Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (24 page)

I was introduced by one of the canons to the curator of the local museum, who was, my friend said, more likely to be able to give me information on the point than anyone else.

I told this gentleman of the description of certain carved figures and arms formerly on the stalls, and asked whether any had survived. He was
able to show me the arms of Dean West and some other fragments. These, he said, had been got from an old resident, who had also once owned a figure—perhaps one of those which I was inquiring for. There was a very odd thing about that figure, he said.

“The old man who had it told me that he picked it up in a wood-yard, whence he had obtained the still extant pieces, and had taken it home for his children. On the way home he was fiddling about with it and it came in two in his hands, and a bit of paper dropped out. This he picked up and, just noticing that there was writing on it, put it into his pocket, and subsequently into a vase on his mantelpiece.

“I was at his house not very long ago, and happened to pick up the vase and turn it over to see whether there were any marks on it, and the paper fell into my hand. The old man, on my handing it to him, told me the story I have told you, and said I might keep the paper.

“It was crumpled and rather torn, so I have mounted it on a card, which I have here. If you can tell me what it means I shall be very glad, and also, I may say, a good deal surprised.”

He gave me the card. The paper was quite legibly inscribed in an old hand, and this is what was on it:

When I grew in the Wood

I was water’d wth Blood

Now in the Church I stand

Who that touches me with his Hand

If a Bloody hand he bear

I councell him to be ware

Lest he be fetcht away

Whether by night or day,

But chiefly when the wind blows high

In a night of February.

This I drempt, Febr. 26, A
^o
1699. JOHN AUSTIN.

“I suppose it is a charm or a spell: wouldn’t you call it something of that kind?” said the curator.

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose one might. What became of the figure in which it was concealed?”

“Oh, I forgot,” said he. “The old man told me it was so ugly and frightened his children so much that he burned it.”

April 15th, 190—.

DEAR SIR,

I am requested by the Council of the——Association to return to you the draft of a paper on “The Truth of Alchemy,” which you have been good enough to offer to read at our forthcoming meeting, and to inform you that the Council do not see their way to including it in the program.

I am,

Yours faithfully,

—Secretary.

April 18th

Dear Sir,

I am sorry to say that my engagements do not permit of my affording you an interview on the subject of your proposed paper. Nor do our laws allow of your discussing the matter with a Committee of our Council, as you suggest. Please allow me to assure you that the fullest consideration was given to the draft which you submitted, and that it was not declined without having
been referred to the judgment of a most competent authority. No personal question (it hardly be necessary for me to add) can have had the slightest influence on the decision of the Council.

Believe me (
ut supra
).

April 20th.

The Secretary of the——Association begs respectfully to inform Mr. Karswell that it is impossible for him to communicate the name of any person or persons to whom the draft of Mr. Karswell’s paper may have been submitted, and further desires to intimate that he cannot undertake to reply to any further letters on this subject.

“And who
is
Mr. Karswell?” inquired the Secretary’s wife. She had called at his office, and (perhaps unwarrantably) had picked up the last of these three letters, which the typist had just brought in.

“Why, my dear, just at present Mr. Karswell is a very angry man. But I don’t know much about him otherwise, except that he is a person of wealth, his address is Lufford Abbey, Warwickshire, and he’s an alchemist, apparently, and wants to tell us all about it. And that’s about all—except that I don’t want to meet him for the next week or two. Now, if you’re ready to leave this place, I am.”

“What have you been doing to make him angry?” asked Mrs. Secretary.

“The usual thing, my dear, the usual thing. He sent in a draft of a paper he wanted to read at the next meeting, and we referred it to Edward Dunning—almost the only man in England who knows about these things—and he said it was perfectly hopeless, so we declined it.

“So Karswell has been pelting me with letters ever since. The last thing he wanted was the name of the man we referred his nonsense to—you saw my answer to that. But don’t you say anything about it, for goodness’ sake”

“I should think not, indeed. Did I ever do such a thing? I do hope, though, he won’t get to know that it was poor Mr. Dunning.”

“Poor Mr. Dunning? I don’t know why you call him that. He’s a very happy man, is Dunning. Lots of hobbies and a comfortable home, and all his time to himself.”

“I only meant I should be sorry for him if this man got hold of his name, and came and bothered him.”

“Oh, ah! Yes. I dare say he would be poor Mr. Dunning then.”

The Secretary and his wife were lunching out, and the friends to whose house they were bound were Warwickshire people. So Mrs. Secretary had already settled it in her own mind that she would question them judiciously about Mr. Karswell.

But she was saved the trouble of leading up to the subject, for the hostess said to the host, before many minutes had passed, “I saw the Abbot of Lufford this morning.”

The host whistled. “
Did
you? What in the world brings him up to town?”

“Goodness knows. He was coming out of the British Museum gate as I drove past.”

It was not unnatural that Mrs. Secretary should inquire whether this was a real Abbot who was being spoken of.

“Oh no, my dear. Only a neighbor of ours in the country who bought Lufford Abbey a few years ago. His real name is Karswell.”

“Is he a friend of yours?” asked Mr. Secretary, with a private wink to his wife.

The question let loose a torrent of declamation. There was really nothing to be said for Mr. Karswell. Nobody knew what he did with himself. His servants were a horrible set of people; he had invented a new religion for himself, and practiced no one could tell what appalling rites; he was very easily offended, and never forgave anybody. He had a dreadful face (so the lady insisted, her husband somewhat demurring); he never did a kind action, and whatever influence he did exert was mischievous.

