The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

The Light in the Garden

E. F. Benson

Location: West Riding, Yorkshire.

Time: July, 1921.

Eyewitness Description: “A shadow seemed to cross the window looking on to the gardens; on the road a light had appeared as if carried by some nocturnal passenger; and somehow the two seemed to have a common source, as if some presence that hovered about the place was striving to manifest itself . . .”

Author: Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) was the middle of the three literary Benson brothers and also the most famous, largely due to the huge success of his shocking novel, Dodo (1893), mocking society and “its lies and swank”. Like his brothers, he was classically educated and formed a deep interest in archaeology, although he had no desire to settle for the life of a scholar as they had done. He was, though, invited to M. R. James’ first Christmas reading in 1893 and soon afterwards was busy creating the supernatural stories which he said were “deliberately written to frighten”: a number of them having subsequently become the favourites of anthologists, particularly the nauseating “Caterpillars” (1912) and his two gruesome vampire tales, “The Room in the Tower” (1912) and “Mrs Amworth” (1922). The majority of Benson’s stories were later collected into popular volumes, Visible and Invisible (1923), Spook Stories (1928) and More Spook Stories (1934), but a few, like “The Light in the Garden” which he wrote for the Christmas 1921 issue of Eve: The Lady’s Pictorial, escaped the net and it is now brought back into print as another reminder of the grisly fare being offered – even to female readers – around Edwardian fireplaces at the Festive season.

The house and the dozen areas of garden and pasture-land surrounding it, which had been left me by my uncle, lay at the top end of one of those remote Yorkshire valleys carved out among the hills of the West Riding. Above it rose the long moors of bracken and heather, from which flowed the stream that ran through the garden, and, joining another tributary, brawled down the valley into the Nidd, and at the foot of its steep fields lay the hamlet – a dozen of houses and a small grey church. I had often spent half my holidays there when a boy, but for the last twenty years my uncle had become a confirmed recluse, and lived alone, seeing neither kith nor kin nor friends from January to December,

It was, therefore, with a sense of clearing old memories from the dust and dimness with which the lapse of years had covered them that I saw the dale again on a hot July afternoon in this year of drought and rainlessness. The house, as his agent had told me, was sorely in need of renovation and repair, and my notion was to spend a fortnight here in personal supervision. I had arranged that the foreman of a firm of decorators in Harrogate should meet me here next day and discuss what had to be done. I was still undecided whether to live in the house myself or let or sell it. As it would be impossible to stay there while painting and cleaning and repairing were going on, the agent had recommended me to inhabit for the next fortnight the lodge which stood at the gate on to the high road. My friend, Hugh Grainger, who was to have come up with me, had been delayed by business in London, but he would join me tomorrow.

It is strange how the revisiting of places which one has known in youth revives all sorts of memories which one had supposed must have utterly faded from the mind. Such recollections crowded fast in upon me, jostling each other for recognition and welcome, as I came near to the place. The sight of the church recalled a Sunday of disgrace, when I had laughed at some humorous happening during the progress of the prayers: the sight of the coffee-coloured stream recalled memories of trout fishing: and, most of all, the sight of the lodge, built of brown stone, with the high wall enclosing the garden, reawoke the most vivid and precise recollections. My uncle’s butler, of the name of Wedge – how it all came back! – lived there, coming up to the house of a morning, and going back there with his lantern at night, if it was dark and moonless, to sleep; Mrs Wedge, his wife, had the care of the locked gate, and opened it to visiting or outgoing vehicles. She had been rather a formidable figure to a small boy, a dark, truculent woman, with a foot curiously malformed, so twisted that it pointed outwards and at right angles to the other. She scowled at you when you knocked at the door and asked her to open the gate, and came hobbling out with a dreadful rocking movement. It was, in fact, worth the trouble of going round by a path through the plantation in order to avoid an encounter with Mrs Wedge, especially after one occasion, when, not being able to get any response to my knockings, I opened the door of the lodge and found her lying on the floor, flushed and tipsily snoring. . . . Then the last year that I ever came here Mrs Wedge went off to Whitby or Scarborough on a fortnight’s holiday. Wedge had not waited at breakfast that morning, for he was said to have driven the dogcart to take Mrs Wedge to the station at Harrogate, ten miles away. There was something a little odd about this, for I had been early abroad that morning, and thought I had seen the dogcart bowling along the road with Wedge, indeed, driving it, but no wife beside him. How odd, I thought now, that I should recollect that, and even while I wondered that I should have retained so insignificant a memory, the sequel, which made it significant, flashed into my mind, for a few days afterwards Wedge was absent again, having been sent for to go to his wife, who was dying. He came back a widower. A woman from the village was installed as lodge-keeper, a pleasant body, who seemed to enjoy opening the gate to a young gentleman with a fishing-rod. . . . Just at that moment my rummaging among old memories ceased, for here was the agent, warned by the motor-horn, coming out of the brown stone lodge.

