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

by M. R. James

  “When we got outside Evans says to me, ‘Did you see the end of that paper?’

  “‘No,’ I says, ‘only it was torn.’

  “‘Yes, it was,’ he says, ‘but it was wet too, and black!’

  “Well, partly because of the fright we had, and partly because that music was wanted in a day or two, and we knew there’d be a set-out about it with the organist, we didn’t say nothing to anyone else, and I suppose the workmen they swept up the bit that was left along with the rest of the rubbish.

  “But Evans, if you were to ask him this very day about it, he’d stick to it he saw that paper wet and black at the end where it was torn.”

  After that the boys gave the choir a wide berth, so that Worby was not sure what was the result of the mason’s renewed mending of the tomb. Only he made out from fragments of conversation dropped by the workmen passing through the choir that some difficulty had been met with, and that the governor—Mr. Palmer to wit—had tried his own hand at the job.

  A little later, he happened to see Mr. Palmer himself knocking at the door of the Deanery and being admitted by the butler. A day or so after that, he gathered from a remark his father let fall at breakfast that something a little out of the common was to be done in the Cathedral after morning service on the morrow.

  “And I’d just as soon it was today,” his father added. “I don’t see the use of running risks.”

  “‘Father,’ I says, ‘what are you going to do in the Cathedral tomorrow?’

  “And he turned on me as savage as I ever see him—he was a wonderful good-tempered man as a general thing, my poor father was. ‘My lad,’ he says, ‘I’ll trouble you not to go picking up your elders’ and betters’ talk—it’s not manners and it’s not straight. What I’m going to do or not going to do in the Cathedral tomorrow is none of your business, and if I catch sight of you hanging about the place tomorrow after your work’s done, I’ll send you home with a flea in your ear. Now you mind that.’

  “Of course I said I was very sorry and that, and equally of course I went off and laid my plans with Evans. We knew there was a stair up in the corner of the transept which you can get up to the triforium, and in them days the door to it was pretty well always open, and even if it wasn’t we knew the key usually laid under a bit of matting hard by.

  “So we made up our minds we’d be putting away music and that, next morning while the rest of the boys was clearing off, and then slip up the stairs and watch from the triforium if there was any signs of work going on.

  “Well, that same night I dropped off asleep as sound as a boy does, and all of a sudden the dog woke me up, coming into the bed, and thought I, now we’re going to get it sharp, for he seemed more frightened than usual.

  “After about five minutes sure enough came this cry. I can’t give you no idea what it was like; and so near too—nearer than I’d heard it yet—and a funny thing, Mr. Lake, you know what a place this Close is for an echo, and particular if you stand this side of it. Well, this crying never made no sign of an echo at all. But, as I said, it was dreadful near this night; and on the top of the start I got with hearing it, I got another fright—for I heard something rustling outside in the passage.

  “Now to be sure I thought I was done; but I noticed the dog seemed to perk up a bit, and next there was someone whispered outside the door, and I very near laughed out loud, for I knew it was my father and mother that had gotten out of bed with the noise.

  “‘Whatever is it?’ says my mother.

  “‘Hush! I don’t know,’ says my father, excited-like, ‘don’t disturb the boy. I hope he didn’t hear nothing.’

  “So, me knowing they were just outside, it made me bolder, and I slipped out of bed across to my little window—giving on the Close—but the dog he bored right down to the bottom of the bed—and I looked out.

  “First go off I couldn’t see anything. Then right down in the shadow under a buttress I made out what I shall always say was two spots of red—a dull red it was—nothing like a lamp or a fire, but just so as you could pick ’em out of the black shadow. I hadn’t but just sighted ’em when it seemed we wasn’t the only people that had been disturbed, because I see a window in a house on the left-hand side become lighted up, and the light moving.

  “I just turned my head to make sure of it, and then looked back into the shadow for those two red things, and they were gone, and for all I peered about and stared, there was not a sign more of them.

