Recurring

The Recurring Tragedy is a ghost story by AM Burrage where a retired general is haunted by the men who died under his command.

Post-war business brought William E. Fitchett to England, and pleasure lured him from the great
northern manufacturing city down to Arborhaven, there to renew a friendship which had been
broken off at the end of his last term at Yale.

Standring was a specialist in nerves and mental diseases. Before the war he had achieved a
reputation. During the war his successful treatment of cases roughly diagnosed as shell-shock
had brought him worldwide fame. He was still a youngish man, round-faced and kindly-looking,
with big searching grey eyes and a full head of dark hair flecked here and there with white.
To Fitchett the Tudor mansion, designed in the shape of an E by an architect anxious to do
honour to the Virgin Queen, was a place made out of dreams. The first sight one has of it, the
gabled pile of mellowed red bricks, standing at the top of long terraces across the water
meadows, is something not to be forgotten. The interior is a wonder of crooked floors, oak
panelling and beams, great stately rooms, rooms absurdly small, with mysterious little passages
and staircases leading to unexpected parts of the house. Here it would seem that Time had stood still, had not the men and women who trod the hollow floors changed the fashion of their clothes and the manner of their speech through the three centuries.

‘They built real houses in those days,’ Fitchett said. ‘I don’t remember your telling me in the
old days that you had a family mansion.

They were sitting alone in the long dining-room after dinner. The table was an island of light
set in a sea of shadows. The gleaming white cloth, the shirt-fronts of the two men, the flowers
and silver, the red wine in the glasses, all stood out in shining contrast to the darkness around
them. Only an occasional reflection from the fire went questing into the mysterious dimness, and little focusses of light gleamed on the polished surface of furniture or panels.

‘I hadn’t,’ Standring answered. ‘I bought this place only six months ago. It used to belong to
General Sir Thomas Shiel.’

‘General Shiel.’ Fitchett repeated the name as if he were trying to wake a memory. ‘Now what
did I hear about him? He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. Before he died he was one of my patients. I came down here to attend to him. I knew him
slightly before. While I was here I fell in love with the house. After his death it came onto the
market and I bought it.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Fitchett’s brows were gathered up into a frown. ‘But what did I hear about General
Shiel? I know there was something.’
‘He commanded one of our divisions over in France.’
‘Yes, that’s right. And didn’t he get sent back for making a mess of things—losing a lot of men
or something? Wasn’t that it?’
‘There were questions asked about him in Parliament, certainly.’
‘Ah, I thought so.’
‘Actually, though, he was invalided home with shell-shock.’
Fitchett laughed and turned a quizzical eye upon his friend.
‘Well, that’s just your British way of doing things,’ he said. ‘No general was ever sent back for
being incompetent. He was always sick. It sounds so much better.’
The specialist smiled and sipped his wine.
‘I can tell you,’ he said, ‘that the General was in a pretty bad way.’
‘Oh, yes: I forgot. He died. And you couldn’t cure him. So you’re not infallible after all,
Standring?’
‘I haven’t pretended to he. And, mind you, there were several forms of what was popularly
known as shell-shock. There was the kind experienced by the poor devil who was blown up, or
lay for hours under the wreck of a dug-out. There was another kind which was a polite name for
funk. There was also, as you have remarked, the kind which afflicted generals who never went
near the line, but about whom questions were asked in the House of Commons.’
‘And he had that kind and yet—he died. You should have found him all the easier to cure,
Standring.’
‘You don’t understand. Suppose you came to me and told me you suffered from delusions, and
suppose when I inquired their nature you told me that all the grass you saw looked green—what
then? Your delusion would consist in your thinking that it ought to be some other colour, and
you would be much more difficult to cure. Even if I succeeded in making you think that grass
looked red you would be very far from cured.’
Fitchett smiled and broke the long ash from his cigar into a little silver tray at his elbow.
‘I see. And if a man tells you he’s been seeing ghosts you can only cure him if he’s been seeing
imaginary ghosts—not real ones. Was that the General’s trouble? Did he see ghosts?’
‘He did not. At least he didn’t say so. But in a sense I suppose he was a haunted man.’
He came to an abrupt pause. Fitchett regarded him with eyebrows slightly raised.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going to pretend that I’m not curious.’
Standring lowered his gaze.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you. There’s such a thing as professional—’
‘Professional secrecy. Professional humbug! Do you remember when we were at Yale, and
bitten with the literary bug? I remember one evening we were talking about novels and short
stories and the old gag about truth being stranger than fiction. We both agreed that every man, no
matter how humdrum his life, had at least one experience which, if he cared to tell it, would
make a tremendous story. You may also remember that we agreed to tell each other when the
great story in real life came to each of us. Mine hasn’t come yet. I rather think yours has.’
