Title: Collected Ghost Stories
Author: M R James
* A Project Gutenberg Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0800911.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: August 2008
Date most recently updated: October 2009


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Title: Collected Ghost Stories
Author: M R James

(A Project Gutenberg Australia Compilation)



CONTENTS:

1. THE UNCOMMON PRAYER-BOOK
2. A NEIGHBOUR'S LANDMARK
3. RATS
4. THE EXPERIMENT
5. THE MALICE OF INANIMATE OBJECTS
6. A VIGNETTE

APPENDIX: M R JAMES ON GHOST STORIES


* * * * *


1. THE UNCOMMON PRAYER-BOOK

Mr Davidson was spending the first week in January alone in a country
town. A combination of circumstances had driven him to that drastic
course: his nearest relations were enjoying winter sports abroad, and the
friends who had been kindly anxious to replace them had an infectious
complaint in the house. Doubtless he might have found someone else to
take pity on him; 'but,' he reflected, 'most of them have made up their
parties, and after all it is only for three or four days at most that I
have to fend for myself, and it will be just as well if I can get a move
on with my introduction to the Leventhorp Papers. I might use the time by
going down as near as I can to Gaulsford and making acquaintance with the
neighbourhood. I ought to see the remains of the Leventhorp house, and
the tombs in the church.'

The first day after his arrival at the Swan Hotel at Longbridge was so
stormy that he got no farther than the tobacconist's. The next,
comparatively bright, he used for his visit to Gaulsford, which
interested him more than a little, but had no ulterior consequences. The
third, which was really a pearl of a day for early January, was too fine
to be spent indoors. He gathered from the landlord that a favourite
practice of visitors in the summer was to take a morning train to a
couple of stations westward and walk back down the valley of the Tent,
through Stanford St Thomas and Stanford Magdalene, both of which were
accounted highly picturesque villages. He closed with this plan, and we
now find him seated in a third-class carriage at 9.45 a.m., on his way to
Kingsbourne Junction, and studying the map of the district.

One old man was his only fellow-traveller, a piping old man, who seemed
inclined for conversation. So Mr Davidson, after going through the
necessary versicles and responses about the weather, inquired whether he
was going far.

'No, sir, not far, not this morning, sir,' said the old man. 'I ain't
only goin' so far as what they call Kingsbourne Junction. There isn't but
two stations betwixt here and there. Yes, they calls it Kingsbourne
Junction.'

'I'm going there, too,' said Mr Davidson.

'Oh indeed, sir! do you know that part?'

'No, I'm only going for the sake of taking a walk back to Longbridge, and
seeing a bit of the country.'

'Oh indeed, sir! Well, 'tis a beautiful day for a gentleman as enjoys a
bit of a walk.'

'Yes, to be sure. Have you got far to go when you get to Kingsbourne?'

'No, sir, I ain't got far to go, once I get to Kingsbourne Junction. I'm
agoin' to see my daughter, sir. She live at Brockstone. That's about two
mile across the fields from what they call Kingsbourne Junction, that is.
You've got that marked down on your map, I expect, sir.'

'I expect I have. Let me see, Brockstone, did you say? Here's
Kingsbourne, yes; and which way is Brockstone toward the Stanfords? Ah, I
see it: Brockstone Court, in a park. I don't see the village, though.'

'No, sir, you wouldn't see no village of Brockstone. There ain't only the
Court and the chapel at Brockstone.'

'Chapel? Oh yes, that's marked here too. The chapel; close by the Court,
it seems to be. Does it belong to the Court?'

'Yes, sir, that's close up to the Court, only a step. Yes, that belong to
the Court. My daughter, you see, sir, she's the keeper's wife now, and
she live at the Court and look after things now the family's away.'

'No one living there now, then?'

'No, sir, not for a number of years. The old gentleman he lived there
when I was a lad, and the lady she lived on after him to very near upon
ninety years of age. And then she died, and them that have it now,
they've got this other place, in Warwickshire I believe it is, and they
don't do nothin' about lettin' the Court out; but Colonel Wildman he have
the shooting, and young Mr Clark, he's the agent, he come over once in so
many weeks to see to things, and my daughter's husband he's the keeper.'

'And who uses the chapel? just the people round about, I suppose.'

'Oh no, no one don't use the chapel. Why, there ain't no one to go. All
the people about, they go to Stanford St Thomas Church; but my son-in-law
he go to Kingsbourne Church now, because the gentleman at Stanford he
have this Gregory singin', and my son-in-law he don't like that; he say
he can hear the old donkey brayin' any day of the week, and he like
something a little cheerful on the Sunday.' The old man drew his hand
across his mouth and laughed. 'That's what my son-in-law say: he say he
can hear the old donkey [etc., do copo].'

Mr Davidson also laughed as honestly as he could, thinking meanwhile that
Brockstone Court and chapel would probably be worth including in his
walk, for the map showed that from Brockstone he could strike the Tent
Valley quite as easily as by following the main Kingsbourne-Longbridge
road. So, when the mirth excited by the remembrance of the son-in-law's
bon mot had died down, he returned to the charge, and ascertained that
both the Court and the chapel were of the class known as 'old-fashioned
places', and that the old man would be very willing to take him thither,
and his daughter would be happy to show him whatever she could.

'But that ain't a lot, sir, not as if the family was livin' there; all
the lookin'-glasses is covered up, and the paintin's, and the curtains
and carpets folded away: not but what I dare say she could show you a
pair just to look at, because she go over them to see as the morth
shouldn't get into 'em.'

'I shan't mind about that, thank you: if she can show me the inside of
the chapel, that's what I'd like best to see.'

'Oh, she can show you that right enough, sir. She have the key of the
door, you see, and most weeks she go in and dust about. That's a nice
chapel, that is. My son-in-law he say he'll be bound they didn't have
none of this Gregory singin' there. Dear! I can't help but smile when I
think of him sayin' that about th' old donkey. "I can hear him bray," he
say, "any day of the week"; and so he can, sir, that's true, anyway.'

The walk across the fields from Kingsbourne to Brockstone was very
pleasant. It lay for the most part on the top of the country, and
commanded wide views over a succession of ridges, plough and pasture, or
covered with dark-blue woods--all ending, more or less abruptly, on the
right, in headlands that overlooked the wide valley of a great western
river. The last field they crossed was bounded by a close copse, and no
sooner were they in it than the path turned downwards very sharply, and
it became evident that Brockstone was neatly fitted into a sudden and
very narrow valley. It was not long before they had glimpses of groups of
smokeless stone chimneys, and stone-tiled roofs, close beneath their
feet; and not many minutes after that, they were wiping their shoes at
the back door of Brockstone Court, while the keeper's dogs barked very
loudly in unseen places, and Mrs Porter in quick succession screamed at
them to be quiet, greeted her father, and begged both her visitors to
step in.

It was not to be expected that Mr Davidson should escape being taken
through the principal rooms of the Court, in spite of the fact that the
house was entirely out of commission. Pictures, carpets, curtains,
furniture, were all covered up or put away, as old Mr Avery had said, and
the admiration which our friend was very ready to bestow had to be
lavished on the proportions of the rooms, and on the one painted ceiling,
upon which an artist who had fled from London in the Plague-year had
depicted the Triumph of Loyalty and Defeat of Sedition. In this Mr
Davidson could show an unfeigned interest. The portraits of Cromwell,
Ireton, Bradshaw, Peters, and the rest, writhing in carefully-devised
torments, were evidently the part of the design to which most pains had
been devoted.

'That were the old Lady Sadleir had that paintin' done, same as the one
what put up the chapel. They say she were the first that went up to
London to dance on Oliver Cromwell's grave.' So said Mr Avery, and
continued musingly: 'Well, I suppose she got some satisfaction to 'er
mind, but I don't know as I should want to pay the fare to London and
back just for that, and my son-in-law he say the same: he say he don't
know as he should have cared to pay all that money only for that. I was
tellin' the gentleman as we come along in the train, Mary, what your
'Arry says about this Gregory singin' down at Stanford here. We 'ad a bit
of a laugh over that, sir, didn't us?'

'Yes, to be sure we did; ha! ha!' Once again Mr Davidson strove to do
justice to the pleasantry of the keeper. 'But,' he said, 'if Mrs Porter
can show me the chapel, I think it should be now, for the days aren't
long, and I want to get back to Longbridge before it falls quite dark.'

Even if Brockstone Court has not been illustrated in Rural Life (and I
think it has not) I do not propose to point out its excellences here; but
of the chapel a word must be said. It stands about a hundred yards from
the house, and has its own little graveyard and trees about it. It is a
stone building about seventy feet long, and in the gothic style, as that
style was understood in the middle of the seventeenth century. On the
whole it resembles some of the Oxford college chapels as much as
anything, save that it has a distinct chancel, like a parish church, and
a fanciful domed bell-turret at the south-west angle.

When the west door was thrown open, Mr Davidson could not repress an
exclamation of pleased surprise at the completeness and richness of the
interior. Screen-work, pulpit, seating, and glass--all were of the same
period; and as he advanced into the nave and sighted the organ-case with
its gold embossed pipes in the western gallery, his cup of satisfaction
was filled. The glass in the nave windows was chiefly armorial; in the
chancel were figure-subjects, of the kind that may be seen at Abbey Dore,
of Lord Scudamore's work. But this is not an archaeological review.

While Mr Davidson was still busy examining the remains of the organ
(attributed to one of the Dallams, I believe) old Mr Avery had stumped up
into the chancel and was lifting the dust-cloths from the blue velvet
cushions of the stall-desks--evidently it was here that the family sat. Mr
Davidson heard him say in a rather hushed tone of surprise, 'Why, Mary,
here's all the books open agin!'

The reply was in a voice that sounded peevish rather than surprised.
'Tt-tt-tt, well, there, I never!'

Mrs Porter went over to where her father was standing, and they continued
talking in a lower key. Mr Davidson saw plainly that something not quite
in the common run was under discussion: so he came down the gallery
stairs and joined them. There was no sign of disorder in the chancel any
more than in the rest of the chapel, which was beautifully clean, but the
eight folio Prayer-Books on the cushions of the stall-desks were
indubitably open.

Mrs Porter was inclined to be fretful over it. 'Whoever can it be as does
it?' she said, 'for there's no key but mine, nor yet door but the one we
come in by, and the winders is barred, every one of 'em: I don't like it,
father, that I don't.'

'What is it, Mrs Porter? Anything wrong?' said Mr Davidson.

'No, sir, nothing reely wrong, only these books. Every time pretty near
that I come in to do up the place, I shuts 'em and spreads the cloths
over 'em to keep off the dust, ever since Mr Clark spoke about it when I
first come; and yet there they are again, and always the same page--and
as I says, whoever it can be as does it with the door and winders shut;
and as I says, it makes anyone feel queer comin' in here alone as I 'ave
to do, not as I'm given that way myself, not to be frightened easy, I
mean to say; and there's not a rat in the place--not as no rat wouldn't
trouble to do a thing like that, do you think, sir?'

'Hardly, I should say; but it sounds very queer. Are they always open at
the same place, did you say?'

'Always the same place, sir, one of the psalms it is, and I didn't
particular notice it the first time or two, till I see a little red line
of printing, and it's always caught my eye since.'

Mr Davidson walked along the stalls and looked at the open books. Sure
enough, they all stood at the same page: Psalm cix, and at the head of
it, just between the number and the Dens Iaudem, was a rubric, 'For the
25th day of April'. Without pretending to minute knowledge of the
history of the Book of Common Prayer, he knew enough to be sure that
this was a very odd and wholly unauthorized addition to its text; and
though he remembered that April is St Mark's Day, he could not imagine
what appropriateness this very savage psalm could have to that festival.
With slight misgivings, he ventured to turn over the leaves to examine
the title-page, and knowing the need for particular accuracy in these
matters, he devoted some ten minutes to making a line-for-line
transcript of it. The date was 1653; the printer called himself Anthony
Cadman. He turned to the list of Proper Psalms for certain days: yes,
added to it was that same inexplicable entry: For the 25th day of April:
the moth Psalm. An expert would no doubt have thought of many other
points to inquire into, but this antiquary, as I have said, was no
expert. He took stock, however, of the binding, a handsome one of tooled
blue leather, bearing the arms that figured in several of the nave
windows in various combinations.

'How often,' he said at last to Mrs Porter, 'have you found these books
lying open like this?'

'Reely I couldn't say, sir, but it's a great many times now. Do you
recollect, father, me telling you about it the first time I noticed it?'

'That I do, my dear: you was in a rare taking, and I don't so much wonder
at it; that was five year ago I was paying you a visit at Michaelmas
time, and you come in at tea-time, and says you, "Father, there's the
books layin' open under the cloths agin"; and I didn't know what my
daughter was speakin' about, you see, sir, and I says, "Books?" just like
that, I says; and then it all came out. But as Harry says,--that's my
son-in-law, sir,--"whoever it can be," he says, "as does it, because
there ain't only the one door, and we keeps the key locked up," he says,
"and the winders is barred, every one on 'em. Well," he says, "I lay once
I could catch 'em at it they wouldn't do it a second time," he says. And
no more they wouldn't, I don't believe, sir. Well that was five year ago,
and it's been happenin' constant ever since by your account, my dear.
Young Mr Clark he don't seem to think much to it, but then he don't live
here, you see, and 'tisn't his business to come and clean up here of a
dark afternoon, is it?'

'I suppose you never notice anything else odd when you are at work here,
Mrs Porter?' said Mr Davidson.

'No, sir, I do not,' said Mrs Porter, 'and it's a funny thing to me I
don't, with the feeling I have as there's someone settin' here--no, it's
the other side, just within the screen--and lookin' at me all the time
I'm dustin' in the gallery and pews. But I never yet see nothin' worse
than myself, as the sayin' goes, and I kindly hope I never may.'

In the conversation that followed (there was not much of it) nothing was
added to the statement of the case. Having parted on good terms with Mr
Avery and his daughter, Mr Davidson addressed himself to his eight-mile
walk. The little valley of Brockstone soon led him down into the broader
one of the Tent, and on to Stanford St Thomas, where he found
refreshment.

We need not accompany him all the way to Longbridge. But as he was
changing his socks before dinner, he suddenly paused and said half-aloud,
'By Jove, that is a rum thing!' It had not occurred to him before how
strange it was that any edition of the Prayer-Book should have been
issued in 1653, seven years before the Restoration, five years before
Cromwell's death, and when the use of the book, let alone the printing of
it, was penal. He must have been a bold man who put his name and a date
on that title-page. Only, Mr Davidson reflected, it probably was not his
name at all, for the ways of printers in difficult times were devious.

