Classic Story: The Ash-Tree

by M.R. James







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 wellnigh 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 powers 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 park 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 any marks of violence did
not at the moment appear; but the window was open.




One of the men went to fetch the parson, and then by his
directions rode on to give notice to the coroner. Mr Crome himself went as
quick as he might to the Hall, and was shown to the room where the dead man
lay. He has left some notes among his papers which show how genuine a respect
and sorrow was felt for Sir Matthew, and there is also this passage, which I
transcribe for the sake of the light it throws upon the course of events, and
also upon the common beliefs of the time:




'There was not any the least Trace of an Entrance having
been forc'd to the Chamber: but the Casement stood open, as my poor Friend
would always have it in this Season. He had his Evening Drink of small Ale in a
silver vessel of about a pint measure, and tonight had not drunk it out. This
Drink was examined by the Physician from Bury, a Mr Hodgkins, who could not,
however, as he afterwards declar'd upon his Oath, before the Coroner's quest,
discover that any matter of a venomous kind was present in it. For, as was
natural, in the great Swelling and Blackness of the Corpse, there was talk made
among the Neighbours of Poyson. The Body was very much Disorder'd as it laid in
the Bed, being twisted after so extream a sort as gave too probable Conjecture
that my worthy Friend and Patron had expir'd in great Pain and Agony. And what
is as yet unexplain'd, and to myself the Argument of some Horrid and Artfull
Designe in the Perpetrators of this Barbarous Murther, was this, that the Women
which were entrusted with the laying-out of the Corpse and washing it, being
both sad Persons and very well Respected in their Mournfull Profession, came to
me in a great Pain and Distress both of Mind and Body, saying, what was indeed
confirmed upon the first View, that they had no sooner touch'd the Breast of
the Corpse with their naked Hands than they were sensible of a more than
ordinary violent Smart and Acheing in their Palms, which, with their whole
Forearms, in no long time swell'd so immoderately, the Pain still continuing,
that, as afterwards proved, during many weeks they were forc'd to lay by the
exercise of their Calling; and yet no mark seen on the Skin.




'Upon hearing this, I sent for the Physician, who was still
in the House, and we made as carefull a Proof as we were able by the Help of a
small Magnifying Lens of Crystal of the condition of the Skinn on this Part of
the Body: but could not detect with the Instrument we had any Matter of
Importance beyond a couple of small Punctures or Pricks, which we then
concluded were the Spotts by which the Poyson might be introduced, remembering
that Ring of Pope Borgia, with other known Specimens of the Horrid Art
of the Italian Poysoners of the last age.




'So much is to be said of the Symptoms seen on the Corpse.
As to what I am to add, it is meerly my own Experiment, and to be left to
Posterity to judge whether there be anything of Value therein. There was on the
Table by the Beddside a Bible of the small size, in which my Friend - punctuall
as in Matters of less Moment, so in this more weighty one - used nightly, and
upon his First Rising, to read a sett Portion. And I taking it up - not without
a Tear duly paid to him which from the Study of this poorer Adumbration was now
pass'd to the contemplation of its great Originall - it came into my Thoughts,
as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any the least
Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and by many
accounted Superstitious Practice of drawing the Sortes: of which a
Principall Instance, in the case of his late Sacred Majesty the Blessed Martyr
King Charles and my Lord Falkland, was now much talked of. I
must needs admit that by my Trial not much Assistance was afforded me: yet, as
the Cause and Origin of these Dreadful Events may hereafter be search'd out, I
set down the Results, in the case it may be found that they pointed the true
Quarter of the Mischief to a quicker Intelligence than my own.




' I made, then, three trials, opening the Book and placing
my Finger upon certain Words: which gave in the first these words, from Luke
xiii 7, Cut it down; in the second, Isaiah xiii 20, It shall never
be inhabited; and upon the third Experiment, Job xxxix 30, Her young
ones also suck up blood.'




This is all that need be quoted from Mr Crome's papers. Sir
Matthew Fell was duly coffined and laid into the earth, and his funeral sermon,
preached by Mr Crome on the following Sunday, has been printed under the title
of 'The Unsearchable Way; or, England's Danger and the Malicious Dealings of
Anti-christ', it being the Vicar's view, as well as that most commonly held in
the neighbourhood, that the Squire was the victim of a recrudescence of the
Popish Plot.