‘Perhaps it has,’ Standring agreed. ‘I’m sorry, though, but I can’t tell it to you.’
‘All right.’ Fitchett was plainly disappointed. ‘If you can’t, you can’t. But listen. Years ago
when we made that compact you knew me for a man who could keep his head shut. That was
before you joined a profession which made you pigeon-hole your memories and label half of
them “secret.” I heard some sort of queer story about General Shiel in New York. Who brought it
over I can’t say. You tell me the truth, and I’ll pass it along if that is your wish. If it isn’t—next
week I leave Liverpool for New York, and I won’t say a single word in this country or mine.
For a little while Standring seemed to consider.
‘You can say,’ he replied at last, ‘that whatever were General Sir Thomas Shiel’s faults he
suffered for them.’
Fitchett inclined his head.
‘I’ll say that. And what are you going to tell me?’
‘The whole thing if you’re really so anxious to hear it and willing to swear to say not a word
about it. The General is dead now, and his story—I don’t know if that deserves quite to die. At
least it’s a queer story and there’s certainly a moral in it.’
He sat silent a moment, the fingers of one hand on the stem of his half-empty glass, which he
rocked slowly to and fro. © 2005 by http://www.HorrorMasters.com
‘I’d known the General slightly for some time. I knew him when he was a lieutenant-colonel in
command of the first battalion of one of the county regiments. He had then the reputation of a
martinet, nobody liking him except perhaps one or two of the senior officers. He gained
promotion before the war and went out as a brigadier. Afterwards he was given the command of
a division. I believe he was pretty thoroughly hated by the men. Every petty annoyance which he
could devise to make their lives more miserable he inflicted at a time when life for them was
little better than hell. His men all died with their buttons in a high state of polish, their equipment
and shrapnel helmets shining. If it sounds splendid it seems at least purposeless. Too much of
that sort of thing only harassed them, made them irritable and injured their morale. His orders
about prisoners, care of wounded and so on were monumentally brutal. He was a specimen of
our own home-grown kind of Prussian, of which there were, fortunately, few. On courts-martial
he was extraordinarily severe. He thought only of himself and his own glory. Were it not for
another picture which I shall always carry in my mind, I should think of him as a serio-comic
goose-stepping figure, with a big sword and a mouthful of oaths. Well, as you know, he ended by
losing nine-tenths of the personnel of his division and being sent home—’
‘With shell-shock,’ Fitchett interpolated drily.
‘At least he came home a broken man. Lady Shiel came to see me after a time. She could not
get him to put himself into professional hands. She did not tell me much. How much she actually
knew I can’t say. We made an arrangement. I was to come down to Arborhaven apparently as a
guest, actually as a physician. I was to try to win the General’s confidence and do what I could
for him. In the end I agreed, mostly for the sake of acquaintance, which she was pleased to call
friendship.
‘I arrived here on a Friday, and Lady Shiel met me at the door. She took me into her husband’s
study—that small room across the hall— but he was not there at the time, and she went to look
for him. While I was there alone I picked up an open book which evidently the General had been
reading. The books a patient reads often afford a guide, or at least a finger-post, to his mental
state. The book was Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew.
‘When Lady Shiel returned with the General his appearance had a great and very disagreeable
effect on me. I will not say that I was shocked, for that is no word for a doctor to use, and yet I
do not know of any other word capable of conveying what I mean. To begin with he had aged
terribly. From a red-blooded, middle-aged man typical of the Army he had grown old and
haggard. Somehow he seemed to have shrunk inside his great frame, like a punctured football.
His voice, when he greeted me, had lost its depth of tone. It was as if old age had come upon him
in a night.
‘Strangest of all he did not impress me as a sick man. His eyes certainly told their tale of
suffering, but it was not physical nor yet of that mental kind which any physician may heal.
Mind you, in describing this to one of my own profession I should have to consider my words
and pick them carefully. To you I tell frankly exactly how I felt about him without stopping to
consider any niceties of phraseology. Tell me, have you ever seen a man suffering terribly from
remorse, from consciousness of sin? I don’t use the phrase in a necessarily pietistic sense.’
Fitchett inclined his head. It was the first movement he had made for some minutes.
‘I once saw a man who had been acquitted of murder,’ he said. ‘Nobody had much doubt about
it, although the jury wouldn’t convict. I know what you mean.’