As he was in the front hall of the Swan that evening, making some
investigations about trains, a small motor stopped in front of the door,
and out of it came a small man in a fur coat, who stood on the steps and
gave directions in a rather yapping foreign accent to his chauffeur. When
he came into the hotel, he was seen to be black-haired and pale-faced,
with a little pointed beard, and gold pince-nez; altogether, very neatly
turned out.

He went to his room, and Mr Davidson saw no more of him till dinner-time.
As they were the only two dining that night, it was not difficult for the
newcomer to find an excuse for falling into talk; he was evidently
wishing to make out what brought Mr Davidson into that neighbourhood at
that season.

'Can you tell me how far it is from here to Arlingworth?' was one of his
early questions, and it was one which threw some light on his own plans,
for Mr Davidson recollected having seen at the station an advertisement
of a sale at Arlingworth Hall, comprising old furniture, pictures, and
books. This, then, was a London dealer.

'No,' he said, 'I've never been there. I believe it lies out by
Kingsbourne--it can't be less than twelve miles. I see there's a sale
there shortly.'

The other looked at him inquisitively, and he laughed. 'No,' he said, as
if answering a question, 'you needn't be afraid of my competing; I'm
leaving this place tomorrow.'

This cleared the air, and the dealer, whose name was Homberger, admitted
that he was interested in books, and thought there might be in these old
country-house libraries something to repay a journey. 'For,' said he, 'we
English have always this marvellous talent for accumulating rarities in
the most unexpected places, ain't it?'

And in the course of the evening he was most interesting on the subject
of finds made by himself and others. 'I shall take the occasion after
this sale to look round the district a bit: perhaps you could inform me
of some likely spots, Mr Davidson?' But Davidson, though he had seen some
very tempting locked-up bookcases at Brockstone Court, kept his counsel.
He did not really like Mr Homberger.

Next day, as he sat in the train, a little ray of light came to
illuminate one of yesterday's puzzles. He happened to take out an
almanac-diary that he had bought for the new year, and it occurred to him
to look at the remarkable events for April 25. There it was: 'St Mark.
Oliver Cromwell born, 1599.'

That, coupled with the painted ceiling, seemed to explain a good deal.
The figure of old Lady Sadleir became more substantial to his
imagination, as of one in whom love for Church and King had gradually
given place to intense hate of the power that had silenced the one and
slaughtered the other. What curious evil service was that which she and a
few like her had been wont to celebrate year by year in that remote
valley? and how in the world had she managed to elude authority? And
again, did not this persistent opening of the books agree oddly with the
other traits of her portrait known to him?

It would be interesting for anyone who chanced to be near Brockstone on
the twenty-fifth of April to look in at the chapel and see if anything
exceptional happened. When he came to think of it, there seemed to be no
reason why he should not be that person himself: he, and if possible,
some congenial friend. He resolved that so it should be.

Knowing that he knew really nothing about the printing of Prayer-Books,
he realized that he must make it his business to get the best light on
the matter without divulging his reasons. I may say at once that his
search was entirely fruitless. One writer of the early part of the
nineteenth century, a writer of rather windy and rhapsodical chat about
books, professed to have heard of a special anti-Cromwellian issue of the
Prayer-Book in the very midst of the Commonwealth period. But he did not
claim to have seen a copy, and no one had believed him. Looking into this
matter, Mr Davidson found that the statement was based on letters from a
correspondent who had lived near Longbridge: so he was inclined to think
that the Brockstone Prayer-Books were at the bottom of it, and had
excited a momentary interest.

Months went on, and St Mark's Day came near. Nothing interfered with Mr
Davidson's plans of visiting Brockstone, or with those of the friend whom
he had persuaded to go with him, and to whom alone he had confided the
puzzle. The same 9.45 train which had taken him in January took them now
to Kingsbourne; the same field-path led them to Brockstone. But today
they stopped more than once to pick a cowslip; the distant woods and
ploughed uplands were of another colour, and in the copse there was, as
Mrs Porter said, 'a regular charm of birds; why you couldn't hardly
collect your mind sometimes with it.'

She recognized Mr Davidson at once and was very ready to do the honours
of the chapel. The new visitor, Mr Witham, was as much struck by the
completeness of it as Mr Davidson had been. 'There can't be such another
in England,' he said.

'Books open again, Mrs Porter?' said Davidson, as they walked up to the
chancel.

'Dear, yes, I expect so, sir,' said Mrs Porter, as she drew off the
cloths. 'Well, there!' she exclaimed the next moment, 'if they ain't
shut! That's the first time ever I've found 'em so. But it's not for want
of care on my part, I do assure you, gentlemen, if they wasn't, for I
felt the cloths the last thing before I shut up last week, when the
gentleman had done photografting the heast winder, and every one was
shut, and where there was ribbons left I tied 'em. Now I think of it, I
don't remember ever to 'ave done that before, and per'aps, whoever it is
it just made the difference to 'em. Well, it only shows, don't it? If at
first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.'

Meanwhile the two men had been examining the books, and now Davidson
spoke.

'I'm sorry to say I'm afraid there's something wrong here, Mrs Porter.
These are not the same books.'

It would make too long a business to detail all Mrs Porter's outcries,
and the questionings that followed. The upshot was this. Early in January
the gentleman had come to see over the chapel and thought a great deal of
it and said he must come back in the spring weather and take some
photografts. And only a week ago he had drove up in his motoring car, and
a very 'eavy box with the slides in it, and she had locked him in because
he said something about a long explosion, and she was afraid of some
damage happening: and he says, no, not explosion, but it appeared the
lantern what they take the slides with worked very slow, and so he was in
there the best part of an hour and she come and let him out, and he drove
off with his box and all and gave her his visiting-card, and oh, dear,
dear, to think of such a thing! he must have changed the books and took
the old ones away with him in his box.

'What sort of man was he?'

'Oh, dear, he was a small-made gentleman, if you can call him so after
the way he've behaved, with black hair, that is if it was hair, and gold
eye-glasses, if they was gold: reely, one don't know what to believe.
Sometimes I doubt he weren't a reel Englishman at all, and yet he seemed
to know the language, and had the name on his visiting-card like anybody
else might.

'Just so; might we see the card? Yes: T. W. Henderson, and an address
somewhere near Bristol. Well, Mrs Porter, it's quite plain this Mr
Henderson, as he calls himself, has walked off with your eight
Prayer-Books and put eight others about the same size in place of them.
Now listen to me. I suppose you must tell your husband about this, but
neither you nor he must say one word about it to anyone else. If you'll
give me the address of the agent--Mr Clark, isn't it?--I will write to
him and tell him exactly what has happened, and that it really is no
fault of yours. But, you understand, we must keep it very quiet: and why?
Because this man who has stolen the books will of course try to sell them
one at a time--for I may tell you they are worth a good deal of
money--and the only way we can bring it home to him is by keeping a sharp
look out and saying nothing.'

By dint of repeating the same advice in various forms they succeeded in
impressing Mrs Porter with the real need for silence, and were forced to
make a concession only in the case of Mr Avery, who was expected on a
visit shortly: 'But you may be safe with father, sir,' said Mrs Porter.
'Father ain't a talkin' man.'

It was not quite Mr Davidson's experience of him; still, there were no
neighbours at Brockstone, and even Mr Avery must be aware that gossip
with anybody on such a subject would be likely to end in the Porters
having to look out for another situation.

A last question was whether Mr Henderson, so-called, had anyone with him.

'No, sir, not when he come he hadn't: he was working his own motoring car
himself, and what luggage he had, let me see: there was his lantern and
this box of slides inside the carriage, which I helped him into the
chapel and out of it myself with it, if only I'd knowed! And as he drove
away under the big yew tree by the monument I see the long white bundle
laying on the top of the coach, what I didn't notice when he drove up.
But he set in front, sir, and only the boxes inside behind him. And do
you reely think, sir, as his name weren't Henderson at all? Oh dear me,
what a dreadful thing! Why fancy what trouble it might bring to a
innocent person that might never have set foot in the place but for
that!'

They left Mrs Porter in tears. On the way home there was much discussion
as to the best means of keeping watch upon possible sales. What
Henderson-Homberger (for there could be no real doubt of the identity)
had done was, obviously, to bring down the requisite number of folio
Prayer-Books--disused copies from college chapels and the like, bought
ostensibly for the sake of the bindings, which were superficially like
enough to the old ones--and to substitute them at his leisure for the
genuine articles. A week had now passed without any public notice being
taken of the theft. He would take a little time himself to find out about
the rarity of the books, and would ultimately, no doubt, 'place' them
cautiously. Between them, Davidson and Witham were in a position to know
a good deal of what was passing in the book-world, and they could map out
the ground pretty completely. A weak point with them at the moment was
that neither of them knew under what other name or names
Henderson-Homberger carried on business. But there are ways of solving
these problems.

And yet all this planning proved unnecessary.

* * * * *

We are transported to a London office on this same 25th of April. We find
there, within closed doors, late in the day, two police inspectors, a
commissionaire, and a youthful clerk. The two latter, both rather pale
and agitated in appearance, are sitting on chairs and being questioned.

'How long do you say you've been in this Mr Poschwitz's employment? Six
months? And what was his business? Attended sales in various parts and
brought home parcels of books. Did he keep a shop anywhere? No? Disposed
of 'em here and there, and sometimes to private collectors. Right. Now
then, when did he go out last? Rather better than a week ago. Tell you
where he was going? No? Said he was going to start next day from his
private residence, and shouldn't be at the office--that's here,
eh?--before two days: you was to attend as usual. Where is his private
residence? Oh, that's the address, Norwood way; I see. Any family? Not in
this country? Now, then, what account do you give of what's happened
since he came back? Came back on the Tuesday, did he? and this is the
Saturday. Bring any books? One package: where is it? In the safe: you got
the key? No, to be sure, it's open, of course. How did he seem when he
got back--cheerful? Well, but how do you mean curious? Thought he might
be in for an illness: he said that, did he? Odd smell got in his nose,
couldn't get rid of it: told you to let him know who wanted to see him
before you let 'em in? That wasn't usual with him? Much the same all
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Out a good deal; said he was going to the
British Museum. Often went there to make inquiries in the way of his
business. Walked up and down a lot in the office when he was in? Anyone
call in on those days? Mostly when he was out. Anyone find him in? Oh, Mr
Collinson? Who's Mr Collinson? An old customer: know his address? All
right, give it us afterwards. Well, now, what about this morning? You
left Mr Poschwitz's here at twelve and went home. Anybody see you?
Commissionaire, you did? Remained at home till summoned here. Very well.

'Now commissionaire; we have your name--Watkins. eh? Very well, make your
statement: don't go too quick, so as we can get it down.'

'I was on duty 'ere later than usual, Mr Potwitch 'axing asked me to
remain on, and ordered his lunching to be sent in, which come as ordered.
I was in the lobby from eleven-thirty on, and see Mr Bligh [the clerk]
leave at about twelve. After that no one come in at all except Mr
Potwitch's lunching come at one o'clock and the man left in five minutes'
time. Towards the afternoon I became tired of waitin' and I come upstairs
to this first floor. The outer door what lead to the orfice stood open,
and I come up to the plate-glass door here. Mr Potwitch he was standing
behind the table smoking a cigar, and he laid it down on the mantelpiece
and felt in his trouser pockets and took out a key and went across to the
safe. And I knocked on the glass, thinkin' to see if he wanted me to come
and take away his tray, but he didn't take no notice, bein' engaged with
the safe door. Then he got it open and stooped down and seemed to be
lifting up a package off of the floor of the safe. And then, sir, I see
what looked to be like a great roll of old shabby white flannel about
four to five feet high fall for'ards out of the inside of the safe right
against Mr Potwitch's shoulder as he was stooping over: and Mr Porwitch
he raised himself up as it were, resting his hands on the package, and
give a exclamation. And I can't hardly expect you should take what I
says, but as true as I stand here I see this roll had a kind of a face in
the upper end of it, sir. You can't be more surprised than what I was, I
can assure you, and I've seen a lot in me time...Yes, I can describe it
if you wish it, sir: it was very much the same as this wall here in
colour [the wall had an earth-coloured distemper] and it had a bit of a
band tied round underneath, and the eyes, well they was dry-like, and
much as if there was two big spiders' bodies in the holes...Hair? no, I
don't know as there was much hair to be seen: the flannel-stuff was over
the top of the 'ead...I'm very sure it warn' t what it should have been.
No, I only see it in a flash, but I took it in like a photograft--wish I
hadn't...Yest, sir, it fell right over on to Mr Potwitch's shoulder, and
this face hid in his neck--yes, sir, about where the injury was--more
like a ferret goin' for a rabbit than anythink else, and he rolled over,
and of course I tried to get in at the door, but as you know, sir, it
were locked on the inside, and all I could do, I rung up everyone, and
the surgeon come, and the police and you gentlemen, and you know as much
as what I do. If you won't be requirin' me any more today I'd be glad to
be gettin' off home: it's shook me up more than I thought for.'

'Well.' said one of the inspectors, when they were left alone, and
'Well?' said the other inspector: and, after a pause, 'What's the
surgeon's report again? You've got it there. Yes. Effect on the blood
like the worst kind of snake-bite: death almost instantaneous. I'm glad
of that for his sake; he was a nasty sight. No case for detaining this
man Watkins, anyway; we know all about him. And what about this safe,
now? We'd better go over it again, and, by the way, we haven't opened
that package he was busy with when he died.'

'Well, handle it careful,' said the other. 'There might be this snake in
it, for what you know. Get a light into the corners of the place, too.
Well: there's room for a shortish person to stand up in; but what about
ventilation?'

'Perhaps,' said the other slowly, as he explored the safe with an
electric torch, 'perhaps they didn't require much of that. My word! it
strikes warm coming out of that place! like a vault, it is. But here,
what's this bank-like of dust all spread out into the room? That must
have come there since the door was opened; it would sweep it all away if
you moved it--see? Now what do you make of that?'

'Make of it? About as much as I make of anything else in this case. One
of London's mysteries this is going to be, by what I can see, and I don't
believe a photographer's box full of large-size old fashioned
Prayer-Books is going to take us much further. For that's just what your
package is.'

It was a natural but hasty utterance. The preceding narrative shows that
there was in fact plenty of material for constructing a case; and when
once Messrs. Davidson and Witham had brought their end to Scotland Yard,
the join-up was soon made, and the circle completed.

To the relief of Mrs Porter, the owners of Brockstone decided not to
replace the books in the chapel: they repose, I believe, in a
safe-deposit in town. The police have their own methods of keeping
certain matters out of the newspapers: otherwise it can hardly be
supposed that Watkins's evidence about Mr Poschwitz's death could have
failed to furnish a good many headlines of a startling character to the
press.



