Chapter II: Harley Street

While I was thus passing my time at Fairburn, at work with my tutor, in rides rendered doubly lonesome by contrast with those made so enjoyable by the company of my friend, or in rambles about the solitary Chase, the course of true love was running more smoothly in Harley Street than it is fabled to do. During each of my visits there, I had perceived its silent increase even more clearly than those between whom it was growing up into the perfect flower, leaf by leaf, and bud by bud; they had tended it together--Marmaduke and Lucy--until it was well nigh in blossom, and yet they had not said to one another, and perhaps not even to themselves, "Why, this is surely Love." Mr. Gerard had watched it, not displeased, for he had found the young man all that my heart had foretold that he would; Mr. Clint had seen it, and won by the strong sense, as much as by the beauty of the gentle girl, forgot the revolutionary stock of which she came. This, thought he, is the wife for Marmaduke Heath; tender, but yet determined; dutiful, but indisposed to submit to unauthorized dictation; as fearless as kind. In her, once wedded to this young man, so morbid, so sensitive, so yielding, Sir Massingberd would find, if it should be necessary, not only a foe, resolute herself, but as firm as steel for him whom she had dowered with her love. What Marmaduke's nature wanted, hers would supply. The keen lawyer foresaw for that unhappy family, whose interests he and his had had in keeping so many scores of years, a future such as had never been promised before. It was an admission painful to me enough at that time, but which I could not conceal from myself, that the real obstacle which prevented the open recognition of attachment between these two young people was Marmaduke himself. No girl more modest or less forward than Lucy Gerard ever breathed, but I knew--ah, how well I knew!--that a word from him would have brought the love-light to her eyes, which now lay waiting but for it in the careful keeping of her maiden heart. But that word had not been spoken. Perfect love, Marmaduke did not yet feel, for he had not quite cast out fear. How can a man offer heart and hand to a woman whom he does not feel certain that he can protect? It is for this reason that marriage among slaves must for ever be a mockery. There was, of course, no danger to Lucy Gerard in her marrying with Marmaduke, although his uncle should storm "No" a thousand times; but the young man felt that he was unworthy of her, while he entertained any terror of him. It was wearing away; it was weakening day by day, through genial influences, and the absence of all things which reminded him of Fairburn and its master, but it was not dead yet. If by these words, I lead any of my readers to suppose that Marmaduke Heath had the least resemblance to that thing which is called a Coward, I have done my friend a grievous wrong. Let me do away with the possibility of this most mistaken notion, at once and for ever, by the recital of an event which, although it does not come within the scope of the present narrative, nearly concerns one of its most important characters.

After the peace in 1815, there were more officers--English and French--killed in single combat in Paris than in any one of the most bloody battles of the late war. This desire to exterminate individual Englishmen extended over the whole of France. A certain gentleman of my acquaintance, then a very young man, chanced to be passing through a town in Normandy, where an assemblage was collected outside the office of the mayor. This arose from the very uncommon circumstance that that functionary had been appealed to by a post-captain in the English navy to punish a bullying Frenchman, who had striven to fasten a quarrel upon him, although entirely unprovoked on his part. Now-a-days, the captain would have been held to have behaved rightly enough, perhaps, but in those fire-eating times an honest man's life was at the mercy of every worthless ruffian who chose to run an equal risk with him from powder and bullet. The decision, wonderful to relate, was given by the mayor against his compatriot, and the crowd were correspondingly enraged. My friend, whose nationality was apparent, was hustled and ill-treated, and one person, well-dressed, and evidently of good position, knocked his hat off, observing at the same time: "You will complain of me to the mayor for that."

"Certainly not," returned the young Englishman quietly, picking his hat up, all broken and muddy, from the trampled ground: "I shall treat you very differently."

"You will fight, will you? Come--I challenge you. Let us fight to-morrow morning," exclaimed the bully, who was, as it turned out, a notorious provincial duellist.

"Not to-morrow, but now," rejoined my friend; "I have no time to wait here, for I must be in Paris on Tuesday."

"Then it will be in Père la Chaise," responded the other brutally.

There was no difficulty in procuring seconds, which were even more plentiful in those parts than principals, and the whole party immediately left the town for a wood outside its suburbs. The choice of weapons of course lay with the Englishman.

"Which do you prefer," asked the Frenchman who acted as his friend upon the occasion--"the pistol or the sword?"

"I have never fired a pistol in my life," replied the Englishman, "nor handled a sword."

"Heavens!" cried his second, "what a barbarous education, what a stupendous ignorance! You are as good as dead, I fear. I know not which to recommend you. It is, however, at least sooner over with the pistol."

"The pistol be it then," said the Englishman coolly. "I elect that only one shall be loaded; and that we fire within four paces of one another. We shall then have an equal chance."

