The World's Greatest Books - Volume 6 Part 55

_I.--Neither Fearing G.o.d Nor Regarding Man_

In a Midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a village called Fairburn, which at the time I knew it first had for its squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath. Its rector, at that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long, into whose wardship I, Peter Meredith, an Anglo-Indian lad, was placed by my parents. I loved Mr.

Long, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Mr.

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. Like the unjust judge, he neither feared G.o.d nor regarded man.

He had been a fast, very fast friend of the regent; but they were no longer on speaking terms. Sir Ma.s.singberd had left the gay, wicked world for good, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country seat in spite of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, and house and land being entailed upon his nephew Marmaduke, he had nothing but a life interest in anything.

Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided with his uncle at the Hall. He dreaded his relative beyond measure. All the pretended frankness with which the old man sometimes treated the lad was unable to hide the hate with which Sir Ma.s.singberd really regarded him; but for this heir-presumptive to the entail, the baronet might raise money to any extent, and once more take his rightful station in the world.

Abject terror obscured the young existence of Marmaduke Heath. The shadow of Sir Ma.s.singberd cast itself over him alike when he went out from his hated presence and when he returned to it.

Soon after my first meeting with Marmaduke, Sir Ma.s.singberd unexpectedly appeared before me. He was a man of Herculean proportions, dressed like an under-gamekeeper, but with the face of one who was used to command.

On his forehead was a curious indented frown like the letter V, and his lips curled contemptuously upward in the same shape. These two together gave him a weird, demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long and flowing, had not enough of dignity to do away with. He ordered his nephew to go home, and the boy instantly obeyed, as though he almost dreaded a blow from his uncle. Then the baronet strode away, and his laugh echoed again and again, for it was joy to know that he was feared.

Mr. Long determined to buy a horse for me, and upon my suggestion that I wished Marmaduke Heath to spend more time in my company, he and I went up to the Hall to ask Sir Ma.s.singberd if he were willing. The squire received us curtly, and upon hearing of my tutor's intention, declared that he himself would select a horse for Marmaduke. Then, since he wished to talk with Mr. Long concerning Mr. Chint, the family lawyer, he bade me go to his nephew's room, calling upon Gr.i.m.j.a.w, a loathsome old dog, to act as my guide. This beast preceded me up the old oak staircase to a chamber door, before which it sat and whined. Marmaduke opened this and admitted me, and we sat talking together.

My tutor found us together, and knowing the house better than the heir did, offered to play cicerone and show me over. In the state bed-room, a great room facing the north, he disclosed to us a secret stairway that opened behind a full-length portrait. Marmaduke, who had been unaware of its existence, grew ghastly pale.

"The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the library door," said Mr. Long. "I dare say that n.o.body has moved the picture for twenty years."

"Yes, yes!" said Marmaduke pa.s.sionately. "My uncle has moved it. When I was ill, upon my coming to Fairburn, I slept here, and I had terrible visions. I see it all now. He wanted to frighten me to death, or to make me mad. He would come and stand by my bedside and stare at me. Cruel-- cruel coward!"

Then he begged us to go away. "My uncle will wonder at your long delay.

He will suspect something," he said.

"Peter," observed my tutor gravely, as we went homeward, "whatever you may think of what has pa.s.sed to-day, say nothing. I am not so ignorant of the wrongs of that poor boy as I appear, but there is nothing for it but patience."

_II.--A Gypsy's Curse_

In a few days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke had the like fortune. My tutor examined the steed Sir Ma.s.singberd had bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of the curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride. After we had left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with Marmaduke, and certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have taken more pains with the animal. In the end he expressed himself highly satisfied. Some days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the horse, behaved in a strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last became positively fiendish. Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched head-first over a declivity. When I found Marmaduke blood was at his mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere.

"Marmaduke, Marmaduke!" I cried. "Speak! Speak, if it be but a single word! Great heaven, he is dead!"

"Dead! No, not he," answered a hoa.r.s.e, cracked voice at my ear. "The devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!"

"Woman," cried I, for it was an old gypsy, who had somehow transported herself to the spot, "for G.o.d's sake go for help! There is a house yonder amongst the trees."

"And why should I stir a foot," replied she fiercely, "for the child of a race that has ever treated me and mine as dogs?"

Then she cursed Sir Ma.s.singberd as the oppressor of her kith and kin, concluding with the terrible words, "May he perish, inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the G.o.d of the poor take him into His hand!"

"If you hate Sir Ma.s.singberd Heath," said I despairingly, "and want to do him the worst service that lies in your power, flee, flee to that house, and bid them save this boy's life, which alone stands between his beggared uncle and unknown riches!"

Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. She knelt at his side, from a pocket produced a spirit-flask in a leathern case, and applied it to his lips. After a painful attempt to swallow, he succeeded; his eyelids began tremulously to move, and the colour to return to his pallid cheeks. She disappeared; during her absence I noted that the tarnished silver top of the flask bore upon it a facsimile of one of the identical griffins which guarded each side of the broad steps that led to Fairburn Hall.

After a short interval, a young and lovely girl appeared, accompanied by a groom and butler, who bore between them a small sofa, on which Marmaduke was lifted and gently carried to the house. The master came in soon, accompanied by the local doctor, who at last delivered the verdict that my friend "would live to be a baronet."

He said, moreover, that the youth must be kept perfectly quiet, and not moved thence on any consideration--it might be for weeks. Harvey Gerard, a n.o.ble-looking gentleman, refused to admit Sir Ma.s.singberd under his roof.

The baronet, however, did appear towards twilight, and forced his way into the house, where Harvey Gerard met him with great severity. Soon hatred took the place of all other expressions on the baronet's face, and he swore that he would see his nephew.

"That you shall not do, Sir Ma.s.singberd," said the gentleman. "If you attempt to do so, my servants will put you out of the house by force."

"Before night, then, I shall send for him, and he shall be carried back to Fairburn, to be nursed in his proper home."

"Nursed!" repeated Harvey Gerard hoa.r.s.ely. "Nursed by the gravedigger!"

Sir Ma.s.singberd turned livid.

"To hear you talk one would think that I had tried to murder the boy,"

he said.

"I _know_ you did!" cried Harvey Gerard solemnly. "To-day you sent your nephew forth upon that devil with a snaffle-bridle instead of a curb!

See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian, begone from beneath this roof, false coward!"

Sir Ma.s.singberd started up like one stung by an adder.

"Yes, I say coward!" continued Harvey Gerard. "Heavens, that this creature should still feel touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not anyone within this house at peril of your life! Murderer!"

For once Sir Ma.s.singberd had met his match--and more. He seized his hat, and hurried from the room.

_III.--A Wife Undesired_

When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching demise.

"I have seen a vision in the night," he said, "far too sweet and fair not to have been sent from heaven itself. They say the Heaths have always ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a gentle messenger."

"Your angel is Lucy Gerard," replied I quietly, "and we are at this moment in her father's house."

He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.

"It would indeed be bitter for me to die _now_," he said.

I myself was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid down my life to kiss her finger-tips. Nearly half a century has pa.s.sed over my head since the time of which I write, and yet, I swear to you, my old heart glows again, and on my withered cheeks there comes a blush as I call to mind the time when I first met that pure and lovely girl.

But from the moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his bed of sickness, of our host's daughter, I determined within myself not only to stand aside, and let him win if he could, but to help him by all the means within my power. And so it came about that later I told Lucy that his recovery depended upon her kindness, and won her to look upon him with compa.s.sion and with tenderness.

Mr. Clint, the lawyer, came from London, and arrangements were made for Marmaduke to continue in Harvey Gerard's care, and when Marmaduke was convalescent the Gerards removed him to their residence in Harley street. After I had bidden them farewell, I rode slowly towards Fairburn, but was stopped at some distance by a young gypsy boy, who summoned me to the encampment to converse with the aged woman whom I had seen on the occasion of the accident. She bade me sit down beside her, and after a time produced the silver-mounted flask, concerning whose history I felt great curiosity. I asked her how it came into her possession, and she herself asked a question in turn.

"Has it never struck you why Sir Ma.s.singberd has not long ago taken to himself a young wife, and begotten an heir for the lands of Fairburn, in despite of his nephew?"

"If that be so," said I, "why does not Sir Ma.s.singberd marry?"