His son, Sir Matthew the second, succeeded to the title and
estates. And so ends the first act of the Castringham tragedy. It is to be
mentioned, though the fact is not surprising, that the new Baronet did not
occupy the room in which his father had died. Nor, indeed, was it slept in by
anyone but an occasional visitor during the whole of his occupation. He died in
1735, and I do not find that anything particular marked his reign, save a
curiously constant mortality among his cattle and livestock in general, which
showed a tendency to increase slightly as time went on.




Those who are interested in the details will find a
statistical account in a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine of 1772,
which draws the facts from the Baronet's own papers. He put an end to it at
last by a very simple expedient, that of shutting up all his beasts in sheds at
night, and keeping no sheep in his park. For he had noticed that nothing was
ever attacked that spent the night indoors. After that the disorder confined
itself to wild birds, and beasts of chase. But as we have no good account of
the symptoms, and as all-night watching was quite unproductive of any clue, I
do not dwell on what the Suffolk farmers called the 'Castringham sickness'.




The second Sir Matthew died in 1735, as I said, and was duly
succeeded by his son, Sir Richard. It was in his time that the great family pew
was built out on the north side of the parish church. So large were the
Squire's ideas that several of the graves on that unhallowed side of the
building had to be disturbed to satisfy his requirements. Among them was that
of Mrs Mothersole, the position of which was accurately known, thanks to a note
on a plan of the church and yard, both made by Mr Crome.




A certain amount of interest was excited in the village when
it was known that the famous witch, who was still remembered by a few, was to
be exhumed. And the feeling of surprise, and indeed disquiet, was very strong
when it was found that, though her coffin was fairly sound and unbroken, there
was no trace whatever inside it of body, bones, or dust. Indeed, it is a
curious phenomenon, for at the time of her burying no such things were dreamt
of as resurrection-men, and it is difficult to conceive any rational motive for
stealing a body otherwise than for the uses of the dissecting-room.




The incident revived for a time all the stories of
witch-trials and of the exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and
Sir Richard's orders that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good
many to be rather foolhardy, though they were duly carried out.




Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before
his time the Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir
Richard had travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and,
having more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian
palace where he had found an English house. So stucco and ashlar masked the
brick; some indifferent Roman marbles were planted about in the entrance-hall
and gardens; a reproduction of the Sibyl's temple at Tivoli was erected on the
opposite bank of the mere; and Castringham took on an entirely new, and, I must
say, a less engaging, aspect. But it was much admired, and served as a model to
a good many of the neighbouring gentry in after years.




*




One morning (it was in 1754) Sir Richard woke after a night
of discomfort. It had been windy, and his chimney had smoked persistently, and
yet it was so cold that he must keep up a fire. Also something had so rattled
about the window that no man could get a moment's peace. Further, there was the
prospect of several guests of position arriving in the course of the day, who
would expect sport of some kind, and the inroads of the distemper (which
continued among his game) had been lately so serious that he was afraid for his
reputation as a game-preserver. But what really touched him most nearly was the
other matter of his sleepless night. He could certainly not sleep in that room
again.




That was the chief subject of his meditations at breakfast,
and after it he began a systematic examination of the rooms to see which would
suit his notions best. It was long before he found one. This had a window with
an eastern aspect and that with a northern; this door the servants would be
always passing, and he did not like the bedstead in that. No, he must have a
room with a western look-out, so that the sun could not wake him early, and it
must be out of the way of the business of the house. The housekeeper was at the
end of her resources.




'Well, Sir Richard,' she said,
'you know that there is but one room like that in the house.'




'Which may that be?' said Sir
Richard. 'And that is Sir Matthew's - the West Chamber.'




'Well, put me in there, for there I'll lie tonight,' said
her master. 'Which way is it? Here, to be sure'; and he hurried off.




'Oh, Sir Richard, but no one has slept there these forty
years. The air has hardly been changed since Sir Matthew died there.' Thus she
spoke, and rustled after him.




'Come, open the door, Mrs
Chiddock. I'll see the chamber, at least.'




So it was opened, and, indeed, the smell was very close and
earthy. Sir Richard crossed to the window, and, impatiently, as was his wont,
threw the shutters back, and flung open the casement. For this end of the house
was one which the alterations had barely touched, grown up as it was with the
great ash-tree, and being otherwise concealed from view.




