Chapter XVI: Taking the Seals Off

Marmaduke Heath came down to Fairburn according to his promise, but it cost him a great effort. With every stage his spirits seemed to fall and fail; and when Mrs. Myrtle at last clasped him in her arms--for Master Marmaduke was ever a great favourite of hers, and the fact of his having grown up and got married weighed with her not a feather--his wan face was paler than when she had seen it last, notwithstanding its three years of happiness and freedom. It was Christmas-time; the Rectory was a bower of ivy and holly-berries; and just within the threshold, the locality which the good housekeeper had chosen for her embrace, hung a huge bough of mistletoe, the finest that could be found in all the Chase. In the spotless kitchen, so exquisitely clean that you might, as the phrase goes, "have eaten your dinner off the floor," if it had not happened to have been a sanded one, there were preparations for sumptuous feasting; a delightful fragrance, suggestive of mince-pies with plenty of citron, pervaded Mrs. Myrtle's private parlour, where the divine mysteries of Apicius were being celebrated. The little larder, cold and immaculate as a dead sucking-pig ready for the spit, was victualled with noble meats as for a siege; while monstrous pasties and plum-puddings, too many for the broad stone slabs, reposed upon the Dutch tiles that formed its carpet. It was not intended that the inhabitants of the Rectory should eat all the good things themselves; but it was a custom of Mr. Long, aided and abetted by Mrs. Myrtle, to keep open house for about a fortnight at this festive period, and to entertain certain worthy persons, who were old and indigent, in the sanded kitchen daily. Attempts to edify the poor in those days were not made so often as they are at present, but it was held essential by all good Christian country folk to keep Christmas as a feast, and to see that others kept it. I suppose Fairburn Hall was the only house in the county where that blessed time was ignored and taken no account of; Sir Massingberd had never suffered the slightest honour to be paid to it; and his worthy deputy and _locum-tenens_, Richard Gilmore, treated it with the like contumely.

The change from the bright little Rectory, with all its hospitable preparations, to the gloomy grandeur of the masterless mansion, was very striking, when we three crossed the road next morning, to take the seals off, which Mr. Long had placed upon the principal rooms, and so, as it were, to break the blockade caused by the baronet's disappearance. The contrast began even with things without. Half one of the globes had been sliced from its pedestal on one side of the great iron gates; and in the very centre of the avenue, the grass grew long and rank. The sun-dial was cracked and gaped in zigzag, an emblem of the uncertainty that overhung the place. The heraldic beasts at the foot of the entrance-steps were much more mutilated than when I had seen them last, and had indeed only one stone fore-paw or claw between them. Disuse is sister to Abuse, but still how comes it that mere absence should beget, as it always does, such absolute Ruin? Had the Squire been at home the last three years, the globe upon the pedestal would have been whole, the dial flawless, the griffins with at least their larger limbs intact; and yet no man was ever seen to work this mischief. When the great door swung reluctantly back to admit the new possessor, he took my hand, and bade me Welcome, but his tone was far from gay. Every glance he cast around him evoked, I could see, some unpleasant association, and even, perhaps, a vague terror.

There is something uncanny in exploring any dwelling the rooms of which have been locked up and unvisited for years--places that have been once consecrated to humanity, but have afterwards been given up to Solitude and slow decay. Memories of their ancient inmates seem to hang gloomily about them, like the cobweb in their corners; they are eloquent of desertion and of death. The shriek of the mouse, and the singing of the blue fly in the pane, have perhaps alone been heard there in the interim; but there seem to have been other and ghostlier noises, which cease at our approach. Who knows what eerie deeds our sudden intrusion may have interrupted!

"What faces glimmered through the doors,
What footsteps trod the upper floors,"

ere we broke in! The peculiar circumstances under which our search was made intensified these feelings in us three, and even Gilmore, who accompanied us, was affected by them.

"O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
This place is _worse_ than haunted."

