Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon
Three years ago I was on my way out to the
East, and as an extra day in London was of
some importance, I took the Friday evening
mail-train to Brindisi instead of the usual
Thursday morning Marseilles express. Many
people shrink from the long forty-eight-hour
train journey through Europe, and the subsequent
rush across the Mediterranean on the nineteen-knot
Isis or Osiris; but there is really very little
discomfort on either the train or the mail-boat,
and unless there is actually nothing for me
to do, I always like to save the extra day
and a half in London before I say goodbye
to her for one of my longer tramps. This time
— it was early, I remember, in the shipping
season, probably about the beginning of September
— there were few passengers, and I had a
compartment in the P. & O. Indian express
to myself all the way from Calais. All Sunday
I watched the blue waves dimpling the Adriatic,
and the pale rosemary along the cuttings;
the plain white towns, with their flat roofs
and their bold “duomos,” and the grey-green
gnarled olive orchards of Apulia. The journey
was just like any other. We ate in the dining-car
as often and as long as we decently could.
We slept after luncheon; we dawdled the afternoon
away with yellow-backed novels; sometimes
we exchanged platitudes in the smoking-room,
and it was there that I met Alastair Colvin.
Colvin was a man of middle height, with a
resolute, well-cut jaw; his hair was turning
grey; his moustache was sun-whitened, otherwise
he was clean-shaven — obviously a gentleman,
and obviously also a pre-occupied man. He
had no great wit. When spoken to, he made
the usual remarks in the right way, and I
dare say he refrained from banalities only
because he spoke less than the rest of us;
most of the time he buried himself in the
Wagon-lit Company’s time-table, but seemed
unable to concentrate his attention on any
one page of it. He found that I had been over
the Siberian railway, and for a quarter of
an hour he discussed it with me. Then he lost
interest in it, and rose to go to his compartment.
But he came back again very soon, and seemed
glad to pick up the conversation again.
Of course this did not seem to me to be of
any importance. Most travellers by train become
a trifle infirm of purpose after thirty-six
hours’ rattling. But Colvin’s restless
way I noticed in somewhat marked contrast
with the man’s personal importance and dignity;
especially ill suited was it to his finely
made large hand with strong, broad, regular
nails and its few lines. As I looked at his
hand I noticed a long, deep, and recent scar
of ragged shape. However, it is absurd to
pretend that I thought anything was unusual.
I went off at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon
to sleep away the hour or two that had still
to be got through before we arrived at Brindisi.
Once there, we few passengers transhipped
our hand baggage, verified our berths — there
were only a score of us in all — and then,
after an aimless ramble of half an hour in
Brindisi, we returned to dinner at the Hotel
International, not wholly surprised that the
town had been the death of Virgil. If I remember
rightly, there is a gaily painted hall at
the International — I do not wish to advertise
anything, but there is no other place in Brindisi
at which to await the coming of the mails
— and after dinner I was looking with awe
at a trellis overgrown with blue vines, when
Colvin moved across the room to my table.
He picked up Il Secolo, but almost immediately
gave up the pretence of reading it. He turned
squarely to me and said:
“Would you do me a favour?”
One doesn’t do favours to stray acquaintances
on Continental expresses without knowing something
more of them than I knew of Colvin. But I
smiled in a noncommittal way, and asked him
what he wanted. I wasn’t wrong in part of
my estimate of him; he said bluntly:
“Will you let me sleep in your cabin on
the Osiris?” And he coloured a little as
he said it.
Now, there is nothing more tiresome than having
to put up with a stable-companion at sea,
and I asked him rather pointedly:
“Surely there is room for all of us?”
I thought that perhaps he had been partnered
off with some mangy Levantine, and wanted
to escape from him at all hazards.
Colvin, still somewhat confused, said: “Yes;
I am in a cabin by myself. But you would do
me the greatest favour if you would allow
me to share yours.”
This was all very well, but, besides the fact
that I always sleep better when alone, there
had been some recent thefts on board English
liners, and I hesitated, frank and honest
and self-conscious as Colvin was. Just then
the mail-train came in with a clatter and
a rush of escaping steam, and I asked him
to see me again about it on the boat when
we started. He answered me curtly — I suppose
he saw the mistrust in my manner — “I
am a member of White’s.” I smiled to myself
as he said it, but I remembered in a moment
that the man — if he were really what he
claimed to be, and I make no doubt that he
was — must have been sorely put to it before
he urged the fact as a guarantee of his respectability
to a total stranger at a Brindisi hotel.