'Air it, Mrs Chiddock, all today, and move my bed-furniture
in in the afternoon. Put the Bishop of Kilmore in my old room.'




'Pray, Sir Richard,' said a new voice, breaking in on this
speech, 'might I have the favour of a moment's interview?'




Sir Richard turned round and saw
a man in black in the doorway, who bowed.




'I must ask your indulgence for this intrusion, Sir Richard.
You will, perhaps, hardly remember me. My name is William Crome, and my
grandfather was Vicar here in your grandfather's time.'




'Well, sir,' said Sir Richard, 'the name of Crome is always
a passport to Castringham. I am glad to renew a friendship of two generations'
standing. In what can I serve you? for your hour of calling - and, if I do not
mistake you, your bearing - shows you to be in some haste.'




'That is no more than the truth, sir. I am riding from
Norwich to Bury St Edmunds with what haste I can make, and I have called in on
my way to leave with you some papers which we have but just come upon in
looking over what my grandfather left at his death. It is thought you may find
some matters of family interest in them.'




'You are mighty obliging, Mr Crome, and, if you will be so
good as to follow me to the parlour, and drink a glass of wine, we will take a
first look at these same papers together. And you, Mrs Chiddock, as I said, be
about airing this chamber . . . Yes, it is here my grandfather died . . . Yes,
the tree, perhaps, does make the place a little dampish . . . No; I do not wish
to listen to any more. Make no difficulties, I beg. You have your orders - go.
Will you follow me, sir?'




They went to the study. The packet which young Mr Crome had
brought - he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall in Cambridge, I may
say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus -
contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the
occasion of Sir Matthew Fell's death. And for the first time Sir Richard was
confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicae which you have heard.
They amused him a good deal.




'Well,' he said, 'my grandfather's Bible gave one prudent
piece of advice - Cut it down. If that stands for the ash-tree, he may
rest assured I shall not neglect it. Such a nest of catarrhs and agues was
never seen.'




The parlour contained the family books, which, pending the
arrival of a collection which Sir Richard had made in Italy, and the building
of a proper room to receive them, were not many in number.




Sir Richard looked up from the
paper to the bookcase.




'I wonder,' says he, 'whether
the old prophet is there yet? I fancy I see him.'




Crossing the room, he took out a dumpy Bible, which, sure
enough, bore on the flyleaf the inscription: 'To Matthew Fell, from his Loving
Godmother, Anne Aldous, 2 September, 1659.'




'It would be no bad plan to test him again, Mr Crome. I will
wager we get a couple of names in the Chronicles. H'm! what have we here?
"Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be." Well, well!
Your grandfather would have made a fine omen of that, hey? No more prophets for
me! They are all in a tale. And now, Mr Crome, I am infinitely obliged to you
for your packet. You will, I fear, be impatient to get on. Pray allow me - another
glass.'




So with offers of hospitality, which were genuinely meant
(for Sir Richard thought well of the young man's address and manner), they
parted.




In the afternoon came the guests - the Bishop of Kilmore,
Lady Mary Hervey, Sir William Kentfield, etc. Dinner at five, wine, cards,
supper, and dispersal to bed.




Next morning Sir Richard is disinclined to take his gun with
the rest. He talks with the Bishop of Kilmore. This prelate, unlike a good many
of the Irish Bishops of his day, had visited his see, and, indeed, resided
there for some considerable time. This morning, as the two were walking along
the terrace and talking over the alterations and improvements in the house, the
Bishop said, pointing to the window of the West Room:




'You could never get one of my
Irish flock to occupy that room, Sir Richard.'




'Why is that, my lord? It is, in
fact, my own.'




'Well, our Irish peasantry will always have it that it
brings the worst of luck to sleep near an ash-tree, and you have a fine growth
of ash not two yards from your chamber window. Perhaps,' the Bishop went on,
with a smile, 'it has given you a touch of its quality already, for you do not
seem, if I may say it, so much the fresher for your night's rest as your
friends would like to see you.'




'That, or something else, it is true, cost me my sleep from
twelve to four, my lord. But the tree is to come down tomorrow, so I shall not
hear much more from it.'




'I applaud your determination. It can hardly be wholesome to
have the air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage.'




'Your lordship is right there, I think. But I had not my
window open last night. It was rather the noise that went on - no doubt from
the twigs sweeping the glass - that kept me open-eyed.'




