when mrs. acres bought the gate-house at tarleton, which had stood so long without a tenant, and appeared in that very agreeable and lively little town as a resident, sufficient was already known about her past history to entitle her to friendliness and sympathy. hers had been a tragic story, and the account of the inquest held on her husband’s body, when, within a month of their marriage, he had shot himself before her eyes, was recent enough, and of as full a report in the papers as to enable our little community of tarleton to remember and run over the salient grimness of the case without the need of inventing any further details—which, otherwise, it would have been quite capable of doing.
briefly, then, the facts had been as follows. horace acres appeared to have been a heartless fortune-hunter—a handsome, plausible wretch, ten years younger than his wife. he had made no secret to his friends of not being in love with her but of having a considerable regard for her more than considerable fortune. but hardly had he married her than his indifference developed into violent dislike, accompanied by some mysterious, inexplicable dread of her. he hated and feared her, and on the morning of the very day when he had put an end to himself he had begged her to divorce him; the case he promised would be undefended, and he would make it indefensible. she, poor soul, had refused to grant this; for, as corroborated by the evidence of[38] friends and servants, she was utterly devoted to him, and stated with that quiet dignity which distinguished her throughout this ordeal, that she hoped that he was the victim of some miserable but temporary derangement, and would come to his right mind again. he had dined that night at his club, leaving his month-old bride to pass the evening alone, and had returned between eleven and twelve that night in a state of vile intoxication. he had gone up to her bedroom, pistol in hand, had locked the door, and his voice was heard screaming and yelling at her. then followed the sound of one shot. on the table in his dressing-room was found a half-sheet of paper, dated that day, and this was read out in court. “the horror of my position,” he had written, “is beyond description and endurance. i can bear it no longer: my soul sickens....” the jury, without leaving the court, returned the verdict that he had committed suicide while temporarily insane, and the coroner, at their request, expressed their sympathy and his own with the poor lady, who, as testified on all hands, had treated her husband with the utmost tenderness and affection.
for six months bertha acres had travelled abroad, and then in the autumn she had bought gate-house at tarleton, and settled down to the 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 gate-house; and when, on the return of my wife and myself from two months in scotland,[39] we found that mrs. acres was installed as a neighbour, madge lost no time in going to call on her. she returned with a series of pleasant impressions. 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 dispose 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....
i listened to this with sufficient attention to grasp what madge was saying, but what i was really thinking about was a chess-problem which i was attempting to solve. but at this point i became acutely aware that her stream of pleasant impressions dried up suddenly, and she became stonily silent. she shut speech off as by the turn of a tap, and glowered at the fire, rubbing the back of one hand with the fingers of another, as is her habit in perplexity.
“go on,” i said.
she got up, suddenly restless.
“all i have been telling you is literally and soberly true,” she said. “i thought mrs. 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,”[40] 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. it’s no use asking me what it was, because i haven’t the slightest idea. if i knew what it was, the thing would explain itself. but i felt a horror—nothing vivid, nothing close, you understand, but somewhere in the background. can the mind have a ‘turn,’ do you think, just as the body can, when for a second or two you suddenly feel giddy? i think it must have been that—oh! i’m sure it was that. but i’m glad i asked her to dine. i mean to like her. i shan’t have a ‘turn’ again, shall i?”
“no, certainly not,” i said.... if the queen refrained from taking the tempting knight——
“oh, do stop your silly chess-problem!” said madge. “bite him, fungus!”
fungus, so called because he is the son of humour and gustavus adolphus, rose from his place on the hearthrug, and with a horse laugh nuzzled against my leg, which is his way of biting those he loves. then the most amiable of bull-dogs, who has a passion for the human race, lay down on my foot and sighed heavily. but madge evidently wanted to talk, and i pushed the chessboard away.
“tell me more about the horror,” i said.
