Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (86 page)

T
HE OTHER STORY
might perhaps be considered a variation on the same theme: no doubt it was suggested by an incident as the first. It was told as a personal experience of the narrator’s. He said:

I was traveling [a good many years ago] in France and found myself at a place called Moulins. I went into a curiosity shop [in a street] not far off the Hotel de Ville to inquire the price of a drawing I had noticed in the window. The man asked more than I wanted to give so I began looking at other things. There were a few old books, all totally uninteresting to me; but, as it turned out, there was nothing else in the shop that I cared in the least to acquire and so by way of doing something to justify the trouble I had given, I bought five or six of the smallest of these books.

Next day I went by train to Troyes [Nevers] and when I was tired of looking out of the window I opened my handbag and took out at random one of my purchases. It was a [n odd] volume of an old novel called
Caroline de Lichtenfeld
: the sort of book that is rarely disturbed from any resting place it may have found, by me at any rate: for all I know it may be a standard work.

I began at the beginning and turned over forty [odd] pages or so: the story made very little progress. Then my eye was attracted by some building we were passing, and I studied the landscape for two or three miles. After that, I returned to my book and noted that I had reached page 43 and was in the middle of a dialogue which ran thus:

“
Où descendez-vous?
”

“
À l’Hôtel des Ambassadeurs.
”

“
Bon,” dit-il, “vous avez sans doute commandé une chambre?
”

“
Ah, non,” dis-je, “je n’y avais pas même songé. Mais cela s’arrangera sans doute. La ville ne serait pas en fête ces jours-ci?
”

Il haussa les épaules
. “
Qui sait?” fit-il. “Parlons d’autre chose: Vous la connaissez, je pense, la ville de [Nevers]?
”

“
Je n’ai fait que passer par là il y a dix ans.
”

At this point I turned over the page and at the same time glanced up. My eye fell on my opposite neighbor who was an elderly lady, stout, and wearing a slight black mustache and a highly determined expression. She was not otherwise interesting. I resumed my reading: the words were curiously appropriate.

“Vous regardiez votre vis-à-vis,” continua-t-il.

“Eh oui! Qu’y a-t-il de singulier en cela.”

“En effet, très peu de chose, seulement, [vous la verrez égorgés ce soir] savezvous où elle demeure?”

“[Monsieur! ne parlez pas de la sorte] Comment donc?—moi qui la vois pour la première fois.”

“Eh bien. Je vous le dirai. C’est à Marcilly-le-Hayer sur la place. La maison à trois pignons.”

“[Vraiment?] C’est [bien] possible: mais pour vrai vous dire elle me paraît pas bien intéressante.”

“A very long-winded dialogue this,” I thought, “not much concentration about it”; and I turned over a leaf or two to see where we were getting to. I found that the personage who had volunteered the information about the woman in the book was now disgorging more—in fact was giving her whole biography. She had been a laborer’s daughter in the village of Marcilly-le-Hayer. Her good looks had attracted the notice of a middle-aged man who owned a good deal of property in the place, a M. Giraud—Émile Giraud (a name which to me seemed unaccountably familiar). He was, said the book, a thoroughly reputable, honest, and amiable person: and his love for the girl—Eugeiné Dupont—was sincere. The match was of course an extremely advantageous one for her. She had no lover of her own rank whom she was in the least inclined to favor, and the marriage took place. [Eighteen months afterward] After nearly three years of what seemed to all their acquaintances
a very happy married life, M. Giraud disappeared from Marcilly leaving absolutely no trace. [Like many country people of his class] He used to leave a not inconsiderable sum of ready money in the house toward the end of each week to pay his men. It was on a Friday that he was found to be missing, and the money was gone too. The widow was obliged to procure a further supply from the branch of the
Société Genérale
in the village. She felt the loss of her husband acutely and never married again.

“
Société Genérale
,” I said to myself: “I didn’t think that existed in the eighteenth century.”

But, said the book, in continuation, if any one were to go to Marcillyle-Hayer and call at the house with the three gables, and ask [to see] the mistress, and ask her what she keeps under the pavement in the further corner of the stable, he would then find out whether she was interesting or not.

“It would be a very impertinent question to ask anyone,” I thought, and with that I put the book away, and took another.

The train to Troyes was very full, and I realized to my disgust, before my journey was over, that a large cattle-show was going on there. I had very great difficulty in finding any room at all: at last I was accommodated with a bed in a rather second rate establishment called the Hotel Terminus. The only part of this place which had any pretension to novelty was the name which was palimpsested over the door. I amused myself by deciphering the old sign, still partly visible underneath: it read “Hotel des Ambassadeurs.”

After exploring Troyes, I found I had a day or two to spare, and I studied the map of the department. There I found, as you might find, the name of Marcilly-le-Hayer occupying a very prominent place in the midst of the uplands which no railway touches. I believe—I say I believe—that I had forgotten all about the story in my book in the days which had passed since I read it. But I now recollected it, and this, combined with the fact that there seemed to be some interesting buildings in and near Marcilly, determined me to go there. I bicycled thither—a laborious ride—and arrived late in the afternoon. There was an inn on the
Place
which was quite satisfactory and I had, of course, come prepared to spend a night there. Immediately opposite to the window of my room was a house with three gables.

In the evening, I had some talk with the people of the house, and asked
if there were any interesting features in the town. I was told of a very fine carved chimney-piece “chez Mme. Giraud.” And where did she live? I naturally asked (we were at the door of the inn). “Straight opposite,” said my informants, pointing to the house with the three gables.

