A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS
By Dr M. R. JAMES
PROVOST OF ETON
GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY
5s. net.
MORE GHOST STORIES
5s. net.
A THIN GHOST AND OTHERS
4s. 6d. net.
THE FIVE JARS
With Illustrations. 6s. net.
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
A WARNING TO
THE CURIOUS
and other Ghost Stories
BY
MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES
Author of “Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,” etc.
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1925
[_All rights reserved_]
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET, EDINBURGH.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first of these stories was written for the library of the Queen’s
Doll’s House, and was printed in the Book thereof; I gratefully
acknowledge the gracious permission granted by Her Majesty to have it
reprinted in this volume.
For like permissions from the editors of the _Atlantic Monthly_,
_Empire Review_, _London Mercury_, and _Eton Chronic_ I return thanks.
M. R. JAMES.
_September 1925._
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE HAUNTED DOLL’S HOUSE 9
THE UNCOMMON PRAYER-BOOK 35
A NEIGHBOUR’S LANDMARK 70
A VIEW FROM A HILL 97
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS 138
AN EVENING’S ENTERTAINMENT 176
THE HAUNTED DOLL’S HOUSE.
“I suppose you get stuff of that kind through your hands pretty often?”
said Mr Dillet, as he pointed with his stick to an object which shall
be described when the time comes: and when he said it, he lied in his
throat, and knew that he lied. Not once in twenty years--perhaps not
once in a lifetime--could Mr Chittenden, skilled as he was in ferreting
out the forgotten treasures of half-a-dozen counties, expect to
handle such a specimen. It was collectors’ palaver, and Mr Chittenden
recognised it as such.
“Stuff of that kind, Mr Dillet! It’s a museum piece, that is.”
“Well, I suppose there are museums that’ll take anything.”
“I’ve seen one, not as good as that, years back,” said Mr Chittenden,
thoughtfully. “But that’s not likely to come into the market: and
I’m told they ’ave some fine ones of the period over the water. No:
I’m only telling you the truth, Mr Dillet, when I say that if you was
to place an unlimited order with me for the very best that could be
got--and you know I ’ave facilities for getting to know of such things,
and a reputation to maintain--well, all I can say is, I should lead you
straight up to that one and say, ‘I can’t do no better for you than
that, Sir.’”
“Hear, hear!” said Mr Dillet, applauding ironically with the end of his
stick on the floor of the shop. “How much are you sticking the innocent
American buyer for it, eh?”
“Oh, I shan’t be over hard on the buyer, American or otherwise. You
see, it stands this way, Mr Dillet--if I knew just a bit more about the
pedigree----”
“Or just a bit less,” Mr Dillet put in.
“Ha, ha! you will have your joke, Sir. No, but as I was saying, if I
knew just a little more than what I do about the piece--though anyone
can see for themselves it’s a genuine thing, every last corner of it,
and there’s not been one of my men allowed to so much as touch it since
it came into the shop--there’d be another figure in the price I’m
asking.”
“And what’s that: five and twenty?”
“Multiply that by three and you’ve got it, Sir. Seventy-five’s my
price.”
“And fifty’s mine,” said Mr Dillet.
The point of agreement was, of course, somewhere between the two, it
does not matter exactly where--I think sixty guineas. But half-an-hour
later the object was being packed, and within an hour Mr Dillet had
called for it in his car and driven away. Mr Chittenden, holding
the cheque in his hand, saw him off from the door with smiles, and
returned, still smiling, into the parlour where his wife was making the
tea. He stopped at the door.
“It’s gone,” he said.
“Thank God for that!” said Mrs Chittenden, putting down the teapot. “Mr
Dillet, was it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Well, I’d sooner it was him than another.”
“Oh, I don’t know, he ain’t a bad feller, my dear.”
“May be not, but in my opinion he’d be none the worse for a bit of a
shake up.”
“Well, if that’s your opinion, it’s my opinion he’s put himself into
the way of getting one. Anyhow, we shan’t have no more of it, and
that’s something to be thankful for.”
And so Mr and Mrs Chittenden sat down to tea.
And what of Mr Dillet and of his new acquisition? What it was, the
title of this story will have told you. What it was like, I shall have
to indicate as well as I can.
There was only just room enough for it in the car, and Mr Dillet had to
sit with the driver: he had also to go slow, for though the rooms of
the Doll’s House had all been stuffed carefully with soft cotton-wool,
jolting was to be avoided, in view of the immense number of small
objects which thronged them; and the ten-mile drive was an anxious
time for him, in spite of all the precautions he insisted upon. At last
his front door was reached, and Collins, the butler, came out.
“Look here, Collins, you must help me with this thing--it’s a delicate
job. We must get it out upright, see? It’s full of little things that
mustn’t be displaced more than we can help. Let’s see, where shall we
have it? (After a pause for consideration). Really, I think I shall
have to put it in my own room, to begin with at any rate. On the big
table--that’s it.”
It was conveyed--with much talking--to Mr Dillet’s spacious room on the
first floor, looking out on the drive. The sheeting was unwound from
it, and the front thrown open, and for the next hour or two Mr Dillet
was fully occupied in extracting the padding and setting in order the
contents of the rooms.
When this thoroughly congenial task was finished, I must say that
it would have been difficult to find a more perfect and attractive
specimen of a Doll’s House in Strawberry Hill Gothic than that which
now stood on Mr Dillet’s large kneehole table, lighted up by the
evening sun which came slanting through three tall sash-windows.