“it was just horror,” she said—“a sort of sickness of the soul.”...
i found my brain puzzling over some vague reminiscence, surely connected with mrs. acres,[41] which those words mistily evoked. but next moment that train of thought was cut short, for the old and sinister legend about the gate-house came into my mind as accounting for the horror of which madge spoke. in the days of elizabethan religious persecutions it had, then newly built, been inhabited by two brothers, of whom the elder, to whom it belonged, had mass said there every sunday. betrayed by the younger, he was arrested and racked to death. subsequently the younger, in a fit of remorse, hanged himself in the panelled parlour. certainly there was a story that the house was haunted by his strangled apparition dangling from the beams, and the late tenants of the house (which now had stood vacant for over three years) had quitted it after a month’s occupation, in consequence, so it was commonly said, of unaccountable and horrible sights. what was more likely, then, than that madge, who from childhood has been intensely sensitive to occult and psychic phenomena, should have caught, on that strange wireless receiver which is characteristic of “sensitives,” some whispered message?
“but you know the story of the house,” i said. “isn’t it quite possible that something of that may have reached you? where did you sit, for instance? in the panelled parlour?”
she brightened at that.
“ah, you wise man!” she said. “i never thought of that. that may account for it all. i hope it does. you shall be left in peace with your chess for being so brilliant.”
i had occasion half an hour later to go to the[42] post-office, a hundred yards up the high street, on the matter of a registered letter which i wanted to despatch that evening. dusk was gathering, but the red glow of sunset still smouldered in the west, sufficient to enable me to recognise familiar forms and features of passers-by. just as i came opposite the post-office there approached from the other direction a tall, finely built woman, whom, i felt sure, i had never seen before. her destination was the same as mine, and i hung on my step a moment to let her pass in first. simultaneously i felt that i knew, in some vague, faint manner, what madge had meant when she talked about a “sickness of the soul.” it was no nearer realisation to me than is the running of a tune in the head to the audible external hearing of it, and i attributed my sudden recognition of her feeling to the fact that in all probability my mind had subconsciously been dwelling on what she had said, and not for a moment did i connect it with any external cause. and then it occurred to me who, possibly, this woman was....
she finished the transaction of her errand a few seconds before me, and when i got out into the street again she was a dozen yards down the pavement, walking in the direction of my house and of the gate-house. opposite my own door i deliberately lingered, and saw her pass down the steps that led from the road to the entrance of the gate-house. even as i turned into my own door the unbidden reminiscence which had eluded me before came out into the open, and i cast my net over it. it was her husband, who, in the inexplicable communication he had left on his dressing-room table, just before[43] he shot himself, had written “my soul sickens.” 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. 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 inquisitiveness. he never passed a moral judgment in his life, he only wants to explore and to know. 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, as he has so little care for anything that can be weighed or propagated, he devotes himself, absorbedly and ecstatically, to that world that lies about the confines of conscious existence. anything not yet certainly determined appeals to him with the call of a trumpet: he ceases to take an interest in a subject as soon as it shows signs of assuming a practical and definite status. he was intensely concerned, for instance, in wireless transmission, until signor marconi proved that it came within the scope of practical science, and then charles abandoned it as dull. i had seen him last[44] two months before, when he was in a great perturbation, since he was speaking at a meeting of anglo-israelites in the morning, to show that the scone stone, which is now in the coronation chair at westminster, was for certain the pillow on which jacob’s head had rested when he saw the vision at bethel; was addressing the psychical research society in the afternoon on the subject of messages received from the dead through automatic script, and in the evening was, by way of a holiday, only listening to a lecture on reincarnation. none of these things could, as yet, be definitely proved, and that was why he loved them. during the intervals when the occult and the fantastic do 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....
“golf!” he said, with insulting scorn. “what is there to know about golf? you hit a ball into the air——”
i was a little sore over the events of the afternoon.
“that’s just what i don’t do,” i said. “i hit it along the ground!”
“well, it doesn’t matter where you hit it,” said he. “it’s all subject to known laws. but the guess, the conjecture: there’s the thrill and the excitement of life. the charlatan with his new cure for cancer, the[45] automatic writer with his messages from the dead, the reincarnationist with his positive assertions that he was napoleon or a christian slave—they are the people who advance knowledge. you have to guess before you know. even darwin saw that when he said you could not investigate without a hypothesis!”
“so what’s your hypothesis this minute?” i asked.
