A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost Stories — John Shaqi
A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost StoriesJames, M. R. (Montague Rhodes)
General
A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost Stories
James, M. R. (Montague Rhodes)
English fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories, English; Short stories, English
So much for the elder Mr Philipson’s paper. To those who, like myself,
are readers of the State Trials it will have gone far to illuminate
the situation. They will remember how between the years 1678 and 1684
the Lady Ivy, formerly Theodosia Bryan, was alternately Plaintiff and
Defendant in a series of trials in which she was trying to establish
a claim against the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s for a considerable
and very valuable tract of land in Shadwell: how in the last of those
trials, presided over by L.C.J. Jeffreys, it was proved up to the hilt
that the deeds upon which she based her claim were forgeries executed
under her orders: and how, after an information for perjury and forgery
was issued against her, she disappeared completely--so completely,
indeed, that no expert has ever been able to tell me what became of her.
Does not the story I have told suggest that she may still be heard of
on the scene of one of her earlier and more successful exploits?
* * * * *
“That,” said my friend, as he folded up his papers, “is a very faithful
record of my one extraordinary experience. And now----”
But I had so many questions to ask him, as for instance, whether his
friend had found the proper owner of the land, whether he had done
anything about the hedge, whether the sounds were ever heard now, what
was the exact title and date of his pamphlet, etc., etc., that bed-time
came and passed, without his having an opportunity to revert to the
Literary Supplement of the _Times_.
A VIEW FROM A HILL
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 particularise further
than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters,
he would have been found in the south-western 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 enquiry 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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