High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories

by Robertson Davies

  The noise of conversation was high. Two notable divines. The Reverend John Evans and the Reverend Northrop Frye, were hard at it; Dr. Evans defending the doctrine of salvation through works—the works one could grind out of others—while Dr. Frye was urging salvation through the refiner’s fire of an exacting criticism of Holy Writ. A conversation on the fine points of agriculture was in progress between two obviously successful farmers across the table. Farmer Wells, who looked and dressed so much like John Bull that he might have stepped out of a drawing by Rowlandson, was arguing intently with Farmer Bissell—Capability Bissell he was called, because of his proven power of making two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before. Farmer Hume was fast asleep, his napkin covering his face. From beneath the table appeared a pair of glittering top boots, the property of Beau Baines who seemed to be resting there. Everybody was talking, except von Hohenheim, who glanced in every direction in an ecstasy of malicious pleasure, and Abu Ben Adhem, who was wrapped in his Mussulman’s robes and, being debarred by the Koran from drinking any port, was doing his best to eat all the dates on the table.

  Everybody was talking, and everybody was behaving in a manner which I felt certain was characteristic of the eighteenth century. It wasn’t bad, except that several people scratched themselves more often than is usual in modern society, and those who wore wigs were apt to remove them from time to time in order to mop the perspiration from their close-cropped heads. There were quite a few gouty feet, and one or two wore spectacles of the Ben Franklin sort. Finch, needless to say, had a quizzing-glass. And of course there was the spitting.

  Everybody spat, more or less, and now and then some of them—those from the Eastern parts of Europe—blew their noses in a fashion rarely seen nowadays except in lumber-camps. They had handkerchiefs, but their purpose appeared to be ornamental. It was the spitting which took my eye, figuratively and once or twice in actuality. The two American gentlemen, Stacey and Careless, were the great proficients in this art, and they spat, as was the polite custom of the day, over their left shoulders, rapidly and with a truly American force and efficiency.

  It is hard to see someone spit without wishing to spit oneself. So I spat. And that was when my own great revelation struck me.

  The Americans, as I said, spat briskly, with a positively musical brio. But when I spat I let my head fall forward, spread my feet, opened my mouth and allowed gravity to take its course. Then I ground the result into the carpet, slowly and, as it were, compassionately. And as I did this I knew what I was; what the eighteenth century meant to me; what 1774 revealed of me.

  I had been aware, as I gazed about the table, of a heaviness in the atmosphere. The air seemed infected with a wooly greasiness; I had assumed that it was Dr. Abu Ben Adhem who, like so many Arabs, was said to rejoice in oil; but I now perceived it to be the smell of lanolin. Not lanolin as you buy it for medical use, but as it exists on the unwashed wool of sheep. Now I knew that this smell came from myself. I was clothed from neck to knee in a homespun smockfrock, and about my shoulders was a sheepskin of venerable age, presumably as a defence against rain, and mist, and the damp of the Welsh hills. Because, you see, I was a simple Welsh shepherd, marked and ingrained with the consequences of his calling. Upon my head was a hat of incalculable antiquity—such a hat as Adam may have worn after the Fall—and my feet were warmly but untidily cased in more wool and gigantic greased boots. My hands were covered in tar—the tar shepherds use against that ovine disease, the foot-rot. And I had just spat as Welsh shepherds always do spit, with minimal effort, but with a primordial splendour that had something religious about it. It was thus, doubtless, that the shepherds spat on that notable occasion which we celebrate here, when they abode in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.

  I was roused from these reflections by a voice I knew, in the very marrow of my bones, to be a voice of authority—the voice of my betters. It was Dr. John Evans, and to any Welshman of the rank in which I found myself, the voice of an Evans of Usbutty Ustwit is like the music of the harp.

  “Pass the wine,” said he. But the words fell upon an uncomprehending ear, and he saw what the trouble was, pointed at the bottle, and spoke again. “Brennin y pen Bilyaid,” said he, and the cruel words of abuse had an age-old familiarity. I passed the drink at once, bowing, cringing and rubbing the mouth of the bottle with my greasy sleeve as I served the gentry.