It was quite six feet long, including the Chapel or Oratory which
flanked the front on the left as you faced it, and the stable on
the right. The main block of the house was, as I have said, in the
Gothic manner: that is to say, the windows had pointed arches and were
surmounted by what are called ogival hoods, with crockets and finials
such as we see on the canopies of tombs built into church walls. At the
angles were absurd turrets covered with arched panels. The Chapel had
pinnacles and buttresses, and a bell in the turret and coloured glass
in the windows. When the front of the house was open you saw four large
rooms, bedroom, dining-room, drawing-room and kitchen, each with its
appropriate furniture in a very complete state.
The stable on the right was in two storeys, with its proper complement
of horses, coaches and grooms, and with its clock and Gothic cupola
for the clock bell.
Pages, of course, might be written on the outfit of the mansion--how
many frying pans, how many gilt chairs, what pictures, carpets,
chandeliers, four-posters, table linen, glass, crockery and plate it
possessed; but all this must be left to the imagination. I will only
say that the base or plinth on which the house stood (for it was fitted
with one of some depth which allowed of a flight of steps to the front
door and a terrace, partly balustraded) contained a shallow drawer
or drawers in which were neatly stored sets of embroidered curtains,
changes of raiment for the inmates, and, in short, all the materials
for an infinite series of variations and refittings of the most
absorbing and delightful kind.
“Quintessence of Horace Walpole, that’s what it is: he must have had
something to do with the making of it.” Such was Mr Dillet’s murmured
reflection as he knelt before it in a reverent ecstasy. “Simply
wonderful; this is my day and no mistake. Five hundred pound coming in
this morning for that cabinet which I never cared about, and now this
tumbling into my hands for a tenth, at the very most, of what it would
fetch in town. Well, well! It almost makes one afraid something’ll
happen to counter it. Let’s have a look at the population, anyhow.”
Accordingly, he set them before him in a row. Again, here is an
opportunity, which some would snatch at, of making an inventory of
costume: I am incapable of it.
There were a gentleman and lady, in blue satin and brocade
respectively. There were two children, a boy and a girl. There was
a cook, a nurse, a footman, and there were the stable servants, two
postillions, a coachman, two grooms.
“Anyone else? Yes, possibly.”
The curtains of the four-poster in the bedroom were closely drawn round
four sides of it, and he put his finger in between them and felt in
the bed. He drew the finger back hastily, for it almost seemed to him
as if something had--not stirred, perhaps, but yielded--in an odd live
way as he pressed it. Then he put back the curtains, which ran on rods
in the proper manner, and extracted from the bed a white-haired old
gentleman in a long linen night-dress and cap, and laid him down by the
rest. The tale was complete.
Dinner time was now near, so Mr Dillet spent but five minutes in
putting the lady and children into the drawing-room, the gentleman into
the dining-room, the servants into the kitchen and stables, and the old
man back into his bed. He retired into his dressing room next door, and
we see and hear no more of him until something like eleven o’clock at
night.
His whim was to sleep surrounded by some of the gems of his collection.
The big room in which we have seen him contained his bed: bath,
wardrobe, and all the appliances of dressing were in a commodious room
adjoining: but his four-poster, which itself was a valued treasure,
stood in the large room where he sometimes wrote, and often sat,
and even received visitors. To-night he repaired to it in a highly
complacent frame of mind.
There was no striking clock within earshot--none on the staircase, none
in the stable, none in the distant Church tower. Yet it is indubitable
that Mr Dillet was startled out of a very pleasant slumber by a bell
tolling One.
He was so much startled that he did not merely lie breathless with
wide-open eyes, but actually sat up in his bed.
He never asked himself, till the morning hours, how it was that,
though there was no light at all in the room, the Doll’s House on the
kneehole table stood out with complete clearness. But it was so. The
effect was that of a bright harvest moon shining full on the front of
a big white stone mansion--a quarter of a mile away it might be, and
yet every detail was photographically sharp. There were trees about
it, too--trees rising behind the chapel and the house. He seemed to be
conscious of the scent of a cool still September night. He thought he
could hear an occasional stamp and clink from the stables, as of horses
stirring. And with another shock he realized that, above the house, he
was looking, not at the wall of his room with its pictures, but into
the profound blue of a night sky.
There were lights, more than one, in the windows, and he quickly saw
that this was no four-roomed house with a movable front, but one of
many rooms, and staircases--a real house, but seen as if through the
wrong end of a telescope. “You mean to show me something,” he muttered
to himself, and he gazed earnestly on the lighted windows. They would
in real life have been shuttered or curtained, no doubt, he thought;
but, as it was, there was nothing to intercept his view of what was
being transacted inside the rooms.
Two rooms were lighted--one on the ground floor to the right of the
door, one upstairs, on the left--the first brightly enough, the other
rather dimly. The lower room was the dining-room: a table was laid,
but the meal was over, and only wine and glasses were left on the
table. The man of the blue satin and the woman of the brocade were
alone in the room, and they were talking very earnestly, seated close
together at the table, their elbows on it: every now and again stopping
to listen, as it seemed. Once _he_ rose, came to the window and opened
it and put his head out and his hand to his ear. There was a lighted
taper in a silver candlestick on a sideboard. When the man left the
window he seemed to leave the room also; and the lady, taper in hand,
remained standing and listening. The expression on her face was that
of one striving her utmost to keep down a fear that threatened to
master her--and succeeding. It was a hateful face, too; broad, flat and
sly. Now the man came back and she took some small thing from him and
hurried out of the room. He, too, disappeared, but only for a moment or
two. The front door slowly opened and he stepped out and stood on the
top of the _perron_, looking this way and that; then turned towards
the upper window that was lighted, and shook his fist.
