Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James

  “We have come, Mrs. Lenthall,” said Mr. Green, “upon a matter of business which we hope may turn out as well to your advantage as to that of the parish at large. I think you know Mr. Cave who lives at the Hall. This is his son whom I daresay you also know, and this is Mr. Green, the gentleman who has been good enough to undertake the important work of restoring our beautiful Parish Church to something of its ancient comeliness.”

  “I am very happy, gentlemen, to see you,” said the old lady, in a strong and rather masculine voice. “If you will be at the pains to find chairs for yourselves I shall be obliged to you: for I am rather past the age when bustling about suits me.”

  There was a general murmur of “Oh pray don’t think of moving, Mrs. Lenthall,” and the four chairs were shuffled into position and occupied.

  “The fact is, Mrs. Lenthall,” the rector went on, “that we are in a difficulty as regards the large monument to Speaker Lenthall that stands in the chancel aisle of St. Mary’s. It was no doubt considered a very beautiful structure in its day, and must have been a very costly one. But knowledge, we know, grows, and we have come to see in our more enlightened days that such memorials to the dead have much that is unsightly and unfitting about them.” Mrs. Lenthall fixed her eyes upon Mr. Eldon who coughed and went on.

  “Now, Mr. Green has pointed out to us that were that monument removed from its position, we should be enabled to put up a most beautiful little chapel in which the beautiful liturgy of our Church might be daily said. And he has told us that in order to be able to obtain leave from our Bishop to destr … to remove the monument, we must first obtain the consent of the relations of the person who is buried there. I know, for you have often told me, that you are the last Lenthall now surviving—and I am sorry to think it …” Mrs. Lenthall bowed slightly. “And we have made bold this morning to come ask you if you would not be so kind as to put your name to this document which we have prepared, giving your consent to the dem … the alteration which we propose. Mr. Cave has been so good as to say that he will see that a sum of money shall be paid to you in consideration of your goodness, and I am confident that beyond that you will feel some satisfaction in having done a service to the parish in which you have been respected for so many years. Now, if you will just think it over quietly and look at this drawing which Mr. Green has prepared, showing the great advantage of the change, we shall be much indebted to you.”

  Mrs. Lenthall examined the drawing for a minute or two. “Tis your work then, young gentleman?” she suddenly said to the architect—so suddenly that he jumped.

  “Yes, my good friend,” he said on recovering his presence of mind, “and you see, do you not, what a handsome chapel for Matins will be the result of the destruction of that hideous pile that your ancestor erected.”

  “That is sufficient, thank you kindly, young man,” said Mrs. Lenthall; “it is no good trade to speak of the dead in that kind. Butcher Green’s bills were paid regular by my grandmother, for I have them in the chest; and Lenthall’s money went some way, I reckon, to prentice Butcher Green’s great-grandson for a builder.”

  There is no denying that Mr. Green was taken a good deal aback by this sally: he was of a burning red color for some minutes, and no word escaped him. The two elder gentlemen were amused, if rather sorry for him. But Harry Cave who had rather taken up the architect was exceedingly angry.

  “I really think you might keep a civil tongue in your head, my good woman,” he said viciously. “We are only anxious to do our best for the Church, and you have a very plain question to answer—whether you object or do not object to Speaker Lenthall’s tomb being destroyed.”

  Mrs. Lenthall looked at him and smiled to herself; and then, turning to Mr. Cave, she said, “Ah, sir, time flies, don’t it! Master Harry’s time for going to College will come soon enough, and maybe he’ll turn out a sharp lad at his works yet. Tis not easy to tell with the young: but I warrant you he’ll make a learner. But now, gentlemen, I have to answer you in regard of my great-grandfather’s monument; and I would be glad not to send you away disappointed. Yet the matter is thus. I never will give my consent while I am a living woman to the touching of the Speaker’s tomb in Burford Chancel. I have lived to hear it praised for a fine piece all my days, and I cannot tell but after I go, there will come those that will cry it up again. And, Rector, I say to you in all sadness, if there comes breaking down of Lenthall tombs when I am dead, Lenthalls will see to it and trouble will be heard. For the Speaker needs to rest quiet, and the Speaker was a strong man: and I am not very sure if Mr. Cave will not hear more of him than he thinks.”

