Short Fiction, M. R. James [best classic books of all time TXT] 📗

said, stopping on a more or less level plot with a ring of large trees, “is Baxter’s Roman villa.” “Baxter?” said Mr. Fanshawe.

“I forgot; you don’t know about him. He was the old chap I got those glasses from. I believe he made them. He was an old watchmaker down in the village, a great antiquary. My father gave him leave to grub about where he liked; and when he made a find he used to lend him a man or two to help him with the digging. He got a surprising lot of things together, and when he died⁠—I dare say it’s ten or fifteen years ago⁠—I bought the whole lot and gave them to the town museum. We’ll run in one of these days, and look over them. The glasses came to me with the rest, but of course I kept them. If you look at them, you’ll see they’re more or less amateur work⁠—the body of them; naturally the lenses weren’t his making.”

“Yes, I see they are just the sort of thing that a clever workman in a different line of business might turn out. But I don’t see why he made them so heavy. And did Baxter actually find a Roman villa here?”

“Yes, there’s a pavement turfed over, where we’re standing: it was too rough and plain to be worth taking up, but of course there are drawings of it: and the small things and pottery that turned up were quite good of their kind. An ingenious chap, old Baxter: he seemed to have a quite out-of-the-way instinct for these things. He was invaluable to our archaeologists. He used to shut up his shop for days at a time, and wander off over the district, marking down places, where he scented anything, on the ordnance map; and he kept a book with fuller notes of the places. Since his death, a good many of them have been sampled, and there’s always been something to justify him.”

“What a good man!” said Mr. Fanshawe.

“Good?” said the Squire, pulling up brusquely.

“I meant useful to have about the place,” said Mr. Fanshawe. “But was he a villain?”

“I don’t know about that either,” said the Squire; “but all I can say is, if he was good, he wasn’t lucky. And he wasn’t liked: I didn’t like him,” he added, after a moment.

“Oh?” said Fanshawe, interrogatively.

“No, I didn’t; but that’s enough about Baxter: besides, this is the stiffest bit, and I don’t want to talk and walk as well.”

Indeed it was hot, climbing a slippery grass slope that evening. “I told you I should take you the short way,” panted the Squire, “and I wish I hadn’t. However, a bath won’t do us any harm when we get back. Here we are, and there’s the seat.”

A small clump of old Scotch firs crowned the top of the hill; and, at the edge of it, commanding the cream of the view, was a wide and solid seat, on which the two disposed themselves, and wiped their brows, and regained breath.

“Now, then,” said the Squire, as soon as he was in a condition to talk connectedly, “this is where your glasses come in. But you’d better take a general look round first. My word! I’ve never seen the view look better.”

Writing as I am now with a winter wind flapping against dark windows and a rushing, tumbling sea within a hundred yards, I find it hard to summon up the feelings and words which will put my reader in possession of the June evening and the lovely English landscape of which the Squire was speaking.

Across a broad level plain they looked upon ranges of great hills, whose uplands⁠—some green, some furred with woods⁠—caught the light of a sun, westering but not yet low. And all the plain was fertile, though the river which traversed it was nowhere seen. There were copses, green wheat, hedges and pastureland: the little compact white moving cloud marked the evening train. Then the eye picked out red farms and grey houses, and nearer home scattered cottages, and then the Hall, nestled under the hill. The smoke of chimneys was very blue and straight. There was a smell of hay in the air: there were wild roses on bushes hard by. It was the acme of summer.

After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point out the leading features, the hills and valleys, and told where the towns and villages lay. “Now,” he said, “with the glasses you’ll be able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll.”

“Yes, yes,” said Fanshawe. “I’ve got it. What a fine tower!”

“You must have got the wrong direction,” said the Squire; “there’s not much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it’s Oldbourne Church that you’ve got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower, you’re easily pleased.”

“Well, I do call it a fine tower,” said Fanshawe, the glasses still at his eyes, “whether it’s Oldbourne or any other. And it must belong to a largish church; it looks to me like a central tower⁠—four big pinnacles at the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over there. How far is it?”

“Oldbourne’s about nine miles, or less,” said the Squire. “It’s a long time since I’ve been there, but I don’t remember thinking much of it. Now I’ll show you another thing.”

Fanshawe had lowered the glasses, and was still gazing in the Oldbourne direction. “No,” he said, “I can’t make out anything with the naked eye. What was it you were going to show me?”

“A good deal more to the left⁠—it oughtn’t to be difficult to find. Do you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it? It’s in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge.”

“I do,” said Fanshawe, “and I believe I could tell