Chapter 26

"The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the library door," said Mr. Long. "I dare say that nobody has moved the picture for twenty years."

"Yes, yes!" said Marmaduke passionately. "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 passed 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 Massingberd 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 hoarse, 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 God'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 Massingberd 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 God of the poor take him into His hand!"

"If you hate Sir Massingberd 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 noble-looking gentleman, refused to admit Sir Massingberd 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 Massingberd," 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 hoarsely. "Nursed by the gravedigger!"

Sir Massingberd 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 Massingberd 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 Massingberd 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 passed 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 compassion 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 Massingberd 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 Massingberd marry?"

Thereupon she told me that many years ago he had joined their company, and shared their wandering fortune. Her sister Sinnamenta, a beautiful girl beloved by the handsome Stanley Carew, had fascinated him, and he would have married her according to gypsy rites; but since her father did not believe that he meant to stay with the tribe longer than it suited him, he peremptorily refused his request. Sir Massingberd left them; they struck tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, a mile from the frontier of Northumberland. There the wretch followed her, and again proposed to go through the Cingari ceremony, and this time the father consented. It was on the wedding-day that he gave my informant the shooting-flask as a remembrance, just before he and his wife went away southward. Long months afterwards Sinnamenta returned heart-stricken, woebegone, about to become a mother, with nothing but wretchedness in the future, and even her happy past a dream dispelled.

The gypsies were at Fairburn again, and Sinnamenta's father sent for Sir Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was well-nigh strangled with passion. At last he caught Sinnamenta's Wrist with fingers of steel.

"What man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?" he cried. "Come along with me, my pretty one!"

Stanley Carew flung himself upon him, knife in hand; but the others plucked him backward, and Sir Massingberd signed to his wife to followed him, and she obeyed. That night Stanley Carew was arrested on a false charge of horse-stealing, and lying witnesses soon afterwards brought him to the gallows.

"I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us," concluded the old woman. "But this I have heard, that when he told her of the death of Stanley Carew, she fell down like one dead, and presently, being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours. Yonder," she looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall, "the mother lives--a maniac. What else could keep me here in a place that tortures me with memories of my youth, and of loving faces that have crumbled into dust? What else but the hope of one day seeing my little sister yet, and the vengeance of Heaven upon him who has worked her ruin? If Massingberd Heath escape some awful end, there is no Avenger on high. I am old, but I shall see it yet, I shall see it before I die."

_IV.--The Curse Fulfilled_

I returned to Fairburn, and soon Sir Massingberd, finding that all correspondence with his nephew was interrupted by Harvey Gerard, began to pay small attentions to my tutor and myself. At last he appeared at the rectory, and desired me to forward a letter to Marmaduke. This--finding nothing objectionable in the contents--I agreed to do, and he departed, after inviting me to make use of his grounds whenever I pleased. On the morrow I yielded to curiosity, and after wandering to and fro in the park, came near a small stone house with unglazed, iron-grated windows. A short, sharp shriek clove the humid air, and approaching, I looked into a sitting-room, where an ancient female sat eating a chicken without knife or fork. Her hair was scanty and white as snow, but hung almost to the ground.

"Permit me to introduce myself," she said. "I am Sinnamenta, Lady Heath. You are not Stanley Carew, are you? They told me that he was hung, but I know better than that. To be hung for nothing must be a terrible thing; but how much worse to be hung for love! It is not customary to watch a lady when she is partaking of refreshment."

Then the poor mad creature turned her back, and I withdrew from the sad scene. A day or two afterwards the post carried misfortune from me to Harley Street. The wily baronet had fooled me, and had substituted a terrible letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his nephew.

"Return hither, sir, at once," he had written. "It is far worse than idle to attempt to cross my will. I give you twenty-four hours to arrive after the receipt of this letter. I shall consider your absence to be equivalent to a contumacious refusal. However well it may seem with you, it will not be well. Whenever you think yourself safest, you will be most in danger. There is, indeed, but one place of safety for you; come you home."

Very soon afterwards, and before we knew of this villainy, word reached us that the baronet was lost, and could not be found. He had started on his usual nocturnal rounds in the preserves, and nobody had seen him since midnight. Old Grimjaw, the dog, had been found on the doorstep, nigh frozen to death.

The news spread like wild-fire through Fairburn village. I myself joined the searchers, but soon separated from them, and passing the home spinney, near by which was the famous Wolsey oak, a tree of great age. I heard a sound that set my heart beating, and fluttering like the wings of a prisoned bird against its cage. Was it a strangled cry for "Help!" repeated once, twice, thrice, or was it the cold wind clanging and grinding the naked branches of the spinney? But nought living was to be seen; a bright wintry sun completely penetrated the leafless woodland. At last I came upon the warm but lifeless body of Grimjaw lying on the grass, and I hurried madly from the accursed place to where the men were dragging the lake.

No clue was found, and my tutor began to fear that the gypsies had made away with their enemy. Word came that they had passed through the turnpike with a covered cart, and we rode out to interview them. The old woman met us, and conducted us to the vehicle, when we found Sinnamenta, Lady Heath, weaving rushes into crowns.

"My little sister is not beaten now," said the beldam. "May God's curse have found Sir Massingberd! I would that I had his fleshless bones to show you. Where he may be we know not; we only hope that in some hateful spot he may be suffering unimagined pains!"

By the next post I received bitter news from Harley Street. A copy of the menacing epistle reached me from Harvey Gerard. In a postscript Lucy added that Marmaduke was too ill to write. An hour later Mr. Long and I set off to town, where we found the lad in a less morbid state than we had expected. He had asked, and gained, Harvey Gerard's permission to marry his daughter, and the beautiful girl was supporting him with all her strength.

The services of Townsend, the great Bow street runner, were called for; but in spite of his endeavours, no solution was discovered to the mystery of Sir Massingberd's disappearance. Fairburn Hall remained without a master, occupied only by the servants.

At last Marmaduke came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife, it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer under a curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young heir was celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd's disappearance was discovered.

Some young boys, playing at hide-and-seek, were using the Wolsey oak for "home," and, whilst waiting there, dug a hole with their knives, and came upon a life-preserver that the baronet had always carried. Then a keeper climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was a skeleton inside.

"It's my belief," said the man, "that Sir Massingberd must have climbed up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."

Later, as I looked upon the ghastly relics of humanity, the old gypsy's curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness. "May he perish, inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him into His hand."

End of Project Gutenberg's The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI., by Various