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

by M. R. James

“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 toward 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 neighborhood, 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 toward 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 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 labeled ‘Betton Wood.’ But as there was no Betton Wood anymore, I never thought it would be worthwhile 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 neighbor’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, an
d 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.]

  After Dark in the Playing Fields

  THE HOUR WAS LATE and the night was fair. I had halted not far from Sheeps’ Bridge and was thinking about the stillness, only broken by the sound of the weir, when a loud tremulous hoot just above me made me jump.

  It is always annoying to be startled; but I have a kindness for owls. This one was evidently very near; I looked about for it. There it was, sitting plumply on a branch about twelve feet up.

  I pointed my stick at it and said, “Was that you?”

  “Drop it,” said the owl. “I know it ain’t only a stick, but I don’t like it. Yes, of course it was me—who do you suppose it would be if it warn’t?”

  We will take as read the sentences about my surprise. I lowered the stick.

  “Well,” said the owl, “what about it? If you will come out here of a Midsummer evening like what this is, what do you expect?”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, “I should have remembered. May I say that I think myself very lucky to have met you tonight? I hope you have time for a little talk?”

  “Well,” said the owl ungraciously, “I don’t know as it matters so particular tonight. I’ve had me supper as it happens, and if you ain’t too long over it—ah-h-h!”

  Suddenly it broke into a loud scream, flapped its wings furiously, bent forward and clutched its perch tightly, continuing to scream. Plainly something was pulling hard at it from behind. The strain relaxed abruptly, the owl nearly fell over, and then whipped around, ruffling up all over, and made a vicious dab at something unseen by me.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” said a small clear voice in a solicitous tone. “I made sure it was loose. I do hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  “Didn’t ’urt me?” said the owl bitterly. “Of course you ’urt me, and well you know it, you young infidel. That feather was no more loose than—oh, if I could git at you! Now I shouldn’t wonder but what you’ve throwed me all out of balance. Why can’t you let a person set quiet for two minutes at a time without you must come creepin’ up and—well, you’ve done it this time, anyway. I shall go straight to ’eadquarters and”—(finding it was now addressing the empty air)—“why, where have you got to now? Oh, it is too bad, that it is!”

  “Dear me!” I said, “I’m afraid this isn’t the first time you’ve been annoyed in this way. May I ask exactly what happened?”

  “Yes, you may ask,” said the owl, still looking narrowly about as it spoke, “but it ’ud take me till the latter end of next week to tell you. Fancy coming and pulling out anyone’s tail feather! ’Urt me something crool, it did. And what for, I should like to know? Answer me that! Where’s the reason of it?”

  All that occurred to me was to murmur, “The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders at our quaint spirits.”

  I hardly thought the point would be taken, but the owl said sharply: “What’s that? Yes, you needn’t to repeat it. I ’eard. And I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it, and you mark my words.” It bent toward me and whispered, with many nods of its round head: “Pride! stand-offish-ness! that’s what it is! Come not near our fairy queen” (this in a tone of bitter contempt). “Oh, dear no! we ain’t good enough for the likes of them. Us that’s been noted time out of mind for the best singers in the Fields—now, ain’t that so?”

  “Well,” I said, doubtfully enough, “I like to hear you very much, but, you know, some people think a lot of the thrushes and nightingales and so on; you must have heard of that, haven’t you? And then, perhaps—of course I don’t know—perhaps your style of singing isn’t exactly what they think suitable to accompany their dancing, eh?”

  “I should kindly ’ope not,” said the owl, drawing itself up. “Our family’s never give in to dancing, nor never won’t neither. Why, whatever are you thinkin’ of!” it went on with rising temper. “A pretty thing it would be for me to set there hiccuppin’ at them”—it stopped and looked cautiously all around it and up and down and then continued in a louder voice—“them little ladies and gentlemen. If it ain’t sootable for them, I’m very sure it ain’t sootable for me. And” (temper rising again) “if they expect me never to say a word just because they’re dancin’ and carryin’ on with their foolishness, they’re very much mistook, and so I tell ’em.”

  From what had passed before I was afraid this was an imprudent line to take, and I was right. Hardly had the owl given its last emphatic nod when four small slim forms dropped from a bough above, and in a twinkling some sort of grass rope was thrown around the body of the unhappy bird, and it was borne off through the air, loudly protesting, in the direction of Fellows’ Pond.

  Splashes and gurgles and shrieks of unfeeling laughter were heard as I hurried up. Something darted away over my head, and as I stood peering over the bank of the pond, which was all in commotion, a very angry and disheveled owl scrambled heavily up the bank, and stopping near my feet shook itself and flapped and hissed for several minutes without saying anything I should care to repeat.

  Glaring at me, it eventually said—and the grim suppressed rage in its voice was such that I hastily drew back a step or two—“’Ear that? Said they was very sorry, but they’d mistook me for a duck. Oh, if it ain’t enough to make anyone go reg’lar distracted in their mind and tear everythink to flinders for miles round.”

  So carried away was it by passion, that it began the process at once by rooting up a large beakful of grass, which alas! got into its throat; and the choking that resulted made me really afraid that it would break a vessel. But the paroxysm was mastered, and the owl sat up, winking and breathless but intact.

  Some expression of sympathy seemed to be required; yet I was chary of offering it, for in its present state of mind I felt that the bird might interpret the best-meant phrase as a fresh insult. So we stood looking at each other without speech for a very awkward minute, and then came a diversion.

  First the thin voice of the pavilion clock, then the deeper sound from the Castle quadrangle, then Lupton’s
Tower, drowning the Curfew Tower by its nearness.

  “What’s that?” said the owl, suddenly and hoarsely.

  “Midnight, I should think,” said I, and had recourse to my watch.

  “Midnight?” cried the owl, evidently much startled, “and me too wet to fly a yard! Here, you pick me up and put me in the tree; don’t, I’ll climb up your leg, and you won’t ask me to do that twice. Quick now!”

  I obeyed. “Which tree do you want?”

  “Why, my tree, to be sure! Over there!” It nodded toward the Wall.

  “All right. Bad-calx tree do you mean?” I said, beginning to run in that direction.

  “’Ow should I know what silly names you call it? The one what ’as like a door in it. Go faster! They’ll be coming in another minute.”

  “Who? What’s the matter?” I asked as I ran, clutching the wet creature, and much afraid of stumbling and coming over with it in the long grass.

  “You’ll see fast enough,” said this selfish bird. “You just let me git on the tree, I shall be all right.”

  And I suppose it was, for it scrabbled very quickly up the trunk with its wings spread and disappeared in a hollow without a word of thanks.

  I looked around, not very comfortably. The Curfew Tower was still playing St. David’s tune and the little chime that follows, for the third and last time, but the other bells had finished what they had to say, and now there was silence, and again the “restless changing weir” was the only thing that broke—no, that emphasized it.

  Why had the owl been so anxious to get into hiding? That of course was what now exercised me. Whatever and whoever was coming, I was sure that this was no time for me to cross the open field—I should do best to dissemble my presence by staying on the darker side of the tree. And that is what I did.

  All this took place some years ago, before summertime came in. I do sometimes go into the Playing Fields at night still, but I come in before true midnight. And I find I do not like a crowd after dark—for example at the Fourth of June fireworks.