2. A NEIGHBOUR'S LANDMARK


Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing
books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of
accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a
stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if
they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble
himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets
of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the
dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as
one of the lesser Works of Mercy. Happy in these employments, and in
occasionally opening an eighteenth-century octavo, to see 'what it is all
about', and to conclude after five minutes that it deserves the seclusion
it now enjoys, I had reached the middle of a wet August afternoon at
Betton Court--

'You begin in a deeply Victorian manner,' I said; 'is this to continue?'

'Remember, if you please,' said my friend, looking at me over his
spectacles, 'that I am a Victorian by birth and education, and that the
Victorian tree may not unreasonably be expected to bear Victorian fruit.
Further, remember that an immense quantity of clever and thoughtful
rubbish is now being written about the Victorian age. Now,' he went on,
laying his papers on his knee, 'that article, "The Stricken Years", in
The Times Literary Supplement the other day,--able? of course it is able;
but, oh! my soul and body, do just hand it over here, will you? it's on
the table by you.'

'I thought you were to read me something you had written,' I said,
without moving, 'but, of course--'

'Yes, I know,' he said. 'Very well, then, I'll do that first. But I
should like to show you afterwards what I mean. However--' And he lifted
the sheets of paper and adjusted his spectacles.

--at Betton Court, where, generations back, two country-house libraries
had been fused together, and no descendant of either stock had ever faced
the task of picking them over or getting rid of duplicates. Now I am not
setting out to tell of rarities I may have discovered, of Shakespeare
quartos bound up in volumes of political tracts, or anything of that
kind, but of an experience which befell me in the course of my search--an
experience which I cannot either explain away or fit into the scheme of
my ordinary life.

It was, I said, a wet August afternoon, rather windy, rather warm.
Outside the window great trees were stirring and weeping. Between them
were stretches of green and yellow country (for the Court stands high on
a hill-side), and blue hills far off, veiled with rain. Up above was a
very restless and hopeless movement of low clouds travelling northwest. I
had suspended my work--if you call it work--for some minutes to stand at
the window and look at these things, and at the greenhouse roof on the
right with the water sliding off it, and the Church tower that rose
behind that. It was all in favour of my going steadily on; no likelihood
of a clearing up for hours to come. I, therefore, returned to the
shelves, lifted out a set of eight or nine volumes, lettered Tracts, and
conveyed them to the table for closer examination.

They were for the most part of the reign of Anne. There was a good deal
of The Late Peace, The Late War, The Conduct of the Allies: there were
also Letters to a Convocation Man; Sermons preached at St Michael's,
Queen hithe; Enquiries in to a late Charge of the Rt. Rev. the Lord
Bishop of Winchester (or more probably Winton) to his Clergy: things all
very lively once, and indeed still keeping so much of their old sting
that I was tempted to betake myself into an arm-chair in the window, and
give them more time than I had intended. Besides, I was somewhat tired by
the day. The Church clock struck four, and it really was four, for in
1889 there was no saving of daylight.

So I settled myself. And first I glanced over some of the War pamphlets,
and pleased myself by trying to pick out Swift by his style from among
the undistinguished. But the War pamphlets needed more knowledge of the
geography of the Low Countries than I had. I turned to the Church, and
read several pages of what the Dean of Canterbury said to the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge on the occasion of their anniversary
meeting in 1711. When I turned over to a Letter from a Beneficed
Clergyman in the Country to the Bishop of C----r, I was becoming languid,
and I gazed for some moments at the following sentence without surprise:

'This Abuse (for I think myself justified in calling it by that name) is
one which I am persuaded Your Lordship would (if 'twere known to you)
exert your utmost efforts to do away. But I am also persuaded that you
know no more of its existence than (in the words of the Country Song)

That which walks in Betton Wood
Knows why it walks or why it cries.'

Then indeed I did sit up in my chair, and run my finger along the lines
to make sure that I had read them right. There was no mistake. Nothing
more was to be gathered from the rest of the pamphlet. The next paragraph
definitely changed the subject: 'But I have said enough upon this Topick'
were its opening words. So discreet, too, was the namelessness of the
Beneficed Clergyman that he refrained even from initials, and had his
letter printed in London.

The riddle was of a kind that might faintly interest anyone: to me, who
have dabbled a good deal in works of folk-lore, it was really exciting. I
was set upon solving it--on finding out, I mean, what story lay behind
it; and, at least, I felt myself lucky in one point, that, whereas I
might have come on the paragraph in some College Library far away, here I
was at Betton, on the very scene of action.

The Church clock struck five, and a single stroke on a gong followed.
This, I knew, meant tea. I heaved myself out of the deep chair, and
obeyed the summons.

My host and I were alone at the Court. He came in soon, wet from a round
of landlord's errands, and with pieces of local news which had to be
passed on before I could make an opportunity of asking whether there was
a particular place in the parish that was still known as Betton Wood.

'Betton Wood,' he said, 'was a short mile away, just on the crest of
Betton Hill, and my father stubbed up the last bit of it when it paid
better to grow corn than scrub oaks. Why do you want to know about Betton
Wood?'

'Because,' I said, 'in an old pamphlet I was reading just now, there are
two lines of a country song which mention it, and they sound as if there
was a story belonging to them. Someone says that someone else knows no
more of whatever it may be--

Than that which walks in Betton Wood
Knows why it walks or why it cries.'

'Goodness,' said Philipson, 'I wonder whether that was why...I must ask
old Mitchell.' He muttered something else to himself, and took some more
tea, thoughtfully.

'Whether that was why--?' I said.

'Yes, I was going to say, whether that was why my father had the Wood
stubbed up. I said just now it was to get more plough-land, but I don't
really know if it was. I don't believe he ever broke it up: it's rough
pasture at this moment. But there's one old chap at least who'd remember
something of it--old Mitchell.' He looked at his watch. 'Blest if I don't
go down there and ask him. I don't think I'll take you,' he went on;
'he's not so likely to tell anything he thinks is odd if there's a
stranger by.'

'Well, mind you remember every single thing he does tell. As for me, if
it clears up, I shall go out, and if it doesn't, I shall go on with the
books.'

It did clear up, sufficiently at least to make me think it worth while to
walk up the nearest hill and look over the country. I did not know the
lie of the land; it was the first visit I had paid to Philipson, and this
was the first day of it. So I went down the garden and through the wet
shrubberies with a very open mind, and offered no resistance to the
indistinct impulse--was it, however, so very indistinct?--which kept
urging me to bear to the left whenever there was a forking of the path.
The result was that after ten minutes or more of dark going between
dripping rows of box and laurel and privet, I was confronted by a stone
arch in the Gothic style set in the stone wall which encircled the whole
demesne. The door was fastened by a spring-lock, and I took the
precaution of leaving this on the jar as I passed out into the road. That
road I crossed, and entered a narrow lane between hedges which led
upward; and that lane I pursued at a leisurely pace for as much as half a
mile, and went on to the field to which it led. I was now on a good point
of vantage for taking in the situation of the Court, the village, and the
environment; and I leant upon a gate and gazed westward and downward.

I think we must all know the landscapes--are they by Birket Foster, or
somewhat earlier?--which, in the form of wood-cuts, decorate the volumes
of poetry that lay on the drawing-room tables of our fathers and
grandfathers--volumes in 'Art Cloth, embossed bindings'; that strikes me
as being the right phrase. I confess myself an admirer of them, and
especially of those which show the peasant leaning over a gate in a hedge
and surveying, at the bottom of a downward slope, the village church
spire--embosomed amid venerable trees, and a fertile plain intersected by
hedgerows, and bounded by distant hills, behind which the orb of day is
sinking (or it may be rising) amid level clouds illumined by his dying
(or nascent) ray. The expressions employed here are those which seem
appropriate to the pictures I have in mind; and were there opportunity, I
would try to work in the Vale, the Grove, the Cot, and the Flood. Anyhow,
they are beautiful to me, these landscapes, and it was just such a one
that I was now surveying. It might have come straight out of Gems of
Sacred Song, selected by a Lady and given as a birthday present to
Eleanor Philipson in 1852 by her attached friend Millicent Graves. All at
once I turned as if I had been stung. There thrilled into my right ear
and pierced my head a note of incredible sharpness, like the shriek of a
bat, only ten times intensified--the kind of thing that makes one wonder
if something has not given way in one's brain. I held my breath, and
covered my ear, and shivered. Something in the circulation: another
minute or two, I thought, and I return home. But I must fix the view a
little more firmly in my mind. Only, when I turned to it again, the taste
was gone out of it. The sun was down behind the hill, and the light was
off the fields, and when the clock bell in the Church tower struck seven,
I thought no longer of kind mellow evening hours of rest, and scents of
flowers and woods on evening air; and of how someone on a farm a mile or
two off would be saying 'How clear Betton bell sounds tonight after the
rain!'; but instead images came to me of dusty beams and creeping spiders
and savage owls up in the tower, and forgotten graves and their ugly
contents below, and of flying Time and all it had taken out of my life.
And just then into my left ear--close as if lips had been put within an
inch of my head, the frightful scream came thrilling again.

There was no mistake possible now. It was from outside. 'With no language
but a cry' was the thought that flashed into my mind. Hideous it was
beyond anything I had heard or have heard since, but I could read no
emotion in it, and doubted if I could read any intelligence. All its
effect was to take away every vestige, every possibility, of enjoyment,
and make this no place to stay in one moment more. Of course there was
nothing to be seen: but I was convinced that, if I waited, the thing
would pass me again on its aimless, endless beat, and I could not bear
the notion of a third repetition. I hurried back to the lane and down the
hill. But when I came to the arch in the wall I stopped. Could I be sure
of my way among those dank alleys, which would be danker and darker now!
No, I confessed to myself that I was afraid: so jarred were all my nerves
with the cry on the hill that I really felt I could not afford to be
startled even by a little bird in a bush, or a rabbit. I followed the
road which followed the wall, and I was not sorry when I came to the gate
and the lodge, and descried Philipson coming up towards it from the
direction of the village.

'And where have you been?' said he.

'I took that lane that goes up the hill opposite the stone arch in the
wall.'

'Oh! did you? Then you've been very near where Betton Wood used to be: at
least, if you followed it up to the top, and out into the field.'

And if the reader will believe it, that was the first time that I put two
and two together. Did I at once tell Philipson what had happened to me? I
did not. I have not had other experiences of the kind which are called
super-natural, or -normal, or -physical, but, though I knew very well I
must speak of this one before long, I was not at all anxious to do so;
and I think I have read that this is a common case.

So all I said was: 'Did you see the old man you meant to?'

'Old Mitchell? Yes, I did; and got something of a story out of him. I'll
keep it till after dinner. It really is rather odd.'

So when we were settled after dinner he began to report, faithfully, as
he said, the dialogue that had taken place. Mitchell, not far off eighty
years old, was in his elbow-chair. The married daughter with whom he
lived was in and out preparing for tea.

After the usual salutations: 'Mitchell, I want you to tell me something
about the Wood.'

'What Wood's that, Master Reginald?'

'Betton Wood. Do you remember it?'

Mitchell slowly raised his hand and pointed an accusing forefinger. 'It
were your father done away with Betton Wood, Master Reginald, I can tell
you that much.'

'Well, I know it was, Mitchell. You needn't look at me as if it were my
fault.'

'Your fault? No, I says it were your father done it, before your time.'

'Yes, and I dare say if the truth was known, it was your father that
advised him to do it, and I want to know why.' Mitchell seemed a little
amused. 'Well,' he said, 'my father were woodman to your father and your
grandfather before him, and if he didn't know what belonged to his
business, he'd oughter done. And if he did give advice that way, I
suppose he might have had his reasons, mightn't he now?'

'Of course he might, and I want you to tell me what they were.'

'Well now, Master Reginald, whatever makes you think as I know what
his reasons might 'a been I don't know how many year ago?'

'Well, to be sure, it is a long time, and you might easily have
forgotten, if ever you knew. I suppose the only thing is for me
to go and ask old Ellis what he can recollect about it.'

That had the effect I hoped for.

'Old Ellis!' he growled. 'First time ever I hear anyone say old Ellis
were any use for any purpose. I should 'a thought you know'd better than
that yourself, Master Reginald. What do you suppose old Ellis can tell
you better'n what I can about Betton Wood, and what call have he got to
be put afore me, I should like to know. His father warn't woodman on the
place: he were ploughman--that's what he was, and so anyone could tell
you what knows; anyone could tell you that, I says.'

'Just so, Mitchell, but if you know all about Betton Wood and won't tell
me, why, I must do the next best I can, and try and get it out of
somebody else; and old Ellis has been on the place very nearly as long as
you have.'

'That he ain't, not by eighteen months! Who says I wouldn't tell you
nothing about the Wood? I ain't no objection; only it's a funny kind of a
tale, and 'taint right to my thinkin' it should be all about the parish.
You, Lizzie, do you keep in your kitchen a bit. Me and Master Reginald
wants to have a word or two private. But one thing I'd like to know,
Master Reginald, what come to put you upon asking about it today?'

'Oh! well, I happened to hear of an old saying about something that walks
in Betton Wood. And I wondered if that had anything to do with its being
cleared away: that's all.'

'Well, you was in the right, Master Reginald, however you come to hear of
it, and I believe I can tell you the rights of it better than anyone in
this parish, let alone old Ellis. You see it came about this way: that
the shortest road to Allen's Farm laid through the Wood, and when we was
little my poor mother she used to go so many times in the week to the
farm to fetch a quart of milk, because Mr Allen what had the farm then
under your father, he was a good man, and anyone that had a young family
to bring up, he was willing to allow 'em so much in the week. But never
you mind about that now. And my poor mother she never liked to go through
the Wood, because there was a lot of talk in the place, and sayings like
what you spoke about just now. But every now and again, when she happened
to be late with her work, she'd have to take the short road through the
Wood, and as sure as ever she did, she'd come home in a rare state. I
remember her and my father talking about it, and he'd say, "Well, but it
can't do you no harm, Emma," and she'd say, "Oh! but you haven't an idear
of it, George. Why, it went right through my head," she says, "and I came
over all bewildered-like, and as if I didn't know where I was. You see,
George," she says, "it ain't as if you was about there in the dusk. You
always goes there in the daytime, now don't you?" and he says: "Why, to
be sure I do; do you take me for a fool?" And so they'd go on. And time
passed by, and I think it wore her out, because, you understand, it
warn't no use to go for the milk not till the afternoon, and she wouldn't
never send none of us children instead, for fear we should get a fright.
Nor she wouldn't tell us about it herself. "No," she says, "it's bad
enough for me. I don't want no one else to go through it, nor yet hear
talk about it." But one time I recollect she says, "Well, first it's a
rustling-like all along in the bushes, coming very quick, either towards
me or after me according to the time, and then there comes this scream as
appears to pierce right through from the one ear to the other, and the
later I am coming through, the more like I am to hear it twice over; but
thanks be, I never yet heard it the three times." And then I asked her,
and I says: "Why, that seems like someone walking to and fro all the
time, don't it?" and she says, "Yes, it do, and whatever it is she wants,
I can't think": and I says, "Is it a woman, mother?" and she says, "Yes,
I've heard it is a woman."

