Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (59 page)

The birds were gone.

The cat was still on the table saying “O you owl! O you owl!”

The sole and only clue to what had been happening was a small earthenware saucer that lay on the path immediately below the window, with a little heap of ashes in it, from which a thin column of smoke was coming straight up and curling over when it reached the window level. That, I could not doubt, was the cause of my sudden sleepiness.

I dropped a large book straight on to it, and had the satisfaction of hearing it crush to bits and of seeing the smoke go four ways along the ground and vanish.

I was perfectly awake now. I looked at the cat, and showed her the back of my hand. She sat quite still and said:

“Well, what did you expect? I had to do something. I’ll lick it if you like, but I’d rather not. No particular ill-feeling, you understand; all the same a hundred years hence.”

I was not in a position to answer her, so I shook my head at her, wound up my hand in a handkerchief, and then stroked her. She took it agreeably, jumped off the table, and requested to be let out.

So the third attack had failed.

I sat down and looked out. The hedges were empty; not a bird, not a mouse was left. I took this to mean that the dangerous time was past, and great was the relief. Soon I heard the maid come back from her errands in the village, then the mistress’s chaise, then the clock striking five. I felt it would be all right for me to go out after tea.

And so I did; first, however, concealing the suitcase in my bedroom—not that I supposed hiding it would be of much use—and piling upon it poker, tongs, knife, horseshoe, and anything else I could find which I thought would keep off trespassers.

I had, by the way, to explain to the maid that a bird had flown against the window and broken it, and when she said “Stupid, tiresome little things they are,” I am afraid I did not contradict her.

I went out by way of the garden and crossed the field, near the middle of which stands a large old oak. I went up to this, for no particular reason, and stood gazing at the trunk. As I did so I became aware that my eyes were beginning to “see through,” and behold! A family of owls was inside.

As it was near evening, they were getting wakeful, stirring, smacking their beaks and opening their wings a little from time to time. At last one of them said:

“Time’s nearly up. Out and about! Out and about!”

“Anyone outside?” said another.

“No harm there,” said the first.

This short way of talking, I believe, was due to the owls not being properly awake and consequently sulky. As they brightened up and got their eyes open, they began to be more easy in manner.

“Oop! Oop! Oop! I’ve had a very good day of it. You have, too, I hope?”

“Sound as a rock, I thank you, except when they were carrying on at the cottage.”

“Oh goodness! I forgot! They didn’t bring it off, I hope.”

“Not they; the watch was too well set, but it was wanted. I had a leaf about it a few minutes after, and it seems they got him asleep.”

“Well! I never heard anyone bring a leaf.”

“I dare say not, but I was expecting it; pigeon dropped it. There it is, on that child’s back.”

I saw the hen-owl stoop and examine a dead chestnut leaf which lay, as the other had said, on an owlet’s back.

“Fa-a-ther!” said this owlet suddenly, in a shrill voice, “mayn’t I go out tonight?”

But all that Father did was to clasp its head in his claw and push it to and fro several times. When he let go, the owlet made no sound, but crept away and hid its face in a corner, and heaved as if with sobs. Father closed his eyes slowly and opened them slowly—amused, I thought. The mother had been reading the leaf all the time.

“Dear me!
Very
interesting!” she said. “I suppose now the worst of it is over.”

“All’s quiet for tonight, anyhow,” said Father, “but I wish he could see someone about tomorrow; that’s their last chance, and they
may
—” He
ruffled up his feathers, lifted first one foot and then the other. “The awkwardness is,” he went on, “if I say too much and they do get the jars, there’s one risk; and if there’s no warning and they get them, there’s another risk.”

“But if there
is
a warning and they
don’t
get them,” said she, very sensibly.

“Well, to be sure, that would be better, even though we don’t know much about him.”

“But where do you suppose he is, and whom ought he to see?” (It was just what I wanted to know, and I thanked her.)

“Why, as to the first, I suspect he’s outside; there is someone there, and why they should stop there all this time unless they’re listening, I don’t know.”

