Lost Sir Massingberd Volume I Part 1

Lost Sir Ma.s.singberd.

by James Payn.

VOL 1.

PREFATORY.

In these days, when every man and woman becomes an author upon the least provocation, it is not necessary to make an apology for appearing in print. Perhaps there was always something affected in those prefatorial justifications; although they did disclaim any literary merit, it is probable that the writers would have been indignant enough had the critics taken them at their word; and perhaps the publication was not entirely owing to "the warmly-expressed wishes of numerous friends."

But, at all events, we have done with all such excuses now. Not to have written anything for the press, is no small claim to being an Original.

Neither s.e.x nor age seems to exempt from the universal pa.s.sion of authorship. My niece, Jessie (aetat. sixteen), writes heart-rending narratives for the "Liliputian Magazine;" her brother, whom I have always looked upon as a violent, healthy hobbledehoy whose highest virtue was Endurance, and whose darkest experience was Skittles, produces the most thrilling romances for the "Home Companion." Even my housekeeper makes no secret of forwarding her most admired recipes to the "Family Intelligencer;" while my stable-boy, it is well known, is a prominent poetical contributor to the "Turf Times," having also the gift of prophecy with reference to the winner of all the racing events of any importance. And yet, I believe, my household is not more addicted to publication than those of my neighbours.

What becomes of authors by profession in such a state of things literary as this, I shudder to think; I feel it almost a sin to add one more to the long list of compet.i.tors with whom they have to struggle; but still, if I do not now set down the story which I have in my mind, I am certain that, sooner or later, my nephew will do so for me, and very likely spoil it in the telling. He writes in a snappy, jerky, pyrotechnic way, which they tell me is now popular, but which is not suited to my old-fashioned taste; and although he dare not make, at present, what he calls "copy" of the stories with which I am perhaps too much accustomed to regale his ears, he keeps a note-book, and a new terror is added to Death from that circ.u.mstance. When I am gone, he will publish my best things, under some such t.i.tle as "After-dinner Tales," I feel certain; and they will appear at the railway book-stalls in a yellow cover bordered with red, or with even a frontispiece displaying a counterfeit and libellous presentment of his departed relative in the very act of narration. The gem of that collection would undoubtedly be the story which I am now about to antic.i.p.ate the young gentleman by relating myself. If I am somewhat old-world in my style, perhaps it may be forgiven me, in consideration of the reality of the circ.u.mstances narrated, and the very strong interest which I do not doubt they will arouse.

It is not necessary to state the exact locality where they occurred, nor the number of years which have elapsed since their occurrence; it is enough to premise that what I tell is true, and that some of the princ.i.p.al personages in the--well, the melodrama, if you will--are yet alive, and will peruse these words before they meet the public eye. If nothing therein offends them, therefore, it need not, upon the score of indiscreet revelation at least, offend my readers.

CHAPTER I.

GIANT DESPAIR.

