A School Story

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. "At ourschool," said A., "we had a ghost's footmark on the staircase. "" What was it like?""Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if Iremember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story aboutthe thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn't somebodyinvent one, I wonder?""You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own.There's a subject for you, by the way - "The Folklore of Private Schools.""Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were toinvestigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys atprivate schools tell each other, they would all turn out to behighly-compressed versions of stories out of books.""Nowadays the Strand and Pearson's, and so on, would be extensively drawnupon.""No doubt: they weren't born or thought of in my time. Let's see. Iwonder if I can remember the staple ones that I was told. First, there wasthe house with a room in which a series of people insisted on pa.s.sing anight; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner, andhad 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 noise in thepa.s.sage at night, opened his door, and saw someone crawling towards him on

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all fours with his eye hanging out on his cheek. There was besides, let methink - Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoemark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered with marks ofhorseshoes also; I don't know why. Also there was the lady who, on lockingher bedroom door in a strange house, heard a thin voice among thebed-curtains say, 'Now we're shut in for the night.' None of those had anyexplanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those stories.""Oh, likely enough - with additions from the magazines, as I said. Younever heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school? I thought not,n.o.body 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. It happened at myprivate school thirty odd years ago, and I haven't any explanation of it."The school I mean was near London. It was established in a large andfairly old house - a great white building with very fine grounds about it;there were large cedars in the garden, as there are in so many of the oldergardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or four fieldswhich we used for our games. I think probably it was quite an attractiveplace, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any tolerablefeatures.