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THE KIND ACTION OF
MR. ROBINSON
WE had been telling ghost stories, not
an unusual occupation in these days of superstition or of psychic activity,
whichever the reader pleases. The guests of the evening had left. I was paying
a visit of a few days, and I and my host, Mr. Redmayne, a man of sixty-eight,
sat and smoked our last pipes by the fire.
Our
talk wandered in a desultory manner over various things, and then we harked
back to the ghost stories we had heard.
“It’s
odd to me,” said Mr. Redmayne, “that you younger men should attach
any value to these things. We told ghost stories to amuse ourselves, work
ourselves up into a happy condition of horrible fear, but there was an end of
it. You are all hoping to find clues, apparently; clues to what, I can’t quite
make out. Anyhow, I’ll show you something, and you can tell me what clue you
find there.”
Mr.
Redmayne went to his desk, opened it, took out a small green leather
pocket-book and a bundle of papers, and handed the pocket-book to me.
“Read
out what’s in it,” he said, “there isn’t very much.”
There were only six entries, written in
the excellent ink possessed by our forefathers. They were these :—
Dec. 19th, 1780. Mr. Robinson lent me £500.
Dec. 18th, 1790. First reminder.
Dec. 18th, 1800. Second reminder. Voice of Mr. Robinson.
Dec. 18th, 1810. Third reminder. Appearance of Mr. Robinson in passage, his back towards me.
Dec. 18th, 1820. Fourth reminder. Appearance of Mr. Robinson in passage, his face towards me.
Dec. 18th, 1830. Fifth reminder. Appearance of Mr. Robinson standing by my side.
“May
God Almighty help me!”
“Well, what do you say to that? “
“I
don’t quite know what I am expected to say. Is it automatic writing? “
“Oh
no, none of that claptrap. These words were written by a Mr. Charles Marsden in
his own person. I can vouch for his existence. My mother saw him once when she
was a child, and his niece, Mrs. Field, was a special friend and also a cousin
of my grandmother, my mother’s mother. He showed that pocket-book to Mrs. Field
and explained the contents, and at his death it came into her possession, and
she gave it to my grandmother shortly before her death, with other personal
things. She had no children, and her money was to go to a nephew in America she
had never seen. As to the papers, it was only a few months ago when I was
sorting out rubbish, the accumulation of more than a century, which ought to
have been sorted out long before, that I came across them. I don’t think my
mother, or my grandmother either, knew of their existence; at any rate my
mother never spoke of them. They are an explanation of the entries in the
pocket-book; you shall look at them afterwards. Have you any further remarks to
make about the pocket-book?”
“Only
that I observe the first five entries are written in a good clear hand, and the
last feebly. But, as there is an interval of fifty years between the first and
last entry, this might be accounted for by old age.”
“Yes,
Marsden was a man of seventy-two when he wrote the last entry, and he died the
next day. It’s not really very late, and the story is not very long, so if you
like to hear it, you shall.”
I
said I should like to hear it, and Mr. Redmayne proceeded:
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