In a midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a village called Fairburn, which, at the time I knew it first--many, many years ago--had for its squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath. Its rector, at that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long; and at the Rectory, when my story commences, there was in pupilage to the said rector a youth, one Peter Meredith, who has since grown up to be the present writer. When we are small, all things seem vast to our young minds; good men are saints, and evil ones are demons. I loved Mr. Long, therefore, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Sir Ma.s.singberd! It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me to hold this man as a monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which the whole county entertained of him, more or less. The people of Fairburn trembled before him, as a ship's company before some cruel captain of fifteen years back--I mean, of fifteen years before the period of which I write. Press-gangs had not very long ceased to do their cruel mission; there were old men in our village who had served their time in His Majesty's ships, very much against their will; there were gaps in poor families still, which might or might not be filled up; empty chairs that had so stood for a score of years perhaps, waiting for still expected occupiers; fathers of families, or the props of families, in sons and brothers, had been spirited away from Fairburn (even a little while ago), and had not come back again yet. They had been poachers, or radicals, or sectaries (as Dissenters were then called), or something else distasteful to Sir Ma.s.singberd's father; and they had been carried off to sea at his command. Let not my young readers imagine that I am exaggerating matters; I write of a state of things of which they have not the remotest conception, but which I remember perfectly well. They have reason to thank Heaven that they did not live in those times, if they happen to belong to those unprosperous cla.s.ses which were then termed collectively, "the mob;" there were no such things as "skilled workmen," or "respectable artisans," in those days. The "people" were "the Great Unwashed." To build a Crystal Palace for such as they were held to be, would have seemed to be the height of folly; they would have taken no other pleasure in it than to smash every pane with brickbats--for were they not "the dangerous cla.s.ses"? Such opinions were beginning to die out, indeed, but they were held still by many great people, and Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath was one of them. Reared in a clergyman's family, and a clergyman myself, I have been a Conservative in politics all my life, and in that belief I shall die; but rank and power are no excuse with me for evil deeds. In the chamber of my nephew John, who "takes in everything," as the phrase goes, I once discovered a democratic magazine, edited by a gentleman whose surname I forget, but who had a great mult.i.tude of initials. All the poor people described in this work were pious and moral, and all the rich people were infidel and profligate; but for the n.o.blemen--and there were a good many persons of high rank in the various stories--were reserved all the choicest invectives and most superlative abuse. Nothing, of course, can be more unfair than this treatment of a cla.s.s of persons who, considering their temptations, are really more than respectable. As a general rule, the portraits were extravagantly malicious, but they had this attraction for me--they were all exceedingly like Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath. He was the very type of that bloated aristocracy that is held up in scarecrow fashion, by republican writers. There were not many living specimens to be met with even at the date of my tale, and the old baronet, perhaps himself perceiving that he was one of the last of them, determined that he should not be the least in infamy. Like the Unjust Judge, he neither feared G.o.d nor regarded man, and, worse than he, he would not perform a good action on account of the importunity of any person. She must have been a brave woman who importuned Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath, and could scarcely have been brought up in Fairburn.

Whether George IV. was king or not, at the period of which I write, it matters not, for his connection with our squire had terminated years before; but at one time they had been fast, very fast friends. When a king and a baronet run a race of extravagance, the king generally wins, and so it had been in this case; His Majesty, or rather His Royal Highness the Regent, had distanced Sir Ma.s.singberd, and they were not now upon even speaking terms. Friendships of this sort do not last when one of the parties has spent all his money. What was the use of a poor man at White's who could only look on while his old friends played whist for one hundred pound points, and five hundred pounds upon the rubber?

What business--let alone pleasure--could one have in London, when Howard and Gribbs would not lend one fifty pounds even at fifty per cent.? Sir Ma.s.singberd had left that gay, wicked world for good, that is to say, for ever, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country-seat in spite of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, so far as his court prospects were concerned, for he had no ready money. He owned all Fairburn, and many hundreds of rich acres about it, beside the Park and the river; he had the great t.i.thes of the place, and manorial rights (which he exercised, too) innumerable. n.o.body quite knew--he did not know himself--what privileges he had or had not, what pathways he could close at pleasure, what heriots he could demand, or what precise property he had in Fairburn gravel-pits; but in all cases he gave himself the benefit of the doubt. It was a very foolish thing to leave any disputed point to the sense of justice, or the good feeling of our squire, and yet this was generally done. Where it was not done, where some honest fellow had ventured to oppose his high prerogative, even though he gained his end, he was always, as the village people said, "paid out" for it. I don't mean to say Sir Ma.s.singberd murdered him--although he would have done that, I am confident, without the slightest scruple, if it could have been effected with safety to himself--but he took his revenge of him, sooner or later, in a very simple way. He caught his children trespa.s.sing--having caused them to be enticed upon his land--and committed them to prison; or he broke down his fences, and spoiled his corn in the night; for he had dependents devoted to his wicked will, and upon whose false witness he could always rely.