“why, that we’ve all lived before, and that we’re going to live again here on this same old earth. any other conception of a future life is impossible. are all the people who have been born and have died since the world emerged from chaos going to become inhabitants of some future world? what a squash, you know, my dear madge! now, i know what you’re going to ask me. if we’ve all lived before, why can’t we remember it? but that’s so simple! if you remembered being cleopatra, you would go on behaving like cleopatra; and what would tarleton say? judas iscariot, too! fancy knowing you had been judas iscariot! you couldn’t get over it! you would commit suicide, or cause everybody who was connected with you to commit suicide from their horror of you. or imagine being a grocer’s boy who knew he had been julius c?sar.... of course, sex doesn’t matter: souls, as far as i understand, are sexless—just sparks of life, which are put into physical envelopes, some male, some female. you might have been king david, madge and poor tony here one of his wives.”
“that would be wonderfully neat,” said i.
charles broke out into a shout of laughter.
“it would indeed,” he said. “but i won’t talk sense any more to you scoffers. i’m absolutely tired[46] out, i will confess, with thinking. i want to have a pretty lady to come to dinner, and talk to her as if she was just herself and i myself, and nobody else. i want to win two-and-sixpence at bridge with the expenditure of enormous thought. i want to have a large breakfast to-morrow and read the times afterwards, and go to tony’s club and talk about crops and golf and irish affairs and peace conferences, and all the things that don’t matter one straw!”
“you’re going to begin your programme to-night, dear,” said madge. “a very pretty lady is coming to dinner, and we’re going to play bridge afterwards.”
madge and i were ready for mrs. acres when she arrived, but charles was not yet down. fungus, who has a wild adoration for charles, quite unaccountable, since charles has no feelings for dogs, was helping him to dress, and madge, mrs. acres, and i waited for his appearance. it was certainly mrs. acres whom i had met last night at the door of the post-office, but the dim light of sunset had not enabled me to see how wonderfully handsome she was. there was something slightly jewish about her profile: the high forehead, the very full-lipped mouth, the bridged nose, the prominent chin, all suggested rather than exemplified an eastern origin. and when she spoke she had that rich softness of utterance, not quite hoarseness, but not quite of the clear-cut distinctness of tone which characterises northern nations. 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—“but have you got a dog?”
madge moved towards the bell.
[47]“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 anti-canine about me.”
it was too late to say more. charles’s steps clattered in the little hall outside, and fungus was hoarse and amused. next moment the door opened, and the two came in.
fungus came in first. he lolloped in a festive manner into the middle of the room, sniffed and snored in greeting, and then turned tail. he slipped and skidded on the parquet outside, and we heard him bundling down the kitchen stairs.
“rude dog,” said madge. “charles, let me introduce you to mrs. acres. my brother, mrs. acres: sir charles alington.”
our little dinner-table of four would not permit of separate conversations, and general topics, springing up like mushrooms, wilted and died at their very inception. what mood possessed the others i did not at that time know, but for myself i was only conscious of some fundamental distaste of the handsome, clever woman who sat on my right, and seemed quite unaffected by the withering atmosphere. she was charming to the eye, she was witty to the ear, she had grace and gracefulness, and all the time she was something terrible. but by degrees, as i found my own distaste increasing, i saw that my brother-in-law’s interest was growing correspondingly keen.[48] the “pretty lady” whose presence at dinner he had desired and obtained was enchaining him—not, so i began to guess, for her charm and her prettiness, but for some purpose of study, and i wondered whether it was her beautiful jewish profile that was confirming to his mind some anglo-israelitish theory, whether he saw in her fine brown eyes the glance of the seer and the clairvoyante, or whether he divined in her some reincarnation of one of the famous or the infamous dead. certainly she had for him some fascination beyond that of the legitimate charm of a very handsome woman; he was studying her with intense curiosity.
“and you are comfortable in the gate-house?” he suddenly rapped out at her, as if asking some question of which the answer was crucial.
“ah! but so comfortable,” she said—“such a delightful atmosphere. i have never known a house that ‘felt’ so peaceful and homelike. or is it merely fanciful to imagine that some houses have a sense of tranquillity about them and others are uneasy and even terrible?”
charles stared at her a moment in silence before he recollected his manners.
“no, there may easily be something in it, i should say,” he answered. “one can imagine long centuries of tranquillity actually investing a home with some sort of psychical aura perceptible to those who are sensitive.”
she turned to madge.
“and yet i have heard a ridiculous story that the house is supposed to be haunted,” she said. “if it is, it is surely haunted by delightful, contented spirits.”