'Anyway, the end of it was my father he spoke to your father, and told
him the Wood was a bad wood. "There's never a bit of game in it, and
there's never a bird's nest there," he says, "and it ain't no manner of
use to you." And after a lot of talk, your father he come and see my
mother about it, and he see she warn't one of these silly women as gets
nervish about nothink at all, and he made up his mind there was somethink
in it, and after that he asked about in the neighbourhood, and I believe
he made out somethink, and wrote it down in a paper what very like you've
got up at the Court, Master Reginald. And then he gave the order, and the
Wood was stubbed up. They done all the work in the daytime, I recollect,
and was never there after three o'clock.' 'Didn't they find anything to
explain it, Mitchell? No bones or anything of that kind?'

'Nothink at all, Master Reginald, only the mark of a hedge and ditch
along the middle, much about where the quickset hedge run now; and with
all the work they done, if there had been anyone put away there, they was
bound to find 'em. But I don't know whether it done much good, after all.
People here don't seem to like the place no better than they did afore.'

'That's about what I got out of Mitchell,' said Philipson, 'and as far as
any explanation goes, it leaves us very much where we were. I must see if
I can't find that paper.'

'Why didn't your father ever tell you about the business?' I said.

'He died before I went to school, you know, and I imagine he didn't want
to frighten us children by any such story. I can remember being shaken
and slapped by my nurse for running up that lane towards the Wood when we
were coming back rather late one winter afternoon: but in the daytime no
one interfered with our going into the Wood if we wanted to--only we
never did want.'

'Hm!' I said, and then, 'Do you you think you'll be able to find that
paper that your father wrote?'

'Yes,' he said, 'I do. I expect it's no farther away than that cupboard
behind you. There's a bundle or two of things specially put aside, most
of which I've looked through at various times, and I know there's one
envelope labelled Betton Wood: but as there was no Betton Wood any more,
I never thought it would be worth while to open it, and I never have.
We'll do it now, though.'

'Before you do,' I said (I was still reluctant, but I thought this was
perhaps the moment for my disclosure), 'I'd better tell you I think
Mitchell was right when he doubted if clearing away the Wood had put
things straight.' And I gave the account you have heard already: I need
not say Philipson was interested. 'Still there?' he said. 'It's amazing.
Look here, will you come out there with me now, and see what happens?'

'I will do no such thing,' I said, 'and if you knew the feeling, you'd be
glad to walk ten miles in the opposite direction. Don't talk of it. Open
your envelope, and let's hear what your father made out.'

He did so, and read me the three or four pages of jottings which it
contained. At the top was written a motto from Scott's Glenfinlas, which
seemed to me well-chosen:

Where walks, they say, the shrieking ghost.

Then there were notes of his talk with Mitchell's mother, from which I
extract only this much. 'I asked her if she never thought she saw
anything to account for the sounds she heard. She told me, no more than
once, on the darkest evening she ever came through the Wood; and then she
seemed forced to look behind her as the rustling came in the bushes, and
she thought she saw something all in tatters with the two arms held out
in front of it coming on very fast, and at that she ran for the stile,
and tore her gown all to finders getting over it.'

Then he had gone to two other people whom he found very shy of talking.
They seemed to think, among other things, that it reflected discredit on
the parish. However, one, Mrs Emma Frost, was prevailed upon to repeat
what her mother had told her. 'They say it was a lady of title that
married twice over, and her first husband went by the name of Brown, or
it might have been Bryan ['Yes, there were Bryans at the Court before it
came into our family,' Philipson put in], and she removed her neighbour's
landmark: leastways she took in a fair piece of the best pasture in
Betton parish what belonged by rights to two children as hadn't no one to
speak for them, and they say years after she went from bad to worse, and
made out false papers to gain thousands of pounds up in London, and at
last they was proved in law to be false, and she would have been tried
and put to death very like, only she escaped away for the time. But no
one can't avoid the curse that's laid on them that removes the landmark,
and so we take it she can't leave Betton before someone take and put it
right again.'

At the end of the paper there was a note to this effect. 'I regret that I
cannot find any clue to previous owners of the fields adjoining the Wood.
I do not hesitate to say that if I could discover their representatives,
I should do my best to indemnify them for the wrong done to them in years
now long past: for it is undeniable that the Wood is very curiously
disturbed in the manner described by the people of the place. In my
present ignorance alike of the extent of the land wrongly appropriated,
and of the rightful owners, I am reduced to keeping a separate note of
the profits derived from this part of the estate, and my custom has been
to apply the sum that would represent the annual yield of about five
acres to the common benefit of the parish and to charitable uses: and I
hope that those who succeed me may see fit to continue this practice.'

So much for the elder Mr Philipson's paper. To those who, like myself,
are readers of the State Trials it will have gone far to illuminate the
situation. They will remember how between the years 1678 and 1684 the
Lady Ivy, formerly Theodosia Bryan, was alternately Plaintiff and
Defendant in a series of trials in which she was trying to establish a
claim against the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's for a considerable and
very valuable tract of land in Shadwell: how in the last of those trials,
presided over by L. C. J. Jeffreys, it was proved up to the hilt that the
deeds upon which she based her claim were forgeries executed under her
orders: and how, after an information for perjury and forgery was issued
against her, she disappeared completely--so completely, indeed, that no
expert has ever been able to tell me what became of her.

Does not the story I have told suggest that she may still be heard of on
the scene of one of her earlier and more successful exploits?

* * * * *

'That,' said my friend, as he folded up his papers, 'is a very faithful
record of my one extraordinary experience. And now--'

But I had so many questions to ask him, as for instance, whether his
friend had found the proper owner of the land, whether he had done
anything about the hedge, whether the sounds were ever heard now, what
was the exact title and date of his pamphlet, etc., etc., that bed-time
came and passed, without his having an opportunity to revert to the
Literary Supplement of The Times.


[Thanks to the researches of Sir John Fox, in his book on The Lady Ivie's
Trial (Oxford, 1929), we now know that my heroine died in her bed in
1695, having--heaven knows how--been acquitted of the forgery, for which
she had undoubtedly been responsible.]



3. RATS


'And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged,
mouldy bedclothes a-heaving and a-heaving like seas.' 'And a-heaving and
a-heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with the rats under 'em.'


But was it with the rats? I ask, because in another case it was not. I
cannot put a date to the story, but I was young when I heard it, and the
teller was old. It is an ill-proportioned tale, but that is my fault, not
his.

It happened in Suffolk, near the coast. In a place where the road makes a
sudden dip and then a sudden rise; as you go northward, at the top of
that rise, stands a house on the left of the road. It is a tall red-brick
house, narrow for its height; perhaps it was built about 1770. The top of
the front has a low triangular pediment with a round window in the
centre. Behind it are stables and offices, and such garden as it has is
behind them. Scraggy Scotch firs are near it: an expanse of gorse-covered
land stretches away from it. It commands a view of the distant sea from
the upper windows of the front. A sign on a post stands before the door;
or did so stand, for though it was an inn of repute once, I believe it is
so no longer.

To this inn came my acquaintance, Mr Thomson, when he was a young man, on
a fine spring day, coming from the University of Cambridge, and desirous
of solitude in tolerable quarters and time for reading. These he found,
for the landlord and his wife had been in service and could make a
visitor comfortable, and there was no one else staying in the inn. He had
a large room on the first floor commanding the road and the view, and if
it faced east, why, that could not be helped; the house was well built
and warm.

He spent very tranquil and uneventful days: work all the morning, an
afternoon perambulation of the country round, a little conversation with
country company or the people of the inn in the evening over the then
fashionable drink of brandy and water, a little more reading and writing,
and bed; and he would have been content that this should continue for the
full month he had at disposal, so well was his work progressing, and so
fine was the April of that year--which I have reason to believe was that
which Orlando Whistlecraft chronicles in his weather record as the
'Charming Year'.

One of his walks took him along the northern road, which stands high and
traverses a wide common, called a heath. On the bright afternoon when he
first chose this direction his eye caught a white object some hundreds of
yards to the left of the road, and he felt it necessary to make sure what
this might be. It was not long before he was standing by it, and found
himself looking at a square block of white stone fashioned somewhat like
the base of a pillar, with a square hole in the upper surface. Just such
another you may see at this day on Thetford Heath. After taking stock of
it he contemplated for a few minutes the view, which offered a church
tower or two, some red roofs of cottages and windows winking in the sun,
and the expanse of sea--also with an occasional wink and gleam upon
it--and so pursued his way.

In the desultory evening talk in the bar, he asked why the white stone
was there on the common.

'A old-fashioned thing, that is,' said the landlord (Mr Betts), 'we was
none of us alive when that was put there.' 'That's right,' said another.
'It stands pretty high,' said Mr Thomson, 'I dare say a sea-mark was on
it some time back.' 'Ah! yes,' Mr Betts agreed, 'I 'ave 'eard they could
see it from the boats; but whatever there was, it's fell to bits this
long time.' 'Good job too,' said a third, ''twarn't a lucky mark, by what
the old men used to say; not lucky for the fishin', I mean to say.' 'Why
ever not?' said Thomson. 'Well, I never see it myself,' was the answer,
'but they 'ad some funny ideas, what I mean, peculiar, them old chaps,
and I shouldn't wonder but what they made away with it theirselves.'

It was impossible to get anything clearer than this: the company, never
very voluble, fell silent, and when next someone spoke it was of village
affairs and crops. Mr Betts was the speaker.

Not every day did Thomson consult his health by taking a country walk.
One very fine afternoon found him busily writing at three o'clock. Then
he stretched himself and rose, and walked out of his room into the
passage. Facing him was another room, then the stair-head, then two more
rooms, one looking out to the back, the other to the south. At the south
end of the passage was a window, to which he went, considering with
himself that it was rather a shame to waste such a fine afternoon.
However, work was paramount just at the moment; he thought he would just
take five minutes off and go back to it, and those five minutes he would
employ--the Bettses could not possibly object--to looking at the other
rooms in the passage, which he had never seen. Nobody at all, it seemed,
was indoors; probably, as it was market day, they were all gone to the
town, except perhaps a maid in the bar. Very still the house was, and the
sun shone really hot; early flies buzzed in the window-panes. So he
explored. The room facing his own was undistinguished except for an old
print of Bury St Edmunds; the two next him on his side of the passage
were gay and clean, with one window apiece, whereas his had two. Remained
the south-west room, opposite to the last which he had entered. This was
locked; but Thomson was in a mood of quite indefensible curiosity, and
feeling confident that there could be no damaging secrets in a place so
easily got at, he proceeded to fetch the key of his own room, and when
that did not answer, to collect the keys of the other three. One of them
fitted, and he opened the door. The room had two windows looking south
and west, so it was as bright and the sun as hot upon it as could be.
Here there was no carpet, but bare boards; no pictures, no washing-stand,
only a bed, in the farther corner: an iron bed, with mattress and
bolster, covered with a bluish check counterpane. As featureless a room
as you can well imagine, and yet there was something that made Thomson
close the door very quickly and yet quietly behind him and lean against
the window-sill in the passage, actually quivering all over. It was this,
that under the counterpane someone lay, and not only lay, but stirred.
That it was some one and not some thing was certain, because the shape of
a head was unmistakable on the bolster; and yet it was all covered, and
no one lies with covered head but a dead person; and this was not dead,
not truly dead, for it heaved and shivered. If he had seen these things
in dusk or by the light of a flickering candle, Thomson could have
comforted himself and talked of fancy. On this bright day that was
impossible. What was to be done? First, lock the door at all costs. Very
gingerly he approached it and bending down listened, holding his breath;
perhaps there might be a sound of heavy breathing, and a prosaic
explanation. There was absolute silence. But as, with a rather tremulous
hand, he put the key into its hole and turned it, it rattled, and on the
instant a stumbling padding tread was heard coming towards the door.
Thomson fled like a rabbit to his room and locked himself in: futile
enough, he knew it was; would doors and locks be any obstacle to what he
suspected? but it was all he could think of at the moment, and in fact
nothing happened; only there was a time of acute suspense--followed by a
misery of doubt as to what to do. The impulse, of course, was to slip
away as soon as possible from a house which contained such an inmate. But
only the day before he had said he should be staying for at least a week
more, and how if he changed plans could he avoid the suspicion of having
pried into places where he certainly had no business? Moreover, either
the Bettses knew all about the inmate, and yet did not leave the house,
or knew nothing, which equally meant that there was nothing to be afraid
of, or knew just enough to make them shut up the room, but not enough to
weigh on their spirits: in any of these cases it seemed that not much was
to be feared, and certainly so far as he had had no sort of ugly
experience. On the whole the line of least resistance was to stay.

Well, he stayed out his week. Nothing took him past that door, and, often
as he would pause in a quiet hour of day or night in the passage and
listen, and listen, no sound whatever issued from that direction. You
might have thought that Thomson would have made some attempt at ferreting
out stories connected with the inn--hardly perhaps from Betts, but from
the parson of the parish, or old people in the village; but no, the
reticence which commonly falls on people who have had strange
experiences, and believe in them, was upon him. Nevertheless, as the end
of his stay drew near, his yearning after some kind of explanation grew
more and more acute. On his solitary walks he persisted in planning out
some way, the least obtrusive, of getting another daylight glimpse into
that room, and eventually arrived at this scheme. He would leave by an
afternoon train--about four o'clock. When his fly was waiting, and his
luggage on it, he would make one last expedition upstairs to look round
his own room and see if anything was left unpacked, and then, with that
key, which he had contrived to oil (as if that made any difference!), the
door should once more be opened, for a moment, and shut.

So it worked out. The bill was paid, the consequent small talk gone
through while the fly was loaded: 'pleasant part of the country--been
very comfortable, thanks to you and Mrs Betts--hope to come back some
time', on one side: on the other, 'very glad you've found satisfaction,
sir, done our best--always glad to 'ave your good word--very much
favoured we've been with the weather, to be sure.' Then, 'I'll just take
a look upstairs in case I've left a book or something out--no, don't
trouble, I'll be back in a minute.' And as noiselessly as possible he
stole to the door and opened it. The shattering of the illusion! He
almost laughed aloud. Propped, or you might say sitting, on the edge of
the bed was--nothing in the round world but a scarecrow! A scarecrow out
of the garden, of course, dumped into the deserted room...Yes; but here
amusement ceased. Have scarecrows bare bony feet? Do their heads loll on
to their shoulders? Have they iron collars and links of chain about their
necks? Can they get up and move, if never so stiffly, across a floor,
with wagging head and arms close at their sides? and shiver?