And yet, with all this power, the baronet, as I have said, was a poor man; he had borrowed all the money he could, and was even said to have overreached the London Jews in these transactions; and it was all gone--absolutely all. It was seldom that this great lord of acres had a ten-pound note in his pocket, for his house and land were all entailed upon his nephew Marmaduke, and he had only a life-interest in anything.

Poverty perhaps made him bitterer and more savage than he would otherwise have been; but, for my part, I cannot imagine him to have been agreeable under any circ.u.mstances. I have heard, however, that at Carlton House he was once the first favourite--after Brummell--and that, of course, made him sought after by many people. He had a wicked wit, which was doubtless acceptable in some circles, and his tongue, it may be, was not quite so coa.r.s.e in those days of prosperity. He took a delight in his old age in retailing his infamous experiences, before women, if possible, and if not, before clergymen or boys. I remember to have heard of Mr. Long once venturing to reprove his squire upon an occasion of this very kind. The rector had been dining at the Hall--an exceptional occurrence, and under exceptional circ.u.mstances--when, after dinner, the host began one of his disgraceful reminiscences, whereupon my tutor rose and said, "Sir Ma.s.singberd, you should be ashamed to talk of such matters to me; but before this boy, it is infamous. I thank you for your hospitality; but I shall go home."

"Very well; go, and be hanged!" replied the baronet; "and Marmaduke and I will make a jolly night of it."

Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided with his uncle at the Hall He would very much rather have retired with his tutor on that occasion, and indeed have resided at the Rectory, for he dreaded his relative beyond measure. All the pretended frankness with which the old man sometimes treated the boy was unable to hide the hate with which Sir Ma.s.singberd really regarded him; but for this heir-presumptive to the entail, this milk-and-water lad of seventeen, the baronet might raise money to any extent, nay, sell all Fairburn, if he chose, and so might once more take his rightful station in the world, rejoin the Four-in-hand Club, and demand his "revenge" from my Lord Thanet at ecarte. He could still drink, for the cellars of Fairburn Hall were well-nigh inexhaustible; but if that chit of a lad was but carried off, he might have the best in the land to drink with him. It is true that a ruined man in Sir Ma.s.singberd's position can still afford a good table; game is plentiful with him, and fish, and he grows his own mutton and venison, so that neither himself nor his friends need starve; but servants must be maintained to wait upon these, and a great country-house without a carriage is as a lobster without a claw.

Consequently, except in the shooting-season, there were no guests at Fairburn Hall; the folks that did come were men of a certain stamp; current indeed, in good society, but only in that of males; a real lady had not set foot in the Park, far less the house, for the last twelve years; the manner in which Sir Ma.s.singberd lived forbade such a thing. A few bachelors of the County Hunt, and half-a-dozen roues from town, were all the company that could be enticed to Fairburn in September and October; all the rest of the year, the gra.s.s grew in the avenue untouched by wheel or hoof, and even sprang up among the stone steps that led to the front-door. Somehow or other, I never saw it thus without thinking of the parable of the Sower and the Seed, with some distant and uncharitable reference to our squire! I wondered whether it was possible that in any far-back time any good seed of any sort had found its way into the crannies of his stony heart, and if so, what had become of it. I used to try and picture that violent wicked man as a child in his cot, or saying his prayers at his mother's knee. I believe she had died soon after her marriage, and that, short as her wedded life had been, it was a very unhappy one.

