Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by Montague Rhodes James (large screen ebook reader txt) 📕
'Is it possible that you found a body?' said the visitor, with an odd feeling of nervousness.
'We did that: but what's more, in every sense of the word, we found two.'
'Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they got there? Was this thing found with them?'
'It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on one of the bodies. A bad business, whatever the story of it may have been. One body had the arms tight round the other. They must have been there thirty years or more--long enough before we came to this place. You may judge we filled the well up fast enough. Do you make anything of what's cut o
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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.
Clearly Collins had not been put in possession of his mistress’s
intentions with regard to this plot of ground: and when he learnt them
from Mr Anstruther he displayed no enthusiasm.
‘Of course I could clear them seats away soon enough,’ he said. ‘They
aren’t no ornament to the place, Mr Anstruther, and rotten too. Look
‘ere, sir,’—and he broke off a large piece—‘rotten right through. Yes,
clear them away, to be sure we can do that.’
‘And the post,’ said Mr Anstruther, ‘that’s got to go too.’
Collins advanced, and shook the post with both hands: then he rubbed his
chin.
‘That’s firm in the ground, that post is,’ he said. ‘That’s been there a
number of years, Mr Anstruther. I doubt I shan’t get that up not quite so
soon as what I can do with them seats.’
‘But your mistress specially wishes it to be got out of the way in an
hour’s time,’ said Mr Anstruther.
Collins smiled and shook his head slowly. ‘You’ll excuse me, sir, but you
feel of it for yourself. No, sir, no one can’t do what’s impossible to
‘em, can they, sir? I could git that post up by after tea-time, sir, but
that’ll want a lot of digging. What you require, you see, sir, if you’ll
excuse me naming of it, you want the soil loosening round this post ‘ere,
and me and the boy we shall take a little time doing of that. But now,
these ‘ere seats,’ said Collins, appearing to appropriate this portion of
the scheme as due to his own resourcefulness, ‘why, I can get the barrer
round and ‘ave them cleared away in, why less than an hour’s time from
now, if you’ll permit of it. Only—’
‘Only what, Collins?’
‘Well now, ain’t for me to go against orders no more than what it is for
you yourself—or anyone else’ (this was added somewhat hurriedly), ‘but
if you’ll pardon me, sir, this ain’t the place I should have picked out
for no rose garden myself. Why look at them box and laurestinus, ‘ow they
reg’lar preclude the light from—’
‘Ah yes, but we’ve got to get rid of some of them, of course.’
‘Oh, indeed, get rid of them! Yes, to be sure, but—I beg your pardon, Mr
Anstruther—’
‘I’m sorry, Collins, but I must be getting on now. I hear the car at the
door. Your mistress will explain exactly what she wishes. I’ll tell her,
then, that you can see your way to clearing away the seats at once, and
the post this afternoon. Good morning.’
Collins was left rubbing his chin. Mrs Anstruther received the report
with some discontent, but did not insist upon any change of plan.
By four o’clock that afternoon she had dismissed her husband to his golf,
had dealt faithfully with Collins and with the other duties of the day,
and, having sent a campstool and umbrella to the proper spot, had just
settled down to her sketch of the church as seen from the shrubbery, when
a maid came hurrying down the path to report that Miss Wilkins had
called.
Miss Wilkins was one of the few remaining members of the family from whom
the Anstruthers had bought the Westfield estate some few years back. She
had been staying in the neighbourhood, and this was probably a farewell
visit. ‘Perhaps you could ask Miss Wilkins to join me here,’ said Mrs
Anstruther, and soon Miss Wilkins, a person of mature years, approached.
‘Yes, I’m leaving the Ashes tomorrow, and I shall be able to tell my
brother how tremendously you have improved the place. Of course he can’t
help regretting the old house just a little—as I do myself—but the
garden is really delightful now.’
‘I am so glad you can say so. But you mustn’t think we’ve finished our
improvements. Let me show you where I mean to put a rose garden. It’s
close by here.’
The details of the project were laid before Miss Wilkins at some length;
but her thoughts were evidently elsewhere.
‘Yes, delightful,’ she said at last rather absently. ‘But do you know,
Mrs Anstruther, I’m afraid I was thinking of old times. I’m very glad
to have seen just this spot again before you altered it. Frank and I had
quite a romance about this place.’
‘Yes?’ said Mrs Anstruther smilingly; ‘do tell me what it was. Something
quaint and charming, I’m sure.’
