Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James Read online

  Whenever he did look at him, he found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against the wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls.

  Dennistoun became rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the old man from his déjeuner, that he was regarded as likely to make away with St. Bertrand’s ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font, began to torment him.

  “Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my notes alone. You can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”

  “Good Heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be thought of for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no. Two hours, three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted, I am not at all cold, with many thanks to monsieur.”

  “Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself. “You have been warned, and you must take the consequences.”

  Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the treasure-chamber, had been well and truly examined—the sacristan still keeping at Dennistoun’s heels, and every now and then whipping around as if he had been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they were sometimes.

  “Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips.

  “‘It is he—that is—it is no one. The door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute.”

  Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand. The composition of the picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below, which runs thus:

  Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat strangulare.

  (How St. Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long sought to strangle.)

  Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.

  Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question would not away from him, “Why should a daub of this kind affect anyone so strongly?” He seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling him all the day. The man must be a monomaniac, but what was his monomania?

  It was nearly five o’clock. The short day was drawing in, and the church began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.

  The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and notebook were finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to the western door of the church, under the tower.

  It was time to ring the Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams, calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women.

  With that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the church.

  On the doorstep they fell into conversation.

  “Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the sacristy.”

  “Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the town.”

  “No, monsieur. Perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter, but it is now such a small place—” Here came a strange pause of irresolution, as it seemed. Then, with a sort of plunge, he went on: “But if monsieur is amateur des vieux livres, I have at home something that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards.”

  At once all Dennistoun’s cherished dreams of finding priceless manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down again the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin’s printing, about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors?

  However, it would be foolish not to go—he would reproach himself forever after if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman.

  He contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in, in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to join him early the next morning.

  To his surprise, the announcement seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that oppressed him. “That is well,” he said quite brightly—“that is very well. Monsieur will travel in company with his friends. They will be always near him. It is a good thing to travel thus in company—sometimes.”

  The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought, and to bring with it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.

  They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its neighbors, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield of Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of Bishop John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680 to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the whole place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying age.

  Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?”

  “Not at all—lots of time—nothing to do till tomorrow. Let us see what it is you have got.”

  The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far younger than the sacristan’s, but bearing something of the same distressing look—only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another.

  Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan’s daughter; and, but for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough. She brightened up considerably seeing her father accompanied by an able-bodied stranger.

  A few remarks passed between father and daughter, of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan, “He was laughing in the church,” words which were answered only by a look of terror from the girl.

  But in another minute they were in the sitting room of the house, a small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth.

  Something of the character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of the natural colors, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of some age and solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs set, the sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with growing excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large book, wrapped in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely embroidered in red thread.

  Even before the wrapping had been removed, Dennistoun began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume. “Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an antiphoner; perhaps it may be something good, after all.”

  The next
moment the book was open, and Dennistoun felt that he had at last lit upon something better than good.

  Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the 17th century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript.

  Such a collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments.

  Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than A.D. 700. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the 13th century could produce. And, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told him at once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was known to have existed as late as the 12th century at Nîmes?†

  In any case, his mind was made up; that book must return to Cambridge with him, even if he had to draw the whole of his balance from the bank and stay at St. Bertrand till the money came.

  He glanced up at the sacristan to see if his face yielded any hint that the book was for sale. The sacristan was pale, and his lips were working.

  “If monsieur will turn on to the end,” he said.

  So monsieur turned on, meeting new treasures at every rise of a leaf; and at the end of the book he came upon two sheets of paper, of much more recent date than anything he had yet seen, which puzzled him considerably.

  They must be contemporary, he decided, with the unprincipled Canon Alberic, who had doubtless plundered the Chapter library of St. Bertrand to form this priceless scrap-book.

  On the first of the paper sheets was a plan, carefully drawn and instantly recognizable by a person who knew the ground, of the south aisle and cloisters of St. Bertrand’s. There were curious signs looking like planetary symbols, and a few Hebrew words, in the corners; and in the northwest angle of the cloister was a cross drawn in gold paint. Below the plan were some lines of writing in Latin, which ran thus:

  Responsa 12mi Dec. 1694. Interrogatum est: Inveniamne?

  Responsum est: Invenies. Fiamne dives? Fies. Vivamne invidendus?

  Vives. Moriarne in lecto meo? Ita.

  (Answers of the 12th of December, 1694. It was asked: Shall I find it? Answer: Thou shalt. Shall I become rich? Thou wilt. Shall I live an object of envy? Thou wilt. Shall I die in my bed? Thou wilt.)