Fairburn Hall had never been a house for tender, honest women; the Heaths, who are celebrated like another n.o.ble race of the same sort, for their hard hearts and excellent digestions, had never been good husbands. Fortunately, daughters were rare in the family. How Sir Ma.s.singberd would have brought up a daughter, I shudder to think. One son had been the sole offspring vouchsafed to the baronets of this line for many generations, except the last; and in the present case, there was no such direct heir. Some said Sir Ma.s.singberd had married secretly, but was separated from his wife, and some said he had not; but it seemed somehow certain that with him the immediate succession from father to son would cease. His brother Gilbert had married young in Italy, and had died in that country within the same year. His widow had brought his posthumous child, when a few months old, to the Hall, at the invitation of Sir Ma.s.singberd, and had remained there for some time. The villagers still spoke of the dark foreign lady as being the most beautiful creature they had ever beheld; the Park keepers used to come upon her in solitary glades, singing sweetly; but ah! so sorrowfully, to her child in a tongue that they did not understand. The baronet himself was absent, not yet cast out of the court whirlpool, and the lonely vastness of the place was not displeasing to the young widow, wishing, perhaps, to be left undisturbed with her grief; but after Sir Ma.s.singberd came down, she remained but a very few days. It was said that she fled with her babe in a winter's night, and that her little footprints were traced in the snow to the cross-roads where the mail went by, by which she had arrived. She was not rich, and had come down in a manner quite different from that of her brother-in-law, who, broken and ruined though he was, had posted with four horses. That was how all gentlefolks of the county travelled in those days; even the very barristers on circuit indulged, and were obliged to do so, in a chaise and a pair. The mother of Marmaduke Heath, however, who was heir-presumptive to the largest landed property in Midshire, was very poor. Whether the late baronet had omitted to make a proper provision for his younger son, or whether Gilbert had made away with it after the usual manner of the Heaths, I do not know; but his widow and child betook themselves into Devonshire--selected, perhaps, from its climate approaching nearer than any other part of England to that of her native land--and, there lived in a very humble fashion. How Marmaduke ever got into his uncle's hands, I never could clearly understand; his mother had died suddenly, whereupon the family lawyer, Mr. Clint of Russell Square, who had the entire management of the Heath property, had in the first instance taken possession of the lad; but Sir Ma.s.singberd had claimed his right to be the guardian of his nephew, and it could not be disallowed.

Such were mainly the circ.u.mstances, I believe; but all sorts of stories were in circulation concerning "Giant Despair," as the savage old baronet was called, and his nephew; the general opinion agreeing only upon one point--that no sane person would change places with Master Marmaduke Heath at Doubting Castle, notwithstanding the greatness of his expectations.

CHAPTER II.

MY FIRST INTERVIEW.

My own history has little or nothing to do with the present narrative, and therefore I will not allude to it, except where it is absolutely necessary. Suffice it to say, that my parents were in India, and that for many years Fairburn Rectory was my home. I had no vacations, in the sense that the word is generally understood to mean; I had nowhere else to go to, nor did I wish to go anywhere. No father could have been kinder, or have done his duty better by me, than did Mr. Long. How poor Marmaduke used to envy me my wardship to that good man! I well remember the first day I came to Fairburn. It was early summer; its great woods were in all their glory; and to me, fresh from shipboard and the vast waste of sea, the place seemed a bower of bliss. First, the grey old church tower upon the hill; and then the turrets of the Hall, half-hidden in oak; and last, the low-roofed, blossom-entangled cottage where I found so bright a welcome--that was the order in which Fairburn was introduced to visitors from town. The Church, and the Hall, and the Rectory all lay together; the churchyard, dark with yews, encroached upon the Rectory garden; and that bright spot, so trimly kept, that one was moved to pick up a fallen leaf, if such were on its lawn, sloped down into the heart of the Park. A light iron railing, with wires to prevent the hares and rabbits from entering in and nibbling the flowers, alone divided the great man's land from Mr. Long's trim demesne. The deer came up and pushed their velvet horns against it. In copse and fern, twinkled the innumerable ear and tail. I had never seen such animals before, and they delighted me hugely. After dinner, on the very day that I arrived, I fed them through the rails, and they ate the bread from my open hand.

"They take you for Marmaduke," said Mr. Long, smiling; "for otherwise, they would be shy of a stranger."

"And who is Marmaduke, sir?"

