A School Story

Two men in asmoking-room were talking of their private-school days. "Atour
school," said A., "we had a ghost's footmark on thestaircase. "

" What was it like?"

"Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with asquare toe, if I
remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard anystory about
the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Whydidn't somebody
invent one, I wonder?"

"You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythologyof their own.
There's a subject for you, by the way - "The Folklore ofPrivate Schools."

"Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if youwere to
investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which theboys at
private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be
highly-compressed versions of stories out of books."

"Nowadays the Strand and Pearson's, and so on, would beextensively drawn
upon."

"No doubt: they weren't born or thought of in my time. Let'ssee. I
wonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First,there was
the house with a room in which a series of people insisted onpassing a
night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in acorner, and
had just time to say, 'I've seen it,' and died."

"Wasn't that the house in Berkeley Square?"

"I dare say it was. Then there was the man who heard a noisein the
passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawlingtowards him on
all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There wasbesides, let me
think - Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with ahorseshoe
mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was coveredwith marks of
horseshoes also; I don't know why. Also there was the lady who,on locking
her bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice among the
bed-curtains say, 'Now we're shut in for the night.' None ofthose had any
explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, thosestories."

"Oh, likely enough - with additions from the magazines, as Isaid. You
never heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? Ithought not,
nobody has that ever I came across."

"From the way in which you said that, I gather that you have."

"I really don't know, but this is what was in my mind. Ithappened at my
private school thirty odd years ago, and I haven't anyexplanation of it.

"The school I mean was near London. It was established in alarge and
fairly old house - a great white building with very fine groundsabout it;
there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many ofthe older
gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three orfour fields
which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite anattractive
place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess anytolerable
features.

"I came to the school in a September, soon after the year1870; and among
the boys who arrived on the same day was one whom I took to: aHighland boy,
whom I will call McLeod. I needn't spend time in describing him:the main
thing is that I got to know him very well. He was not anexceptional boy in
any way - not particularly good at books or games - but he suitedme.

"The school was a large one: there must have been from 120to 130 boys
there as a rule, and so a considerable staff of masters wasrequired, and
there were rather frequent changes among them.

"One term - perhaps it was my third or fourth - a new mastermade his
appearance. His name was Sampson. He was a tallish, stoutish,pale,
black-bearded man. I think we liked him: he had travelled a gooddeal, and
had stories which amused us on our school walks, so that therewas some
competition among us to get within earshot of him. I remember too- dear me,
I have hardly thought of it since then - that he had a charm onhis
watch-chain that attracted my attention one day, and he let meexamine it.
It was, I now suppose, a gold Byzantine coin; there was an effigyof some
absurd emperor on one side; the other side had been wornpractically smooth,
and he had had cut on it - rather barbarously - his own initials,G.W.S.,
and a date, 24 July, 1865. Yes, I can see it now: he told me hehad picked
it up in Constantinople: it was about the size of a florin,perhaps rather
smaller.