That evening, as we cleared the red and green
harbour-lights of Brindisi, Colvin explained.
This is his story in his own words.
“When I was travelling in India some years
ago, I made the acquaintance of a youngish
man in the Woods and Forests. We camped out
together for a week, and I found him a pleasant
companion. John Broughton was a light-hearted
soul when off duty, but a steady and capable
man in any of the small emergencies that continually
arise in that department. He was liked and
trusted by the natives, and though a trifle
over-pleased with himself when he escaped
to civilisation at Simla or Calcutta, Broughton’s
future was well assured in Government service,
when a fair-sized estate was unexpectedly
left to him, and he joyfully shook the dust
of the Indian plains from his feet and returned
to England. For five years he drifted about
London. I saw him now and then. We dined together
about every eighteen months, and I could trace
pretty exactly the gradual sickening of Broughton
with a merely idle life. He then set out on
a couple of long voyages, returned as restless
as before, and at last told me that he had
decided to marry and settle down at his place,
Thurnley Abbey, which had long been empty.
He spoke about looking after the property
and standing for his constituency in the usual
way. Vivien Wilde, his fiancée, had, I suppose,
begun to take him in hand. She was a pretty
girl with a deal of fair hair and rather an
exclusive manner; deeply religious in a narrow
school, she was still kindly and high-spirited,
and I thought that Broughton was in luck.
He was quite happy and full of information
about his future.
“Among other things, I asked him about Thurnley
Abbey. He confessed that he hardly knew the
place. The last tenant, a man called Clarke,
had lived in one wing for fifteen years and
seen no one. He had been a miser and a hermit.
It was the rarest thing for a light to be
seen at the Abbey after dark. Only the barest
necessities of life were ordered, and the
tenant himself received them at the side-door.
His one half-caste manservant, after a month’s
stay in the house, had abruptly left without
warning, and had returned to the Southern
States. One thing Broughton complained bitterly
about: Clarke had wilfully spread the rumour
among the villagers that the Abbey was haunted,
and had even condescended to play childish
tricks with spirit-lamps and salt in order
to scare trespassers away at night. He had
been detected in the act of this tomfoolery,
but the story spread, and no one, said Broughton,
would venture near the house except in broad
daylight. The hauntedness of Thurnley Abbey
was now, he said with a grin, part of the
gospel of the countryside, but he and his
young wife were going to change all that.
Would I propose myself any time I liked? I,
of course, said I would, and equally, of course,
intended to do nothing of the sort without
a definite invitation.
“The house was put in thorough repair, though
not a stick of the old furniture and tapestry
were removed. Floors and ceilings were relaid:
the roof was made watertight again, and the
dust of half a century was scoured out. He
showed me some photographs of the place. It
was called an Abbey, though as a matter of
fact it had been only the infirmary of the
long-vanished Abbey of Clouster some five
miles away. The larger part of the building
remained as it had been in pre-Reformation
days, but a wing had been added in Jacobean
times, and that part of the house had been
kept in something like repair by Mr. Clarke.
He had in both the ground and first floors
set a heavy timber door, strongly barred with
iron, in the passage between the earlier and
the Jacobean parts of the house, and had entirely
neglected the former. So there had been a
good deal of work to be done.
“Broughton, whom I saw in London two or
three times about this period, made a deal
of fun over the positive refusal of the workmen
to remain after sundown. Even after the electric
light had been put into every room, nothing
would induce them to remain, though, as Broughton
observed, electric light was death on ghosts.
The legend of the Abbey’s ghosts had gone
far and wide, and the men would take no risks.
They went home in batches of five and six,
and even during the daylight hours there was
an inordinate amount of talking between one
and another, if either happened to be out
of sight of his companion. On the whole, though
nothing of any sort or kind had been conjured
up even by their heated imaginations during
their five months’ work upon the Abbey,
the belief in the ghosts was rather strengthened
than otherwise in Thurnley because of the
men’s confessed nervousness, and local tradition
declared itself in favour of the ghost of
an immured nun.
“ ‘Good old nun!’ said Broughton.
