stanza or so of one of his wild staves, wrapped the while, it would seem,
in affectionate contemplation of the subject-matter of his song:
THE CHURCHYARD YEW.
'----Metuendaque succo
Taxus.'
A noxious tree is the churchyard yew,
As if from the dead its sap it drew;
Dark are its branches, and dismal to see,
Like plumes at Death's latest solemnity.
Spectral and jagged, and black as the wings
Which some spirit of ill o'er a sepulchre flings:
Oh! a terrible tree is the churchyard yew;
Like it is nothing so grimly to view.
Yet this baleful tree hath a core so sound,
Can nought so tough in a grove be found:
From it were fashioned brave English bows,
The boast of our isle, and the dread of its foes.
For our sturdy sires cut their stoutest staves
From the branch that hung o'er their fathers' graves;
And though it be dreary and dismal to view,
Staunch at the heart is the churchyard yew.
"His ditty concluded, Alan entered the church, taking care to leave the
door slightly ajar, in order to facilitate his grandson's entrance. For an
instant he lingered in the chancel. The yellow moonlight fell upon the
monuments of his race; and, directed by the instinct of hate, Alan's eye
rested upon the gilded entablature of his perfidious brother Reginald, and
muttering curses, 'not loud, but deep,' he passed on. Having lighted his
lantern in no tranquil mood, he descended into the vault, observing a
similar caution with respect to the portal of the cemetery, which he left
partially unclosed, with the key in the lock. Here he resolved to abide
Luke's coming. The reader knows what probability there was of his
expectations being realised.
[Sidenote: FARCICAL ROMANCE]
"For a while he paced the tomb, wrapped in gloomy meditation, and
pondering, it might be, upon the result of Luke's expedition, and the
fulfilment of his own dark schemes, scowling from time to time beneath his
bent eyebrows, counting the grim array of coffins, and noticing, with
something like satisfaction, that the shell which contained the remains of
his daughter had been restored to its former position. He then bethought
him of Father Checkley's midnight intrusion upon his conference with Luke,
and their apprehension of a supernatural visitation, and his curiosity was
stimulated to ascertain by what means the priest had gained admission to
the spot unperceived and unheard. He resolved to sound the floor, and see
whether any secret entrance existed; and hollowly and dully did the hard
flagging return the stroke of his heel as he pursued his scrutiny. At
length the metallic ringing of an iron plate, immediately behind the
marble effigy of Sir Ranulph, resolved the point. There it was that the
priest had found access to the vault; but Alan's disappointment was
excessive when he discovered that this plate was fastened on the
under-side, and all communication thence with the churchyard, or to
wherever else it might conduct him, cut off; but the present was not the
season for further investigation, and tolerably pleased with the discovery
he had already made, he returned to his silent march around the sepulchre.
"At length a sound, like the sudden shutting of the church door, broke
upon the profound stillness of the holy edifice. In the hush that
succeeded a footstep was distinctly heard threading the aisle.
"'He comes--he comes!' exclaimed Alan joyfully; adding, an instant after,
in an altered voice, 'but he comes alone.'
"The footstep drew near to the mouth of the vault--it was upon the stairs.
Alan stepped forward to greet, as he supposed, his grandson, but started
back in astonishment and dismay as he encountered in his stead Lady
Rookwood. Alan retreated, while the lady advanced, swinging the iron door
after her, which closed with a tremendous clang. Approaching the statue of
the first Sir Ranulph she passed, and Alan then remarked the singular and
terrible expression of her eyes, which appeared to be fixed upon the
statue, or upon some invisible object near it. There was something in her
whole attitude and manner calculated to impress the deepest terror on the
beholder, and Alan gazed upon her with an awe which momently increased.
Lady Rookwood's bearing was as proud and erect as we have formerly
described it to have been, her brow was as haughtily bent, her chiselled
lip as disdainfully curled; but the staring, changeless eye, and the
deep-heaved sob which occasionally escaped her, betrayed how much she was
under the influence of mortal terror. Alan watched her in amazement. He
knew not how the scene was likely to terminate, nor what could have
induced her to visit this ghostly spot at such an hour and alone; but he
resolved to abide the issue in silence--profound as her own. After a time,
however, his impatience got the better of his fears and scruples, and he
spoke.
"'What doth Lady Rookwood in the abode of the dead?' asked he at length.
"She started at the sound of his voice, but still kept her eye fixed upon
the vacancy.