'I think that can hardly be. Sir Richard. Here - you see it
from this point. None of these nearest branches even can touch your casement
unless there were a gale, and there was none of that last night. They miss the
panes by a foot.'




'No, sir, true. What, then, will it be, I wonder, that
scratched and rustled so - ay, and covered the dust on my sill with lines and
marks?'




At last they agreed that the rats must have come up through
the ivy. That was the Bishop's idea, and Sir Richard jumped at it.




So the day passed quietly, and night came, and the party
dispersed to their rooms, and wished Sir Richard a better night.




And now we are in his bedroom, with the light out and the
Squire in bed. The room is over the kitchen, and the night outside still and
warm, so the window stands open.




There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is
a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head
rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would
guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and
brownish, which move back and forward, even as low as his chest. It is a
horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with
a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another -
four - and after that there is quiet again.




'Thou shalt seek me in the
morning, and I shall not be.'




As with Sir Matthew, so with Sir Richard - dead and black in
his bed! A pale and silent party of guests and servants gathered under the
window when the news was known. Italian poisoners, Popish emissaries, infected
air - all these and more guesses were hazarded, and the Bishop of Kilmore
looked at the tree, in the fork of whose lower boughs a white tom-cat was
crouching, looking down the hollow which years had gnawed in the trunk. It was
watching something inside the tree with great interest.




Suddenly it got up and craned over the hole. Then a bit of
the edge on which it stood gave way, and it went slithering in. Everyone looked
up at the noise of the fall.




It is known to most of us that a cat can cry; but few of us
have heard, I hope, such a yell as came out of the trunk of the great ash. Two
or three screams there were - the witnesses are not sure which - and then a
slight and muffled noise of some commotion or struggling was all that came. But
Lady Mary Hervey fainted outright, and the housekeeper stopped her ears and
fled till she fell on the terrace,




The Bishop of Kilmore and Sir William Kentfield stayed. Yet
even they were daunted, though it was only at the cry of a cat; and Sir William
swallowed once or twice before he could say:




'There is something more than we
know of in that tree, my lord. I am for an instant search.'




And this was agreed upon. A ladder was brought, and one of
the gardeners went up, and, looking down the hollow, could detect nothing but a
few dim indications of something moving. They got a lantern, and let it down by
a rope.




'We must get at the bottom of this. My life upon it, my
lord, but the secret of these terrible deaths is there.'




Up went the gardener again with the lantern, and let it down
the hole cautiously. They saw the yellow light upon his face as he bent over,
and saw his face struck with an incredulous terror and loathing before he cried
out in a dreadful voice and fell back from the ladder - where, happily, he was
caught by two of the men - letting the lantern fall inside the tree.




He was in a dead faint, and it
was some time before any word could be got from him.




By then they had something else to look at. The lantern must
have broken at the bottom, and the light in it caught upon dry leaves and
rubbish that lay there, for in a few minutes a dense smoke began to come up,
and then flame; and, to be short, the tree was in a blaze.




The bystanders made a ring at some yards' distance, and Sir
William and the Bishop sent men to get what weapons and tools they could; for,
clearly, whatever might be using the tree as its lair would be forced out by
the fire.




So it was. First, at the fork, they saw a round body covered
with fire - the size of a man's head - appear very suddenly, then seem to
collapse and fall back. This, five or six times; then a similar ball leapt into
the air and fell on the grass, where after a moment it lay still. The Bishop
went as near as he dared to it, and saw - what but the remains of an enormous
spider, veinous and seared! And, as the fire burned lower down, more terrible
bodies like this began to break out from the trunk, and it was seen that these
were covered with greyish hair.




All that day the ash burned, and until it fell to pieces the
men stood about it, and from time to time killed the brutes as they darted out.
At last there was a long interval when none appeared, and they cautiously
closed in and examined the roots of the tree.




'They found,' says the Bishop of Kilmore, 'below it a
rounded hollow place in the earth, wherein were two or three bodies of these
creatures that had plainly been smothered by the smoke; and, what is to me more
curious, at the side of this den, against the wall, was crouching the anatomy
or skeleton of a human being, with the skin dried upon the bones, having some
remains of black hair, which was pronounced by those that examined it to be
undoubtedly the body of a woman, and clearly dead for a period of fifty years.'