There was time before sunset to stroll up to the house and form a general idea of what must be done in the way of decoration and repair, and not till we had got back to the lodge again did the thought of Wedge re-occur to me.

“My uncle’s butler used to live here,” I said. “Is he alive still? Is he here now?”

“Mr Wedge died a fortnight ago,” said the agent. “It was of the suddenest; he was looking forward to your coming and to attending to you, for he remembered you quite well.”

Though I had so vivid a mental picture of Mrs Wedge, I could not recall in the least what Wedge looked like.

“I, too, can remember all about him,” I said. “But I can’t remember him. What was he like?”

Mr Harkness described him to me, of course, as he knew him, an old man of middle height, grey-haired and much wrinkled, with the habit of looking round quickly when he spoke to you; but his description roused no response whatever in my memory. Naturally, the grey hair and the wrinkles, and, for that matter, perhaps the habit of “looking round quickly,” delineated an older man than he was when I knew him, and anyhow, among so much that was vivid in recollection, the appearance of Wedge was to me not even dim, but had no existence at all.

I found that Mr Harkness had made thoughtful arrangements for my comfort in the lodge. A woman from the village and her daughter were to come in early every morning for cooking and housework, and leave again at night after I had had my dinner. I was served with an excellent plain meal, and presently, as I sat watching the fading of the long twilight, there came past my open window the figures of the woman and the girl going home to the village. I heard the gate clang as they passed out, and knew that I was alone in the house. To cheerful folk fond of solitude, such as myself, that is a rare but pleasant sensation; there is the feeling that by no possibility can one be interrupted, and I prepared to spend a leisurely evening over a book that had beguiled my journey and a pack of patience cards. It was fast growing dark, and before settling down I turned to the chimney-piece to light a pair of candles. Perhaps the kindling of the match cast some momentary shadow, for I found myself looking quickly across to the window, under the impression that some black figure had gone past it along the garden path outside. The illusion was quite momentary, but I knew that I was thinking about Wedge again. And still I could not remember in the least what Wedge was like.

My book that had begun so well in the train proved disappointing in its development, and my thoughts began to wander from the printed page, and presently I rose to pull down the blinds which till now had remained unfurled. The room was at an angle of the cottage: one window looked on to the little high-walled garden, the other up the road towards my uncle’s house. As I drew down the blind here I saw up the road the light as of some lantern, which bobbed and oscillated as if to the steps of someone who carried it, and the thought of Wedge coming home at night when his work at the house was done re-occurred to my memory. Then, even as I watched, the light, whatever it was, ceased to oscillate, but burned steadily. At a guess, I should have said it was about a hundred yards distant. It remained like that a few seconds and then went out, as if the bearer had extinguished it. As I pulled down the blind I found that my breath came quick and shallow, as if I had been running.

It was with something of an effort that I sat myself down to play Patience, and with an effort that I congratulated myself on being alone and secure from interruptions. I did not feel quite so secure now, and I did not know what the interruption might be. . . . There was no sense of any presence but my own being in the house with me, but there was a sense, deny it though I might, of there being some presence outside. A shadow had seemed to cross the window looking on to the garden; on the road a light had appeared, as if carried by some nocturnal passenger, as if somehow the two seemed to have a common source, as if some presence that hovered about the place was striving to manifest itself. . . .