  “Then come my last fright that night—something come against my bare leg—but that was all right: that was my little dog had come out of bed, and prancing about making a great to-do, only holding his tongue, and me seeing he was quite in spirits again, I took him back to bed and we slept the night out!

  “Next morning I made out to tell my mother I’d had the dog in my room, and I was surprised, after all she’d said about it before, how quiet she took it. ‘Did you?’ she says. ‘Well, by good rights you ought to go without your breakfast for doing such a thing behind my back, but I don’t know as there’s any great harm done, only another time you ask my permission, do you hear?’

  “A bit after that I said something to my father about having heard the cats again. ‘Cats?’ he says; and he looked over at my poor mother, and she coughed and he says, ‘Oh! Ah! Yes, cats. I believe I heard ’em myself.’

  “That was a funny morning altogether: nothing seemed to go right. The organist he stopped in bed, and the minor Canon he forgot it was the 19th day and waited for the Venite; and after a bit the deputy he set off playing the chant for evensong, which was a minor; and then the Decani boys were laughing so much they couldn’t sing, and when it came to the anthem the solo boy he got took with the giggles, and made out his nose was bleeding, and shoved the book at me what hadn’t practiced the verse and wasn’t much of a singer if I had known it. Well, things was rougher, you see, fifty years ago, and I got a nip from the counter-tenor behind me that I remembered.

  “So we got through somehow, and neither the men nor the boys weren’t by way of waiting to see whether the Canon in residence—Mr. Henslow it was—would come to the vestries and fine ’em, but I don’t believe he did. For one thing I fancy he’d read the wrong lesson for the first time in his life, and knew it.

  “Anyhow, Evans and me didn’t find no difficulty in slipping up the stairs as I told you, and when we got up we laid ourselves down flat on our stomachs where we could just stretch our heads out over the old tomb, and we hadn’t but just done so when we heard the verger that was then, first shutting the iron porch-gates and locking the south-west door, and then the transept door, so we knew there was something up, and they meant to keep the public out for a bit.

  “Next thing was, the Dean and the Canon come in by their door on the north, and then I see my father, and old Palmer, and a couple of their best men, and Palmer stood a talking for a bit with the Dean in the middle of the choir. He had a coil of rope and the men had crows. All of ’em looked a bit nervous.

  “So there they stood talking, and at last I heard the Dean say, ‘Well, I’ve no time to waste, Palmer. If you think this’ll satisfy Southminster people, I’ll permit it to be done. But I must say this, that never in the whole course of my life have I heard such arrant nonsense from a practical man as I have from you. Don’t you agree with me, Henslow?’

  “As far as I could hear Mr. Henslow said something like ‘Oh well! We’re told, aren’t we, Mr. Dean, not to judge others?’

  “And the Dean he gave a kind of sniff, and walked straight up to the tomb, and took his stand behind it with his back to the screen, and the others they come edging up rather gingerly. Henslow, he stopped on the south side and scratched on his chin, he did.

  “Then the Dean spoke up: ‘Palmer,’ he says, ‘which can you do easiest, get the slab off the top, or shift one of the side slabs?’

  “Old Palmer and his men they pottered about a bit looking around the edge of the top slab and sounding the sides on the south and east and
west and everywhere but the north. Henslow said something about it being better to have a try at the south side, because there was more light and more room to move about in.

  “Then my father who’d been watching of them, went around to the north side, and knelt down and felt of the slab by the chink, and he got up and dusted his knees and says to the Dean: ‘Beg pardon, Mr. Dean, but I think if Mr. Palmer’ll try this here slab he’ll find it’ll come out easy enough. Seems to me one of the men could pry it out with his crow by means of this chink.’

  “‘Ah! Thank you, Worby,’ says the Dean. ‘That’s a good suggestion. Palmer, let one of your men do that, will you?’

  “So the man come around, and put his bar in and bore on it, and just that minute when they were all bending over, and we boys got our heads well over the edge of the triforium, there come a most fearful crash down at the west end of the choir, as if a whole stick of big timber had fallen down a flight of stairs.

