Public Domain Text: The Temple by E. F. Benson

“The Temple” is taken from Benson’s Spook Stories anthology (1928). It’s one of Benson’s darkest stories and, in my opinion, one of his best.

“The Temple” is set in Cornwall, where two friends have left the hustle and bustle of London behind and plan to spend at least a couple of months enjoying the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. They initially stay in a hotel in a small village but later discover an idyllic cottage that appears to be perfect for their needs. It’s empty and available for rent so everything is quickly settled.

One of the men, Frank, believes there may be an ancient druid temple in the vicinity and is keen to find it’s ruins. He and his friend are successful in this and also discover something alarming about the cottage that they are presently calling home.

About E. F. Benson

Edward Frederic Benson (1867 — 1940) is probably best known for his six Mapp and Lucia books, but he was a very versatile writer who produced a large body of work, including several biographies.

Benson also wrote a number of ghost stories and the author H. P. Lovecraft was impressed enough by Benson’s work to mention him in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”

The Temple

by E. F. Benson

(Unabridged Online Text)

Frank Ingleton and I had left London early in July with the intention of spending a couple of months at least in Cornwall. This sojourn was not by any means to be a complete holiday, for he was a student of those remains of prehistoric civilisation which are found in such mysterious abundance in the ancient county, and I was employed on a book which should have already been approaching completion, but which was still lamentably far from its consummation. Naturally there was to be a little golf and a little sea-bathing for relaxation, but we were both keen on our work and meant to have gathered in a respectable harvest of industry before we returned.

The village of St. Caradoc, from all accounts, seemed likely to be favourable to our projects, for there were remains in the neighbourhood which had never been thoroughly investigated by any archæologist, and its position on the map, remote from any of the more celebrated holiday centres, promised a reasonable tranquillity. It supplied also the desirable relaxations; the club-house of a pleasantly hazardous golf-course stood at the bottom of the hotel garden, and five minutes’ walk across the sand-dunes among which the holes were placed, led to the beach. The hotel was comfortable, and at present half-empty, and fortune seemed to smile on our undertakings. We settled down, therefore, without further plans. Frank meant, before he left, to visit other parts of the county, but here, within a mile of the hotel, was that curious circle of monoliths, like some Stonehenge in miniature, known as the “Council of Penruth.” It had always been supposed, so Frank told me, that it was some place of Druidical worship, but he distrusted the conclusion and wanted to study it minutely on the spot.

I went there with him by way of an evening saunter on the second day after our arrival. The shortest way was along the sand-dunes, and thence up a steep, grassy slope on to the ploughed stretches of the uplands. In that warm, soft climate the wheat was in full ear, and beginning already to turn ripe and tawny. A very narrow path led across these cornfields to our destination, and from far off one could see the circle of stones, four to five feet high, standing there, black and austere, against the yellowing grain. Though all the country round was in cultivation no plough had furrowed the interior of the circle, and inside was the ancient turf of the downs, short and velvety, with patches of thyme and hare-bells. It seemed odd; a plough could have passed backwards and forwards between the monoliths and a half-acre of land have been made fruitful.

“But why isn’t it ploughed?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re in the land of superstitions and ancient sorceries,” he said. “These circles are never touched or made use of. And do you see, the path across the fields by which we have come passes round it; it doesn’t run across it. There it goes again on the far side, pursuing the same line, after making the detour.”

He laughed.

“The farmer of the land was up here this morning when I was making some measurements,” he said. “He went round it, I noticed, and when his dog came inside after some interesting smell, he called it back, and cuffed it, and rapped out: ‘Come out of that there; and never do you go within again.'”

“But what’s the idea?” I asked.

“Something clings to it, some curse, some abomination. They think no doubt, just as the archæologists do, that the place has been a Druidical temple, where dreadful rites were performed and human sacrifices made. But they are all wrong; this was never a temple at all, it was a Council Chamber, and the very name of it, the ‘Council of Penruth,’ confirms that. No doubt there was a temple somewhere about; dearly should I like to find it.”

It had been hot work climbing up that steep, slippery hillside from the village, and we sat down within the circle, leaning our backs against two adjacent stones, and as we sat and rested Frank explained to me the grounds of his belief.

