A SAINT

The first time that I was really impressed by the possibility of supernatural power working outside the common or beaten path of materialism was in a Devon country-house. I always believed material things or ordinary events could be affected by the spirit, for instance that it was quite useful to pray for or against rain, and that a fine afternoon generally rewarded the Vicar’s prayers before a Bazaar or School-treat. But that quite extraordinary things were liable to happen out of the blue because of unseen and unknown forces used to be beyond my reasonable expectation. It is not so with me now.

I was staying in a beautiful but nameless old Manor House in Devonshire, cut off from road and rail. The only approach was down a breakneck hill, a kind of gravelly toboggan run into the smiling valley below. Coombes of red, red terracotta earth enclosed the landscape and over the hill-tops floated a glimpse of distant sea. A Devonshire coombe is a pretty piece of landscape pretending to be a switchback railway. It was spring, and spring in Devon gives a springier feeling than anywhere else in England, whether it is the beauty of the Devonian maids or the wonderful red colour of the earth.

The Manor House was Tudor, dating from the time when Englishmen took up home, beer and bowls and gave up Castles, archery and the San Graal. It was built on monastic ground and had passed through the hands of a succession of families, each of which had fulfilled the curse attached to Abbey lands by slowly extinguishing their seed and silver and cellar through the several and appropriate means of drink, debauch and lawyers.

The Manor was inhabited by what are known as Devon worthies, which means folk who are worthier of Devon than other folk, or perhaps that Devon is worthier of them. Every day I wandered out between showers. As a matter of fact I had hit the comparative lull between the vernal deluges and the summer rainy season. It was delicious though wet work watching the patches of gorse, which clung like the rags of a golden fleece to the hill-sides, while the white bloom of the bird-cherry trees lay on the twig-tops like a late snowstorm that had forgotten itself and dried instead of melting in the sun. The harebells ran like blue ink through the wood-bottoms. An occasional bee-orchis sanguified the hedge, like a bluebell whose stalk had been soaked and its leaf spotted with red wine, though from closer it looked like a purple-hooded cobra in the green grass; and splotches of delicate primrose never ceased to advertise the purity and colour of Devonshire cream.

The house was in the possession of the hereditary Lord of the Manor, Sir Petronille Pawkins, Bart., a very robust and pugnacious gentleman with the usual collateral relationship with Sir Francis Drake, a violent temper behind his shirt and plenty of good wine in his cellar. All were in evidence during the party. His mother, the Dowager Lady Pawkins, had never been put out to grass, and had subsided into a rather cheery kind of housekeeper. Certainly she took the place of the pale silent wife everywhere except in the Oratory. The old lady came of Catholic stock and, though frankly she had taken to drink, she had not lost the Faith, which she had handed on to her rowdy son. The terrible undercurrent and possible moral of this story will excuse my saying anything so brutal about a lady who is dead and, I am certain, now with the Blest.

She lived in the house, rather terrorising the wax-pale wife. The Dowager had a reputation for enjoying the cellar as much as her son, so that the two hostesses were a great contrast. The Dowager was fat, cheerful and, to my regret, generally tipsy. She had married the last Baronet as a convent girl and, beyond adding a modern Chapel and a Catholic heir to the family, gave no further example of piety. The beautiful Flemish tapestry in the drawing-room of the adoring Magi was an heirloom, not an evidence of devotion.

She was mixing cocktails for the guests before dinner when I arrived. She explained that this domestic duty fell to her because the present Lady of the Manor did not approve of drinking at all, and was always trying to induce Sir Petronille to take the pledge. This Sir Petronille declined to do on the curious grounds that his father had died of drink and that he owed something to his memory. She too was of Catholic stock, from some forgotten sanctuary behind the Fens. She was young and preferred to leave the brunt of entertainment to her mother-in-law. They were too unlike for any rivalry to rise between them. She reminded me of a candle burning away in the daylight to an unseen flame. Life itself was hardly apparent in her eyes, which seemed to look backwards into her inner self and not upon the wicked world into which she had been given in marriage.

