She said no word of denial in answer to
the terrible accusation that had been uttered. And I think I was glad
of that, for there are times when it is not only futility to deny, but
blasphemy. For my part, I could neither look at her nor speak to her. I
remember holding out my hands to the empty grate, as if there had been
a fire burning there. And standing there I heard her rise, and drearily
wondered what she would say and knew how useless it would be. And then
I heard the whisper of her dress on the carpet and the noise of the
door opening and shutting, and when I turned I found that I was alone
in the room. Presently I let myself out of the house.”

There was a long pause, but I did not break it, for I felt he had not
quite finished. “I had loved her with my whole heart,” he said, “and she knew it. Perhaps that was why I never attempted to see her again and why she did
not attempt to see me. That little white figure would always have been
with us, for she could not deny the reality of it and the truth of that
which it had spoken. That’s my story, then. You needn’t even tell me if
you think I could have done differently, for I knew I couldn’t. And she
couldn’t.”

He rose. “I see there is to be an inquest,” he said. “I hope they will find
that she killed herself. It will mean, won’t it, that her remorse was
unbearable. And that’s atonement.”

He moved towards the door. “Inscrutable decrees,” he said. The Gardener




The Gardener


Two friends of mine, Hugh Grainger and his wife, had taken for a
month of Christmas holiday the house in which we were to witness such
strange manifestations, and when I received an invitation from them to
spend a fortnight there I returned them an enthusiastic affirmative. Well already did I know that pleasant heathery country-side, and most
intimate was my acquaintance with the subtle hazards of its most
charming golf-links. Golf, I was given to understand, was to occupy the
solid day for Hugh and me, so that Margaret should never be obliged to
set her hand to the implements with which the game, so detestable to
her, was conducted.... I arrived there while yet the daylight lingered, and as my hosts were
out, I took a ramble round the place. The house and garden stood on a
plateau facing south; below it were a couple of acres of pasture that
sloped down to a vagrant stream crossed by a foot-bridge, by the side
of which stood a thatched cottage with a vegetable patch surrounding
it. A path ran close past this across the pasture from a wicket-gate in
the garden, conducted you over the foot-bridge, and, so my remembered
sense of geography told me, must constitute a short cut to the links
that lay not half a mile beyond. The cottage itself was clearly on
the land of the little estate, and I at once supposed it to be the
gardener’s house. What went against so obvious and simple a theory was
that it appeared to be untenanted. No wreath of smoke, though the
evening was chilly, curled from its chimneys, and, coming closer, I
fancied it had that air of “waiting” about it which we so often conjure
into unused habitations. There it stood, with no sign of life whatever
about it, though ready, as its apparently perfect state of repair
seemed to warrant, for fresh tenants to put the breath of life into it
again. Its little garden, too, though the palings were neat and newly
painted, told the same tale; the beds were untended and unweeded, and
in the flower-border by the front door was a row of chrysanthemums,
which had withered on their stems. But all this was but the impression
of a moment, and I did not pause as I passed it, but crossed the
foot-bridge and went on up the heathery slope that lay beyond. My
geography was not at fault, for presently I saw the club-house just
in front of me. Hugh no doubt would be just about coming in from his
afternoon round, and so we would walk back together. On reaching the
club-house, however, the steward told me that not five minutes before
Mrs. Grainger had called in her car for her husband, and I therefore
retraced my steps by the path along which I had already come. But
I made a detour, as a golfer will, to walk up the fairway of the
seventeenth and eighteenth holes just for the pleasure of recognition,
and looked respectfully at the yawning sandpit which so inexorably
guards the eighteenth green, wondering in what circumstances I should
visit it next, whether with a step complacent and superior, knowing
that my ball reposed safely on the green beyond, or with the heavy
footfall of one who knows that laborious delving lies before him. The light of the winter evening had faded fast, and when I crossed
the foot-bridge on my return the dusk had gathered. To my right, just
beside the path, lay the cottage, the whitewashed walls of which
gleamed whitely in the gloaming; and as I turned my glance back from
it to the rather narrow plank which bridged the stream I thought I
caught out of the tail of my eye some light from one of its windows,
which thus disproved my theory that it was untenanted. But when I
looked directly at it again I saw that I was mistaken: some reflection
in the glass of the red lines of sunset in the west must have deceived
me, for in the inclement twilight it looked more desolate than ever. Yet I lingered by the wicket gate in its low palings, for though all
exterior evidence bore witness to its emptiness, some inexplicable
feeling assured me, quite irrationally, that this was not so, and that
there was somebody there. Certainly there was nobody visible, but, so
this absurd idea informed me, he might be at the back of the cottage
concealed from me by the intervening structure, and, still oddly, still
unreasonably, it became a matter of importance to my mind to ascertain
whether this was so or not, so clearly had my perceptions told me that
the place was empty, and so firmly had some conviction assured me
that it was tenanted. To cover my inquisitiveness, in case there was
someone there, I could inquire whether this path was a short cut to
the house at which I was staying, and, rather rebelling at what I was
doing, I went through the small garden, and rapped at the door. There
was no answer, and, after waiting for a response to a second summons,
and having tried the door and found it locked, I made the circuit of
the house. Of course there was no one there, and I told myself that I
was just like a man who looks under his bed for a burglar and would be
beyond measure astonished if he found one. My hosts were at the house when I arrived, and we spent a cheerful two
hours before dinner in such desultory and eager conversation as is
proper between friends who have not met for some time. Between Hugh
Grainger and his wife it is always impossible to light on a subject
which does not vividly interest one or other of them, and golf,
politics, the needs of Russia, cooking, ghosts, the possible victory
over Mount Everest, and the income tax were among the topics which we
passionately discussed.