Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

by Travelers In Time

  I stayed where I had lain myself, and whether my eyes were open or closed I no longer knew. The miseries of this place had abated. No, that does not express it, for this was no longer a place. This place had disappeared, or it had been merged in the new dimension which I call Nowhere.

  It is immeasurably great; it is unimaginably small: for as there is no time so there is no space: there is only being, and its modes: and in that region my misery continued itself far from the knowledge of this brain and beyond the let or hindrance of this body.

  And yet somewhere, somehow, I knew something that I can only think of as nothing. An awful, a deadly business was proceeding, with me as the subject. It can only be expressed negatively. Thus I may phrase it, I had gone in the spirit into that aperture from which I had fled. I was in contact with the unmanifest, and that, in its own sphere, is as competent and enduring as are its extensions with which we are familiar. But of that I cannot speak; for as it was out of range of these senses so it was out of range of this mind whose sole preoccupation is these senses.

  I had been in terror, but in what was I now? How little to me was the human absence of light, the normal absence of sound that had frightened me.

  I was nowhere, and it was real. I was nothing and I was enduring. I would have returned to my blank, dumb prison as one flies to a paradise, but I could not, for something had happened to me. I was translated; and until that experience was fulfilled I could not regain myself nor evade in any way my happenings.

  Therefore, I do not know how long I remained crouched in that stony den. Nor how I lay; nor aught that happened to me. But at a point I did return to normal consciousness, and that as swiftly as though one had taken me by the shoulders and clicked me to another direction.

  All that monstrous Something-Nothing ceased; and I was listening with these ears, and staring through known darkness with these eyes that see you.

  There were footsteps outside the door, and in an instant the door grinced and screeched and swung.

  It was those two. But I did not move from where I lay, and when I did so it was because he lifted me. Those giant arms could lift me as one plucks up a cat; and in a moment I was walking, and the arm that was yet around my waist was pressing me lovingly to his side.

  "We were only playing with you," he said.

  And she at my other side cooed, as she fondled my hand.

  "It was only a game."

  I looked wordlessly from one to the other and laughed gently.

  It was strange that I did not wish to speak. It was strange still that I would not speak; and to everything that they said I returned my gentle laugh. That, it seemed to me, must be sufficient communion even for them; and who in the world could wish to speak when he might laugh?

  We walked on, slowly at first, and then hastily, and sentences came from one to the other across me; sometimes explanations, at times assertions and assents.

  "It took us ten minutes to get out," he said, "and we thought---- "

  "For you are so much cleverer than we are," she interposed.

  "That you would have been home almost as quickly as we were."

  "It took us ten long minutes to imagine that although the door was closed it might not be fastened," he went on, "but when I pulled on it it opened at once.

  "I was glad to see the moonlight," he continued in a tone of reverie.

  "Glad!" she exclaimed.

  "Those ten minutes were unpleasant," he assented.

  "They were wicked," she exclaimed energetically. "They--- " she

  paused and took my arm again: "They are forgotten and forgiven. Our thoughts of each other now can be all frankness and trust."

  I must have been imprisoned for some hours, for when I went in there had been a bright moon in a bare sky, where now there was no moon and the heavens were deeply shadowed. Our faces were visible to each other as dull shapes, and the spaces about us were bathed in that diaphanous darkness through which one looks without seeing, and against which things loom rather than show.

  A wonderful feeling of well-being flowed through me, warming and bracing me. A feeling of astonishing rest for myself, and of endless affection for my companions.

  And with it all there was a sense, confused and yet strong, that I knew something which they did not know. That I had a secret which would astonish them when they discovered it.

  I knew they should discover it, for I would reveal it to them myself, as soon as I became aware of what it really was. And my mind was filled with joy at the thought of how I would surprise them, and of how they should be surprised.

  That strange knowledge lay like a warmth at my heart. It lit the dull night for me, so that through the gloom and mirk I walked as on air and in radiance. All that I had gone through vanished from my memory. It was as though it had never been. Nothing was any more but this new-found rest and contentment.

  Happiness! I had found it at last; and it was more worth finding than anything I had yet experienced.

  But the end of our walk was nigh. At a distance was the gleam of lights, and black silhouettes about them. We increased our pace, I, willingly enough, for I wished to tell them a secret; and in a short time we came to the great steps and mounted them. Men were there with torches, and we walked gaily from darkness into light.

  Reaching the top, on the wide platform before the door, she turned to me with a smile, and she stopped dead. I saw the smile frozen on her face. I saw her face blanch to the whiteness of snow, and her eyes widen and fix and stare. She clasped her bosom with both hands and stood so, staring.

  Then something, a self of me, detached itself from me, and stood forward and looked also.

  I saw myself. My mouth was twisted sidewards in a jolly grin. My eyes were turned inwards in a comical squint, and my chin was all a sop of my own saliva.

  I looked at myself so for a mortal moment, and I awakened.

  From The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James, reprinted by permission of Edward Arnold & Co.