It was time to look at that upper window. Through it was seen a
four-post bed: a nurse or other servant in an armchair, evidently
sound asleep; in the bed an old man lying: awake, and, one would say,
anxious, from the way in which he shifted about and moved his fingers,
beating tunes on the coverlet. Beyond the bed a door opened. Light was
seen on the ceiling, and the lady came in: she set down her candle on
a table, came to the fireside and roused the nurse. In her hand she
had an old-fashioned wine bottle, ready uncorked. The nurse took it,
poured some of the contents into a little silver sauce-pan, added some
spice and sugar from casters on the table, and set it to warm on the
fire. Meanwhile the old man in the bed beckoned feebly to the lady,
who came to him, smiling, took his wrist as if to feel his pulse, and
bit her lip as if in consternation. He looked at her anxiously, and
then pointed to the window, and spoke. She nodded, and did as the
man below had done; opened the casement and listened--perhaps rather
ostentatiously: then drew in her head and shook it, looking at the old
man, who seemed to sigh.
By this time the posset on the fire was steaming, and the nurse poured
it into a small two-handled silver bowl and brought it to the bedside.
The old man seemed disinclined for it and was waving it away, but the
lady and the nurse together bent over him and evidently pressed it
upon him. He must have yielded, for they supported him into a sitting
position, and put it to his lips. He drank most of it, in several
draughts, and they laid him down. The lady left the room, smiling
good-night to him, and took the bowl, the bottle and the silver
sauce-pan with her. The nurse returned to the chair, and there was an
interval of complete quiet.
Suddenly the old man started up in his bed--and he must have uttered
some cry, for the nurse started out of her chair and made but one step
of it to the bedside. He was a sad and terrible sight--flushed in
the face, almost to blackness, the eyes glaring whitely, both hands
clutching at his heart, foam at his lips.
For a moment the nurse left him, ran to the door, flung it wide open,
and, one supposes, screamed aloud for help, then darted back to the bed
and seemed to try feverishly to soothe him--to lay him down--anything.
But as the lady, her husband, and several servants, rushed into the
room with horrified faces, the old man collapsed under the nurse’s
hands and lay back, and the features, contorted with agony and rage,
relaxed slowly into calm.
A few moments later, lights showed out to the left of the house, and
a coach with flambeaux drove up to the door. A white-wigged man in
black got nimbly out and ran up the steps, carrying a small leather
trunk-shaped box. He was met in the doorway by the man and his wife,
she with her handkerchief clutched between her hands, he with a tragic
face, but retaining his self-control. They led the newcomer into the
dining-room, where he set his box of papers on the table, and, turning
to them, listened with a face of consternation at what they had to
tell. He nodded his head again and again, threw out his hands slightly,
declined, it seemed, offers of refreshment and lodging for the night,
and within a few minutes came slowly down the steps entering the coach
and driving off the way he had come. As the man in blue watched him
from the top of the steps, a smile not pleasant to see stole slowly
over his fat white face. Darkness fell over the whole scene as the
lights of the coach disappeared.
But Mr Dillet remained sitting up in the bed: he had rightly guessed
that there would be a sequel. The house front glimmered out again
before long. But now there was a difference. The lights were in other
windows, one at the top of the house, the other illuminating the range
of coloured windows of the chapel. How he saw through these is not
quite obvious, but he did. The interior was as carefully furnished as
the rest of the establishment, with its minute red cushions on the
desks, its Gothic stall-canopies, and its western gallery and pinnacled
organ with gold pipes. On the centre of the black and white pavement
was a bier: four tall candles burned at the corners. On the bier was a
coffin covered with a pall of black velvet.
As he looked the folds of the pall stirred. It seemed to rise at one
end: it slid downwards: it fell away, exposing the black coffin with
its silver handles and name-plate. One of the tall candlesticks swayed
and toppled over. Ask no more, but turn, as Mr Dillet hastily did,
and look in at the lighted window at the top of the house, where a
boy and girl lay in two truckle-beds, and a four-poster for the nurse
rose above them. The nurse was not visible for the moment; but the
father and mother were there, dressed now in mourning, but with very
little sign of mourning in their demeanour. Indeed, they were laughing
and talking with a good deal of animation, sometimes to each other,
and sometimes throwing a remark to one or other of the children,
and again laughing at the answers. Then the father was seen to go on
tiptoe out of the room, taking with him as he went a white garment that
hung on a peg near the door. He shut the door after him. A minute or
two later it was slowly opened again, and a muffled head poked round
it. A bent form of sinister shape stepped across to the truckle-beds,
and suddenly stopped, threw up its arms and revealed, of course, the
father, laughing. The children were in agonies of terror, the boy with
the bed clothes over his head, the girl throwing herself out of bed
into her mother’s arms. Attempts at consolation followed--the parents
took the children on their laps, patted them, picked up the white gown
and showed there was no harm in it, and so forth; and at last putting
the children back into bed, left the room with encouraging waves of the
hand. As they left it, the nurse came in, and soon the light died down.
Still Mr Dillet watched immovable.
