Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M. R. James

THE SAINT AND THE VICAR Cecil Binney

Cecil Binney (1897–1963) was another old Etonian who turned out some ghost stories under the probable influence of M. R. James. He used the pseudonym ‘Ambrose Hoopington’ for some of his tales in Truth and the Cornhill, but the story reprinted here first appeared under his own name in the anthology Fifty Years of Ghost Stories (1935). Binney was a barrister for many years, and he published several books on crime including The Divorce Court and Crime and Abnormality.

‘And now,’ said the Vicar, ‘I must show you our most interesting relic, the shrine of Saint Wilfred of Wilbraham, or rather the ruins of it.’

‘Tm afraid I am wasting all your afternoon,’ I began.

‘Not at all,’ said the vicar, ‘I shall enjoy showing it to you.’

Of course he would. There was obviously nothing he enjoyed more than boring casual strangers who permitted him to show them round the parish. Perhaps it would have been a pleasant way of spending the day for anyone who was particularly interested in ecclesiastical architecture, but I am not. I had only gone down to this remote village because an aunt of mine wished me to see about a monument to some of her relations which happened to be in the church, and I could have said everything I needed to say to the Vicar in five minutes. But like a fool I had accepted his offer to show me round, and this was the result. The church did not appear to be particularly old or particularly interesting, but the Vicar had taken nearly three-quarters of an hour to show it to me, and, when I thought my visit was at an end, he insisted on taking me on to the old church.

Apparently the original Wilbraham Church had been burnt down towards the end of the Middle Ages, and instead of rebuilding it they had erected the present church on a completely different site.

That may have constituted an interesting departure from custom but it did not improve the ruins of the old church which consisted, so far as I could see, of a perfectly ordinary Norman Arch and some blocks of rubble overgrown with ivy. And now, having seen that, I was to be taken to see something else of the same description at the opposite end of the village.

‘Is it far from here?’ I asked. With strangers I have often used my lameness as a pretext to get out of such excursions. But, unfortunately, the Vicar must in our walk through the village have noticed that for practical purposes I was a better walker than he was, and I could think of no other excuse. I could not say I had a train to catch, for the Vicar had seen me driving up in my car.

‘About three-quarters of a mile,’ he said. ‘It is rather a pleasant walk across the meadows. And on the way I can tell you the story, or legend, of the saint.’

With the best intentions in the world, the Vicar was an intolerable bore. He was pedantic rather than learned; as he talked, he gave me the impression of knowing, like a cathedral guide, little beyond what he had learned up in order to tell the story of his parish, and of never having read the books to which he so glibly referred.

‘Saint Wilfred of Wilbraham,’ he began, rather as though he were preaching at a children’s service, ‘is our local saint. He has of course nothing to do with the great Saint Wilfred of Ripon. At one time, I believe, it was thought that the parish was called after him, but this theory is frowned upon by modern scholars. He was, as you will have gathered from his name, a Saxon saint; but, unlike most of the Saxon saints, he was an ascetic and a visionary. He came to live here in a cell. In those days the land from here down to the river was marshland and inaccessible.’ I felt I could well believe it, for the footpath along which we walked was extremely wet and muddy. ‘In it Saint Wilfred lived the life of a hermit, and was afflicted with the terrors of the Nitrian desert. You know the kind of thing which one sees in the grotesque pictures of the temptation of Saint Anthony: there are also very full accounts of them in the various Lives of the saints’—from the way he skipped over these I felt convinced he had no idea where they were to be found—‘while in a more rationalist spirit they are described by Gibbon, or perhaps even better by Lecky, in his History of European Morals, a work with which you are doubtless familiar.’

‘I have never read it.’

‘Well, he gives a very good summary of them from an ultra-Protestant point of view, attributing them of course to the effects of loneliness, privation, and religious hallucination. Briefly, one might say that there were two kinds of demon which tormented the saints, those which took on an alluring shape to tempt the ascetic to sin, and those which were merely malevolent, plaguing him in the form of ghosts or hobgoblins or mythological monsters. Saint Wilfred was grievously afflicted by one of the first kind. His biography, which, it must be admitted, dates from two centuries after his supposed death, recounts how a young woman of surpassing beauty and of a charm and intelligence equal to her looks appeared at the door of his cell and asked him in God’s name for shelter, She had dark hair and a face like an angel and she wore jewelled rings on her ears and fingers and a marvellous garment of cloth of gold, embroidered with magical letterings—Greek, no doubt. In spite of the saint’s tears and protests she continued to live there for many years, trying to ensnare him with temptations of every kind, which the monastic biographer described with great particularity.’

‘What did they consist of?’

