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 buttons 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 <i>my</i> 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 passes 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 Massingberd 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 passion for reading was not so much a love of books, as a desire to escape in them from the circumstances 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 associations happened to be at hand, and they were very unhealthy food. The wickedness of Sir Massingberd 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 noble 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 title seems to have said, like the descendants of Tubal Cain--

'We will not hear, we will not know,
The God 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 God'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 circumstance 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 assistance 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. Nobody 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 hearse-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. The solitary witness, frightened enough before, was now doubly terrified, for he made sure that what he had seen was the news of Sir Nicholas's decease, brought over in this ghastly and characteristic fashion. He did not for a single moment imagine that it was a palpable vision; and yet he had seen a veritable funeral pass by. The old baronet had died in France, leaving directions, and the money to carry them out, that his corpse should be taken at night, and at full gallop, through every town that lay between Dover and Fairburn.--Alive or dead," added Marmaduke grimly, "the Heaths are a charming family."

"At all events, my dear fellow," said I, laying my hand upon his arm, "you will have nothing to fear from comparison with your forefathers. You may make a good reputation at a cheap price.[1] A very little virtue will go a great way with the next tenant of Fairburn Hall, if half the tales we hear be true."

"And what tales are those?" inquired a deep, low voice at my very elbow.

I believe I jumped a foot or two in the air myself, so great was my alarm. But as far my companion, if those grass-grown tombs which we were contemplating had given up their wicked skeletons before his eyes, he could not have exhibited a greater excess of terror.

Beside me stood a man of Herculean proportions, who by his dress might have been taken for an under-gamekeeper, but for a very massive gold chain which hung from the top button-hole of his waistcoat down to its deep-flapped pocket. What is now, I believe, called an "Albert guard," resembles it on a smaller scale; but at the time I speak of, such an ornament was altogether unique. His face, too, evidently belonged to one who was used to command. On the forehead was a curious indented curve like the letter U, while his lip curled contemptuously upwards also, in somewhat the same shape. The two together gave him a weird and indeed a demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long and flowing, had not enough of dignity to do away with. I had never heard Sir Massingberd's personal appearance described; but even if I had not had before me his shrinking nephew, I should have recognized at once the features of Giant Despair.

"And what tales are those which are told against the present tenant of Fairburn Hall?" reiterated the baronet, scanning me from head to foot with his cold glittering eyes. "And who is this young gentleman who comes to listen to them from the lips of my loving ward?"

"Sir," said I, "your nephew was saying nothing whatever against you, I do assure you. I was merely referring to the gossip of the village, which, indeed, does not make you out to be entirely a saint." I was angry at having been frightened by this man, who, after all, could not hurt <i>me</i>. I had been accustomed, too, to Indian life; which, without making one bolder than other people, indisposes one to submit to dictation, which is only the duty of the natives.

Sir Massingberd reached forth one iron finger, and rocked me with it to and fro, though I stood as firm as I could. "Take care, young gentleman, take care," said he; "that spirit of yours will not do down at Fairburn. Mr. Long does not seem to have taught you humility, I think. Marmaduke, go home." He spoke these last words exactly as a man speaks to his dog who has injudiciously followed him to church on Sunday, in the hope that he was bent on partridge shooting.

The boy instantly obeyed. He shrank away, passing as closely to the churchyard railing as he could, as though he almost feared a blow from his uncle.

"There is humility, there is docility!" sneered the baronet, looking after him. "And if I had <i>you</i> up at the Hall, my young bantam, for four and twenty hours or so, I'd make you docile too." He strode away with a laugh like the creaking of an iron hinge, for he saw that I did not dare to answer him. He strode away over the humble graves, setting his foot deep into their daisied mounds as though in scorn; and his laugh echoed again and again from the sepulchral walls, for it was joy to Sir Massingberd Heath to know that he was feared.

[1] I am told by an able friend, who is good enough to revise for me this manuscript, that it is not likely that a mere boy, as I then was, would have made such an observation as the above. I do not doubt that this remark is altogether just; but I am afraid it will apply to so much else in this narrative, that it is scarcely worth while to make an alteration. I am not used to literary composition; I cannot weigh whether this or that is characteristic of a speaker. I am merely a garrulous person, who has, however, such a striking story to tell, that I trust the matter will atone for the manner.