“If you care to count them,” he said, “you’ll find there are twenty-one of these monoliths, against two of which you and I are leaning, and if you care to measure the distances between them you will find that they are all equal. Each stone, in fact, represents the seat of a member of the council of twenty-one. But if the place had been a temple there would have been a larger gap between two of the stones towards the east, where the gate of the temple was, facing the rising sun, and somewhere within the circle, probably exactly in the middle, there would have been a large, flat stone, which was the stone of sacrifice, where no doubt human victims were offered. Or, if the stone had disappeared, there would have been a depression where it once was. Those are the distinguishing marks of a temple, and this place lacks them. It has always been assumed that it was a temple, and it has been described as such. But I am sure I am right about it.”

“But there is a temple somewhere about?” I asked.

“Certain to be. If any of these prehistoric settlements was large enough to have a council hall, it would certainly have had a temple, though the remains of it have very likely disappeared. When the country was Christianised, the old religion—if you can call it a religion—was reckoned an abomination, and the places of worship were destroyed, just as the Israelites destroyed the groves of Baal. But I mean to explore very thoroughly here: there may be remains in some of those woods down there. This is just the sort of remote place where the temple might have escaped destruction.”

“And what was the ancient religion?” I asked.

“Very little is known about it. It certainly was a religion not of love but fear. The gods were the blind powers of nature, manifesting themselves in storms and destruction and plague, and had to be propitiated with human sacrifices. And the priests, of course, dealt in magic and sorcery. They were the governing class, and kept their power alive by terror. If you offended them, as likely as not you would be sent for and told that the gods required your eldest son as a blood-offering next mid-summer day at sunrise when the first beams of morning shone through the eastern gate of the temple. It was wise to be a good churchman in those days.”

“It looks a kindly country nowadays,” I said. “The temples of the old gods are empty.”

“Yes, but it’s extraordinary how old superstitions linger. It isn’t a year ago that there was a witch-craft trial in Penzance. The cattle belonging to some farmer near here began to pine and die, and he went to an old woman who said that a spell had been cast on them, and that if he paid her she could remove it. He went on paying and paying, and at last got tired of that and prosecuted her instead.”

He looked at his watch.

“Let’s take a stroll before dinner,” he said. “Instead of going back the way we came, we might make a ramble down the hillside in front and through the woods. They look rather attractive.”

“And may conceal a pagan temple,” said I, getting up.

We skirted the harvest fields, and found a path leading through a big fir-wood that climbed up the hillside. The trees were of no great growth as regards height, and the prevalent wind from the south-west, to which they stood exposed, had combed and pressed their branches landwards. But the foliage of the tree-tops was very dense, making a curious sombre twilight as we penetrated deeper into the wood. There was no undergrowth whatever below them, the ground was spread thick and smooth with fallen pine needles, and with the tree trunks rising straight and column-like and that thick roof of branches above, the place looked like some great hall of nature’s building. No whisper of wind moved overhead, and so dark and still was it that you might easily have conceived yourself to be walking up the aisle of some walled-in place. The smell of the firs was thick in the air like incense, and the foot went noiselessly as over spread carpets. No birds flitted between the tree trunks or called to each other, the only noise was the murmurous buzz of flies, which sounded like some long-held organ note.

It had been hot enough outside in the fresh draught off the sea, but here where no breeze winnowed the air it was stiflingly close, and as we plunged deeper into the dimness I was conscious of some gathering oppression of the spirit. It was an uncomfortable place, it seemed thick with unseen presences. And the same notion must have struck Frank as well.

“I feel as if we were being watched,” he said. “There are eyes peeping at us from behind the trunks, and they don’t like us. Now what makes so silly an idea enter my head?”

“A grove of Baal is it?” I suggested. “One that has escaped destruction and is full of the spirits of murderous priests.”

“I wish it was,” he said. “Then we could inquire the way to the temple.”

Suddenly he pointed ahead.

“Hullo, what’s that?” he said.

I followed the direction of his finger, and for one half-second thought I saw the glimmer of something white moving among the trees. But before I could focus it it was gone. Somehow, the heat and the oppression had got on my nerves.

“Well, it’s not our wood,” I said. “I suppose other people have just as much right to walk here. But I’ve had enough of tree-trunks, I should like to have done with the wood.”

Even as I spoke, I saw it was getting lighter in front of us; glimmers of day began to show between the thick-set trunks, and presently we found ourselves threading the last row of the trees. The light of day poured in again and the stir of the sea breeze; it was like coming out of some crowded and airless building into the open air.

