MISCELLANY 94
‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’
M. R. James
From Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
PART 1
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,'[*] Rogers interrupted, with every
appearance of an earnest desire for accuracy. 'But I beg your pardon, Parkins:
I'm stopping you.'
[*] 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 ferae naturae. 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 scraped, and disclosed a
small cavity. He lighted one match after another to help him to see of what
nature the hole was, but the wind was too strong for them all. By tapping and
scratching the sides with his knife, however, he was able to make out that it
must be an artificial hole in masonry. It was rectangular, and the sides, top,
and bottom, if not actually plastered, were smooth and regular. Of course it
was empty. No! As he withdrew the knife he heard a metallic clink, and when he
introduced his hand it met with a cylindrical object lying on the floor of the
hole. Naturally enough, he picked it up, and when he brought it into the light,
now fast fading, he could see that it, too, was of man's making—a metal tube
about four inches long, and evidently of some considerable age.
By the time Parkins had made sure
that there was nothing else in this odd receptacle, it was too late and too
dark for him to think of undertaking any further search. What he had done had
proved so unexpectedly interesting that he determined to sacrifice a little
more of the daylight on the morrow to archaeology. The object which he now had
safe in his pocket was bound to be of some slight value at least, he felt sure.
Bleak and solemn was the view on
which he took a last look before starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the
west showed the links, on which a few figures moving towards the club-house
were still visible, the squat martello tower, the lights of Aldsey village, the
pale ribbon of sands intersected at intervals by black wooden groynings, the
dim and murmuring sea. The wind was bitter from the north, but was at his back
when he set out for the Globe. He quickly rattled and clashed through the
shingle and gained the sand, upon which, but for the groynings which had to be
got over every few yards, the going was both good and quiet. One last look
behind, to measure the distance he had made since leaving the ruined Templars'
church, showed him a prospect of company on his walk, in the shape of a rather
indistinct personage, who seemed to be making great efforts to catch up with
him, but made little, if any, progress. I mean that there was an appearance of
running about his movements, but that the distance between him and Parkins did
not seem materially to lessen. So, at least, Parkins thought, and decided that
he almost certainly did not know him, and that it would be absurd to wait until
he came up. For all that, company, he began to think, would really be very
welcome on that lonely shore, if only you could choose your companion. In his
unenlightened days he had read of meetings in such places which even now would
hardly bear thinking of. He went on thinking of them, however, until he reached
home, and particularly of one which catches most people's fancy at some time of
their childhood. 'Now I saw in my dream that Christian had gone but a very
little way when he saw a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him.' 'What
should I do now,' he thought, 'if I looked back and caught sight of a black
figure sharply defined against the yellow sky, and saw that it had horns and
wings? I wonder whether I should stand or run for it. Luckily, the gentleman
behind is not of that kind, and he seems to be about as far off now as when I
saw him first. Well, at this rate, he won't get his dinner as soon as I shall;
and, dear me! it's within a quarter of an hour of the time now. I must run!'
Parkins had, in fact, very little
time for dressing. When he met the Colonel at dinner, Peace—or as much of her
as that gentleman could manage—reigned once more in the military bosom; nor was
she put to flight in the hours of bridge that followed dinner, for Parkins was
a more than respectable player. When, therefore, he retired towards twelve
o'clock, he felt that he had spent his evening in quite a satisfactory way, and
that, even for so long as a fortnight or three weeks, life at the Globe would
be supportable under similar conditions—'especially,' thought he, 'if I go on
improving my game.'
As he went along the passages he
met the boots of the Globe, who stopped and said:
'Beg your pardon, sir, but as I
was abrushing your coat just now there was something fell out of the pocket. I
put it on your chest of drawers, sir, in your room, sir—a piece of a pipe or
somethink of that, sir. Thank you, sir. You'll find it on your chest of
drawers, sir—yes, sir. Good night, sir.'
The speech served to remind
Parkins of his little discovery of that afternoon. It was with some
considerable curiosity that he turned it over by the light of his candles. It
was of bronze, he now saw, and was shaped very much after the manner of the
modern dog-whistle; in fact it was—yes, certainly it was—actually no more nor
less than a whistle. He put it to his lips, but it was quite full of a fine,
caked-up sand or earth, which would not yield to knocking, but must be loosened
with a knife. Tidy as ever in his habits, Parkins cleared out the earth on to a
piece of paper, and took the latter to the window to empty it out. The night
was clear and bright, as he saw when he had opened the casement, and he stopped
for an instant to look at the sea and note a belated wanderer stationed on the
shore in front of the inn. Then he shut the window, a little surprised at the
late hours people kept at Burnstow, and took his whistle to the light again.