  “A good specimen of the treasure-hunter’s record—quite reminds one of Mr. Minor-Canon Quatremain in ‘Old St. Paul’s,’” was Dennistoun’s comment, and he turned the leaf.

  What he then saw impressed him, as he has often told me, more than he could have conceived any drawing or picture capable of impressing him. And, though the drawing he saw is no longer in existence, there is a photograph of it (which I possess) which fully bears out that statement.

  The picture in question was a sepia drawing at the end of the 17th century, representing, one would say at first sight, a Biblical scene. For the architecture (the picture represented an interior) and the figures had that semi-classical flavor about them which the artists of two hundred years ago thought appropriate to illustrations of the Bible.

  On the right was a King on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead, lions on either side—evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched scepter, in attitude of command. His face expressed horror and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious will and confident power.

  The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The interest plainly centered there. On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified. They seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst.

  I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. I recollect once showing the photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology—a person of, I was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits of mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and he told me afterward that for many nights he had not dared to put out his light before going to sleep.

  However, the main traits of the figure I can at least indicate. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair. Presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by this appalling effigy.

  One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture: “It was drawn from the life.”

  As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided, Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan’s hands were pressed upon his eyes. His daughter, looking up at the cross on the wall, was telling her beads feverishly.

  At last the question was asked, “Is this book for sale?”

  There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination that he had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer.

  “If monsieur pleases.”

  “How much do you ask for it?”

  “I will take two hundred and fifty francs.”

  This was confounding. Even a collector’s conscience is sometimes stirred, and Dennistoun’s conscience was tenderer than a collector’s.

  “My good man!” he said again and again, “your book is worth far more than two hundred and fifty francs, I assure you—far more.”

  But the answer did not vary: “I will take two hundred and fifty francs, not more.”

  There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money was paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the transaction, and then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He stood upright, he ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him, he actually laughed or tried to laugh.

  Dennistoun rose to go.

  “I shall have the honor of accompanying monsieur to his hotel?” said the sacristan.

  “Oh no, thanks! It isn’t a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and there is a moon.”

  The offer was pressed three or four times, and refused as often.

  “Then, monsieur will summon me if—if he finds occasion. He will keep the middle of the road, the sides are so rough.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine his prize by himself, and he stepped out into the passage with his book under his arm.

  Here he was met by the daughter. She, it appeared, was anxious to do a little business on her own account—perhaps, like Gehazi, to “take somewhat” from the foreigner whom her father had spared.

  “A silver crucifix and chain for the neck. Monsieur would perhaps be good enough to accept it?”

  Well, really, Dennistoun hadn’t much use for these things. What did mademoiselle want for it?

  “Nothing—nothing in the world. Monsieur is more than welcome to it.”

  The tone in which this and much more was said was unmistakably genuine, so that Dennistoun was reduced to profuse thanks, and submitted to have the chain put around his neck. It really seemed as if he had rendered the father and daughter some service which they hardly knew
how to repay.

  As he set off with his book they stood at the door looking after him, and they were still looking when he waved them a last good night from the steps of the Chapeau Rouge.

  Dinner was over, and Dennistoun was in his bedroom, shut up alone with his acquisition. The landlady had manifested a particular interest in him since he had told her that he had paid a visit to the sacristan and bought an old book from him.

  He thought, too, that he had heard a hurried dialogue between her and the said sacristan in the passage outside the salle à manger, some words to the effect that “Pierre and Bertrand would be sleeping in the house” had closed the conversation.

  All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of his discovery. Whatever it was, it resulted in a conviction that there was someone behind him, and that he was far more comfortable with his back to the wall.

  All this, of course, weighed light in the balance as against the obvious value of the collection he had acquired. And now, as I said, he was alone in his bedroom, taking stock of Canon Alberic’s treasures, in which every moment revealed something more charming.

  “Bless Canon Alberic!” said Dennistoun, who had an inveterate habit of talking to himself. “I wonder where he is now? Dear me! I wish that landlady would learn to laugh in a more cheering manner—it makes one feel as if there was someone dead in the house.

  “Half a pipe more, did you say? I think perhaps you are right. I wonder what that crucifix is that the young woman insisted on giving me? Last century, I suppose. Yes, probably. It is rather a nuisance of a thing to have around one’s neck—just too heavy. Most likely her father had been wearing it for years. I think I might give it a cleanup before I put it away.”

  He had taken the crucifix off, and laid it on the table, when his attention was caught by an object lying on the red cloth just by his left elbow. Two or three ideas of what it might be flitted through his brain with their own incalculable quickness.