A new sort of light--not of lamp or candle--a pale ugly light,
began to dawn around the door-case at the back of the room. The door
was opening again. The seer does not like to dwell upon what he saw
entering the room: he says it might be described as a frog--the size of
a man--but it had scanty white hair about its head. It was busy about
the truckle-beds, but not for long. The sound of cries--faint, as if
coming out of a vast distance--but, even so, infinitely appalling,
reached the ear.
There were signs of a hideous commotion all over the house: lights
passed along and up, and doors opened and shut, and running figures
passed within the windows. The clock in the stable turret tolled one,
and darkness fell again.
It was only dispelled once more, to show the house front. At the bottom
of the steps dark figures were drawn up in two lines, holding flaming
torches. More dark figures came down the steps, bearing, first one,
then another small coffin. And the lines of torch-bearers with the
coffins between them moved silently onward to the left.
The hours of night passed on--never so slowly, Mr Dillet thought.
Gradually he sank down from sitting to lying in his bed--but he did not
close an eye: and early next morning he sent for the doctor.
The doctor found him in a disquieting state of nerves, and recommended
sea-air. To a quiet place on the East Coast he accordingly repaired by
easy stages in his car.
One of the first people he met on the sea-front was Mr Chittenden, who,
it appeared, had likewise been advised to take his wife away for a bit
of a change.
Mr Chittenden looked somewhat askance upon him when they met: and not
without cause.
“Well, I don’t wonder at you being a bit upset, Mr Dillet. What? yes,
well, I might say ’orrible upset, to be sure, seeing what me and my
poor wife went through ourselves. But I put it to you, Mr Dillet, one
of two things: was I going to scrap a lovely piece like that on the one
’and, or was I going to tell customers: ‘I’m selling you a regular
picture-palace-dramar in reel life of the olden time, billed to perform
regular at one o’clock a.m.’? Why, what would you ’ave said yourself?
And next thing you know, two Justices of the Peace in the back parlour,
and pore Mr and Mrs Chittenden off in a spring cart to the County
Asylum and everyone in the street saying, ‘Ah, I thought it ’ud come
to that. Look at the way the man drank!’--and me next door, or next
door but one, to a total abstainer, as you know. Well, there was my
position. What? Me ’ave it back in the shop? Well, what do _you_ think?
No, but I’ll tell you what I will do. You shall have your money back,
bar the ten pound I paid for it, and you make what you can.”
Later in the day, in what is offensively called the “smoke-room” of the
hotel, a murmured conversation between the two went on for some time.
“How much do you really know about that thing, and where it came from?”
“Honest, Mr Dillet, I don’t know the ’ouse. Of course, it came out
of the lumber room of a country ’ouse--that anyone could guess. But
I’ll go as far as say this, that I believe it’s not a hundred miles
from this place. Which direction and how far I’ve no notion. I’m only
judging by guess-work. The man as I actually paid the cheque to ain’t
one of my regular men, and I’ve lost sight of him; but I ’ave the idea
that this part of the country was his beat, and that’s every word I can
tell you. But now, Mr Dillet, there’s one thing that rather physicks
me--that old chap,--I suppose you saw him drive up to the door--I
thought so: now, would he have been the medical man, do you take it? My
wife would have it so, but I stuck to it that was the lawyer, because
he had papers with him, and one he took out was folded up.”
“I agree,” said Mr Dillet. “Thinking it over, I came to the conclusion
that was the old man’s will, ready to be signed.”
“Just what I thought,” said Mr Chittenden, “and I took it that will
would have cut out the young people, eh? Well, well! It’s been a
lesson to me, I know that. I shan’t buy no more dolls’ houses, nor
waste no more money on the pictures--and as to this business of
poisonin’ grandpa, well, if I know myself, I never ’ad much of a turn
for that. Live and let live: that’s bin my motto throughout life, and I
ain’t found it a bad one.”
Filled with these elevated sentiments, Mr Chittenden retired to
his lodgings. Mr Dillet next day repaired to the local Institute,
where he hoped to find some clue to the riddle that absorbed him. He
gazed in despair at a long file of the Canterbury and York Society’s
publications of the Parish Registers of the district. No print
resembling the house of his nightmare was among those that hung on the
staircase and in the passages. Disconsolate, he found himself at last
in a derelict room, staring at a dusty model of a church in a dusty
glass case: _Model of St Stephen’s Church, Coxham. Presented by J.
Merewether, Esq., of Ilbridge House, 1877. The work of his ancestor
James Merewether, d. 1786._ There was something in the fashion of it
that reminded him dimly of his horror. He retraced his steps to a wall
map he had noticed, and made out that Ilbridge House was in Coxham
Parish. Coxham was, as it happened, one of the parishes of which he had
retained the name when he glanced over the file of printed registers,
and it was not long before he found in them the record of the burial of
Roger Milford, aged 76, on the 11th of September, 1757, and of Roger
and Elizabeth Merewether, aged 9 and 7, on the 19th of the same month.
It seemed worth while to follow up this clue, frail as it was; and in
the afternoon he drove out to Coxham. The east end of the north aisle
of the church is a Milford chapel, and on its north wall are tablets
to the same persons; Roger, the elder, it seems, was distinguished by
all the qualities which adorn “the Father, the Magistrate, and the
Man”: the memorial was erected by his attached daughter Elizabeth,
“who did not long survive the loss of a parent ever solicitous for her
welfare, and of two amiable children.” The last sentence was plainly
an addition to the original inscription.
