Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
he done?” and “Is there no hope?” Doctors, he knows, would call him
mad, policemen would laugh at him. The parson is away. What can he do
but lock his door and cry to God?
People still remembered last year at Belchamp St Paul how a strange
gentleman came one evening in August years back; and how the next
morning but one he was found dead, and there was an inquest; and the
jury that viewed the body fainted, seven of ’em did, and none of ’em
wouldn’t speak to what they see, and the verdict was visitation of God;
and how the people as kep’ the ’ouse moved out that same week, and went
away from that part. But they do not, I think, know that any glimmer of
light has ever been thrown, or could be thrown, on the mystery. It so
happened that last year the little house came into my hands as part of
a legacy. It had stood empty since 1863, and there seemed no prospect
of letting it; so I had it pulled down, and the papers of which I have
given you an abstract were found in a forgotten cupboard under the
window in the best bedroom.
“OH, WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD”
“I suppose you will be getting away pretty soon, now Full Term is over,
Professor,” said a person not in the story to the Professor of
Ontography, soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast
in the hospitable hall of St James’s College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
“Yes,” he said; “my friends have been making me take up golf this term,
and I mean to go to the East Coast—in point of fact to Burnstow—(I dare
say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to
get off tomorrow.”
“Oh, Parkins,” said his neighbour on the other side, “if you are going
to Burnstow, I wish you would look at the site of the Templars’
preceptory, and let me know if you think it would be any good to have a
dig there in the summer.”
It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits who said
this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need
to give his entitlements.
“Certainly,” said Parkins, the Professor: “if you will describe to me
whereabouts the site is, I will do my best to give you an idea of the
lie of the land when I get back; or I could write to you about it, if
you would tell me where you are likely to be.”
“Don’t trouble to do that, thanks. It’s only that I’m thinking of
taking my family in that direction in the Long, and it occurred to me
that, as very few of the English preceptories have ever been properly
planned, I might have an opportunity of doing something useful on
off-days.”
The Professor rather sniffed at the idea that planning out a preceptory
could be described as useful. His neighbour continued:
“The site—I doubt if there is anything showing above ground—must be
down quite close to the beach now. The sea has encroached tremendously,
as you know, all along that bit of coast. I should think, from the map,
that it must be about three-quarters of a mile from the Globe Inn, at
the north end of the town. Where are you going to stay?”
“Well, _at_ the Globe Inn, as a matter of fact,” said Parkins; “I have
engaged a room there. I couldn’t get in anywhere else; most of the
lodging-houses are shut up in winter, it seems; and, as it is, they
tell me that the only room of any size I can have is really a
double-bedded one, and that they haven’t a corner in which to store the
other bed, and so on. But I must have a fairly large room, for I am
taking some books down, and mean to do a bit of work; and though I
don’t quite fancy having an empty bed—not to speak of two—in what I may
call for the time being my study, I suppose I can manage to rough it
for the short time I shall be there.”
“Do you call having an extra bed in your room roughing it, Parkins?”
said a bluff person opposite. “Look here, I shall come down and occupy
it for a bit; it’ll be company for you.”
The Professor quivered, but managed to laugh in a courteous manner.
“By all means, Rogers; there’s nothing I should like better. But I’m
afraid you would find it rather dull; you don’t play golf, do you?”
“No, thank Heaven!” said rude Mr Rogers.
“Well, you see, when I’m not writing I shall most likely be out on the
links, and that, as I say, would be rather dull for you, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I don’t know! There’s certain to be somebody I know in the place;
but, of course, if you don’t want me, speak the word, Parkins; I shan’t
be offended. Truth, as you always tell us, is never offensive.”
Parkins was, indeed, scrupulously polite and strictly truthful. It is
to be feared that Mr Rogers sometimes practised upon his knowledge of
these characteristics. In Parkins’s breast there was a conflict now
raging, which for a moment or two did not allow him to answer. That
interval being over, he said:
“Well, if you want the exact truth, Rogers, I was considering whether
the room I speak of would really be large enough to accommodate us both
comfortably; and also whether (mind, I shouldn’t have said this if you
hadn’t pressed me) you would not constitute something in the nature of
a hindrance to my work.”
Rogers laughed loudly.
“Well done, Parkins!” he said. “It’s all right. I promise not to
interrupt your work; don’t you disturb yourself about that. No, I won’t
come if you don’t want me; but I thought I should do so nicely to keep
the ghosts off.” Here he might have been seen to wink and to nudge his
next neighbour. Parkins might also have been seen to become pink. “I
beg pardon, Parkins,” Rogers continued; “I oughtn’t to have said that.
I forgot you didn’t like levity on these topics.”
