Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (49 page)

The reader will not be far out if he guesses that Miss Mary and Mr. Spearman made a match of it not very long after this month of June. Mr. Spearman was a young spark, who had a good property in the neighborhood of Whitminster, and not unfrequently about this time spent a few days at the King’s Head, ostensibly on business.

But he must have had some leisure, for his diary is copious, especially for the days of which I am telling the story. It is probable to me that he wrote this episode as fully as he could at the bidding of Miss Mary.

Uncle Oldys (how I hope I may have the right to call him so before long!) called this morning. After throwing out a good many short remarks on indifferent topics, he said, “I wish, Spearman, you’d listen to an odd story and keep a close tongue about it just for a bit, till I get more light on it.”

“To be sure,” said I, “you may count on me.”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “You know my bedroom. It is well away from everyone else’s, and I pass through the great hall and two or three other rooms to get to it.”

“Is it at the end next the minster, then?” I asked.

“Yes, it is. Well, now, yesterday morning my Mary told me that the room next before it was infested with some sort of fly that the
housekeeper couldn’t get rid of. That may be the explanation, or it may not. What do you think?”

“Why,” said I, “you’ve not yet told me what has to be explained.”

“True enough, I don’t believe I have; but by the by, what are these sawflies? What’s the size of them?”

I began to wonder if he was touched in the head.

“What I call a sawfly,” I said very patiently, “is a red animal, like a daddy-long-legs, but not so big, perhaps an inch long, perhaps less. It is very hard in the body, and to me”—I was going to say “particularly offensive”—but he broke in.

“Come, come; an inch or less. That won’t do.”

“I can only tell you,” I said, “what I know. Would it not be better if you told me from first to last what it is that has puzzled you, and then I may be able to give you some kind of an opinion.”

He gazed at me meditatively. “Perhaps it would,” he said. “I told Mary only today that I thought you had some vestiges of sense in your head.” (I bowed my acknowledgments.) “The thing is, I’ve an odd kind of shyness about talking of it. Nothing of the sort has happened to me before.

“Well, about eleven o’clock last night, or after, I took my candle and set out for my room. I had a book in my other hand—I always read something for a few minutes before I drop off to sleep. A dangerous habit: I don’t recommend it, but I know how to manage my light and my bed curtains.

“Now then, first, as I stepped out of my study into the great hall that’s next to it, and shut the door, my candle went out. I supposed I had clapped the door behind me too quick, and made a draft, and I was annoyed, for I’d no tinder-box nearer than my bedroom. But I knew my way well enough, and went on.

“The next thing was that my book was struck out of my hand in the dark. If I said twitched out of my hand it would better express the sensation. It fell on the floor. I picked it up, and went on, more annoyed than before, and a little startled.

“But as you know, that hall has many windows without curtains, and in summer nights like these it’s easy to see not only where the
furniture is, but whether there’s anyone or anything moving: and there was no one—nothing of the kind.

“So on I went through the hall and through the audit chamber next to it, which also has big windows, and then into the bedrooms which lead to my own, where the curtains were drawn, and I had to go slower because of steps here and there.

“It was in the second of those rooms that I nearly got my quietus. The moment I opened the door of it I felt there was something wrong.

“I thought twice, I confess, whether I shouldn’t turn back and find another way there is to my room rather than go through that one. Then I was ashamed of myself, and thought what people call better of it, though I don’t know about ‘better’ in this case.

“If I was to describe my experience exactly, I should say this: there was a dry, light, rustling sound all over the room as I went in, and then (you remember it was perfectly dark) something seemed to rush at me, and there was—I don’t know how to put it—a sensation of long thin arms, or legs, or feelers, all about my face, and neck, and body.

“Very little strength in them, there seemed to be, but, Spearman, I don’t think I was ever more horrified or disgusted in all my life, that I remember: and it does take something to put me out.

“I roared out as loud as I could, and flung away my candle at random, and, knowing I was near the window, I tore at the curtain and somehow let in enough light to be able to see something waving which I knew was an insect’s leg, by the shape of it: but, Lord, what a size! Why, the beast must have been as tall as I am.