We emerged into a delectable place; a broad stretch of downland turf was spread in front of us, smooth and ancient turf like that in the circle, jewelled with thyme and centaury and bugloss. The path we had been following lay straight across this, and dipping down over the edge of it we came suddenly on the most enchanting little house, low and two-storied, standing in a small enclosure of lawn and garden beds. The hill behind it had evidently once been quarried, but long ago, for now the sheer sides of it were overgrown with a tangle of ivy and briony, and at their base lay a pool of water. Beyond and bordering the lawn was a copse of birches and hornbeams, which half encircled the clearing in which stood house and garden. The house itself, smothered in honeysuckle and climbing fuchsia, seemed unoccupied, for the chimneys were smokeless and the blinds drawn down over the windows. As we turned the corner of its low fence and came on to the front of it, the impression was verified, for there by the gate was a notice proclaiming that it was to be let furnished, and directing that application should be made to a house agent in St. Caradoc’s.

“But it’s a pocket Paradise,” said I. “Why shouldn’t we—”

Frank interrupted me.

“Of course there’s no reason why we shouldn’t,” he said. “In fact, there’s every reason why we should. The manager at the hotel told me they were filling up next week and wanted to know for how long we should stop. We’ll make inquiries to-morrow morning, and find the agent and the keys.”

The keys next morning revealed a charm within that came up to the promise of what we had seen without, and, what was as wonderful, the agent could provide our staff as well. This consisted of a rotund and capable Cornishwoman who, with her daughter to help her, would arrive early every morning, and remain till she had served our dinner, and then go back to her cottage in St. Caradoc’s. If that would suffice us, she was ready to be in charge as soon as we settled to take the little house; it must be understood, however, that she would not sleep there. Without making any further inquiries, the assurance that she was a clean and capable cook and competent in every way was enough, and two days afterwards we entered into possession. The rent asked was extraordinarily low, and my suspicious mind, as we went through the house, visualised an absence of water-supply or a kitchen range that, while getting red hot, left its ovens as in the chill of an Arctic night. But no such dispiriting discoveries awaited us; Mrs. Fennell turned taps and manipulated dampers, and, scouring capably through the house, pronounced on her solemn guarantee that we should be very comfortable. “But I go back to my own house at night, gentlemen,” she said, “and I promise you the water will be hot and your breakfast ready for you by eight in the morning.”

We entered that afternoon; our luggage had been sent up an hour before, and when we arrived the portmanteaux were already unpacked and clothes bestowed in their drawers, and tea ready in the sitting-room. It and its adjoining dining-room with a small parqueted hall, formed the ground floor accommodation. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen, the convenience of which had already satisfied Mrs. Fennell. Upstairs there were two good bedrooms, and above the kitchen two smaller servants’ rooms, which, by our arrangement, would be unoccupied. There was a bathroom between the two bedrooms with a door into it from each; for two friends occupying the house nothing could have been more exactly what was wanted with nothing to spare. Mrs. Fennell gave us an admirable plain dinner, and by nine o’clock she had locked the outer kitchen door and left us.

Before going to bed we wandered out into the garden, marvelling at our luck. The hotel, as the manager had told us, was already beginning to fill up, the dining-room to-night would have been a cackle of voices, the sitting-room crowded, and surely it was a wonderfully good exchange to be housed in this commodious little tranquillity of a place, with our own unobtrusive establishment that came at dawn and left at night. It remained only to see if this paragon who was so proficient in her kitchen would be as punctual in the morning.

“But I wonder why she and her daughter would not establish themselves here,” said Frank. “They live alone down in the village. You’d have thought that they would have shut their cottage up, and saved themselves a morning and evening tramp.”

“Gregariousness,” said I. “They like to know that there are people, just people, close at hand and to right and left. I like to know that there are not. I like—”

As I spoke we turned at the garden gate, where the notice that the house was to let had been, and my eyes, quite idly, travelled across the space of open downland to the black fringe of the wood that stood above it, and for a moment, bright, and then quenched again like the line of fire made by a match that has been struck and has not flared, I saw a light there. It was only for a second that it was visible, but it must have been somewhere inside the wood, for against that luminous streak I saw the shape of the fir trunks.

“Did you see that?” I said to Frank.

