Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (34 page)

The globe, furthermore, completely absorbed her. It was unique in her experience, and she pored over it for long.

“I should like a rubbing of that,” she said, “if it could possibly be made. Yes, I am sure you would be most kind about it, Mr. Humphreys, but I trust you won’t attempt it on my account, I do indeed. I shouldn’t like to take any liberties here. I have the feeling that it might be resented.

“Now, confess,” she went on, turning and facing Humphreys, “don’t you feel—haven’t you felt ever since you came in here—that a watch is being kept on us, and that if we overstepped the mark in any way there would be a—well, a pounce?

“No?
I
do; and I don’t care how soon we are outside the gate.

“After all,” she said, when they were once more on their way to the house, “it may have been only the airlessness and the dull heat of that place that pressed on my brain. Still, I’ll take back one thing I said. I’m not sure that I won’t forgive you after all, if I find next spring that that maze has been grubbed up.”

“Whether or no that’s done, you shall have the plan, Lady Wardrop. I have made one, and no later than tonight I can trace you a copy.”

“Admirable. A pencil tracing will be all I want, with an indication of the scale. I can easily have it brought into line with the rest of my plates. Many, many thanks.”

“Very well, you shall have that tomorrow. I wish you could help me to a solution of my block-puzzle.”

“What, those stories in the summer-house? That
is
a puzzle. They are in no sort of order? Of course not. But the men who put them down must have had some directions—perhaps you’ll find a paper about it among your uncle’s things. If not, you’ll have to call in somebody who’s an expert in ciphers.”

“Advise me about something else, please,” said Humphreys. “That bush-thing under the library window: you would have that away, wouldn’t you?”

“Which? That? Oh, I think not,” said Lady Wardrop. “I can’t see it very well from this distance, but it’s not unsightly.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Only, looking out of my window, just above it, last night, I thought it took up too much room. It doesn’t seem to, as one sees it from here, certainly.

“Very well, I’ll leave it alone for a bit.”

Tea was the next business, soon after which Lady Wardrop drove off. But, halfway down the drive, she stopped the car and beckoned to Humphreys, who was still on the front-door steps.

He ran to glean her parting words, which were: “It just occurs to me, it might be worth your while to look at the underside of those stones. They
must
have been numbered, mustn’t they?
Good
-bye again.

“Home, please.”

The main occupation of this evening at any rate was settled. The tracing of the plan for Lady Wardrop and the careful collation of it with the original meant a couple of hours’ work at least.

Accordingly, soon after nine Humphreys had his materials put out in the library and began. It was a still, stuffy evening. Windows had to stand open, and he had more than one grisly encounter with a bat. These unnerving episodes made him keep the tail of his eye on the window.

Once or twice it was a question whether there was—not a bat, but something more considerable—that had a mind to join him. How unpleasant it would be if someone had slipped noiselessly over the sill and was crouching on the floor!

The tracing of the plan was done. It remained to compare it with the original, and to see whether any paths had been wrongly closed or left open.

With one finger on each paper, he traced out the course that must be followed from the entrance. There were one or two slight mistakes, but here, near the center, was a bad confusion, probably due to the entry of the Second or Third Bat. Before correcting the copy he followed out carefully the last turnings of the path on the original. These, at least, were right: they led without a hitch to the middle space.

Here was a feature which need not be repeated on the copy—an ugly black spot about the size of a shilling. Ink? No. It resembled a hole, but how should a hole be there?

He stared at it with tired eyes: the work of tracing had been very laborious, and he was drowsy and oppressed …

But surely this was a very odd hole. It seemed to go not only through the paper, but through the table on which it lay. Yes, and through the floor below that, down, and still down, even into infinite depths. He craned over it, utterly bewildered.

Just as, when you were a child, you may have pored over a square inch of counterpane until it became a landscape with wooded hills, and perhaps even churches and houses, and you lost all thought of the true size, of yourself and it, so this hole seemed to Humphreys for the moment the only thing in the world.

For some reason it was hateful to him from the first, but he had gazed at it for some moments before any feeling of anxiety came upon him. And then it did come, stronger and stronger—a horror lest something might emerge from it, and a really agonizing conviction that a terror was on its way, from the sight of which he would not be able to escape.

Oh yes, far, far down there was a movement, and the movement was upward—toward the surface. Nearer and nearer it came, and it was of a blackish-gray color with more than one dark hole.

It took shape as a face—a human face—a
burned
human face. And with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping out of a rotten apple there clambered forth an appearance of a form, waving black arms prepared to clasp the head that was bending over them.

With a convulsion of despair Humphreys threw himself back, struck his head against a hanging lamp, and fell.

There was concussion of the brain, shock to the system, and a long confinement to bed. The doctor was badly puzzled, not by the symptoms, but by a request which Humphreys made to him as soon as he was able to say anything.