“And now you tell me sawflies are an inch long or less. What do you make of it, Spearman?”

“For goodness’ sake finish your story first,” I said. “I never heard anything like it.”

“Oh,” said he, “there’s no more to tell. Mary ran in with a light, and there was nothing there. I didn’t tell her what was the matter. I changed my room for last night, and I expect for good.”

“Have you searched this odd room of yours?” I said. “What do you keep in it?”

“We don’t use it,” he answered. “There’s an old press there, and some other furniture.”

“And the press?” said I.

“I don’t know. I never saw it opened, but I do know that it’s locked.”

“Well, I should have it looked into, and, if you had time, I own to having some curiosity the see the palace myself.”

“I didn’t exactly like to ask you, but that’s rather what I hoped you’d say. Name your time and I’ll take you there.”

“No time like the present,” I said at once, for I saw he would never settle down to anything while this affair was in suspense.

He got up with great alacrity, and looked at me, I am tempted to think, with marked approval. “Come along,” was all he said, however, and was pretty silent all the way to his house.

My Mary (as he calls her in public, and I in private) was summoned, and we proceeded to the room.

The Doctor had gone so far as to tell her that he had had something of a fright there last night, of what nature he had not yet divulged. But now he pointed out and described, very briefly, the incidents of his progress.

When we were near the important spot, he pulled up, and allowed me to pass on. “There’s the room,” he said. “Go in, Spearman, and tell us what you find.”

Whatever I might have felt at midnight, noonday I was sure would keep back anything sinister, and I flung the door open with an air and stepped in.

It was a well-lighted room, with its large window on the right, though not, I thought, a very airy one. The principal piece of furniture was the gaunt old press of dark wood. There was, too, a four-post bedstead, a mere skeleton which could hide nothing, and there was a chest of drawers.

On the window-sill and the floor near it were the dead bodies of many hundred sawflies, and one torpid one which I had some satisfaction in killing.

I tried the door of the press, but could not open it. The drawers, too, were locked. Somewhere, I was conscious, there was a faint
rustling sound, but I could not locate it, and when I made my report to those outside, I said nothing of it. But, I said, clearly the next thing was to see what was in those locked receptacles.

Uncle Oldys turned to Mary. “Mrs. Maple,” he said, and Mary ran off—no one, I am sure, steps like her—and soon came back at a soberer pace, with an elderly lady of discreet aspect.

“Have you the keys of these things, Mrs. Maple?” said Uncle Oldys. His simple words let loose a torrent (not violent, but copious) of speech. Had she been a shade or two higher in the social scale, Mrs. Maple might have stood as the model for Miss Bates.

“Oh, Doctor, and Miss, and you too, sir,” she said, acknowledging my presence with a bend, “them keys! Who was that again that come when first we took over things in this house—a gentleman in business it was, and I gave him his luncheon in the small parlor on account of us not having everything as we should like to see it in the large one—chicken, and apple-pie, and a glass of madeira—dear, dear, you’ll say I’m running on, Miss Mary; but I only mention it to bring back my recollection. And there it comes—Gardner, just the same as it did last week with the artichokes and the text of the sermon.

“Now that Mr. Gardner, every key I got from him were labeled to itself, and each and every one was a key of some door or another in this house, and sometimes two. And when I say door, my meaning is door of a room, not like such a press as this is. Yes, Miss Mary, I know full well, and I’m just making it clear to your uncle and you too, sir.

“But now there was a box which this same gentleman he give over into my charge, and thinking no harm after he was gone I took the liberty, knowing it was your uncle’s property, to rattle it: and unless I’m most surprisingly deceived, in that box there was keys, but what keys, that, Doctor, is known Elsewhere, for open the box, no that I would not do.”

I wondered that Uncle Oldys remained as quiet as he did under this address. Mary, I knew, was amused by it, and he probably had been taught by experience that it was useless to break in upon it.

