Read Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James for Free Online Page B

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    “Who was the old man whose picture hung on the staircase, sitting at a table, with a skull under his hand?”
    These and many similar points were cleared up by the resources of Mrs. Bunch’s powerful intellect.
    There were others, however, of which the explanations furnished were less satisfactory.
    One November evening Stephen was sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room reflecting on his surroundings.
    “Is Mr. Abney a good man, and will he go to Heaven?” he suddenly asked, with the peculiar confidence which children possess in the ability of their elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be reserved for other tribunals.
    “Good?—Bless the child!” said Mrs. Bunch. “Master’s as kind a soul as ever I see! Didn’t I never tell you of the little boy as he took in out of the street, as you may say, this seven years back? And the little girl, two years after I first come here?”

    “No. Do tell me all about them, Mrs. Bunch—now this minute!”
    “Well,” said Mrs. Bunch, “the little girl I don’t seem to recollect so much about. I know master brought her back with him from his walk one day, and give orders to Mrs. Ellis, as was housekeeper then, as she should be took every care with. And the pore child hadn’t no one belonging to her—she telled me so her own self—and here she lived with us a matter of three weeks it might be.
    “And then, whether she were somethink of a gypsy in her blood or what not, but one morning she out of her bed afore any of us had opened a eye, and neither track nor yet trace of her have I set eyes on since.
    “Master was wonderful put about, and had all the ponds dragged; but it’s my belief she was had away by them gypsies, for there was singing around the house for as much as an hour the night she went, and Parkes, he declares he heard them a-calling in the woods all that afternoon.
    “Dear, dear! a hodd child she was, so silent in her ways and all, but I was wonderful taken up with her, so domesticated she was—surprising.”
    “And what about the little boy?” said Stephen.
    “Ah, that pore boy!” sighed Mrs. Bunch. “He were a foreigner—Jevanny he called himself—and he come a-tweaking his ’urdy-gurdy round and about the drive one winter day, and master ’ad him in that minute, and ast all about where he came from, and how old he was, and how he made his way, and were was his relatives, and all as kind as heart could wish.
    “But it went the same way with him.
    “They’re a hunruly lot, them foreign nations, I do suppose, and he was off one fine morning just the same as the girl. Why he went and what he done was our question for as much as a year after; for he never took his ’urdy-gurdy, and there it lays on the shelf.”
    The remainder of the evening was spent by Stephen in miscellaneous cross-examination of Mrs. Bunch and in efforts to extract a tune from the hurdy-gurdy.
    That night he had a curious dream. At the end of the passage at the top of the house, in which his bedroom was situated, there was an old disused bathroom. It was kept locked, but the upper half of the door was glazed,and, since the muslin curtains which used to hang there had long been gone, you could look in and see the lead-lined bath affixed to the wall on the right hand, with its head toward the window.
    On the night of which I am speaking, Stephen Elliot found himself, as he thought, looking through the glazed door. The moon was shining through the window, and he was gazing at a figure which lay in the bath.
    His description of what he saw reminds me of what I once beheld myself in the famous vaults of St. Michan’s Church in Dublin, which possess the horrid property of preserving corpses from decay for centuries.
    A figure inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden color, enveloped in a shroud-like garment, the thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile, the hands pressed tightly over the region of the heart.
    As