“I wish you would open the ball in the maze.”

“Hardly room enough there, I should have thought,” was the best answer he could summon up. “But it’s more in your way than mine—my dancing days are over.”

At which Humphreys muttered and turned over to sleep, and the doctor
intimated to the nurses that the patient was not out of the wood yet.

When he was better able to express his views, Humphreys made his meaning clear, and received a promise that the thing should be done at once.

He was so anxious to learn the result that the doctor, who seemed a little pensive next morning, saw that more harm than good would be done by saving up his report. “Well,” he said, “I am afraid the ball is done for. The metal must have worn thin, I suppose. Anyhow, it went all to bits with the first blow of the chisel.”

“Well? Go on, do!” said Humphreys impatiently.

“Oh! You want to know what we found in it, of course. Well, it was half-full of stuff like ashes.”

“Ashes? What did you make of them?”

“I haven’t thoroughly examined them yet, there’s hardly been time: but Cooper’s made up his mind—I dare say from something I said—that it’s a case of cremation …

“Now don’t excite yourself, my good sir. Yes, I must allow I think he’s probably right.”

The maze is gone, and Lady Wardrop has forgiven Humphreys. In fact, I believe he married her niece.

She was right, too, in her conjecture that the stones in the temple were numbered. There had been a numeral painted on the bottom of each. Some few of these had rubbed off, but enough remained to enable Humphreys to reconstruct the inscription. It ran thus:

PENETRANS AD INTERIORA MORTIS

Grateful as Humphreys was to the memory of his uncle, he could not quite forgive him for having burned the journals and letters of the James Wilson who had gifted Wilsthorpe with the maze and the temple.

As to the circumstances of that ancestor’s death and burial no tradition survived. But his will, which was almost the only record of him accessible, assigned an unusually generous legacy to a servant who bore an Italian name.

Mr. Cooper’s view is that, humanly speaking, all these many solemn events have a meaning for us, if our limited intelligence permitted of our
disintegrating it, while Mr. Calton has been reminded of an aunt now gone from us, who, about the year 1866, had been lost for upward of an hour-and-a-half in the maze at Covent Gardens, or it might be Hampton Court.

One of the oddest things in the whole series of transactions is that the book which contained the Parable has entirely disappeared. Humphreys has never been able to find it since he copied out the passage to send to Lady Wardrop.

M
R. AMD
M
RS
. A
NSTRUTHER
were at breakfast in the parlor of Westfield Hall, in the county of Essex. They were arranging plans for the day.

“George,” said Mrs. Anstruther, “I think you had better take the car to Maldon and see if you can get any of those knitted things I was speaking about which would do for my stall at the bazaar.”

“Oh well, if you wish it, Mary, of course I can do that, but I had half-arranged to play a round with Geoffrey Williamson this morning. The bazaar isn’t till Thursday of next week, is it?”

“What has that to do with it, George? I should have thought you would have guessed that if I can’t get the things I want in Maldon I shall have to write to all manner of shops in town: and they are certain to send something quite unsuitable in price or quality the first time.

“If you have actually made an appointment with Mr. Williamson, you had better keep it, but I must say I think you might have let me know.”

“Oh no, no, it wasn’t really an appointment. I quite see what you mean. I’ll go. And what shall you do yourself?”

“Why, when the work of the house is arranged for, I must see about laying out my new rose garden. By the way, before you start for Maldon I wish you would just take Collins to look at the place I fixed upon. You know it, of course.”

“Well, I’m not quite sure that I do, Mary. Is it at the upper end, toward the village?”

“Good gracious no, my dear George. I thought I had made that quite clear. No, it’s that small clearing just off the shrubbery path that goes toward the church.”

“Oh yes, where we were saying there must have been a summer-house once: the place with the old seat and the posts. But do you think there’s enough sun there?”

“My dear George, do allow me
some
common sense, and don’t credit me with all your ideas about summer-houses. Yes, there will be plenty of sun when we have got rid of some of those box-bushes. I know what you are going to say, and I have as little wish as you to strip the place bare.

“All I want Collins to do is to clear away the old seats and the posts and things before I come out in an hour’s time. And I hope you will manage to get off fairly soon. After luncheon I think I shall go on with my sketch of the church, and if you please you can go over to the links, or—”

“Ah, a good idea—very good! Yes, you finish that sketch, Mary, and I should be glad of a round.”

“I was going to say, you might call on the Bishop, but I suppose it is no use my making
any
suggestion. And now do be getting ready, or half the morning will be gone.”

Mr. Anstruther’s face, which had shown symptoms of lengthening, shortened itself again, and he hurried from the room, and was soon heard giving orders in the passage. Mrs. Anstruther, a stately dame of some fifty 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.