Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by Montague Rhodes James (large screen ebook reader txt) 📕

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,

half-way 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 centre, 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 upwards—towards the surface. Nearer and

nearer it came, and it was of a blackish-grey colour with more than one

dark hole. It took shape as a face—a human face—a burnt 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:

Grateful as Humphreys was to the memory of his uncle, he could not quite

forgive him for having burnt 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 upwards 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.

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by Montague Rhodes James

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