I pondered and pondered: but no light came. The persistence of names of [
unreadable word
] in a place like Marcilly must be a marked feature. One other question was inevitable. What, I asked, was Mme. Giraud’s maiden name? “Dupont, Monsieur. Eugeiné Dupont.”

When I got back to my luggage at Troyes, I looked again at the volume of
Caroline de Lichtenfeld
. It was a defective copy, pp 33-80 were absent—had evidently never been bound up in it. On the flyleaf in a feminine hand was the name: Émile Giraud.

T
WO ELDERLY PERSONS
sat reading and smoking in the library of a country house after tea on an afternoon in the Christmas holidays, and outside a number of the children of the house were playing about. They had turned out all the lights and were engaged in the dreadful game of “Bear” which entails stealthy creepings up and down staircases and along passages, and being leapt upon from doorways with loud and hideous cries. Such a cry, and an answering scream of great poignancy, were heard just outside the library door. One of the two readers—an uncle of the young things who were disporting themselves there—leapt from his chair and dashed the door open. “I will
not
have you doing that!” he shouted (and his voice was vibrant with real anger); “do you hear? Stop it at once. I can’t stand it. You—you—Why can’t you find something else? What? … Well, I don’t care, I can’t put up with it … Yes, very well, go and do it somewhere where I can’t hear it.” He subsided into a growl and came back to his chair; but his friend saw that his nerves were really on edge, and ventured something sympathetic. “It’s all very well,” said the uncle, “but I can
not
bear that jumping out and screaming. Stupid of me to fly out like that, but I couldn’t help it. It reminded me of all that business—
you
know.”

“Well,” said the friend after a short pause, “I’m really not sure that I do. Oh!” he added, in a more concerned tone, “unless you mean Purdue.” “That’s it,” said the uncle. There was another silence, and then the friend said, “Really, I’m not sorry that happened just now, for I never did hear the rights of the Purdue business. Will you tell me exactly what happened?”

“I don’t know,” said the uncle: “I
really
don’t know, if I ought. But I think I will. Not just now, though. I’ll tell you what: if it’s fine tomorrow we’ll take a walk in the morning; and tonight I’ll think over the whole affair and get it straight in my mind. I
have
often felt some-body besides me ought to know about it, and all his people are out of the way now.”

The next day
was
fine, and the two men walked out to a hill at no real distance, which was known as Windmill Hill. The mill that had topped it was gone but a bit of the brick foundation remained and afforded a seat from which a good stretch of pleasant wild country could be seen. Here then Mr. A and Mr. B sat down on the short, dry grass with their backs against the warm brick wall, and Mr. A produced a little bundle of folded paper and a pocket-book which he held up before Mr. B as an indication that he was prepared not only to tell the story to which he stood pledged, but to back it with documentary evidence.

“I brought you here,” he said, “partly because you can see Purdue’s place. There!” He pointed with his stick to a wooded slope which might be three or four miles off. In the wood was a large clearing and in the clearing stood a mansion of yellow stone with a portico, upon which, as it chanced, the sun was shining very brilliantly, so that the house stood out brightly against the background of dark trees.

“Where shall I begin?” said Mr. A.

“Why,” said Mr. B, “I’ll tell you exactly how little I know, and then you can judge. You and Purdue, you remember, were senior to me at school and at Cambridge. He went down after his three years; you stayed up for part of a fourth, and then I began to see more of you: before that, I was more with people of my own year, and, beyond a fair number of meetings with Purdue at breakfast and lunch and so on, I never saw much of him—not nearly as much as I should have liked, in fact. Then I remember your going to stay with him—there, I suppose” (pointing with his stick)—“in the Easter Vac, and—well, that was the last of it.”

“Just so,” said Mr. A; “I didn’t come up again, and you and I practically didn’t meet till a year or two back, did we? Though you were a better correspondent than any of my other Cambridge friends. Very well, then, there it is: I was never inclined to write the story down in a letter, and the long and short of it is that you have never heard it: but you do know what
sort of man Purdue was, and how fond I was of him.

“When I stayed with him over there, the place was his only home, and yet it wasn’t his. He was an orphan and practically adopted by his uncle and aunt who were quite old childless people. There had been another uncle who had married a village woman, and had one daughter. That couple were very odd squalid creatures, and died off, I think from drink, but the daughter survived and went on living in a cottage in the next parish. She wasn’t left destitute by any means in the way of money; but she lived all by herself, and I think always with a sense of injury upon her that she wasn’t noticed by the county families and such. The remaining uncle and aunt had been kind enough to her and at one time used to invite her over to their place, but she had a very difficult temper and was always on the look-out for slights and injuries, and at last they gave up the effort to be cordial, and saw no more of her. It wasn’t to be expected after that that they would pass on the property to her (it was entirely at their disposition, to do what they liked with it) and no more they did. When they died it went to Purdue, about a year before his own death, that was.

“So there he was, settled, you would say, into a happy life: he’d been brought up in the country and knew all the neighborhood, places and people, very well; and was interested in farming and forestry and prepared to make himself useful. That last visit I paid him was particularly delightful: he was on such excellent terms with everybody in the village. ‘Master Henry’ to all of them, and just as well liked by the neighbors in the larger houses. I think the only fly in the ointment was that woman Caroline Purdue. She took to attending our parish church and we used to find her in our pew every Sunday morning. She didn’t say much to Henry, but all the service time she sat and looked at him through her veil. A short stout red-faced woman she was, with black hair and snappy black eyes. She used to wait in the churchyard till we had gone out and then set off on her three mile walk home. She gave me the creeps, I couldn’t say why; I suppose there was a flavor of concentrated hostility about her.