Read Classic Ghost Stories Online
Authors: Wilkie Collins,M. R. James,Charles Dickens and Others
Classic Ghost Stories (17 page)
That this auspicious relation had in fact existed, had continued, for two or three weeks, was sufficiently proved by the dawn of the distress with which our young man found himself aware that he had, for some reason, from a certain evening, begun to miss it. The sign of that was an abrupt, surprised senseâon the occasion of his mislaying a marvellous unpublished page which, hunt where he would, remained stupidly, irrecoverably lostâthat his protected state was, after all, exposed to some confusion and even to some depression. If, for the joy of the business, Doyne and he had, from the start, been together, the situation had, within a few days of his first new suspicion of it, suffered the odd change of their ceasing to be so. That was what was the matter, he said to himself, from the moment an impression of mere mass and quantity struck him as taking, in his happy outlook at his material, the place of his pleasant assumption of a clear course and a lively pace. For five nights he struggled; then never at his table, wandering about the room, taking up his references only to lay them down, looking out of the window, poking the fire, thinking strange thoughts, and listening for signs and sounds not as he suspected or imagined, but as he vainly desired and invoked them, he made up his mind that he was, for the time at least, forsaken.
The extraordinary thing thus became that it made him not only sad not to feel Doyne's presence, but in a high degree uneasy. It was stranger, somehow, that he shouldn't be there than it had ever been that he
was
âso strange, indeed, at last that Withermore's nerves found themselves quite inconsequently affected. They had taken kindly enough to what was of an order impossible to explain, perversely reserving their sharpest state for the return to the normal, the supersession of the false. They were remarkably beyond control when, finally, one night, after resisting an hour or two, he simply edged out of the room. It had only now, for the first time, become impossible to him to remain there. Without design, but panting a little and positively as a man scared, he passed along his usual corridor and reached the top of the staircase. From this point he saw Mrs. Doyne looking up at him from the bottom quite as if she had known he would come; and the most singular thing of all was that, though he had been conscious of no notion to resort to her, had only been prompted to relieve himself by escape, the sight of her position made him recognise it as just, quickly feel it as a part of some monstrous oppression that was closing over both of them. It was wonderful how, in the mere modern London hall, between the Tottenham Court Road rugs and the electric light, it came up to him from the tall black lady, and went again from him down to her, that he knew what she meant by looking as if he would know. He descended straight, she turned into her own little lower room, and there, the next thing, with the door shut, they were, still in silence and with queer faces, confronted over confessions that had taken sudden life from these two or three movements. Withermore gasped as it came to him why he had lost his friend. “He has been with
you?”
With this it was all outâout so far that neither had to explain and that, when “What do you suppose is the matter?” quickly passed between them, one appeared to have said it as much as the other. Withermore looked about at the small, bright room in which, night after night, she had been living her life as he had been living his own upstairs. It was pretty, cosy, rosy; but she had by turns felt in it what he had felt and heard in it what he had heard. Her effect thereâfantastic black, plumed and extravagant, upon deep pinkâwas that of some “decadent” coloured print, some poster of the newest school. “You understood he had left me?” he asked.
She markedly wished to make it clear. “This eveningâyes. I've made things out.”
“You knewâbeforeâthat he was with me?”
She hesitated again. “I felt he wasn't with
me
. But on the stairsââ”
“Yes?”
“Wellâhe passed, more than once. He was in the house. And at your doorââ”
“Well?” he went on as she once more faltered.
“If I stopped I could sometimes tell. And from your face,” she added, “to-night, at any rate, I knew your state.”
“And that was why you came out?”
“I thought you'd come to me.”
He put out to her, on this, his hand, and they thus, for a minute, in silence, held each other clasped. There was no peculiar presence for either, nowânothing more peculiar than that of each for the other. But the place had suddenly become as if consecrated, and Withermore turned over it again his anxiety. “What is then the matter?”
“I only want to do the real right thing,” she replied after a moment.
“And are we not doing it?”
“I wonder. Are
you
not?”
He wondered too. “To the best of my belief. But we must think.”
“We must think,” she echoed. And they did thinkâthought, with intensity, the rest of that evening together, and thought, independent lyâWithermore at least could answer for himselfâduring many days that followed. He intermitted for a little his visits and his work, trying, in meditation, to catch himself in the act of some mistake that might have accounted for their disturbance. Had he taken, on some important pointâor looked as if he might takeâsome wrong line or wrong view? had he somewhere benightedly falsified or inadequately insisted? He went back at last with the idea of having guessed two or three questions he might have been on the way to muddle; after which he had, above stairs, another period of agitation, presently followed by another interview, below, with Mrs. Doyne, who was still troubled and flushed.