“I asked him whether in general he believed
in the possibility of ghosts, and, rather
to my surprise, he said that he couldn’t
say he entirely disbelieved in them. A man
in India had told him one morning in camp
that he believed that his mother was dead
in England, as her vision had come to his
tent the night before. He had not been alarmed,
but had said nothing, and the figure vanished
again. As a matter of fact, the next possible
dak-walla brought on a telegram announcing
the mother’s death. ‘There the thing was,’
said Broughton. But at Thurnley he was practical
enough. He roundly cursed the idiotic selfishness
of Clarke, whose silly antics had caused all
the inconvenience. At the same time, he couldn’t
refuse to sympathise to some extent with the
ignorant workmen. ‘My own idea,’ said
he, ‘is that if a ghost ever does come in
one’s way, one ought to speak to it.’
“I agreed. Little as I knew of the ghost
world and its conventions, I had always remembered
that a spook was in honour bound to wait to
be spoken to. It didn’t seem much to do,
and I felt that the sound of one’s own voice
would at any rate reassure oneself as to one’s
wakefulness. But there are few ghosts outside
Europe — few, that is, that a white man
can see — and I had never been troubled
with any. However, as I have said, I told
Broughton that I agreed.
“So the wedding took place, and I went to
it in a tall hat which I bought for the occasion,
and the new Mrs. Broughton smiled very nicely
at me afterwards. As it had to happen, I took
the Orient Express that evening and was not
in England again for nearly six months. Just
before I came back I got a letter from Broughton.
He asked if I could see him in London or come
to Thurnley, as he thought I should be better
able to help him than anyone else he knew.
His wife sent a nice message to me at the
end, so I was reassured about at least one
thing. I wrote from Budapest that I would
come and see him at Thurnley two days after
my arrival in London, and as I sauntered out
of the Pannonia into the Kerepesi Utcza to
post my letters, I wondered of what earthly
service I could be to Broughton. I had been
out with him after tiger on foot, and I could
imagine few men better able at a pinch to
manage their own business. However, I had
nothing to do, so after dealing with some
small accumulations of business during my
absence, I packed a kit-bag and departed to
Euston.
“I was met by Broughton’s great limousine
at Thurnley Road station, and after a drive
of nearly seven miles we echoed through the
sleepy streets of Thurnley village, into which
the main gates of the park thrust themselves,
splendid with pillars and spread-eagles and
tom-cats rampant atop of them. I never was
a herald, but I know that the Broughtons have
the right to supporters — Heaven knows why!
From the gates a quadruple avenue of beech-trees
led inwards for a quarter of a mile. Beneath
them a neat strip of fine turf edged the road
and ran back until the poison of the dead
beech-leaves killed it under the trees. There
were many wheel-tracks on the road, and a
comfortable little pony trap jogged past me
laden with a country parson and his wife and
daughter. Evidently there was some garden
party going on at the Abbey. The road dropped
away to the right at the end of the avenue,
and I could see the Abbey across a wide pasturage
and a broad lawn thickly dotted with guests.
“The end of the building was plain. It must
have been almost mercilessly austere when
it was first built, but time had crumbled
the edges and toned the stone down to an orange-lichened
grey wherever it showed behind its curtain
of magnolia, jasmine, and ivy. Farther on
was the three-storied Jacobean house, tall
and handsome. There had not been the slightest
attempt to adapt the one to the other, but
the kindly ivy had glossed over the touching-point.
There was a tall flèche in the middle of
the building, surmounting a small bell tower.
Behind the house there rose the mountainous
verdure of Spanish chestnuts all the way up
the hill.
“Broughton had seen me coming from afar,
and walked across from his other guests to
welcome me before turning me over to the butler’s
care. This man was sandy-haired and rather
inclined to be talkative. He could, however,
answer hardly any questions about the house;
he had, he said, only been there three weeks.
Mindful of what Broughton had told me, I made
no inquiries about ghosts, though the room
into which I was shown might have justified
anything. It was a very large low room with
oak beams projecting from the white ceiling.
Every inch of the walls, including the doors,
was covered with tapestry, and a remarkably
fine Italian fourpost bedstead, heavily draped,
added to the darkness and dignity of the place.
All the furniture was old, well made, and
dark. Underfoot there was a plain green pile
carpet, the only new thing about the room
except the electric light fittings and the
jugs and basins. Even the looking-glass on
the dressing-table was an old pyramidal Venetian
glass set in heavy repoussé frame of tarnished
silver.