"He is your fellow pupil, and I make no doubt will be your friend. I wish that he was resident with me, like yourself; but his uncle, who lives at the Hall yonder, will not part with him. He reads with me morning and afternoon, however."

"Does he like reading, sir?" inquired I with hesitation, for I for my part did not. My education, such as it was, had been fitful incomplete, and in a word, Indian; and I had come back much older than most European boys have to come home, a sad dunce.

"Yes, Marmaduke is very fond of reading," pursued my tutor; "that is, reading of a certain sort. He always does his work well with me, so I must not be hard on him; but he is certainly too fond of novels. And yonder he comes, see, with a book in his hand, even as he walks." My tutor pointed to the Park; and there, coming slowly down a long, broad "ride," with his eyes fixed upon a volume he held in his hand, was a youth of seventeen years old or so, which was about my own age. As he came nearer, I began to see why the deer had mistaken me for him; not, indeed, because he was very handsome (which was not at all the case with me), but inasmuch as his complexion was as olive as my own.

"Why, he has been to India too!" whispered I to my tutor, rather disappointed than otherwise, for I had had enough of Indian playmates, and to spare.

"No," returned he in the same low voice; "his mother was an Italian."

Then he introduced us; and I began to hang my head, and play with the b.u.t.tons of my waistcoat, as is the graceful manner of hobbledehoys upon such a ceremony; but Marmaduke, completely self-possessed, asked about my journey, and particularly what I had seen at sea. He knew so much about sharks and porpoises, that I thought he must have made some long voyage himself; but he told me that such was not the case.

"Though I should like to go to sea of all things," said he; "and I would cruise about that cape--what's its name?--until I met with the "Flying Dutchman:" that is the vessel which I wish to see."

"I have never heard of her," said I, proud of that nautical use of the feminine. "Is she one of the Company's ships?"

At this my tutor began to rub his hands, and chuckle inwardly, as was his wont when vastly amused; but perceiving that the colour came into my cheeks, he laid his hand upon my shoulder kindly, and said that he was glad to find my head, at least, was not stuck full of foolish stories, as some people's heads were; while Marmaduke, without triumphing in the least over my ignorance, explained to me all about that Phantom Ship, which glides full sail upon the astonished voyager, and pa.s.ses through his vessel without shock or noise. He told the tale exactly as if he had heard it straight from the lips of an eye-witness, and believed it himself; he never laughed, and if he smiled, he seemed to be sorry that he had done so directly afterwards. Some melancholy thought appeared to occupy his mind at all times; and if a bright fancy crossed it, it was but for an instant, like lightning through the cloud. I am not describing an "interesting" youth, after the manner of romance-writers; no "secret sorrow" obscured the young existence of Marmaduke Heath, but simply, as I subsequently discovered, vulgar, abject terror. His whole being was oppressed by reason of one man. The shadow of Sir Ma.s.singberd cast itself over him alike when he went out from his hated presence and when he was about to return to it. He was never free from its nightmare influence--never. His pa.s.sion for reading was not so much a love of books, as a desire to escape in them from the circ.u.mstances of his actual life. If he ever forgot him in earnest talk--and he was the most earnest talker, as a boy, I ever knew--the mention of his uncle's name was a Medusa's Head to turn him into stony silence on the instant. If Marmaduke Heath could only have got away from Fairburn Hall when I first knew him, his mind might have regained its natural vigour and elasticity; but as it was, it grew more sombre and morbid every day. His hungry intellect was nourished upon what a.s.sociations happened to be at hand, and they were very unhealthy food. The wickedness of Sir Ma.s.singberd was, of course, sufficiently present to him, like some hateful picture hung at a bed's foot, which the eyes of a sleepless man cannot avoid; while every tongue about the Hall was ready to tell him of the evil deeds of his forefathers. At first, I thought my young friend's constant allusion to his family was the result of aristocratic pride, although, indeed, there was nothing to be proud of in what he told me, but very much the reverse; but I soon found that this was not the case.