“He's there?”
“He's there.”
“I knew it!” she returned in an odd gloom of triumph. Then as to make it clear: “He has not been again with
me
.”
“Nor with me again to help,” said Withermore.
She considered. “Not to help?”
“I can't make it outâI'm at sea. Do what I will, I feel I'm wrong.”
She covered him a moment with her pompous pain. “How do you feel it?”
“Why, by things that happen. The strangest things. I can't describe themâand you wouldn't believe them.”
“Oh yes, I would!” Mrs. Doyne murmured.
“Well, he intervenes.” Withermore tried to explain. “However I turn, I find him.”
She earnestly followed. “âFind' him?”
“I meet him. He seems to rise there before me.”
Mrs. Doyne, staring, waited a little. “Do you mean you see him?”
“I feel as if at any moment I may. I'm baffled. I'm checked.” Then he added: “I'm afraid.”
“Of
him
?” asked Mrs. Doyne.
He thought. “Wellâof what I'm doing.”
“Then what, that's so awful,
are
you doing?”
“What you proposed to me. Going into his life.”
She showed, in her gravity, now a new alarm. “And don't you
like
that?”
“Doesn't
he
? That's the question. We lay him bare. We serve him up. What is it called? We give him to the world.”
Poor Mrs. Doyne, as if on a menace to her hard atonement, glared at this for an instant in deeper gloom. “And why shouldn't we?”
“Because we don't know. There are natures, there are lives, that shrink. He mayn't wish it,” said Withermore. “We never asked him.”
“How
could
we?”
He was silent a little. “Well, we ask him now. That's after all, what our start has, so far, represented. We've put it to him.”
“Thenâif he has been with usâwe've had his answer.” Withermore spoke now as if he knew what to believe. “He hasn't been âwith' usâhe has been against us.”
“Then why did you thinkââ”
“What I
did
think, at firstâthat what he wishes to make us feel is his sympathy? Because, in my original simplicity, I was mistaken. I wasâI don't know what to call itâso excited and charmed that I didn't understand. But I understand at last. He only wanted to communicate. He strains forward out of his darkness; he reaches toward us out of his mystery; he makes us dim signs out of his horror.”
“âHorror'?” Mrs. Doyne gasped with her fan up to her mouth.
“At what we're doing.” He could by this time piece it all together. “I see now that at firstââ”
“Well, what?”
“One had simply to feel he was there, and therefore not indifferent. And the beauty of that misled me. But he's there as a protest.”
“Against
my
Life?” Mrs. Doyne wailed.
“Against
any
Life. He's there to
save
his Life. He's there to be let alone.”
“So you give up?” she almost shrieked.
He could only meet her. “He's there as a warning.”
For a moment, on this, they looked at each other deep. “You
are
afraid!” she at last brought out.
It affected him, but he insisted. “He's there as a curse!”
With that they parted, but only for two or three days; her last word to him continuing to sound so in his ears that, between his need really to satisfy her and another need presently to be noted, he felt that he might not yet take up his stake. He finally went back at his usual hour and found her in her usual place. “Yes, I
am
afraid,” he announced as if he had turned that well over and knew now all it meant. “But I gather that you're not.”
She faltered, reserving her word. “What is it you fear?”
“Well, that if I go on I
shall
see him.”
“And thenââ?”
“Oh, then,” said George Withermore, “I
should
give up!”
She weighed it with her lofty but earnest air. “I think, you know, we must have a clear sign.”
“You wish me to try again?”
She hesitated. “You see what it meansâfor meâto give up.”
“Ah, but
you
needn't,” Withermore said.
She seemed to wonder, but in a moment she went on. “It would mean that he won't take from meââ” But she dropped for despair.
“Well, what?”
“Anything,” said poor Mrs. Doyne.
He faced her a moment more. “I've thought myself of the clear sign. I'll try again.”
As he was leaving her, however, she remembered. “I'm only afraid that to-night there's nothing readyâno lamp and no fire.”
“Never mind,” he said from the foot of the stairs; “I'll find things.”
