Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Montague Rhodes James [best ereader under 100 .TXT] 📗

>summers, proceeded, after a second consideration of the morning’s

letters, to her housekeeping.

 

Within a few minutes Mr Anstruther had discovered Collins in the

greenhouse, and they were on their way to the site of the projected rose

garden. I do not know much about the conditions most suitable to these

nurseries, but I am inclined to believe that Mrs Anstruther, though in

the habit of describing herself as ‘a great gardener’, had not been well

advised in the selection of a spot for the purpose. It was a small, dank

clearing, bounded on one side by a path, and on the other by thick

box-bushes, laurels, and other evergreens. The ground was almost bare of

grass and dark of aspect. Remains of rustic seats and an old and

corrugated oak post somewhere near the middle of the clearing had given

rise to Mr Anstruther’s conjecture that a summer-house had once stood

there.

 

Clearly Collins had not been put in possession of his mistress’s

intentions with regard to this plot of ground: and when he learnt them

from Mr Anstruther he displayed no enthusiasm.

 

‘Of course I could clear them seats away soon enough,’ he said. ‘They

aren’t no ornament to the place, Mr Anstruther, and rotten too. Look

‘ere, sir,’—and he broke off a large piece—‘rotten right through. Yes,

clear them away, to be sure we can do that.’

 

‘And the post,’ said Mr Anstruther, ‘that’s got to go too.’

 

Collins advanced, and shook the post with both hands: then he rubbed his

chin.

 

‘That’s firm in the ground, that post is,’ he said. ‘That’s been there a

number of years, Mr Anstruther. I doubt I shan’t get that up not quite so

soon as what I can do with them seats.’

 

‘But your mistress specially wishes it to be got out of the way in an

hour’s time,’ said Mr Anstruther.

 

Collins smiled and shook his head slowly. ‘You’ll excuse me, sir, but you

feel of it for yourself. No, sir, no one can’t do what’s impossible to

‘em, can they, sir? I could git that post up by after tea-time, sir, but

that’ll want a lot of digging. What you require, you see, sir, if you’ll

excuse me naming of it, you want the soil loosening round this post ‘ere,

and me and the boy we shall take a little time doing of that. But now,

these ‘ere seats,’ said Collins, appearing to appropriate this portion of

the scheme as due to his own resourcefulness, ‘why, I can get the barrer

round and ‘ave them cleared away in, why less than an hour’s time from

now, if you’ll permit of it. Only—’

 

‘Only what, Collins?’

 

‘Well now, ain’t for me to go against orders no more than what it is for

you yourself—or anyone else’ (this was added somewhat hurriedly), ‘but

if you’ll pardon me, sir, this ain’t the place I should have picked out

for no rose garden myself. Why look at them box and laurestinus, ‘ow they

reg’lar preclude the light from—’

 

‘Ah yes, but we’ve got to get rid of some of them, of course.’

 

‘Oh, indeed, get rid of them! Yes, to be sure, but—I beg your pardon, Mr

Anstruther—’

 

‘I’m sorry, Collins, but I must be getting on now. I hear the car at the

door. Your mistress will explain exactly what she wishes. I’ll tell her,

then, that you can see your way to clearing away the seats at once, and

the post this afternoon. Good morning.’

 

Collins was left rubbing his chin. Mrs Anstruther received the report

with some discontent, but did not insist upon any change of plan.

 

By four o’clock that afternoon she had dismissed her husband to his golf,

had dealt faithfully with Collins and with the other duties of the day,

and, having sent a campstool and umbrella to the proper spot, had just

settled down to her sketch of the church as seen from the shrubbery, when

a maid came hurrying down the path to report that Miss Wilkins had

called.

 

Miss Wilkins was one of the few remaining members of the family from whom

the Anstruthers had bought the Westfield estate some few years back. She

had been staying in the neighbourhood, and this was probably a farewell

visit. ‘Perhaps you could ask Miss Wilkins to join me here,’ said Mrs

Anstruther, and soon Miss Wilkins, a person of mature years, approached.

 

‘Yes, I’m leaving the Ashes tomorrow, and I shall be able to tell my

brother how tremendously you have improved the place. Of course he can’t

help regretting the old house just a little—as I do myself—but the

garden is really delightful now.’

 

‘I am so glad you can say so. But you mustn’t think we’ve finished our

improvements. Let me show you where I mean to put a rose garden. It’s

close by here.’

 

The details of the project were laid before Miss Wilkins at some length;

but her thoughts were evidently elsewhere.

 

‘Yes, delightful,’ she said at last rather absently. ‘But do you know,

Mrs Anstruther, I’m afraid I was thinking of old times. I’m very glad

to have seen just this spot again before you altered it. Frank and I had

quite a romance about this place.’