The house party was various. As they sat round the dinner table the first night, I could not help dividing them into the two categories of Bottles and Barrels. It is an amusing game to play with oneself at a dull dinner party. In the first place so many people are shaped like a Barrel or a Bottle. And so often the mental contents are similar. Bores are simply empty barrels, except (what is worse) when they are overflowing ones. Social bottles seldom run to more than conversational soda-water. Very rare is the sparkling vintage, and it is one that needs to be deftly uncorked. I am afraid the Dowager was a typical barrel. The human bottles did not strike me as worth tapping, even Sir Petronille. There were two talkative Americans who could only have been tolerated under the rule of Trappists and even then might have proved unbearable to the Trappists. They were rather like people who had stepped out of books with very little to say worth putting back into books. Their flow of soul was as soda water without the water. There were some neighbours who provided the news of Exeter and even from as far as Torquay, which is the English Deauville, only more so. And there were a few literary men and a budding politician from London who talked rubbish. Naturally we pattered the Metropolitan movies, a cursory list of which may help to date this story twenty years hence. We said all there was to be said about Wembley, about the Labour Parties, the Opposition Parties and Lady Colefax parties; about Steve Donoghue’s riding; about the Rodeo riding; and Lord Dudley’s marriage.

It was the last party that the unexpected might be expected to happen. But good port covers much ordinary conversation, whereas vin ordinaire is difficult to conceal with the brightest chat. We had reached the stage between the first and second glass of port when the servants suddenly disappeared apparently with a scuffle. Our host followed with an oath. Something had gone wrong below stairs. We would have carried on polite conversation until relieved, had not a drift of pungent smoke crossed the doorway. We left the room and hurried to the staircase in time to hear an alarm of fire. The customary scenes at an English country-house fire followed. The unselfish shifted furniture. The selfish shifted for themselves. The budding politician assumed a mediæval helmet and gave loud and continued orders from the stairs with some such caption in his mind’s eye for the next day’s Mirror as “Young statesman acts as fireman!” The men servants stood in different corners of the library, which was found to be in flames, discharging Minimax squirts at each other. The chemicals slowly changed the colour of their livery, but not the stolid cast of their countenances. The ladies rushed up and down stairs impaled on the dilemma of saving the hats in their rooms or leaving their evening wraps in the hall. The rest of the party brought buckets and jugs of water which did as much damage to the carpets as the Minimax to the shelves and curtains. But true to its classical derivative the Minimax minimised the maximum of fire. Amid much hissing and smoking the flame was quenched and the damaged furniture carried into the garden, to wit: a gutted sofa, two charred chairs and a stinking carpet. Everybody congratulated each other on delivery from atrocious death, a telephone call was sent to the Insurance Company, and beer was provided for the expected and expectant firemen of the neighbouring Borough, who arrived in the early morning.

During the rest of that evening the fire supplied an agreeably thrilling note to the conversation. The escape of the party was celebrated with duplication and even multiplication of the port wine. The Americans were shocked and then delighted and even unpersuaded to uphold the reputation of a dry country against the enticements of a drinking Baronet and a wet spring. Lady Pawkins was terribly upset, whether by the fire or the drinking. She hardly appeared at all during the next three days, leaving the house affairs almost entirely to her mother-in-law.

It was remembered that Sir Petronille had only remarked that the smoke had spoilt the port left on the table, and that it was a damnable nuisance the fire had not started a quarter of an hour later. The insurance agent arrived and a cheque for damages was paid. All was as it should be. Sir Petronille’s wife looked a little paler, and nothing happened for three days....

We were returning to tea in the late afternoon when we found the servants extinguishing a fire in an empty bedroom. There was nothing but smoke and smell left by the time we arrived. It was a horrible nuisance. Our host’s oaths took the sheepish grins off the servants’ faces. The insurance agent arrived again and re-estimated damages. It was curious that there had been no grate fire in the room, but it was generously attributed by the agent to forgotten cigarette ends. Everybody looked at each other foolishly, and then somebody blurted out that it was only the ladies who smoked cigarettes. The men smoked cigars and pipes. The agent bowed and smiled; “I have no doubt some lady was forgetful,” he suggested. He was anxious to turn the incident into a good advertisement for the company. “But they don’t smoke in empty bedrooms!” shouted the Dowager. The agent bowed again and withdrew with his report. There was a general laugh, I don’t know why.

A second fire was excessively unlucky, and the only consolation which could be offered to the host was that he had surely exhausted his share of bad luck for a life-time. That evening the party kept sober and, when towards ten o’clock the butler entered and with a very scared face reported that a third fire had just been extinguished in the Chapel itself, the party resembled so many aldermen and church-wardens proceeding to view the site of municipal disaster.

It turned out to be a slight outbreak and only a few smouldering hangings had to be removed. It was promptly attributed to one of the altar candles or to the blue light which Lady Pawkins kept burning before the statue of the Lourdes Madonna, now generally taking the place of the mediæval Mother and Child in the shrines of the Catholic community. But it was proved that no candle had been lit since Mass was said on the previous Sunday, and that only the supernatural could have caused the hangings to be ignited from the lamp. Lady Pawkins had been in the Chapel until just before the dinner gong, so all scent was once more at fault. There was no scent in fact except the obvious and unpleasant smell of burnt cloth.