To which she answered that the door of the room would probably, at any rate, be open; and retired again as if to wait for him. She had not long to wait; though, with her own door wide and her attention fixed, she may not have taken the time quite as it appeared to her visitor. She heard him, after an interval, on the stair, and he presently stood at her entrance, where, if he had not been precipitate, but rather, as to step and sound, backward and vague, he showed at least as livid and blank.
“I give up.”
“Then you've seen him?”
“On the thresholdâguarding it.”
“Guarding it?” She glowed over her fan. “Distinct?”
“Immense. But dim. Dark. Dreadful,” said poor George Withermore.
She continued to wonder. “You didn't go in?”
The young man turned away. “He forbids!”
“You say I needn't,” she went on after a moment. “Well then, need I?”
“See him?” George Withermore asked.
She waited an instant. “Give up.”
“You must decide.” For himself he could at last but drop upon the sofa with his bent face in his hands. He was not quite to know afterwards how long he had sat so; it was enough that what he did next know was that he was alone among her favourite objects. Just as he gained his feet, however, with this sense and that of the door standing open to the hall, he found himself afresh confronted, in the light, the warmth, the rosy space, with her big black perfumed presence. He saw at a glance, as she offered him a huger, bleaker stare over the mask of her fan, that she had been above; and so it was that, for the last time, they faced together their strange question. “You've seen him?” Withermore asked.
He was to infer later on from the extraordinary way she closed her eyes, and, as if to steady herself, held them tight and long, in silence, that beside the unutterable vision of Ashton Doyne's wife his own might rank as an escape. He knew before she spoke that all was over. “I give up.”
M. R. JAMES
“I SUPPOSE you will be getting away pretty soon, now Full term is over, Professor,” said a person not in the story to the Professor of Ontography, soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast in the hospitable hall of St. James's College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
“Yes,” he said; “my friends have been making me take up golf this term, and I mean to go to the East Coastâin point of fact to Burnstowâ(I dare say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to get off tomorrow.”
“Oh, Parkins,” said his neighbour on the other side, “if you are going to Burnstow, I wish you would look at the site of the Templars' preceptory, and let me know if you think it would be any good to have a dig there in the summer.”
It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give his entitlements.
“Certainly,” said Parkins, the Professor: “if you will describe to me whereabouts the site is, I will do my best to give you an idea of the lie of the land when I get back; or I could write to you about it, if you would tell me where you are likely to be.”
“Don't trouble to do that, thanks. It's only that I'm thinking of taking my family in that direction in the Long, and it occurred to me that, as very few of the English preceptories have ever been properly planned, I might have an opportunity of doing something useful on off days.”
The Professor rather sniffed at the idea that planning out a preceptory could be described as useful. His neighbour continued:
“The siteâI doubt if there is anything showing above groundâmust be down quite close to the beach now. The sea has encroached tremendously, as you know, all along that bit of coast. I should think, from the map, that it must be about three-quarters of a mile from the Globe Inn, at the north end of the town. Where are you going to stay?”
“Well,
at
the Globe Inn, as a matter of fact,” said Parkins; “I have engaged a room there. I couldn't get in anywhere else; most of the lodging-houses are shut up in winter, it seems; and, as it is, they tell me that the only room of any size I can have is really a double-bedded one, and that they haven't a corner in which to store the other bed, and so on. But I must have a fairly large room, for I am taking some books down, and mean to do a bit of work; and though I don't quite fancy having an empty bedânot to speak of twoâin what I may call for the time being my study, I suppose I can manage to rough it for the short time I shall be there.”
“Do you call having an extra bed in your room roughing it, Parkins?” said a bluff person opposite. “Look here, I shall come down and occupy it for a bit; it'll be company for you.”
The Professor quivered, but managed to laugh in a courteous manner.
“By all means, Rogers; there's nothing I should like better. But I'm afraid you would find it rather dull; you don't play golf, do you?”
“No, thank Heaven!” said rude Mr. Rogers.
“Well, you see, when I'm not writing I shall most likely be out on the links, and that, as I say, would be rather dull for you, I'm afraid.”
“Oh, I don't know! There's certain to be somebody I know in the place; but, of course, if you don't want me, speak the word, Parkins; I shan't be offended. Truth, as you always tell us, is never offensive.”