  A View from a Hill

  By M. R. JAMES

  HOW PLEASANT IT CAN BE, ALONE IN A FIRST-CLASS RAILWAY CARRIAGE,

  on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken only by a footstep crunching the gravel. Yet perhaps that is best experienced after sundown, and the traveller I have in mind was making his leisurely progress on a sunny afternoon in the latter half of June.

  He was in the depths of the country. I need not particularize further than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters, he would have been found in the south-westem of them.

  He was a man of academic pursuits, and his term was just over. He was on his way to meet a new friend, older than himself. The two of them had met first on an official inquiry in town, had found that they had many tastes and habits in common, liked each other, and the result was an invitation from Squire Richards to Mr. Fanshawe which was now taking effect.

  The journey ended about five o'clock. Fanshawe was told by a cheerful country porter that the car from the Hall had been up to the station and left a message that something had to be fetched from half a mile farther on, and would the gentleman please to wait a few minutes till it came back? "But I see," continued the porter, "as you've got your bysticle, and very like you'd find it pleasanter to ride up to the 'All yourself. Straight up the road 'ere, and then first turn to the left—it ain't above two mile—and I'll see as your things is put in the car for you. You'll excuse me mentioning it, only I thought it were a nice evening for a ride. Yes, sir, very seasonable weather for the haymakers: let me see, I have your bike ticket. Thank you, sir; much obliged: you can't miss your road, etc., etc."

  The two miles to the Hall were just what was needed, after the day in the train, to dispel som
nolence and impart a wish for tea. The Hall, when sighted, also promised just what was needed in the way of a quiet resting-place after days of sitting on committees and college-meetings. It was neither excitingly old nor depressingly new. Plastered walls, sash-windows, old trees, smooth lawns, were the features which Fanshawe noticed as he came up the drive. Squire Richards, a burly man of sixty odd, was awaiting him in the porch with evident pleasure.

  "Tea first," he said, "or would you like a longer drink? No? All right, tea's ready in the garden. Come along, they'll put your machine away. I always have tea under the lime-tree by the stream on a day like this."

  Nor could you ask for a better place. Midsummer afternoon, shade and scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards. It was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr. Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: "Look here, it's cool enough now to think of a stroll, if you're inclined? All right: then what I suggest is that we walk up the park and get on to the hill-side, where we can look over the country. We'll have a map, and I'll show you where things are; and you can go off on your machine, or we can take the car, according as you want exercise or not. If you're ready, we can start now and be back well before eight, taking it very easy."

  "I'm ready. I should like my stick, though, and have you got any field-glasses? I lent mine to a man a week ago, and he's gone off Lord knows where and taken them with him."

  Mr. Richards pondered. "Yes," he said, "I have, but they're not things I use myself, and I don't know whether the ones I have will suit you. They're old-fashioned, and about twice as heavy as they make 'em now. You're welcome to have them, but I won't carry them. By the way, what do you want to drink after dinner?"

  Protestations that anything would do were overruled, and a satisfactory settlement was reached on the way to the front hall, where Mr. Fanshawe found his stick, and Mr. Richards, after thoughtful pinching of his lower lip, resorted to a drawer in the hall-table, extracted a key, crossed to a cupboard in the panelling, opened it, took a box from the shelf, and put it on the table. "The glasses are in there," he said, "and there's some dodge of opening it, but I've forgotten what it is. You try." Mr. Fanshawe accordingly tried. There was no keyhole, and the box was solid, heavy and smooth: it seemed obvious that some part of it would have to be pressed before anything could happen. "The comers," said he to himself, "are the likely places; and infernally sharp comers they are too," he added, as he put his thumb in his mouth after exerting force on a lower comer.

  "What's the matter?" said the Squire.

  "Why, your disgusting Borgia box has scratched me, drat it," said Fanshawe. The Squire chuckled unfeelingly. "Well, you've got it open, anyway," he said.

  "So I have! Well, I don't begrudge a drop of blood in a good cause, and here are the glasses. They are pretty heavy, as you said, but I think I'm equal to carrying them."

  "Ready?" said the Squire. "Come on then; we go out by the garden."

  So they did, and passed out into the park, which sloped decidedly upwards to the hill which, as Fanshawe had seen from the train, dominated the country. It was a spur of a larger range that lay behind. On the way, the Squire, who was great on earthworks, pointed out various spots where he detected or imagined traces of war-ditches and the like. "And here," he said, stopping on a more or less level plot with a ring of large trees, "is Baxter's Roman villa."

  "Baxter?" said Mr. Fanshawe.

  "I forgot; you don't know about him. He was the old chap I got those glasses from. I believe he made them. He was an old watchmaker down in the village, a great antiquary. My father gave him leave to grub about where he liked; and when he made a find he used to lend him a man or two to help him with the digging. He got a surprising lot of things together, and when he died—I dare say it's ten or fifteen years ago—I bought the whole lot and gave them to the town museum. We'll run in one of these days, and look over them. The glasses came to me with the rest, but of course I kept them. If you look at them, you'll see they're more or less amateur work—the body of them; naturally the lenses weren't his making."

