Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by Montague Rhodes James (famous ebook reader txt) 📖

PART 2: MORE GHOST STORIES

A School Story

The Rose Garden

The Tractate Middoth

Casting the Runes

The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral

Martin’s Close

Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance

 

*

 

The first six of the seven tales were Christmas productions, the very

first (‘A School Story’) having been made up for the benefit of King’s

College Choir School. ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ was printed in

Contemporary Review; ‘Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance’ was written to

fill up the volume. In ‘A School Story’ I had Temple Grove, East Sheen in

mind; in ‘The Tractate Middoth’, Cambridge University Library; in

‘Martin’s Close’, Sampford Courtenay in Devon. The Cathedral of

Barchester is a blend of Canterbury, Salisbury, and Hereford.

 

M.R. JAMES

 

*

A SCHOOL STORY

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. ‘At

our school,’ said A., ‘we had a ghost’s footmark on the staircase. What

was it like? Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a

square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never

heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think

of it. Why didn’t somebody invent one, I wonder?’

 

‘You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own.

There’s a subject for you, by the way—“The Folklore of Private

Schools”.’

 

‘Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to

investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at

private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be

highly-compressed versions of stories out of books.’

 

‘Nowadays the Strand and Pearson’s, and so on, would be extensively

drawn upon.’

 

‘No doubt: they weren’t born or thought of in my time. Let’s see. I

wonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, there

was the house with a room in which a series of people insisted on passing

a night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner,

and had just time to say, “I’ve seen it,” and died.’

 

‘Wasn’t that the house in Berkeley Square?’

 

‘I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noise in the

passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards him

on all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides,

let me think—Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a

horseshoe mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered

with marks of horseshoes also; I don’t know why. Also there was the lady

who, on locking her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice

among the bed-curtains say, “Now we’re shut in for the night.” None of

those had any explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those

stories.’

 

‘Oh, likely enough—with additions from the magazines, as I said. You

never heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? I thought not;

nobody has that ever I came across.’

 

‘From the way in which you said that, I gather that you have.’

 

‘I really don’t know; but this is what was in my mind. It happened at my

private school thirty odd years ago, and I haven’t any explanation of it.

 

‘The school I mean was near London. It was established in a large and

fairly old house—a great white building with very fine grounds about it;

there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many of the

older gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or four

fields which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite an

attractive place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any

tolerable features.

 

‘I came to the school in a September, soon after the year 1870; and among

the boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to: a Highland

boy, whom I will call McLeod. I needn’t spend time in describing him: the

main thing is that I got to know him very well. He was not an exceptional

boy in any way—not particularly good at books or games—but he suited

me.

 

‘The school was a large one: there must have been from 120 to 130 boys

there as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters was required, and

there were rather frequent changes among them.

 

‘One term—perhaps it was my third or fourth—a new master made his

appearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tallish, stoutish, pale,

black-bearded man. I think we liked him: he had travelled a good deal,

and had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that there was

some competition among us to get within earshot of him. I remember

too—dear me, I have hardly thought of it since then!—that he had a

charm on his watch-chain that attracted my attention one day, and he let

me examine it. It was, I now suppose, a gold Byzantine coin; there was an

effigy of some absurd emperor on one side; the other side had been worn

practically smooth, and he had had cut on it—rather barbarously—his own

initials, G.W.S., and a date, 24 July, 1865. Yes, I can see it now: he

told me he had picked it up in Constantinople: it was about the size of a

florin, perhaps rather smaller.

 

‘Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampson was doing

Latin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods—perhaps it is rather

a good one—was to make us construct sentences out of our own heads to

illustrate the rules he was trying to make us learn. Of course that is a

thing which gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent: there are

lots of school stories in which that happens—or anyhow there might be.

But Sampson was too good a disciplinarian for us to think of trying that

on with him. Now, on this occasion he was telling us how to express

remembering in Latin: and he ordered us each to make a sentence

bringing in the verb memini, “I remember.” Well, most of us made up

some ordinary sentence such as “I remember my father,” or “He remembers

his book,” or something equally uninteresting: and I dare say a good many

put down memino librum meum, and so forth: but the boy I

mentioned—McLeod—was evidently thinking of something more elaborate

than that. The rest of us wanted to have our sentences passed, and get on

to something else, so some kicked him under the desk, and I, who was next

to him, poked him and whispered to him to look sharp. But he didn’t seem

to attend. I looked at his paper and saw he had put down nothing at all.

So I jogged him again harder than before and upbraided him sharply for

keeping us all waiting. That did have some effect. He started and seemed

to wake up, and then very quickly he scribbled about a couple of lines on

his paper, and showed it up with the rest. As it was the last, or nearly

the last, to come in, and as Sampson had a good deal to say to the boys

who had written meminiscimus patri meo and the rest of it, it turned

out that the clock struck twelve before he had got to McLeod, and McLeod

had to wait afterwards to have his sentence corrected. There was nothing

much going on outside when I got out, so I waited for him to come. He

came very slowly when he did arrive, and I guessed there had been some

sort of trouble. “Well,” I said, “what did you get?” “Oh, I don’t know,”

said McLeod, “nothing much: but I think Sampson’s rather sick with me.”

“Why, did you show him up some rot?” “No fear,” he said. “It was all

right as far as I could see: it was like this: Memento—that’s right

enough for remember, and it takes a genitive,—_memento putei inter

quatuor taxos_.” “What silly rot!” I said. “What made you shove that

down? What does it mean?” “That’s the funny part,” said McLeod. “I’m not

quite sure what it does mean. All I know is, it just came into my head

and I corked it down. I know what I think it means, because just before

I wrote it down I had a sort of picture of it in my head: I believe it

means ‘Remember the well among the four’—what are those dark sort of

trees that have red berries on them?” “Mountain ashes, I s’pose you

mean.” “I never heard of them,” said McLeod; “no, I’ll tell you—yews.”

“Well, and what did Sampson say?” “Why, he was jolly odd about it. When

he read it he got up and went to the mantelpiece and stopped quite a long

time without saying anything, with his back to me. And then he said,

without turning round, and rather quiet, ‘What do you suppose that

means?’ I told him what I thought; only I couldn’t remember the name of

the silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put it down, and I had

to say something or other. And after that he left