[49]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 gate-house so tranquil. the late tenants, i remember, didn’t find that soothing touch about it!”
“how do you account for that?” 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.”
“or——” i suggested.
he laughed.
“well, you might say—mind, i don’t say so—but you might say that the—the spiritual tenants of the house find mrs. 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?”
[50]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. “you know how i run on if i once get on that subject, tony, so don’t give me the opportunity.”
“but why did you say that?” i persisted.
“because i was talking nonsense. you know me well enough to be aware that i am an habitual criminal in that respect.”
it was indeed strange to find how completely both the first impression that madge had formed of mrs. acres and the feeling that followed so quickly on its heels were endorsed by those who, during the next week or two, did a neighbour’s duty to the newcomer. all were loud in praise of her charm, her pleasant, kindly wit, her good looks, her beautiful clothes, but even while this lob-gesang was in full chorus it would suddenly die away, and an uneasy silence descended, which somehow was more eloquent than all the appreciative speech. odd, unaccountable little incidents had occurred, which were whispered from mouth to mouth till they became common property. the same fear that fungus had shown of her was exhibited by another dog. a parallel case occurred when she returned the call of our parson’s wife. mrs. dowlett had a cage of canaries in the window of her drawing-room. these birds had manifested symptoms of extreme terror when mrs. acres entered the room, beating themselves against the wires of their cage, and uttering the alarm-note.... she inspired some sort of inexplicable[51] fear, over which we, as trained and civilised human beings, had control, so that we behaved ourselves. but animals, without that check, gave way altogether to it, even as fungus had done.
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 panelled parlour 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 gate-house behaving quite as usual, though with this unease in the background. but with a few, and most of all with madge, it grew into a sort of obsession. she made every effort to combat it; her will was entirely set against it, but her struggle seemed only to establish its power over her. the pathetic and pitiful part was that mrs. acres from the first had taken a tremendous liking to her, and used to drop in continually, calling first to madge at the window, in that pleasant, serene voice of hers, to tell fungus that the hated one was imminent.
then came a day when madge and i were bidden to a party at the gate-house on christmas evening. this was to be the last of mrs. acres’s hospitalities for the present, since she was leaving immediately afterwards for a couple of months in egypt. so, with this remission ahead, madge almost gleefully accepted the bidding. but when the evening came she was seized with so violent an attack of sickness[52] and shivering that she was utterly unable to fulfil her engagement. her doctor could find no physical trouble to account for this: it seemed that the anticipation of her evening alone caused it, and here was the culmination of her shrinking from our kindly and pleasant neighbour. she could only tell me that her sensations, as she began to dress for the party, were like those of that moment in sleep when somewhere in the drowsy brain nightmare is ripening. something independent of her will revolted at what lay before her....
spring had begun to stretch herself in the lap of winter when next the curtain rose on this veiled drama of forces but dimly comprehended and shudderingly conjectured; but then, indeed, nightmare ripened swiftly in broad noon. and this was the way of it.
charles alington had again come to stay with us five days before easter, and expressed himself as humorously disappointed to find that the subject of his curiosity was still absent from the gate-house. on the saturday morning before easter he appeared very late for breakfast, and madge had already gone her ways. i rang for a fresh teapot, and while this was on its way he took up the times.
“i only read the outside page of it,” he said. “the rest is too full of mere materialistic dullnesses—politics, sports, money-market——”
he stopped, and passed the paper over to me.
“there, where i’m pointing,” he said—“among the deaths. the first one.”
what i read was this:
[53]
“acres, bertha. died at sea, thursday night, 30th march, and by her own request buried at sea. (received by wireless from p. & o. steamer peshawar.)”
he held out his hand for the paper again, and turned over the leaves.
“lloyd’s,” he said. “the peshawar arrived at tilbury yesterday afternoon. the burial must have taken place somewhere in the english channel.”
on the afternoon of easter sunday madge and i motored out to the golf links three miles away. she proposed to walk along the beach just outside the dunes while i had my round, and return to the club-house for tea in two hours’ time. the day was one of most lucid spring: a warm south-west wind bowled white clouds along the sky, and their shadows jovially scudded over the sandhills. we had told her of mrs. acres’s death, and from that moment something dark and vague which had been lying over her mind since the autumn seemed to join this fleet of the shadows of clouds and leave her in sunlight. we parted at the door of the club-house, and she set out on her walk.
half an hour later, as my opponent and i were waiting on the fifth tee, where the road crosses the links, for the couple in front of us to move on, a servant from the club-house, scudding along the road, caught sight of us, and, jumping from his bicycle, came to where we stood.
“you’re wanted at the club-house, sir,” he said to me. “mrs. carford was walking along the shore,[54] and she found something left by the tide. a body, sir. ’twas in a sack, but the sack was torn, and she saw—— it’s upset her very much, sir. we thought it best to come for you.”
i took the boy’s bicycle and went back to the club-house as fast as i could turn the wheel. i felt sure i knew what madge had found, and, knowing that, realised the shock.... five minutes later she was telling me her story in gasps and whispers.
“the tide was going down,” she said, “and i walked along the high-water mark.... there were pretty shells; i was picking them up.... and then i saw it in front of me—just shapeless, just a sack ... and then, as i came nearer, it took shape; there were knees and elbows. it moved, it rolled over, and where the head was the sack was torn, and i saw her face. her eyes were open, tony, and i fled.... all the time i felt it was rolling along after me. oh, tony! she’s dead, isn’t she? she won’t come back to the gate-house? 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. the weights with which at burial it had been laden must by some strange chance have been detached from it, and by a chance stranger yet it had drifted to the shore closest to her home. that night it lay in the mortuary, and the inquest was[55] held on it next day, though that was a bank-holiday. from there it was taken to the gate-house and coffined, and it lay in the panelled parlour for the funeral on the morrow.
madge, after that one hysterical outburst, had completely recovered herself, and on the monday evening she made a little wreath of the spring-flowers which the early warmth had called into blossom in the garden, and i went across with it to the gate-house. though the news of mrs. acres’s death and the subsequent finding of the body had been widely advertised, there had been no response from relations or friends, and as i laid the solitary wreath on the coffin a sense of the utter loneliness of what lay within seized and encompassed me. and then a portent, no less, took place before my eyes. hardly had the freshly gathered flowers been laid on the coffin than they drooped and wilted. the stalks of the daffodils bent, and their bright chalices closed; the odour of the wallflowers died, and they withered as i watched.... what did it mean, that even the petals of spring shrank and were moribund?
i told madge nothing of this; and she, as if through some pang of remorse, was determined to be present next day at the funeral. no arrival of friends or relations had taken place, and from the gate-house there came none of the servants. they stood in the porch as the coffin was brought out of the house, and even before it was put into the hearse had gone back again and closed the door. so, at the cemetery on the hill above tarleton, madge and her brother and i were the only mourners.
[56]the afternoon was densely overcast, though we got no rainfall, and it was with thick clouds above and a sea-mist drifting between the grave-stones that we came, after the service in the cemetery-chapel, to the place of interment. and then—i can hardly write of it now—when it came for the coffin to be lowered into the grave, it was found that by some faulty measurement it could not descend, for the excavation was not long enough to hold it.
madge was standing close to us, and at this moment i heard her sob.
“and the kindly earth will not receive her,” she whispered.
there was awful delay: the diggers must be sent for again, and meantime the rain had begun to fall thick and tepid. for some reason—perhaps some outlying feeler of madge’s obsession had wound a tentacle round me—i felt that i must know that earth had gone to earth, but i could not suffer madge to wait. so, in this miserable pause, i got charles to take her home, and then returned.
pick and shovel were busy, and soon the resting-place was ready. the interrupted service continued, the handful of wet earth splashed on the coffin-lid, and when all was over i left the cemetery, still feeling, i knew not why, that all was not over. some restlessness and want of certainty possessed me, and instead of going home i fared forth into the rolling wooded country inland, with the intention of walking off these bat-like terrors that flapped around me. the rain had ceased, and a blurred sunlight penetrated the sea-mist which still blanketed the fields and woods, and for half an hour, moving briskly, i[57] endeavoured to fight down some fantastic conviction that had gripped my mind in its claws. i refused to look straight at that conviction, telling myself how fantastic, how unreasonable it was; but as often as i put out a hand to throttle it there came the echo of madge’s words: “the sea will not suffer her; the kindly earth will not receive her.” and if i could shut my eyes to that there came some remembrance of the day she died, and of half-forgotten fragments of charles’s superstitious belief in reincarnation. the whole thing, incredible though its component parts were, hung together with a terrible tenacity.