A yet later slab told of James Merewether, husband of Elizabeth,
“who in the dawn of life practised, not without success, those arts
which, had he continued their exercise, might in the opinion of the
most competent judges have earned for him the name of the British
Vitruvius: but who, overwhelmed by the visitation which deprived him of
an affectionate partner and a blooming offspring, passed his Prime and
Age in a secluded yet elegant Retirement: his grateful Nephew and Heir
indulges a pious sorrow by this too brief recital of his excellences.”
The children were more simply commemorated. Both died on the night of
the 12th of September.
Mr Dillet felt sure that in Ilbridge House he had found the scene of
his drama. In some old sketch-book, possibly in some old print, he may
yet find convincing evidence that he is right. But the Ilbridge House
of to-day is not that which he sought; it is an Elizabethan erection of
the forties, in red brick with stone quoins and dressings. A quarter
of a mile from it, in a low part of the park, backed by ancient,
stag-horned, ivy-strangled trees and thick undergrowth, are marks of
a terraced platform overgrown with rough grass. A few stone balusters
lie here and there, and a heap or two, covered with nettles and ivy,
of wrought stones with badly carved crockets. This, someone told Mr
Dillet, was the site of an older house.
As he drove out of the village, the hall clock struck four, and Mr
Dillet started up and clapped his hands to his ears. It was not the
first time he had heard that bell.
Awaiting an offer from the other side of the Atlantic, the doll’s house
still reposes, carefully sheeted, in a loft over Mr Dillet’s stables,
whither Collins conveyed it on the day when Mr Dillet started for the
sea coast.
* * * * *
[It will be said, perhaps, and not unjustly, that this is no more than
a variation on a former story of mine called _The Mezzotint_. I can
only hope that there is enough of variation in the setting to make the
repetition of the _motif_ tolerable].
THE UNCOMMON PRAYER-BOOK
I
Mr Davidson was spending the first week in January alone in a country
town. A combination of circumstances had driven him to that drastic
course: his nearest relations were enjoying winter sports abroad,
and the friends who had been kindly anxious to replace them had an
infectious complaint in the house. Doubtless he might have found
someone else to take pity on him. “But,” he reflected, “most of them
have made up their parties, and, after all, it is only for three or
four days at most that I have to fend for myself, and it will be just
as well if I can get a move on with my introduction to the Leventhorp
Papers. I might use the time by going down as near as I can to
Gaulsford and making acquaintance with the neighbourhood. I ought to
see the remains of Leventhorp House, and the tombs in the church.”
The first day after his arrival at the Swan Hotel at Longbridge was
so stormy that he got no farther than the tobacconist’s. The next,
comparatively bright, he used for his visit to Gaulsford, which
interested him more than a little, but had no ulterior consequences.
The third, which was really a pearl of a day for early January, was
too fine to be spent indoors. He gathered from the landlord that a
favourite practice of visitors in the summer was to take a morning
train to a couple of stations westward, and walk back down the valley
of the Tent, through Stanford St Thomas and Stanford Magdalene, both
of which were accounted highly picturesque villages. He closed with
this plan, and we now find him seated in a third-class carriage at 9.45
A.M., on his way to Kingsbourne Junction, and studying the map of the
district.
One old man was his only fellow-traveller, a piping old man, who seemed
inclined for conversation. So Mr Davidson, after going through the
necessary versicles and responses about the weather, inquired whether
he was going far.
“No, sir, not far, not this morning, sir,” said the old man. “I ain’t
only goin’ so far as what they call Kingsbourne Junction. There isn’t
but two stations betwixt here and there. Yes, they calls it Kingsbourne
Junction.”
“I’m going there, too,” said Mr Davidson.
“Oh, indeed, sir; do you know that part?”
“No, I’m only going for the sake of taking a walk back to Longbridge,
and seeing a bit of the country.”
“Oh, indeed, sir! Well, ’tis a beautiful day for a gentleman as enjoys
a bit of a walk.”
“Yes, to be sure. Have you got far to go when you get to Kingsbourne?”
“No, sir, I ain’t got far to go, once I get to Kingsbourne Junction.
I’m agoin’ to see my daughter, sir. She live at Brockstone. That’s
about two mile across the fields from what they call Kingsbourne
Junction, that is. You’ve got that marked down on your map, I expect,
sir.”
“I expect I have. Let me see, Brockstone, did you say? Here’s
Kingsbourne, yes; and which way is Brockstone--toward the Stanfords?
Ah, I see it: Brockstone Court, in a park. I don’t see the village,
though.”
“No, sir, you wouldn’t see no village of Brockstone. There ain’t only
the Court and the Chapel at Brockstone.”
“Chapel? Oh, yes, that’s marked here, too. The Chapel; close by the
Court, it seems to be. Does it belong to the Court?”
“Yes, sir, that’s close up to the Court, only a step. Yes, that belong
to the Court. My daughter, you see, sir, she’s the keeper’s wife now,
and she live at the Court and look after things now the family’s away.”
“No one living there now, then?”
“No, sir, not for a number of years. The old gentleman, he lived there
when I was a lad; and the lady, she lived on after him to very near
upon ninety years of age. And then she died, and them that have it
now, they’ve got this other place, in Warwickshire I believe it is, and
they don’t do nothin’ about lettin’ the Court out; but Colonel Wildman,
he have the shooting, and young Mr Clark, he’s the agent, he come over
once in so many weeks to see to things, and my daughter’s husband, he’s
the keeper.”