The slam of the door, the dash to the stair-head, the leap downstairs,
were followed by a faint. Awakening, Thomson saw Betts standing over him
with the brandy bottle and a very reproachful face. 'You shouldn't a done
so, sir, really you shouldn't. It ain't a kind way to act by persons as
done the best they could for you.' Thomson heard words of this kind, but
what he said in reply he did not know. Mr Betts, and perhaps even more
Mrs Betts, found it hard to accept his apologies and his assurances that
he would say no word that could damage the good name of the house.
However, they were accepted. Since the train could not now be caught, it
was arranged that Thomson should be driven to the town to sleep there.
Before he went the Bettses told him what little they knew. 'They says he
was landlord 'ere a long time back, and was in with the 'ighwaymen that
'ad their beat about the 'eath. That's how he come by his end: 'ung in
chains, they say, up where you see that stone what the gallus stood in.
Yes, the fishermen made away with that, I believe, because they see it
out at sea and it kep' the fish off, according to their idea. Yes, we 'ad
the account from the people that 'ad the 'ouse before we come. "You keep
that room shut up," they says, "but don't move the bed out, and you'll
find there won't be no trouble." And no more there 'as been; not once he
haven't come out into the 'ouse, though what he may do now there ain't no
sayin'. Anyway, you're the first I know on that's seen him since we've
been 'ere: I never set eyes on him myself, nor don't want. And ever since
we've made the servants' rooms in the stablin', we ain't 'ad no
difficulty that way. Only I do 'ope, sir, as you'll keep a close tongue,
considerin' 'ow an 'ouse do get talked about': with more to this effect.

The promise of silence was kept for many years. The occasion of my
hearing the story at last was this: that when Mr Thomson came to stay
with my father it fell to me to show him to his room, and instead of
letting me open the door for him, he stepped forward and threw it open
himself, and then for some moments stood in the doorway holding up his
candle and looking narrowly into the interior. Then he seemed to
recollect himself and said: 'I beg your pardon. Very absurd, but I can't
help doing that, for a particular reason.' What that reason was I heard
some days afterwards, and you have heard now.



4. THE EXPERIMENT


A NEW YEAR'S EVE GHOST STORY
(Full Directions will be found at the End)


The Reverend Dr Hall was in his study making up the entries for the year
in the parish register: it being his custom to note baptisms, weddings
and burials in a paper book as they occurred, and in the last days of
December to write them out fairly in the vellum book that was kept in the
parish chest.

To him entered his housekeeper, in evident agitation. 'Oh, sir,' said
she, 'whatever do you think? The poor Squire's gone!'

'The Squire? Squire Bowles? What are you talking about, woman? Why, only
yesterday--.'

'Yes, I know, sir, but it's the truth. Wickem, the clerk, just left word
on his way down to toll the bell--you'll hear it yourself in a minute.
There now, just listen.'

Sure enough the sound broke on the still night--not loud, for the Rectory
did not immediately adjoin the churchyard. Dr Hall rose hastily.

'Terrible, terrible,' he said. 'I must see them at the Hall at once. He
seemed so greatly better yesterday.' He paused. 'Did you hear any word of
the sickness having come this way at all? There was nothing said in
Norwich. It seems so sudden.'

'No, indeed, sir, no such thing. Just caught away with a choking in his
throat, Wickem says. It do make one feel--well, I'm sure I had to set
down as much as a minute or more, I come over that queer when I heard the
words--and by what I could understand they'll be asking for the burial
very quick. There's some can't bear the thought of the cold corpse laying
in the house, and--.'

'Yes: well, I must find out from Madam Bowles herself or Mr Joseph. Get
me my cloak, will you? Ah, and could you let Wickem know that I desire to
see him when the tolling is over?' He hurried off.


'In an hour's time he was back and found Wickem waiting for him. 'There
is work for you, Wickem,' he said, as he threw off his cloak, 'and not
overmuch time to do it in.'

'Yes, sir,' said Wickem, 'the vault to be opened to be sure--.'

'No, no, that's not the message I have. The poor Squire, they tell me,
charged them before now not to lay him in the chancel. It was to be an
earth grave in the yard, on the north side.' He stopped at an
inarticulate exclamation from the clerk. 'Well?' he said.

'I ask pardon, sir,' said Wickem in a shocked voice, 'but did I
understand you right? No vault, you say, and on the north side? Tt-tt-!
Why the poor gentleman must a been wandering.'

'Yes, it does seem strange to me, too,' said Dr Hall, 'but no, Mr Joseph
tells me it was his father's--I should say stepfather's--clear wish,
expressed more than once, and when he was in good health. Clean earth and
open air. You know, of course, the poor Squire had his fancies, though he
never spoke of this one to me. And there's another thing, Wickem. No
coffin.'

'Oh dear, dear, sir,' said Wickem, yet more shocked. 'Oh, but that'll
make sad talk, that will, and what a disappointment for Wright, too! I
know he'd looked out some beautiful wood for the Squire, and had it by
him years past.'

'Well, well, perhaps the family will make it up to Wright in some way,'
said the Rector, rather impatiently, 'but what you have to do is to get
the grave dug and all things in a readiness--torches from Wright you must
not forget--by ten o'clock tomorrow night. I don't doubt but there will
be somewhat coming to you for your pains and hurry.'

'Very well, sir, if those be the orders, I must do my best to carry them
out. And should I call in on my way down and send the women up to the
Hall to lay out the body, sir?'

'No: that, I think--I am sure--was not spoken of. Mr Joseph will send, no
doubt, if they are needed. No, you have enough without that. Good-night,
Wickem. I was making up the registers when this doleful news came. Little
had I thought to add such an entry to them as I must now.'


All things had been done in decent order. The torchlighted cortege had
passed from the Hall through the park, up the lime avenue to the top of
the knoll on which the church stood. All the village had been there, and
such neighbours as could be warned in the few hours available. There was
no great surprise at the hurry.

Formalities of law there were none then, and no one blamed the stricken
widow for hastening to lay her dead to rest. Nor did anyone look to see
her following in the funeral train. Her son Joseph--only issue of her
first marriage with a Calvert of Yorkshire--was the chief mourner.

There were, indeed, no kinsfolk on Squire Bowles's side who could have
been bidden. The will, executed at the time of the Squire's second
marriage, left everything to the widow.

And what was 'everything'? Land, house, furniture, pictures, plate were
all obvious. But there should have been accumulations in coin, and beyond
a few hundreds in the hands of agents--honest men and no embezzlers--cash
there was none. Yet Francis Bowles had for years received good rents and
paid little out. Nor was he a reputed miser; he kept a good table, and
money was always forthcoming for the moderate spendings of his wife and
stepson. Joseph Calvert had been maintained ungrudgingly at school and
college.


What, then, had he done with it all? No ransacking of the house brought
any secret hoard to light; no servant, old or young, had any tale to tell
of meeting the Squire in unexpected places at strange hours. No, Madam
Bowles and her son were fairly non-plussed. As they sat one evening in
the parlour discussing the problem for the twentieth time:

'You have been at his books and papers, Joseph, again today, haven't
you?'

'Yes, mother, and no forwarder.'

'What was it he would be writing at, and why was he always sending
letters to Mr Fowler at Gloucester?'

'Why, you know he had a maggot about the Middle State of the Soul. 'Twas
over that he and that other were always busy. The last thing he wrote
would be a letter that he never finished. I'll fetch it...Yes, the same
song over again.

'"Honoured friend,--I make some slow advance in our studies, but I know
not well how far to trust our authors. Here is one lately come my way who
will have it that for a time after death the soul is under control of
certain spirits, as Raphael, and another whom I doubtfully read as Nares;
but still so near to this state of life that on prayer to them he may be
free to come and disclose matters to the living. Come, indeed, he must,
if he be rightly called, the manner of which is set forth in an
experiment. But having come, and once opened his mouth, it may chance
that his summoner shall see and hear more than of the hid treasure which
it is likely he bargained for; since the experiment puts this in the
forefront of things to be enquired. But the eftest way is to send you the
whole, which herewith I do; copied from a book of recipes which I had of
good Bishop Moore."'

Here Joseph stopped, and made no comment, gazing on the paper. For more
than a minute nothing was said, then Madam Bowles, drawing her needle
through her work and looking at it, coughed and said, 'There was no more
written?'

'No, nothing, mother.'

'No? Well, it is strange stuff. Did ever you meet this Mr Fowler?'

'Yes, it might be once or twice, in Oxford, a civil gentleman enough.'

'Now I think of it,' said she, 'it would be but right to acquaint him
with--with what has happened: they were close friends. Yes, Joseph, you
should do that: you will know what should be said. And the letter is his,
after all.

'You are in the right, mother, and I'll not delay it.' And forthwith he
sat down to write.

From Norfolk to Gloucester was no quick transit. But a letter went, and a
larger packet came in answer; and there were more evening talks in the
panelled parlour at the Hall. At the close of one, these words were said:
'Tonight, then, if you are certain of yourself, go round by the field
path. Ay, and here is a cloth will serve.'

'What cloth is that, mother? A napkin?'

'Yes, of a kind: what matter?' So he went out by the way of the garden,
and she stood in the door, musing, with her hand on her mouth. Then the
hand dropped and she said half aloud: 'If only I had not been so hurried!
But it was the face cloth, sure enough.'

It was a very dark night, and the spring wind blew loud over the black
fields: loud enough to drown all sounds of shouting or calling. If
calling there was, there was no voice, nor any that answered, nor any
that regarded--yet.

Next morning, Joseph's mother was early in his chamber. 'Give me the
cloth,' she said, 'the maids must not find it. And tell me, tell me,
quick!'

Joseph, seated on the side of the bed with his head in his hands, looked
up at her with bloodshot eyes. 'We have opened his mouth,' he said. 'Why
in God's name did you leave his face bare?'

'How could I help it? You know how I was hurried that day? But do you
mean you saw it?'

Joseph only groaned and sunk his head in his hands again. Then, in a low
voice, 'He said you should see it, too.'

With a dreadful gasp she clutched at the bedpost and clung to it. 'Oh,
but he's angry,' Joseph went on. 'He was only biding his time, I'm sure.
The words were scarce out of my mouth when I heard like the snarl of a
dog in under there.' He got up and paced the room. 'And what can we do?
He's free! And I daren't meet him! I daren't take the drink and go where
he is! I daren't lie here another night. Oh, why did you do it? We could
have waited.'

'Hush,' said his mother: her lips were dry. ''Twas you, you know it, as
much as I. Besides, what use in talking? Listen to me: 'tis but six
o'clock. There's money to cross the water: such as they can't follow.
Yarmouth's not so far, and most night boats sail for Holland, I've
heard. See you to the horses. I can be ready.'

Joseph stared at her. 'What will they say here?'

'What? Why, cannot you tell the parson we have wind of property lying in
Amsterdam which we must claim or lose? Go, go; or if you are not man
enough for that, lie here again tonight.' He shivered and went.


That evening after dark a boatman lumbered into an inn on Yarmouth Quay,
where a man and a woman sat, with saddle-bags on the floor by them.

'Ready, are you, mistress and gentleman?' he said. 'She sails before the
hour, and my other passenger he's waitin' on the quay. Be there all your
baggage?' and he picked up the bags.

'Yes, we travel light,' said Joseph. 'And you have more company bound for
Holland?'

'Just the one,' said the boatman, 'and he seem to travel lighter yet.'

'Do you know him?' said Madam Bowles: she laid her hand on Joseph's arm,
and they both paused in the doorway.

'Why no, but for all he's hooded I'd know him again fast enough, he have
such a cur'ous way of speakin', and I doubt you'll find he know you, by
what he said. "Go you and fetch 'em out," he say, "and I'll wait on 'em
here," he say, and sure enough he's a-comin' this way now.'

Poisoning of a husband was petty treason then, and women guilty of it
were strangled at the stake and burnt. The Assize records of Norwich tell
of a woman so dealt with and of her son hanged thereafter, convict on
their own confession, made before the Rector of their parish, the name of
which I withhold, for there is still hid treasure to be found there.

Bishop Moore's book of recipes is now in the University Library at
Cambridge, marked Dd 11, 45, and on the leaf numbered 144 this is
written:

An experiment most ofte proved true, to find out tresure hidden in the
ground, theft, manslaughter, or anie other thynge. Go to the grave of a
ded man, and three tymes call hym by his nam at the hed of the grave, and
say. Thou, N., N., N., I coniure the, I require the, and I charge the, by
thi Christendome that thou takest leave of the Lord Raffael and Nares and
then askest leave this night to come and tell me trewlie of the tresure
that lyith hid in such a place. Then take of the earth of the grave at
the dead bodyes hed and knitt it in a lynnen clothe and put itt under thi
right eare and sleape theruppon: and wheresoever thou lyest or slepest,
that night he will come and tell thee trewlie in waking or sleping.


5. THE MALICE OF INANIMATE OBJECTS


The Malice of Inanimate Objects is a subject upon which an old friend of
mine was fond of dilating, and not without justification. In the lives of
all of us, short or long, there have been days, dreadful days, on which
we have had to acknowledge with gloomy resignation that our world has
turned against us. I do not mean the human world of our relations and
friends: to enlarge on that is the province of nearly every modern
novelist. In their books it is called 'Life' and an odd enough harsh it is
as they portray it. No, it is the world of things that do not speak or
work or hold congresses and conferences. It includes such beings as the
collar stud, the inkstand, the fire, the razor, and, as age increases,
the extra step on the staircase which leads you either to expect or not
to expect it. By these and such as these (for I have named but the merest
fraction of them) the word is passed round, and the day of misery
arranged. Is the tale still remembered of how the Cock and Hen went to
pay a visit to Squire Korbes? How on the journey they met with and picked
up a number of associates, encouraging each with the announcement:

To Squire Korbes we are going
For a visit is owing.

Thus they secured the company of the Needle, the Egg, the Duck, the Cat,
possibly--for memory is a little treacherous here--and finally the
Millstone: and when it was discovered that Squire Korbes was for the
moment out, they took up positions in his mansion and awaited his return.
He did return, wearied no doubt by a day's work among his extensive
properties. His nerves were first jarred by the raucous cry of the Cock.
He threw himself into his armchair and was lacerated by the Needle. He
went to the sink for a refreshing wash and was splashed all over by the
Duck. Attempting to dry himself with the towel he broke the Egg upon his
face.

