Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James by M.R. James Page B

Mr. Williams’s college was at seven. It need not be dwelled upon. The less so as he met there colleagues who had been playing golf during the afternoon, and words with which we have no concern were freely bandied across the table—merely golfing words, I would hasten to explain.
    I suppose an hour or more to have been spent in what is called common-room after dinner. Later in the evening some few retired to Williams’s rooms, and I have little doubt that whist was played and tobacco smoked.
    During a lull in these operations Williams picked up the mezzotint from the table without looking at it, and handed it to a person mildly interested in art, telling him where it had come from, and the other particulars which we already know.
    The gentleman took it carelessly, looked at it, then said, in a tone of some interest:
    “It’s really a very good piece of work, Williams. It has quite a feeling of the romantic period. The light is admirably managed, it seems to me, and the figure, though it’s rather too grotesque, is somehow very impressive.”
    “Yes, isn’t it?” said Williams, who was just then busy giving whisky-and-soda to others of the company, and was unable to come across the room to look at the view again.
    It was by this time rather late in the evening, and the visitors were on the move. After they went Williams was obliged to write a letter or two and clear up some odd bits of work. At last, sometime past midnight, he was disposed to turn in, and he put out his lamp after lighting his bedroom candle.
    The picture lay face upward on the table where the last man who looked at it had put it, and it caught his eye as he turned the lamp down. What he saw made him very nearly drop the candle on the floor, and he declares nowthat if he had been left in the dark at that moment he would have had a fit. But, as that did not happen he was able to put down the light on the table and take a good look at the picture.
    It was indubitable—rankly impossible, no doubt, but absolutely certain. In the middle of the lawn in front of the unknown house there was a figure where no figure had been at five o’clock that afternoon.
    It was crawling on all-fours toward the house, and it was muffled in a strange black garment with a white cross on the back.
    I do not know what is the ideal course to pursue in a situation of this kind. I can only tell you what Mr. Williams did.
    He took the picture by one corner and carried it across the passage to a second set of rooms which he possessed. There he locked it up in a drawer, bolted the doors of both sets of rooms, and retired to bed. But first he wrote out and signed an account of the extraordinary change which the picture had undergone since it had come into his possession.
    Sleep visited him rather late, but it was consoling to reflect that the behavior of the picture did not depend upon his own unsupported testimony. Evidently the man who had looked at it the night before had seen something of the same kind as he had, otherwise he might have been tempted to think that something gravely wrong was happening either to his eyes or his mind.
    This possibility being fortunately precluded, two matters awaited him on the morrow. He must take stock of the picture very carefully, and call in a witness for the purpose, and he must make a determined effort to ascertain what house it was that was represented.
    He would therefore ask his neighbor Nisbet to breakfast with him, and he would subsequently spend a morning over the gazetteer.
    Nisbet was disengaged, and arrived about 9:30. His host was not quite dressed, I am sorry to say, even at this late hour.
    During breakfast nothing was said about the mezzotint by Williams, save that he had a picture on which he wished for Nisbet’s opinion. But those who are familiar with University life can picture for themselves the wide and delightful range of subjects over which the conversation of two Fellows of Canterbury College is likely to extend during