The duellist turned pale as the death that threatened him, but he did not venture to make any objection. It was manifest no other proposal would have been fair. The seconds went apart, and placed powder and ball in one weapon, powder only in the other. The combatants drew lots for choice. The Frenchman won. The pistols were lying on a log of wood; he advanced towards them, took one up in his hand, and retired with it, then once more came back, and exchanged it for the other. He fancied that the weapon was lighter than it should have been if it had a ball within it. My friend's second objected strongly to this course; he called it even unfair and shameful; he protested that the pistol taken first ought to be retained. But the young Englishman, who was leaning carelessly against a tree, exclaimed, "Let the gentleman have which he likes. Whether he is right or not will be decided in a few seconds." So the combatants were placed opposite to one another, and advanced to within four paces. They raised their weapons; the word was given to fire, and the Frenchman fell, pierced through the heart.

"His blood is upon his own head," exclaimed the other solemnly. "He was brave enough to have been a better man." Then perceiving that his help could be of no avail to his late antagonist, he lifted his battered hat to the Frenchman that remained alive, and returning to his carriage, immediately resumed his journey.

It is not possible, without putting some very strained and unusual meaning on the word, to call the hero of such an adventure a coward; yet the man who acted thus was Marmaduke Heath.

The above relation is but a clumsy method of proving him courageous, I am well aware; but I really know not otherwise how to make him appear so, slave, as it is seen he was, to terrors which must seem almost imaginary. It is said that no man, however fearless, quite gets over his awe of his schoolmaster. An exaggeration of this sentiment probably possessed this unfortunate young man; added to which was the fact that Sir Massingberd was his uncle, a family tie which was doubtless not without its influence, notwithstanding Marmaduke's evil opinion of his own race. I suspect, too, he entertained a morbid notion that his own life and that of his relative were somehow bound up together in one; and on the few occasions when I ever saw him moved to wrath, a similarity--mental as well as physical--between him and his uncle became apparent, which actually inspired him with a sort of awe and hatred of _himself_. A noble mind more injured and misshapen by ill-training it was impossible to imagine. For the last few months, however, as I have said, it had been growing aright, and gaining strength and vigour. No home--even Mr. Clint and my tutor felt that--could possibly be better adapted for him than his present one; the society of Mr. Gerard, a man independent almost to audacity, and despising the haughty and the strong with a supreme contempt, was the very tonic he needed. Rarely, however, was his uncle's name mentioned in his presence: at first, Mr. Gerard had purposely spoken of Sir Massingberd lightly and jestingly, but it was found that the subject had better be altogether avoided. It is ill to jest upon earthquakes with one who, having but just recovered from certain shocks of a volcanic nature, is not without apprehensions of more to come. This anticipation turned out to be but too well grounded. A day or two after my discovery of the baronet's poor gipsy-wife at Fairburn, whose existence was well known, I found, to both the rector and Mr. Clint, and of course to Marmaduke himself, the postman carried misfortune from me to Harley Street, although I was myself as unconscious of the fact as he. Marmaduke did not come in to luncheon from his study, as usual, and Mr. Gerard was sent with a gay message to him by Lucy, to bid him do so. He was not wanted, he was to be assured, upon his own account at all, but she was dying to hear news of Peter, whose handwriting she had perceived upon the letter that had been sent in to him that morning. Mr. Gerard found the poor lad with his eyes riveted upon an autograph that was not mine, and upon words that I would rather have cut off my hand than knowingly have sent him:

"Nephew Marmaduke,--I am told, whether falsely or not, it does not matter now, that you have not seen the letter which I previously sent to you. I think you can scarcely have done so, or you would not have dared to disobey my orders therein contained, but would have returned to Fairburn long ago. At all events, you will read _this_ with your own eyes, and beware how you hesitate to comply with it. _Return hither, sir, at once._ It is idle to suppose that I wish you harm, as those you are with would fain persuade you; but it is far worse than idle to attempt to cross my will. Come back to Fairburn, and I will behave towards you as though you had not acted in your late undutiful manner. Delay to do so, and be sure that you will still have to return, but under very different circumstances. Marmaduke Heath, you should know me well by this time. When I say 'Come,' it is bad for the person to whom I speak to reply, 'I will not come.' I give you twenty-four hours to arrive here after the receipt of this letter; when these have elapsed without my seeing you, I shall consider your absence to be equivalent to a contumacious refusal. Then war will begin between us; and the strife will be unequal, Nephew Marmaduke; although you had fifty men at your back like lawyer Clint and this man Gerard, they could not keep you from my arm. It will reach you wheresoever you are, at the time you least suspect it, and from the quarter to which you have least looked. However well it may seem to be with you, it will not be well. When you think yourself safest, you will be most in danger. There is indeed but one place of safety for you: come you home.

"MASSINGBERD HEATH."

The wily baronet had fooled me, and doubtless, when I rose to light the taper, had substituted the above letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his unhappy nephew.