At that moment there came on the door of the house, just outside the room where I sat, a sharp knock, followed by silence, and then once more a knock. And instantaneous, as a blink of lightning, there flashed unbidden into my mind the image of the lantern-bearer who, seeing me at the window, had extinguished his light, and in the darkness had crept up to the house and was now demanding admittance. I knew that I was frightened now, but I knew also that I was hugely interested, and, taking one of the candles in my hand, I went quietly to the door. Just then the knocking was renewed outside, three raps in quick succession, and I had to wait until mere curiosity was ascendant again over some terror that came welling up to my forehead in beads of moisture. It might be that I should find outside some tenant or dependant of my uncle, who, unaware of my advent, wondered who might have business in this house lately vacated, and in that case my terror would vanish; or I should find outside either nothing or some figure as yet unconjecturable, and my curiosity and interest would flame up again. And then, holding the candle above my head so that I could look out undazzled, I pulled back the latch of the door and opened it wide.

Though but a few seconds ago the door had sounded with the knockings, there was no one there, neither in front of it nor to the right or left of it. But though to my physical eye no one was visible, I must believe that to the inward eye of soul or spirit there was apparent that which my grosser bodily vision could not perceive. For as I scrutinised the empty darkness it was as if I was gazing on the image of the man whom I had so utterly forgotten, and I knew what Wedge was like when I had seen him last. “In his habit as he lived” he sprang into my mind, his thick brown hair not yet tinged with grey, his hawk-like nose, his thin, compressed mouth, his eyes set close together, which shifted if you gave him a straight gaze. No less did I know his low, broad shoulders and the mole on the back of his left hand, his heavy watch-chain, his dark striped trousers. Externally and materially my questing eyes saw but the empty circle of illumination cast by my candle, but my soul’s vision beheld Wedge standing on the doorstep. It was his shadow that had passed the window as I lit my lights after dinner, his lantern that I had seen on the road, his knocking that I had heard.

Then I spoke to him who stood there so minutely seen and yet so invisible.

“What do you want with me, Wedge?” I asked. “Why are you not at rest?”

A draught of wind came round the corner, extinguishing my light. At that a gust of fear shook me, and I slammed to the door and bolted it. I could not be there in the darkness with that which indubitably stood on the threshold.

The mind is not capable of experiencing more than a certain degree of any emotion. A climax arrives, and an assuagement, a diminution follows. That was certainly the case with me now, for though I had to spend the night alone here, with God knew what possible visitations before day, the terror had reached its culminating point and ebbed away again. Moreover, that haunting presence, which I now believed I had identified, was without and not within the house. It had not, to the psychical sense, entered through the open door, and I faced my solitary night with far less misgiving than would have been mine if I had been obliged now to fare forth into the darkness. I slept and woke again, and again slept, but never with panic of nightmare, or with the sense, already once or twice familiar to me, that there was any presence in the room beside my own, and when finally I dropped into a dreamless slumber I woke to find the cheerful day already bright, and the dawn-chorus of the birds in full harmony.

My time was much occupied with affairs of restorations and repairs that day, but I did a little private thinking about Wedge, and made up my mind that I would not tell Hugh Grainger any of my experiences on the previous evening. Indeed, they seemed now of no great evidential value: the shape that had passed my window might so easily have been some queer shadow cast by the kindling of my match; the lantern-light I had seen up the road – if, indeed, it was a lantern at all – might easily have been a real lantern, and who knew whether those knocks at the door might not have been vastly exaggerated by my excitement and loneliness, and be found only to have been the tapping of some spray of ivy or errant creeper? As for the sudden recollection of Wedge, which had eluded me before, it was but natural that I should sooner or later have recaptured the memory of him. Besides, supposing there was anything supernormal about these things, and supposing that they or similar phenomena appeared to Hugh also, his evidence would be far more weighty, if it was come at independently, without the prompting of suggestions from me. He arrived, as I had done the day before, a little before sunset, big and jovial, and rather disposed to reproach me for holding out trout-fishing as an attraction, when the stream was so dwindled by the drought.

“But there’s rain coming,” said he. “Can’t you smell it?”

The sky certainly was thickly overcast and sultry with storm, and before dinner was over the shrubs outside began to whisper underneath the first drops. But the shower soon passed, and while I was busy with some estimate which I had promised the contractor to look at before he came again next morning, Hugh strolled out along the road up to the house for a breath of air. I had finished before he came back, and we sat down to picquet. As he cut, he said:

“I thought you told me the house above was unoccupied. But I passed a man apparently coming down from there, carrying a lantern.”

“I don’t know who that could be,” said I. “Did you see him at all clearly?”