“After a few minutes’ cleaning up, I went
downstairs and out upon the lawn, where I
greeted my hostess. The people gathered there
were of the usual country type, all anxious
to be pleased and roundly curious as to the
new master of the Abbey. Rather to my surprise,
and quite to my pleasure, I rediscovered Glenham,
whom I had known well in the old days in Barotseland:
he lived quite close, as, he remarked with
a grin, I ought to have known. ‘But,’
he added, ‘I don’t live in a place like
this.’ He swept his hand to the long, low
lines of the Abbey in obvious admiration,
and then, to my intense interest, muttered
beneath his breath, ‘Thank God!’ He saw
that I had overheard him, and turning to me
said decidedly, ‘Yes, “thank God” I
said, and I meant it. I wouldn’t live at
the Abbey for all Broughton’s money.’
“ ‘But surely,’ I demurred, ‘you know
that old Clarke was discovered in the very
act of setting light on his bug-a-boos?’
“Glenham shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes,
I know about that. But there is something
wrong with the place still. All I can say
is that Broughton is a different man since
he has lived there. I don’t believe that
he will remain much longer. But — you’re
staying here? — well, you’ll hear all
about it to-night. There’s a big dinner,
I understand.’ The conversation turned off
to old reminiscences, and Glenham soon after
had to go.
“Before I went to dress that evening I had
twenty minutes’ talk with Broughton in his
library. There was no doubt that the man was
altered, gravely altered. He was nervous and
fidgety, and I found him looking at me only
when my eye was off him. I naturally asked
him what he wanted of me. I told him I would
do anything I could, but that I couldn’t
conceive what he lacked that I could provide.
He said with a lustreless smile that there
was, however, something, and that he would
tell me the following morning. It struck me
that he was somehow ashamed of himself, and
perhaps ashamed of the part he was asking
me to play. However, I dismissed the subject
from my mind and went up to dress in my palatial
room. As I shut the door a draught blew out
the Queen of Sheba from the wall, and I noticed
that the tapestries were not fastened to the
wall at the bottom. I have always held very
practical views about spooks, and it has often
seemed to me that the slow waving in firelight
of loose tapestry upon a wall would account
for ninety-nine per cent of the stories one
hears. Certainly the dignified undulation
of this lady with her attendants and huntsmen
— one of whom was untidily cutting the throat
of a fallow deer upon the very steps on which
King Solomon, a grey-faced Flemish nobleman
with the order of the Golden Fleece, awaited
his fair visitor — gave colour to my hypothesis.
“Nothing much happened at dinner. The people
were very much like those of the garden party.
A young woman next me seemed anxious to know
what was being read in London. As she was
far more familiar than I with the most recent
magazines and literary supplements, I found
salvation in being myself instructed in the
tendencies of modern fiction. All true art,
she said, was shot through and through with
melancholy. How vulgar were the attempts at
wit that marked so many modern books! From
the beginning of literature it had always
been tragedy that embodied the highest attainment
of every age. To call such works morbid merely
begged the question. No thoughtful man — she
looked sternly at me through the steel rim
of her glasses — could fail to agree with
me. Of course, as one would, I immediately
and properly said that I slept with Pett Ridge
and Jacobs under my pillow at night, and that
if Jorrocks weren’t quite so large and cornery,
I would add him to the company. She hadn’t
read any of them, so I was saved — for a
time. But I remember grimly that she said
that the dearest wish of her life was to be
in some awful and soul-freezing situation
of horror, and I remember that she dealt hardly
with the hero of Nat Paynter’s vampire story,
between nibbles at her brown-bread ice. She
was a cheerless soul, and I couldn’t help
thinking that if there were many such in the
neighbourhood, it was not surprising that
old Glenham had been stuffed with some nonsense
or other about the Abbey. Yet nothing could
well have been less creepy than the glitter
of silver and glass, and the subdued lights
and cackle of conversation all round the dinner-table.
“After the ladies had gone I found myself
talking to the rural dean. He was a thin,
earnest man, who at once turned the conversation
to old Clarke’s buffooneries. But, he said,
Mr. Broughton had introduced such a new and
cheerful spirit, not only into the Abbey,
but, he might say, into the whole neighbourhood,
that he had great hopes that the ignorant
superstitions of the past were from henceforth
destined to oblivion. Thereupon his other
neighbour, a portly gentleman of independent
means and position, audibly remarked ‘Amen,’
which damped the rural dean, and we talked
to partridges past, partridges present, and
pheasants to come. At the other end of the
table Broughton sat with a couple of his friends,
red-faced hunting men. Once I noticed that
they were discussing me, but I paid no attention
to it at the time. I remembered it a few hours
later.