‘I think you’ve only a dim idea for all that. It was as if the General bore upon his soul ten
thousand crimes, each one ten thousand times worse than murder. I never had much faith in God
or devil, heaven or hell until that moment, when I knew that I looked into the eyes of a damned
soul. I tell you, Fitchett, my own nerves are pretty sound, and I am not a man whom most would
describe as “sensitive”, but something like nausea overtook me as I made some kind of pretence
to shake his hand.
‘I will pass over the early part of the evening and the dreary dinner which followed in this
room. There were no other guests, and the Shiels were a childless couple. I found myself
dreading the departure of Lady Shiel to the drawing-room. I was almost childishly averse to
being left alone with her husband.
‘When she had gone, however, I resigned myself to the inevitable, and, at the General’s
invitation, mixed myself a stiff whisky and soda. I sat where you are sitting now. The General sat
here in my place at the head of the table. The low shade of a lamp cut off the light from the upper
part of his face, and, thank Heaven, I could scarcely see those dreadful eyes of his.
‘He came very abruptly to the point before Lady Shiel had been absent a full minute. “I know
exactly why my wife has asked you here,” he said, with a kind of weary indifference. “If you
cannot see it for yourself I suppose it is hopeless for me to tell you that I am no material for your
skill. You will, of course, persist in trying to cure me?” @#$ &# ~
‘ “As you have guessed, that is why I am here,” I answered.
‘He poured himself out a stiff tot of whisky, and regarded me with a mirthless smile.
‘ “Of course,” he said, “this is the first thing I am to give up?” #$!@ #$# ~~ #
‘ “That and morbid books,” I answered.
‘ “Oh, you mean The Wandering Jew? Do you know the story?”
‘ “I haven’t read Eugene Sue’s book, but I know the legend. He passes from life to life, doesn’t
he? And cannot die until Christ’s second coming? I have heard various accounts of the legend.
Christ on His way to Calvary had fallen under the weight of His Cross. One of the crowd struck
Him and urged Him to go faster. Christ replied: ‘I go on, but you shall linger until I return.’
Some accounts have it that the Wandering Jew was Pilate’s porter, others that he was one of the
Pharisees, a shoemaker.”
‘ “He was neither,” said the General, as if he were stating an item of authentic news. “He was
Judas Iscariot.”
‘ “That is quite new to me,” I said.
‘ “He was Judas Iscariot,” he repeated. “He stood jeering with the crowd, and Christ fell at his
feet—the Cross was so heavy—and Judas—Judas was so eager to show that he had renounced
his Master. He kicked Him as He lay fainting and said: ‘What are you feigning, Man?’ And
Christ, presently rising up, gazed at him and—and spoke that dreadful sentence.”
‘The General’s voice shook terribly, and the words ended in a whisper.
‘ “Who told you that version?” I asked as lightly as I could.
‘ “Who told me?” he repeated. “Who told me?” He let his face fall between his hands and
groaned aloud. “Oh, my God, if somebody had only told me!” He raised his face once more. “Do
you know why Judas betrayed his Master? I can tell you that, too. It was pride. His some-time
friends had jeered at him for a follower of the charlatan who pretended to be the Messiah, the
King of the Jews. It wasn’t for the thirty silver coins—it was all pride!”
‘He spoke with an uncanny air of certainty and ended with a deep shuddering groan. Rather
belatedly, perhaps, I thought it best to change the topic of conversation.
‘ “Come, General,” I said. “I don’t think too much theorising about Scriptural matters is good
for you. I am here to try to do something for you. If you don’t mind my asking a few questions
so soon after dinner—”
‘He cut me short with a motion of his hand.
‘“My dear doctor,” he said, “I will tell you the whole truth about myself, as far as I know it. If,
after having heard what I am going to tell you, you still think that my malady comes within the
scope of science, then—I was going to say for the sake of peace—I will submit myself to your
hands. You will probably regard me as an interesting case, but you will not have much time in
which to experiment upon me. First, I know, you require perfect frankness. You shall have it.
And I had better begin by stating that just as a few rare men have never been able to understand
the meaning of the word fear, so I have never understood the meaning of the word sympathy. I
know it to be a sensation which makes people shrink from hurting others, but I never
experienced it.
‘ “I have had the reputation of a hard, proud, ambitious man. I have earned it. The men under
my command hated and feared me, not without cause. I wanted them to. I had my head full of the
hard great men of old times: Moor, who lashed men for breaking step on the march; the
swearing, steel-hearted Iron Duke. I wanted my name to go down to history coupled with names
like these. My great aim was to win battles, to take ground, not for the sake of my country, but
for the reputation of General Sir Thomas Shiel.”
