The M.R. James Megapack (26 page)

“Gentlemen, I’m afraid I’ve been very inattentive to you this evening. Isn’t there anything I can do to amuse you? Won’t you come up on the table? You’re welcome to walk up my leg if you find that convenient.”

I was almost sorry I had spoken the moment after, for they made but one rush at my legs as I stood by the table, and the sensation was rather like that, I imagine, of a swarm of rats climbing up one’s trousers. However, it was over in a few seconds, and all of them—over a dozen—were with Wag and Slim on the table, except one, who, whether by mistake or on purpose, went on climbing me by way of my waistcoat buttons, rather deliberately, until he reached my shoulder. I didn’t object, of course, but I turned round (which made him catch at my ear) and went back to my chair, seated in which I felt rather as if I was presiding at a meeting. The one on my shoulder sat down and, I thought, folded his arms and looked at his friends with some triumph. Wag evidently took this to be a liberty.

“My word!” he said, “what do you mean by it, Wisp? Come off it!”

Wisp was a little daunted, as I judged by his fidgeting somewhat, but put a bold face on it and said, “Why should I come off?”

I put in a word: “I don’t mind his being here.”

“I dare say not; that’s not the point,” said Wag. “Are you coming down?”

“No,” said Wisp, “not for you.” But his tone was rather blustering than brave.

“Very well, don’t then,” said Wag; and I expected him to run up and pull Wisp down by the legs, but he didn’t do that. He took something out of the breast of his tunic, put it in his mouth, lay down on his stomach, and, with his eyes on Wisp, puffed out his cheeks. Two or three seconds passed, during which I felt Wisp shifting about on his perch, and breathing quickly. Then he gave a sharp shriek, which went right through my head, slipped rapidly down my chest and legs and on to the floor, where he continued to squeal and to run about like a mad thing, to the great amusement of everyone on the table.

Then I saw what was the matter. All round his head were a multitude of little sparks, which flew about him like a swarm of bees, every now and then settling and coming off again, and, I suppose, burning him every time; if he beat them off, they attacked his hands, so he was in a bad way. After watching him for about a minute from the edge of the table, Wag called out:

“Do you apologize?”

“Yes!” he screamed.

“All right,” said Wag; “stand still! stand still, you bat! How can I get ’em back if you don’t?” Wag was back to me and I couldn’t see what he did, but Wisp sat down on the carpet free of sparks, and wiped his face and neck with his handkerchief for some time, while the rest gradually recovered from their laughter. “You can come up again now,” said Wag; and so he did, though he was slow and shy about it.

“Why didn’t he send sparks at Wag?” said I to Slim.

“He hasn’t got ’em to send,” was the answer. “It’s only the Captain of the moon.”

“Well now, what about a little peace and quiet?” I said. “And, you know, I’ve never been introduced to you all properly. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to do that, before the bell goes?”

“Very well,” said Wag. “We’ll
do
it properly. You bring ’em up one at a time, Slim, and” (to me) “you put your sun-hand out on the table.”

(
I
: “Sun-hand?”

Wag
: “Yes, sun-hand; don’t you know?” He held up his right hand, then his left: “Sun-hand, Moon-hand, Day-hand, Night-hand, Star-hand, Cloud-hand, and so on.”

I
: “Thank you.”)

This was done, and meanwhile Slim formed the troop into a queue and beckoned them up one by one. Wag stood on a book on the right and proclaimed the name of each. First he had made me arrange my right hand edgeways on the table, with the forefinger out. Then “Gold!” said Wag. Gold stepped forward and made a lovely bow, which I returned with an inclination of my head, then took as much of my forefinger top joint in his right hand as he could manage, bent over it and shook it or tried to, and then took up a position on the left and watched the next comer. The ceremony was the same for everyone, but not all the bows were equally elegant; some of the boys were jocular, and shook my finger with both hands and a great display of effort. These were frowned upon by Wag. The names (I need not set them all down now) were all of the same kind as you have heard; there was Red, Wise, Dart, Sprat, and so on. After Wisp, who came last and was rather humble, Wag called out Slim, and, after him, descended and presented himself in the same form.

“And now,” he said, “perhaps you’ll tell us
your
name.”

I did so (one is always a little shamefaced about it, I don’t know why) in full. He whistled.

“Too much,” he said; “what’s the easiest you can do?”

After some thought I said, “What about M or N?”

“Much better! If M’s all right for you, it’ll do for us.” So M was agreed upon.

I was still rather afraid that the rank and file had been passing a dull evening and would not come again, and I tried to express as much to them. But they said:

“Dull? Oh no, M; why we’ve found out all sorts of things!”

“Really? What sort of things?”

“Well, inside the wall in that corner there’s the biggest spider I’ve ever seen, for one thing.”

“Good gracious!” I said. “I hate ’em. I hope it can’t get out?”

“It would have to-night if we hadn’t stopped up the hole. Something’s been helping it to gnaw through.”

“Has it?” said Wag. “My word! that looks bad. What was it made the hole?”

Some called out, “A bat,” and some “A rat.”

“It doesn’t matter much for that,” said Slim, “so long as it’s safe now. Where is it?”

“Gone down to the bottom and saying awful things,” Red answered.

“Well, I
am
obliged to you,” I said.“Anything else?”

“There’s a lot of this stuff under the floor,” said Dart, pointing with his foot at a half-crown which lay on the table.

“Is there? Whereabouts?” said I.“Oh, but I was forgetting; I can look after that myself.”

“Yes, of course you can,” they said;“and lots of things happened here before you came. We were watching. The old man and the woman, they were the worst, weren’t they, Red?”

“Do you mean you’ve been here before?” I asked.

“No, no, but to-night we were looking at them, like we do at school.”

