Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Part 2: More Ghost Stories

  Produced by Suzanne Shell, Thomas Berger, and PG DistributedProofreaders

  PART 2: More Ghost Stories

  M.R. JAMES

  GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY

  _These stories are dedicated to all those who at various times havelistened to them._

  CONTENTS

  PART I: GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY

  Canon Alberic's Scrap-bookLost HeartsThe MezzotintThe Ash-treeNumber 13Count Magnus'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

  PART 2: MORE GHOST STORIES

  A School StoryThe Rose GardenThe Tractate MiddothCasting the RunesThe Stalls of Barchester CathedralMartin's CloseMr Humphreys and his Inheritance

  * * * * *

  The first six of the seven tales were Christmas productions, the veryfirst ('A School Story') having been made up for the benefit of King'sCollege Choir School. 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral' was printed in_Contemporary Review_; 'Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance' was written tofill up the volume. In 'A School Story' I had Temple Grove, East Sheen inmind; in 'The Tractate Middoth', Cambridge University Library; in'Martin's Close', Sampford Courtenay in Devon. The Cathedral ofBarchester is a blend of Canterbury, Salisbury, and Hereford.

  M.R. JAMES

  * * * * *

  A SCHOOL STORY

  Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. 'At_our_ school,' said A., 'we had a ghost's footmark on the staircase. Whatwas it like? Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with asquare toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I neverheard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to thinkof it. Why didn't somebody invent one, I wonder?'

  'You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own.There's a subject for you, by the way--"The Folklore of PrivateSchools".'

  'Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were toinvestigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys atprivate schools tell each other, they would all turn out to behighly-compressed versions of stories out of books.'

  'Nowadays the _Strand_ and _Pearson's_, and so on, would be extensivelydrawn upon.'

  'No doubt: they weren't born or thought of in _my_ time. Let's see. Iwonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, therewas the house with a room in which a series of people insisted on passinga night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner,and had just time to say, "I've seen it," and died.'

  'Wasn't that the house in Berkeley Square?'

  'I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noise in thepassage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards himon all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides,let me think--Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with ahorseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was coveredwith marks of horseshoes also; I don't know why. Also there was the ladywho, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voiceamong the bed-curtains say, "Now we're shut in for the night." None ofthose had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, thosestories.'

  'Oh, likely enough--with additions from the magazines, as I said. Younever heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? I thought not;nobody has that ever I came across.'

  'From the way in which you said that, I gather that _you_ have.'

  'I really don't know; but this is what was in my mind. It happened at myprivate school thirty odd years ago, and I haven't any explanation of it.

  'The school I mean was near London. It was established in a large andfairly old house--a great white building with very fine grounds about it;there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many of theolder gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or fourfields which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite anattractive place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess anytolerable features.

  'I came to the school in a September, soon after the year 1870; and amongthe boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to: a Highlandboy, whom I will call McLeod. I needn't spend time in describing him: themain thing is that I got to know him very well. He was not an exceptionalboy in any way--not particularly good at books or games--but he suitedme.

  'The school was a large one: there must have been from 120 to 130 boysthere as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters was required, andthere were rather frequent changes among them.

  'One term--perhaps it was my third or fourth--a new master made hisappearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tallish, stoutish, pale,black-bearded man. I think we liked him: he had travelled a good deal,and had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that there wassome competition among us to get within earshot of him. I remembertoo--dear me, I have hardly thought of it since then!--that he had acharm on his watch-chain that attracted my attention one day, and he letme examine it. It was, I now suppose, a gold Byzantine coin; there was aneffigy of some absurd emperor on one side; the other side had been wornpractically smooth, and he had had cut on it--rather barbarously--his owninitials, G.W.S., and a date, 24 July, 1865. Yes, I can see it now: hetold me he had picked it up in Constantinople: it was about the size of aflorin, perhaps rather smaller.

  'Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampson was doingLatin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods--perhaps it is rathera good one--was to make us construct sentences out of our own heads toillustrate the rules he was trying to make us learn. Of course that is athing which gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent: there arelots of school stories in which that happens--or anyhow there might be.But Sampson was too good a disciplinarian for us to think of trying thaton with him. Now, on this occasion he was telling us how to express_remembering_ in Latin: and he ordered us each to make a sentencebringing in the verb _memini_, "I remember." Well, most of us made upsome ordinary sentence such as "I remember my father," or "He remembershis book," or something equally uninteresting: and I dare say a good manyput down _memino librum meum_, and so forth: but the boy Imentioned--McLeod--was evidently thinking of something more elaboratethan that. The rest of us wanted to have our sentences passed, and get onto something else, so some kicked him under the desk, and I, who was nextto him, poked him and whispered to him to look sharp. But he didn't seemto attend. I looked at his paper and saw he had put down nothing at all.So I jogged him again harder than before and upbraided him sharply forkeeping us all waiting. That did have some effect. He started and seemedto wake up, and then very quickly he scribbled about a couple of lines onhis paper, and showed it up with the rest. As it was the last, or nearlythe last, to come in, and as Sampson had a good deal to say to the boyswho had written _meminiscimus patri meo_ and the rest of it, it turnedout that the clock struck twelve before he had got to McLeod, and McLeodhad to wait afterwards to have his sentence corrected. There was nothingmuch going on outside when I got out, so I waited for him to come. Hecame very slowly when he did arrive, and I guessed there had been somesort of trouble. "Well," I said, "what did you get?" "Oh, I don't know,"said McLeod, "nothing much: but I think Sampson's rather sick with me.""Why, did you show him up some rot?" "No fear," he said. "It was allright as far as I could see: it was like this: _Memento_--that's rightenough for remember, and it takes a genitive,--_memento putei interquatuor taxos_." "What silly rot!" I said. "What made you shove thatdown? What does it mean?" "That's the funny part," said McLeod. "I'm notquite sure what it does mean. All I know is, it just came into my headand I corked it down. I know what I _think_ it mean
s, because just beforeI wrote it down I had a sort of picture of it in my head: I believe itmeans 'Remember the well among the four'--what are those dark sort oftrees that have red berries on them?" "Mountain ashes, I s'pose youmean." "I never heard of them," said McLeod; "no, _I'll_ tell you--yews.""Well, and what did Sampson say?" "Why, he was jolly odd about it. Whenhe read it he got up and went to the mantelpiece and stopped quite a longtime without saying anything, with his back to me. And then he said,without turning round, and rather quiet, 'What do you suppose thatmeans?' I told him what I thought; only I couldn't remember the name ofthe silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put it down, and I hadto say something or other. And after that he left off talking about it,and asked me how long I'd been here, and where my people lived, andthings like that: and then I came away: but he wasn't looking a bitwell."

  'I don't remember any more that was said by either of us about this. Nextday McLeod took to his bed with a chill or something of the kind, and itwas a week or more before he was in school again. And as much as a monthwent by without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not MrSampson was really startled, as McLeod had thought, he didn't show it. Iam pretty sure, of course, now, that there was something very curious inhis past history, but I'm not going to pretend that we boys were sharpenough to guess any such thing.

  'There was one other incident of the same kind as the last which I toldyou. Several times since that day we had had to make up examples inschool to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any rowexcept when we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we weregoing through those dismal things which people call ConditionalSentences, and we were told to make a conditional sentence, expressing afuture consequence. We did it, right or wrong, and showed up our bits ofpaper, and Sampson began looking through them. All at once he got up,made some odd sort of noise in his throat, and rushed out by a door thatwas just by his desk. We sat there for a minute or two, and then--Isuppose it was incorrect--but we went up, I and one or two others, tolook at the papers on his desk. Of course I thought someone must have putdown some nonsense or other, and Sampson had gone off to report him. Allthe same, I noticed that he hadn't taken any of the papers with him whenhe ran out. Well, the top paper on the desk was written in red ink--whichno one used--and it wasn't in anyone's hand who was in the class. Theyall looked at it--McLeod and all--and took their dying oaths that itwasn't theirs. Then I thought of counting the bits of paper. And of thisI made quite certain: that there were seventeen bits of paper on thedesk, and sixteen boys in the form. Well, I bagged the extra paper, andkept it, and I believe I have it now. And now you will want to know whatwas written on it. It was simple enough, and harmless enough, I shouldhave said.

