"There was no sign of life, save one: The subtle spider, that from overhead Hung like a spy on human guilt and error, Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread, Ran with a nimble terror."
This insect had woven its webs in every nook and cranny, in readiness for the prey that rarely came, and the slanting pillars of motes and light that streamed into the gloom seemed almost as palpable as they. A door led up by three or four steps into Sir Massingberd's bedroom--a bare unfurnished place, where skins of wild animals, instead of carpet, were spread for a banquet to the moth. His shooting-boots stood up still stiff and strong beside the empty grate, although they were white with mildew, and his night-gear lay folded upon the rotting pillow, in preparation for his rest. The sitting-room, however, bore the more striking vestiges of its late proprietor.
The huge arm-chair stood a little aside from the fender, where he had pushed it back as he rose to leave the room; and the book which he had been reading lay open with its face to the table, ready for him to resume its perusal upon his return. A spirit-case with the stoppers in, the couple of cigars which it had been Sir Massingberd's invariable custom to smoke before going to bed, and a few fly-blown lumps of sugar, were set out in hideous travesty of creature-comfort. The rector took up the volume, and with one involuntary glance towards the fire-place, tore the wrinkled and blue-spotted leaves to fragments. A scurrilous French novel had engaged the last hours of the wretched old man, ere he went forth--to his doom.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAIRY'S WAND.
There are but few of us, I fear, who can say: "Though I should die suddenly, and at the most unlooked-for time, there will be nothing left behind me which I would have destroyed, even though I had had the opportunity." Of course there are none who can boast that they are at peace with all mankind; that they leave nothing unrepented of or unatoned for; that their human affairs and social relations are exactly where they would have wished them to be. But independent of these matters, neglected by the very best of us, how eagerly must many a man desire, between the warning and swift stroke of death, that he had had but a little time--a little strength to set, not, indeed, his house in order, but his desk and his note-book. What a cruel shock have many a family received, after they have lost the Head whom they have worshipped so many years, by discovering, where they looked for no such thing, _after his death_, that he had all along (as will be thought) been even such a one--_not_ as themselves, but worse--as they whom they had been taught by his own self to look upon with contempt, or at least with pity; as they who, by contrast with himself, were persons base and vile.
Is there no letter, reader, ragged and time-worn, perhaps, but still legible, lying among that heap of correspondence you intend to winnow some day--which it will be better to burn _now_? Is there no half-forgotten gift, meant for your own eyes alone, when they were brighter than at present, which it would be well to make an end of this very day? Can you say: "Even though I do not return home to night, or ever again, but am smashed by a railway locomotive, or driven over by a 'bus, or poisoned in a cab, yet there will be nothing of mine, nothing when my friends take stock of my personal effects, of which I need be ashamed." If so, thou art a good man indeed--or one of exceeding prudence. Above all things, my friends, be good, for that is best; but if not, at least be prudent. Let your memories be sullied with no stain, at all events in the thoughts of those you leave at home. The actions of the unjust blossom in their dust into flowers compared with which the deadly nightshade is as the violet or the rose. The satirist tells us that in a week, a month, a year at most, the memory of a dead man dies even from the hearts of those he held most dear. This is not true; but the satirist would have been severer yet, and have spoken truth as well, had he said that the memory of a dead man, so far as his vice and wickedness are concerned, dies not at all among his kin. It is spoken of in whispers by the purest, and renders them less pure; it is made light of by the vicious, but only to excuse their wrongful acts by a worse example. "Wild as I may be, I am not so wild as the governor was in his day," is a terrible legacy of comfort to leave behind one to one's son.
It is possible that even Sir Massingberd Heath may at some far-back time have deemed it necessary to lay to his soul some flattering unction of this kind. There were Sir Wentworth and Sir Nicholas, and many a Heath to extenuate his acts, if bad example might do it. But the time came to him, and very early in life, when he had no longer this slender justification, since he had outdone his worse progenitor in vice and folly. Mr. Clint had known, Mr. Long had guessed--we all of us had suspected more or less that the lost baronet's life had been evil beyond that of an ordinary man; but the dumb revelations which were made concerning it in the necessary examination of his papers, were simply shocking. After destroying these, the next approach to cleansing Fairburn Hall was to discharge all the indoor domestics. Mr. Richard Gilmore resented this conduct towards a faithful servant of the family, as he styled himself, very bitterly; but he departed with the rest, laden, there is little doubt with a very considerable plunder. Presently the upholsterers came down from town with a great following of workpeople, and a caravan of waggons, bearing costly furniture; then a host of servants, selected with as much care as was possible, replaced the exiles; and when all was ready within and without--the waste places of the grounds being reclaimed, and put upon the same footing with those which hitherto had alone been "kept up"--Sir Marmaduke Heath and his wife themselves took possession of Fairburn Hall.