  “Well, you can’t expect me to tell you everything that happened all in a minute. Of course there was a terrible commotion. I heard the slab fall out, and the crowbar on the floor, and I heard the Dean say, ‘Good God!’

  “When I looked down again I saw the Dean tumbled over on the floor, the men was making off down the choir, Henslow was just going to help the Dean up, Palmer was going to stop the men (as he said afterward) and my father was sitting on the altar step with his face in his hands.

  “The Dean he was very cross. ‘I wish to goodness you’d look where you’re coming to, Henslow,’ he says. ‘Why you should all take to your heels when a stick of wood tumbles down I cannot imagine.’ And all Henslow could do, explaining he was right away on the other side of the tomb, would not satisfy him.

  “Then Palmer came back and reported there was nothing to account for this noise and nothing seemingly fallen down, and when the Dean finished feeling of himself they gathered around—except my father, he sat where he was—and someone lighted up a bit of candle and they looked into the tomb.

  “‘Nothing there,’ says the Dean, ‘what did I tell you? Stay! Here’s something. What’s this? A bit of music paper, and a piece of torn stuff—part of a dress it looks like. Both quite modern—no interest whatever. Another time perhaps you’ll take the advice of an educated man’—or something like that, and off he went, limping a bit, and out through the north door, only as he went he called back angry to Palmer for leaving the door standing open.

  “Palmer called out ‘Very sorry, sir,’ but he shrugged his shoulders.

  “And Henslow says, ‘I fancy Mr. Dean’s mistaken. I closed the door behind me, but he’s a little upset.’

  “Then Palmer says, ‘Why, where’s Worby?” and they saw him sitting on the step and went up to him. He was recovering himself, it seemed, and wiping his forehead, and Palmer helped him up on to his legs, as I was glad to see.

  “They were too far off for me to hear what they said, but my father pointed to the north door in the aisle, and Palmer and Henslow both of them looked very surprised and scared.

  “After a bit, my father and Henslow went out of the church, and the others made what haste they could to put the slab back and plaster it in. And about as the clock struck twelve the Cathedral was opened again and us boys made the best of our way home.

  “I was in a great taking to know what it was had given my poor father such a turn, and when I got in and found him sitting in his chair taking a glass of spirits, and my mother standing looking anxious at him, I couldn’t keep from bursting out and making confession where I’d been.

  “But he didn’t seem to take on, not in the way of losing his temper. ‘You was there, was you? Well, did you see it?’

  “‘I see everything, father,’ I said, ‘except when the noise came.’

  “‘Did you see what it was knocked the Dean over?’ he says, ‘that what come out of the monument? You didn’t? Well, that’s a mercy.’

  “‘Why, what was it, father?’ I said.

  “‘Come, you must have seen it,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you see? A thing like a man, all over hair, and two great eyes to it?’

  “Well, that was all I could get out of him that time, and later on he seemed as if he was ashamed of being so frightened, and he used to put me off when I asked him about it.

  “But years after, when I was got to be a grown man, we had more talk now and again on the matter, and he always said the same thing. ‘Black it was,’ he’d say, ‘and a mass of hair, and two legs, and the light caught on its eyes.’

  “Well, that’s the tale of that tomb, Mr. Lake. It’s one we don’t tell to our visitors, and I should be obliged to you not to make any use of it till I’m out of the way. I doubt Mr. Evans’ll feel the same as I do, if you ask him.”

  This proved to be the case. But over twenty years have passed by, and the grass is growing over both Worby and Evans, so Mr. Lake felt no difficulty about communicating his notes—taken in 1890—to me.

  He accompanied them with a sketch of the tomb and a copy of the short inscription on the metal cross which was affixed at the expense of Dr. Lyall to the center of the northern side. It was from the Vulgate of Isaiah xxxiv., and consisted merely of the three words—

  IBI CUBAVIT LAMIA.