Parkins was, indeed, scrupulously polite and strictly truthful. It is to be feared that Mr. Rogers sometimes practised upon his knowledge of these characteristics. In Parkins's breast there was a conflict now raging, which for a moment or two did not allow him to answer. That interval being over, he said:
“Well, if you want the exact truth, Rogers, I was considering whether the room I speak of would really be large enough to accommodate us both comfortably; and also whether (mind, I shouldn't have said this if you hadn't pressed me) you would not constitute something in the nature of a hindrance to my work.”
Rogers laughed loudly.
“Well done, Parkins!” he said. “It's all right. I promise not to interrupt your work; don't you disturb yourself about that. No, I won't come if you don't want me; but I thought I should do so nicely to keep the ghosts off.” Here he might have been seen to wink and to nudge his next neighbour. Parkins might also have been seen to become pink. “I beg pardon, Parkins,” Rogers continued; “I oughtn't to have said that. I forgot you didn't like levity on these topics.”
“Well,” Parkins said, “as you have mentioned the matter, I freely own that I do not like careless talk about what you call ghosts. A man in my position,” he went on, raising his voice a little, “cannot, I find, be too careful about appearing to sanction the current beliefs on such subjects. As you know, Rogers, or as you ought to know; for I think I have never concealed my viewsââ”
“No, you certainly have not, old man,” put in Rogers
sotto voce.
“ââI hold that any semblance, any appearance of concession to the view that such things might exist is equivalent to a renunciation of all that I hold most sacred. But I'm afraid I have not succeeded in securing your attention.”
“Your
undivided
attention, was what Dr. Blimber actually
said
,”
2
Rogers interrupted, with every appearance of an earnest desire for accuracy. “But I beg your pardon, Parkins: I'm stopping you.”
“No, not at all,” said Parkins. “I don't remember Blimber; perhaps he was before my time. But I needn't go on. I'm sure you know what I mean.
“Yes, yes,” said Rogers, rather hastilyâ“just so. We'll go into it fully at Burnstow, or somewhere.”
In repeating the above dialogue I have tried to give the impression which it made on me, that Parkins was something of an old womanârather henlike, perhaps, in his little ways; totally destitute, alas! of the sense of humour, but at the same time dauntless and sincere in his convictions, and a man deserving of the greatest respect. Whether or not the reader has gathered so much, that was the character which Parkins had.
Â
On the following day Parkins did, as he had hoped, succeed in getting away from his college, and in arriving at Burnstow. He was made welcome at the Globe Inn, was safely installed in the large double-bedded room of which we have heard, and was able before retiring to rest to arrange his materials for work in apple-pie order upon a commodious table which occupied the outer end of the room, and was surrounded on three sides by windows looking out seaward; that is to say, the central window looked straight out to sea, and those on the left and right commanded prospects along the shore to the north and south respectively. On the south you saw the village of Burnstow. On the north no houses were to be seen, but only the beach and the low cliff backing it. Immediately in front was a stripânot considerableâof rough grass, dotted with old anchors, capstans, and so forth; then a broad path; then the beach. Whatever may have been the original distance between the Globe Inn and the sea, not more than sixty yards now separated them.
The rest of the population of the inn was, of course, a golfing one, and included few elements that call for a special description. The most conspicuous figure was, perhaps, that of an
ancien militaire
, secretary of a London club, and possessed of a voice of incredible strength, and of views of a pronouncedly Protestant type. These were apt to find utterance after his attendance upon the ministrations of the Vicar, an estimable man with inclinations towards a picturesque ritual, which he gallantly kept down as far as he could out of deference to East Anglian tradition.
Professor Parkins, one of whose principal characteristics was pluck, spent the greater part of the day following his arrival at Burnstow in what he had called improving his game, in company with this Colonel Wilson: and during the afternoonâwhether the process of improvement were to blame or not, I am not sureâthe Colonel's demeanour assumed a colouring so lurid that even Parkins jibbed at the thought of walking home with him from the links. He determined, after a short and furtive look at that bristling moustache and those incarnadined features, that it would be wiser to allow the influences of tea and tobacco to do what they could with the Colonel before the dinner-hour should render a meeting inevitable.
“I might walk home tonight along the beach,” he reflectedâ“yes, and take a lookâthere will be light enough for thatâat the ruins of which Disney was talking. I don't exactly know where they are, by the way; but I expect I can hardly help stumbling on them.”
