Such, with the addition that she had died in my house, and that Roderick had been with her, was the sum of my meagre knowledge, which might or might not, so he had intimated, be supplemented by him. He arrived next day, having motored down from London for the avoidance of fatigue, and certainly as we sat after dinner that night in the garden-room, he had avoided it very successfully, for never had I seen him more animated.
“Oh, I have been so right to come here,” he said, “for I feel steeped in tranquillity and content. There’s such a tremendous sense of Margaret’s presence here, and I never knew how much I wanted it. Perhaps that is purely subjective, but what does that matter so long as I feel it? How a scene soaks into the place where it has been enacted; my room, which you know was her room, is alive with her. I want nothing better than to be here, prowling and purring over the memory of the last time, which was the only one, that I was here. Yes, just that; and I know how odd you must think it. But it’s true, it was here that I saw her die, and instead of shunning the place, I bathe myself in it. For it was one of the happiest hours of my life.”
“Because—” I began.
“No; not because it gave her release, if that’s in your mind,” he said. “It’s because I saw—”
He broke off, and remembering his stipulation that I should ask him nothing, but that he would tell me “if and when” he could, I put no question to him. His eyes were dancing with the sparkle of fire that burned on the hearth, for though April was here, the evenings were still chilly, and it was not the fire that gave them their light, but a joyousness that was as bright as glee, and as deep as happiness.
“No, I’m not going on with that now,” he said, “though I expect I shall before my days are out. At present I shall leave you wondering why a place that should hold such mournful memories for me, is such a wellspring. And as I am not for telling you about me, let me enquire about you. Bring yourself up to date; what have you been doing, and much more important, what have you been thinking about?”
“My doings have chiefly been confined to settling into this house,” I said. “I’ve been pulling and pushing furniture into places where it wouldn’t go, and cursing it.”
He looked round the room.
“It doesn’t seem to bear you any grudge,” he said. “It looks contented. And what else?”
“In the intervals, when I couldn’t push and curse any more,” I said, “I’ve been writing a few spook stories. All about the borderland, which I love as much as you do.”
He laughed outright.
“Do you, indeed?” he said. “Then it’s no use my saying that it is quite impossible. But I should like to know your views on the borderland.”
I pointed to a sheaf of typewritten stuff that littered my table.
“Them’s my sentiments,” I said, “and quite at your service.”
“Good; then I’ll take them to bed with me when I go, if you’ll allow me. I’ve always thought that you had a pretty notion of the creepy, but the mistake that you make is to imagine that creepiness is characteristic of the borderland. No doubt there are creepy things there, but so there are everywhere, and a thunderstorm is far more terrifying than an apparition. And when you get really close to the borderland, you see how enchanting it is, and how vastly more enchanting the other side must be. I got right on to the borderland once, here in this house, as I shall probably tell you, and I never saw so happy and kindly a place. And without doubt I shall soon be careering across it in my own person. That’ll be, as we’ve often determined, wildly interesting, and it will have the solemnity of a first night at a new play about it. There’ll be the curtain close in front of you, and presently it will be raised, and you will see something you never saw before. How well, on the whole, the secret has been kept, though from time to time little bits of information, little scraps of dialogue, little descriptions of scenery have leaked out. Enthrallingly interesting; one wonders how they will come into the great new drama.”
“You don’t mean the sort of thing that mediums tell us?” I asked.
“Of course I don’t. I hate the sloshy—really there’s no other word for it, and why should there be, since that word fits so admirably—the sloshy utterances of the ordinary high-class, beyond-suspicion medium at half a guinea a sitting, who asks if there’s anybody present who once knew a Charles, or if not Charles, Thomas or William. Naturally somebody has known a Charles, Thomas or William who has passed over, and is the son, brother, father or cousin of a lady in black. So when she claims Thomas, he tells her that he is very busy and happy, helping people. … O Lord, what rot! I went to