“Good gracious! Listening to our private conversation! And me with my feathers all anyhow!” She began to peck at herself vigorously; but this was straying from the point, and annoyed me. However, Father went slowly on:

“As to that, I don’t much care whether he’s listening or not. As to whom he ought to see, that’s rather more difficult. If he’s got as far as talking to any of the Right People (he said this as if they had capital letters), they’d know, of course; and some of them down about the village, they’d know; and the Old Mother knows, and—”

“What about the boys?” said she, pausing in the middle of her toilet and poking her head up at him. He wholly disdained to answer, and merely butted at her with his head, so that she slipped down off her ledge several inches, with a great scrabbling. “Oh,
don’t
!” she said peevishly, as she climbed back. “I’m all untidy again.”

“Well then, don’t ask such ridiculous questions. I shall buffle you with both wings next time. And now, as soon as the coast is clear, I shall be out and about.”

I took the hint and moved off, for I had learned as much perhaps as I could expect, even if all was not yet plain; and before I had gone many paces I was aware of the pair both sailing smoothly off in the opposite direction.

I was “seeing through” a good deal that evening; it is surprising what a lot of coppers people drop, even on a field path; surprising, too, in how many places there lie, unsuspected, bones of men. Some things I saw which were ugly and sad, like that, but more that were amusing and even exciting.

There is one spot I could show where four gold cups stand around what
was once a book, but the book is no more than earth now. That, however, I did not see on this particular evening.

What I remember best is a family of young rabbits huddled around their parents in a burrow, and the mother telling a story: “And so then he went a little farther and found a dandelion, and stopped and sat up and began to eat it. And when he had eaten two large leaves and one little one, he saw a fly on it—no, two flies; and then he thought he had had enough of that dandelion, and he went a little farther and found another dandelion …”

And so it went on interminably, and entirely stupid, like everything else I ever heard a rabbit say, for they have forgotten all about their ancestor, Brer Rabbit. However, the children were absorbed in the story, so much so that they never heard a stoat making its way down the burrow.

But I heard it, and by stamping and driving my stick in I was able to make it turn tail and go off, cursing. All stoats, weasels, ferrets, polecats, are of the wrong people, as you may imagine, and so are most rats and bats.

At last I left off seeing through, by trying not to do so, and went back to the house, where I found all safe and quiet.

I ought to say that I had not as yet tried speaking to any animal, even to the cat when she scratched me, but I thought I would try it now.

So when she came in at dinner-time and circled about, with what I may call pious aspirations about fish and other such things, I summoned up my courage and said (using my voice in the way I described, or rather did not describe, before):

“I used to be told, ‘If you are hungry, you can eat dry bread.’”

She was certainly horribly startled. At first I thought she would have dashed up the chimney or out of the window; but she recovered pretty quickly and sat down, still looking at me with intense surprise.

“I suppose I might have guessed,” she said. “But dear! What a turn you did give me! I feel quite faint. And gracious! What a day it has been! When I found you dozing off like a great—Well, no one wants to be rude, do they? But I can tell you I had more than half a mind to go at your face.”

“I am glad you didn’t,” I said. “And really, you know, it wasn’t my fault: it was that stuff they were burning on the path.”

“I know that well enough,” she said. “But to come back to the point, all this anxiety has made me as empty in myself as a clean saucer.”

“Just what I was saying. If you are hungry, you can—”

“Say that again, say it just once more,” she said, and her eyes grew narrow as she said it, “and I shall—”

“What shall you do?” I asked, for she stopped suddenly.

She calmed herself. “Oh, you know how it is when one’s been all excited-like and worked up; we all say more than we mean. But that about dry bread! Well, there! I simply can’t bear it. It’s a wicked, cruel untruth, that’s what it is. And besides, you
can’t
be going to eat all the whole of what she’s put down for you.”

Excitement was coming on again, and she ended with a loud ill-tempered mew.

