Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
engraver in mezzotint. After his son’s disappearance he lived in
complete retirement at the Hall, and was found dead in his studio on
the third anniversary of the disaster, having just completed an
engraving of the house, impressions of which are of considerable
rarity.
This looked like business, and, indeed, Mr Green on his return at once
identified the house as Anningley Hall.
“Is there any kind of explanation of the figure, Green?” was the
question which Williams naturally asked.
“I don’t know, I’m sure, Williams. What used to be said in the place
when I first knew it, which was before I came up here, was just this:
old Francis was always very much down on these poaching fellows, and
whenever he got a chance he used to get a man whom he suspected of it
turned off the estate, and by degrees he got rid of them all but one.
Squires could do a lot of things then that they daren’t think of now.
Well, this man that was left was what you find pretty often in that
country—the last remains of a very old family. I believe they were
Lords of the Manor at one time. I recollect just the same thing in my
own parish.”
“What, like the man in _Tess o’ the Durbervilles_?” Williams put in.
“Yes, I dare say; it’s not a book I could ever read myself. But this
fellow could show a row of tombs in the church there that belonged to
his ancestors, and all that went to sour him a bit; but Francis, they
said, could never get at him—he always kept just on the right side of
the law—until one night the keepers found him at it in a wood right at
the end of the estate. I could show you the place now; it marches with
some land that used to belong to an uncle of mine. And you can imagine
there was a row; and this man Gawdy (that was the name, to be
sure—Gawdy; I thought I should get it—Gawdy), he was unlucky enough,
poor chap! to shoot a keeper. Well, that was what Francis wanted, and
grand juries—you know what they would have been then—and poor Gawdy was
strung up in double-quick time; and I’ve been shown the place he was
buried in, on the north side of the church—you know the way in that
part of the world: anyone that’s been hanged or made away with
themselves, they bury them that side. And the idea was that some friend
of Gawdy’s—not a relation, because he had none, poor devil! he was the
last of his line: kind of _spes ultima gentis_—must have planned to get
hold of Francis’s boy and put an end to _his_ line, too. I don’t
know—it’s rather an out-of-the-way thing for an Essex poacher to think
of—but, you know, I should say now it looks more as if old Gawdy had
managed the job himself. Booh! I hate to think of it! have some whisky,
Williams!”
The facts were communicated by Williams to Dennistoun, and by him to a
mixed company, of which I was one, and the Sadducean Professor of
Ophiology another. I am sorry to say that the latter, when asked what
he thought of it, only remarked: “Oh, those Bridgeford people will say
anything”—a sentiment which met with the reception it deserved.
I have only to add that the picture is now in the Ashleian Museum; that
it has been treated with a view to discovering whether sympathetic ink
has been used in it, but without effect; that Mr Britnell knew nothing
of it save that he was sure it was uncommon; and that, though carefully
watched, it has never been known to change again.
THE ASH-TREE
Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller
country-houses with which it is studded—the rather dank little
buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some
eighty to a hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong
attraction: with the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the
meres with their reed-beds, and the line of distant woods. Then, I like
the pillared portico—perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house
which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the
“Grecian” taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside,
going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a
gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you may find
anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare
quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like
fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in
the piping times of landlords’ prosperity, and not least now, when, if
money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as
interesting. I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to
keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly.
But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of
events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It
is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to
the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I
have sketched are still there—Italian portico, square block of white
house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The
one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone.
As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old
ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or
quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood
there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since
the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any
rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690.
In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene
of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive
at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason—if there was any—which
lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether
the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were
possessed of unusual power of any kind; or whether they had the will at
least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or
whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted
by the mere cruelty of the witch-finders—these are questions which are
not, I fancy, yet solved. And the present narrative gives me pause. I
cannot altogether sweep it away as mere invention. The reader must
judge for himself.
Castringham contributed a victim to the _auto-da-fé_. Mrs Mothersole
was her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches
only in being rather better off and in a more influential position.
Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the
parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed
considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.
But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the
then proprietor of Castringham Hall—Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to
having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the
full of the moon, gathering sprigs “from the ash-tree near my house”.
She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was
cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did
so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew
had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm
at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got
down to the garden was a hare running across the path in the direction
of the village.
On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best
speed, and had gone straight to Mrs Mothersole’s house; but he had had
to wait a quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had
come out very cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed;
and he had no good explanation to offer of his visit.
Mainly on this evidence, though there was much more of a less striking
and unusual kind from other parishioners, Mrs Mothersole was found
guilty and condemned to die. She was hanged a week after the trial,
with five or six more unhappy creatures, at Bury St Edmunds.
Sir Matthew Fell, then Deputy-Sheriff, was present at the execution. It
was a damp, drizzly March morning when the cart made its way up the
rough grass hill outside Northgate, where the gallows stood. The other
victims were apathetic or broken down with misery; but Mrs Mothersole
was, as in life so in death, of a very different temper. Her “poysonous
Rage”, as a reporter of the time puts it, “did so work upon the
Bystanders—yea, even upon the Hangman—that it was constantly affirmed
of all that saw her that she presented the living Aspect of a mad
Divell. Yet she offer’d no Resistance to the Officers of the Law; onely
she looked upon those that laid Hands upon her with so direfull and
venomous an Aspect that—as one of them afterwards assured me—the meer
Thought of it preyed inwardly upon his Mind for six Months after.”
However, all that she is reported to have said was the seemingly
meaningless words: “There will be guests at the Hall.” Which she
repeated more than once in an undertone.
Sir Matthew Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He
had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom
he travelled home after the assize business was over. His evidence at
the trial had not been very willingly given; he was not specially
infected with the witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and
afterwards, that he could not give any other account of the matter than
that he had given, and that he could not possibly have been mistaken as
to what he saw. The whole transaction had been repugnant to him, for he
was a man who liked to be on pleasant terms with those about him; but
he saw a duty to be done in this business, and he had done it. That
seems to have been the gist of his sentiments, and the Vicar applauded
it, as any reasonable man must have done.
A few weeks after, when the moon of May was at the full, Vicar and
Squire met again in the park, and walked to the Hall together. Lady
Fell was with her mother, who was dangerously ill, and Sir Matthew was
alone at home; so the Vicar, Mr Crome, was easily persuaded to take a
late supper at the Hall.
Sir Matthew was not very good company this evening. The talk ran
chiefly on family and parish matters, and, as luck would have it, Sir
Matthew made a memorandum in writing of certain wishes or intentions of
his regarding his estates, which afterwards proved exceedingly useful.
When Mr Crome thought of starting for home, about half past nine
o’clock, Sir Matthew and he took a preliminary turn on the gravelled
walk at the back of the house. The only incident that struck Mr Crome
was this: they were in sight of the ash-tree which I described as
growing near the windows of the building, when Sir Matthew stopped and
said:
“What is that that runs up and down the stem of the ash? It is never a
squirrel? They will all be in their nests by now.”
The Vicar looked and saw the moving creature, but he could make nothing
of its colour in the moonlight. The sharp outline, however, seen for an
instant, was imprinted on his brain, and he could have sworn, he said,
though it sounded foolish, that, squirrel or not, it had more than four
legs.
Still, not much was to be made of the momentary vision, and the two men
parted. They may have met since then, but it was not for a score of
years.
Next day Sir Matthew Fell was not downstairs at six in the morning, as
was his custom, nor at seven, nor yet at eight. Hereupon the servants
went and knocked at his chamber door. I need not prolong the
description of their anxious listenings and renewed batterings on the
panels. The door was opened at last from the outside, and they found
their master dead and black. So much you have guessed. That there were