  "Yes, I see they are just the sort of thing that a clever workman in a different line of business might turn out. But I don't see why he made them so heavy. And did Baxter actually find a Roman villa here?"

  "Yes, there's a pavement turfed over, where we're standing: it was too rough and plain to be worth taking up, but of course there are drawings of it: and the small things and pottery that turned up were quite good of their kind. An ingenious chap, old Baxter: he seemed to have a quite out-of-the-way instinct for these things. He was invaluable to our archaeologists. He used to shut up his shop for days at a time, and wander off over the district, marking down places, where he scented anything, on the ordnance map; and he kept a book with fuller notes of the places. Since his death, a good many of them have been sampled, and there's always been something to justify him."

  "What a good man!" said Mr. Fanshawe.

  "Good?" said the Squire, pulling up brusquely.

  "I meant useful to have about the place," said Mr. Fanshawe. "But was he a villain?"

  "I don't know about that either," said the Squire; "but all I can say is, if he was good, he wasn't lucky. And he wasn't liked: I didn't like him," he added, after a moment.

  "Oh?" said Fanshawe interrogatively.

  "No, I didn't; but that's enough about Baxter: besides, this is the stiffest bit, and I don't want to talk and walk as well."

  Indeed it was hot, climbing a slippery grass slope that evening. "I told you I should take you the short way," panted the Squire, "and I wish I hadn't. However, a bath won't do us any harm when we get back. Here we are, and there's the seat."

  A small clump of old Scotch firs crowned the top of the hill; and, at the edge of it, commanding the cream of the view, was a wide and solid seat, on which the two disposed themselves, and wiped their brows, and regained breath.

  "Now, then," said the Squire, as soon as he was in a condition to talk connectedly, "this is where your glasses come in. But you'd better take a general look round first. My word! I've never seen the view look better."

  Writing as I am now with a winter wind flapping against dark windows and a rushing, tumbling sea within a hundred yards, I find it hard to summon up the feelings and words which will put my reader in possession of the June evening and the lovely English landscape of which the Squire was speaking.

  Across a broad level plain they looked upon ranges of great hills, whose uplands—some green, some furred with woods—caught the light of a sun, westering but not yet low. And all the plain was fertile, though the river which traversed it was nowhere seen. There were copses, green wheat, hedges and pasture-land: the little compact white moving cloud marked the evening train. Then the eye picked out red farms and grey houses, and nearer home scattered cottages, and then the Hall, nestled under the hill. The smoke of chimneys was very blue and straight. There was a smell of hay in the air: there were wild roses on bushes hard by. It was the acme of summer.

  After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point out the leading features, the hills and valleys, and told where the towns and villages lay. "Now," he said, "with the glasses you'll be able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll."

  "Yes, yes," said Fanshawe. "I've got it. What a fine tower!"

  "You must have got the wrong direction," said the Squire; "there's not much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it's Old-bourne Church that you've got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower, you're easily pleased."

  "Well, I do call it a fine tower," said Fanshawe, the glasses still at his eyes, "whether it's Oldboume or any other. And it must belong to a largish church; it looks to me like a central tower—four big pinnacles at the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over there. How far is it?"

  "Oldboume's about nine miles, or less," said the Squire. "It's a
long time since I've been there, but I don't remember thinking much of it. Now I'll show you another thing."

  Fanshawe had lowered the glasses, and was still gazing in the Old-bourne direction. "No," he said, "I can't make out anything with the naked eye. What was it you were going to show me?"

  "A good deal more to the left—it oughtn't to be difficult to find. Do you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it? It's in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge."

  "I do," said Fanshawe, "and I believe I could tell you without much difficulty what it's called."

  "Could you now?" said the Squire. "Say on."

  "Why, Gallows Hill," was the answer.

  "How did you guess that?"

  "Well, if you don't want it guessed, you shouldn't put up a dummy gibbet and a man hanging on it."

  "What's that?" said the Squire abruptly. "There's nothing on that hill but wood."

  "On the contrary," said Fanshawe, "there's a largish expanse of grass on the top and your dummy gibbet in the middle; and I thought there was something on it when I looked first. But I see there's nothing—or is there? I can't be sure."

  "Nonsense, nonsense, Fanshawe, there's no such thing as a dummy gibbet, or any other sort, on that hill. And it's thick wood—a fairly young plantation. I was in it myself not a year ago. Hand me the glasses, though I don't suppose I can see anything." After a pause: "No, I thought not: they won't show a thing."

  Meanwhile Fanshawe was scanning the hill—it might be only two or three miles away. "Well, it's very odd," he said, "it does look exactly like a wood without the glass." He took it again. "That is one of the oddest effects. The gibbet is perfectly plain, and the grass field, and there even seem to be people on it, and carts, or a cart, with men in it. And yet when I take the glass away, there's nothing. It must- be something in the way this afternoon light falls: I shall come up earlier in the day when the sun's full on it."