"'Oh them flies, how bad they was, Doctor and Miss, this three or four
days: and you, too, sir, you wouldn't guess, none of you! And how they
come, too! First we took the room in hand, the shutters was up, and
had been, I daresay, years upon years, and not a fly to be seen. Then
we got the shutter bars down with a deal of trouble and left it so for
the day, and next day I sent Susan in with the broom to sweep about,
and not two minutes hadn't passed when out she come into the hall like
a blind thing, and we had regular to beat them off her. Why her cap
and her hair, you couldn't see the colour of it, I do assure you, and
all clustering round her eyes, too. Fortunate enough she's not a girl
with fancies, else if it had been me, why only the tickling of the
nasty things would have drove me out of my wits. And now there they
lay like so many dead things. Well, they was lively enough on the
Monday, and now here's Thursday, is it, or no, Friday. Only to come
near the door and you'd hear them pattering up against it, and once
you opened it, dash at you, they would, as if they'd eat you. I
couldn't help thinking to myself, "If you was bats, where should we be
this night?" Nor you can't cresh 'em, not like a usual kind of a fly. Well, there's something to be thankful for, if we could but learn by
it. And then this tomb, too,' she said, hastening on to her second
point to elude any chance of interruption, 'of them two poor young
lads. I say poor, and yet when I recollect myself, I was at tea with
Mrs. Simpkins, the sexton's wife, before you come, Doctor and Miss
Mary, and that's a family has been in the place, what? I daresay a
hundred years in that very house, and could put their hand on any tomb
or yet grave in all the yard and give you name and age. And his
account of that young man, Mr. Simpkins's I mean to say--_well_!' She
compressed her lips and nodded several times. 'Tell us, Mrs. Maple,'
said Mary. 'Go on,' said Uncle Oldys. 'What about him?' said I. 'Never was such a thing seen in this place, not since Queen Mary's
times and the Pope and all,' said Mrs. Maple. 'Why, do you know he
lived in this very house, him and them that was with him, and for all
I can tell in this identical room' (she shifted her feet uneasily on
the floor). 'Who was with him? Do you mean the people of the house?' said Uncle Oldys suspiciously. 'Not to call people, Doctor, dear no,'
was the answer; 'more what he brought with him from Ireland, I believe
it was. No, the people in the house was the last to hear anything of
his goings-on. But in the town not a family but knew how he stopped
out at night: and them that was with him, why they were such as would
strip the skin from the child in its grave; and a withered heart makes
an ugly thin ghost, says Mr. Simpkins. But they turned on him at the
last, he says, and there's the mark still to be seen on the minster
door where they run him down. And that's no more than the truth, for I
got him to show it to myself, and that's what he said. A lord he was,
with a Bible name of a wicked king, whatever his godfathers could have
been thinking of.' 'Saul was the name,' said Uncle Oldys. 'To be sure
it was Saul, Doctor, and thank you; and now isn't it King Saul that we
read of raising up the dead ghost that was slumbering in its tomb till
he disturbed it, and isn't that a strange thing, this young lord to
have such a name, and Mr. Simpkins's grandfather to see him out of his
window of a dark night going about from one grave to another in the
yard with a candle, and them that was with him following through the
grass at his heels: and one night him to come right up to old Mr.
Simpkins's window that gives on the yard and press his face up against
it to find out if there was any one in the room that could see him:
and only just time there was for old Mr. Simpkins to drop down like,
quiet, just under the window and hold his breath, and not stir till he
heard him stepping away again, and this rustling-like in the grass
after him as he went, and then when he looked out of his window in the
morning there was treadings in the grass and a dead man's bone. Oh, he
was a cruel child for certain, but he had to pay in the end, and
after.' 'After?' said Uncle Oldys, with a frown. 'Oh yes, Doctor,
night after night in old Mr. Simpkins's time, and his son, that's our
Mr. Simpkins's father, yes, and our own Mr. Simpkins too. Up against
that same window, particular when they've had a fire of a chilly
evening, with his face right on the panes, and his hands fluttering
out, and his mouth open and shut, open and shut, for a minute or more,
and then gone off in the dark yard. But open the window at such times,
no, that they dare not do, though they could find it in their heart to
pity the poor thing, that pinched up with the cold, and seemingly
fading away to a nothink as the years passed on. Well, indeed, I
believe it is no more than the truth what our Mr. Simpkins says on his
own grandfather's word, "A withered heart makes an ugly thin ghost."' 'I daresay,' said Uncle Oldys suddenly: so suddenly that Mrs. Maple
stopped short. 'Thank you. Come away, all of you.' 'Why, _Uncle_,'
said Mary, 'are you not going to open the press after all?' Uncle
Oldys blushed, actually blushed. 'My dear,' he said, 'you are at
liberty to call me a coward, or applaud me as a prudent man, whichever
you please. But I am neither going to open that press nor that chest
of drawers myself, nor am I going to hand over the keys to you or to
any other person. Mrs. Maple, will you kindly see about getting a man
or two to move those pieces of furniture into the garret?' 'And when
they do it, Mrs. Maple,' said Mary, who seemed to me--I did not then
know why--more relieved than disappointed by her uncle's decision, 'I
have something that I want put with the rest; only quite a small
packet.' "We left that curious room not unwillingly, I think. Uncle Oldys's
orders were carried out that same day. And so," concludes Mr.
Spearman, "Whitminster has a Bluebeard's chamber, and, I am rather
inclined to suspect, a Jack-in-the-box, awaiting some future occupant
of the residence of the senior prebendary." FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Apparently the ichneumon fly (_Ophion obscurum_), and not
the true sawfly, is meant.] THE DIARY OF MR. POYNTER




THE DIARY OF MR. POYNTER


The sale-room of an old and famous firm of book auctioneers in London
is, of course, a great meeting-place for collectors, librarians,
dealers: not only when an auction is in progress, but perhaps even
more notably when books that are coming on for sale are upon view. It
was in such a sale-room that the remarkable series of events began
which were detailed to me not many months ago by the person whom they
principally affected, namely, Mr. James Denton, M.A., F.S.A., etc.,
etc., some time of Trinity Hall, now, or lately, of Rendcomb Manor in
the county of Warwick.