‘Not so very charming, but it has always seemed to me curious. Neither of
us would ever be here alone when we were children, and I’m not sure that
I should care about it now in certain moods. It is one of those things
that can hardly be put into words—by me at least—and that sound rather
foolish if they are not properly expressed. I can tell you after a
fashion what it was that gave us—well, almost a horror of the place when
we were alone. It was towards the evening of one very hot autumn day,
when Frank had disappeared mysteriously about the grounds, and I was
looking for him to fetch him to tea, and going down this path I suddenly
saw him, not hiding in the bushes, as I rather expected, but sitting on
the bench in the old summer-house—there was a wooden summer-house here,
you know—up in the corner, asleep, but with such a dreadful look on his
face that I really thought he must be ill or even dead. I rushed at him
and shook him, and told him to wake up; and wake up he did, with a
scream. I assure you the poor boy seemed almost beside himself with
fright. He hurried me away to the house, and was in a terrible state all
that night, hardly sleeping. Someone had to sit up with him, as far as I
remember. He was better very soon, but for days I couldn’t get him to say
why he had been in such a condition. It came out at last that he had
really been asleep and had had a very odd disjointed sort of dream. He
never saw much of what was around him, but he felt the scenes most
vividly. First he made out that he was standing in a large room with a
number of people in it, and that someone was opposite to him who was
“very powerful”, and he was being asked questions which he felt to be
very important, and, whenever he answered them, someone—either the
person opposite to him, or someone else in the room—seemed to be, as he
said, making something up against him. All the voices sounded to him very
distant, but he remembered bits of the things that were said: “Where were
you on the 19th of October?” and “Is this your handwriting?” and so on. I
can see now, of course, that he was dreaming of some trial: but we were
never allowed to see the papers, and it was odd that a boy of eight
should have such a vivid idea of what went on in a court. All the time he
felt, he said, the most intense anxiety and oppression and hopelessness
(though I don’t suppose he used such words as that to me). Then, after
that, there was an interval in which he remembered being dreadfully
restless and miserable, and then there came another sort of picture, when
he was aware that he had come out of doors on a dark raw morning with a
little snow about. It was in a street, or at any rate among houses, and
he felt that there were numbers and numbers of people there too, and that
he was taken up some creaking wooden steps and stood on a sort of
platform, but the only thing he could actually see was a small fire
burning somewhere near him. Someone who had been holding his arm left
hold of it and went towards this fire, and then he said the fright he was
in was worse than at any other part of his dream, and if I had not
wakened him up he didn’t know what would have become of him. A curious
dream for a child to have, wasn’t it? Well, so much for that. It must
have been later in the year that Frank and I were here, and I was sitting
in the arbour just about sunset. I noticed the sun was going down, and
told Frank to run in and see if tea was ready while I finished a chapter
in the book I was reading. Frank was away longer than I expected, and the
light was going so fast that I had to bend over my book to make it out.
All at once I became conscious that someone was whispering to me inside
the arbour. The only words I could distinguish, or thought I could, were
something like “Pull, pull. I’ll push, you pull.”
‘I started up in something of a fright. The voice—it was little more
than a whisper—sounded so hoarse and angry, and yet as if it came from a
long, long way off—just as it had done in Frank’s dream. But, though I
was startled, I had enough courage to look round and try to make out
where the sound came from. And—this sounds very foolish, I know, but
still it is the fact—I made sure that it was strongest when I put my ear
to an old post which was part of the end of the seat. I was so certain of
this that I remember making some marks on the post—as deep as I could
with the scissors out of my work-basket. I don’t know why. I wonder, by
the way, whether that isn’t the very post itself…. Well, yes, it might
be: there are marks and scratches on it—but one can’t be sure. Anyhow,
it was just like that post you have there. My father got to know that
both of us had had a fright in the arbour, and he went down there himself
one evening after dinner, and the arbour was pulled down at very short
notice. I recollect hearing my father talking about it to an old man who
used to do odd jobs in the place, and the old man saying, “Don’t you fear
for that, sir: he’s fast enough in there without no one don’t take and
let him out.” But when I asked who it was, I could get no satisfactory
answer. Possibly my father or mother might have told me more about it
when I grew up, but, as you know, they both died when we were still quite
children. I must say it has always seemed very odd to me, and I’ve often
asked the older people in the village whether they knew of anything
strange: but either they knew nothing or they
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