Well, I gave her what she seemed to want, and shortly after, worn out doubtless with the fatigues of the day, she went to sleep on a chair, not even caring to follow the maid downstairs when things were cleared away.

I got out my precious casket. I sat by the window and watched. The moon shone out, the lid of the box loosened in due course, and I touched my forehead with the ointment. But neither at once nor for some little time after did I notice any fresh power coming to me.

With the moon, up came also the little town, and no sooner were the doors of the houses level with the grass than the boys were out of them and running in some numbers toward my window; in fact, some slipped out of their own windows, not waiting for the doors to be available.

Wag was the first. Slim, more sedate, came among the crowd that followed. These were still the only two who felt no hesitation about talking to me. The others were all fully occupied in exploring the room.

“Tomorrow,” I said (after some sort of how-do-you-do’s had been exchanged), “you’ll be flying all over the place, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Wag, shortly. “But I want to know—I say, Slim, what was it we wanted first?”

“Wasn’t there a message from your father?” said Slim.

“Oh, yes, of course. ‘If they’re about the house,’ he said, ‘give them horseshoes; if there’s a bat-ball, squirt at it’: he thinks there’s a squirt in the
tool-house—Oh, there’s the cat; I must—” After delivering all this in one sentence, he rushed to the edge of the table and took a kind of header into the midst of the unfortunate animal, who, however, only moaned or crowed without waking, and turned partly over on her back.

Slim remained sitting on a book and gazing soberly at me.

“Well,” I said, “it’s very kind of Wag’s father to send me a message, but I must say I can’t make much of it.”

Slim nodded. “So he said, and he said you’d see when the time came. Of course I don’t know, myself: I’ve never seen a bat-ball. Wag says he has, but you never know with Wag.”

“Well, I must do the best I can, I suppose. But look here, Slim, I wish you could tell me one or two things. What
are
you? What do they call you?”

“They call me Slim: and the whole of us they call the Right People,” said Slim; “but it’s no good asking us much, because we don’t know, and besides, it isn’t good for us.”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, you see, our job is to keep the little things right, and if we do more than that, or if we try to find out much more, then we burst.”

“And is that the end of you?”

“Oh, no!” he said cheerfully, “but that’s one of the things it’s no good asking.”

“And if you don’t do your job, what then?”

“Oh, then they get smaller and have no sense.” (He said
they
, not
we
, I noticed.)

“I see. Well now, you go to school, don’t you?” He nodded. “What for? Isn’t that likely to be bad for you?” (I hardly liked to say “make you burst.”)

“No,” he said. “You see, it’s to learn our job. We have to be told what used to go on, so as we can put things right, or keep them right. And the owls, you see, they remember a long way back, but they don’t know any more than we do about the swell things.”

I was very shy about putting the next question I had in mind, but I felt I must. “Now do you know how old you are, or how long it takes you to grow up, or how—how long you go on when you
are
grown up!”

He pressed his hands to his head, and I was dreadfully afraid for the
moment that it might be swelling and would burst; but it was not so bad as that. After a few seconds he looked up and said:

“I think it’s seven times seven moons since I went to school and seven times seven times seven moons before I grow up; and the rest is no good asking. But it’s all right,” upon which he smiled.

And this, I may say, was the most part of what I ventured to ask any of them about themselves. But at other times I gathered that as long as they “did their job” nothing could injure them. And they were regularly measured—all of them—to see if they were getting smaller, and a careful record kept. But if anyone lost as much as a quarter of his height, he was doomed, and he crept off out of the settlement.

Whether such a one ever came back I could not be sure; most of the failures (and they were not common) went and lived in hollow trees or by brooks, and were happy enough, but in a feeble way, not remembering much, nor able to make anything. And it was supposed that very slowly they shrunk to the size of a pin’s point, and probably to nothing. All the same, it was believed that they
could
recover.

Many other things that
you
would have asked, I did not, being anxious to avoid giving trouble.

But this time, anyhow, I felt I had catechised Slim long enough, so I broke off and said: