Hugh Lamb - Ghosts in the House - Tales of Terror by A. C. Benson and R. H. Benson

‘It was as he climbed that his odd sensations began. As he went up, clinging with his hands, he became perfectly certain that he was being watched. He couldn’t turn round very well; but he looked up as he went to the opening overhead; but there was nothing there but the dead blue sky, and the trees very green against it, and the red rocks curving away on every side. It was extraordinarily quiet, he said, the pigeons had not come home from feeding, and he was out of hearing of the dripping water that I told you of.

‘Then he reached the platform and the opening of the path where I had had my fright in the morning; and turned round to look.

‘At first he saw nothing peculiar. The rocks up which he had come fell away at his feet down to the floor of the “Cathedral” and to the nettles with which he had stung his hands a minute or two before. He looked around at the galleries overhead and opposite; but there was nothing there.

‘Then he looked across at the platform where he had been in the morning and where the accident had taken place.

‘Let me tell you what this was like. It was about twenty yards in breadth, and ten deep; but lay irregular, and filled with tumbled rocks. It was a little below the level of his eyes, right across the gulf; and, in a straight line, would be about fifty or sixty yards away. It lay under the roof, rather retired, so that no light from the sky fell directly on to it; it would have been in complete twilight if it hadn’t been for a smaller shaft above it, which shot down a funnel of bluish light, exactly like a stage-effect. You see, Reverend Fathers, it was very theatrical altogether. That might account no doubt—’

Mr Percival broke off again, smiling.

‘I am always forgetting,’ he said. ‘Well, we must go back to Murphy. At first he saw nothing but the rocks, and the thick red dust, and the broken wall behind it. He was very honest, and told me that as he looked at it, he remembered distinctly what the landlady had told us at lunch. It was on that little stage that the tragedy had happened.

‘Then he became aware that something was moving among the rocks, and he became perfectly certain that people were looking at him; but it was too dusky to see very clearly at first. Whatever it was, was in the shadows at the back. He fixed his eyes on what was moving. Then this happened.’

The lawyer stopped again.

‘I will tell you the rest,’ he said, ‘in his own words, so far as I remember them.

‘“I was looking at this moving thing,” he said, “which seemed exactly of the red colour of the rocks, when it suddenly came out under the funnel of light; and I saw it was a man. He was in a rough suit, all iron-stained; with a rusty cap; and he had some kind of pick in his hand. He stopped first in the centre of the light, with his back turned to me, and stood there, looking. I cannot say that I was consciously frightened; I honestly do not know what I thought he was. I think that my whole mind was taken up in watching him.

‘“Then he turned round slowly, and I saw his face. Then I became aware that if he looked at me I should go into hysterics or something of the sort; and I crouched down as low as I could. But he didn’t look at me; he was attending to something else; and I could see his face quite clearly. He had a beard and moustache, rather ragged and rusty; he was rather pale, but not particularly: I judged him to be about thirty-five.” Of course,’ went on the lawyer, ‘Murphy didn’t tell it me quite as I am telling it to you. He stopped a good deal, he drank a sip of tea once or twice, and changed his feet about.

‘Well; he had seen this man’s face very clearly; and described it very clearly.

‘It was the expression that struck him most.

‘“It was rather an amused expression,” he said, “rather pathetic and rather tender; and he was looking interestedly about at everything – at the rocks above and beneath: he carried his pick easily in the crook of his arm. He looked exactly like a man whom I once saw visiting his home where he had lived as a child.” (Murphy was very particular about that, though I don’t believe he was right.) “He was smiling a little in his beard, and his eyes were half-shut. It was so pathetic that I nearly went into hysterics then and there,” said Murphy. “I wanted to stand up and explain that it was all right, but I knew he knew more than I did. I watched him, I should think for nearly five minutes, he went to and fro softly in the thick dust, looking here and there, sometimes in the shadow and sometimes out of it. I could not have moved for ten thousand pounds; and I could not take my eyes off him.

‘“Then just before the end, I did look away from him. I wanted to know if it was all real, and I looked at the rocks behind and the openings. Then I saw that there were other people there, at least there were things moving, of the colour of the rocks.

‘“I suppose I made some sound then; I was horribly frightened. At any rate, the man in the middle turned right round and faced me, and at that I sank down, with the sweat dripping from me, flat on my face, with my hands over my eyes.

‘“I thought of a hundred thousand things: of the inn, and you; and the walk we had had; and I prayed – well, I suppose I prayed. I wanted God to take me right out of this place. I wanted the rocks to open and let me through.”’

Mr Percival stopped. His voice shook with a tiny tremor. He cleared his throat.

‘Well, Reverend Fathers; Murphy got up at last, and looked about him; and of course, there was nothing there, but just the rocks and the dust, and the sky overhead. Then he came away home, the shortest way.’

It was a very abrupt ending; and a little sigh ran round the circle.

Monsignor struck a match noisily, and kindled his pipe again.

‘Thank you very much, sir,’ he said briskly.

Mr Percival cleared his throat again; but before he could speak Father Brent broke in.

‘Now that is just an instance of what I was saying, Monsignor, the night we began. May I ask if you really believe that those were the souls of the miners? Where’s the justice of it? What’s the point?’

Monsignor glanced at the lawyer.

‘Have you any theory, sir?’ he asked.

Mr Percival answered without lifting his eyes.

‘I think so,’ he said shortly, ‘but I don’t feel in the least dogmatic.’

Father Brent looked at him almost indignantly. ‘I should like to hear it,’ he said, ‘if you can square that—’

‘I do not square it,’ said the lawyer. ‘Personally I do not believe they were spirits at all.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. I do not; though I do not wish to be dogmatic. To my mind it seems far more likely that this is an instance of Mr Hudson’s theory – the American, you know. His idea is that all apparitions are no more than the result of violent emotions experienced during life. That about the pathetic expression is all nonsense, I believe.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Father Brent.

‘Well; these men, killed by the fall of the roof, probably went through a violent emotion. This would be heightened in some degree by their loneliness and isolation from the world. This kind of emotion, Mr Hudson suggests, has a power of saturating material surroundings and under certain circumstances, would once more, like a phonograph, give off an image of the agent. In this instance, too, the absence of other human visitors would give this materialised emotion a chance, so to speak, of surviving; there would be very few cross-currents to confuse it. And finally, Murphy was alone; his receptive faculties would be stimulated by that fact, and all that he saw, in my belief, was the psychical wave left by these men in dying.’

‘Oh! did you tell him so?’

‘I did not. Murphy is a violent man.’