Three fires within four days was incomprehensible indeed. Either it was an amazing coincidence, and by the law of chances could not possibly recur, or it was the work of a firebug—more politely called a pyromaniac. There must be somebody in the house with a Freudian fancy for setting random fire to the furniture in broad daylight. Even so, it was impossible to strike a cause. The staff was old and warranted. Many had been reared under the family they served. A fire in the Manor House was unheard of. Guests and servants were anxious equally to prove alibis for themselves. The odd thing was that nobody had been alone when any of the fires had started, except Lady Pawkins praying in the Oratory; and the Oratory fire occurred while she was out. It was more than strange. That evening the ladies were as voluble as the men were thoughtful. The budding politician said he owed it to his constituents not to expose himself to suffocation in his bed. The Americans rehearsed endlessly the great fire in Boston, the greater fire in Chicago and the greatest of all in San Francisco. And there was talk of the disaster to the General Slocum and much other cheerful and appertaining matter.

Nobody slept that night, and the gentlemen took turns to patrol the passages. Nothing happened, nor during the next day, which was a Saturday. There arrived detectives from one of the great London agencies, and a Benedictine priest from the neighbouring monastery, who came regularly to hear the confessions of the Ladies Pawkins. On this occasion only the younger of the two was available. I regret to say that the Dowager had, under the strain of three fires, become amusingly drunk. I watched the younger woman pass into the Oratory and kneel, paler-faced than ever. An hour later the monk passed out of the house. She had apparently made up for the absence of other penitents, but what on earth, I thought, could she have had to tell her confessor? But, then, there are more things in Heaven and earth than.... Most of her time was spent in the chapel praying, and the hours spared from her devotions were lavished on the comfort of her guests. Her hospitality was humble rather than brilliant. She was found one morning making her mother-in-law’s bed, and nobody had any doubt of the unseen hands that changed and rearranged the flowers in the rooms every afternoon. She lived in the house, but she hardly seemed to be of the house party. Yet she was indefatigable at every meal and in her care for the guests. For their vinal welfare alone she showed indifference, if not abhorrence. And, like most model hostesses, she made no attempt to add to the gaiety of the party, though she never allowed a trace of tiredness or boredom to cross her face. But her smile was worth more than much laughter from the drunken.

Meantime the sleuth-hounds had arrived—one in the impenetrable disguise of a valet, who spent long mornings and discreet evenings brushing the threads out of our evening trousers. Another was ambushed as literary adviser to Sir Petronille Pawkins, and it was given out that the Baronet, who was almost illiterate, intended editing some chapters of his very obscure family history. While we ate, they sought clues and found them not. The sole result of their search was the finding of a number of private letters in coat pockets, which letters were surrendered to those least intended to see them. A number of unpaid bills, addressed to the Dowager Lady Pawkins, were handed by mistake to Lady Pawkins. And a letter from an Inebriates’ Home, directed to Sir Petronille, gave the Dowager the shock of her life. She, poor soul, had remained in a very intoxicated state owing to reaction from the incendiarism. I surprised her one evening mumbling to herself. It was a long rigmarole about trying to fight it (I presume she meant the firebug), about her failure and what a disgrace it was, and finally how good Alice was (Alice was the daughter-in-law). “She won’t give in. She’ll beat it,” and the old lady burst into hysterics.

The local police carried out a portentous investigation of footprints and thumbmarks to substantiate a theory of malicious arson from without. The local constable found and rightly measured the inspector’s bootmark in the garden clay, and the inspector found a finger-print on a window-pane a few hours later which might or might not have been the constable’s. The clues discovered by means of the house party would have filled a shelf in the Scotland Yard museum.

Nevertheless, there were comic variations in the house-party life, and people became quite amusing against the tragic background, though a certain amount of discreet panic took place. Fear of the unknown hushed the rowdiness of the party. The second fire had sobered them. After the third few dared to take their normal rest. It was obvious to material minds that, if fire could break out on a sofa or among hangings for no reason during the daytime, it might do so during the night-time for a better reason. Nobody cares to be roasted in bed, so we broke the party into night patrols and relieved one another in watching the passages and hunting for the most likely places for the spontaneous combustion to occur which had been solemnly adduced by one of the theorists. The leader of each watch was armed with the dinner-gong, on which he was urged to sound the alarm. The next night was unquiet. The alarm was given on two occasions, needlessly. One of the Americans dropped a lighted cigarette into his bed, while trying to keep awake until his time for watch. He promptly gave the alarm himself, and the presence of half the household was required to satisfy his conscience that by sitting on the sparks he had averted a catastrophe. The second alarm was caused by the officer of the early morning watch tripping on the stairs and falling, gong and all, to the bottom. The next morning the representative of the Fire Insurance arrived and, after making investigations on his own account, announced that the Insurance Company had decided not to renew the policy as they were convinced that the fires could not be accidental. He was convinced that fire had been ignited, especially in the case of the chapel curtains, by the use of paraffin or petrol. For the rest of that day everybody searched for combustibles. But during this time no oil had been permitted in the house, and even a box of firelighters, thanks to their specific name, had been buried in the garden.