before long the rain began again, and i turned, meaning to go by the main-road into tarleton, which passes in a wide-flung curve some half-mile outside the cemetery. but as i approached the path through the fields, which, leaving the less direct route, passes close to the cemetery and brings you by a steeper and shorter descent into the town, i felt myself irresistibly impelled to take it. i told myself, of course, that i wished to make my wet walk as short as possible; but at the back of my mind was the half-conscious, but none the less imperative need to know by ocular evidence that the grave by which i had stood that afternoon had been filled in, and that the body of mrs. acres now lay tranquil beneath the soil. my path would be even shorter if i passed through the graveyard, and so presently i was fumbling in the gloom for the latch of the gate, and closed it again behind me. rain was falling now thick and sullenly, and in the bleared twilight i[58] picked my way among the mounds and slipped on the dripping grass, and there in front of me was the newly turned earth. all was finished: the grave-diggers had done their work and departed, and earth had gone back again into the keeping of the earth.
it brought me some great lightening of the spirit to know that, and i was on the point of turning away when a sound of stir from the heaped soil caught my ear, and i saw a little stream of pebbles mixed with clay trickle down the side of the mound above the grave: the heavy rain, no doubt, had loosened the earth. and then came another and yet another, and with terror gripping at my heart i perceived that this was no loosening from without, but from within, for to right and left the piled soil was falling away with the press of something from below. faster and faster it poured off the grave, and ever higher at the head of it rose a mound of earth pushed upwards from beneath. somewhere out of sight there came the sound as of creaking and breaking wood, and then through that mound of earth there protruded the end of the coffin. the lid was shattered: loose pieces of the boards fell off it, and from within the cavity there faced me white features and wide eyes. all this i saw, while sheer terror held me motionless; then, i suppose, came the breaking-point, and with such panic as surely man never felt before i was stumbling away among the graves and racing towards the kindly human lights of the town below.
i went to the parson who had conducted the service that afternoon with my incredible tale, and an hour later he, charles alington, and two or three men from the undertaker’s were on the spot. they[59] found the coffin, completely disinterred, lying on the ground by the grave, which was now three-quarters full of the earth which had fallen back into it. after what had happened it was decided to make no further attempt to bury it; and next day the body was cremated.
now, it is open to anyone who may read this tale to reject the incident of this emergence of the coffin altogether, and account for the other strange happenings by the comfortable theory of coincidence. he can certainly satisfy himself that one bertha acres did die at sea on this particular thursday before easter, 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 significant in the fact that the grave, as originally dug, was not of sufficient dimensions to receive the coffin. that all these incidents should have happened to the body of a single individual is odd, but then the nature of coincidence is to be odd. they form a startling series, but unless coincidences are startling they escape observation altogether. so, if you reject the last incident here recorded, or account for it by some local disturbance, an earthquake, or the breaking of a spring just below the grave, you can comfortably recline on the cushion of coincidence....
for myself, i give no explanation of these events,[60] though my brother-in-law brought forward one with which he himself is perfectly satisfied. only the other day he sent me, with considerable jubilation, a copy of some extracts from a medi?val treatise on the subject of reincarnation which sufficiently indicates his theory. the original work was in latin, which, mistrusting my scholarship, he kindly translated for me. i transcribe his quotations exactly as he sent them to me.
“we have these certain instances of his reincarnation. 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.... she, it is said, died on the anniversary of the day on which he hanged himself, after the betrayal, but of this i have no certain information. what is sure is that, when the time came for her burial, the kindly earth would receive her not, but though the grave was dug deep and well it spewed her forth again.... of the man in whom his cursed spirit was reincarnated it is said that, being on a voyage when he died, he was cast overboard with weights to sink him; but the sea would not suffer him to rest in her bosom, but slipped the weights from him, and cast him forth again on to the coast.... howbeit, when the full time of his expiation shall have come and his deadly sin forgiven, the corporal body which is the cursed receptacle of his spirit shall at length be purged with fire, and so he shall, in the infinite mercy of the almighty, have rest, and shall wander no more.”