“A light in the wood?” he asked. “Yes, it has appeared there several times. Just for a moment and then disappearing again. Some farmer, perhaps, finding his way home.”

That was a very sensible conclusion, and, for some reason that I did not trouble to probe, my mind hastened to adopt it. After all, who was more likely to be passing through the wood than men from the upland farms going home at closing time from the Red Lion at St. Caradoc’s?

I was roused next morning out of very deep sleep by the entry of Mrs. Fennell with hot water; it was a struggle to join myself up with the waking world again. I had the impression of having dreamed very vividly of things dark and dim, and of perilous places, and though I had certainly slept for something like eight hours at a stretch I felt curiously unrefreshed. At breakfast Frank was more silent than his wont, but presently we were making plans for the day. He proposed to explore the wood again, while I was busy with my work; in the afternoon a round of golf would bring us to teatime. Before he started and I settled down, we strolled about the garden that dozed tranquilly in the hot morning sun, and again congratulated ourselves on our exchange from the hotel. We went down to the pool below the quarried cliff, and there I left him to return to the house, while he, in order to start exploring at once, followed an overgrown path that led into the copse of birch and hornbeam of which I have spoken. But I had not crossed the lawn before I heard myself called.

“Come here a minute,” he shouted, “I’ve found something interesting.” I retraced my steps, and pushing through the trees found him standing by a tall, black granite stone that pushed its moss-green head above the undergrowth.

“It’s a monolith,” he said excitedly. “It’s like one of those stones in the circle. Perhaps there has been another circle here, or, perhaps, it’s a stone of the temple. It’s deep in the earth, it looks as if it was in place. Let’s see if we can find another in this copse.”

He pushed on into the thick growing trees to the right of the path, and I, infected with his enthusiasm, made an exploration to the left. Before long I came upon another stone of the same character as the first, and my shout of discovery was echoed by his. Yet another rewarded his hunting, and as I emerged from the copse on the edge of the quarry pool I found a fifth, standing but fallen forward in a bed of rushes that fringed the water.

In the excitement of this find, my planned studiousness was, of course, abandoned; so, too, when we had eaten a hearty lunch, was the projected game of golf, and before evening we had arrived at a rough scheme of the entire place. Most of the stones were in the belt of copse that half-encircled the house, and with a tape-measure we found that these were set at uniform intervals from each other except that exactly twice that interval separated the two stones that lay due east of the circle. In the bank that lay to the south of the house several were missing, but in each case, by digging at the proper intervals, we found fragments of granite grassed over in the soil, which indicated that these stones had been broken up and used, probably, for building materials, and this conjecture of Frank’s was confirmed by the discovery of pieces of granite built into the walls of the house we occupied.

He had jotted down the approximate position of the stones, and passed over to me the paper on which he had drawn his plan.

“Without doubt it’s a temple,” he said, “there’s the double interval at the east, which I told you about, and which was the gate into it.”

I looked at what he had drawn.

“Then our house stands just in the centre of it,” I said.

“Yes; what vandals they were to build it just there,” said he. “Probably the stone of sacrifice lies somewhere below it. Good Lord, dinner ready, Mrs. Fennell? I had no idea it was so late.”

The sky had clouded over during the afternoon, and while we sat at dinner, a windless and heavy rain began to fall and thunder to mutter over the sea. Mrs. Fennell came in to enquire into our tastes for to-morrow, and as there was every appearance of a violent storm approaching, I asked her whether she and her girl would not stop here for the night and save themselves a wetting.

“No, I’ll be off now, sir, thank you,” she said. “We don’t mind a wetting in Cornwall.”

“But not very good for your rheumatism,” I said. She had mentioned that she was a sufferer in this respect.

A blink of lightning flashed rather vividly across the uncurtained windows, and the rain hissed more heavily.

“No, I’ll be off now,” she said, “for it’s late already. Good night, gentlemen.”

We heard her turn the key in the kitchen door, and presently the figures of herself and her girl passed the window.

“Not even umbrellas,” said Frank. “They’ll be drenched before they get down.”

“I wonder why they wouldn’t stop,” said I.

Frank was soon employed on preparations for a plan to scale that he was meaning to make to-morrow, and he began putting in the house, which he had ascertained stood just in the centre of the temple. The size of the ground plan of it was all he required on the scale he intended for the complete plan, and after measuring the sitting-room, passage, and dining-room, he went through into the kitchen. Meanwhile, I had settled down to the work I had intended to do this morning, and proposed to get a couple of solid hours at it before I went to bed. It was rather hard to get the thread of it again, and for some time I floundered with false starts and erased sentences, but before long I got into better form, and was already happily absorbed in it when he called me from the kitchen.