“By eleven all the guests were gone, and
Broughton, his wife, and I were alone together
under the fine plaster ceiling of the Jacobean
drawing-room. Mrs. Broughton talked about
one or two of the neighbours, and then, with
a smile, said that she knew I would excuse
her, shook hands with me, and went off to
bed. I am not very good at analysing things,
but I felt that she talked a little uncomfortably
and with a suspicion of effort, smiled rather
conventionally, and was obviously glad to
go. These things seem trifling enough to repeat,
but I had throughout the faint feeling that
everything was not quite square. Under the
circumstances, this was enough to set me wondering
what on earth the service could be that I
was to render — wondering also whether the
whole business were not some ill-advised jest
in order to make me come down from London
for a mere shooting-party.
“Broughton said little after she had gone.
But he was evidently labouring to bring the
conversation round to the so-called haunting
of the Abbey. As soon as I saw this, of course
I asked him directly about it. He then seemed
at once to lose interest in the matter. There
was no doubt about it: Broughton was somehow
a changed man, and to my mind he had changed
in no way for the better. Mrs. Broughton seemed
no sufficient cause. He was clearly very fond
of her, and she of him. I reminded him that
he was going to tell me what I could do for
him in the morning, pleaded my journey, lighted
a candle, and went upstairs with him. At the
end of the passage leading into the old house
he grinned weakly and said, ‘Mind, if you
see a ghost, do talk to it; you said you would.’
He stood irresolutely a moment and then turned
away. At the door of his dressing-room he
paused once more: ‘I’m here,’ he called
out, ‘if you should want anything. Good
night,’ and he shut the door.
“I went along the passage to my room, undressed,
switched on a lamp beside my bed, read a few
pages of The Jungle Book, and then, more than
ready for sleep, turned the light off and
went fast asleep.
“Three hours later I woke up. There was
not a breath of wind outside. There was not
even a flicker of light from the fireplace.
As I lay there, an ash tinkled slightly as
it cooled, but there was hardly a gleam of
the dullest red in the grate. An owl cried
among the silent Spanish chestnuts on the
slope outside. I idly reviewed the events
of the day, hoping that I should fall off
to sleep again before I reached dinner. But
at the end I seemed as wakeful as ever. There
was no help for it. I must read my Jungle
Book again till I felt ready to go off, so
I fumbled for the pear at the end of the cord
that hung down inside the bed, and I switched
on the bedside lamp. The sudden glory dazzled
me for a moment. I felt under my pillow for
my book with half-shut eyes. Then, growing
used to the light, I happened to look down
to the foot of my bed.
“I can never tell you really when happened
then. Nothing I could ever confess in the
most abject words could even faintly picture
to you what I felt. I know that my heart stopped
dead, and my throat shut automatically. In
one instinctive movement I crouched back up
against the head-boards of the bed, staring
at the horror. The movement set my heart going
again, and the sweat dripped from every pore.
I am not a particularly religious man, but
I had always believed that God would never
allow any supernatural appearance to present
itself to man in such a guise and in such
circumstances that harm, either bodily or
mental, could result to him. I can only tell
you that at the moment both my life and my
reason rocked unsteadily on their seats.”
The other Osiris passengers had gone to bed.
Only he and I remained leaning over the starboard
railing, which rattled uneasily now and then
under the fierce vibration of the over-engined
mail-boat. Far over, there were the lights
of a few fishing-smacks riding out the night,
and a great rush of white combing and seething
water fell out and away from us overside.
At last Colvin went on:
“Leaning over the foot of my bed, looking
at me, was a figure swathed in a rotten and
tattered veiling. This shroud passed over
the head, but left both eyes and the right
side of the face bare. It then followed the
line of the arm down to where the hand grasped
the bed-end. The face was not entirely that
of a skull, though the eyes and the flesh
of the face were totally gone. There was a
thin, dry skin drawn tightly over the features,
and there was some skin left on the hand.
One wisp of hair crossed the forehead. It
was perfectly still. I looked at it, and it
looked at me, and my brains turned dry and
hot in my head. I had still got the pear of
the electric lamp in my hand, and I played
idly with it; only I dared not turn the light
out again. I shut my eyes, only to open them
in a hideous terror the same second. The thing
had not moved. My heart was thumping, and
the sweat cooled me as it evaporated. Another
cinder tinkled in the grate, and a panel creaked
in the wall.
