Short Fiction

we could see I shall never be sure: perhaps it was partly the venom of that horrid fly’s bite that was working in me that made me feel so strange; for, dear me, how that poor arm and hand of mine did swell up, to be sure! I’m afraid to tell you how large it was round! and the pain of it, too! Nothing my mother could put on it had any power over it at all, and it wasn’t till she was persuaded by our old nurse to get the wise man over at Bascombe to come and look at it, that I got any peace at all. But he seemed to know all about it, and said I wasn’t the first that had been taken that way. “When the sun’s gathering his strength,” he said, “and when he’s in the height of it, and when he’s beginning to lose his hold, and when he’s in his weakness, them that haunts about that lane had best to take heed to themselves.” But what it was he bound on my arm and what he said over it, he wouldn’t tell us. After that I soon got well again, but since then I’ve heard often enough of people suffering much the same as I did; only of late years it doesn’t seem to happen but very seldom: and maybe things like that do die out in the course of time.

But that’s the reason, Charles, why I say to you that I won’t have you gathering me blackberries, no, nor eating them either, in that lane; and now you know all about it, I don’t fancy you’ll want to yourself. There! Off to bed you go this minute. What’s that, Lucy? A light in your room? The idea of such a thing! You get yourself undressed at once and say your prayers, and perhaps if your father doesn’t want me when he wakes up, I’ll come and say good night to you. And you, Charles, if I hear anything of you frightening your little sister on the way up to your bed, I shall tell your father that very moment, and you know what happened to you the last time.

The door closes, and granny, after listening intently for a minute or two, resumes her knitting. The Squire still slumbers.

Endnotes

1. We now know that these leaves did contain a considerable fragment of that work, if not of that actual copy of it. ↩

2. He died that summer; his daughter married, and settled at St. Papoul. She never understood the circumstances of her father’s “obsession.” ↩

3. I.e., The Dispute of Solomon with a demon of the night. Drawn by Alberic de Mauléon. Versicle. O Lord, make haste to help me. Psalm. Whoso dwelleth (XCI.).

   Saint Bertrand, who puttest devils to flight, pray for me most unhappy. I saw it first on the night of Dec. 12, 1694: soon I shall see it for the last time. I have sinned and suffered, and have more to suffer yet. Dec. 29, 1701.

   The Gallia Christiana gives the date of the Canon’s death as December 31, 1701, “in bed, of a sudden seizure.” Details of this kind are not common in the great work of the Sammarthani. ↩

4. Mr. Rogers was wrong, vide Dombey and Son, chapter XII. ↩

5. An account of the Premonstratensian abbey of Steinfeld, in the Eiffel, with lives of the Abbots, published at Cologne in 1712 by Christian Albert Erhard, a resident in the district. The epithet Norbertinum is due to the fact that St. Norbert was founder of the Premonstratensian Order. ↩

6. There is a place for gold where it is hidden. ↩

7. They have on their raiment a writing which no man knoweth. ↩

8. Upon one stone are seven eyes. ↩

9. “Keep that which is committed to thee.” ↩

10. Apparently the ichneumon fly (Ophion obscurum), and not the true sawfly, is meant. ↩

List of Illustrations

1. The engraving of the words FLA FUR BIS FLE.

2. The engraving of the words QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT.

Colophon

Short Fiction
was published between 1904 and 1925 by
M. R. James.

This ebook was produced for
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by
Mike Bennett,
and is based on a transcription produced between 2003 and 2007 by
Suzanne Shell, Thomas Berger, Diane Monico, Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan, David T. Jones, Mark Akrigg, The Online Distributed Proofreading Team, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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Internet Archive and the HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
The Penitent Magdalen,
a painting completed ca. 1640 by
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