School Story

'At our 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 passing 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 passage at night, opened his door, and saw someone

crawling towards him on 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; nobody 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 ,