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

was his man he meant) and me are together there, it seems to bring back the old times so plain.” And my father said, “Well,” he said, “it may suit you, but I shouldn’t like a lonely place like that in the middle of the night.” And Mr. Davis smiled, and the young man, who’d been listening, said, “Oh, we don’t want for company at such times,” and my father said he couldn’t help thinking Mr. Davis made some kind of sign, and the young man went on quick, as if to mend his words, and said, “That’s to say, Mr. Davis and me’s company enough for each other, ain’t we, master? and then there’s a beautiful air there of a summer night, and you can see all the country round under the moon, and it looks so different, seemingly, to what it do in the daytime. Why, all them barrows on the down⁠—”

And then Mr. Davis cut in, seeming to be out of temper with the lad, and said, “Ah yes, they’re old-fashioned places, ain’t they, sir? Now, what would you think was the purpose of them?” And my father said (now, dear me, it seems funny, doesn’t it, that I should recollect all this: but it took my fancy at the time, and though it’s dull perhaps for you, I can’t help finishing it out now), well, he said, “Why, I’ve heard, Mr. Davis, that they’re all graves, and I know, when I’ve had occasion to plough up one, there’s always been some old bones and pots turned up. But whose graves they are, I don’t know: people say the ancient Romans were all about this country at one time, but whether they buried their people like that I can’t tell.” And Mr. Davis shook his head, thinking, and said, “Ah, to be sure: well they look to me to be older-like than the ancient Romans, and dressed different⁠—that’s to say, according to the pictures the Romans was in armour, and you didn’t never find no armour, did you, sir, by what you said?” And my father was rather surprised and said, “I don’t know that I mentioned anything about armour, but it’s true I don’t remember to have found any. But you talk as if you’d seen ’em, Mr. Davis,” and they both of them laughed, Mr. Davis and the young man, and Mr. Davis said, “Seen ’em, sir? that would be a difficult matter after all these years. Not but what I should like well enough to know more about them old times and people, and what they worshipped and all.” And my father said, “Worshipped? Well, I dare say they worshipped the old man on the hill.” “Ah, indeed!” Mr. Davis said, “well, I shouldn’t wonder,” and my father went on and told them what he’d heard and read about the heathens and their sacrifices: what you’ll learn some day for yourself, Charles, when you go to school and begin your Latin. And they seemed to be very much interested, both of them; but my father said he couldn’t help thinking the most of what he was saying was no news to them. That was the only time he ever had much talk with Mr. Davis, and it stuck in his mind, particularly, he said, the young man’s word about not wanting for company: because in those days there was a lot of talk in the villages round about⁠—why, but for my father interfering, the people here would have ducked an old lady for a witch.

Charles: What does that mean, granny, ducked an old lady for a witch? Are there witches here now?

Grandmother: No, no, dear! why, what ever made me stray off like that? No, no, that’s quite another affair. What I was going to say was that the people in other places round about believed that some sort of meetings went on at nighttime on that hill where the man is, and that those who went there were up to no good. But don’t you interrupt me now, for it’s getting late. Well, I suppose it was a matter of three years that Mr. Davis and this young man went on living together: and then all of a sudden, a dreadful thing happened. I don’t know if I ought to tell you. (Outcries of: “Oh yes! yes, granny, you must,” etc.). Well, then, you must promise not to get frightened and go screaming out in the middle of the night. (“No, no, we won’t, of course not!”) One morning very early towards the turn of the year, I think it was in September, one of the woodmen had to go up to his work at the top of the long covert just as it was getting light; and just where there were some few big oaks in a sort of clearing deep in the wood he saw at a distance a white thing that looked like a man through the mist, and he was in two minds about going on, but go on he did, and made out as he came near that it was a man, and more than that, it was Mr. Davis’s young man: dressed in a sort of white gown he was, and hanging by his neck to the limb of the biggest oak, quite, quite dead: and near his feet there lay on the ground a hatchet all in a gore of blood. Well, what a terrible sight that was for anyone to come upon in that lonely place! This poor man was nearly out of his wits: he dropped everything he was carrying and ran as hard as ever he could straight down to the Parsonage, and woke them up and told what he’d seen. And old Mr. White, who was the parson then, sent him off to get two or three of the best men, the blacksmith and the churchwardens and whatnot, while he dressed himself, and all of them went up to this dreadful place with a horse to lay the poor body on and take