"'Hast thou not beckoned me hither, and am I not come?' returned she, in a
hollow tone. 'And now thou askest wherefore I am here. I am here because,
as in thy life I feared thee not, neither in death do I fear thee. I am
here because----'
"'What seest thou?' interrupted Alan, with ill-suppressed terror.
"'What see I--ha--ha!' shouted Lady Rookwood, amidst discordant laughter;
'that which might appal a heart less stout than mine--a figure
anguish-writhen, with veins that glow as with a subtle and consuming
flame. A substance, yet a shadow, in thy living likeness. Ha--frown if
thou wilt; I can return thy glances.'
[Sidenote: MELODRAMA POUR RIRE]
"'Where dost thou see this vision?' demanded Alan.
"'Where?' echoed Lady Rookwood, becoming for the first time sensible of
the presence of a stranger. 'Ha--who are you that question me?--what are
you?--speak!'
"'No matter who or what I am,' returned Alan; 'I ask you what you behold?'
"'Can you see nothing?'
"'Nothing,' replied Alan.
"'You knew Sir Piers Rookwood?'
"'Is it he?' asked Alan, drawing near her.
"'It is,' replied Lady Rookwood; 'I have followed him hither, and I will
follow him whithersoever he leads me, were it to----'
"'What doth he now?' asked Alan; 'do you see him still?'
"'The figure points to that sarcophagus,' returned Lady Rookwood--'can you
raise up the lid?'
"'No,' replied Alan; 'my strength will not avail to lift it.'
"'Yet let the trial be made,' said Lady Rookwood; 'the figure points there
still--my own arm shall aid you.'
"Alan watched her in dumb wonder. She advanced towards the marble
monument, and beckoned him to follow. He reluctantly complied. Without any
expectation of being able to move the ponderous lid of the sarcophagus, at
Lady Rookwood's renewed request he applied himself to the task. What was
his surprise when, beneath their united efforts, he found the ponderous
slab slowly revolve upon its vast hinges, and, with little further
difficulty, it was completely elevated, though it still required the
exertion of all Alan's strength to prop it open and prevent its falling
back.
"'What does it contain?' asked Lady Rookwood.
"'A warrior's ashes,' returned Alan.
"'There is a rusty dagger upon a fold of faded linen,' cried Lady
Rookwood, holding down the light.
"'It is the weapon with which the first dame of the house of Rookwood was
stabbed,' said Alan, with a grim smile:
'Which whoso findeth in the tomb
Shall clutch until the hour of doom;
And when 'tis grasped by hand of clay
The curse of blood shall pass away.
So saith the rhyme. Have you seen enough?'
"'No,' said Lady Rookwood, precipitating herself into the marble coffin.
'That weapon shall be mine.'
"'Come forth--come forth,' cried Alan. 'My arm trembles--I cannot support
the lid.'
"'I will have it, though I grasp it to eternity,' shrieked Lady Rookwood,
vainly endeavouring to wrest away the dagger, which was fastened, together
with the linen upon which it lay, by some adhesive substance to the bottom
of the shell.
"At this moment Alan Rookwood happened to cast his eye upward, and he
then beheld what filled him with new terror. The axe of the sable statue
was poised above its head, as in the act to strike him. Some secret
machinery, it was evident, existed between the sarcophagus lid and this
mysterious image. But in the first impulse of his alarm Alan abandoned his
hold of the slab, and it sunk slowly downwards. He uttered a loud cry as
it moved. Lady Rookwood heard this cry. She raised herself at the same
moment--the dagger was in her hand--she pressed it against the lid, but
its downward force was too great to be withstood. The light was within the
sarcophagus and Alan could discern her features. The expression was
terrible. She uttered one shriek, and the lid closed for ever.
"Alan was in total darkness. The light had been enclosed with Lady
Rookwood. There was something so horrible in her probable fate that even
_he_ shuddered as he thought upon it. Exerting all his remaining strength,
he essayed to raise the lid; but now it was more firmly closed than ever.
It defied all his power. Once, for an instant, he fancied that it yielded
to his straining sinews, but it was only his hand that slided upon the
surface of the marble. It was fixed--immovable. The sides and lid rang
with the strokes which the unfortunate lady bestowed upon them with the
dagger's point; but these sounds were not long heard. Presently all was
still; the marble ceased to vibrate with her blows. Alan struck the lid
with his knuckles, but no response was returned. All was silent.