“Oh, I can’t come,” I said, “I’m busy.”

“Just a moment, please,” he shouted.

I laid down my pen and went to him. He had moved the kitchen table aside and turned up the drugget that covered the floor.

“Look there!” he said.

The floor was paved with stone of the district, very likely from the quarry just outside. But in the centre was an oblong slab of granite, some six feet by four in dimensions.

“That’s a whacking big stone,” I said. “Odd of them to have been at the trouble of putting that there.”

“They didn’t,” said he. “I’ll bet it was there when they laid the floor!”

Then I understood.

“The stone of sacrifice?” I asked.

“Rather. Granite and just in the centre of the temple. It can’t be anything else.”

Some sudden thrill of horror seized me. It was on that stone that young boys and maidens, torn from their mother’s arms and bound hand and foot, were laid, while the priest, with one hand over the victim’s eyes, plunged the flint knife into the smooth, white throat, sawing through the tissue till the blood spurted from the severed artery…. In the flickering light of the candle Frank carried the stone seemed wet and darkly glistening, and was that noise only the rain volleying on the roof, or the beating of drums to drown the cries of the victim?…

“It’s terrible,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t found it.”

Frank was on his knees by it, examining the surface of it. “I can’t say I agree with you,” he said. “It just puts the final touch of certainty on my discovery. Besides, whether I had found it or not, it would have been there just the same.”

“Well, I’m going on with my work,” I said. “It’s more cheerful than stones of sacrifice.”

He laughed.

“I hope it’s as interesting,” he said.

It appeared, when I went back to it, that it was not, and try as I would I could not recapture the interest which is necessary to production of any kind. Even my eye wandered from the words I wrote; as for my mind, it would give only the most cursory glance at that for which I demanded its fixed attention. It was busy elsewhere. I found myself, at its bidding, scrutinizing the shadowy corners of the room, but there was nothing there, and all the time some strange darkness, blacker than that which pressed in upon the house, began to grow upon my spirit. There was fear mingled with it, though I did not know what I was afraid of, but chiefly it was some sort of despair and depression, distant as yet and undefined, but quietly closing in upon me. As I sat with my pen still in my hand, trying to analyse these perturbed and troubled sensations, I heard Frank call out sharply from the kitchen, the door of which, on my return, I had left open.

“Hullo!” he cried. “What’s that? Is anyone there?”

I jumped from my seat and went to join him. He was standing close to the stove, holding his candle above his head, and looking at the door into the garden, which Mrs. Fennell had locked on her departure.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

He looked round at me, startled by the sound of my voice.

“Curious,” he said, “I was just measuring the stone, when out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw that door open. But it’s locked, isn’t it?”

He tried the handle, but sure enough it was locked.

“Optical delusion,” he said. “Well, I’ve finished here for the present. But what a night! Frightfully oppressive, isn’t it? And not a breath of air stirring.”

We went back to the sitting-room. I put away my laboured manuscript and we got out the cards for a game of piquet. But after one partie, he rose with a yawn.

“I really don’t think I could keep awake for another,” he said, “I’m heavy with sleep. Let’s have a breath of air, the rain seems to have stopped, and go to bed. Or are you going to sit up and work?”

I had not meant to do so, but his suggestion made me determine to have another try. There was certainly some mysterious pall of depression on me, and the wisest thing to do was to fight it.

“I shall try for half an hour,” I said, “and see how it goes,” and I followed him to the front door of the house. The rain, as he said, had ceased, but the darkness was impenetrable, and shuffling with our feet, we took a few steps along the gravel path to the corner of the house. There the light from the sitting-room windows cast a circle of illumination, and one could see the flower-beds glistening with the wet. Though it was night, the air was still so hot that the gravel path was steaming. Beyond that nothing was visible of the lawn or the hill that sloped up to the fir-wood. But, as we stood there, I saw, as last night, a light moving up there. Now, however, it seemed to be outside the wood, for its progress was not interrupted by the tree-trunks.

Frank saw it too, and pointed at it.