‘Unfortunately,’ said the Vicar, ‘the details are lost. Saint Wulfstan, thinking they would cause scandal rather than edification, had the pages devoted to them cut out of the manuscript. I believe it is still to be seen in the cathedral library, deliberately mutilated in this manner.’

I felt thoroughly annoyed with the Vicar. I did not believe the story about St Wulfstan, and thought he had been consciously making fun of me. I showed no particular interest and let him resume his narrative.

‘At last the temptation became almost intolerable for the saint to bear; and he prayed that it might pass from him, that, if he was to be tormented by a devil, it should appear rather in its proper hideous shape as the enemy of man or a roaring lion seeking whom it might devour, but that the too beautiful lady might be removed.’

‘Most of us would wish exactly the opposite,’ I said, rather rudely as my companion was a clergyman.

‘He did not wish—he prayed,’ said the Vicar, and for the first time I saw a curious look in his eyes. I have often noticed that many elderly clergymen in the country get into a state in which it would not be right to say they are off their heads, but in which they are quite different from the ordinary sane man of the world. I suspected that the Vicar was approaching this condition.

‘And his prayer was answered,’ he went on, exactly as though he were preaching a sermon. ‘The lady no longer pursued him, but instead he suffered from an invisible adversary whose steps he could hear following him when he went in or out of his cell. There were also terrific storms of rain which must have made it uninhabitable. And the saint rejoiced, for he could bear to be torn in pieces by a devil or swept away by the storm, so long as he did not fall into sin. Thus it continued till the end of the year, and then on Saint Sylvester’s Day, New Year’s Eve, that is, the devil met him face to face, and the saint fled before him, till he reached the river, where, being unable to cross, he plunged into the stream, and perished.’

‘Nowadays,’ I said, ‘we should say he went mad from living alone till one day he committed suicide by drowning himself.’

‘In the Middle Ages they thought differently. For hundreds of years he was venerated as a saint and martyr. In particular, the young women of the district made pilgrimages to his shrine which was rebuilt in the thirteenth century—at least the present ruins date from that period. There is no trace of any Saxon work. As in many other matters the Reformation altered things for the worse, and instead of being sacred the shrine was regarded as haunted. No doubt that explains the survival of the steps, which one might have expected to be used for building, for they are of excellent stone, which has evidently been brought from some distance.’

‘I am glad to say I am not frightened of ghosts,’ I answered.

‘Then I hope you will not mind entering the haunted house alone, for I always find that going down into the ruin has a bad effect on my rheumatism. I don’t know if it is particularly damp or what.’

‘Perhaps it was rheumatism which really drove the saint to despair and death,’ I said flippantly.

‘Perhaps it was. But I hardly think so.’

The shrine, which we had now reached, was no more worth visiting than the ruins of the old church, for it consisted of little more than a hole in the ground into which descended a flight of well-preserved stone steps. I went down them rather carefully, for they were wet and moss-grown. In spite of his words I could have sworn that the Vicar was following me, till I reached the floor and, looking up, saw him gazing down upon me with a rather mocking expression. I felt sorry if I had annoyed him, for he meant well.

There was nothing particular to look at and I commenced to return up the stairs. Then I realized the cause of my mistake: below ground there was an extraordinarily clear echo, so that every step I took I seemed to hear an invisible person following me. No doubt that explained why the rustics had thought the place haunted. But it was curious that when I made some remark to the Vicar my voice did not seem to echo in the same way. I could not resist going once again down the steps and up again.

And then I noticed a very peculiar thing. It was not an echo in the ordinary sense of the word. Having an ear for rhythm, I am acutely conscious of the different sounds made by my own footfalls and by those of a person who does not limp and this is particularly obvious upon a staircase, as I unconsciously descend upon my stronger foot. Yet as I went haltingly, slowly, and cautiously down the stairs, the footsteps echoing behind me were firm and even. It was uncanny. I was quite glad to get back to the surface and the company of the Vicar. I am not superstitious, but I am not at all sure that I should have cared to walk back alone to the village through the gathering dusk, quite apart from the difficulty of finding the way over the muddy fields.

‘I hope you will come and have a little tea with me,’ said the Vicar. ‘Probably you have lost your bearings, but it is actually only a few minutes’ walk to the vicarage from here.’

‘I really ought to be starting back to London——’ I began.

‘But you must have tea somewhere,’ he said, as though the argument was unanswerable. ‘Besides, it is coming on to rain and you will not want to start till the shower is over. It rains very heavily in this part of the world when it does rain.’

