A School Story 1 1

school," 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 I

remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about

the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn't somebody

invent 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 to

investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys 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 be extensively drawn

upon."

"No doubt: they weren't born or thought of in my time. Let's see. 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 on pa.s.sing a

night; and each of them in the morning was found kneeling in a corner, 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 noise in the

pa.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 me

think - Yes! the room where a man was found dead in bed with a horseshoe

mark on his forehead, and the floor under the bed was covered with 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 of those had any

explanation or sequel. I wonder if they go on still, those stories."

"Oh, likely enough - with additions from the magazines, as I said. You

never 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 my

private 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 and

fairly 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 older

gardens in the Thames valley, and ancient elms in the three or four fields

which we used for our games. I think probably it was quite an attractive

place, but boys seldom allow that their schools possess any tolerable

features.