‘ “He had no heart, no feeling. He was an automaton, but what an automaton! What a soldier!
Almost I could see the printed word.
‘ “To that end my men had to be the smartest in France. I caused them to be continually harried
while they were resting. While they were in the line my brigade staffs continually went round to
see that their buttons, boots, and equipment were as brilliantly polished as if they were parading
on the barrack square. It mattered nothing to me what rest and sleep I deprived them of. Those
last letters home, which might have been written and were not, troubled me not at all. I was the
Iron General; they were my soldiers, my pawns. When men were sniped at night because of the
moonlight shining on a polished shrapnel helmet it mattered nothing to me. Men were cheap
enough. England was full of them; the bases were full of them; long processions of drafts
thronged all the lines of communication. One asked for men and got them, as if one were
indenting for quantities of soap or rifle oil. I did not mind sacrificing lives to enhance my
reputation. I wanted to command an army; I might even rise to be Commander-in-Chief if the
war lasted long enough. There was no end to my ambition.
‘ “I had orders at last to move my division on to the Somme, to take part in one of those attacks
which proved so disastrous. My division had a certain objective. I gave my brigades orders that
they had to take it. There must be no flinching or bungling. I warned them. If a unit failed to take
its objective, whatever the cause, it must attack and attack again so long as there was one man
left. I said it, I meant it, and I stuck to it. I was the Iron General until the end.
‘ “I had my headquarters in a little village called Flarincourt. There was a small white chateau
a few hundred yards to the north where my staff and myself were housed. We arrived some days
before the troops, and as the trains at the railhead disgorged them I myself took the ‘march past,’
sitting my horse at the roadside, my hand at the salute, while the doomed battalions tramped past
me in columns of fours. There were motor-omnibuses waiting for them at the next village, and
the men hated them as forerunners of disaster.
‘ “I had watched the last battalion of a brigade march past, and, knowing no other troops were
due to arrive for some hours, rode off with an officer on my staff for lunch at the chateau.
Opposite the chateau gates was a roadside Calvary, the Cross raised high and almost surrounded
by poplars, but with an opening of the trees in front, made—so it seemed to me later—so that
Christ might look down and marvel at the ways of men two thousand years after His own passion
and death. Close against the Calvary, and in the shade of the poplars, a private soldier sprawled
on the grass in an attitude of acute exhaustion. His face was pale and damp with sweat. To the
sleeves of his tunic, below the numerals on his shoulder-straps, was sewn the divisional sign
which marked him as one of my men and a straggler from one of the battalions which had just
marched down the road.
‘ “Just then we were getting men from employment at the bases and from the non-combatant
forces, men who had hitherto been declared unfit for service in the front line. They were hastily
passed as ‘fit’ by medical boards and drafted into fighting units after a few days’ training. Some
of them were fit for the work and others were not. I had a reputation to retain with men who
came under my notice for falling out on the march. I reined up at once. ‘Hi, you, man’ I shouted,
‘what are you doing there?’
‘ “He neither stirred nor answered, and in a trice I was off my horse and standing beside him,
shouting and cursing. The man was clean-shaven, and his short hair was auburn-brown. I started
a little when I saw his face, for I fancied I had seen him somewhere before. I knew the wide
brow and the pair of large, deep, sorrowful brown eyes which he opened to look up into my face.
The lower part of his face I did not recognise, but that brow and those eyes were strangely,
insistently familiar. There was something else which affected me queerly. I put it down to some
optical illusion, due to the sun’s rays and the shrapnel helmet. When I first looked at him it
seemed as if blood were trickling down his forehead. Then, as I looked closer, it was gone.
‘ “ ‘Why can’t you stand up,’ I bawled, ‘when an officer speaks to you? What are you feigning,
man?’
‘ “ ‘I must have fainted’, he answered in a gentle cultured voice. One hand strayed round to
his shoulders and touched the great square pack which was strapped upon them. ‘It is so heavy,’
he said.
‘ “I cursed and kicked him, told him to get up at once and go on, and stood over him while he
struggled to his feet. I did not care if he were shamming or not. If he were, he would go on his
way with a wholesome lesson. If he were not, he might drop down again and die for all I cared.
He was no use to the Army in that event, and I cared nothing of what happened to men who
could not march and shoot.
‘ “With great difficulty and much obvious suffering he rose to his feet. Then he stood still for a
moment and looked at me. ‘This has happened before,’ he said very slowly and distinctly, and
added: ‘You will remember.’
‘ “Something—I do not know what—prevented me from questioning him as to his words. It
seemed absurd at the time, but an unaccountable sensation of fear stole over me. The curse died
on my lips as the man turned his back on me and began slowly and painfully to limp down the
road. I remounted my horse and rode up to the chateau for lunch—wondering.