“Well,” Parkins said, “as you have mentioned the matter, I freely own
that I do _not_ like careless talk about what you call ghosts. A man in
my position,” he went on, raising his voice a little, “cannot, I find,
be too careful about appearing to sanction the current beliefs on such
subjects. As you know, Rogers, or as you ought to know; for I think I
have never concealed my views—”
“No, you certainly have not, old man,” put in Rogers _sotto voce._
“—I hold that any semblance, any appearance of concession to the view
that such things might exist is equivalent to a renunciation of all
that I hold most sacred. But I’m afraid I have not succeeded in
securing your attention.”
“Your _undivided_ attention, was what Dr Blimber actually _said_,”[4]
Rogers interrupted, with every appearance of an earnest desire for
accuracy. “But I beg your pardon, Parkins: I’m stopping you.”
[4] Mr Rogers was wrong, _vide Dombey and Son_, chapter xii.
“No, not at all,” said Parkins. “I don’t remember Blimber; perhaps he
was before my time. But I needn’t go on. I’m sure you know what I
mean.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rogers, rather hastily—“just so. We’ll go into it
fully at Burnstow, or somewhere.”
In repeating the above dialogue I have tried to give the impression
which it made on me, that Parkins was something of an old woman—rather
henlike, perhaps, in his little ways; totally destitute, alas! of the
sense of humour, but at the same time dauntless and sincere in his
convictions, and a man deserving of the greatest respect. Whether or
not the reader has gathered so much, that was the character which
Parkins had.
On the following day Parkins did, as he had hoped, succeed in getting
away from his college, and in arriving at Burnstow. He was made welcome
at the Globe Inn, was safely installed in the large double-bedded room
of which we have heard, and was able before retiring to rest to arrange
his materials for work in apple-pie order upon a commodious table which
occupied the outer end of the room, and was surrounded on three sides
by windows looking out seaward; that is to say, the central window
looked straight out to sea, and those on the left and right commanded
prospects along the shore to the north and south respectively. On the
south you saw the village of Burnstow. On the north no houses were to
be seen, but only the beach and the low cliff backing it. Immediately
in front was a strip—not considerable—of rough grass, dotted with old
anchors, capstans, and so forth; then a broad path; then the beach.
Whatever may have been the original distance between the Globe Inn and
the sea, not more than sixty yards now separated them.
The rest of the population of the inn was, of course, a golfing one,
and included few elements that call for a special description. The most
conspicuous figure was, perhaps, that of an _ancien militaire_,
secretary of a London club, and possessed of a voice of incredible
strength, and of views of a pronouncedly Protestant type. These were
apt to find utterance after his attendance upon the ministrations of
the Vicar, an estimable man with inclinations towards a picturesque
ritual, which he gallantly kept down as far as he could out of
deference to East Anglian tradition.
Professor Parkins, one of whose principal characteristics was pluck,
spent the greater part of the day following his arrival at Burnstow in
what he had called improving his game, in company with this Colonel
Wilson: and during the afternoon—whether the process of improvement
were to blame or not, I am not sure—the Colonel’s demeanour assumed a
colouring so lurid that even Parkins jibbed at the thought of walking
home with him from the links. He determined, after a short and furtive
look at that bristling moustache and those incarnadined features, that
it would be wiser to allow the influences of tea and tobacco to do what
they could with the Colonel before the dinner-hour should render a
meeting inevitable.
“I might walk home tonight along the beach,” he reflected—“yes, and
take a look—there will be light enough for that—at the ruins of which
Disney was talking. I don’t exactly know where they are, by the way;
but I expect I can hardly help stumbling on them.”
This he accomplished, I may say, in the most literal sense, for in
picking his way from the links to the shingle beach his foot caught,
partly in a gorse-root and partly in a biggish stone, and over he went.
When he got up and surveyed his surroundings, he found himself in a
patch of somewhat broken ground covered with small depressions and
mounds. These latter, when he came to examine them, proved to be simply
masses of flints embedded in mortar and grown over with turf. He must,
he quite rightly concluded, be on the site of the preceptory he had
promised to look at. It seemed not unlikely to reward the spade of the
explorer; enough of the foundations was probably left at no great depth
to throw a good deal of light on the general plan. He remembered
vaguely that the Templars, to whom this site had belonged, were in the
habit of building round churches, and he thought a particular series of
the humps or mounds near him did appear to be arranged in something of
a circular form. Few people can resist the temptation to try a little
amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for
the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have been had
they only taken it up seriously. Our Professor, however, if he felt
something of this mean desire, was also truly anxious to oblige Mr
Disney. So he paced with care the circular area he had noticed, and
wrote down its rough dimensions in his pocket-book. Then he proceeded
to examine an oblong eminence which lay east of the centre of the
circle, and seemed to his thinking likely to be the base of a platform
or altar. At one end of it, the northern, a patch of the turf was
gone—removed by some boy or other creature _feraæ naturæ_. It might, he
thought, be as well to probe the soil here for evidences of masonry,
and he took out his knife and began scraping away the earth. And now
followed another little discovery: a portion of soil fell inward as he