The library was the first room we entered, which, even in the palmiest days of Fairburn Hall had been a dreary room, because the least in use. Except Marmaduke himself, no one ever sat there; the wicked books, which were the only sort read and patronized by Sir Massingberd, were all in the Squire's private sitting-room, and the gaps in the shelves that lined the present apartment, revealed that the Heaths had laid in a considerable stock of them. Old Sir Wentworth, a miser in his old age, had been a dunce in his youth, and was once heard openly to regret that circumstance from the fact, that he was unable to peruse the loose continental literature which his ancestors had provided for his delectation, free of expense. In the rare cases when the Oak Parlour had not sufficient accommodation for the guests of the missing Squire, they had been wont to adjourn to the present apartment, to smoke and lounge through half the night; but it bore no trace of having been so used. Every chair and sofa were in their appointed place, as though they had grown up like trees through the dusty carpet. Upon the tables and mantelpieces, the dust had settled inches thick. The grate was laid ready for lighting; but over the coals and sticks hung a sort of mildew, that looked as if it would have defied a pine-torch to set light to it. These things we remarked gradually, one by one, for the butler had only opened the shutters of one window, and the extent of the apartment was prodigious. The shelves were filled almost entirely with quartos--books were not hand-books in those days--rich with plates, and "meadows of margin;" you could not have sent a child on an errand to bring one of them; if he had managed to extricate a tome at all by painfully loosening it at head and foot, it might have fallen out and brained him. A fourth of the entire stock was composed of books of Catholic theology. "Those," observed Mr. Long, "are the most valuable things in the library. Sir Nicholas is supposed to have won his bride by paying that costly tribute to her faith. The illuminations are most rare and splendid. Why, what is this, Gilmore? I can't get this volume down. It seems stuck to the others."

The butler grinned maliciously. "I think you will find them all like that, sir. There's nothing but the wood-backs left. The Squire disposed of these books soon after Mr. Marmaduke left, and got this imitation stuff put up instead."

Mr. Long broke out into wrathful indignation, but the young heir kept silence, only smiling bitterly.

"Perhaps he was afraid that their heterodoxy might do his nephew harm," remarked I, rather tickled, I confess, by this characteristic fraud.

"No, sir," replied Gilmore, drily; "he merely observed, that, being theological works, there was as much in them now as before."

"Impious wretch!" exclaimed the Rector. "See, he has bartered the Fathers of the Church for a set of empty backgammon boards, and lettered them with their venerable names."

"Here, however, is the Family Bible," said I; "he has not sold that."

The spider had spun his web across the sacred volume, but it opened readily enough at the only place, perhaps, into which its late owner had ever looked--the huge yellow fly-leaf, upon which were inscribed the names of the later generations of the Heaths; Sir Massingberd's birth in his father's own handwriting, and Sir Wentworth's death in that of his son's, and only too probably his murderer's. The autograph was bold and flaring, quite different from the crabbed hand of the parent, is which the names of Gilbert Heath and Marmaduke's mother were also written, as likewise that of Marmaduke himself. There was a little space beneath the last; and the young heir, looking over my shoulder, pointed to it, significantly; doubtless, it had been hoped by the last possessor of the volume that this might one day have been filled up by the date of his nephew's, demise.