“And who uses the Chapel? just the people round about, I suppose.”
“Oh, no, no one don’t use the Chapel. Why, there ain’t no one to go.
All the people about, they go to Stanford St Thomas Church; but my
son-in-law, he go to Kingsbourne Church now, because the gentleman at
Stanford, he have this Gregory singin’, and my son-in-law, he don’t
like that; he say he can hear the old donkey brayin’ any day of the
week, and he like something a little cheerful on the Sunday.” The
old man drew his hand across his mouth and laughed. “That’s what my
son-in-law say; he say he can hear the old donkey,” etc., _da capo_.
Mr Davidson also laughed as honestly as he could, thinking meanwhile
that Brockstone Court and Chapel would probably be worth including
in his walk; for the map showed that from Brockstone he could
strike the Tent Valley quite as easily as by following the main
Kingsbourne-Longbridge road. So, when the mirth excited by the
remembrance of the son-in-law’s _bon mot_ had died down, he returned to
the charge, and ascertained that both the Court and the Chapel were of
the class known as “old-fashioned places,” and that the old man would
be very willing to take him thither, and his daughter would be happy to
show him whatever she could.
“But that ain’t a lot, sir, not as if the family was livin’ there; all
the lookin’-glasses is covered up, and the paintin’s, and the curtains
and carpets folded away; not but what I dare say she could show you
a pair just to look at, because she go over them to see as the morth
shouldn’t get into ’em.”
“I shan’t mind about that, thank you; if she can show me the inside of
the Chapel, that’s what I’d like best to see.”
“Oh, she can show you that right enough, sir. She have the key of the
door, you see, and most weeks she go in and dust about. That’s a nice
Chapel, that is. My son-in-law, he say he’ll be bound they didn’t have
none of this Gregory singin’ there. Dear! I can’t help but smile when I
think of him sayin’ that about th’ old donkey. ‘I can hear him bray,’
he say, ‘any day of the week’; and so he can, sir; that’s true, anyway.”
The walk across the fields from Kingsbourne to Brockstone was very
pleasant. It lay for the most part on the top of the country, and
commanded wide views over a succession of ridges, plough and pasture,
or covered with dark-blue woods--all ending, more or less abruptly,
on the right, in headlands that overlooked the wide valley of a great
western river. The last field they crossed was bounded by a close
copse, and no sooner were they in it than the path turned downward
very sharply, and it became evident that Brockstone was neatly fitted
into a sudden and very narrow valley. It was not long before they had
glimpses of groups of smokeless stone chimneys, and stone-tiled roofs,
close beneath their feet; and, not many minutes after that, they were
wiping their shoes at the back door of Brockstone Court, while the
keeper’s dogs barked very loudly in unseen places, and Mrs Porter, in
quick succession, screamed at them to be quiet, greeted her father, and
begged both her visitors to step in.
II
It was not to be expected that Mr Davidson should escape being taken
through the principal rooms of the Court, in spite of the fact that
the house was entirely out of commission. Pictures, carpets, curtains,
furniture, were all covered up or put away, as old Mr Avery had
said; and the admiration which our friend was very ready to bestow
had to be lavished on the proportions of the rooms, and on the one
painted ceiling, upon which an artist who had fled from London in the
plague-year had depicted the Triumph of Loyalty and Defeat of Sedition.
In this Mr Davidson could show an unfeigned interest. The portraits of
Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, Peters, and the rest, writhing in carefully
devised torments, were evidently the part of the design to which most
pains had been devoted.
“That were the old Lady Sadleir had that paintin’ done, same as the
one what put up the Chapel. They say she were the first that went up
to London to dance on Oliver Cromwell’s grave.” So said Mr Avery, and
continued musingly, “Well, I suppose she got some satisfaction to her
mind, but I don’t know as I should want to pay the fare to London and
back just for that; and my son-in-law, he say the same; he say he don’t
know as he should have cared to pay all that money only for that. I was
tellin’ the gentleman as we came along in the train, Mary, what your
’Arry says about this Gregory singin’ down at Stanford here. We ’ad a
bit of a laugh over that, sir, didn’t us?”
“Yes, to be sure we did; ha! ha!” Once again Mr Davidson strove to do
justice to the pleasantry of the keeper. “But,” he said, “if Mrs Porter
can show me the Chapel, I think it should be now, for the days aren’t
long, and I want to get back to Longbridge before it falls quite dark.”
Even if Brockstone Court has not been illustrated in _Rural Life_ (and
I think it has not), I do not propose to point out its excellences
here; but of the Chapel a word must be said. It stands about a hundred
yards from the house, and has its own little graveyard and trees about
it. It is a stone building about seventy feet long, and in the Gothic
style, as that style was understood in the middle of the seventeenth
century. On the whole it resembles some of the Oxford college chapels
as much as anything, save that it has a distinct chancel, like a parish
church, and a fanciful domed bell-turret at the south-west angle.
When the west door was thrown open, Mr Davidson could not repress an
exclamation of pleased surprise at the completeness and richness of
the interior. Screen-work, pulpit, seating, and glass--all were of
the same period; and as he advanced into the nave and sighted the
organ-case with its gold-embossed pipes in the western gallery, his cup
of satisfaction was filled. The glass in the nave windows was chiefly
armorial; and in the chancel were figure-subjects, of the kind that may
be seen at Abbey Dore, of Lord Scudamore’s work.
