other. She was not angry, but only firm and strong, and wished that from the first there should be no doubt whatever about her position. Having done that, she allowed Jill to explain, which Jill did with twitchings of her stumpy tail and attitude provocative of gambols. And before many minutes were up, Puss-cat’s mamma was kind enough to play with her. Then she suddenly remembered that she had not seen the rest of the house, and went upstairs, where she remained till lunch-time.

  It was the manner in which she spent the first morning that gave me the key to the character of Puss-cat’s mamma, and we at once settled that her name had always been Martha. She had annexed our house, it is true, but in no grabbing or belligerent spirit, but simply because she had seen from her post on the garden wall that we wanted somebody to look after us and manage the house, and she could not help knowing how wonderful she was in all things connected with a mistress’s duties. Every morning when the housemaid’s step was heard on the stairs during breakfast (she had a very audible step), Martha, even in the middle of fish or milk, ran to the door, said “A-a-a-a” till it was opened, and rushed after her, sitting in each bedroom in turn to see that the slops were properly emptied and the beds well and truly made. In the middle of such supervision sometimes came other calls upon her, the front-door bell would ring, and Martha had to hurry down to see that the door was nicely opened. Then perhaps she would catch sight of somebody digging in the garden, and she was forced to go out in this busiest time of the morning, to dab at the turned-up earth, in order to be sure that it was fresh. In particular, I remember the day on which the dining-room was repapered. She had to climb the step-ladder to ascertain if it was safe, and sit on the top to clean herself. Then each roll of paper had to be judged by the smell, and the paste to be touched with the end of a pink tongue. That made her sneeze (which must be the right test for paste), and she allowed it to be used. That day we lunched in the drawingroom, and it is easy to imagine how busy Martha was, for the proceeding was very irregular, and she could not tell how it would turn out. Meal-times were always busy: she had to walk in front of every dish as it was brought in, and precede it as it was taken out, and to-day these duties were complicated by the necessity of going back constantly to the real dining room to see that the paper-hangers were not idling. To make the rush more overpowering, Jill was in the garden wanting to play (and to play with Jill was one of Martha’s duties) and some young hollyhocks were being put in, certain of which, for inscrutable reasons, had to be dug up again with strong backward kicks of the hind-legs.