"Well, the first odd thing that happened was this. Sampsonwas doing
Latin grammar with us. One of his favourite methods - perhaps itis rather a
good one - was to make us construct sentences out of our ownheads to
illustrate the rules he was trying to make us learn. Of coursethat is a
thing which gives a silly boy a chance of being impertinent:there are lots
of school stories in which that happens - or any-how there mightbe. But
Sampson was too good a disciplinarian for us to think of tryingthat on with
him. Now, on this occasion he was telling us how to expressremembering in
Latin: and he ordered us each to make a sentence bringing in theverb
memini, 'I remember.' Well, most of us made up some ordinarysentence such
as 'I remember my father,' or 'He remembers his book,' orsomething equally
uninteresting: and I dare say a good many put down memino librummeum, and
so forth: but the boy I mentioned - McLeod - was evidentlythinking of
something more elaborate than that. The rest of us wanted to haveour
sentences passed, and get on to something else, so some kickedhim under the
desk, and I, who was next to him, poked him and whispered to himto look
sharp. But he didn't seem to attend. I looked at his paper andsaw he had
put down nothing at all. So I jogged him again harder than beforeand
upbraided him sharply for keeping us all waiting. That did havesome effect.
He started and seemed to wake up, and then very quickly hescribbled about a
couple of lines on his paper, and showed it up with the rest. Asit was the
last, or nearly the last, to come in, and as Sampson had a gooddeal to say
to the boys who had written meminiscimus patri meo and the restof it, it
turned out that the clock struck twelve before he had got toMcLeod, and
McLeod had to wait afterwards to have his sentence corrected.There was
nothing much going on outside when I got out, so I waited for himto come.
He came very slowly when he did arrive, and I guessed there hadbeen some
sort of trouble. 'Well,' I said, 'what did you get?' 'Oh, I don'tknow,'
said McLeod, 'nothing much: but I think Sampson's rather sickwith me.'
'Why, did you show him up some rot?' 'No fear,' he said. 'It wasall right
as far as I could see: it was like this: Memento - that's rightenough for
remember, and it takes a genitive, - memento putei inter quatuortaxos.'
'What silly rot!' I said. 'What made you shove that down? Whatdoes it
mean?' 'That's the funny part,' said McLeod. 'I'm not quite surewhat it
does mean. All I know is, it just came into my head and I corkedit down. I
know what I think it means, because just before I wrote it down Ihad a sort
of picture of it in my head: I believe it means "Rememberthe well among the
four" - what are those dark sort of trees that have redberries on them?'
'Mountain ashes, I s'pose you mean.' 'I never heard of them,'said McLeod;
'no, I'll tell you - yews.' 'Well, and what did Sampson say?''Why, he was
jolly odd about it. When he read it he got up and went to themantel-piece
and stopped quite a long time without saying anything, with hisback to me.
And then he said, without turning round, and rather quiet, "Whatdo you
suppose that means?" I told him what I thought; only Icouldn't remember the
name of the silly tree: and then he wanted to know why I put itdown, and I
had to say something or other. And after that he left off talkingabout it,
and asked me how long I'd been here, and where my people lived,and things
like that: and then I came away: but he wasn't looking a bit well.'

"I don't remember any more that was said by either of usabout this. Next
day McLeod took to his bed with a chill or something of the kind,and it was
a week or more before he was in school again. And as much as amonth went by
without anything happening that was noticeable. Whether or not Mr.Sampson
was really startled, as McLeod had thought, he didn't show it. Iam pretty
sure, of course, now, that there was something very curious inhis past
history, but I'm not going to pretend that we boys were sharpenough to
guess any such thing.

"There was one other incident of the same kind as the lastwhich I told
you. Several times since that day we had had to make up examplesin school
to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any rowexcept when
we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we were goingthrough those
dismal things which people call Conditional Sentences, and wewere told to
make a conditional sentence, expressing a future consequence. Wedid it,
right or wrong, and showed up our bits of paper, and Sampsonbegan looking
through them. All at once he got up, made some odd sort of noisein his
throat, and rushed out by a door that was just by his desk. Wesat there for
a minute or two, and then - I suppose it was incorrect - but wewent up, I
and one or two others, to look at the papers on his desk. Ofcourse I
thought someone must have put down some nonsense or other, andSampson had
gone off to report him. All the same, I noticed that he hadn'ttaken any of
the papers with him when he ran out. Well, the top paper on thedesk was
written in red ink - which no one used - and it wasn't inanyone's hand who
was in the class. They all looked at it - McLeod and all - andtook their
dying oaths that it wasn't theirs. Then I thought of counting thebits of
paper. And of this I made quite certain: that there wereseventeen bits of
paper on the desk, and sixteen boys in the form. Well, I baggedthe extra
paper, and kept it, and I believe I have it now. And now you willwant to
know what was written on it. It was simple enough, and harmlessenough, I
should have said.

"'Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te,' which means, Isuppose, 'If
you don't come to me, I'll come to you.'"

"Could you show me the paper?" interrupted the listener.

"Yes, I could: but there's another odd thing about it. Thatsame
afternoon I took it out of my locker - I know for certain it wasthe same
bit, for I made a finger-mark on it and no single trace ofwriting of any
kind was there on it. I kept it, as I said, and since that time Ihave tried
various experiments to see whether sympathetic ink had been used,but
absolutely without result.