He suffered other indignities from the Hen and her accomplices, which I
cannot now recollect, and finally, maddened with pain and fear, rushed
out by the back door and had his brains dashed out by the Millstone that
had perched itself in the appropriate place. 'Truly,' in the concluding
words of the story, 'this Squire Korbes must have been either a very
wicked or a very unfortunate man.' It is the latter alternative which I
incline to accept. There is nothing in the preliminaries to show that any
slur rested on his name, or that his visitors had any injury to avenge.
And will not this narrative serve as a striking example of that Malice of
which I have taken upon me to treat? It is, I know, the fact that Squire
Korbes's visitors were not all of them, strictly speaking, inanimate. But
are we sure that the perpetrators of this Malice are really inanimate
either? There are tales which seem to justify a doubt.


Two men of mature years were seated in a pleasant garden after breakfast.
One was reading the day's paper, the other sat with folded arms, plunged
in thought, and on his face were a piece of sticking plaster and lines of
care. His companion lowered his paper. 'What,' said he, 'is the matter
with you? The morning is bright, the birds are singing, I can hear no
aeroplanes or motor bikes.'

'No,' replied Mr Burton, 'it is nice enough, I agree, but I have a bad
day before me. I cut myself shaving and spilt my tooth powder.'

'Ah,' said Mr Manners, 'some people have all the luck,' and with this
expression of sympathy he reverted to his paper. 'Hullo,' he exclaimed,
after a moment, 'here's George Wilkins dead! You won't have any more
bother with him, anyhow.'

'George Wilkins?' said Mr Burton, more than a little excitedly, 'Why, I
didn't even know he was ill.'

'No more he was, poor chap. Seems to have thrown up the sponge and put an
end to himself. Yes,' he went on, 'it's some days back: this is the
inquest. Seemed very much worried and depressed, they say. What about, I
wonder?

'Could it have been that will you and he were having a row about?'

'Row?' said Mr Burton angrily, 'there was no row: he hadn't a leg to
stand on: he couldn't bring a scrap of evidence. No, it may have been
half-a-dozen things: but Lord! I never imagined he'd take anything so
hard as that.'

'I don't know,' said Mr Manners, 'he was a man, I thought, who did take
things hard: they rankled. Well, I'm sorry, though I never saw much of
him. He must have gone through a lot to make him cut his throat. Not the
way I should choose, by a long sight. Ugh! Lucky he hadn't a family,
anyhow. Look here, what about a walk round before lunch? I've an errand
in the village.'

Mr Burton assented rather heavily. He was perhaps reluctant to give the
inanimate objects of the district a chance of getting at him. If so, he
was right. He just escaped a nasty purl over the scraper at the top of
the steps: a thorny branch swept off his hat and scratched his fingers,
and as they climbed a grassy slope he fairly leapt into the air with a
cry and came down flat on his face. 'What in the world?' said his friend
coming up. 'A great string, of all things! What business--Oh, I
see--belongs to that kite' (which lay on the grass a little farther up).
'Now if I can find out what little beast has left that kicking about,
I'll let him have it--or rather I won't, for he shan't see his kite
again. It's rather a good one, too.' As they approached, a puff of wind
raised the kite and it seemed to sit up on its end and look at them with
two large round eyes painted red, and, below them, three large printed
red letters, I.C.U. Mr Manners was amused and scanned the device with
care. 'Ingenious,' he said, 'it's a bit off a poster, of course: I see!
Full Particulars, the word was.' Mr Burton on the other hand was not
amused, but thrust his stick through the kite. Mr Manners was inclined to
regret this. 'I dare say it serves him right,' he said, 'but he'd taken a
lot of trouble to make it.'

'Who had?' said Mr Burton sharply. 'Oh, I see, you mean the boy.'

'Yes, to be sure, who else? But come on down now: I want to leave a
message before lunch.' As they turned a corner into the main street, a
rather muffled and choky voice was heard to say 'Look out! I'm coming.'
They both stopped as if they had been shot.

'Who was that?' said Manners. 'Blest if I didn't think I knew'--then,
with almost a yell of laughter he pointed with his stick. A cage with a
grey parrot in it was hanging in an open window across the way. 'I was
startled, by George: it gave you a bit of a turn, too, didn't it?' Burton
was inaudible. 'Well, I shan't be a minute: you can go and make friends
with the bird.' But when he rejoined Burton, that unfortunate was not, it
seemed, in trim for talking with either birds or men; he was some way
ahead and going rather quickly. Manners paused for an instant at the
parrot window and then hurried on laughing more than ever. 'Have a good
talk with Polly?' said he, as he came up.

'No, of course not,' said Burton, testily. 'I didn't bother about the
beastly thing.'

'Well, you wouldn't have got much out of her if you'd tried,' said
Manners. 'I remembered after a bit; they've had her in the window for
years: she's stuffed.' Burton seemed about to make a remark, but
suppressed it.

Decidedly this was not Burton's day out. He choked at lunch, he broke a
pipe, he tripped in the carpet, he dropped his book in the pond in the
garden. Later on he had or professed to have a telephone call summoning
him back to town next day and cutting short what should have been a
week's visit. And so glum was he all the evening that Manners'
disappointment in losing an ordinarily cheerful companion was not very
sharp.

At breakfast Mr Burton said little about his night: but he did intimate
that he thought of looking in on his doctor. 'My hand's so shaky,' he
said, 'I really daren't shave this morning.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' said Mr Manners, 'my man could have managed that for
you: but they'll put you right in no time.'

Farewells were said. By some means and for some reason Mr Burton
contrived to reserve a compartment to himself. (The train was not of the
corridor type.) But these precautions avail little against the angry
dead.

I will not put dots or stars, for I dislike them, but I will say that
apparently someone tried to shave Mr Burton in the train, and did not
succeed overly well. He was however satisfied with what he had done, if
we may judge from the fact that on a once white napkin spread on Mr
Burton's chest was an inscription in red letters: GEO. W. FECI.

Do not these facts--if facts they are--bear out my suggestion that there
is something not inanimate behind the Malice of Inanimate Objects? Do
they not further suggest that when this malice begins to show itself we
should be very particular to examine and if possible rectify any
obliquities in our recent conduct? And do they not, finally, almost force
upon us the conclusion that, like Squire Korbes, Mr Burton must have been
either a very wicked or a singularly unfortunate man?



6. A VIGNETTE


You are asked to think of the spacious garden of a country rectory,
adjacent to a park of many acres, and separated therefrom by a belt of
trees of some age which we knew as the Plantation. It is but about thirty
or forty yards broad. A close gate of split oak leads to it from the path
encircling the garden, and when you enter it from that side you put your
hand through a square hole cut in it and lift the hook to pass along to
the iron gate which admits to the park from the Plantation. It has
further to be added that from some windows of the rectory, which stands
on a somewhat lower level than the Plantation, parts of the path leading
thereto, and the oak gate itself can be seen. Some of the trees, Scotch
firs and others, which form a backing and a surrounding, are of
considerable size, but there is nothing that diffuses a mysterious gloom
or imparts a sinister flavour--nothing of melancholy or funereal
associations. The place is well clad, and there are secret nooks and
retreats among the bushes, but there is neither offensive bleakness nor
oppressive darkness. It is, indeed, a matter for some surprise when one
thinks it over, that any cause for misgivings of a nervous sort have
attached itself to so normal and cheerful a spot, the more so, since
neither our childish mind when we lived there nor the more inquisitive
years that came later ever nosed out any legend or reminiscence of old or
recent unhappy things.

Yet to me they came, even to me, leading an exceptionally happy wholesome
existence, and guarded--not strictly but as carefully as was any way
necessary--from uncanny fancies and fear. Not that such guarding avails
to close up all gates. I should be puzzled to fix the date at which any
sort of misgiving about the Plantation gate first visited me. Possibly it
was in the years just before I went to school, possibly on one later
summer afternoon of which I have a faint memory, when I was coming back
after solitary roaming in the park, or, as I bethink me, from tea at the
Hall: anyhow, alone, and fell in with one of the villagers also homeward
bound just as I was about to turn off the road on to the track leading to
the Plantation. We broke off our talk with 'good nights', and when I
looked back at him after a minute or so I was just a little surprised to
see him standing still and looking after me. But no remark passed, and on
I went. By the time I was within the iron gate and outside the park, dusk
had undoubtedly come on; but there was no lack yet of light, and I could
not account to myself for the questionings which certainly did rise as to
the presence of anyone else among the trees, questionings to which I
could not very certainly say 'No', nor, I was glad to feel, 'Yes',
because if there were anyone they could not well have any business there.
To be sure, it is difficult, in anything like a grove, to be quite
certain that nobody is making a screen out of a tree trunk and keeping it
between you and him as he moves round it and you walk on. All I can say
is that if such an one was there he was no neighbour or acquaintance of
mine, and there was some indication about him of being cloaked or hooded.
But I think I may have moved at a rather quicker pace than before, and
have been particular about shutting the gate. I think, too, that after
that evening something of what Hamlet calls a 'gain-giving' may have been
present in my mind when I thought of the Plantation, I do seem to
remember looking out of a window which gave in that direction, and
questioning whether there was or was not any appearance of a moving form
among the trees. If I did, and perhaps I did, hint a suspicion to the
nurse the only answer to it will have been 'the hidea of such a thing!'
and an injunction to make haste and get into my bed.

Whether it was on that night or a later one that I seem to see myself
again in the small hours gazing out of the window across moonlit grass
and hoping I was mistaken in fancying any movement in that half-hidden
corner of the garden, I cannot now be sure. But it was certainly within a
short while that I began to be visited by dreams which I would much
rather not have had--which, in fact, I came to dread acutely; and the
point round which they centred was the Plantation gate.

As years go on it but seldom happens that a dream is disturbing. Awkward
it may be, as when, while I am drying myself after a bath, I open the
bedroom door and step out on to a populous railway platform and have to
invent rapid and flimsy excuses for the deplorable deshabille. But such a
vision is not alarming, though it may make one despair of ever holding up
one's head again. But in the times of which I am thinking, it did happen,
not often, but oftener than I liked, that the moment a dream set in I
knew that it was going to turn out ill, and that there was nothing I
could do to keep it on cheerful lines.

Ellis the gardener might be wholesomely employed with rake and spade as I
watched at the window; other familiar figures might pass and repass on
harmless errands; but I was not deceived. I could see that the time was
coming when the gardener and the rest would be gathering up their
properties and setting off on paths that led homeward or into some safe
outer world, and the garden would be left--to itself, shall we say, or to
denizens who did not desire quite ordinary company and were only waiting
for the word 'all clear' to slip into their posts of vantage.

Now, too, was the moment near when the surroundings began to take on a
threatening look; that the sunlight lost power and a quality of light
replaced it which, though I did not know it at the time my memory years
after told me was the lifeless pallor of an eclipse. The effect of all
this was to intensify the foreboding that had begun to possess me, and to
make me look anxiously about, dreading that in some quarter my fear would
take a visible shape. I had not much doubt which way to look. Surely
behind those bushes, among those trees, there was motion, yes, and
surely--and more quickly than seemed possible--there was motion, not now
among the trees, but on the very path towards the house. I was still at
the window, and before I could adjust myself to the new fear there came
the impression of a tread on the stairs and a hand on the door. That was
as far as the dream got, at first; and for me it was far enough. I had no
notion what would have been the next development, more than that it was
bound to be horrifying.

That is enough in all conscience about the beginning of my dreams. A
beginning it was only, for something like it came again and again; how
often I can't tell, but often enough to give me an acute distaste for
being left alone in that region of the garden. I came to fancy that I
could see in the behaviour of the village people whose work took them
that way an anxiety to be past a certain point, and moreover a welcoming
of company as they approached that corner of the park. But on this it
will not do to lay overmuch stress, for, as I have said, I could never
glean any kind of story bound up with the place.

However, the strong probability that there had been one once I cannot
deny.

I must not by the way give the impression that the whole of the
Plantation was haunted ground. There were trees there most admirably
devised for climbing and reading in; there was a wall, along the top of
which you could walk for many hundred yards and reach a frequented road,
passing farmyard and familiar houses; and once in the park, which had its
own delights of wood and water, you were well out of range of anything
suspicious--or, if that is too much to say, of anything that suggested
the Plantation gate.

But I am reminded, as I look on these pages, that so far we have had only
preamble, and that there is very little in the way of actual incident to
come, and that the criticism attributed to the devil when he sheared the
sow is like to be justified. What, after all, was the outcome of the
dreams to which without saying a word about them I was liable during a
good space of time? Well, it presents itself to me thus. One
afternoon--the day being neither overcast nor threatening--I was at my
window in the upper floor of the house. All the family were out. From
some obscure shelf in a disused room I had worried out a book, not very
recondite: it was, in fact, a bound volume of a magazine in which were
contained parts of a novel. I know now what novel it was, but I did not
then, and a sentence struck and arrested me. Someone was walking at dusk
up a solitary lane by an old mansion in Ireland, and being a man of
imagination he was suddenly forcibly impressed by what he calls 'the
aerial image of the old house, with its peculiar malign, scared, and
skulking aspect' peering out of the shade of its neglected old trees. The
words were quite enough to set my own fancy on a bleak track. Inevitably
I looked and looked with apprehension, to the Plantation gate. As was but
right it was shut, and nobody was upon the path that led to it or from
it. But as I said a while ago, there was in it a square hole giving
access to the fastening; and through that hole, I could see--and it
struck like a blow on the diaphragm--something white or partly white. Now
this I could not bear, and with an access of something like courage--only
it was more like desperation, like determining that I must know the
worst--I did steal down and, quite uselessly, of course, taking cover
behind bushes as I went, I made progress until I was within range of the
gate and the hole. Things were, alas! worse than I had feared; through
that hole a face was looking my way. It was not monstrous, not pale,
fleshless, spectral. Malevolent I thought and think it was; at any rate
the eyes were large and open and fixed. It was pink and, I thought, hot,
and just above the eyes the border of a white linen drapery hung down
from the brows.

There is something horrifying in the sight of a face looking at one out
of a frame as this did; more particularly if its gaze is unmistakably
fixed upon you. Nor does it make the matter any better if the expression
gives no clue to what is to come next. I said just now that I took this
face to be malevolent, and so I did, but not in regard of any positive
dislike or fierceness which it expressed. It was, indeed, quite without
emotion: I was only conscious that I could see the whites of the eyes all
round the pupil, and that, we know, has a glamour of madness about it.
The immovable face was enough for me. I fled, but at what I thought must
be a safe distance inside my own precincts I could not but halt and look
back. There was no white thing framed in the hole of the gate, but there
was a draped form shambling away among the trees.