There was, of course, nothing to talk about at meals except these strange happenings. The Devon Worthies could rake up no analogy except rick-burning, and were inclined to lay the trouble to gipsies or poachers, whom they classed with Bolshevists as the enemies of all mankind. The Americans continued to talk with consummate fluency about the San Francisco fire, with variations on the Boston fire and the great Chicago fire, which was traced to an Irish widow’s cow. The servants became so alarmed that they would only work in pairs. Everything was done to facilitate the work of the detectives. Their finds continued to be irrelevant, to say the least of it. They discovered a secret staircase, which had been walled up a century previously. They also discovered a cupboard full of empty bottles, to which cupboard no member of the family could or would produce a key. The next discovery was mine.

I was sitting in the drawing-room studying the Literary Supplement to Vogue, when suddenly I saw the old Flemish tapestry of the Adoration of the Magi stretched across the wall move! There was no draught or motion of the air at the time. I thought it must be an ocular delusion caused by my glasses. Nobody was pulling or even touching the tapestry. But the threads in its texture were moving and wriggling like ashen-coloured worms. The nimbus above the Virgin’s head was trembling and crackling and the white elbow of her arm was twisting and slowly blackening in front of my eyes. It was all happening in perfect silence and for no apparent cause. That was the terror of it, and I dragged myself out of my chair and forced myself to examine the tapestry closer. The woof was crisping and crumbling under the action of intense heat, though it was not yet on actual fire. I stared in a foolish and fascinated sort of way until the sudden spurt of pungent smell roused me to what senses were left to me, and I began feebly sounding the alarm. At this moment Lady Pawkins came down the stairs and entered the room. When I pointed out what was happening, she became deathly white and rang the bell three times, the concerted signal for a fire in any part of the house. Detectives and servants arrived almost immediately and quickly extinguished the sparks running through the threads of the tapestry before beginning an exhaustive inquiry, of which I was the chief butt. The tapestry was handled, fingered and almost dissected. All my words were taken down, and I was even searched for matches, but in vain. I did not describe, a very curious sensation which had been growing upon me, which was the ridiculous idea that Lady Pawkins was somehow responsible for what had happened. The official theory was that the oriel glass had acted like a magnifying glass in setting fire to the tapestry.

After this, the atmosphere in the house became not only serious but rather strained. It was like living in a crematorium with no honourable chance of escape, a crematorium in charge of unseen and probably insane attendants. Were we the victims of an abominable practical joke? Or was there an invisible criminal or an unknown madman amongst the guests? We had stopped suspecting the wretched servants. We grew more inclined to look round among ourselves. Everybody laid what had happened to his neighbour, but how to associate one iota of proof with any individual was a hopeless difficulty. In vain, mental traps were set and the most innocently seeming inveiglements devised. Nobody gave himself away by deed or word or thought.

The atmosphere became quite impossible towards the end of the week. It was far worse than the presence of a ghost or a supernatural phenomenon. A White Lady or an immured nun or chained monk would have afforded welcome relief. We could have slept peacefully amid spectral rattles and death-warnings. But the menace hanging over the house seemed to combine the terrors of the earthly and the unearthly. The firebug that flieth by day giveth no warning, and, whatever was the cause of the incendiarism, there was no comfort in the night. The house party continued to its appointed end rather like a comic funeral, at which the skeleton sat at every feast and lurked in every cupboard. At night the house was watched by night-watchmen with instructions to fire upon anybody attempting to fire the house. And all the while out of doors the beautiful spring was bursting into moist melody. As for the landscape, it was red, red earth all the way, with jerks of blue sea over the hills and far away. The hedges burst into flowerage. Devon is the only county rhymed with Heaven, but it has Paradisal parallels.

