Night Terrors: the ghost stories of E. F. Benson [S.S. Col.] by Benson E. F

Author:Benson, E. F. [Benson, E. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short Stories, Classics, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Published: 2013-03-28T23:00:00+00:00

Roderick’s Story

My powers of persuasion at first seemed quite ineffectual; I could not induce my friend Roderick Cardew to strike his melancholy tent in Chelsea, and (leaving it struck) steal away like the Arabs and spend this month of spring with me at my newly acquired house at Tilling to observe the spell of April’s wand making magic in the country. I seemed to have brought out all the arguments of which I was master; he had been very ill, and his doctor recommended a clearer air with as mild a climate as he could conveniently attain; he loved the great stretches of drained marsh-land which lay spread like a pool of verdure round the little town; he had not seen my new home which made a breach in the functions of hospitality, and he really could not be expected to object to his host, who, after all, was one of his oldest friends. Besides (to leave no stone unturned) as he regained his strength he could begin to play golf again, and it entailed, as he well remembered, a very mild exertion for him to keep me in my proper position in such a pursuit.

At last there was some sign of yielding.

‘Yes. I should like to see the marsh and the big sky once more,’ he said.

A rather sinister interpretation of his words ‘once more’, made a sudden flashed signal of alarm in my mind. It was utterly fanciful, no doubt, but that had better be extinguished first.

‘Once more?’ I asked. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I always say “once more”,’ he said. ‘It’s greedy to ask for too much.’

The very fact that he fenced so ingeniously deepened my suspicion.

‘That won’t do,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Roddie.’

He was silent a moment.

‘I didn’t intend to,’ he said, ‘for there can be no use in it. But if you insist, as apparently you mean to do, I may as well give in. It’s what you think; “once more” will very likely be the most. But you mustn’t fuss about it; I’m not going to. No proper person fusses about death; that’s a train which we are all sure to catch. It always waits for you.’

I have noticed that when one learns tidings of that sort, one feels, almost immediately, that one has known them a long time. I felt so now.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s about all there is. I’ve had sentence of death passed upon me, and it will probably be carried out, I’m delighted to say, in the French fashion. In France, you know, they don’t tell you when you are to be executed till a few minutes before. It is likely that I shall have even less than that, so my doctor informs me. A second or two will be all I shall get. Congratulate me, please.’

I thought it over for a moment.

‘Yes, heartily,’ I said. ‘I want to know a little more though.’

‘Well, my heart’s all wrong, quite unmendably so. Heart-disease! Doesn’t it sound romantic? In mid-Victorian romance, heroes and heroines alone die of heart-disease.

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