This he accomplished, I may say, in the most literal sense, for in picking his way from the links to the shingle beach his foot caught, partly in a gorse-root and partly in a biggish stone, and over he went. When he got up and surveyed his surroundings, he found himself in a patch of somewhat broken ground covered with small depressions and mounds. These latter, when he came to examine them, proved to be simply masses of flints embedded in mortar and grown over with turf. He must, he quite rightly concluded, be on the site of the preceptory he had promised to look at. It seemed not unlikely to reward the spade of the explorer; enough of the foundations was probably left at no great depth to throw a good deal of light on the general plan. He remembered vaguely that the Templars, to whom this site had belonged, were in the habit of building round churches, and he thought a particular series of the humps or mounds near him did appear to be arranged in something of a circular form. Few people can resist the temptation to try a little amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have been had they only taken it up seriously. Our Professor, however, if he felt something of this mean desire, was also truly anxious to oblige Mr. Disney. So he paced with care the circular area he had noticed, and wrote down its rough dimensions in his pocket-book. Then he proceeded to examine an oblong eminence which lay east of the centre of the circle, and seemed to his thinking likely to be the base of a platform or altar. At one end of it, the northern, a patch of the turf was goneâremoved by some boy or other creature
ferae naturae
. It might, he thought, be as well to probe the soil here for evidences of masonry, and he took out his knife and began scraping away the earth. And now followed another little discovery: a portion of soil fell inward as he scraped, and disclosed a small cavity. He lighted one match after another to help him to see of what nature the hole was, but the wind was too strong for them all. By tapping and scratching the sides with his knife, however, he was able to make out that it must be an artificial hole in masonry. It was rectangular, and the sides, top, and bottom, if not actually plastered, were smooth and regular. Of course it was empty. No! As he withdrew the knife he heard a metallic clink, and when he introduced his hand it met with a cylindrical object lying on the floor of the hole. Naturally enough, he picked it up, and when he brought it into the light, now fast fading, he could see that it, too, was of man's makingâa metal tube about four inches long, and evidently of some considerable age.
By the time Parkins had made sure that there was nothing else in this odd receptacle, it was too late and too dark for him to think of undertaking any further search. What he had done had proved so unexpectedly interesting that he determined to sacrifice a little more of the daylight on the morrow to archaeology. The object which he now had safe in his pocket was bound to be of some slight value at least, he felt sure.
Bleak and solemn was the view on which he took a last look before starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the west showed the links, on which a few figures moving towards the club-house were still visible, the squat martello tower, the lights of Aldsey village, the pale ribbon of sands intersected at intervals by black wooden groynes, the dim and murmuring sea. The wind was bitter from the north, but was at his back when he set out for the Globe. He quickly rattled and clashed through the shingle and gained the sand, upon which, but for the groynes which had to be got over every few yards, the going was both good and quiet. One last look behind, to measure the distance he had made since leaving the ruined Templars' church, showed him a prospect of company on his walk, in the shape of a rather indistinct personage, who seemed to be making great efforts to catch up with him, but made little, if any, progress. I mean that there was an appearance of running about his movements, but that the distance between him and Parkins did not seem materially to lessen. So, at least, Parkins thought, and decided that he almost certainly did not know him, and that it would be absurd to wait until he came up. For all that, company, he began to think, would really be very welcome on that lonely shore, if only you could choose your companion. In his unenlightened days he had read of meetings in such places which even now would hardly bear thinking of. He went on thinking of them, however, until he reached home, and particularly of one which catches most people's fancy at some time of their childhood. “Now I saw in my dream that Christian had gone but a very little way when he saw a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him.” “What should I do now,” he thought, “if I looked back and caught sight of a black figure sharply defined against the yellow sky, and saw that it had horns and wings? I wonder whether I should stand or run for it. Luckily, the gentleman behind is not of that kind, and he seems to be about as far off now as when I saw him first. Well, at this rate he won't get his dinner as soon as I shall; and, dear me! it's within a quarter of an hour of the time now. I must run!”
Parkins had, in fact, very little time for dressing. When he met the Colonel at dinner, Peaceâor as much of her as that gentleman could manageâreigned once more in the military bosom; nor was she put to flight in the hours of bridge that followed dinner, for Parkins was a more than respectable player. When, therefore, he retired towards twelve o'clock, he felt that he had spent his evening in quite a satisfactory way, and that, even for so long as a fortnight or three weeks, life at the Globe would be supportable under similar conditionsâ“especially,” thought he, “if I go on improving my game.”