  Mr. Cave laughed quietly and said, “Well, well, Mrs. Lenthall, I think I will take the risk of that.”

  But Harry was still fuming, and not to be held in.

  “All I can say is that you, Madam Lenthall, may be very proud of your ancestor the Speaker, but most of us would rather not have such an old ratter and trimmer in the family. And another thing I can tell you is that it will give me the greatest pleasure to knock that hideous tomb to bits as soon as—as I can do it.”

  “Sit you there a moment, Master Harry,” said the old woman whom this speech seemed to have touched very nearly. “You would say, as soon as I am in my grave, you will knock the Speaker’s marble tomb to bits—the tomb that he had men from Italy to make, and paid them four hundred pounds for it—you that lives in his house and sleeps, I daresay, in his chamber. Well, you may begin it: I daresay you will. But you will not carry it through: not one of you will go through with the business; and you were well advised to look to yourself in the doing. Now, gentlemen, I will wish you a good morning, for I am not well in myself and such talk is not good for an old heart.”

  The gentlemen took back their document and their drawings to the Lenthall house, and found themselves reduced to leave the Morning Chapel out of their program for the present.

  Miss Mary Cave paid a long visit to Miss Lenthall in the afternoon, and reported on her return that the old lady seemed very weak, and still much incensed against Harry; whom his sister took to task, but did not convince that he had been wanting in tact. This was on Thursday in March. On Saturday Mrs. Lenthall died; on Monday she was buried. Harry’s spirits were only superficially damped, for he went back to Oxford for the Easter Term, and the plans for the Morning Chapel were completed by Mr. Green.

  II

  It is now the Long Vacation: the faculty for the removal of Lenthall’s tomb has arrived. Harry is to superintend the destruction of that abomination of desolation. Miss Cave is still regretful and so are some of the inhabitants of Burford. Several farmers have driven their wives in to see the last of the monument, and Mr. Green has made a sketch of it, with a good deal of inaccuracy in detail, and has succeeded in making it appear as ugly and clumsy as he believed it to be. Enough.

  The fated morning arrived. Harry and the workmen were around the monument, selecting the best point of attack: the headman suggested that the best way would be to get out one of the corner columns supporting the canopy; then the canopy would fall, and help to break up the effigy and the actual tomb below. So Harry was just loosening the base of the said column with the thin end of a mattock when smash!—down came the statuette of Envy which stood at the top of it, entwined with snakes, and took him on the shoulder in its descent. He could not get up and had to be helped. Evidently he was in a good deal of pain—collar bone broken and a cut on the head. No more mason’s work for Harry just at present, was the doctor’s verdict, and someone gave him an arm home. The masons meanwhile were examining the place whence the figure had fallen. It was a curious circumstance that it should have come down, for it was fixed on a strong iron dowel running up into it, and this did not seem to have rusted in the least. At any rate all the other figures were quite firm.

  Harry Cave was so anxious to see the destruction of the tomb that the clerk of the works made no objection to putting it off for a week or two, as the men had plenty to do in other parts of the building. Harry
spent a few days in bed and [an]other few in comparative quiet for him—interrupted by somewhat acrid disputes with his sister about the advisability of persisting in the design of the Morning Chapel. Pugin and Green were quoted on one side, and only Mrs. Lenthall and sentimental considerations on the other. Harry usually came off with flying colors, and these little battles aided him greatly in recovering his strength. It wanted now two days to the time when he had been told he might go to work again, and he was in great spirits at dinner and, I grieve to say, rather offensively exultant toward his sister. Bedtime arrived. Harry went to bed; but did not go to sleep very immediately after blowing out his candle. The room was rather light, only a blind being drawn over the window, and he was a little restless.