"So much for that. After about half an hour Sampson lookedin again: said
he had felt very unwell, and told us we might go. He came rathergingerly to
his desk, and gave just one look at the uppermost paper: and Isuppose he
thought he must have been dreaming: anyhow, he asked no questions.

"That day was a half-holiday, and next day Sampson was inschool again,
much as usual. That night the third and last incident in my storyhappened.

"We - McLeod and I - slept in a dormitory at right angles tothe main
building. Sampson slept in the main building on the first floor.There was a
very bright full moon. At an hour which I can't tell exactly, butsome time
between one and two, I was woken up by somebody shaking me. Itwas McLeod,
and a nice state of mind he seemed to be in. 'Come,' he said, -'come
there's a burglar getting in through Sampson's window.' As soonas I could
speak, I said, 'Well, why not call out and wake everybody up?'No, no,' he
said, 'I'm not sure who it is: don't make a row: come and look.'Naturally I
came and looked, and naturally there was no one there. I wascross enough,
and should have called McLeod plenty of names: only - I couldn'ttell why -
it seemed to me that there was something wrong - something thatmade me very
glad I wasn't alone to face it. We were still at the windowlooking out, and
as soon as I could, I asked him what he had heard or seen. 'Ididn't hear
anything at all,' he said, 'but about five minutes before I wokeyou, I
found myself looking out of this window here, and there was a mansitting or
kneeling on Sampson's window-sill, and looking in, and I thoughthe was
beckoning.' 'What sort of man?' McLeod wriggled. 'I don't know,'he said,
'but I can tell you one thing - he was beastly thin: and helooked as if he
was wet all over: and,' he said, looking round and whispering asif he
hardly liked to hear himself, 'I'm not at all sure that he wasalive.'

"We went on talking in whispers some time longer, andeventually crept
back to bed. No one else in the room woke or stirred the wholetime. I
believe we did sleep a bit afterwards, but we were very cheapnext day.

"And next day Mr. Sampson was gone: not to be found: and Ibelieve no
trace of him has ever come to light since. In thinking it over,one of the
oddest things about it all has seemed to me to be the fact thatneither
McLeod nor I ever mentioned what we had seen to any third personwhatever.
Of course no questions were asked on the subject, and if they hadbeen, I am
inclined to believe that we could not have made any answer: weseemed unable
to speak about it.

"That is my story," said the narrator. "The onlyapproach to a ghost
story connected with a school that I know, but still, I think, anapproach
to such a thing."

* * * * *

The sequel to this may perhaps be reckoned highly conventional;but a
sequel there is, and so it must be produced. There had been morethan one
listener to the story, and, in the latter part of that same year,or of the
next, one such listener was staying at a country house in Ireland.

One evening his host was turning over a drawer full of odds andends in
the smoking-room. Suddenly he put his hand upon a little box."Now," he
said, "you know about old things; tell me what that is."My friend opened
the little box, and found in it a thin gold chain with an objectattached to
it. He glanced at the object and then took off his spectacles toexamine it
more narrowly. "What's the history of this?" he asked."Odd enough," was the
answer. "You know the yew thicket in the shrubbery: well, ayear or two back
we were cleaning out the old well that used to be in the clearinghere, and
what do you suppose we found?"

"Is it possible that you found a body?" said thevisitor, with an odd
feeling of nervousness.

"We did that: but what's more, in every sense of the word,we found two."

"Good Heavens! Two? Was there anything to show how they gotthere? Was
this thing found with them?"

"It was. Amongst the rags of the clothes that were on one ofthe bodies.
A bad business, whatever the story of it may have been. One bodyhad the
arms tight round the other. They must have been there thirtyyears or more -
long enough before we came to this place. You may judge we filledthe well
up fast enough. Do you make anything of what's cut on that goldcoin you
have there?"

"I think I can," said my friend, holding it to thelight (but he read it
without much difficulty); "it seems to be G.W.S., 24 July,1865."