Do not press me with questions as to how I bore myself when it became
necessary to face my family again. That I was upset by something I had
seen must have been pretty clear, but I am very sure that I fought off
all attempts to describe it. Why I make a lame effort to do it now I
cannot very well explain: it undoubtedly has had some formidable power of
clinging through many years to my imagination. I feel that even now I
should be circumspect in passing that Plantation gate; and every now and
again the query haunts me: Are there here and there sequestered places
which some curious creatures still frequent, whom once on a time anybody
could see and speak to as they went about on their daily occasions,
whereas now only at rare intervals in a series of years does one cross
their paths and become aware of them; and perhaps that is just as well
for the peace of mind of simple people.


* * * * *



APPENDIX: M. R. JAMES ON GHOST STORIES

(i) from the Preface to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904)

I WROTE these stories at long intervals, and most of them were read to
patient friends, usually at the season of Christmas. One of these friends
[James McBryde] offered to illustrate them, and it was agreed that, if he
would do that, I would consider the question of publishing them. Four
pictures he completed, which will be found in this volume, and then, very
quickly and unexpectedly, he was taken away. This is the reason why the
greater part of the stories are not provided with illustrations. Those
who knew the artist will understand how much I wished to give a permanent
form even to a fragment of his work; others will appreciate the fact that
here a remembrance is made of one in whom many friendships centred. The
stories themselves do not make any very exalted claim. If any of them
succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when
walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire
in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained.

(ii) from the Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911)

Some years ago I promised to publish a second volume of ghost stories
when a sufficient number of them should have been accumulated. That time
has arrived, and here is the volume. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to warn
the critic that in evolving the stories I have not been possessed by that
austere sense of the responsibility of authorship which is demanded of
the writer of fiction in this generation; or that I have not sought to
embody in them any well-considered scheme of 'psychical' theory. To be
sure, I have my ideas as to how a ghost story ought to be laid out if it
is to 'be effective.' I think that, as a rule, the setting should be
fairly familiar and the majority of the characters and their talk such as
you may meet or hear any day. A ghost story of which the scene is laid in
the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or
poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to
himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to
me!' Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be
malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well
in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a
fictitious ghost story. Again, I feel that the technical terms of
'occultism', if they are not very carefully handled, tend to put the mere
ghost story (which is all that I am attempting) upon a quasi-scientific
plane, and to call into play faculties quite other than the imaginative.
I am well aware that mine is a nineteenth-(and not a twentieth-) century
conception of this class of tale; but were not the prototypes of all the
best ghost stories written in the sixties and seventies?

However, I cannot claim to have been guided by any very strict rules. My
stories have been produced (with one exception) at successive Christmas
seasons. If they serve to amuse some readers at the Christmas-time that
is coming--or at any time whatever--they will justify my action in
publishing them.

(iii) from the Prologue to J. S. Le Fanu, Madam Crowl's Ghost (1923)

[Le Fanu] stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost
stories. That is my deliberate verdict, after reading all the
supernatural tales I have been able to get hold of. Nobody sets the scene
better than he, nobody touches in the effective detail more deftly. I do
not think it is merely the fact of my being past middle age that leads me
to regard the leisureliness of his style as a merit; for I am by no means
inappreciative of the more modern efforts in this branch of fiction. No,
it has to be recognized, I am sure, that the ghost story is in itself a
slightly old-fashioned form; it needs some deliberateness in the telling:
we listen to it the more readily if the narrator poses as elderly, or
throws back his experience to 'some thirty years ago'.

(iv) from the Introduction to V. H. Collins (ed.), Ghosts and Marvels
(Oxford, 1924)

Often have I been asked to formulate my views about ghost stories and
tales of the marvellous, the mysterious, the supernatural. Never have I
been able to find out whether I had any views that could be formulated.
The truth is, I suspect, that the genre is too small and special to bear
the imposition of far reaching principles. Widen the question, and ask
what governs the construction of short stories in general, and a great
deal might be said, and has been said. There are, of course, instances of
whole novels in which the supernatural governs the plot; but among them
are few successes. The ghost story is, at its best, only a particular
sort of short story, and is subject to the same broad rules as the whole
mass of them. Those rules, I imagine, no writer ever consciously follows.
In fact, it is absurd to talk of them as rules; they are qualities which
have been observed to accompany success.

Some such qualities I have noted, and while I cannot undertake to write
about broad principles, something more concrete is capable of being
recorded. Well, then: two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of
a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed
crescendo. I assume, of course, that the writer will have got his central
idea before he undertakes the story at all. Let us, then, be introduced
to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary
business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings;
and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head,
unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the
stage. It is not amiss sometimes to leave a loophole for a natural
explanation; but, I would say, let the loophole be so narrow as not to
be quite practicable. Then, for the setting. The detective story cannot
be too much up-to-date: the motor, the telephone, the aeroplane, the
newest slang, are all in place there. For the ghost story a slight haze
of distance is desirable. 'Thirty years ago', 'Not long before the war',
are very proper openings. If a really remote date be chosen, there is
more than one way of bringing the reader in contact with it. The finding
of documents about it can be made plausible; or you may begin with your
apparition and go back over the years to tell the cause of it; or (as in
'Schalken the Painter') you may set the scene directly in the desired
epoch, which I think is hardest to do with success. On the whole (though
not a few instances might be quoted against me) I think that a setting so
modern that the ordinary reader can judge of its naturalness for himself
is preferable to anything antique. For some degree of actuality is the
charm of the best ghost stories; not a very insistent actuality, but one
strong enough to allow the reader to identify himself with the patient;
while it is almost inevitable that the reader of an antique story should
fall into the position of the mere spectator.

(v) 'Stories I Have Tried to Write', first published in The Touchstone, 2
(30 Nov. 1929), 46-7; reprinted in The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R.
James (1931), 643-7

I have neither much experience nor much perseverance in the writing of
stories--I am thinking exclusively of ghost stories, for I never cared to
try any other kind--and it has amused me sometimes to think of the
stories which have crossed my mind from time to time and never
materialized properly. Never properly: for some of them I have actually
written down, and they repose in a drawer somewhere. To borrow Sir Walter
Scott's most frequent quotation, 'Look on (them) again I dare not.' They
were not good enough. Yet some of them had ideas in them which refused to
blossom in the surroundings I had devised for them, but perhaps came up
in other forms in stories that did get as far as print. Let me recall
them for the benefit (so to style it) of somebody else.

There was the story of a man travelling in a train in France. Facing him
sat a typical Frenchwoman of mature years, with the usual moustache and a
very confirmed countenance. He had nothing to read but an antiquated
novel he had bought for its binding--Madame de Lichtenstein it was
called. Tired of looking out of the window and studying his vis-a-vis, he
began drowsily turning the pages, and paused at a conversation between
two of the characters. They were discussing an acquaintance, a woman who
lived in a largish house at Marcilly-le-Hayer. The house was described,
and--here we were coming to a point--the mysterious disappearance of the
woman's husband. Her name was mentioned, and my reader couldn't help
thinking he knew it in some other connexion. Just then the train stopped
at a country station, the traveller, with a start, woke up from a
doze--the book open in his hand--the woman opposite him got out, and on
the label of her bag he read the name that had seemed to be in his novel.
Well, he went on to Troyes, and from there he made excursions, and one of
these took him--at lunch-time--to--yes, to Marcilly-le-Hayer. The hotel
in the Grande Place faced a three-gabled house of some pretensions. Out
of it came a well-dressed woman whom he had seen before. Conversation
with the waiter. Yes, the lady was a widow, or so it was believed. At any
rate nobody knew what had become of her husband. Here I think we broke
down. Of course, there was no such conversation in the novel as the
traveller thought he had read.

Then there was quite a long one about two undergraduates spending
Christmas in a country house that belonged to one of them. An uncle, next
heir to the estate, lived near. Plausible and learned Roman priest,
living with the uncle, makes himself agreeable to the young men. Dark
walks home at night after dining with the uncle. Curious disturbances as
they pass through the shrubberies. Strange, shapeless tracks in the snow
round the house, observed in the morning. Efforts to lure away the
companion and isolate the proprietor and get him to come out after dark.
Ultimate defeat and death of the priest, upon whom the Familiar, baulked
of another victim, turns.

Also the story of two students of King's College, Cambridge, in the
sixteenth century (who were, in fact, expelled thence for magical
practices), and their nocturnal expedition to a witch at Fenstanton, and
of how, at the turning to Lolworth, on the Huntingdon road, they met a
company leading an unwilling figure whom they seemed to know. And of how,
on arriving at Fenstanton, they learned of the witch's death, and of what
they saw seated upon her newly-dug grave.

These were some of the tales which got as far as the stage of being
written down, at least in part. There were others that flitted across the
mind from time to time, but never really took shape. The man, for
instance (naturally a man with something on his mind), who, sitting in
his study one evening, was startled by a slight sound, turned hastily,
and saw a certain dead face looking out from between the window curtains:
a dead face, but with living eyes. He made a dash at the curtains and
tore them apart. A pasteboard mask fell to the floor. But there was no
one there, and the eyes of the mask were but eyeholes. What was to be
done about that?

There is the touch on the shoulder that comes when you are walking
quickly homewards in the dark hours, full of anticipation of the warm
room and bright fire, and when you pull up, startled, what face or
no-face do you see?

Similarly, when Mr Badman had decided to settle the hash of Mr Goodman
and had picked out, just the right thicket by the roadside from which to
fire at him, how came it exactly that when Mr Goodman and his unexpected
friend actually did pass, they found Mr Badman weltering in the road? He
was able to tell them something of what he had found waiting for
him--even beckoning to him--in the thicket: enough to prevent them from
looking into it themselves. There are possibilities here, but the labour
of constructing the proper setting has been beyond me.

There may be possibilities, too, in the Christmas cracker, if the right
people pull it, and if the motto which they find inside has the right
message on it. They will probably leave the party early, pleading
indisposition; but very likely a previous engagement of long standing
would be the more truthful excuse.

In parenthesis, many common objects may be made the vehicles of
retribution, and where retribution is not called for, of malice. Be
careful how you handle the packet you pick up in the carriage-drive,
particularly if it contains nail-parings and hair. Do not, in any case,
bring it into the house. It may not be alone...(Dots are believed by many
writers of our day to be a good substitute for effective writing. They
are certainly an easy one. Let us have a few more.....)

Late on Monday night a toad came into my study: and, though nothing has
so far seemed to link itself with this appearance, I feel that it may not
be quite prudent to brood over topics which may open the interior eye to
the presence of more formidable visitants. Enough said.

(vi) 'Some Remarks on Ghost Stories', The Bookman (December 1929),
169-172

Very nearly all the ghost stories of old times claim to be true
narratives of remarkable occurrences. At the outset I must make it clear
that with these--be they ancient, medieval or post medieval--I have
nothing to do, any more than I have with those chronicled in our own
days. I am concerned with a branch of fiction; not a large branch, if you
look at the rest of the tree, but one which has been astonishingly
fertile in the last thirty years. The avowedly fictitious ghost story is
my subject, and that being understood I can proceed.

In the year 1854 George Borrow narrated to an audience of Welshmen, 'in
the tavern of Gutter Vawr, in the county of Glamorgan', what he asserted
to be 'decidedly the best ghost story in the world'. You may read this
story either in English, in Knapp's notes to Wild Wales, or in Spanish,
in a recent edition with excellent pictures (Las Aventuras de Pánfilo).
The source is Lope de Vega's El Peregrino en so patria published in 1604.
You will find it a remarkably interesting specimen of a tale of terror
written in Shakespeare's lifetime, but I shall be surprised if you agree
with Borrow's estimate of it. It is nothing but an account of a series of
nightmares experienced by a wanderer who lodges for a night in a
'hospital', which had been deserted because of hauntings. The ghosts come
in crowds and play tricks with the victim's bed. They quarrel over cards,
they squirt water at the man, they throw torches about the room. Finally
they steal his clothes and disappear; but next morning the clothes are
where he put them when he went to bed. In fact they are rather goblins
than ghosts.

Still, here you have a story written with the sole object of inspiring a
pleasing terror in the reader; and as I think, that is the true aim of
the ghost story.

As far as I know, nearly two hundred years pass before you find the
literary ghost story attempted again. Ghosts of course figure on the
stage, but we must leave them out of consideration. Ghosts are the
subject of quasi-scientific research in this country at the hands of
Glanville, Beaumont and others; but these collectors are out to prove
theories of the future life and the spiritual world. Improving treatises,
with illustrative instances, are written on the Continent, as by Lavater.
All these, if they do afford what our ancestors called amusement (Dr
Johnson decreed that Coriolanius was 'amusing'), do so by a side-wind.
The Castle of Otranto is perhaps the progenitor of the ghost story as a
literary genre, and I fear that it is merely amusing in the modern sense.
Then we come to Mrs Radcliffe, whose ghosts are far better of their kind,
but with exasperating timidity are all explained away; and to Monk Lewis,
who in the book which gives him his nickname is odious and horrible
without being impressive. But Monk Lewis was responsible for better
things than he could produce himself. It was under his auspices that
Scott's verse first saw the light: among the Tales of Terror and Wonder
are not only some of his translations, but 'Glenfinlas' and the 'Eve of
St John', which must always rank as fine ghost stories. The form into
which he cast them was that of the ballads which he loved and collected.
and we must not forget that the ballad is in the direct line of ancestry
of the ghost story. Think of 'Clerk Saunders', 'Young Benjie,' the 'Wife
of Usher's Well'. I am tempted to enlarge on the Tales of Terror, for the
most part supremely absurd, where Lewis holds the pen, and jigs along
with such stanzas as:


All present then uttered a terrified shout;
All turned with disgust from the scene.
The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out,
And sported his eyes and his temples about,
While the spectre addressed Imogene.


But proportion must be observed.

If I were writing generally of horrific books which include supernatural
appearances, I should be obliged to include Maturin's Melmoth, and
doubtless imitations of it which I know nothing of. But Melmoth is a
long--a cruelly long--book, and we must keep our eye on the short prose
ghost story in the first place. If Scott is not the creator of this, it
is to him that we owe two classical specimens--'Wandering Willie's Tale'
and the 'Tapestried Chamber'. The former we know is an episode in a
novel; anyone who searches the novels of succeeding years will certainly
find (as we, alas, find in Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby!) stories of
this type foisted in; and possibly some of them may be good enough to
deserve reprinting. But the real happy hunting ground, the proper habitat
of our game is the magazine, the annual, the periodical publication
destined to amuse the family circle. They came up thick and fast, the
magazines, in the thirties and forties, and many died young. I do not,
having myself sampled the task, envy the devoted one who sets out to
examine the files, but it is not rash to promise him a measure of
success. He will find ghost stories; but of what sort? Charles Dickens
will tell us. In a paper from Household Words, which will be found among
Christmas Stories under the name of 'A Christmas Tree' (I reckon it among
the best of Dickens's occasional writings), that great man takes occasion
to run through the plots of the typical ghost stories of his time. As he
remarks, they are 'reducible to a very few general types and classes; for
ghosts have little originality, and "walk" in a beaten track.' He gives
us at some length the experience of the nobleman and the ghost of the
beautiful young housekeeper who drowned herself in the park two hundred
years before; and, more cursorily, the indelible bloodstain, the door
that will not shut, the clock that strikes thirteen, the phantom coach,
the compact to appear after death, the girl who meets her double, the
cousin who is seen at the moment of his death far away in India, the
maiden lady who 'really did see the Orphan Boy'. With such things as
these we arc still familiar. But we have rather forgotten--and I for my
part have seldom met--those with which he ends his survey: 'Legion is the
name of the German castles where we sit up alone to meet the
spectre--where we are shown into a room made comparatively cheerful for
our reception' (more detail, excellent of its kind, follows), 'and where,
about the small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers
supernatural mysteries. Legion is the name of the haunted German
students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the
schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the
footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally blows
open.'

