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

dear, how I have been boring you with my childish remembrances! but

indeed that arbour did absorb our thoughts quite remarkably for a time.

You can fancy, can’t you, the kind of stories that we made up for

ourselves. Well, dear Mrs Anstruther, I must be leaving you now. We shall

meet in town this winter, I hope, shan’t we?’ etc., etc.

The seats and the post were cleared away and uprooted respectively by

that evening. Late summer weather is proverbially treacherous, and during

dinner-time Mrs Collins sent up to ask for a little brandy, because her

husband had took a nasty chill and she was afraid he would not be able to

do much next day.

Mrs Anstruther’s morning reflections were not wholly placid. She was sure

some roughs had got into the plantation during the night. ‘And another

thing, George: the moment that Collins is about again, you must tell him

to do something about the owls. I never heard anything like them, and I’m

positive one came and perched somewhere just outside our window. If it

had come in I should have been out of my wits: it must have been a very

large bird, from its voice. Didn’t you hear it? No, of course not, you

were sound asleep as usual. Still, I must say, George, you don’t look as

if your night had done you much good.’

‘My dear, I feel as if another of the same would turn me silly. You have

no idea of the dreams I had. I couldn’t speak of them when I woke up, and

if this room wasn’t so bright and sunny I shouldn’t care to think of them

even now.’

‘Well, really, George, that isn’t very common with you, I must say. You

must have—no, you only had what I had yesterday—unless you had tea at

that wretched club house: did you?’

‘No, no; nothing but a cup of tea and some bread and butter. I should

really like to know how I came to put my dream together—as I suppose one

does put one’s dreams together from a lot of little things one has been

seeing or reading. Look here, Mary, it was like this—if I shan’ t be

boring you—’

‘I wish to hear what it was, George. I will tell you when I have had

enough.’

‘All right. I must tell you that it wasn’t like other nightmares in one

way, because I didn’t really see anyone who spoke to me or touched me,

and yet I was most fearfully impressed with the reality of it all. First

I was sitting, no, moving about, in an old-fashioned sort of panelled

room. I remember there was a fireplace and a lot of burnt papers in it,

and I was in a great state of anxiety about something. There was someone

else—a servant, I suppose, because I remember saying to him, “Horses, as

quick as you can,” and then waiting a bit: and next I heard several

people coming upstairs and a noise like spurs on a boarded floor, and

then the door opened and whatever it was that I was expecting happened.’

‘Yes, but what was that?’

‘You see, I couldn’t tell: it was the sort of shock that upsets you in a

dream. You either wake up or else everything goes black. That was what

happened to me. Then I was in a big dark-walled room, panelled, I think,

like the other, and a number of people, and I was evidently—’

‘Standing your trial, I suppose, George.’

‘Goodness! yes, Mary, I was; but did you dream that too? How very odd!’

‘No, no; I didn’t get enough sleep for that. Go on, George, and I will

tell you afterwards.’

‘Yes; well, I was being tried, for my life, I’ve no doubt, from the

state I was in. I had no one speaking for me, and somewhere there was a

most fearful fellow—on the bench I should have said, only that he seemed

to be pitching into me most unfairly, and twisting everything I said, and

asking most abominable questions.’

‘What about?’

‘Why, dates when I was at particular places, and letters I was supposed

to have written, and why I had destroyed some papers; and I recollect his

laughing at answers I made in a way that quite daunted me. It doesn’t

sound much, but I can tell you, Mary, it was really appalling at the

time. I am quite certain there was such a man once, and a most horrible

villain he must have been. The things he said—’

‘Thank you, I have no wish to hear them. I can go to the links any day

myself. How did it end?’

‘Oh, against me; he saw to that. I do wish, Mary, I could give you a

notion of the strain that came after that, and seemed to me to last for

days: waiting and waiting, and sometimes writing things I knew to be

enormously important to me, and waiting for answers and none coming, and

after that I came out—’

‘Ah!’

‘What makes you say that? Do you know what sort of thing I saw?’

‘Was it a dark cold day, and snow in the streets, and a fire burning

somewhere near you?’

‘By George, it was! You have had the same nightmare! Really not? Well,

it is the oddest thing! Yes; I’ve no doubt it was an execution for high

treason. I know I was laid on straw and jolted along most wretchedly, and

then had to go up some steps, and someone was holding my arm, and I

remember seeing a bit of a ladder and hearing a sound of a lot of people.