“No, he put out his lantern as I approached; I turned immediately afterwards, and caught him up, and passed him again.”

There came a knock at the front door, then silence, and then a repetition.

“Shall I see who it is while you are dealing?” he said.

He took a candle from the table, but, leaving the deal incomplete, I followed him, and saw him open the door. The candlelight shone out into the darkness, and under Hugh’s uplifted arm I beheld, vaguely and indistinctly, the shape of a man. Then the light fell full on to his face, and I recognised him.

“Yes, what do you want?” said Hugh, and just as had happened last night a puff of wind blew the flame off the candle-wick and left us in the dark.

Then Hugh’s voice, suddenly raised, came again.

“Here, get out,” he said. “What do you want?”

I threw open the door into the sitting-room close at hand, and the light within illuminated the narrow passage of the entry. There was no one there but Hugh and myself.

“But where’s the beggar gone?” said Hugh. “He pushed in by me. Did he go into the sitting-room? And where on earth is he?”

“Did you see him?” I asked.

“Of course I saw him. A little man, hook-nosed, with eyes close together. I never liked a man less . . . Look here, we must search through the house. He did come in.”

Together, not singly, we went through the few rooms which the cottage contained, the two living rooms and the kitchen below, and the three bedrooms upstairs. All was empty and quiet.

“It’s a ghost,” said Hugh; and then I told him my experience on the previous evening. I told him also all that I knew of Wedge, and of his wife, and of her sudden death when on her holiday. Once or twice as I spoke I saw that Hugh put up his hand as if to shade the flame of the candle from shining out into the garden, and as I finished he suddenly blew it out and came close to me.

“I thought it was the reflection of the candle-light on the panes,” he said, “but it isn’t. Look out there.”

There was a light burning at the far end of the garden, visible in glimpses through a row of tall peas, and there was something moving beside it. A piece of an arm appeared there, as of a man digging, a shoulder and head . . .

“Come out,” whispered Hugh. “That’s our man. And what is he doing?”

Next moment we were gazing into blackness: the light had vanished.

We each took a candle and went out through the kitchen door. The flames burned steady in the windless air as in a room, and in five minutes we had peered behind every bush, and looked into every cranny. Then suddenly Hugh stopped.

“Did you leave a light in the kitchen?” he asked.

“No.”

“There’s one there now,” he said, and my eye followed his pointing finger.

There was a communicating door between our bedrooms, both of which looked out on to the garden, and before getting into bed I made myself some trivial excuse of wanting to speak to Hugh, and left it open. He was already in bed.

“You’d like to fish tomorrow?” I asked.

Before he could answer the room leaped into light, and simultaneously the thunder burst overhead. The fountains of the clouds were unsealed, and the deluge of the rain descended. I took a step across to the window with the idea of shutting it, and across the dark streaming cave of the night outside, again, and now unobscured from the height of the upper floor, I saw the lantern light at the far end of the garden, and the figure of a man bending and rising again as he plied his secret task . . . The downpour continued; sometimes I dozed for a little, but through dozing and waking alike, my mind was delving and digging as to why out there in the hurly-burly of the storm, the light burned and the busy figure rose and fell. There was haste and bitter urgency in that hellish gardening, which recked nothing of the rain.

I awoke suddenly from an uneasy doze, and felt the skin of my scalp grow tight with some nameless terror. Hugh apparently had lit his candle again, for light came in through the open door between our rooms. Then came the click of a turned handle, and the other door into the passage slowly opened. I was sitting up in bed now with my eyes fixed on it, and round it came the figure of Wedge. He carried a lantern, and his hands were black with mould. And at that sight the whole of my self-control was shattered.

“Hugh!” I yelled. “Hugh! He is here.”

Hugh came hurrying in, and for one second I turned my eyes to him.

“There by the door!” I cried.

When I looked back again the apparition was no longer there. But the door was open, and on the floor by it fragments of mud and soaked soil . . .

The sequel is soon told. Where we had seen the figure digging in the garden was a row of lavender bushes. These we pulled up, and three feet below came on the huddled remains of a woman’s body. The skull had been beaten in by some crashing blow; fragments of clothing and the malformation of one of the feet were sufficient to establish identification. The bones lie now in the churchyard close by the grave of her husband and murderer.