 

‘Yes?’ said Mrs Anstruther smilingly; ‘do tell me what it was. Something

quaint and charming, I’m sure.’

 

‘Not so very charming, but it has always seemed to me curious. Neither of

us would ever be here alone when we were children, and I’m not sure that

I should care about it now in certain moods. It is one of those things

that can hardly be put into words—by me at least—and that sound rather

foolish if they are not properly expressed. I can tell you after a

fashion what it was that gave us—well, almost a horror of the place when

we were alone. It was towards the evening of one very hot autumn day,

when Frank had disappeared mysteriously about the grounds, and I was

looking for him to fetch him to tea, and going down this path I suddenly

saw him, not hiding in the bushes, as I rather expected, but sitting on

the bench in the old summer-house—there was a wooden summer-house here,

you know—up in the corner, asleep, but with such a dreadful look on his

face that I really thought he must be ill or even dead. I rushed at him

and shook him, and told him to wake up; and wake up he did, with a

scream. I assure you the poor boy seemed almost beside himself with

fright. He hurried me away to the house, and was in a terrible state all

that night, hardly sleeping. Someone had to sit up with him, as far as I

remember. He was better very soon, but for days I couldn’t get him to say

why he had been in such a condition. It came out at last that he had

really been asleep and had had a very odd disjointed sort of dream. He

never saw much of what was around him, but he felt the scenes most

vividly. First he made out that he was standing in a large room with a

number of people in it, and that someone was opposite to him who was

“very powerful”, and he was being asked questions which he felt to be

very important, and, whenever he answered them, someone—either the

person opposite to him, or someone else in the room—seemed to be, as he

said, making something up against him. All the voices sounded to him very

distant, but he remembered bits of the things that were said: “Where were

you on the 19th of October?” and “Is this your handwriting?” and so on. I

can see now, of course, that he was dreaming of some trial: but we were

never allowed to see the papers, and it was odd that a boy of eight

should have such a vivid idea of what went on in a court. All the time he

felt, he said, the most intense anxiety and oppression and hopelessness

(though I don’t suppose he used such words as that to me). Then, after

that, there was an interval in which he remembered being dreadfully

restless and miserable, and then there came another sort of picture, when

he was aware that he had come out of doors on a dark raw morning with a

little snow about. It was in a street, or at any rate among houses, and

he felt that there were numbers and numbers of people there too, and that

he was taken up some creaking wooden steps and stood on a sort of

platform, but the only thing he could actually see was a small fire

burning somewhere near him. Someone who had been holding his arm left

hold of it and went towards this fire, and then he said the fright he was

in was worse than at any other part of his dream, and if I had not

wakened him up he didn’t know what would have become of him. A curious

dream for a child to have, wasn’t it? Well, so much for that. It must

have been later in the year that Frank and I were here, and I was sitting

in the arbour just about sunset. I noticed the sun was going down, and

told Frank to run in and see if tea was ready while I finished a chapter

in the book I was reading. Frank was away longer than I expected, and the

light was going so fast that I had to bend over my book to make it out.

All at once I became conscious that someone was whispering to me inside

the arbour. The only words I could distinguish, or thought I could, were

something like “Pull, pull. I’ll push, you pull.”

 

‘I started up in something of a fright. The voice—it was little more

than a whisper—sounded so hoarse and angry, and yet as if it came from a

long, long way off—just as it had done in Frank’s dream. But, though I

was startled, I had enough courage to look round and try to make out

where the sound came from. And—this sounds very foolish, I know, but

still it is the fact—I made sure that it was strongest when I put my ear

to an old post which was part of the end of the seat. I was so certain of

this that I remember making some marks on the post—as deep as I could

with the scissors out of my work-basket. I don’t know why. I wonder, by

the way, whether that isn’t the very post itself…. Well, yes, it might

be: there are marks and scratches on it—but one can’t be sure. Anyhow,

it was just like that post you have there. My father got to know that

both of us had had a fright in the arbour, and he went down there himself

one evening after dinner, and the arbour was pulled down at very short

notice. I recollect hearing my father talking about it to an old man who

used to do odd jobs in the place, and the old man saying, “Don’t you fear

for that, sir: he’s fast enough in there without no one don’t take and

let him out.” But when I asked who it was, I could get no satisfactory

answer. Possibly my father or mother might have told me more about it

when I grew up, but, as you know, they both died when we were still quite

children. I must say it has always seemed very odd to me, and I’ve often

asked the older people in the village whether they knew of anything

strange: but either they knew nothing or they