“My reason failed me. For twenty minutes,
or twenty seconds, I was able to think of
nothing else but this awful figure, till there
came, hurtling through the empty channels
of my senses, the remembrances that Broughton
and his friends had discussed me furtively
at dinner. The dim possibility of its being
a hoax stole gratefully into my unhappy mind,
and once there, one’s pluck came creeping
back along a thousand tiny veins. My first
sensation was one of blind unreasoning thankfulness
that my brain was going to stand the trial.
I am not a timid man, but the best of us needs
some human handle to steady him in time of
extremity, and in this faint but growing hope
that after all it might be only a brutal hoax,
I found the fulcrum that I needed. At last
I moved.
“How I managed to do it I cannot tell you,
but with one spring towards the foot of the
bed I got within arm’s-length and struck
out one fearful blow with my fist at the thing.
It crumbled under it, and my hand was cut
to the bone. With a sickening revulsion after
my terror, I dropped half-fainting across
the end of the bed. So it was merely a foul
trick after all. No doubt the trick had been
played many a time before: no doubt Broughton
and his friends had had some large bet among
themselves as to what I should do when I discovered
the gruesome thing. From my state of abject
terror I found myself transported into an
insensate anger. I shouted curses upon Broughton.
I dived rather than climbed over the bed-end
of the sofa. I tore at the robed skeleton
— how well the whole thing had been carried
out, I thought — I broke the skull against
the floor, and stamped upon its dry bones.
I flung the head away under the bed, and rent
the brittle bones of the trunk in pieces.
I snapped the thin thigh-bones across my knee,
and flung them in different directions. The
shin-bones I set up against a stool and broke
with my heel. I raged like a Berserker against
the loathly thing, and stripped the ribs from
the backbone and slung the breastbone against
the cupboard. My fury increased as the work
of destruction went on. I tore the frail rotten
veil into twenty pieces, and the dust went
up over everything, over the clean blotting-paper
and the silver inkstand. At last my work was
done. There was but a raffle of broken bones
and strips of parchment and crumbling wool.
Then, picking up a piece of the skull — it
was the cheek and temple bone of the right
side, I remember — I opened the door and
went down the passage to Broughton’s dressing-room.
I remember still how my sweat-dripping pyjamas
clung to me as I walked. At the door I kicked
and entered.
“Broughton was in bed. He had already turned
the light on and seemed shrunken and horrified.
For a moment he could hardly pull himself
together. Then I spoke. I don’t know what
I said. Only I know that from a heart full
and over-full with hatred and contempt, spurred
on by shame of my own recent cowardice, I
let my tongue run on. He answered nothing.
I was amazed at my own fluency. My hair still
clung lankily to my wet temples, my hand was
bleeding profusely, and I must have looked
a strange sight. Broughton huddled himself
up at the head of the bed just as I had. Still
he made no answer, no defence. He seemed preoccupied
with something besides my reproaches, and
once or twice moistened his lips with his
tongue. But he could say nothing though he
moved his hands now and then, just as a baby
who cannot speak moves its hands.
“At last the door into Mrs. Broughton’s
rooms opened and she came in, white and terrified.
‘What is it? What is it? Oh, in God’s
name! what is it?’ she cried again and again,
and then she went up to her husband and sat
on the bed in her night-dress, and the two
faced me. I told her what the matter was.
I spared her husband not a word for her presence
there. Yet he seemed hardly to understand.
I told the pair that I had spoiled their cowardly
joke for them. Broughton looked up.
“ ‘I have smashed the foul thing into
a hundred pieces,’ I said. Broughton licked
his lips again and his mouth worked. ‘By
God!’ I shouted, ‘it would serve you right
if I thrashed you within an inch of your life.
I will take care that not a decent man or
woman of my acquaintance ever speaks to you
again. And there,’ I added, throwing the
broken piece of the skull upon the floor beside
his bed, ‘there is a souvenir for you, of
your damned work to-night!’