Art had already done much to change that sombre house into a comfortable as well as splendid mansion; but the presence of its new mistress did more than all to rescue it from the long tyranny of decay and gloom.
Beneath her smile, the shadows of the past could take no shape, but vanished, thin and pale. She would allow them nowhere resting-place.
Where they had been wont to gather thickest to her husband's eyes, she quelled them by her radiant presence, day and night. The Oak Parlour and its adjoining bedroom; she formed into a double boudoir for her own sweet self; and straightway all bat-winged, harpy-headed memories, the brood of evil deeds, flew from it as the skirts of Night before the dawn, and in their place an angel-throng came fluttering in, and made it their abode. No stage-fairy, wand in hand, ever effected transformation-scene more charming and complete. One fear, and one alone, now agitated Marmaduke's heart, for the safety of his priceless wife in her approaching trial. He would have gladly cancelled nature's gracious promise, and lived childless all his days, rather than any risk should befall Lucy. His friends, his servants, and the villagers, brimful of hope that there should be an heir to Fairburn, flowed over in earnest congratulations; but for his part, he felt apprehensive only.
His heart experienced no yearning for the child who might endanger the mother.
In accordance with her plan of ignoring all that had gone before of shame and sorrow, and regenerating evil places with a baptism of joy, Lady Heath had chosen the state chamber itself as her sleeping apartment, and there in due time she safely brought forth a son. Upon his knees, Marmaduke thanked Heaven for the blessing which was thus vouchsafed to him, but above all, in that it had brought with it no curse. Verily had the house of mourning become the house of feasting, and the chamber of sorrow the chamber of mirth.
The unconscious father had been sitting by the library fire, endeavouring vainly to distract his mind from what was occurring upstairs, and turning his eyes restlessly ever and anon towards the door, when the voice of Dr. Sitwell suddenly broke the silence.
"Sir Marmaduke, I congratulate you; you have a son and heir."
"And my wife?" cried the husband impatiently.
"She is as well as can possibly be expected, I do assure you."
"You are very welcome," exclaimed the young baronet; "and would have been so, although you had chosen to burst your way in with a torpedo.
But I confess you startled me a good deal."
"I am afraid I did," returned the doctor, in a voice like a stream of milk and honey, "although it was not my intention to do so. But the fact is, I did not come in by the door at all. Her ladyship desired that I should bring you the good news by way of Jacob's Ladder; and I may add, that you may come back with me that way and see her yourself for just one quarter of a minute."
So even Jacob's Ladder was made a pleasant thoroughfare to Marmaduke, and dearer from that hour than all staircases of wood or stone.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FOUND.
Now, when Marmaduke junior, who was named also Peter, to mark the regard which both its parents had for my poor self, became of the ripe age of fourteen weeks or so, and the spring had so far advanced upon the summer as to admit of open-air rejoicings, it was determined that the advent of the heir of Fairburn should be celebrated with all due honour. This would have been done before, for Lady Heath had soon recovered her strength, and the child was reported to be a miracle of health and plumpness, had it not been for the backwardness of the season. The Hall had, of course, made merry upon the matter long ago, and if all the poor in the place had not done so, it was from no want of materials in the way of creature-comfort supplied by the young Squire. But what Marmaduke had waited for was settled fine weather, in order that the Chase might be filled by merrymakers, whose happiness should cleanse it from all memories of woe and wrong. Much of these, it is true, had been effaced already; a portion of the Park had been given up to the villagers for cricket and other sports, a grant common enough now, but one almost unexampled in those days, and the right of way which Sir Massingberd had spent so many hundreds in opposing, had been voluntarily surrendered. Oliver Bradford still retained his office, but being almost bedridden, inspired less terror than of yore among evil-doers; this was not so much to be regretted, however, since there was now little want, and therefore few poachers in Fairburn, while the general popularity of the young Squire lessened even those. I am afraid that if the new owner had heard a gun discharged at night in the Home Spinney itself, it is doubtful whether he would have laid down his book, or hesitated more than usual in his vain attempt to checkmate his wife at chess, in order to listen for the second barrel. The terror of the Lost Baronet had long been fading from his old domain; and upon this occasion, when old and young were all invited to make holiday in those once almost unknown retreats of hare and deer, there was no urchin but was determined--by no means single-handed, however--to explore them thoroughly. The very Wolsey Oak which the ravens had made their quarters was not shunned, but in the great space about it, races were run, and dances danced, and its vast trunk was made the very headquarters of childish merriment. These young folks did not affect the company of their elders, except when the gongs gave signal from the various marquees that there was food afoot, when they flocked to meet their parents at the heaped-up boards with a dutiful celerity. The higher class of tenantry were upon the lawn, and among them mixed with stately condescension a goodly number of the county aristocracy. I remember that some of the latter introduced upon this occasion the new dance called the quadrille, which had just arrived from Paris at that time. It had come over in the bad company of the waltz; but that lively measure was held to be too indecorous to be imported to Fairburn under its new _regime_. Everybody, when out of earshot of the host and hostess, was talking about the change that had taken place in this respect.