Why, surely there were marks on it, and not merely marks, but letters! A very
little rubbing rendered the deeply-cut inscription quite legible, but the
Professor had to confess, after some earnest thought, that the meaning of it
was as obscure to him as the writing on the wall to Belshazzar. There were
legends both on the front and on the back of the whistle. The one read thus:
FLA FUR BIS FLE
The other:
QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT
'I ought to be able to make it
out,' he thought; 'but I suppose I am a little rusty in my Latin. When I come
to think of it, I don't believe I even know the word for a whistle. The long
one does seem simple enough. It ought to mean: "Who is this who is
coming?" Well, the best way to find out is evidently to whistle for him.'
He blew tentatively and stopped
suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited. It had a
quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it
must be audible for miles round. It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the
power (which many scents possess) of forming pictures in the brain. He saw
quite clearly for a moment a vision of a wide, dark expanse at night, with a
fresh wind blowing, and in the midst a lonely figure—how employed, he could not
tell. Perhaps he would have seen more had not the picture been broken by the
sudden surge of a gust of wind against his casement, so sudden that it made him
look up, just in time to see the white glint of a seabird's wing somewhere
outside the dark panes.
The sound of the whistle had so
fascinated him that he could not help trying it once more, this time more
boldly. The note was little, if at all, louder than before, and repetition
broke the illusion—no picture followed, as he had half hoped it might. "But
what is this? Goodness! what force the wind can get up in a few minutes! What a
tremendous gust! There! I knew that window-fastening was no use! Ah! I thought
so—both candles out. It is enough to tear the room to pieces."
The first thing was to get the window
shut. While you might count twenty Parkins was struggling with the small
casement, and felt almost as if he were pushing back a sturdy burglar, so
strong was the pressure. It slackened all at once, and the window banged to and
latched itself. Now to relight the candles and see what damage, if any, had
been done. No, nothing seemed amiss; no glass even was broken in the casement.
But the noise had evidently roused at least one member of the household: the
Colonel was to be heard stumping in his stockinged feet on the floor above, and
growling. Quickly as it had risen, the wind did not fall at once. On it went,
moaning and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so desolate that,
as Parkins disinterestedly said, it might have made fanciful people feel quite
uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, he thought after a quarter of an hour,
might be happier without it.
Whether it was the wind, or the
excitement of golf, or of the researches in the preceptory that kept Parkins
awake, he was not sure. Awake he remained, in any case, long enough to fancy
(as I am afraid I often do myself under such conditions) that he was the victim
of all manner of fatal disorders: he would lie counting the beats of his heart,
convinced that it was going to stop work every moment, and would entertain
grave suspicions of his lungs, brain, liver, etc.—suspicions which he was sure
would be dispelled by the return of daylight, but which until then refused to
be put aside. He found a little vicarious comfort in the idea that someone else
was in the same boat. A near neighbour (in the darkness it was not easy to tell
his direction) was tossing and rustling in his bed, too.
The next stage was that Parkins
shut his eyes and determined to give sleep every chance. Here again over-excitement
asserted itself in another form—that of making pictures. Experto crede,
pictures do come to the closed eyes of one trying to sleep, and are often so
little to his taste that he must open his eyes and disperse them.
Parkins's experience on this
occasion was a very distressing one. He found that the picture which presented
itself to him was continuous. When he opened his eyes, of course, it went; but
when he shut them once more it framed itself afresh, and acted itself out
again, neither quicker nor slower than before. What he saw was this:
A long stretch of shore—shingle
edged by sand, and intersected at short intervals with black groynes running
down to the water—a scene, in fact, so like that of his afternoon's walk that,
in the absence of any landmark, it could not be distinguished therefrom. The
light was obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter
evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor was
visible. Then, in the distance, a bobbing black object appeared; a moment more,
and it was a man running, jumping, clambering over the groynes, and every few
seconds looking eagerly back. The nearer he came the more obvious it was that
he was not only anxious, but even terribly frightened, though his face was not
to be distinguished. He was, moreover, almost at the end of his strength. On he
came; each successive obstacle seemed to cause him more difficulty than the
last. 'Will he get over this next one?' thought Parkins; 'it seems a little
higher than the others.' Yes; half climbing, half throwing himself, he did get
over, and fell all in a heap on the other side (the side nearest to the
spectator). There, as if really unable to get up again, he remained crouching
under the groyne, looking up in an attitude of painful anxiety.
So far no cause whatever for the
fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be seen, far up the
shore, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with
great swiftness and irregularity. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared
itself as a figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined. There was
something about its motion which made Parkins very unwilling to see it at close
quarters. It would stop, raise arms, bow itself towards the sand, then run
stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and then, rising
upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed that was startling
and terrifying. The moment came when the pursuer was hovering about from left
to right only a few yards beyond the groyne 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.
To be concluded