[Sidenote: FRENZY]
"He now turned his attention to his own situation, which had become
sufficiently alarming. An hour must have elapsed, yet Luke had not
arrived. The door of the vault was closed--the key was in the lock, and on
the outside. He was himself a prisoner within the tomb. What if Luke
should _not_ return? What if he were slain, as it might chance, in the
enterprise? That thought flashed across his brain like an electric shock.
None knew of his retreat but his grandson. He might perish of famine
within this desolate vault.
"He checked this notion as soon as it was formed--it was too dreadful to
be indulged in. A thousand circumstances might conspire to detain Luke. He
was sure to come. Yet the solitude, the darkness, was awful, almost
intolerable. The dying and the dead were around him. He dared not stir.
"Another hour--an age it seemed to him--had passed. Still Luke came not.
Horrible forebodings crossed him; but he would not surrender himself to
them. He rose, and crawled in the direction, as he supposed, of the
door--fearful even of the stealthy sound of his own footsteps. He reached
it, and his heart once more throbbed with hope. He bent his ear to the
key; he drew in his breath; he listened for some sound, but nothing was to
be heard. A groan would have been almost music in his ears.
"Another hour was gone! He was now a prey to the most frightful
apprehensions, agitated in turns by the wildest emotions of rage and
terror. He at one moment imagined that Luke had abandoned him, and heaped
curses upon his head; at the next, convinced that he had fallen, he
bewailed with equal bitterness his grandson's fate and his own. He paced
the tomb like one distracted; he stamped upon the iron plate; he smote
with his hands upon the door; he shouted, and the vault hollowly echoed
his lamentations. But Time's sand ran on, and Luke arrived not.
"Alan now abandoned himself wholly to despair. He could no longer
anticipate his grandson's coming--no longer hope for deliverance. His fate
was sealed. Death awaited him. He must anticipate his slow but inevitable
stroke, enduring all the grinding horrors of starvation. The contemplation
of such an end was madness, but he was forced to contemplate it now; and
so appalling did it appear to his imagination, that he half resolved to
dash out his brains against the walls of the sepulchre, and put an end at
once to his tortures; and nothing, except a doubt whether he might not, by
imperfectly accomplishing his purpose, increase his own suffering,
prevented him from putting this dreadful idea into execution. His dagger
was gone, and he had no other weapon. Terrors of a new kind now assailed
him. The dead, he fancied, were bursting from their coffins, and he
peopled the darkness with grisly phantoms. They were round about him on
each side, whirling and rustling, gibbering, groaning, shrieking,
laughing, and lamenting. He was stunned, stifled. The air seemed to grow
suffocating, pestilential; the wild laughter was redoubled; the horrible
troop assailed him; they dragged him along the tomb, and amid their howls
he fell, and became insensible.
[Sidenote: TORMENT]
"When he returned to himself, it was some time before he could collect his
scattered faculties; and when the agonising consciousness of his terrible
situation forced itself upon his mind, he had nigh relapsed into oblivion.
He arose. He rushed towards the door: he knocked against it with his
knuckles till the blood streamed from them; he scratched against it with
his nails till they were torn off by the roots. With insane fury he
hurled himself against the iron frame: it was in vain. Again he had
recourse to the trap-door. He searched for it; he found it. He laid
himself upon the ground. There was no interval of space in which he could
insert a finger's point. He beat it with his clenched hand; he tore it
with his teeth; he jumped upon it; he smote it with his heel. The iron
returned a sullen sound.
"He again essayed the lid of the sarcophagus. Despair nerved his strength.
He raised the slab a few inches. He shouted, screamed, but no answer was
returned; and again the lid fell.
"'She is dead!' cried Alan. 'Why have I not shared her fate? But mine is
to come. And such a death!--oh, oh!' And, frenzied at the thought, he
again hurried to the door, and renewed his fruitless attempts to escape,
till nature gave way, and he sank upon the floor, groaning and exhausted.
"Physical suffering now began to take the place of his mental tortures.
Parched and consumed with a fierce internal fever, he was tormented by
unappeasable thirst--of all human ills the most unendurable. His tongue
was dry and dusty, his throat inflamed; his lips had lost all moisture. He
licked the humid floor; he sought to imbibe the nitrous drops from the
walls; but, instead of allaying his thirst, they increased it. He would
have given the world, had he possessed it, for a draught of cold
spring-water. Oh, to have died with his lips upon some bubbling fountain's
marge! But to perish thus!