But this is not an archæological review.
While Mr Davidson was still busy examining the remains of the organ
(attributed to one of the Dallams, I believe), old Mr Avery had
stumped up into the chancel and was lifting the dust-cloths from the
blue-velvet cushions of the stall-desks. Evidently it was here that the
family sat.
Mr Davidson heard him say in a rather hushed tone of surprise, “Why,
Mary, here’s all the books open agin!”
The reply was in a voice that sounded peevish rather than surprised.
“Tt-tt-tt, well, there, I never!”
Mrs Porter went over to where her father was standing, and they
continued talking in a lower key. Mr Davidson saw plainly that
something not quite in the common run was under discussion; so he came
down the gallery stairs and joined them. There was no sign of disorder
in the chancel any more than in the rest of the Chapel, which was
beautifully clean; but the eight folio Prayer-Books on the cushions of
the stall-desks were indubitably open.
Mrs Porter was inclined to be fretful over it. “Whoever can it be as
does it?” she said: “for there’s no key but mine, nor yet door but the
one we came in by, and the winders is barred, every one of ’em; I don’t
like it, father, that I don’t.”
“What is it, Mrs Porter? Anything wrong?” said Mr Davidson.
“No, sir, nothing reely wrong, only these books. Every time, pretty
near, that I come in to do up the place, I shuts ’em and spreads the
cloths over ’em to keep off the dust, ever since Mr Clark spoke about
it, when I first come; and yet there they are again, and always the
same page--and as I says, whoever it can be as does it with the door
and winders shut; and as I says, it makes anyone feel queer comin’ in
here alone, as I ’ave to do, not as I’m given that way myself, not
to be frightened easy, I mean to say; and there’s not a rat in the
place--not as no rat wouldn’t trouble to do a thing like that, do you
think, sir?”
“Hardly, I should say; but it sounds very queer. Are they always open
at the same place, did you say?”
“Always the same place, sir, one of the psalms it is, and I didn’t
particular notice it the first time or two, till I see a little red
line of printing, and it’s always caught my eye since.”
Mr Davidson walked along the stalls and looked at the open books. Sure
enough, they all stood at the same page; Psalm cix., and at the head
of it, just between the number and the _Deus laudum_, was a rubric,
“For the 25th day of April.” Without pretending to minute knowledge
of the history of the Book of Common Prayer, he knew enough to be sure
that this was a very odd and wholly unauthorized addition to its text;
and though he remembered that April 25 is St Mark’s Day, he could not
imagine what appropriateness this very savage psalm could have to that
festival. With slight misgivings he ventured to turn over the leaves to
examine the title-page, and knowing the need for particular accuracy in
these matters, he devoted some ten minutes to making a line-for-line
transcript of it. The date was 1653; the printer called himself Anthony
Cadman. He turned to the list of proper psalms for certain days; yes,
added to it was that same inexplicable entry: _For the 25th day of
April: the 109th Psalm_. An expert would no doubt have thought of many
other points to inquire into, but this antiquary, as I have said, was
no expert. He took stock, however, of the binding--a handsome one of
tooled blue leather, bearing the arms that figured in several of the
nave windows in various combinations.
“How often,” he said at last to Mrs Porter, “have you found these books
lying open like this?”
“Reely I couldn’t say, sir, but it’s a great many times now. Do you
recollect, father, me telling you about it the first time I noticed it?”
“That I do, my dear; you was in a rare taking, and I don’t so much
wonder at it; that was five year ago I was paying you a visit at
Michaelmas time, and you come in at tea-time, and says you, ‘Father,
there’s the books laying open under the cloths agin;’ and I didn’t
know what my daughter was speakin’ about, you see, sir, and I says,
‘Books?’ just like that, I says; and then it all came out. But as Harry
says,--that’s my son-in-law, sir,--‘whoever it can be,’ he says, ‘as
does it, because there ain’t only the one door, and we keeps the key
locked up,’ he says, ‘and the winders is barred, every one on ’em.
Well,’ he says, ‘I lay once I could catch ’em at it, they wouldn’t do
it a second time,’ he says. And no more they wouldn’t, I don’t believe,
sir. Well, that was five year ago, and it’s been happenin’ constant
ever since by your account, my dear. Young Mr Clark, he don’t seem to
think much to it; but then he don’t live here, you see, and ’tisn’t his
business to come and clean up here of a dark afternoon, is it?”
“I suppose you never notice anything else odd when you are at work
here, Mrs Porter?” said Mr Davidson.
“No, sir, I do not,” said Mrs Porter, “and it’s a funny thing to me I
don’t, with the feeling I have as there’s someone settin’ here--no,
it’s the other side, just within the screen--and lookin’ at me all the
time I’m dustin’ in the gallery and pews. But I never yet see nothin’
worse than myself, as the sayin’ goes, and I kindly hope I never may.”
III
In the conversation that followed (there was not much of it), nothing
was added to the statement of the case. Having parted on good terms
with Mr Avery and his daughter, Mr Davidson addressed himself to his
eight-mile walk. The little valley of Brockstone soon led him down into
the broader one of the Tent, and on to Stanford St Thomas, where he
found refreshment.
We need not accompany him all the way to Longbridge. But as he
was changing his socks before dinner, he suddenly paused and said
half-aloud, “By Jove, that is a rum thing!” It had not occurred to him
before how strange it was that any edition of the Prayer-Book should
have been issued in 1653, seven years before the Restoration, five
years before Cromwell’s death, and when the use of the book, let alone
the printing of it, was penal. He must have been a bold man who put his
name and a date on that title-page. Only, Mr Davidson reflected, it
probably was not his name at all, for the ways of printers in difficult
times were devious.
