Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
where the runner lay in hiding. After two or three ineffectual castings
hither and thither it came to a stop, stood upright, with arms raised
high, and then darted straight forward towards the groyne.
It was at this point that Parkins always failed in his resolution to
keep his eyes shut. With many misgivings as to incipient failure of
eyesight, overworked brain, excessive smoking, and so on, he finally
resigned himself to light his candle, get out a book, and pass the
night waking, rather than be tormented by this persistent panorama,
which he saw clearly enough could only be a morbid reflection of his
walk and his thoughts on that very day.
The scraping of match on box and the glare of light must have startled
some creatures of the night—rats or what not—which he heard scurry
across the floor from the side of his bed with much rustling. Dear,
dear! the match is out! Fool that it is! But the second one burnt
better, and a candle and book were duly procured, over which Parkins
pored till sleep of a wholesome kind came upon him, and that in no long
space. For about the first time in his orderly and prudent life he
forgot to blow out the candle, and when he was called next morning at
eight there was still a flicker in the socket and a sad mess of
guttered grease on the top of the little table.
After breakfast he was in his room, putting the finishing touches to
his golfing costume—fortune had again allotted the Colonel to him for a
partner—when one of the maids came in.
“Oh, if you please,” she said, “would you like any extra blankets on
your bed, sir?”
“Ah! thank you,” said Parkins. “Yes, I think I should like one. It
seems likely to turn rather colder.”
In a very short time the maid was back with the blanket.
“Which bed should I put it on, sir?” she asked.
“What? Why, that one—the one I slept in last night,” he said, pointing
to it.
“Oh yes! I beg your pardon, sir, but you seemed to have tried both of
“em; leastways, we had to make ’em both up this morning.”
“Really? How very absurd!” said Parkins. “I certainly never touched the
other, except to lay some things on it. Did it actually seem to have
been slept in?”
“Oh yes, sir!” said the maid. “Why, all the things was crumpled and
throwed about all ways, if you’ll excuse me, sir—quite as if anyone
’adn’t passed but a very poor night, sir.”
“Dear me,” said Parkins. “Well, I may have disordered it more than I
thought when I unpacked my things. I’m very sorry to have given you the
extra trouble, I’m sure. I expect a friend of mine soon, by the way—a
gentleman from Cambridge—to come and occupy it for a night or two. That
will be all right, I suppose, won’t it?”
“Oh yes, to be sure, sir. Thank you, sir. It’s no trouble, I’m sure,”
said the maid, and departed to giggle with her colleagues.
Parkins set forth, with a stern determination to improve his game.
I am glad to be able to report that he succeeded so far in this
enterprise that the Colonel, who had been rather repining at the
prospect of a second day’s play in his company, became quite chatty as
the morning advanced; and his voice boomed out over the flats, as
certain also of our own minor poets have said, “like some great bourdon
in a minster tower”.
“Extraordinary wind, that, we had last night,” he said. “In my old home
we should have said someone had been whistling for it.”
“Should you, indeed!” said Parkins. “Is there a superstition of that
kind still current in your part of the country?”
“I don’t know about superstition,” said the Colonel. “They believe in
it all over Denmark and Norway, as well as on the Yorkshire coast; and
my experience is, mind you, that there’s generally something at the
bottom of what these country-folk hold to, and have held to for
generations. But it’s your drive” (or whatever it might have been: the
golfing reader will have to imagine appropriate digressions at the
proper intervals).
When conversation was resumed, Parkins said, with a slight hesitancy:
“A propos of what you were saying just now, Colonel, I think I ought to
tell you that my own views on such subjects are very strong. I am, in
fact, a convinced disbeliever in what is called the ‘supernatural’.”
“What!” said the Colonel, “do you mean to tell me you don’t believe in
second-sight, or ghosts, or anything of that kind?”
“In nothing whatever of that kind,” returned Parkins firmly.
“Well,” said the Colonel, “but it appears to me at that rate, sir, that
you must be little better than a Sadducee.”
Parkins was on the point of answering that, in his opinion, the
Sadducees were the most sensible persons he had ever read of in the Old
Testament; but, feeling some doubt as to whether much mention of them
was to be found in that work, he preferred to laugh the accusation off.
“Perhaps I am,” he said; “but—Here, give me my cleek, boy!—Excuse me
one moment, Colonel.” A short interval. “Now, as to whistling for the
wind, let me give you my theory about it. The laws which govern winds
are really not at all perfectly known—to fisherfolk and such, of
course, not known at all. A man or woman of eccentric habits, perhaps,
or a stranger, is seen repeatedly on the beach at some unusual hour,
and is heard whistling. Soon afterwards a violent wind rises; a man who
could read the sky perfectly or who possessed a barometer could have
foretold that it would. The simple people of a fishing-village have no
barometers, and only a few rough rules for prophesying weather. What
more natural than that the eccentric personage I postulated should be
regarded as having raised the wind, or that he or she should clutch
eagerly at the reputation of being able to do so? Now, take last
night’s wind: as it happens, I myself was whistling. I blew a whistle
twice, and the wind seemed to come absolutely in answer to my call. If
anyone had seen me—”
The audience had been a little restive under this harangue, and Parkins
had, I fear, fallen somewhat into the tone of a lecturer; but at the
last sentence the Colonel stopped.