"Nor were the pangs of hunger wanting. He had to endure all the horrors of
famine as well as the agonies of quenchless thirst.
"In this dreadful state three days and nights passed over Alan's fated
head. Nor night nor day had he. Time, with him, was only measured by its
duration, and that seemed interminable. Each hour added to his suffering,
and brought with it no relief. During this period of prolonged misery
reason often tottered on her throne. Sometimes he was under the influence
of the wildest passions. He dragged coffins from their recesses, hurled
them upon the ground, striving to break them open and drag forth their
loathsome contents. Upon other occasions he would weep bitterly and
wildly; and once--once only--did he attempt to pray; but he started from
his knees with an echo of infernal laughter, as he deemed, ringing in his
ears. Then, again, would he call down imprecations upon himself and his
whole line, trampling upon the pile of coffins he had reared; and, lastly,
more subdued, would creep to the boards that contained the body of his
child, kissing them with a frantic outbreak of affection.
"At length he became sensible of his approaching dissolution. To him the
thought of death might well be terrible; but he quailed not before it, or
rather seemed, in his latest moments, to resume all his wonted firmness of
character. Gathering together his remaining strength, he dragged himself
towards the niche wherein his brother, Sir Reginald Rookwood, was
deposited, and, placing his hand upon the coffin, solemnly exclaimed, 'My
curse--my dying curse--be upon thee evermore!'
"Falling with his face upon the coffin, Alan instantly expired. In this
attitude his remains were discovered."
How to repress a smile at the picture conjured up of Lady Rookwood
"precipitating herself into the marble coffin"! How not to refrain from
laughing at the fantastic description of Alan piling up coffins in the
vault and jumping upon them!
XXVIII
Half a mile below Cuckfield stands Ansty Cross, (the "Handstay" of old
road-books, and said to derive from the Anglo-Saxon, _Heanstige_, meaning
highway), a cluster of a few cottages and the "Green Cross" inn, once old
and picturesque, now rebuilt in the Ready-made Picturesque order of
architecture. Here stood one of the numerous turnpike-gates.
Close by is Riddens Farm, a picturesque little homestead, with tile-hung
front and clustered chimneys. It still contains one of those old Sussex
cast-iron firebacks mentioned in an earlier page, dated 1622.
Below Ansty, two miles or thereby down the road, the little river Adur is
passed at Bridge Farm, and the twin towns of St. John's Common and Burgess
Hill are reached.
Before 1820 their sites were fields and common land, wild and
gorse-covered, free and open. Few houses were then in sight; the "Anchor"
inn, by Burgess Hill, the reputed haunt of smugglers, who stored their
contraband in the woods and heaths close by; and the "King's Head," at St.
John's Common, with two or three cottages--these were all.
[Illustration: OLD SUSSEX FIREBACK, RIDDENS FARM.]
[Sidenote: BURGESS HILL]
St. John's Common, partly in Keymer and partly in Clayton parishes, was
enclosed piecemeal, between 1828 and 1855, by an arrangement between the
lords of the manors and the copyholders, who divided the plunder between
them, when this large tract of land resently became the site of these
towns of St. John's Common and Burgess Hill, which sprang up, if not with
quite the rapidity of a Californian mining-town, at least with a celerity
previously unknown in England. Their rapid rise was of course due to the
Brighton Railway and its station. There are, however, nowadays not
wanting signs, quite apart from the condition of the brick and tile and
drainpipe-making industry, on which the two mushroom towns have come into
being, that the unlovely places are in a bad way. Shops closed and vainly
offered "to let" tell a story of artificial expansion and consequent
depression: the inevitable Nemesis of discounting the future.
[Illustration: JACOB'S POST.]
I will show you what the site of these uninviting modern places was like,
a hundred years ago. It is not far, geographically, from the sorry streets
of Burgess Hill to the wild, wide commons of Wivelsfield and Ditchling;
but such a change is wrought in two miles and a half as would be
considered impossible by any who have not made the excursion into those
beautiful regions. They show us, in survival, what the now hackneyed main
roads were like three generations ago.