I really don’t think I could bear now to go into a crowd of people and

hear the noise they make talking. However, mercifully, I didn’t get to

the real business. The dream passed off with a sort of thunder inside my

head. But, Mary—’

‘I know what you are going to ask. I suppose this is an instance of a

kind of thought-reading. Miss Wilkins called yesterday and told me of a

dream her brother had as a child when they lived here, and something did

no doubt make me think of that when I was awake last night listening to

those horrible owls and those men talking and laughing in the shrubbery

(by the way, I wish you would see if they have done any damage, and speak

to the police about it); and so, I suppose, from my brain it must have

got into yours while you were asleep. Curious, no doubt, and I am sorry

it gave you such a bad night. You had better be as much in the fresh air

as you can to-day.’

‘Oh, it’s all right now; but I think I will go over to the Lodge and

see if I can get a game with any of them. And you?’

‘I have enough to do for this morning; and this afternoon, if I am not

interrupted, there is my drawing.’

‘To be sure—I want to see that finished very much.’

No damage was discoverable in the shrubbery. Mr Anstruther surveyed with

faint interest the site of the rose garden, where the uprooted post still

lay, and the hole it had occupied remained unfilled. Collins, upon

inquiry made, proved to be better, but quite unable to come to his work.

He expressed, by the mouth of his wife, a hope that he hadn’t done

nothing wrong clearing away them things. Mrs Collins added that there was

a lot of talking people in Westfield, and the hold ones was the worst:

seemed to think everything of them having been in the parish longer than

what other people had. But as to what they said no more could then be

ascertained than that it had quite upset Collins, and was a lot of

nonsense.

*

Recruited by lunch and a brief period of slumber, Mrs Anstruther settled

herself comfortably upon her sketching chair in the path leading through

the shrubbery to the side-gate of the churchyard. Trees and buildings

were among her favourite subjects, and here she had good studies of both.

She worked hard, and the drawing was becoming a really pleasant thing to

look upon by the time that the wooded hills to the west had shut off the

sun. Still she would have persevered, but the light changed rapidly, and

it became obvious that the last touches must be added on the morrow. She

rose and turned towards the house, pausing for a time to take delight in

the limpid green western sky. Then she passed on between the dark

box-bushes, and, at a point just before the path debouched on the lawn,

she stopped once again and considered the quiet evening landscape, and

made a mental note that that must be the tower of one of the Roothing

churches that one caught on the sky-line. Then a bird (perhaps) rustled

in the box-bush on her left, and she turned and started at seeing what at

first she took to be a Fifth of November mask peeping out among the

branches. She looked closer.

It was not a mask. It was a face—large, smooth, and pink. She remembers

the minute drops of perspiration which were starting from its forehead:

she remembers how the jaws were clean-shaven and the eyes shut. She

remembers also, and with an accuracy which makes the thought intolerable

to her, how the mouth was open and a single tooth appeared below the

upper lip. As she looked the face receded into the darkness of the bush.

The shelter of the house was gained and the door shut before she

collapsed.

Mr and Mrs Anstruther had been for a week or more recruiting at Brighton

before they received a circular from the Essex Archaeological Society,

and a query as to whether they possessed certain historical portraits

which it was desired to include in the forthcoming work on Essex

Portraits, to be published under the Society’s auspices. There was an

accompanying letter from the Secretary which contained the following

passage: ‘We are specially anxious to know whether you possess the

original of the engraving of which I enclose a photograph. It represents

Sir –- –-, Lord Chief Justice under Charles II, who, as you doubtless

know, retired after his disgrace to Westfield, and is supposed to have

died there of remorse. It may interest you to hear that a curious entry

has recently been found in the registers, not of Westfield but of Priors

Roothing to the effect that the parish was so much troubled after his

death that the rector of Westfield summoned the parsons of all the

Roothings to come and lay him; which they did. The entry ends by saying:

“The stake is in a field adjoining to the churchyard of Westfield, on the

west side.” Perhaps you can let us know if any tradition to this effect

is current in your parish.’

The incidents which the ‘enclosed photograph’ recalled were productive of

a severe shock to Mrs Anstruther. It was decided that she must spend the

winter abroad.

Mr Anstruther, when he went down to Westfield to make the necessary

arrangements, not unnaturally told his story to the rector (an old

gentleman), who showed little surprise.

‘Really I had managed to piece out for myself very much what must have

happened, partly from old people’s talk and partly from what I saw in

your grounds. Of course we have suffered to some extent also. Yes, it was

bad at first: like owls, as you say, and men talking sometimes. One night

it