My acquaintance with the supernatural happened in January 1919, after I was demobilised and went back to Cambridge, und rented the rooms in the old Vicarage, Grantchester, formerly occupied by Rupert Brooke, which, by reason of his famous pem, is now familiar to all poetry lovers.
The sitting-room at the old Vicarage gave me the impression af still being lived in; there was not the slightest feeling that the bright young life associated with the place had met with such sudden extinction. How well one knows the atmosphere of a man's room when he is the healthy out-of-doors type, and where the aftermath of good tobacco blends with the never-to-be forgotten smell of leather-bound books, and one appreciates the "homeliness" of photographs, the favourite ash-trays, and the odds and ends so characteristic of the man.
I was perfectly happy in the friendly, unchanged environment of Rupert Brooke's "den", which possessed one especially curious feature-a false bookcase which concealed a priest's hiding-place, probably dating from the Reformation.
One winter's evening, after I had finished supper, I settled myself comfortably by the fire, reading and smoking in the soft amplight, by which Rupert Brooke had also once smoked and esar, my bulldog, was snoring on the sofa. The stillness of a frost-bound night by over everything, and a bright moon riding high in the serene heavens made objects in the Vicarage garden as clear as day
Suddenly Cacsar woke up, to the usual bulldog accompaniment of gurgles and snorts, and listened intently
I put down my book... Slow, regular footsteps were coming round the house, making their way towards the french wind of the sitting-room.
The footsteps stopped-Caesar gave a non-committal growth. and I jumped up and opened the windows, expecting to see my landlord, Mr. Neave, returning from a moonlight stroll
No one was visible. The garden slept under a glittering sheet of frost; there was no possibility of any person taking cover. I and Caesar stood for a few moments on the path looking around them, and then went back to the warm lamplit room.
Presently, in answer to my ring, Mr. Neave appeared, and listened to the story of the weird footsteps.
"Can you explain it?" asked I.
Mr. Neave said: "We are used to these footsteps; they've happened ever since Mr. Brooke was killed-they belong to his ghost, which up to now nobody has seen. The footsteps come close to the window, but there's no one there... I hope, sir, you've not been upset," concluded Mr. Neave, a little anxiously.
It is highly probable that Rupert Brooke returns to the place he loved and lived in before he looked at the bright face of danger, and took the great leap into the dark. How truly Rupert Brooke, and all those whose youth was given to England, can say: "I could not dic by any nobler fate". And one recalls a verse in his poem on the old Vicarage, Grantchester, wrote in the same room where I heard his footsteps seven years later, which perhaps explains something of the reason for his "return".
For England's the one land I know, Where men with splendid hearts may go, And Cambridge-shire of all England, The shire for men who understand.