“Broughton saw the bone, and in a moment
it was his turn to frighten me. He squealed
like a hare caught in a trap. He screamed
and screamed till Mrs. Broughton, almost as
bewildered as myself, held on to him and coaxed
him like a child to be quiet. But Broughton
— and as he moved I thought that ten minutes
ago I perhaps looked as terribly ill as he
did — thrust her from him, and scrambled
out of bed on to the floor, and still screaming
put out his hand to the bone. It had blood
on it from my hand. He paid no attention to
me whatever. In truth I said nothing. This
was a new turn indeed to the horrors of the
evening. He rose from the floor with the bone
in his hand and stood silent. He seemed to
be listening. ‘Time, time, perhaps,’ he
muttered, and almost at the same moment fell
at full length on the carpet, cutting his
head against the fender. The bone flew from
his hand and came to rest near the door. I
picked Broughton up, haggard and broken, with
blood over his face. He whispered hoarsely
and quickly, ‘Listen, listen!’ We listened.
“After ten seconds’ utter quiet, I seemed
to hear something. I could not be sure, but
at last there was no doubt. There was a quiet
sound as one moving along the passage. Little
regular steps came towards us over the hard
oak flooring. Broughton moved to where his
wife sat, white and speechless, on the bed,
and pressed her face into his shoulder.
“Then, the last thing that I could see as
he turned the light out, he fell forward with
his own head pressed into the pillow of the
bed. Something in their company, something
in their cowardice, helped me, and I faced
the open doorway of the room, which was outlined
fairly clearly against the dimly lighted passage.
I put out one hand and touched Mrs. Broughton’s
shoulder in the darkness. But at the last
moment I too failed. I sank on my knees and
put my face in the bed. Only we all heard.
The footsteps came to the door and there they
stopped. The piece of bone was lying a yard
inside the door. There was a rustle of moving
stuff, and the thing was in the room. Mrs.
Broughton was silent: I could hear Broughton’s
voice praying, muffled in the pillow: I was
cursing my own cowardice. Then the steps moved
out again on the oak boards of the passage,
and I heard the sounds dying away. In a flash
of remorse I went to the door and looked out.
At the end of the corridor I thought I saw
something that moved away. A moment later
the passage was empty. I stood with my forehead
against the jamb of the door almost physically
sick.
“ ‘You can turn the light on,’ I said,
and there was an answering flare. There was
no bone at my feet. Mrs. Broughton had fainted.
Broughton was almost useless, and it took
me ten minutes to bring her to. Broughton
only said one thing worth remembering. For
the most part he went on muttering prayers.
But I was glad afterwards to recollect that
he had said that thing. He said in a colourless
voice, half as a question, half as a reproach,
‘You didn’t speak to her.’
“We spent the remainder of the night together.
Mrs. Broughton actually fell off into a kind
of sleep before dawn, but she suffered so
horribly in her dreams that I shook her into
consciousness again. Never was dawn so long
in coming. Three or four times Broughton spoke
to himself. Mrs. Broughton would then just
tighten her hold on his arm, but she could
say nothing. As for me, I can honestly say
that I grew worse as the hours passed and
the light strengthened. The two violent reactions
had battered down my steadiness of view, and
I felt that the foundations of my life had
been built upon the sand. I said nothing,
and after binding up my hand with a towel,
I did not move. It was better so. They helped
me and I helped them, and we all three knew
that our reason had gone very near to ruin
that night. At last, when the light came in
pretty strongly, and the birds outside were
chattering and singing, we felt that we must
do something. Yet we never moved. You might
have thought that we should particularly dislike
being found as we were by the servants: yet
nothing of that kind mattered a straw, and
an overpowering listlessness bound us as we
sat, until Chapman, Broughton’s man, actually
knocked and opened the door. None of us moved.
Broughton, speaking hardly and stiffly, said,
‘Chapman, you can come back in five minutes.’
Chapman was a discreet man, but it would have
made no difference to us if he had carried
his news to the ‘room’ at once.
“We looked at each other and I said I must
go back. I meant to wait outside till Chapman
returned. I simply dared not re-enter my bedroom
alone. Broughton roused himself and said that
he would come with me. Mrs. Broughton agreed
to remain in her own room for five minutes
if the blinds were drawn up and all the doors
left open.
“So Broughton and I, leaning stiffly one
against the other, went down to my room. By
the morning light that filtered past the blinds
we could see our way, and I released the blinds.
There was nothing wrong with the room from
end to end, except smears of my own blood
on the end of the bed, on the sofa, and on
the carpet where I had torn the thing to pieces.”
Colvin had finished his story. There was nothing
to say. Seven bells stuttered out from the
fo’c’sle, and the answering cry wailed
through the darkness. I took him downstairs.
“Of course I am much better now, but it
is a kindness of you to let me sleep in your
cabin.”