"How odd this all seems," quoth Squire Broadacres to his neighbour, Mr.
Flinthert, heir of the late lamented admiral. "None of _us_, I suppose, have been at the Hall here for this quarter of a century."
"Ay, that at least," quoth the other. "Of course, it is a great matter to see people in the Heaths' position properly conducted as to morals.
But I doubt whether this young fellow may not go astray in another and even a still more dangerous direction. They say his politics are, dear me, shocking."
"Not a bit of it," replied Mr. Broadacres. "It isn't in the Heath blood to be radical. But his wife, she rules the roost, you see--and a devilish pretty woman too; I could find it in my heart to forgive her anything."
"But that fellow, Harvey Gerard, her father--why, he's a downright _sans-culotte_, sir."
"The Gerards are bound to be, my dear sir," returned the jolly squire.
"All these things are a question of family; it's nothing but that. I am told there is some French blood in him."
"We want nothing of that sort down in Midshire," responded Mr.
Flinthert, shaking his head.
"But we have got it, you see, my friend, and therefore we must make the best of it. It was all very well to ignore Gerard while he was a new-comer at the Dovecot, although, mind you, he was always a gentleman, every inch of him, notwithstanding his queer opinions; but now that he is become so nearly connected with Sir Marmaduke, and living at the Hall half his time, why, the county must make up its mind to receive him."
"I shall let him perceive, however, that it does so--so far at least as I am concerned--upon sufferance, and, as it were--what is the word?--ay, vicariously."
"Very good," observed Mr. Broadacres, dryly. "I am not quite clear as to your meaning; but if you intend to put Harvey Gerard down, I do not think you will meet with any very triumphant success. Why, Sir Massingberd here, who would have grappled with the devil, was tripped up and thrown by this man with the greatest ease."
"Nevertheless, I shall give him the cold shoulder," observed Mr.
Flinthert, stiffly; "although I shall studiously avoid being rude."
"Faith, I would recommend your doing that, my friend," laughed the jolly Squire. "If you turned your back upon Harvey Gerard instead of your shoulder, my belief is that he'd kick you."
"That he'd do what?" exclaimed Mr. Barnardistone Flinthert, late high-sheriff and present magistrate and _custos rotulorum_ of Midshire.
"That he'd take advantage of the opportunity, that's all," returned Mr.
Broadacres, quietly. "No, no, sir, with a man like Gerard, all good Tories should keep on good terms. One can't hang him, you know, like a radical tailor, and therefore it's quite worth while to make ourselves appear to the best advantage. A stupid slight to a clever man has often done more harm to the cause of good government than a whole regiment of dragoons can remedy."
"Oh curse his cleverness!" responded Mr. Flinthert, savagely. "I'm for no such milk-and-water measures. I think it's the duty of somebody to tell young Marmaduke----"
"Well, say it _yourself_," interrupted Mr. Broadacres.
"It's a positive duty, I say, that somebody should go to the baronet, and tell him frankly that all this leniency to poaching fellows, and liberty to the rabble, cannot but lead to harm. 'You're a young man,' he should be told, 'and don't understand these things; but that is the opinion of the county, and it behoves you to know it.'"
"That would do more harm than good, Mr. Flinthert. You may depend upon it that Marmaduke Heath thinks for himself in these matters, notwithstanding that I dare say Gerard and his pretty daughter have had some influence. The young fellow naturally goes exactly counter to all that his uncle did before him. This holiday-making and mixture of high and low here, are themselves enough to make Sir Massingberd turn in his grave."
"Ay, if he _is_ in his grave," responded Mr. Flinthert, darkly. "But who knows whether he may not turn up some day after all; tell me that."
"I can't tell you that," responded Mr. Broadacres; "but I'll bet you ten guineas to one that he never does."
"Ay, but if he did!" replied the other, gloomily. "If he was to appear this very day, for instance, what a scene it would be--what a revolution for some people!"
"Well, if he did, he'd find the property greatly improved--except that that right of way has been reopened through the Park; all his thieving servants dismissed; all his debts settled; and his mad gipsy wife amply provided for, and well content, I am told, among her vagabond friends."