  However, he turned his face to the wall, and composed himself by reflecting upon the improvements in ritual which he wished to see introduced at Burford. Suddenly he began to hear a faint sweeping or rustling noise approaching over the carpet. He turned half over—nothing to be seen—the room being, as I said, very fairly light by reason of the strong moonlight outside. It came to the side of the bed. Then a pause: next a very slight stretching of the bedclothes over his legs toward the outside of the bed, much as if a kitten had jumped up. Harry not much affected by this, but on the alert. The next phenomenon was the touch, on the bare back of his neck, of something bristly—so much so that it pricked the skin. He whipped over in the bed, thoroughly frightened, and had just time to see a very strange object against the white window blind before it disappeared. It was long and sharply crooked in the midst: he could only describe it by saying that it was like a very long finger covered thickly with short hairs. He was out of bed in a second, had a candle lighted, and searched the room thoroughly. The door was fastened and the window shut, and there was no sign of man or beast in any corner. For the rest of that night Harry read the Tracts for the Times.

  He kept his experience to himself next day, feeling dimly that it was a point in favor of his sister’s view of the question, he could hardly tell why, or how he came to connect it with Lenthall’s tomb, but that he did so connect it, he couldn’t deny.

  He went down to the Church in the morning and had a talk with the mason about tomorrow’s job. The mason showed him with pride the rope ready, attached to the pillar of the canopy, and pointed out that the fall of the heavy marble transoms would so effectually break up the Speaker that Miss Mary could construct a rockery from his remains. This was after Harry’s own heart and he retailed it at luncheon. Mary was really very nearly in tears over the matter. Mr. Cave chaffed her good naturedly but was a little sorry himself. Mr. Green who arrived that day was suave and instructive but distinctly triumphant. Miss Cave spent the evening in cleaning up the portrait of Speaker Lenthall, which old Mrs. Lenthall had presented to her on the day when she had visited her for the last time. The gentlemen were in their rooms by eleven o’clock p.m.

  It is very fortunate for Harry Cave that his father sat up late in his bedroom over a bundle of papers which had to be sorted. Otherwise he would not have heard a choking and crowing sound rising into a scream, which came from Harry’s

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  bed clothes; and then straight upon that two sharp points had been plunged into his neck. He had cried out and clutched with his hands at the spot only to feel something hairy, which pricked his fingers and seemed to melt away under them: the room, searched as strictly as possible, yielded no evidence whatever.

  But this adventure daunted him completely: it became clear that he was now as much frightened at the thought of destroying Lenthall’s monument as he had been eager to do it. The scheme was dropped and Miss Cave triumphed. She bore it well. At the moment when Harry detailed to her the circumstances of his adventure she was engaged still in cleaning the lower half of the Lenthall portrait. Suddenly she started: “What in the world is this on the table in the picture? Why, it’s an enormous spider.” And so it was: painted there no doubt as the emblem of industry or avarice or both.

  Merfield House

  To William Chatteris Esq., Potton, Bedfordshire.

  Sir,

  It was in the month of March last that you put into my hands a mass of papers and MSS belonging to the late John Stedman of Merfield Hall, Beds, and requested me to go through them and extract what I could relative to his experiences in that house, of which he left you the heir, and to the death of his friend Mr. Haydon there. I have happily come upon a full narrative of those occurrences in Mr. Stedman’s own handwriting, signed by himself and attested by his butler and housekeeper for the time being, and not impossibly intended for the human eye. I think the narrative will satisfy your curiosity as far as is possible in a case where the attendant circumstances are so mysterious. I enclose the MS without further comment.

  Yrs etc.

  Henry Wiggins

  John Stedman MS

  First Sheet?