  The Diary of Mr. Poynter

  THE SALESROOM of an old and famous firm of book auctioneers in London is, of course, a great meeting-place for collectors, librarians, dealers. Not only when an auction is in progress, but perhaps even more notably when books that are coming on for sale are upon view.

  It was in such a salesroom that the remarkable series of events began which were detailed to me not many months ago by the person whom they principally affected—namely, Mr. James Denton, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc., sometime of Trinity Hall, now, or lately, of Rendcomb Manor in the county of Warwick.

  He, on a certain spring day in a recent year, was in London for a few days upon business connected principally with the furnishing of the house which he had just finished building at Rendcomb.

  It may be a disappointment to you to learn that Rendcomb Manor was new; that I cannot help. There had, no doubt, been an old house; but it was not remarkable for beauty or interest. Even had it been, neither beauty nor interest would have enabled it to resist the disastrous fire which about a couple of years before the date of my story had razed it to the ground.

  I am glad to say that all that was most valuable in it had been saved, and that it was fully insured. So that it was with a comparatively light heart that Mr. Denton was able to face the task of building a new and considerably more convenient dwelling for himself and his aunt who constituted his whole ménage.

  Being in London, with time on his hands, and not far from the salesroom at which I have obscurely hinted, Mr. Denton thought that he would spend an hour there upon the chance of finding, among that portion of the famous Thomas collection of MSS., which he knew to be then on view, something bearing upon the history or topography of his part of Warwickshire.

  He turned in accordingly, purchased a catalog and ascended to the salesroom, where, as usual, the books were disposed in cases and some laid out upon the long tables.

  At the shelves, or sitting about at the tables, were figures, many of whom were familiar to him. He exchanged nods and greetings with several, and then settled down to examine his catalog and note likely items. He had made good progress through about two hundred of the five hundred lots—every now and then rising to take a volume from the shelf and give it a cursory glance—when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he looked up.

  His interrupter was one of those intelligent men with a pointed beard and a flannel shirt, of whom the last quarter of the 19th century was, it seems to me, very prolific.

  It is no part of my plan to repeat the whole conversation which ensued between the two. I must content myself with stating that it largely referred to common acquaintances, e.g., to the nephew of Mr. Denton’s friend who had recently married and settled in Chelsea, to the sister-in-law of Mr. Denton
’s friend who had been seriously indisposed, but was now better, and to a piece of china which Mr. Denton’s friend had purchased some months before at a price much below its true value.

  From which you will rightly infer that the conversation was rather in the nature of a monologue.

  In due time, however, the friend bethought himself that Mr. Denton was there for a purpose, and said he, “What are you looking out for in particular? I don’t think there’s much in this lot.”

  “Why, I thought there might be some Warwickshire collections, but I don’t see anything under Warwick in the catalog.”

  “No, apparently not,” said the friend. “All the same, I believe I noticed something like a Warwickshire diary. What was the name again? Drayton? Potter? Painter—either a P or a D, I feel sure.”

  He turned over the leaves quickly. “Yes, here it is. Poynter. Lot 486. That might interest you. There are the books, I think: out on the table. Someone has been looking at them. Well, I must be getting on. Good-bye—you’ll look us up, won’t you? Couldn’t you come this afternoon? We’ve got a little music about four. Well, then, when you’re next in town.” He went off.

  Mr. Denton looked at his watch and found to his confusion that he could spare no more than a moment before retrieving his luggage and going for the train. The moment was just enough to show him that there were four largish volumes of the diary—that it concerned the years about 1710, and that there seemed to be a good many insertions in it of various kinds.

  It seemed quite worthwhile to leave a commission of five and twenty pounds for it, and this he was able to do, for his usual agent entered the room as he was on the point of leaving it.

  That evening he rejoined his aunt at their temporary abode, which was a small dower-house not many hundred yards from the Manor.

  On the following morning the two resumed a discussion that had now lasted for some weeks as to the equipment of the new house.

  Mr. Denton laid before his relative a statement of the results of his visit to town—particulars of carpets, of chairs, of wardrobes, and of bedroom china.