He gave me permission to put my car in the little vicarage stable, while he went in to make tea. It was as well that I did so, for by the time I had got it safely under cover it was pelting with rain. To avoid being soaked, I had to run across the little yard and along the tiled pathway to the house. And once again I noticed a very peculiar thing. Behind me, as I ran, I could hear footsteps, not the echo of my own steps but the slow measured steps of someone who does not hurry because he knows he must arrive in time. And yet there was nobody: when I got indoors, I found the Vicar placidly boiling a kettle upon a little spirit stove. Everything else seemed to be laid out ready for tea.

I could not help asking him if he was married. He shook his head.

‘Do you live all by yourself?’

‘Practically so.’

‘Don’t you find it rather lonely?’

‘I have my church to look after and my parishioners.’

This man whom at first I had regarded as a harmless bore seemed now to have taken on a sinister interest, which was increased by the surroundings—the Vicar’s study was furnished principally with bookcases and religious pictures, and lighted only by candles, while outside the rain beat upon the lattice windows and the wind howled in the tree-tops. I felt as the great detective in a detective story must feel when he suddenly realizes that the harmless lunatic or the old professor, or for that matter why not say ‘the Vicar’, is leader of the international drug-traffickers and, of course, armed to the teeth.

As far as I remember, he went on telling me about the parish church. I certainly did not feel like asking him any more about St Wilfred of Wilbraham, and in any case I was far more interested in the man himself than in anything that he said. The more I looked at him the more uncanny and ghost-like he seemed. When I finally went away and the Vicar walked with me to the stable I was quite surprised to find that the only footsteps audible were his and my own. And yet I do not know why I should particularly associate these curious footsteps with the Vicar, for I was never actually in his company when I heard them. But I had evidently worked myself into a queer state of mind, for I must admit, idiot as it sounds, that when I had got miles away from the vicarage on the main road to Oxford, I could not resist stopping the car for a few minutes to make sure there were not footsteps following me along the road.

The foregoing account I composed the morning after my return. Indeed, after writing to my aunt, it was the first thing I did—for it happened to be a Sunday morning and I had nothing particular to do. I was determined to put down all the relevant incidents while they were fresh in my mind and as they had struck me at the time, and to tell the story with such artistry as I could command, since I anticipated that it would be the only occasion in my conventional existence when I should be able to tell—what all the world who know no better, desire to tell—a first-hand ghost story. For, of course, I imagined that the story had come to its end. The present record is made in very different circumstances. All attempt at style or narrative skill has vanished. I am merely trying to describe as shortly as I can what I had far rather not have to describe, but what should not in the interest of others remain a secret. At least it is accurate, for I particularly made a note at the time they occurred of the manifestations or symptoms, as I suppose one would call them if, like Lecky, or whoever it was, one regards it as mere insanity.

It was on the Sunday, the very next day after my return, the day I wrote the former narrative, that I realized that the footsteps had not left me. I had been for a short walk, posted the letter to my aunt, and just as it was getting dark I was returning home to tea, when, walking up the stone stairs, I plainly heard behind me the same footsteps, which I had heard before, following me once again with the same insistent slowness and lack of hurry up the four flights of stairs, through the door-way and along the passage to my room. And since then I have never got rid of them. I do not mean they are always there. If they were, it would be better, for I could regard them more easily as a mere nervous affliction like a continual buzzing of the ears. In the broad daylight I do not hear them, nor when I am walking with a companion, but at uncertain times, particularly as I walk about the flat at night, or when I come up the stairs about sunset, they are following me. In the summer it was better, but I was never entirely rid of them: nor is it any use going away from London. They are attached to me, not to any particular place. Once when I was at the seaside and went for a walk along the shore in the evening as it got dark, I could hear them following behind me, crunching down the shingle, never tripping over it as I did, coming on slowly but inevitably.

I do not know that it makes it any better to say it is all an illusion. I admit that I am in some ways a nervous man. At one time, for example, I became excessively apprehensive of burglars, and even bought myself an automatic pistol; until I came to realize there was nothing of sufficient value in my flat to tempt a serious burglar. Perhaps, therefore, my fear of burglars was no more reasonable than a fear of ghosts. Yet there is something, as I realize, absurd in the idea of a supposedly rational businessman living in what is surely the most heavily substantial and Victorian block of buildings in the whole of London, unable to walk up the staircase without the sound of these ghostly footsteps following, so slowly yet so firmly, behind me, as though their owner was merely mocking at me, knowing that in the end there could be no escape.

Once I was seized with an idea, and I wrote to the Vicar. I was not sure whether he was my friend or my worst enemy. I did not even know his name but I guessed that, in the eight months that had elapsed, the living would not have changed hands, and I addressed the envelope to ‘The Rev. the Vicar of Wilbraham’. I had only one question to ask him: were the footsteps which followed St Wilfred heard by anyone except himself? And I enclosed a stamped postcard for him to answer.

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:

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.