As he was in the front hall of the Swan that evening, making some
investigations about trains, a small motor stopped in front of the
door, and out of it came a small man in a fur coat, who stood on the
steps and gave directions in a rather yapping foreign accent to his
chauffeur. When he came into the hotel, he was seen to be black-haired
and pale-faced, with a little pointed beard, and gold _pince-nez_;
altogether, very neatly turned out.
He went to his room, and Mr Davidson saw no more of him till
dinner-time. As they were the only two dining that night, it was not
difficult for the newcomer to find an excuse for falling into talk; he
was evidently wishing to make out what brought Mr Davidson into that
neighbourhood at that season.
“Can you tell me how far it is from here to Arlingworth?” was one of
his early questions; and it was one which threw some light on his
own plans; for Mr Davidson recollected having seen at the station an
advertisement of a sale at Arlingworth Hall, comprising old furniture,
pictures, and books. This, then, was a London dealer.
“No,” he said, “I’ve never been there. I believe it lies out by
Kingsbourne--it can’t be less than twelve miles. I see there’s a sale
there shortly.”
The other looked at him inquisitively, and he laughed. “No,” he said,
as if answering a question, “you needn’t be afraid of my competing; I’m
leaving this place to-morrow.”
This cleared the air, and the dealer, whose name was Homberger,
admitted that he was interested in books, and thought there might be
in these old country-house libraries something to repay a journey.
“For,” said he, “we English have always this marvellous talent for
accumulating rarities in the most unexpected places, ain’t it?”
And in the course of the evening he was most interesting on the subject
of finds made by himself and others. “I shall take the occasion after
this sale to look round the district a bit; perhaps you could inform me
of some likely spots, Mr Davidson?”
But Mr Davidson, though he had seen some very tempting locked-up
book-cases at Brockstone Court, kept his counsel. He did not really
like Mr Homberger.
Next day, as he sat in the train, a little ray of light came to
illuminate one of yesterday’s puzzles. He happened to take out an
almanac-diary that he had bought for the new year, and it occurred to
him to look at the remarkable events for April 25. There it was: “St
Mark. Oliver Cromwell born, 1599.”
That, coupled with the painted ceiling, seemed to explain a good
deal. The figure of old Lady Sadleir became more substantial to his
imagination, as of one in whom love for Church and King had gradually
given place to intense hate of the power that had silenced the one and
slaughtered the other. What curious evil service was that which she and
a few like her had been wont to celebrate year by year in that remote
valley? And how in the world had she managed to elude authority? And
again, did not this persistent opening of the books agree oddly with
the other traits of her portrait known to him? It would be interesting
for anyone who chanced to be near Brockstone on the twenty-fifth
of April to look in at the Chapel and see if anything exceptional
happened. When he came to think of it, there seemed to be no reason
why he should not be that person himself; he, and if possible, some
congenial friend. He resolved that so it should be.
Knowing that he knew really nothing about the printing of Prayer-Books,
he realized that he must make it his business to get the best light
on the matter without divulging his reasons. I may say at once that
his search was entirely fruitless. One writer of the early part of the
nineteenth century, a writer of rather windy and rhapsodical chat about
books, professed to have heard of a special anti-Cromwellian issue of
the Prayer-Book in the very midst of the Commonwealth period. But he
did not claim to have seen a copy, and no one had believed him. Looking
into this matter, Mr Davidson found that the statement was based on
letters from a correspondent who had lived near Longbridge; so he was
inclined to think that the Brockstone Prayer-Books were at the bottom
of it, and had excited a momentary interest.
Months went on, and St Mark’s Day came near. Nothing interfered with Mr
Davidson’s plans of visiting Brockstone, or with those of the friend
whom he had persuaded to go with him, and to whom alone he had confided
the puzzle. The same 9.45 train which had taken him in January took
them now to Kingsbourne; the same field-path led them to Brockstone.
But to-day they stopped more than once to pick a cowslip; the distant
woods and ploughed uplands were of another colour, and in the copse
there was, as Mrs Porter said, “a regular charm of birds; why you
couldn’t hardly collect your mind sometimes with it.”
She recognized Mr Davidson at once, and was very ready to do the
honours of the Chapel. The new visitor, Mr Witham, was as much struck
by the completeness of it as Mr Davidson had been. “There can’t be
such another in England,” he said.
“Books open again, Mrs Porter?” said Davidson, as they walked up to the
chancel.
“Dear, yes, I expect so, sir,” said Mrs Porter, as she drew off the
cloths. “Well, there!” she exclaimed the next moment, “if they ain’t
shut! That’s the first time ever I’ve found ’em so. But it’s not for
want of care on my part, I do assure you, gentlemen, if they wasn’t,
for I felt the cloths the last thing before I shut up last week, when
the gentleman had done photografting the heast winder, and every one
was shut, and where there was ribbons left, I tied ’em. Now I think
of it, I don’t remember ever to ’ave done that before, and per’aps,
whoever it is, it just made the difference to ’em. Well, it only shows,
don’t it? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”
Meanwhile the two men had been examining the books, and now Davidson
spoke.
“I’m sorry to say I’m afraid there’s something wrong here, Mrs Porter.
These are not the same books.”