Of course, the Vicar was incapable of a plain yes or no. He covered the postcard with his unformed finicky little writing. But what he said was something to this effect:
The footsteps were undoubtedly heard (according to the saint’s biographer) by many witnesses, so there is no doubt of their reality, but no one but he appreciated their diabolical nature.
With this information I approached my housekeeper, and I asked her without any concealment whether she had noticed the queer way things echoed in the flat, whether in fact it was only my imagination that along with my own footsteps I seemed to hear others as though somebody were following me when there was no other man in the flat. She was a good deal less surprised than I had expected. Perhaps she had read the Vicar’s postcard, more likely she had noticed there was something on my mind and thought I was letting myself be bothered by trifles. At any rate, she is an intelligent woman and she gave a rational explanation. She had, she admitted, noticed that one heard strange footsteps in the flat, when there was no one there except ourselves, but it had never worried her as it might have done if she had heard them when I was out, that one did often hear them in old houses, especially on the staircases, and that she had been told it caused by the boards springing back into position, when they had been trodden upon by someone who walked particularly heavily.
It was exactly the answer I had expected. I did not tell her about the footsteps I had heard coming along the seashore. She could not have explained them away so easily.
And now I come to write the conclusion of the story, for it is New Year’s Eve, St Sylvester’s Day as they seem to have called it in the Middle Ages. I am staying in all alone in my flat—though there is no need to give a reason for staying in with the wind and the rain pouring down outside, but I am staying up, not to see the New Year in—for I shall never see the New Year—but because I know there is something which I may as well stay up for, since in the end I must go to the door and face it. It was on St Sylvester’s Day that St Wilfred of Wilbraham had at last to turn and see the pursuer that had dogged his footsteps all the year.
Twice already tonight I have heard those same footsteps that he knew so well and that I know so well, not merely following easily behind, but coming up the steps to see me. Twice I have heard a knock upon the door, the way door-knockers sound when there is no real person knocking, and they have gone away again down the stairs. They are not impatient, for they know very well that the third time they come I must go to the door and open it to their knock. Perhaps after all there is nothing mysterious in it, only some caller to ask for a Christmas box or demand payment of a rate—perhaps it is a thief intending to break into the flat, once he is sure it is quite empty, though if it is it will go hardly with him for I shall be armed—but if it is what I know very well that it will be, then I still have my automatic pistol; I shall not have to run like St Wilfred of Wilbraham for miles till I find a river to hide myself for so long as may be from my pursuers.
CHRISTMAS RE-UNION
Andrew Caldecott
Sir Andrew Caldecott (1884–1951) was a distinguished civil servant who spent many years in Malaya. He used this setting, under the fictional name of Kongea, to good effect in many of the ghost stories which he wrote following his retirement. Other tales in his two books, Not Exactly Ghosts (1947) and Fires Burn Blue (1948), are more characteristically Jamesian, and ‘Christmas Re-union’ from the former collection pays James the compliment of incorporating one of the plot ideas from his ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’ (Collected Ghost Stories). The resulting story is not unlike L. P. Hartley’s classic, ‘A Visitor from Down Under’.
‘I cannot explain what exactly it is about him; but I don’t like your Mr Clarence Love, and I’m sorry that you ever asked him to stay.’
Thus Richard Dreyton to his wife Elinor on the morning of Christmas Eve.
‘But one must remember the children, Richard. You know what marvellous presents he gives them.’
‘Much too marvellous. He spoils them. Yet you’ll have noticed that none of them likes him. Children have a wonderful intuition in regard to the character of grown-ups.’
‘What on earth are you hinting about his character? He’s a very nice man.’
Dreyton shuffled off his slippers in front of the study fire and began putting on his boots.
‘I wonder, darling, whether you noticed his face just now, at breakfast, when he opened that letter with the Australian stamps on?’
‘Yes; he did seem a bit upset: but not more so than you when you get my dressmaker’s bill!’
Mrs Dreyton accompanied this sally with a playful pat on her husband’s back as he leant forward to do up his laces.
‘Well, Elinor, all that I can say is that there’s something very fishy about his antipodean history. At five-and-twenty, he left England a penniless young man and, hey-presto! he returns a stinking plutocrat at twenty-eight. And how? What he’s told you doesn’t altogether tally with what he’s told me; but, cutting out the differences, his main story is that he duly contacted old Nelson Joy, his maternal uncle, whom he went out to join, and that they went off together, prospecting for gold. They struck it handsomely; and then the poor old uncle gets a heart-stroke or paralysis, or something, in the bush, and bids Clarence leave him there to die and get out himself before the food gives out. Arrived back in Sydney, Clarence produces a will under which he is the sole beneficiary, gets the Court to presume old Joy’s death, and bunks back here with the loot.’
Mrs Dreyton frowned. ‘I can see nothing wrong or suspicious about the story,’ she said, ‘but only in your telling of it.’
‘No! No! In his telling of it. He never gets the details quite the same twice running, and I’m certain that he gave a different topography to their prospecting expedition this year from what he did last. It’s my belief that he did the uncle in, poor old chap!’
‘Don’t be so absurd, Richard; and please remember that he’s our guest, and that we must be hospitable: especially at Christmas. Which reminds me: on your way to office, would you mind looking in at Harridge’s and making sure that they haven’t forgotten our order for their Santa Claus tomorrow? He’s to be here at seven; then to go on to the Simpsons at seven-thirty, and to end up at the Joneses at eight. It’s lucky our getting three households to share the expenses: Harridge’s charge each of us only half their catalogued fee. If they could possibly send us the same Father Christmas as last year it would be splendid. The children adored him. Don’t forget to say, too, that he will find all the crackers, hats, musical toys and presents inside the big chest in the hall. Just the same as last year. What should we do nowadays without the big stores? One goes to them for everything.’
‘We certainly do,’ Dreyton agreed; ‘and I can’t see the modern child putting up with the amateur Father Christmas we used to suffer from. I shall never forget the annual exhibition Uncle Bertie used to make of himself, or the slippering I got when I stuck a darning-needle into his behind under pretence that I wanted to see if he was real! Well, so long, old girclass="underline" no, I won’t forget to call in at Harridge’s.’
By the time the festive Christmas supper had reached the dessert stage, Mrs Dreyton fully shared her husband’s regret that she had ever asked Clarence Love to be of the party. The sinister change that had come over him on receipt of the letter from Australia became accentuated on the later arrival of a telegram which, he said, would necessitate his leaving towards the end of the evening to catch the eight-fifteen northbound express from King’s Pancras. His valet had already gone ahead with the luggage and, as it had turned so foggy, he had announced his intention of following later by Underground, in order to avoid the possibility of being caught in a traffic-jam.