As I have said, this German stratum of ghost stories is one of which I
know little; but I am confident that the searcher of magazines will
penetrate to it. Examples of the other types will accrue, especially when
he reaches the era of Christmas Numbers, inaugurated by Dickens himself.
His Christmas Numbers are not to be confused with his Christmas Books,
though the latter led on to the former. Ghosts are not absent from these,
but I do not call the Christmas Carol a ghost story proper; while I do
assign that name to the stories of the Signalman and the Juryman (in
'Mugby Junction' and 'Dr Marigold').

These were written in 1865 and 1866, and nobody can deny that they
conform to the modern idea of the ghost story. The setting and the
personages are those of the writer's own day; they have nothing antique
about them. Now this mode is not absolutely essential to success, but it
is characteristic of the majority of successful stories: the belted
knight who meets the spectre in the vaulted chamber and has to say 'By
my halidom', or words to that effect, has little actuality about him.
Anything, we feel, might have happened in the fifteenth century. No; the
seer of ghosts must talk something like me, and be dressed, if not in my
fashion, yet not too much like a man in a pageant, if he is to enlist my
sympathy. Wardour Street has no business, here.

If Dickens's ghost stories are good and of the right complexion, they are
not the best that were written in his day. The palm must I think be
assigned to J. S. Le Fanu, whose stories of The Watcher' (or 'The
Familiar'), 'Mr Justice Harbottle', 'Carmilla', are unsurpassed, while
'Schalken the Painter'. 'Squire Toby's Will', the haunted house in 'The
House by the Churchyard', 'Dickon the Devil', 'Madam Crowl's Ghost', run
them very close. Is it the blend of French and Irish in Le Fanu's descent
and surroundings that gives him the knack of infusing ominousness into
his atmosphere? He is anyhow an artist in words; who else could have hit
on the epithets in this sentence: The aerial image of the old house for a
moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, scared and skulking
aspect.' Other famous stories of Le Fanu there are which are not quite
ghost stories--'Green Tea' and 'The Room in the Dragon Volant'; and yet
another, 'The Haunted Baronet', not famous, not even known but to a few,
contains some admirable touches, but somehow lacks proportion. Upon
mature consideration, I do not think that there are better ghost stories
anywhere than the best of Le Fanu's; and among these I should give the
first place to 'The Familiar' (alias 'The Watcher').

Other famous novelists of those days tried their hand--Bulwer Lytton for
one. Nobody is permitted to write about ghost stories without mentioning
'The Haunters and the Haunted'. To my mind it is spoilt by the
conclusion; the Cagliostro element (forgive an inaccuracy) is alien. It
comes in with far better effect (though in a burlesque guise) in
Thackeray's one attempt in this direction--'The Notch in the Axe', in the
Roundabout Papers. This to be sure begins by being a skit partly on
Dumas, partly on Lytton; but as Thackeray warmed to his work he got
interested in the story and, as he says, was quite sorry to part with
Pinto in the end. We have to reckon too with Wilkie Collins. The Haunted
Hotel, a short novel, is by no means ineffective; grisly enough, almost,
for the modern American taste.

Rhoda Broughton, Mrs Riddell, Mrs Henry Wood, Mrs Oliphant--all these
have some sufficiently absorbing stories to their credit. I own to
reading not infrequently 'Featherston's Story' in the fifth series of
Johnny Ludlow, to delighting in its domestic flavour and finding its
ghost very convincing. (Johnny Ludlow, some young persons may not know,
is by Mrs Henry Wood.) The religious ghost story, as it may be called,
was never done better than by Mrs Oliphant in 'The Open Door' and 'A
Beleaguered City'; though there is a competitor, and a strong one, in Le
Fanu's 'Mysterious Lodger'.

Here I am conscious of a gap; my readers will have been conscious of many
previous gaps. My memory does in fact slip on from Mrs Oliphant to Marion
Crawford and his horrid story of 'The Upper Berth', which (with The
Screaming Skull' some distance behind) is the best in his collection of
Uncanny Tales, and stands high among ghost stories in general.

That was I believe written in the late eighties. In the early nineties
comes the deluge, the deluge of the illustrated monthly magazines, and it
is no longer possible to keep pace with the output either of single
stories or of volumes of collected ones. Never was the flow more copious
than it is today, and it is only by chance that one comes across any
given example. So nothing beyond scattering and general remarks can be
offered. Some whole novels there have been which depend for all or part
of their interest on ghostly matter. There is Dracula, which suffers by
excess. (I fancy, by the way, that it must be based on a story in the
fourth volume of Chambers's Repository, issued in the fifties.) There is
Alice-for-Short [by W. de Morgan, 1907], in which I never cease to admire
the skill with which the ghost is woven into the web of the tale. But
that is a very rare feat.

Among the collections of short stories, E. F. Benson's three volumes rank
high, though to my mind he sins occasionally by stepping over the line of
legitimate horridness. He is however blameless in this aspect as compared
with some Americans, who compile volumes called Not At Night and the
like. These are merely nauseating, and it is very easy to be nauseating.
I, mot qui vous parle, could undertake to make a reader physically sick,
if I chose to think and write in terms of the Grand Guignol. The authors
of the stories I have in mind tread, as they believe, in the steps of
Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce (himself sometimes unpardonable), but
they do not possess the force of either.

Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic
point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect,
blatancy ruins it, and there is much blatancy in a lot of recent stories.
They drag in sex too, which is a fatal mistake; sex is tiresome enough in
the novels; in a ghost story, or as the backbone of a ghost story, I have
no patience with it.

At the same time don't let us be mild and drab. Malevolence and terror,
the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing
forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place,
and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully
husbanded; the weltering and wallowing that I too often encounter merely
recall the methods of M. G. Lewis.

Clearly it is out of the question for me to begin upon a series of 'short
notices' of recent collections; but an illustrative instance or two will
be to the point. A. M. Burrage, in Sonic Ghost Stories, keeps on the
right side of the line, and if about half of his ghosts are amiable, the
rest have their terrors, and no mean ones. H. R. Wakefield, in They
Return at Evening (a good title) gives us a mixed bag, from which I
should remove one or two that leave a nasty taste. Among the residue are
some admirable pieces, very inventive. Going back a few years I light on
Mrs Everett's The Death Mask, of a rather quieter tone on the whole, but
with some excellently conceived stories. Hugh Benson's Light Invisible
and Mirror of Shalott are too ecclesiastical. K. and Hesketh Prichard's
'Flaxman Low' is most ingenious and successful, but rather
over-technically 'occult'. It seems impertinent to apply the same
criticism to Algernon Blackwood, but 'John Silence' is surely open to it.
Mr Elliott O'Donnell's multitudinous volumes I do not know whether to
class as narratives of fact or exercises in fiction. I hope they may be
of the latter sort, for life in a world managed by his gods and infested
by his demons seems a risky business.

So I might go on through a long list of authors; but the remarks one can
make in an article of this compass can hardly be illuminating. The
reading of many ghost stories has shown me that the greatest successes
have been scored by the authors who can make us envisage a definite time
and place, and give us plenty of clear-cut and matter-of-fact detail, but
who, when the climax is reached, allow us to be just a little in the dark
as to the working of their machinery. We do not want to see the bones of
their theory about the supernatural.

All this while I have confined myself almost entirely to the English
ghost story. The fact is that either there are not many good stories by
foreign writers, or (more probably) my ignorance has veiled them from me.
But I should feel myself ungrateful if I did not pay a tribute to the
supernatural tales of Erckmann-Chatrian. The blend of French with German
in them, comparable to the French-Irish blend in Le Fanu, has produced
some quite first-class romance of this kind. Among longer stories, 'La
Maison Forestičre' (and, if you will, 'Hugues le Loup'); among shorter
ones 'Le Blanc et le Noir', 'Le Ręvedu Cousin Elof’ and L'Oeil Invisible'
have for years delighted and alarmed me. It is high time that they were
made more accessible than they are.

There need not be any peroration to a series of rather disjointed
reflections. I will only ask the reader to believe that, though I have
not hitherto mentioned it, I have read The Turn of the Screw.

(vii) 'Ghosts--Treat Them Gently!', Evening News (17 April 1931)

What first interested me in ghosts? This I can tell you quite definitely.
In my childhood I chanced to see a toy Punch and Judy set, with figures
cut out in cardboard. One of these was The Ghost. It was a tall figure
habited in white with an unnaturally long and narrow head, also
surrounded with white, and a dismal visage.

Upon this my conceptions of a ghost were based, and for years it
permeated my dreams.

Other questions--why I like ghost stories, or what are the best, or why
they are the best, or a recipe for writing such things--I have never
found it easy to be so positive about. Clearly, however, the public likes
them. The recrudescence of ghost stories in recent years is notable: it
corresponds, of course, with the vogue of the detective tale.

The ghost story can be supremely excellent in its kind, or it may be
deplorable. Like other things, it may err by excess or defect. Bram
Stoker's Dracula is a book with very good ideas in it, but--to be
vulgar--the butter is spread far too thick. Excess is the fault here: to
give an example of erring by defect is difficult, because the stories
that err in that way leave no impression on the memory.

I am speaking of the literary ghost story here. The story that claims to
be 'veridical' (in the language of the Society of Psychical Research) is
a very different affair. It will probably be quite brief, and will
conform to some one of several familiar types. This is but reasonable,
for, if there be ghosts--as I am quite prepared to believe--the true
ghost story need do no more than illustrate their normal habits (if
normal is the right word), and may be as mild as milk.

The literary ghost, on the other hand, has to justify his existence by
some startling demonstration, or, short of that must be furnished with a
background that will throw him into full relief and make him the central
feature.

Since the things which the ghost can effectively do are very limited in
number, ranging about death and madness and the discovery of secrets, the
setting seems to me all-important, since in it there is the greatest
opportunity for variety.

It is upon this and upon the first glimmer of the appearance of the
supernatural that pains must be lavished. But we need not, we should not,
use all the colours in the box. In the infancy of the art we needed the
haunted castle on a beetling rock to put us in the right frame: the
tendency is not yet extinct, for I have but just read a story with a
mysterious mansion on a desolate height in Cornwall and a gentleman
practising the worst sort of magic. How often, too, have ruinous old
houses been described or shown to me as fit scenes for stories!

'Can't you imagine some old monk or friar wandering about this long
gallery?' No, I can't.

I know Harrison Ainsworth could: The Lancashire Witches teems with
Cistercians and what he calls votaresses in mouldering vestments, who
glide about passages to very little purpose. But these fail to impress.
Not that I have not a soft corner in my heart for The Lancashire Witches,
which--ridiculous as much of it is--has distinct merits as a story.

It cannot be said too often that the more remote in time the ghost is the
harder it is to make him effective, always supposing him to be the ghost
of a dead person. Elementals and such-like do not come under this rule.

Roughly speaking, the ghost should be a contemporary of the seer. Such
was the elder Hamlet and such Jacob Marley. The latter I cite with
confidence and in despite of critics, for, whatever may be urged against
some parts of A Christmas Carol, it is, I hold, undeniable that the
introduction, the advent, of Jacob Marley is tremendously effective.

And be it observed that the setting in both these classic examples is
contemporary and even ordinary. The ramparts of the Kronborg and the
chambers of Ebenezer Scrooge were, to those who frequented them, features
of every-day life.

But there are exceptions to every rule. An ancient haunting can be made
terrible and can be invested with actuality, but it will tax your best
endeavours to forge the links between past and present in a satisfying
way. And in any case there must be ordinary level-headed modern
persons--Horatios--on the scene, such as the detective needs his Watson
or his Hastings to play the part of the lay observer.

Setting or environment, then, is to me a principal point, and the more
readily appreciable the setting is to the ordinary reader the better. The
other essential is that our ghost should make himself felt by gradual
stirrings diffusing an atmosphere of uneasiness before the final flash or
stab of horror.

Must there be horror? you ask. I think so. There are but two really good
ghost stories I know in the language wherein the elements of beauty and
pity dominate terror. They are Lanoe Falconer's 'Cecilia de Noel' and Mrs
Oliphant's 'The Open Door'. In both there are moments of horror; but in
both we end by saying with Hamlet: 'Alas, poor ghost!' Perhaps my limit
of two stories is overstrict; but that these two are by very much the
best of their kind I do not doubt.

On the whole, then, I say you must have horror and also malevolence. Not
less necessary, however, is reticence. There is a series of books I have
read, I think American in origin, called Not at Night (and with other
like titles), which sin glaringly against this law. They have no other
aim than that of Mr Wardle's Fat Boy.

Of course, all writers of ghost stories do desire to make their readers'
flesh creep; but these are shameless in their attempts. They are
unbelievably crude and sudden, and they wallow in corruption. And if
there is a theme that ought to be kept out of the ghost story, it is that
of the charnel house. That and sex, wherein I do not say that these Not
at Night books deal, but certainly other recent writers do, and in so
doing spoil the whole business.

To return from the faults of ghost stories to their excellence. Who, do I
think, has best realized their possibilities? I have no hesitation in
saying that it is Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. In the volume called In a
Glass Darkly are four stories of paramount excellence, 'Green Tea', 'The
Familiar', 'Mr Justice Harbottle', and 'Carmilla'. All of these conform
to my requirements: the settings are quite different, but all seen by the
writer; the approaches of the supernatural nicely graduated; the climax
adequate. Le Fanu was a scholar and poet, and these tales show him as
such. It is true that he died as long ago as 1873, but there is
wonderfully little that is obsolete in his manner.

Of living writers I have some hesitation in speaking, but on any list
that I was forced to compile the names of E. F. Benson. Blackwood,
Burrage, De la Mare and Wakefield would find a place.

But, although the subject has its fascinations. I see no use in being
pontifical about it. These stories are meant to please and amuse us. If
they do so, well; but, if not, let us relegate them to the top shelf and
say no more about it.



The End

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