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

keeping the old man from his
déjeuner
, that he was regarded as likely to make away with St. Bertrand’s ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font, began to torment him.
    “Won’t you go home?” he said at last; “I’m quite well able to finish my notes alone. You can lock me in if you like. I shall want at least two hours more here, and it must be cold for you, isn’t it?”
    “Good Heavens!” said the little man, whom the suggestion seemed to throw into a state of unaccountable terror, “such a thing cannot be thought of for a moment. Leave
monsieur
alone in the church? No, no. Two hours, three hours, all will be the same to me. I have breakfasted, I am not at all cold, with many thanks to
monsieur
.”
    “Very well, my little man,” quoth Dennistoun to himself. “You have been warned, and you must take the consequences.”
    Before the expiration of the two hours, the stalls, the enormous dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon, the remnants of glass and tapestry, and the objects in the treasure-chamber, had been well and truly examined—the sacristan still keeping at Dennistoun’s heels, andevery now and then whipping around as if he had been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they were sometimes.
    “Once,” Dennistoun said to me, “I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips.
    “‘It is he—that is—it is no one. The door is locked,’ was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute.”
    Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was examining a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand. The composition of the picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below, which runs thus:
    Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat strangulare.
    (How St. Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long sought to strangle.)
    Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.
    Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question would not away from him, “Why should a daub of this kind affect anyone so strongly?” He seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to the reason of the strange look that had been puzzling him all the day. The man must be a monomaniac, but what was his monomania?
    It was nearly five o’clock. The short day was drawing in, and the church began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible all day—seemed, no doubt because of the fading light and the consequently quickened sense of hearing, to become more frequent and insistent.
    The sacristan began for the first time to show signs of hurry and impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when camera and notebook were finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned Dennistoun tothe western door of the church, under the tower.
    It was time to ring the Angelus. A few pulls at the reluctant rope, and the great bell Bertrande, high in the tower, began to speak, and swung her voice up among the pines and down to the valleys, loud with mountain-streams, calling the dwellers on those lonely hills to remember and repeat the salutation of the angel to her whom he called Blessed among women.
    With that a profound quiet seemed to fall for the first time that day upon the little town, and Dennistoun and the sacristan went out of the church.
    On the doorstep they fell into conversation.
    “
Monsieur
seemed to interest himself in the old