  '"_Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te_," which means, I suppose,"If you don't come to me, I'll come to you."'

  'Could you show me the paper?' interrupted the listener.

  'Yes, I could: but there's another odd thing about it. That sameafternoon I took it out of my locker--I know for certain it was the samebit, for I made a finger-mark on it--and no single trace of writing ofany kind was there on it. I kept it, as I said, and since that time Ihave tried various experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had beenused, but absolutely without result.

  'So much for that. After about half an hour Sampson looked in again: saidhe had felt very unwell, and told us we might go. He came rather gingerlyto his desk and gave just one look at the uppermost paper: and I supposehe thought he must have been dreaming: anyhow, he asked no questions.

  'That day was a half-holiday, and next day Sampson was in school again,much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my storyhappened.

  'We--McLeod and I--slept in a dormitory at right angles to the mainbuilding. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor. Therewas a very bright full moon. At an hour which I can't tell exactly, butsome time between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking me. Itwas McLeod; and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in. "Come," hesaid,--"come! there's a burglar getting in through Sampson's window." Assoon as I could speak, I said, "Well, why not call out and wake everybodyup?" "No, no," he said, "I'm not sure who it is: don't make a row: comeand look." Naturally I came and looked, and naturally there was no onethere. I was cross enough, and should have called McLeod plenty of names:only--I couldn't tell why--it seemed to me that there _was_ somethingwrong--something that made me very glad I wasn't alone to face it. Wewere still at the window looking out, and as soon as I could, I asked himwhat he had heard or seen. "I didn't _hear_ anything at all," he said,"but about five minutes before I woke you, I found myself looking out ofthis window here, and there was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson'swindow-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning." "What sortof man?" McLeod wriggled. "I don't know," he said, "but I can tell youone thing--he was beastly thin: and he looked as if he was wet all over:and," he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hearhimself, "I'm not at all sure that he was alive."

  'We went on talking in whispers some time longer, and eventually creptback to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the whole time. Ibelieve we did sleep a bit afterwards, but we were very cheap next day.

  'And next day Mr Sampson was gone: not to be found: and I believe notrace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over, one ofthe oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact thatneither McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third personwhatever. Of course no questions were asked on the subject, and if theyhad been, I am inclined to believe that we could not have made anyanswer: we seemed unable to speak about it.

  'That is my story,' said the narrator. 'The only approach to a ghoststory connected with a school that I know, but still, I think, anapproach to such a thing.'

  * * * * *

  The sequel to this may perhaps be reckoned highly conventional; but asequel there is, and so it must be produced. There had been more than onelistener to the story, and, in the latter part of that same year, or ofthe next, one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland.

  One evening his host was turning over a drawer full of odds and ends inthe smoking-room. Suddenly he put his hand upon a little box. 'Now,' hesaid, 'you know about old things; tell me what that is.' My friend openedthe little box, and found in it a thin gold chain with an object attachedto it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles toexamine it more narrowly. 'What's the history of this?' he asked. 'Oddenough,' was the answer. 'You know the yew thicket in the shrubbery:well, a year or two back we were cleaning out the old well that used tobe in the clearing here, and what do you suppose we found?'

  'Is it possible that you found a body?' said the visitor, with an oddfeeling of nervousness.

  'We did that: but what's more, in every sense of the word, we found two.'

  'Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they got there? Wasthis thing found with them?'

  'It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on one of the bodies.A bad business, whatever the story of it may have been. One body had thearms tight round the other. They must have been there thirty years ormore--long enough before we came to this place. You may judge we filledthe well up fast enough. Do you make anything of what's cut on that goldcoin you have there?'

  'I think I can,' said my friend, holding it to the light (but he read itwithout much difficulty); 'it seems to be G.W.S., 24 July, 1865.'