The history of the Heaths was what interested him most of all histories, and he favoured me with extracts from it solely upon that account. As for the fact of their n.o.ble blood running in his own veins, he would, I am confident, have far rather been the son of Mrs. Myrtle, the kind old housekeeper at the Rectory.

"We are a doomed race, Peter," he once said to me, not long after we had made friendship with one another. "Generation after generation of us have sinned and sinned. The Corsicans have their family feuds transmitted to them, but they are hostile only to their fellow men; the Heaths have ever fought against Heaven itself. Each successor to the t.i.tle seems to have said, like the descendants of Tubal Cain--

'We will not hear, we will not know, The G.o.d that was our father's foe.'

There is the Church," said he, pointing to that glorious pile, which, at Fairburn, was almost a cathedral in magnitude and beauty, "and there is the Hall. They are antagonistic; they are devoted to opposite purposes.

I tell you, yes; our family residence is consecrated to the devil."

I am afraid I could not help laughing at this singular notion.

"Nay," cried he, looking round him furtively, "but you shall see that it is so." We were in the Rectory garden, which communicated with the churchyard by a wicket. He led the way into it; and in a distant corner, upon the north side of the chancel, he showed me a sombre burying-ground, separated from the rest of the G.o.d's acre, and imprisoned in dark purgatorial rails. "Do you know why we are all put there," asked he, "instead of with the other--Christian--folks?"

"You are too proud to lie with the poor, perhaps," returned I, who had still that idea in my mind with regard to Marmaduke himself.

"No," said he; "it is not that--it is because the Heaths will not be buried in consecrated ground."

"But you have a family vault underneath the chancel, have you not?"

"Yes; but it is not 'snug lying.' None of us have been put there since old Sir Hugh, in Queen Anne's time. When they opened the vault for him, they found his father's coffin with its plate to the ground. It had turned over. The witty parson would have it that it was only natural that it should have done so, since its tenant, during life, had fought alternately for Parliament and King, and was addicted to changing sides. Bat when Sir Hugh's successor demanded lodging in the place in his turn, they found Sir Hugh's coffin had turned over likewise. The circ.u.mstance so terrified the dead man's heir--who had not been on the best terms with him during life, and perhaps thought he owed him some amends--that he swore his father should not lie in such restless company; and as the late baronet had been at feud with the then rector, he determined to dispense with any a.s.sistance from the church at all, and buried him in an adjoining field, which was subsequently made the last resting-place of all our race, as you perceive. The burial service is dispensed with, of course. It would be mere mockery to address such words as Hope and Faith to the corpse of a Heath of Fairburn."

"My dear Marmaduke," said I, "you make my very blood run cold. But surely you exaggerate these things. Some of your people have been Catholics, and been buried in their own chapel at the Hall, have they not?"

"Only one of them," replied the boy with bitterness. "My great-grandfather, Sir Nicholas, abjured his infidelity, and became a papist, in order to secure his bride. He turned the chapel into a banqueting-hall, however, and used the sacramental plate in his unholy revels; but after death, the priests got hold of him at last, and 'Nick the Younger,' as he was called, now lies under the altar which he so often profaned. The beginning of his funeral ceremonies was not conducted so decently as the last rites. He had got outlawed, I believe, or, at all events, was driven abroad in his latter days, and died there.

n.o.body at Fairburn had heard of him for many months, when one October night, as Oliver Bradford, who is now the head-keeper, but was then a very young man, was watching in the home-preserves, he heard a terrible noise in the high-road, and making his way out, came upon this spectacle: two men in black, and upon black horses, rode by him at full speed, and close behind them came a hea.r.s.e-and-four, likewise at the gallop. The plumes upon it waved backwards, he says, like corn, and all the black trappings of the thing fluttered and flapped as it went by.

Another man on horseback, singing to himself a drunken song, closed this horrid procession. It moved up towards the village, and Oliver listened to it until the noise seemed to cease about opposite to the Park gates.