Nothing but these

trivial hints offered themselves. Lumped together, however, they had

the effect of defining the Shadow a little. I became more and more

aware of its very real existence. And, if I have made little mention

of Frances and my hostess in this connection, it is because they

contributed at first little or nothing towards the discovery of what

this story tries to tell. Our life was wholly external, normal, quiet,

and uneventful; conversation banal—Mrs. Franklyn’s conversation in

particular. They said nothing that suggested revelation.

Both were in this Shadow, and both knew that they were in it, but

neither betrayed by word or act a hint of interpretation. They talked

privately, no doubt, but of that I can report no details.

And so it was that, after ten days of a very commonplace visit, I

found myself looking straight into the face of a Strangeness that

defied capture at dose quarters. ‘There’s something here that never

happens,’ were the words that rose in my mind, ‘and that’s why none of

us can speak of it.’

And as I looked out of the window and watched the vulgar

blackbirds, with toes turned in, boring out their worms, I realised

sharply that even they, as indeed everything large and small in the

house and grounds, shared this strangeness, and were twisted out of

normal appearance because of it. Life, as expressed in the entire

place, was crumpled, dwarfed, emasculated. God’s meanings here were

crippled, His love of joy was stunted. Nothing in the garden danced or

sang.

There was hate in it. ‘The Shadow,’ my thought hurried on to

completion, ‘is a manifestation of hate; and hate is the Devil.’ And

then I sat back frightened in my chair, for I knew that I had partly

found the truth.

Leaving my books I went out into the open. The sky was overcast,

yet the day by no means gloomy, for a soft, diffused light oozed

through the clouds and turned all things warm and almost summery. But

I saw the grounds now in their nakedness because I understood. Hate

means strife, and the two together weave the robe that terror wears.

Having no so-called religious beliefs myself, nor belonging to any set

of dogmas called a creed, I could stand outside these feelings and

observe. Yet they soaked into me sufficiently for me to grasp

sympathetically what others, with more cabined souls (I flattered

myself), might feel. That picture in the dining-room stalked

everywhere, hid behind every tree, peered down upon me from the peaked

ugliness of the bourgeois towers, and left the impress of its powerful

hand upon every bed of flowers. ‘You must not do this, you must not do

that,’ went past me through the air. ‘You must not leave these narrow

paths,’ said the rigid iron railings of black. ‘You shall not walk

here,’ was written on the lawns. ‘Keep to the steps,’ ‘Don’t pick the

flowers; make no noise of laughter, singing, dancing,’

was placarded all over the rose-garden, and ‘Trespassers will

be—not prosecuted but— destroyed’ hung from the crest of monkey-tree

and holly. Guarding the ends of each artificial terrace stood gaunt,

implacable policemen, warders, gaolers. ‘Come with us,’ they chanted,

‘or be damned eternally.’

I remember feeling quite pleased with myself that I had discovered

this obvious explanation of the prison-feeling the place breathed out.

That the posthumous influence of heavy old Samuel Franklyn might be an

inadequate solution did not occur to me.