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, 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 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. 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 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
picked my way among the mounds and slipped on the dripping grass, and
there in front of me was the newly turned earth.