  But inwardly I was stricken. Though I seemed to comprehend through my vision what others were saying, or were likely to be saying, in English, not one English word could I utter. “Arunwaith, iechyd da, mae Rhaglaw” said I to Dr. Evans, bowing obsequiously. But he waved me aside, as he had every right to do—him a great man of education, and me the humble shepherd of the flocks. But I glared across the table at that villain von Hohenheim, and muttered a curse in Welsh that made him wriggle in his chair, mighty magician though he was.

  But mine was not the worst case. What of the poor girl who had held such high hopes of the eighteenth century; who had talked so innocently of its “graciousness”; who had been certain that in that bygone time she would have been a mistress—and a scented, pampered mistress of royalty, no less.

  She was padding about the table in her bare feet, a single ragged garment tied around her waist with a dirty string, her hair in filthy disarray and in her hand a bunch of what I took to be weeds. But it wasn’t weeds. “Won’t you buy my pretty lavender: two bunches a penny?” she sang in a voice coarsened with gin. But there was a glance in her eye that made it clear that lavender was not everything she sold. Some of the men waved her away; others gave her extremely small coins which they found in the depths of their pockets. Swinton of Swinton pinched her behind, but perfunctorily, as if it were a social duty rather than a pleasure. Nobody seemed to want to buy anything at all. My heart wept for her. But yet, I thought, even from Gin Lane in the eighteenth century the modern Ph.D. may arise. I took a deep breath of hope, and immediately wished I hadn’t, for the warmth of the room was working powerfully on my sheepskin.

  At no time did the girl approach me, but as she passed my heart yearned toward her in pity; I hooked her to me with my crook and blessed her. “Bendith yr Arglwdd, putain-ferch” I cried, as tears started from my eyes. But she utterly mistook my words and my intention. “Not for twenty golden guineas,” she said, drawing her poor garment about her with pathetic pride.

  I had little time to grieve over this misunderstanding, for I heard a familiar voice at my elbow. It was the College steward, putting his usual question at this time of the evening. “May I blow out the candles?” he asked, and I nodded assent. I knew that it would do nothing to untangle the complexities of the evening to address Miroslav Stojanovich in Welsh.

  Slowly, ceremoniously he extinguished each candle; in that brief moment when all the candles are out, and the electric lights have not yet been put on I heard von Hohenheim’s chiming watch and, you must believe me, it was playing the same tune as before, but playing it backward, as Bach sometimes reversed a subject in counterpoint. And as it played I recovered myself, and the English tongue, completely. In the clean new light I turned to the girl beside me and said: “Will you have some coffee? Or perhaps a little cognac?” She too was quite herself—her 1974 self,—now. “Cognac every time,” said she.

  As I went to fetch it for her, I found myself next to the unspeakable Dr. Theophrastus von Hohenheim. He smiled darkly at me, and flung me a quotation from Scripture: “Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.”

  I am unfailingly polite to College guests. “Isaiah 51, reading from the first verse,” said I, smiling serenely.

  But he won’t be asked again.

  The Perils of the Double Sign

  More than once, over the past years, Professor Douglas Baines has asked me why I never write a story about a scientific ghost. “You should write something about haunted mach
inery,” he says. “All the machinery in this College is haunted,” I reply; “Roger has spent countless hours attempting to exorcise our heating system.” “Of course,” he says; “so why don’t you write about that?”

  The answer is that I do not write ghost stories. That is to say, I do not invent them. I simply confide to you the uncanny things that have happened to me since I associated myself with this College. If I were to come before you with a merely invented tale, I should feel myself to be an impostor. No: I tell you only what is true. “Literally true?” Professor Baines might ask. No, for literal truth is not the truth of uncanny things. They belong to the realm of psychic, of subjective truth. It would be quite outside my powers to invent a scientific ghost story. My typewriter—which is a scientific marvel, and consequently always in a very delicate state of health—would refuse its task. Nevertheless I am not, I assure you, a stranger to science. I am steeped in it, but it is not of the kind that is in vogue in this university at the moment. It is the science of past ages.