We were about to leave the room, when Mr. Long suddenly exclaimed, "Nay, let us try the secret way. You told me, I remember, that you did not know of Jacob's ladder, Marmaduke. The spring lies in the index of Josephus, a wooden volume, which perhaps put this notion of wholesale 'dumbies' into Sir Massingberd's head." This practical satire upon the unpopularity of the Jewish historian was presently discovered, hidden away upon one of those ground-floor shelves, which, if the enthusiastic student investigates at all, it must be upon his knees. After a little manipulation, the spring obeyed, and with a surly creak, as if in protest, the whole compartment of shelves above moved slowly outward on some hidden hinge, and disclosed the narrow stairs that ended in the shepherdess of the state chamber. The steps were worm-eaten, and the wall on both sides hung with moth-devoured and ragged tapestry. Marmaduke shrank back, and gazed upon the aperture with abhorrence and dismay. To what vile purposes might it not have been used, besides that of attempting to overthrow a poor child's reason; nay, was it not possible that what we had sought, yet feared to find for so long, might be in this very place, where no eye could have looked or thought of looking! Might it not have hidden there, and been imprisoned alive in righteous retribution, by the very spring which had ministered to hate and cruelty? "I went up here," said Mr. Long, divining the young man's thoughts, "when I searched the house with Gilmore, and put on the seals. I think we should climb Jacob's ladder, Marmaduke; as you will make the Hall your home, it is well to leave no spot in it associated with any unpleasantness, unfamiliar." So saying, the rector led the way, and we all followed: there was some delay while he opened the door above, and certainly it was not a cheerful position for us in the meantime, cooped up in the darkness, with the arras touching us with its ghostly folds on either side the narrow way; but I think that my tutor's advice was good, and that his old pupil experienced a feeling of satisfaction when the thing was done. Once more we stood together in that state bedroom where Marmaduke had suffered such ghastly terrors when a boy.

"Shall I ever forget those nights!" muttered he with a shudder. "Can this room ever be otherwise than hateful to me! It was here, as I sat weak and ill in that arm-chair, that my uncle struck me for losing----. Stay, now I remember it all. Remove this skirting-board, Gilmore; take the poker; do not spare the rotting wood. Ay, there it is." A yellow something lay amid the dust and rubbish, which on inspection turned out to be a gold pencil-case. "That was lent me by my uncle, a dozen years ago," said Marmaduke musing, "and he chastised me for losing it. It had rolled under yonder skirting-board, but I was too terrified at the time to recollect the fact. I wish I could forget things now. Undo the other shutters, Richard. Light, more light."

And thus we let the blessed sunlight into all the shuttered rooms. It glanced in galleries on knights in all their panoply, and smote the steel upon their visors, as though the flame of battle once more darted from their eyes; it made their tattered pennons blush again, and tipped their rusted spears with sudden fire. It flashed upon the stern ancestral faces on the wall, and through their dust evoked a look of life. That winter sun had not the power to warm, however; all things struck cold. The dark oak-pannels chilled us from their waveless depths; the cumbrous organ, carved with fruit and flowers, kept frozen silence; while in the chapel, Sir Nicholas in stone and mildew struck to our marrow. His lady opposite, upon her knees in her "devout oratory," gave us cold looks, as though we had interrupted her devotions. In vain the painted windows, high and triple arched, cast down "warm gules" upon her marble breast, and filled the sacred place with glorious hues. In vain the gilded scroll, "Praie for hys Soule," appealed to us through dust and damp, and his memorial pane blushed scarlet in its endeavour to perpetuate his infamy. All things seemed cursed in that accursed house; the hallowed places desecrated, and those where hospitality and good fellowship were meant to reign, solitary and barren. There was one apartment still which had been left by common consent to be visited last of all--Sir Massingberd's oak parlour. There he might have been said to have lived, for it was the only sitting-room he used from early morning--and he was no great sleeper--until very late at night. There, as we have seen, he had held his audiences, and dined, and sometimes slept after any deep debauch. By all the household, except Gilmore, it was held as a Bluebeard's chamber, and would not have been entered upon any account, even had it not had the rector's seal upon it. It was here that the lost baronet had passed his last hours within the house, and thither he had intended to return--if he had meant to return at all--before he retired for the night. The butler entered it first, and let the light in; then Mr. Long, then I, then Marmaduke. Although I had been there once before, I scarcely recognized the place, for upon that occasion the squire himself had occupied it, and I had had no eyes except for him. It was doubtless a comfortable room enough when the fire was shining on its polished walls, and the red curtains snugly drawn over the windows; but with that thin December light--for it was afternoon by this time--creeping coldly in upon the three-year-old ashes of the burnt-out fire, and on the panels, smeared with spots and stains, it was very cheerless:

"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.