Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Montague Rhodes James [best ereader under 100 .TXT] 📗
- Author: Montague Rhodes James
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dear, how I have been boring you with my childish remembrances! but
indeed that arbour did absorb our thoughts quite remarkably for a time.
You can fancy, can’t you, the kind of stories that we made up for
ourselves. Well, dear Mrs Anstruther, I must be leaving you now. We shall
meet in town this winter, I hope, shan’t we?’ etc., etc.
The seats and the post were cleared away and uprooted respectively by
that evening. Late summer weather is proverbially treacherous, and during
dinner-time Mrs Collins sent up to ask for a little brandy, because her
husband had took a nasty chill and she was afraid he would not be able to
do much next day.
Mrs Anstruther’s morning reflections were not wholly placid. She was sure
some roughs had got into the plantation during the night. ‘And another
thing, George: the moment that Collins is about again, you must tell him
to do something about the owls. I never heard anything like them, and I’m
positive one came and perched somewhere just outside our window. If it
had come in I should have been out of my wits: it must have been a very
large bird, from its voice. Didn’t you hear it? No, of course not, you
were sound asleep as usual. Still, I must say, George, you don’t look as
if your night had done you much good.’
‘My dear, I feel as if another of the same would turn me silly. You have
no idea of the dreams I had. I couldn’t speak of them when I woke up, and
if this room wasn’t so bright and sunny I shouldn’t care to think of them
even now.’
‘Well, really, George, that isn’t very common with you, I must say. You
must have—no, you only had what I had yesterday—unless you had tea at
that wretched club house: did you?’
‘No, no; nothing but a cup of tea and some bread and butter. I should
really like to know how I came to put my dream together—as I suppose one
does put one’s dreams together from a lot of little things one has been
seeing or reading. Look here, Mary, it was like this—if I shan’ t be
boring you—’
‘I wish to hear what it was, George. I will tell you when I have had
enough.’
‘All right. I must tell you that it wasn’t like other nightmares in one
way, because I didn’t really see anyone who spoke to me or touched me,
and yet I was most fearfully impressed with the reality of it all. First
I was sitting, no, moving about, in an old-fashioned sort of panelled
room. I remember there was a fireplace and a lot of burnt papers in it,
and I was in a great state of anxiety about something. There was someone
else—a servant, I suppose, because I remember saying to him, “Horses, as
quick as you can,” and then waiting a bit: and next I heard several
people coming upstairs and a noise like spurs on a boarded floor, and
then the door opened and whatever it was that I was expecting happened.’
‘Yes, but what was that?’
‘You see, I couldn’t tell: it was the sort of shock that upsets you in a
dream. You either wake up or else everything goes black. That was what
happened to me. Then I was in a big dark-walled room, panelled, I think,
like the other, and a number of people, and I was evidently—’
‘Standing your trial, I suppose, George.’
‘Goodness! yes, Mary, I was; but did you dream that too? How very odd!’
‘No, no; I didn’t get enough sleep for that. Go on, George, and I will
tell you afterwards.’
‘Yes; well, I was being tried, for my life, I’ve no doubt, from the
state I was in. I had no one speaking for me, and somewhere there was a
most fearful fellow—on the bench I should have said, only that he seemed
to be pitching into me most unfairly, and twisting everything I said, and
asking most abominable questions.’
‘What about?’
‘Why, dates when I was at particular places, and letters I was supposed
to have written, and why I had destroyed some papers; and I recollect his
laughing at answers I made in a way that quite daunted me. It doesn’t
sound much, but I can tell you, Mary, it was really appalling at the
time. I am quite certain there was such a man once, and a most horrible
villain he must have been. The things he said—’
‘Thank you, I have no wish to hear them. I can go to the links any day
myself. How did it end?’
‘Oh, against me; he saw to that. I do wish, Mary, I could give you a
notion of the strain that came after that, and seemed to me to last for
days: waiting and waiting, and sometimes writing things I knew to be
enormously important to me, and waiting for answers and none coming, and
after that I came out—’
‘Ah!’
‘What makes you say that? Do you know what sort of thing I saw?’
‘Was it a dark cold day, and snow in the streets, and a fire burning
somewhere near you?’
‘By George, it was! You have had the same nightmare! Really not? Well,
it is the oddest thing! Yes; I’ve no doubt it was an execution for high
treason. I know I was laid on straw and jolted along most wretchedly, and
then had to go up some steps, and someone was holding my arm, and I
remember seeing a bit of a ladder and hearing a sound of a lot of people.