  This was brought forcibly to my attention last Christmas, which is to say, during the academic year of 1974-75. It is a period that will go down in the history of Massey College as The Year of the Two Hall Dons. A Hall Don, I should explain for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is the elected head of the Junior Fellows of the College, and a very important person. Last year we had two of them. One resigned at Christmas for reasons of—well, I’m going to tell you why, though at the time we agreed to say that it was because his work on behalf of the NDP became too demanding to permit him to give adequate attention to his College obligations. He was succeeded—for such is politics—by a man who was in almost every way his direct opposite. The second Hall Don was a man of balanced mind and calm and reflective temperament—a natural Conservative. The first Hall Don was a student of law, and it was a matter for wonder that he was able to keep up with his demanding legal study, while apparently giving so much of his time to the NDP. Obviously he possessed, in the highest degree, those qualities which lead to success at the bar. I need not tell you in disgusting detail what those are.

  Superficially, both men seemed to be devoted to truth, as it may be determined by argument—hours and hours of complicated argument—and a close consideration of objective evidence. But the Conservative Don was a student of history, and thus a slave of Romance. The Legal Don, as a lawyer, was supposedly wedded to fact, but ah—beneath the surface he was involved in a study which does not accord with truth and evidence as we now know them—though I will not go so far as to say it was a study without its application in legal practice. He was an astrologer.

  He made no secret of it. He cast horoscopes right and left. He cast one for me, and indeed published it in the College paper, The Bull. But it was to me alone that he confided its deeper meanings. “You are very strongly under the influence of Jupiter,” he said, in his deep, thrilling voice. “Oh, jolly good,” said I, uneasily. When I am uneasy I often fall into the colloquial speech of an earlier day. “Not jolly good at all,” he boomed, and his splendid, glowing eyes darkened. “Jupiter is the bringer of energy, right? But can we tell what he is going to do with his energy? He may put it at the service of forces that are destructive, right? Now, you have an equally strong influence from Saturn. Just suppose your Jupiter throws himself, thunderbolts and all, behind your Saturn? What then? Saturn is maleficent, so your Saturn backed up by your Jupiter produces an evil influence of incalculable force.” And there he stopped, but he gazed into my eyes hypnotically. “What would you say that indicated?” said I, with a pitiable affectation of carelessness. “Better you shouldn’t know,” said he. “What must be, must be, right?”

  I did everything a reasonable man would do under such circumstances. I attempted to dismiss the subject from my mind. Astrology, I told myself, is a science of the past. It is utterly discredited. Its place has been taken by Sociology, Guidance Counselling and Educational Theory. Who believes in astrology now?

  Ah, that was the trouble. Though I am not a whole-hearted believer in astrology as such, I was brought up a Presbyterian, and thus I am inclined to believe bad news from virtually any source. And my own observations of history have convinced me that behind what has passed as science, in whatever age and however absurd, there lurk some ill-perceived, phantasmal truths. I began to fret. When would my Jupiter throw all his unthinking, capricious force behind my malignant Saturn, and bring me to—to what? To what abyss of disgrace, to what towering folly, to—? My mind abounded in horrors: the hangnail that turns to gangrene—the safety-belt that becomes a hangman’s noose. Whenever I met the Hall Don, I thought I saw pity in his lustrous eye.

  It was at about this time last year—the time when Christmas is imminent—that the presence of this strangely learned man and his grim predictions gave me an unforgettable night—a night which destroyed forever my conception of this College as an abode of peace and academic decorum. It was exactly a year ago this very night—the night of St. Lucy’s Day, and also Friday 13. It is my custom, when I have been working late, to take a turn or two around the quad before I go to bed, in search of fresh air and that quieting of spirit which the darkness of night brings. As I strolled through the early winter mist, I became aware of a strange light in one of the College windows. Some windows were dark, some illumined by electric light, but this window was lit by a blue flame that undulated and quivered in a manner that could only mean one thing. Fire!