  IN 1849 MY HALF BROTHER Charles Horsley, then a man of 37, came into possession of Merfield Hall in the county of Bedfordshire. The Home and Park and a sufficient income of some 3000£ a year were left to him by his uncle, with whom he had always been a favorite. The two were much alike in temperament: saturnine, cynical and secretive, and not a little inclined to seclude themselves. I very well remember, when invited to spend Christmas at Merfield as a boy (William having as usual preceded me by some days), how for hours at a time I was left entirely alone to wander about the house and grounds while uncle and nephew, closeted in the library, were elaborating their schemes—so at least I thought—to avenge themselves on a society which despised them.

  Before I relate the first incident which led me to view them and their proceedings with something like terror, I must devote a few lines to describing the house as it was in my day. It dated from about 1690, and was a fine solid building of red brick, 2 or 3 storied (whichever you call it) with a pediment and round windows pierced in it, 2 wings projecting slightly. The windows large with many panes and conspicuous white wooden framings; a niche with scallop shell head in each wing; a tiled roof and good chimneys. Within, a large hall, paved in squares of black and white marble. Fine staircases and many rooms, most of them, when I knew them first, unoccupied. My uncle’s room was in the left wing, toward the west, and Charles was always put next door to him. I was as invariably banished to the East wing and put in a room between two empty ones—one a disused bathroom with the bath in it cobwebbed over—the other a bedroom with a few books. The garden was pleasant with hedges of yew and hornbeam, and fair trees—elm and lime. The Park had an elm avenue and an ornamental sheet of water with a Fishing Temple—such as the last generation delighted in. The county handbook said of this one that it had been built by the ingenious Mr. Essex in the Gothick Taste and was much admired by all curiosi. As far as I can recollect, some of its details were borrowed from Peterboro’ Cathedral and some from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, which the architect was then engaged upon.

  But to my stay. I was passing the library windows one morning on my way to the water to fish when I heard the two voices within laughing—a pleasurable laugh of anticipation. This was so unusual a thing that I could not for the life of me help stopping to try and catch a glimpse of the cause. I had only time to see my uncle and brother pushing away the heavy library table from its usual place in the middle of the room, when the latter caught sight of me standing outside. He came hastily to the window, and with an angry look at me drew down the blinds. I had expected as much for both were exceedingly jealous of an overlooking eye, and walked slowly on, puzzling over the laughter I had heard, when I heard behind me a peculiar shrill cry with a sort of dying sound to it as of a shout carried on a high blustering wind. I had never heard anything in the least like it, so fearfully lonely and desperate a tone was there in it, and I stopped in extreme fear. At the same time—I am sure of what I am saying—a sudden shade seemed to run over the whole landscape—it seemed to me like a shudder of all the Nature around me—and it went across to the South-West.
br />   I was cold with terror and hardly knew what I did, but an instinct seemed to tell me to run to the library. I rushed to the window—which a few minutes before had been darkened to me. The blind was gone—torn down or pulled up, I knew not which—and I saw the two inside lying on the floor. As quickly as I could I got to the door, some of the servants following, but, though I am sure it was not locked, I felt for a moment some resistance from within to my efforts. At last, between us we got it open. It flew back—I had not thought I was pushing so hard—and after a moment’s hesitation, whether it was timorousness or horror or something further that threw us back, we all rushed into the room.

  My brother was already on his knees, white and shaking, and was trying to bring around my uncle who lay as he had fallen with his head against the wall, completely stunned. Suddenly, he too sat up and looked around at us, then, realizing the situation and seeing the servants in the room, he staggered to his feet and would have us all be gone. I shall not set down here the terms of his command, but they were most urgent, and, seeing he was himself again, we had all nearly left the room when he called me back, and, clutching my arm: “An experiment,” he said, speaking very fast and low; “a scientific experiment, you know, went wrong, Johnny, and your brother Charles and I might have been killed. Think of that! But all’s right now and it’s not worth making a fuss about. Don’t get tattling with the servants about it and making mischief. Now go about your business; you needn’t be afraid we shall try any more dangerous experiments.” And he smiled in a ghastly fashion, with a glance at Charles who was still shaking like an aspen and clutching the table.