“It’s too wet to-night,” he said, “but to-morrow evening, I vote we go up there, and see who these nightly wanderers are. It’s coming closer, and there’s another of them.”

Even as we looked a third light sprang up, and in another moment all had vanished again.

I carried out my intention of trying to work, but I could make nothing of it, and presently I found myself nodding over a page that contained nothing but erasures. With head bent forward, I drifted into a doze and from dozing into sleep, and when I woke I found the lamp burning low and the wick smouldering. I seemed to have come back from some very distant place, and, only half awake, I lit a candle and quenched the lamp and went to the windows to bolt them. And then my heart stood still, for I thought I saw someone standing outside and looking in through the intervening glass. But it must have been a sleepy fancy, for now, broad awake again, I was staring at my own reflection cast by the candle on the window. I told myself that what I had seen was no more than that, but as I creaked my way upstairs I found myself asking if I really believed that.

As I dressed next morning, after another long but unrefreshing night, I began puzzling over a lost memory to which I had tried to find the clue yesterday. There was a bookcase in the sitting-room with some two or three dozen volumes in it, and opening one or two of these I had found the name Samuel Townwick inscribed in them. I knew I had seen that name not so many months ago in the daily Press, but I could not recapture the connection in which I had read it; but from the recurrence of it in these books it was reasonable to conjecture that he was the owner of the house we occupied. In taking it, his name had not come up; the house agent had plenary powers, and our deposit of a fortnight’s rent clinched the contract. But this morning the name still haunted me, and since I had other small businesses in St. Caradoc’s, I settled to walk down there and make some definite inquiry at the agent’s. Frank was too busy with his plan to accompany me, and I set out alone.

The feeling of depression and vague foreboding was more leaden than ever this morning, and I was aware by that sixth sense, which needs no speech or language, that he was a prey to the same causeless weight. But I had not gone fifty yards from the house when the burden of it was lifted from me, and I knew again the exhilaration proper to such a morning. The rain of last evening had cleared the air, the sea breeze drew lightly landwards and, as if I had come out of some tunnel, I rejoiced in the morning splendour. The village hummed with holiday: Mr. Cranston received me with polite enquiries as to our comfort and Mrs. Fennell’s capability, and having assured him on that score, I approached my point.

“Mr. Samuel Townwick is the owner, is he not?” I asked.

The agent’s smile faded a little.

“He was, sir,” he said. “I act for the executors.”

Suddenly, in a flash, some of what I had been groping for came back to me. “I begin to remember,” I said. “He died suddenly; there was an inquest. I want to know the rest. Hadn’t you better tell me?”

He shifted his glance and came back to me again.

“It was a painful affair,” he said. “The executors naturally do not want it talked about.”

Another glimpse of what I had forgotten blinked on my memory.

“Suicide,” I said. “The usual verdict of unsound mind was brought in. And—and is that why Mrs. Fennell won’t sleep in the house? She left last night in a deluge of rain.”

I readily gave him my promise of secrecy, for I had not the slightest desire to tell Frank, and he told me the rest. Mr. Townwick had been for some days in a very depressed state of mind, and one morning the servants coming down had found him lying underneath the kitchen table with his throat cut. Beside him was a sharp, curiously-shaped fragment of flint covered with blood. The jagged nature of the wound had confirmed the idea that he had sawn at his throat till he had severed the jugular vein. Murder was ruled out, for he was a strong man, and there were no marks on his body, or about the room, of there having been any struggle, nor any sign of an assailant having entered. Both kitchen doors were locked on the inside, his valuables were untouched, and from the position of the body the only reasonable inference was that he had laid down under the table, and there deliberately done himself to death. I repeated my assurance of silence and went out.

I knew now what the source of my nameless horror and depression had been. It was no haunting spectre of Townwick that I feared; it was the power, whatever that was, which had driven him to kill himself on the stone of sacrifice.

I went back up the hill: there was the garden blazing in the July noon, and the sweet tranquillity of the place was spread abroad in the air. But I had no sooner passed the copse and come within the circle than the dead weight of something unseen began to lay its burden on me again. There was something here, horrible and menacing and potent.

I found Frank in the sitting-room. His head was bent over his plan, and he started as I entered.

“Hullo!” he said. “I’ve made all my measurements and I want to sit tight and finish my plan to-day. I don’t know why, but I feel I must hurry about it and get it done. And I’ve got the most awful fit of the blues. I can’t account for it, but anyhow, occupation is the best thing. Go in to lunch, will you, I don’t want any.”

I looked at him and saw some indefinable change had come over his face. There was terror in his eyes that came from within: I can express it in no other way than that.

“Anything wrong?” I asked.

“No; just blues. I want to go on working. This evening, you know, we have to see where those lights come from.”

All afternoon he sat close over his work, and it was not till the day was fading that he got up.

“That’s done,” he said. “Good Lord, we have found a temple and a half! And I’m horribly tired. I shall have a snooze till dinner.”

The invasion of fear beleaguered me, it seemed to pour in through the open windows in the gathering dusk, it gathered its reinforcements outside, ready to support the onrush of it. And yet how childish it was to yield to it. By now we were alone in the house, for we had told Mrs. Fennell that a cold meal would serve us in this heat, and while Frank slept I had heard the lock of the outside kitchen door turn and she and the girl went by the window.

Presently he stirred and awoke. I had lit the lamp, and I saw his hand feel in his waistcoat pocket, and he drew out a small object which he held out to me.

“A flint knife,” he said. “I picked it up in the garden this morning. It’s got a fine edge to it.”

At that I felt a prickle of terror run through the hair of my head, and I jumped up.

“Look here,” I said, “you’ve had no walk to-day, and that always gives you the blues. Let’s go down and dine at the hotel.”

His head was outside the illumination of the lamp, and from the dimness there came a curious cackle of laughter.

“But I can’t,” he said. “How strange that you don’t know that I can’t. They’ve surrounded the place, and there’s no way out. Listen! Can’t you hear the drums and the squeal of their pipes? And their hands are about me. Christ! It’s terrible to die.”

He got up and began to move with curious little shuffling steps towards the kitchen. I had laid the flint knife down on the table and he snatched it up. The horror of presences unseen and multitudinous closed in round me, but I knew they were concentrated not on me, but on him. They poured in, not through the window alone but through the solid walls of the house; outside on the lawn there were lights moving, slow and orderly.

I had still control of my mind, the awfulness and the imminence of what so closely beset us gave me the courage and clearness of despair. I darted from my chair and stood with my back to the kitchen door.

“You’re not to go in there,” I said. “You must come away with me out of this. Pull yourself together, Frank. We’ll get through yet; once outside the garden we’re safe.”

He paid no attention to what I said; it was as if he did not hear me. He laid his hand on my shoulder, and I felt his fingers press through the muscles and grind like points of steel on the underlying bone. Some maniac force possessed them, and he pulled me aside as if I had been a feather.

There was one thing only to be done. With my disengaged arm I hit him full on the chin, and he fell like a log across the floor. Without pausing for a second I gripped him round the knees and began dragging him senseless and inert towards the door.

It is difficult to state in words what those next few minutes held. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I felt no touch of invisible hands upon me, but I can imagine no grinding agony of pain that wrenches body and soul asunder to equal that war of the evil and the unseen that raged about me. I struggled against no visible adversary, and there was the horror of it, for I am sure that no phantom of the dead that die not could have evoked so unnerving a terror.

Before those intangible hosts had fully closed in round me and my unconscious burden, I had got him on to the lawn, and it was then that the full stress of their beleaguering might poured in upon me. Strange fugitive lights wavered round me and muttered voices filled the air, and as I dragged Frank over the grass his weight seemed to grow till it was not a man’s body that I was pulling along, but something well-nigh immovable, so that I had to tug and pant for breath and tug again.

“God help us both,” I heard myself muttering. “Deliver us from our ghostly enemies” and again I tugged and panted for breath. Close at hand now was the ring of enclosing copse, where the stones of the circle stood, and I made one final effort of concentration, for I knew that my spirit was spent, and soon there would be no power of fight left in me at all.

“In the name of the Holiest, and by the power of the Highest,” I cried aloud, and waited for a moment, gathering what dregs of strength were still left in me. And then I leaned forward, and the strained sinews of my legs were slackened as the weight of Frank’s body moved after me, and I made another step, and yet another, and we had passed beyond the copse, and out of the accursed precinct.

I knew no more after that. I had fallen forwards half across him, and when I regained my senses he was stirring, and the dew of the grass was on my face.
There stood the house, with the lamp still burning in the window of the sitting-room, and the quiet night was around us, with a clear and starry heaven.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867 — 1940)