“Whistling, were you?” he said. “And what sort of whistle did you use?
Play this stroke first.” Interval.
“About that whistle you were asking, Colonel. It’s rather a curious
one. I have it in my—No; I see I’ve left it in my room. As a matter of
fact, I found it yesterday.”
And then Parkins narrated the manner of his discovery of the whistle,
upon hearing which the Colonel grunted, and opined that, in Parkins’s
place, he should himself be careful about using a thing that had
belonged to a set of Papists, of whom, speaking generally, it might be
affirmed that you never knew what they might not have been up to. From
this topic he diverged to the enormities of the Vicar, who had given
notice on the previous Sunday that Friday would be the Feast of St
Thomas the Apostle, and that there would be service at eleven o’clock
in the church. This and other similar proceedings constituted in the
Colonel’s view a strong presumption that the Vicar was a concealed
Papist, if not a Jesuit; and Parkins, who could not very readily follow
the Colonel in this region, did not disagree with him. In fact, they
got on so well together in the morning that there was no talk on either
side of their separating after lunch.
Both continued to play well during the afternoon, or, at least, well
enough to make them forget everything else until the light began to
fail them. Not until then did Parkins remember that he had meant to do
some more investigating at the preceptory; but it was of no great
importance, he reflected. One day was as good as another; he might as
well go home with the Colonel.
As they turned the corner of the house, the Colonel was almost knocked
down by a boy who rushed into him at the very top of his speed, and
then, instead of running away, remained hanging on to him and panting.
The first words of the warrior were naturally those of reproof and
objurgation, but he very quickly discerned that the boy was almost
speechless with fright. Inquiries were useless at first. When the boy
got his breath he began to howl, and still clung to the Colonel’s legs.
He was at last detached, but continued to howl.
“What in the world _is_ the matter with you? What have you been up to?
What have you seen?” said the two men.
“Ow, I seen it wive at me out of the winder,” wailed the boy, “and I
don’t like it.”
“What window?” said the irritated Colonel. “Come, pull yourself
together, my boy.”
“The front winder it was, at the ’otel,” said the boy.
At this point Parkins was in favour of sending the boy home, but the
Colonel refused; he wanted to get to the bottom of it, he said; it was
most dangerous to give a boy such a fright as this one had had, and if
it turned out that people had been playing jokes, they should suffer
for it in some way. And by a series of questions he made out this
story: The boy had been playing about on the grass in front of the
Globe with some others; then they had gone home to their teas, and he
was just going, when he happened to look up at the front winder and see
it a-wiving at him. _It_ seemed to be a figure of some sort, in white
as far as he knew—couldn’t see its face; but it wived at him, and it
warn’t a right thing—not to say not a right person. Was there a light
in the room? No, he didn’t think to look if there was a light. Which
was the window? Was it the top one or the second one? The seckind one
it was—the big winder what got two little uns at the sides.
“Very well, my boy,” said the Colonel, after a few more questions. “You
run away home now. I expect it was some person trying to give you a
start. Another time, like a brave English boy, you just throw a
stone—well, no, not that exactly, but you go and speak to the waiter,
or to Mr Simpson, the landlord, and—yes—and say that I advised you to
do so.”
The boy’s face expressed some of the doubt he felt as to the likelihood
of Mr Simpson’s lending a favourable ear to his complaint, but the
Colonel did not appear to perceive this, and went on:
“And here’s a sixpence—no, I see it’s a shilling—and you be off home,
and don’t think any more about it.”
The youth hurried off with agitated thanks, and the Colonel and Parkins
went round to the front of the Globe and reconnoitred. There was only
one window answering to the description they had been hearing.
“Well, that’s curious,” said Parkins; “it’s evidently my window the lad
was talking about. Will you come up for a moment, Colonel Wilson? We
ought to be able to see if anyone has been taking liberties in my
room.”
They were soon in the passage, and Parkins made as if to open the door.
Then he stopped and felt in his pockets.
“This is more serious than I thought,” was his next remark. “I remember
now that before I started this morning I locked the door. It is locked
now, and, what is more, here is the key.” And he held it up. “Now,” he
went on, “if the servants are in the habit of going into one’s room
during the day when one is away, I can only say that—well, that I don’t
approve of it at all.” Conscious of a somewhat weak climax, he busied
himself in opening the door (which was indeed locked) and in lighting
candles. “No,” he said, “nothing seems disturbed.”
“Except your bed,” put in the Colonel.
“Excuse me, that isn’t my bed,” said Parkins. “I don’t use that one.
But it does look as if someone had been playing tricks with it.”
It certainly did: the clothes were bundled up and twisted together in a
most tortuous confusion. Parkins pondered.
“That must be it,” he said at last: “I disordered the clothes last
night in unpacking, and they haven’t made it since. Perhaps they came
in to make it, and that boy saw them through the window; and then they
were called away and locked the door after them. Yes, I think that must
be it.”