  I darted into the residence where that window was, and with all the energy of my abundant Jupiter I bounded up the stair. I came to the door, and saw by the card that it was the door of our astrological Hall Don. Easily seen through the crack by the floor the curious blue light darted and flickered.

  Never before had I used my master key to open the door of a private room, but this was an emergency, and I did so without hesitation. I threw open the door, ready to leap backward if there should be a rush of flame, but although the room was filled with curious light, there was no fire in the ordinary sense. A wooden box, of handsome workmanship, stood on one of the shelves, and it was from it that the blue light came.

  Foolish people have called me impractical, but in an emergency I am lion-like. I rushed into the nearby bathroom, soaked a heavy towel in water, carried it back, and with deft, masterful movements I wrapped the box in it. That, I thought, will settle the hash of whatever conflagration lurks inside. But judge of my amazement when the blue light, instead of being quenched, came through the wet towel and filled the room, as before.

  Nor was this the only circumstance that made my eyes start, and my hair stand on end. From beneath the towel I heard sounds—first a heavy sigh, and then a tiny, pleading voice, crying: “If you please, sir! Oh, my preserver, my noble friend! Let me out, I beseech! Let me out in the name of Ahriman, the All Powerful!”

  What would you have done? I acted without an instant of indecision. Not, I assure you, from excess of daring, but from a vastly greater positive influence—from curiosity. I was in the room of our astrologer-Hall Don, and it lay in my power to discover some of his strange secrets. I tore away the soaking towel. But of course the box was locked.

  “The key,” cried the tiny voice. “The key is under his pillow!” It was the work of an instant to find it, to unlock the box, and—what did my eyes behold?

  Inside, cradled in velvet, was a globular crystal bottle, from which the blue radiance flooded the room. I lifted it, and it appeared to be filled with a mesh of deep golden threads. But as I gazed, there peeped through the golden wire, as I took it to be, a tiny face, like a piece of exquisitely carved old ivory. Its expression was imploring, and close to it two pretty little hands were clasped in anguish.

  All prudence cried Watch your step! But all curiosity said Uncork him! So I did.

  There was a rushing as of a mighty wind. A blue radiance shot upward to the ceiling, and there, on the desk before me appeared a little man, no bigger than a child of two, and I saw that the golden threads were a superb g
olden beard, that hung to his waist.

  “A thousand thanks!” he cried. “And of course, the usual reward. What’s your will?”

  “Great Scot,” I exclaimed. (I was, of course, invoking the spirit of Michael Scot, the medieval expert on magic and the occult, whose works are my favourite bedside reading). “Are you a genie?”

  An expression of absurd vanity overspread the mannikin’s face, and he combed his fingers through the luxuriant beard. “Indeed,” said he; “I am the Genie With the Light Brown Hair. My name is Asmodeus.”

  “The Devil on Two Sticks,” I cried, in amazement, for he was not a person I had ever expected to see in Massey College.

  “As you may observe, I am slightly lame,” he said, ruefully, displaying two little ivory crutches which he had kept hidden beneath his robe. “Now, dear friend, how may I reward you?”

  My senses swam. Should I then and there deliver the College from all future care by asking for a generous addition to our endowment fund—something in the order of a few million lakhs of rupees, or perhaps a conveniently located emerald mine? But I knew my Michael Scot, and I knew what tricky fellows these genies could be. Caution, caution, I whispered to myself.

  “Before we talk of that, may I not have the inestimable boon of a few minutes’ conversation?” I asked. “We are quite accustomed to distinguished visitors here, but the Never-Too-Highly-To-Be-Esteemed Asmodeus, the Devil on Two Sticks himself, is a catch even for us. Now I know you won’t be offended if I ask for some identification?”