‘ “Next day occurred an incident which I forgot immediately afterwards for the time being. A
party of men with a sergeant in charge was passing the chateau, proceeding on some duty or
other. I came out immediately behind them so that, although they did not see me, I could hear
them talking. ‘Your pack ’urts you, does it?’ shouted the sergeant to one of them. ‘Well, you
look up there.’ He nodded towards the Calvary. ‘Jesus Christ ’ad to carry something a blank
sight ’eavier!’ I do not know if he meant to be profane or if it were merely his rough way of
offering consolation. But I remembered the incident later.
‘ “From the next day I was busy. Before dawn the muttering, rumbling and fluttering of gunfire
began. It continued all day and the next night, increasing to drum-fire before the following dawn.
Shortly afterwards the first reports came in. The day had gone ill with us. Our attack had broken
down. I sent out the order: ‘Attack again immediately. Every objective must be taken.’ It was the
sort of order that any of the great generals might have issued. It made me one with them—I, the
Iron General.
‘ “All that day and the next panic reports came in from all the brigade headquarters. The enemy
along our front was impregnably placed so long as he held out on the left and right. I knew it was
so. I think a kind of madness seized me. To send the remnants of those battalions again and again
to the attack was like flinging spray against a rock. But my pride weighed down all discretion. I
was the Iron General who had never drawn back from what he set out to do. I cared for nothing
but that reputation. From the safe distance of my chateau, far from the welter of mud and blood. I
sent out the order repeatedly: ‘Attack again! Attack again!’ And my big battalions melted and
melted and melted, and long processions of Red Cross vans thundered past the chateau, and still I
sent to my rebellious brigadiers the same mad command: ‘Attack again!’
‘ “You know how it ended, the thousands I sacrificed on the altar of my pride. That’s ancient
history now. When the final crash came, in the shape of a peremptory order from the Army
Command, I was like a man dazed. Then, through my bewilderment streamed the light of old and
dreadful memories. He had told me I should remember. I did remember! I did remember!”
‘The General’s voice rose to a scream. His face worked horribly and he clenched his hands and
beat them upon the table, close by where I am sitting now, in a kind of frenzy.
‘ “What did you remember?” I asked him.
‘ “It was the soldier’s face first of all—the soldier who had fainted under the weight of his pack
beside the Calvary. I thought I knew it. I did know it. Everybody knows it. O God, have mercy—
mercy!”
‘I drew a long breath and sat still and staring. “Ye did it unto Me.” The words shaped
themselves in my brain and kept repeating themselves. The General’s voice broke out again:
“‘Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” he snivelled. “It was He I cursed and kicked as He
lay fainting by the roadside, just as I had cursed and kicked Him on His way to that other death
two thousand years ago. Oh, yes, I remembered that, too! It all came back so clearly across the
centuries, even to the memory of how the blood-money in my pouch had jingled as I asked Him
what He was feigning. I remembered all—all. How they laughed at me for a follower of Him . . .
the leering High Priest of the Temple with his bag of money . . . the kiss in the Garden. And I
remembered passages out of other lives since then, for death with me is scarcely a breathing
space between one life and another. And in each of these lives I have betrayed my fellow-man
because of the pride that is my heritage and curse through all the ages. I can look back until my
mind reels upon betrayal after betrayal in my many lives, down to the day when, because of my
pride, I betrayed those thousands in that hell upon the Somme. For that is my punishment!—to
go on living and betraying, to live in many lands and under many names, but always to be
Judas.”
‘He fell forward and began to weep unpleasantly, great rending sobs that seemed to tear his
throat. “If I’d only known Him,” he whimpered, “when He lay by the roadside outside
Flarincourt, He might have forgiven me at last! I might have saved myself. But I must go on . . . I must go on to the same End which only marks another Beginning.’ ”
Standring brought his story to an abrupt conclusion. His cigar had gone out, and he sought for
and lit another. Fitchett waited a little while, as if he expected more to come.
‘Is that all?’ he said at last.
‘That is all the General’s story, as he told it to me.
‘But what about the end?’
‘The end? Oh, you know that. I treated the General, and failed. You knew that from the
beginning. I think you remarked that I wasn’t infallible.’
‘But what did the General die of? One doesn’t generally die of an hallucination, does one?’
‘No. My dear fellow, surely you can guess. You remember what happened to Judas Iscariot,
don’t you?’
‘Not—’
‘Yes. The General hanged himself from that long beam out there in the hall.’

The End.