It seemed incongruous to see Nature so happy and busy, spinning the loves of flowers and birds, while within the walls of the old house the lords of creation sat in moody and suspicious silence. I must admit that it was one of the most exciting weeks of my life, and certainly I would never have missed the experiences: the uncanny supernatural sensations, the actual personal knowledge of a fire and the study of human psychology reacting to strain. On the whole everybody had improved as human beings. People ceased to be boring or selfish. Everybody became anxious to protect or reassure everybody else. The common fear made us all friends, and we felt we would have something to talk to each other about, whenever we met, for the rest of our lives. The only person who seemed to show not the least change was Lady Pawkins. Her time-table was totally unaffected by what had happened. She still rose at an earlier hour than her servants and prayed in her Oratory. On Sundays and Feast days she remained praying most of the day. Even on weekdays she read the whole Office of the Church to herself. She ordered the meals, and though she left the entertainment to her cheery and collapsible mother-in-law, her personality none the less penetrated the whole house. I was never more conscious of it than at each outbreak of fire. Guests and detectives seemed to look upon her as a phantom and of no importance in the search for the mystery, and yet I reiterate the extraordinary impression I had received in the subconscious part of my soul that she was somewhere at the origin of all this trouble.

At last Saturday dawned and the visit was over for guests, who had been struggling between an intense desire to depart and the thrill of remaining. Most of them had recovered their balance at the prospect of going. There were three extra detectives by the end of the week and the very meals we ate were cooked under Scotland Yard supervision. The Americans were drawing plans of the central heating system, which would be necessary before they paid a second visit. We had long given up trying to affix the deed to any particular person. It was all too complicated.

But two things happened that Saturday morning, which I have not disclosed until to-day. The Benedictine chaplain arrived as usual and, after hearing the news of the week from Sir Petronille, made his way into the Chapel where he was joined by Lady Pawkins. As he descended the stairs an hour later, the tension precipitated us into conversation. He talked about the untoward occurrences and the ladies of the family with the simplest gravity. He spoke with the kindest benevolence and pity of the Dowager: “She put up such a strong fight. But the holy have no peace in this house. She is at peace since she ceased struggling with all her body and soul. Not so Lady Pawkins.” As he spoke, I had the curious feeling in my mind that he had no doubt either as to the source of the fires. When I described the horror of the igniting tapestry to him, he was tremendously interested and asked me to show him the exact place. The tapestry had not been put away and still hung in the drawing-room with an ugly scar upon the Virgin’s arm. He was really excited beyond measure when he saw the mark of the flame, and I heard him muttering to himself: “Poor lady, poor lady! How could she bear it?” Then he flung himself on his knees and began to pray. I made allowance for his nerves and for his deep affection for the Pawkins family and began re-examining the tapestry. I noticed for the first time that the fire had been confined to the imagery of the Blessed Virgin and to her arms alone. The Holy Child and the Magi had not been touched. Something in the thread had kept the flame to the same section of colour in the web. The good monk was very much moved, and remained some time on his knees. I suppose he thought that there was something sacrilegious in even the singeing of the Virgin’s likeness.

An hour later I went to the Oratory to say good-bye to Lady Pawkins. She was there immersed in prayer and it was some time before she noticed me. Rising from her knees, she came slowly towards me and held out her right hand with a quiet smile as though to apologise for all that had happened during my stay. As she raised her arm I caught sight of her skin under the hanging sleeve and my eyes froze to it. It was burnt and charred to the bone! God! I was glad to get out of that house.

Then I was right, and she was in some mystical and appalling way at the source of all that had happened; and the monk knew. Yes! I was sure that he knew, and now I realised why he had fallen to prayer before the burnt picture of the Virgin in the tapestry. Everything began to fit itself together in my mind. The Dowager’s strange words about herself and her daughter-in-law, coupled with those of the monk—what was it that they meant? How was it that the poor drunken Dowager had fought against it with all her might and soul, but that the evil had been too strong for her, and why, since she had given up struggling, had she been at peace? Could it be that though the old lady had collapsed under demoniacal assault and let herself take to drink, there was some mystical and tremendous excuse for her weakness, that in the atmosphere of that house there was a power which would not permit people to live quiet, ordinary, sober lives? That women who married into the family found themselves attacked by an influence which gave them no rest, which actually forced holy people into evil habits? Was I right in guessing that the only chance a woman had in that house was the overwhelming and simple practice of mediæval Sanctity, the gifts of prayer, holiness and atonement carried to an heroic degree? Such a woman was given the chance of becoming saintly or sodden—there was no middle course.

So I guessed, but I never returned to confirm my guess. You can only imagine my feelings a year later when I took up a newspaper and read that the country residence of Sir Petronille Pawkins had been burnt to the ground and that everybody had been saved in the house except Lady Pawkins, who was believed to have returned to the Chapel to save the holy vessels. I suppose she would not yield—more power to her burnt elbows! But she must have gone to Heaven in a fiery chariot.