[Sidenote: JACOB'S POST]
In every circumstance Ditchling Common recalls the "Crackskull Commons" of
the eighteenth-century comedies, for it has a little horror of its own in
the shape of an authentic fragment of a gibbet. This is the silent
reminder of a crime committed near at hand, at the "Royal Oak" inn,
Wivelsfield, in 1734. In that year Jacob Harris, a Jew pedlar, came to the
inn and, stabling his horse, attacked Miles, the landlord, while he was
grooming the animal down, and cut his throat. The servant-maid, hearing a
disturbance in the stable, and coming downstairs to see the cause of it,
was murdered in the same way, and then the Jew calmly walked upstairs and
slaughtered the landlord's wife, who was lying ill in bed. None of these
unfortunate people died at once. The two women expired the same night, but
Miles lived long enough to identify the assassin, who was hanged at
Horsham, his body being hung in chains from this gibbet, ever since known
as Jacob's Post.
Pieces of wood from this gallows-tree were long and highly esteemed by
country-folk as charms, and were often carried about with them as
preventatives of all manner of accidents and diseases; indeed, its present
meagre proportions are due to this practice and belief.
The post is fenced with a wooden rail, and is surmounted by the quaint
iron effigy of a rooster, pierced with the date, 1734, in old-fashioned
figures.
It is a lonely spot, with but one cottage near at hand: the common
undulating away for miles until it reaches close to the grey barrier of
the noble South Downs, rising magnificently in the distance.
XXIX
Returning to the exploited main road. Friar's Oak is soon reached. It was
selected by Sir Conan Doyle as one of the scenes of his Regency story,
"Rodney Stone"; but since the year 1900, when the old inn was rebuilt, the
spot has become an eyesore to those who knew it of old.
No one knows why Friar's Oak is so called, and "Nothing is ever known
about anything on the roads," is the intemperate exclamation that rises to
the lips of the disappointed explorer. But wild legends, as usual, supply
the place of facts, and the old oak that stands opposite the inn is said
to have been the spot where a friar, or friars, distributed alms. To any
one who knows even the least about friars, this story would at once carry
its own condemnation; but a friar, or a hermit, may have solicited alms
here. At any rate, the old inn used to exhibit a very forbidding "friar of
orders grey" as its sign, dancing beneath the oak. Stolen many years ago,
it was subsequently discovered in London by the merest accident, was
purchased for a trifling sum, and restored to its bereft signpost. The
innkeeper, however, thinking that what befell once might happen again,
hung the cherished panel within the house, where it remains to this day.
From Friar's Oak it is but a step to that newest creation among Brighton's
suburbs, Clayton Park, its clustering red-brick villas, building estates,
and half-formed roads adjoining the station of Hassocks Gate, which, by
the way, the railway authorities have long since reduced to "Hassocks."
The name recalls certain dusty contrivances of straw and carpeting
artfully contrived for the devout to stumble over in church. But, not to
incur the suspicion of tripping over the name as here applied, it may be
mentioned that "hassock" is the Anglo-Saxon name for a coppice or small
wood; and there are really many of these at and around Hassocks Gate to
this day.
[Sidenote: TURNPIKE GATES]
At Stonepound a road leads on the right to Hurstpierpoint, which is too
big a mouthful for general use, and so is locally "Hurst." The Pierpoints,
whose name is embedded in that of the place, like an ammonite in a
geological stratum, were long since as extinct as those other Normans, the
Monceaux of Hurstmonceaux, and are what Americans would term a "back
number."
............................
. Stone Pound Gate .
. Clears Patcham Gate .
.St. John's and Ansty Gates.
. Y .
............................
............................
. Patcham Gate .
. Clears Stone Pound Gate, .
.St. John's and Ansty Gates.
. 126 .
............................
Stonepound Gate was one of the nine that at one time barred the Brighton
Road, and the last but one on the way. It will be seen, by the specimens
of turnpike-tickets reprinted here, that at one time, at least, the burden
of the tolls was not quite so heavy as the mere number of the gates would
lead a casual observer to suppose, a ticket taken at Ansty "clearing" the
remaining distance, through three other gates, to Brighton. But it was
necessary for the traveller to know his way about, and, if he were going
through, to ask for a ticket to clear to Brighton; else the pikeman would
issue a ticket, which cost just as much, to the next gate only, when
another payment would be demanded. These were "tricks upon travellers"
familiar to every road, and they earned the pikemen, as a class, a very
unenviable reputation.
It was here, in the great Christmas Eve snowstorm of 1836, that the London
mail was snowed up. Its adventures illustrate the uncertainty of
travelling the roads.