This was beyond me, and I thought it would be of no use to ask for more explanations. Besides, just at this moment we heard the bell. They all clambered down either me or the chairs or the tablecloth. Slim lingered a moment to say, “You’ll look out, won’t you?” and then followed the rest on to the window-sill, where, taking the time from Captain Wag, they all stood in a row, bowed with their caps off, straightened up again, each sang one note, which combined into a wonderful chord, faced round and disappeared. I followed them to the window and saw the inhabitants of the house separating and going to their homes with the young ones capering round them. One or two of the elders—Wag’s father in particular—looked up at me, paused in their walk, and bowed gravely, which courtesy I returned. I went on gazing until the lawn was a blank once more, and then, closing and fastening the sitting-room window, I betook myself to the bedroom.

THE BAT-BALL

It had certainly been an eventful day and evening, and I felt that my adventures could not be quite at an end yet, for I had still to find out what new power or sense the Fourth Jar had brought me. I stood and thought, and tried quite vainly to detect some difference in myself. And then I went to the window and drew the curtain aside and looked out on the road, and within a few minutes I began to understand.

There came walking rapidly along the road a young man, and he turned in at the garden gate and came straight up the path to the house door. I began to be surprised, not at his coming, for it was not so very late, but at the look of him. He was young, as I said, rather red-faced, but not bad-looking; of the class of a farmer, I thought. He wore biggish brown whiskers—which is not common nowadays—and his hair was rather long at the back—which also is not common with young men who want to look smart—but his hat, and his clothes generally, were the really odd part of him. The hat was a sort of low top-hat, with a curved brim; it spread out at the top and it was brushed rough instead of smooth. His coat was a blue swallow-tail with brass buttons. He had a broad tie wound round and round his neck, and a Gladstone collar. His trousers were tight all the way down and had straps under his feet. To put it in the dullest, shortest way, he was “dressed in the fashion of eighty or ninety years ago,” as we read in the ghost stories. Evidently he knew his way about very well. He came straight up to the front door and, as far as I could tell, into the house, but I did not hear the door open or shut or any steps on the stairs. He must, I thought, be in my landlady’s parlour downstairs.

I turned away from the window, and there was the next surprise. It was as if there was no wall between me and the sitting-room. I saw straight into it. There was a fire in the grate, and by it were sitting face to face an old man and an old woman. I thought at once of what one of the boys had said, and I looked curiously at them. They were, you would have said, as fine specimens of an old-fashioned yeoman and his wife as anyone could wish to see. The man was hale and red-faced, with grey whiskers, smiling as he sat bolt upright in his arm-chair. The old lady was rosy and smiling too, with a smart silk dress and a smart cap, and tidy ringlets on each side of her face—a regular picture of wholesome old age; and yet I hated them both. The young man, their son, I suppose, was in the room standing at the door with his hat in his hand, looking timidly at them. The old man turned half round in his chair, looked at him, turned down the corners of his mouth, looked across at the old lady, and they both smiled as if they were amused. The son came farther into the room, put his hat down, leaned with both hands on the table, and began to speak (though nothing could be heard) with an earnestness that was painful to see, because I could be certain his pleading would be of no use; sometimes he spread out his hands and shook them, every now and again he brushed his eyes. He was very much moved, and so was I, merely watching him. The old people were not; they leaned forward a little in their chairs and sometimes smiled at each other—again as if they were amused. At last he had done, and stood with his hands before him, quivering all over. His father and mother leaned back in their chairs and looked at each other. I think they said not a single word. The son caught up his hat, turned round, and went quickly out of the room. Then the old man threw back his head and laughed, and the old lady laughed too, not so boisterously.

I turned back to the window. It was as I expected. Outside the garden gate, in the road, a young slight girl in a large poke-bonnet and shawl and rather short-skirted dress was waiting, in great anxiety, as I could see by the way she held to the railings. Her face I could not see. The young man came out; she clasped her hands, he shook his head; they went off together slowly up the road, he with bowed shoulders, supporting her, she, I dare say, crying. Again I looked round to the sitting-room. The wall hid it now.

It sounds a dull ordinary scene enough, but I can assure you it was horribly disturbing to watch, and the cruel calm way in which the father and mother, who looked so nice and worthy and were so abominable, treated their son, was like nothing I had ever seen.

Of course I know now what the effect of the Fourth Jar was; it made me able to see what had happened in any place. I did not yet know how far back the memories would go, or whether I was obliged to see them if I did not want to. But it was clear to me that the boys were sometimes taught in this way. “We were watching them like we do at school,” one of them said, and though the grammar was poor, the meaning was plain, and I would ask Slim about it when we next met. Meanwhile I must say I hoped the gift would not go on working instead of letting me go to sleep. It did not.

Next day I met my landlady employing herself in the garden, and asked her about the people who had formerly lived in the house.

“Oh yes,” said she. “I can tell you about them, for my father he remembered old Mr. and Mrs. Eld quite well when he was a slip of a lad. They wasn’t liked in the place, neither of them, partly through bein’ so hard-like to their workpeople, and partly from them treating their only son so bad—I mean to say turning him right off because he married without asking permission. Well, no doubt, that’s what he shouldn’t have done, but my father said it was a very nice respectable young girl he married, and it do seem hard for them never to say a word of kindness all those years and leave every penny away from the young people. What become of them, do you say, sir? Why, I believe they emigrated away to the United States of America and never was heard of again, but the old people they lived on here, and I never heard but what they was easy in their minds right up to the day of their death. Nice-looking old people they was too, my father used to say; seemed as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, as the saying is. Now I don’t know when I’ve thought of them last, but I recollect my father speaking of them as well, and the way they’re spoke of on their stone that lays just to the right-hand side as you go up the churchyard path—well, you’d think there never was such people. But I believe that was put up by them that got the property; now what was that name again?”