Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
by M. R. James
_These stories are dedicated to all those who at various times have listened
to them._
Contents
Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book
Lost Hearts
The Mezzotint
The Ash-tree
Number 13
Count Magnus
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
If anyone is curious about my local settings, let it be recorded that
St Bertrand de Comminges and Viborg are real places: that in “Oh,
Whistle, and I’ll Come to You” I had Felixstowe in mind. As for the
fragments of ostensible erudition which are scattered about my pages,
hardly anything in them is not pure invention; there never was,
naturally, any such book as that which I quote in “The Treasure of
Abbot Thomas”. “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” was written in 1894 and
printed soon after in the _National Review_, “Lost Hearts” appeared in
the _Pall Mall Magazine_; of the next five stories, most of which were
read to friends at Christmas-time at King’s College, Cambridge, I only
recollect that I wrote “Number 13” in 1899, while “The Treasure of
Abbot Thomas” was composed in the summer of 1904.
M. R. JAMES
CANON ALBERIC’S SCRAP-BOOK
St Bertrand de Comminges is a decayed town on the spurs of the
Pyrenees, not very far from Toulouse, and still nearer to
Bagnères-de-Luchon. It was the site of a bishopric until the
Revolution, and has a cathedral which is visited by a certain number of
tourists. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman arrived at this old-world
place—I can hardly dignify it with the name of city, for there are not
a thousand inhabitants. He was a Cambridge man, who had come specially
from Toulouse to see St Bertrand’s Church, and had left two friends,
who were less keen archaeologists than himself, in their hotel at
Toulouse, under promise to join him on the following morning. Half an
hour at the church would satisfy _them_, and all three could then
pursue their journey in the direction of Auch. But our Englishman had
come early on the day in question, and proposed to himself to fill a
note-book and to use several dozens of plates in the process of
describing and photographing every corner of the wonderful church that
dominates the little hill of Comminges. In order to carry out this
design satisfactorily, it was necessary to monopolize the verger of the
church for the day. The verger or sacristan (I prefer the latter
appellation, inaccurate as it may be) was accordingly sent for by the
somewhat brusque lady who keeps the inn of the Chapeau Rouge; and when
he came, the Englishman found him an unexpectedly interesting object of
study. It was not in the personal appearance of the little, dry,
wizened old man that the interest lay, for he was precisely like dozens
of other church-guardians in France, but in a curious furtive, or
rather hunted and oppressed, air which he had. He was perpetually half
glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be
hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting
every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman
hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed
delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an
unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up,
certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed
was that of a more formidable persecutor even than a termagant wife.
However, the Englishman (let us call him Dennistoun) was soon too deep
in his note-book and too busy with his camera to give more than an
occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he
found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against
the wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became
rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the
old man from his _déjeuner_, that he was regarded as likely to make
away with St Bertrand’s ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed
crocodile that hangs over the font, began to torment him.
“Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my
notes alone; you can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two
hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”
“Good heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to
throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be
thought of for a moment. Leave monsieur alone in the church? No, no;
two hours, three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted,
I am not at all cold, with many thanks to monsieur.”
“Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself: “you have been
warned, and you must take the consequences.”
Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous
dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the
remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the
treasure-chamber, had been well and truly examined; the sacristan still
keeping at Dennistoun’s heels, and every now and then whipping round as
if he had been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that
trouble a large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they
were sometimes.
“Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin
metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring
glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips. ‘It is he—that is—it
is no one; the door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each
other for a full minute.”
Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was
examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a
series illustrating the miracles of St Bertrand. The composition of the
picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below,
which runs thus:
_Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat
strangulare_. (How St Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long
sought to strangle.)
Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular
remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old
man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in
agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.
Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the
question would not go away from him, “Why should a daub of this kind
affect anyone so strongly?” He seemed to himself to be getting some
sort of clue to the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling
him all the day: the man must be a monomaniac; but what was his
monomania?
It was nearly five o’clock; the short day was drawing in, and the
church began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled
footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all
day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently
quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.
The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and
impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and note-book were
finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun to
the western door of the church, under the tower. It was time to ring
the Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell
Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up
among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams,
calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the
salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women. With
that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon
the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the
church.
On the doorstep they fell into conversation.
“Monsieur seemed to interest himself in the old choir-books in the
sacristy.”
“Undoubtedly. I was going to ask you if there were a library in the
town.”
“No, monsieur; perhaps there used to be one belonging to the Chapter,
but it is now such a small place—” Here came a strange pause of
irresolution, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, he went on:
“But if monsieur is _amateur des vieux livres_, I have at home
something that might interest him. It is not a hundred yards.”
At once all Dennistoun’s cherished dreams of finding priceless
manuscripts in untrodden corners of France flashed up, to die down
again the next moment. It was probably a stupid missal of Plantin’s
printing, about 1580. Where was the likelihood that a place so near
Toulouse would not have been ransacked long ago by collectors? However,
it would be foolish not to go; he would reproach himself for ever after
if he refused. So they set off. On the way the curious irresolution and
sudden determination of the sacristan recurred to Dennistoun, and he
wondered in a shamefaced way whether he was being decoyed into some
purlieu to be made away with as a supposed rich Englishman. He
contrived, therefore, to begin talking with his guide, and to drag in,
in a rather clumsy fashion, the fact that he expected two friends to
join him early the next morning. To his surprise, the announcement
seemed to relieve the sacristan at once of some of the anxiety that
oppressed him.
“That is well,” he said quite brightly—“that is very well. Monsieur
will travel in company with his friends; they will be always near him.
It is a good thing to travel thus in company—sometimes.”
The last word appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with
it a relapse into gloom for the poor little man.
They were soon at the house, which was one rather larger than its
neighbours, stone-built, with a shield carved over the door, the shield
of Alberic de Mauléon, a collateral descendant, Dennistoun tells me, of
Bishop John de Mauléon. This Alberic was a Canon of Comminges from 1680
to 1701. The upper windows of the mansion were boarded up, and the
whole place bore, as does the rest of Comminges, the aspect of decaying
age.
Arrived on his doorstep, the sacristan paused a moment.
“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps, after all, monsieur has not the time?”
“Not at all—lots of time—nothing to do till tomorrow. Let us see what
it is you have got.”
The door was opened at this point, and a face looked out, a face far
younger than the sacristan’s, but bearing something of the same
distressing look: only here it seemed to be the mark, not so much of
fear for personal safety as of acute anxiety on behalf of another.
Plainly, the owner of the face was the sacristan’s daughter; and, but
for the expression I have described, she was a handsome girl enough.
She brightened up considerably on seeing her father accompanied by an
able-bodied stranger. A few remarks passed between father and daughter,
of which Dennistoun only caught these words, said by the sacristan, “He
was laughing in the church,” words which were answered only by a look
of terror from the girl.
But in another minute they were in the sitting-room of the house, a
small, high chamber with a stone floor, full of moving shadows cast by
a wood-fire that flickered on a great hearth. Something of the
character of an oratory was imparted to it by a tall crucifix, which
reached almost to the ceiling on one side; the figure was painted of
the natural colours, the cross was black. Under this stood a chest of
some age and solidity, and when a lamp had been brought, and chairs
set, the sacristan went to this chest, and produced therefrom, with
growing excitement and nervousness, as Dennistoun thought, a large
book, wrapped in a white cloth, on which cloth a cross was rudely
embroidered in red thread. Even before the wrapping had been removed,
Dennistoun began to be interested by the size and shape of the volume.
“Too large for a missal,” he thought, “and not the shape of an