Ghosts in the House by A. C. Benson

Author:A. C. Benson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008249045
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

THE UTTERMOST FARTHING

A.C. Benson

Yes, Hebden Hill was the next station, the porter told me, and as the dowdy little train puffed sturdily across the wide green flat, intersected by dykes, which had once been a great bay of the sea, I watched with pleasure the low shapely bluffs, like miniature seacliffs, but now covered with thickets and copses, which bounded the plain to the west half a mile away, and thought how like it was to the background of an old Italian picture. It was a warm summer evening, not oppressive, as there was a fresh breeze from the sea, along which white clouds sailed lazily landward. I could see far out in the plain hamlets and solitary farms nestling among trees; and it was pleasant to see the birds, crested plovers and pearly-grey gulls, that stood motionless, all facing up the wind in the pastures; and a lean grey heron by the old sluice-gate, poring upon the water.

And then I began to wonder how it was that I was going on so vaguely defined a visit to Hector Bendyshe, whom I knew so slightly. What exactly did I know about him? He was just an agreeable man, whom one was never surprised to meet at dinner, and whose talk, mildly interesting, seldom flagged. He had been at Winchester and at Oxford; he had been perhaps in the diplomatic service, and had certainly travelled a good deal. He was clearly wealthy, for he had a flat in town, and a house understood to be of an attractive kind in Sussex, at Hebden Hill. But he had done nothing particular for twenty years – he was a man of fifty – he had read a good many books, he was fond of music, he was something of a connoisseur. But the more I reflected the less I seemed to know. He had no relations that I had ever heard of, and no intimate friends, though a host of acquaintances; he went everywhere and got on with everybody. He did not seem mysterious or secretive in any way; he talked easily and frankly about his own concerns and pursuits, and indeed on most topics of general interest.

How then had my visit come about? I was myself a so-called literary man, who lived, not very prosperously, in rooms in town, reviewing, writing literary articles, putting together an occasional book, and enabled by my small earnings and a little private income to exist in tolerable comfort. I was just over forty, and the artistic ambitions I had once had, had long vanished; but I was more than content with my life, and my interest in other people was stronger than ever. The unexpected things that happened, the strange contrasts and contradictions of character, the amazing inconsistency of human beings and their intricate relations, so utterly different from and so much richer than the helpless conventional traditions of fiction – all this had kept alive in me a sense of romance in life which amply atoned for a career which had been disappointing and even humiliating.

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