“Do the poor man justice, dear,” the husband interrupted. “You forget the treat he gave the school children.”

“Forget it, indeed! But I’m glad you mentioned it, because it gives an idea of the man. Now, Florence, listen to this.

“The first winter he was at Lufford this delightful neighbor of ours wrote to the clergyman of his parish (he’s not ours, but we know him very well) and offered to show the school children some magic-lantern slides. He said he had some new kinds which he thought would interest them.

“Well, the clergyman was rather surprised, because Mr. Karswell had shown himself inclined to be unpleasant to the children—complaining of their trespassing, or something of the sort; but of course he accepted, and the evening was fixed and our friend went himself to see that everything went right.

“He said he never had been so thankful for anything as that his own children were all prevented from being there—they were at a children’s party at our house, as a matter of fact. Because this Mr. Karswell had evidently set out with the intention of frightening these poor village children out of their wits, and I do believe, if he had been allowed to go on, he would actually have done so.

“He began with some comparatively mild things. Red Riding Hood was one, and even then, Mr. Farrer said, the wolf was so dreadful that several of the smaller children had to be taken out. And he said Mr. Karswell began the story by producing a noise like a wolf howling in the distance, which was the most gruesome thing he had ever heard.

“All the slides he showed, Mr. Farrer said, were most clever. They were absolutely realistic, and where he had gotten them or how he worked them he could not imagine.

“Well, the show went on, and the stories kept on becoming a little more terrifying each time, and the children were mesmerized into complete silence.

“At last he produced a series which represented a little boy passing through his own park—Lufford, I mean—in the evening. Every child in the room could recognize the place from the pictures. And this poor boy was followed, and at last pursued and overtaken, and either torn to pieces or somehow made away with, by a horrible hopping creature in white, which you saw first dodging about among the trees, and gradually it appeared more and more plainly.

“Mr. Farrer said it gave him one of the worst nightmares he ever remembered and what it must have meant to the children doesn’t bear thinking of.

“Of course this was too much, and he spoke very sharply indeed to Mr. Karswell, and said it couldn’t go on. All
he
said was: ‘Oh, you think it’s time to bring our little show to an end and send them home to their beds?
Very
well!’ And then, if you please, he switched on another slide, which showed a great mass of snakes, centipedes, and disgusting creatures with wings, and somehow or other he made it seem as if they were climbing out of the picture and getting in amongst the audience. And this was accompanied by a sort of dry rustling noise which sent the children nearly mad, and of course they stampeded. A good many of them were rather hurt in getting out of the room and I don’t suppose one of them closed an eye that night.

“There was the most dreadful trouble in the village afterward. Of course the mothers threw a good part of the blame on poor Mr. Farrer, and, if they could have got past the gates, I believe the fathers would have broken every window in the Abbey.

“Well, now, that’s Mr. Karswell—that’s the Abbot of Lufford, my dear, and you can imagine how we covet
his
society.”

“Yes, I think he has all the possibilities of a distinguished criminal, has Karswell,” said the host. “I should be sorry for anyone who got into his bad books.”

“Is he the man, or am I mixing him up with someone else?” asked the Secretary (who for some minutes had been wearing the frown of the man who is trying to recollect something). “Is he the man who brought out a
History of Witchcraft
some time back—ten years or more?”

“That’s the man, do you remember the reviews of it?”

“Certainly I do. And what’s equally to the point, I knew the author of the most incisive of the lot. So did you—you must remember John Harrington; he was at John’s in our time.”

“Oh, very well indeed, though I don’t think I saw anything of him between the time I went down and the day I read the account of the inquest on him.”

“Inquest?” said one of the ladies. “What has happened to him?”

“Why, what happened was that he fell out of a tree and broke his neck. But the puzzle was, what could have induced him to get up there. It was a mysterious business, I must say.

“Here was this man—not an athletic fellow, was he? And with no
eccentric twist about him that was ever noticed—walking home along a country lane late in the evening—no tramps about—and he suddenly begins to run like mad, loses his hat and stick, and finally shins up a tree—quite a difficult tree—growing in the hedgerow. A dead branch gives way, and he comes down with it and breaks his neck, and there he’s found next morning with the most dreadful face of fear on him that could be imagined.

“It was pretty evident, of course, that he had been chased by something, and people talked of savage dogs, and beasts escaped out of menageries. But there was nothing to be made of that.

“That was in ’89, and I believe his brother Henry (whom I remember well at Cambridge, but
you
probably don’t) has been trying to get on the track of an explanation ever since. He, of course, insists there was malice in it, but I don’t know. It’s difficult to see how it could have come in.”

After a time the talk reverted to the
History of Witchcraft
. “Did you ever look into it?” asked the host.

“Yes, I did,” said the Secretary. “I went so far as to read it.”

“Was it as bad as it was made out to be?”

“Oh, in point of style and form, quite hopeless. It deserved all the pulverizing it got. But, besides that, it was an evil book. The man believed every word of what he was saying, and I’m very much mistaken if he hadn’t tried the greater part of his receipts.”

“Well, I only remember Harrington’s review of it, and I must say if I’d been the author it would have quenched my literary ambition for good. I should never have held up my head again.”

“It hasn’t had that effect in the present case. But come, it’s half-past three. I must be off.”

On the way home the Secretary’s wife said, “I do hope that horrible man won’t find out that Mr. Dunning had anything to do with the rejection of his paper.”