At any rate he did not, but merely said at the end, “Have you that box handy, Mrs. Maple? If so, you might bring it here.”

Mrs. Maple pointed her finger at him, either in accusation or in gloomy triumph. “There,” she said, “was I to choose out the very words out of your mouth, Doctor, them would be the ones. And if I’ve took it to my own rebuke one half-a-dozen times, it’s been nearer fifty.

“Laid awake I have in my bed, sat down in my chair I have, the same you and Miss Mary gave me the day I was twenty year in your service, and no person could desire a better—yes, Miss Mary, but it is the truth, and well we know who it is would have it different if he could. ‘All very well,’ says I to myself, ‘but pray, when the Doctor calls you to account for that box, what are you going to say?’

“No, Doctor, if you was some masters I’ve heard of and I was some servants I could name, I should have an easy task before me, but things being, humanly speaking, what they are, the one course open to me is just to say to you that without Miss Mary comes to my room and helps me to my recollection, which her wits may manage what’s slipped beyond mine, no such box as that, small though it be, will cross your eyes thus many a day to come.”

“Why, dear Mrs. Maple, why didn’t you tell me before that you wanted me to help you to find it?” said my Mary. “No, never mind telling me why it was: let us come at once and look for it.”

They hastened off together. I could hear Mrs. Maple beginning an explanation which, I doubt not, lasted into the farthest recesses of the housekeeper’s department. Uncle Oldys and I were left alone.

“A valuable servant,” he said, nodding toward the door. “Nothing goes wrong under her: the speeches are seldom over three minutes.”

“How will Miss Oldys manage to make her remember about the box?” I asked.

“Mary? Oh, she’ll make her sit down and ask her about her aunt’s last illness, or who gave her the china dog on the mantelpiece—something quite off the point. Then, as Maple says, one thing brings up another, and the right one will come around sooner than you could suppose. There! I believe I hear them coming back already.”

It was indeed so, and Mrs. Maple was hurrying on ahead of Mary with the box in her outstretched hand, and a beaming face. “What was it,” she cried as she drew near, “what was it as I said, before ever I come out of Dorsetshire to this place? Not that I’m a Dorset woman myself, nor had need to be. ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ and there it was in the place where I’d put it—what?—two months back, I dare say.”

She handed it to Uncle Oldys, and he and I examined it with some interest, so that I ceased to pay attention to Mrs. Ann Maple for the moment, though I know that she went on to expound exactly where the box had been, and in what way Mary had helped to refresh her memory on the subject.

It was an oldish box, tied with pink tape and sealed, and on the lid was pasted a label inscribed in old ink,
The Senior Prebendary’s House, Whitminster.
On being opened it was found to contain two keys of moderate size, and a paper, on which, in the same hand as the label, was
Keys of the Press and Box of Drawers standing in the disused Chamber.

Also this:
The Effects in this Press and Box are held by me, and to be held by my successors in the Residence, in trust for the noble Family of Kildonan, if claim be made by any survivor of it. I having made all the Inquiry possible to myself am of the opinion that that noble House is wholly extinct: the last Earl having been, as is notorious, cast away at sea, and his only Child and Heire deceas’d in my House (the Papers as to which melancholy Casualty were by me repos’d in the same Press in this year of our Lord 1753, March) 21. I am further of opinion that unless grave discomfort arise, such persons, not being of the Family of Kildonan, as shall become possess’d of these keys, will be well advised to leave matters as they are: which opinion I do not express without weighty and sufficient reason; and am Happy to have my judgment confirm’d by the other Members of this College and Church who are conversant with the Events referr’d to in this Paper.

—Tho. Ashton,
S.T.P., Præb. senr.
Will. Blake,
S.T.P., Decanus.
Hen. Goodman,
S.T.B., Præb. junr.

“Ah!” said Uncle Oldys, “grave discomfort! So he thought there might be something. I suspect it was that young man,” he went on, pointing with the key to the line about the “only Child and Heire.” “Eh, Mary? The viscounty of Kildonan was Saul.”