I really don’t think I could bear now to go into a crowd of people and
hear the noise they make talking. However, mercifully, I didn’t get to
the real business. The dream passed off with a sort of thunder inside my
head. But, Mary—’
‘I know what you are going to ask. I suppose this is an instance of a
kind of thought-reading. Miss Wilkins called yesterday and told me of a
dream her brother had as a child when they lived here, and something did
no doubt make me think of that when I was awake last night listening to
those horrible owls and those men talking and laughing in the shrubbery
(by the way, I wish you would see if they have done any damage, and speak
to the police about it); and so, I suppose, from my brain it must have
got into yours while you were asleep. Curious, no doubt, and I am sorry
it gave you such a bad night. You had better be as much in the fresh air
as you can to-day.’
‘Oh, it’s all right now; but I think I will go over to the Lodge and
see if I can get a game with any of them. And you?’
‘I have enough to do for this morning; and this afternoon, if I am not
interrupted, there is my drawing.’
‘To be sure—I want to see that finished very much.’
No damage was discoverable in the shrubbery. Mr Anstruther surveyed with
faint interest the site of the rose garden, where the uprooted post still
lay, and the hole it had occupied remained unfilled. Collins, upon
inquiry made, proved to be better, but quite unable to come to his work.
He expressed, by the mouth of his wife, a hope that he hadn’t done
nothing wrong clearing away them things. Mrs Collins added that there was
a lot of talking people in Westfield, and the hold ones was the worst:
seemed to think everything of them having been in the parish longer than
what other people had. But as to what they said no more could then be
ascertained than that it had quite upset Collins, and was a lot of
nonsense.
*
Recruited by lunch and a brief period of slumber, Mrs Anstruther settled
herself comfortably upon her sketching chair in the path leading through
the shrubbery to the side-gate of the churchyard. Trees and buildings
were among her favourite subjects, and here she had good studies of both.
She worked hard, and the drawing was becoming a really pleasant thing to
look upon by the time that the wooded hills to the west had shut off the
sun. Still she would have persevered, but the light changed rapidly, and
it became obvious that the last touches must be added on the morrow. She
rose and turned towards the house, pausing for a time to take delight in
the limpid green western sky. Then she passed on between the dark
box-bushes, and, at a point just before the path debouched on the lawn,
she stopped once again and considered the quiet evening landscape, and
made a mental note that that must be the tower of one of the Roothing
churches that one caught on the sky-line. Then a bird (perhaps) rustled
in the box-bush on her left, and she turned and started at seeing what at
first she took to be a Fifth of November mask peeping out among the
branches. She looked closer.
It was not a mask. It was a face—large, smooth, and pink. She remembers
the minute drops of perspiration which were starting from its forehead:
she remembers how the jaws were clean-shaven and the eyes shut. She
remembers also, and with an accuracy which makes the thought intolerable
to her, how the mouth was open and a single tooth appeared below the
upper lip. As she looked the face receded into the darkness of the bush.
The shelter of the house was gained and the door shut before she
collapsed.
Mr and Mrs Anstruther had been for a week or more recruiting at Brighton
before they received a circular from the Essex Archaeological Society,
and a query as to whether they possessed certain historical portraits
which it was desired to include in the forthcoming work on Essex
Portraits, to be published under the Society’s auspices. There was an
accompanying letter from the Secretary which contained the following
passage: ‘We are specially anxious to know whether you possess the
original of the engraving of which I enclose a photograph. It represents
Sir –- –-, Lord Chief Justice under Charles II, who, as you doubtless
know, retired after his disgrace to Westfield, and is supposed to have
died there of remorse. It may interest you to hear that a curious entry
has recently been found in the registers, not of Westfield but of Priors
Roothing to the effect that the parish was so much troubled after his
death that the rector of Westfield summoned the parsons of all the
Roothings to come and lay him; which they did. The entry ends by saying:
“The stake is in a field adjoining to the churchyard of Westfield, on the
west side.” Perhaps you can let us know if any tradition to this effect
is current in your parish.’
The incidents which the ‘enclosed photograph’ recalled were productive of
a severe shock to Mrs Anstruther. It was decided that she must spend the
winter abroad.
Mr Anstruther, when he went down to Westfield to make the necessary
arrangements, not unnaturally told his story to the rector (an old
gentleman), who showed little surprise.
‘Really I had managed to piece out for myself very much what must have
happened, partly from old people’s talk and partly from what I saw in
your grounds. Of course we have suffered to some extent also. Yes, it was
bad at first: like owls, as you say, and men talking sometimes. One night
it
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