by James Payn
CHAPTER XVI.
TAKING THE SEALS OFF.
Marmaduke Heath came down to Fairburn according to his promise, but itcost him a great effort. With every stage his spirits seemed to fall andfail; and when Mrs. Myrtle at last clasped him in her arms--for MasterMarmaduke was ever a great favourite of hers, and the fact of his havinggrown up and got married weighed with her not a feather--his wan facewas paler than when she had seen it last, notwithstanding its threeyears of happiness and freedom. It was Christmas-time; the Rectory was abower of ivy and holly-berries; and just within the threshold, thelocality which the good housekeeper had chosen for her embrace, hung ahuge bough of mistletoe, the finest that could be found in all theChase. In the spotless kitchen, so exquisitely clean that you might, asthe phrase goes, "have eaten your dinner off the floor," if it had nothappened to have been a sanded one, there were preparations forsumptuous feasting; a delightful fragrance, suggestive of mince-pieswith plenty of citron, pervaded Mrs. Myrtle's private parlour, where thedivine mysteries of Apicius were being celebrated. The little larder,cold and immaculate as a dead sucking-pig ready for the spit, wasvictualled with noble meats as for a siege; while monstrous pasties andplum-puddings, too many for the broad stone slabs, reposed upon theDutch tiles that formed its carpet. It was not intended that theinhabitants of the Rectory should eat all the good things themselves;but it was a custom of Mr. Long, aided and abetted by Mrs. Myrtle, tokeep open house for about a fortnight at this festive period, and toentertain certain worthy persons, who were old and indigent, in thesanded kitchen daily. Attempts to edify the poor in those days were notmade so often as they are at present, but it was held essential by allgood Christian country folk to keep Christmas as a feast, and to seethat others kept it. I suppose Fairburn Hall was the only house in thecounty where that blessed time was ignored and taken no account of; SirMassingberd had never suffered the slightest honour to be paid to it;and his worthy deputy and _locum-tenens_, Richard Gilmore, treated itwith the like contumely.
The change from the bright little Rectory, with all its hospitablepreparations, to the gloomy grandeur of the masterless mansion, wasvery striking, when we three crossed the road next morning, to take theseals 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 hadbeen sliced from its pedestal on one side of the great iron gates; andin the very centre of the avenue, the grass grew long and rank. Thesun-dial was cracked and gaped in zigzag, an emblem of the uncertaintythat overhung the place. The heraldic beasts at the foot of theentrance-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 issister 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 thelast three years, the globe upon the pedestal would have been whole, thedial flawless, the griffins with at least their larger limbs intact; andyet no man was ever seen to work this mischief. When the great doorswung reluctantly back to admit the new possessor, he took my hand, andbade me Welcome, but his tone was far from gay. Every glance he castaround 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 whichhave been locked up and unvisited for years--places that have been onceconsecrated to humanity, but have afterwards been given up to Solitudeand slow decay. Memories of their ancient inmates seem to hang gloomilyabout them, like the cobweb in their corners; they are eloquent ofdesertion and of death. The shriek of the mouse, and the singing of theblue fly in the pane, have perhaps alone been heard there in theinterim; but there seem to have been other and ghostlier noises, whichcease at our approach. Who knows what eerie deeds our sudden intrusionmay 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 wasmade intensified these feelings in us three, and even Gilmore, whoaccompanied 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 palmiestdays of Fairburn Hall had been a dreary room, because the least in use.Except Marmaduke himself, no one ever sat there; the wicked books, whichwere the only sort read and patronized by Sir Massingberd, were all inthe Squire's private sitting-room, and the gaps in the shelves thatlined the present apartment, revealed that the Heaths had laid in aconsiderable 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 thatcircumstance from the fact, that he was unable to peruse the loosecontinental literature which his ancestors had provided for hisdelectation, free of expense. In the rare cases when the Oak Parlour hadnot sufficient accommodation for the guests of the missing Squire, theyhad been wont to adjourn to the present apartment, to smoke and loungethrough 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 hadgrown up like trees through the dusty carpet. Upon the tables andmantelpieces, the dust had settled inches thick. The grate was laidready 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 onlyopened the shutters of one window, and the extent of the apartment wasprodigious. The shelves were filled almost entirely with quartos--bookswere not hand-books in those days--rich with plates, and "meadows ofmargin;" you could not have sent a child on an errand to bring one ofthem; if he had managed to extricate a tome at all by painfullyloosening it at head and foot, it might have fallen out and brainedhim. A fourth of the entire stock was composed of books of Catholictheology. "Those," observed Mr. Long, "are the most valuable things inthe library. Sir Nicholas is supposed to have won his bride by payingthat costly tribute to her faith. The illuminations are most rare andsplendid. Why, what is this, Gilmore? I can't get this volume down. Itseems stuck to the others."
The butler grinned maliciously. "I think you will find them all likethat, sir. There's nothing but the wood-backs left. The Squire disposedof these books soon after Mr. Marmaduke left, and got this imitationstuff put up instead."
Mr. Long broke out into wrathful indignation, but the young heir keptsilence, 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, beingtheological works, there was as much in them now as before."
"Impious wretch!" exclaimed the Rector. "See, he has bartered theFathers of the Church for a set of empty backgammon boards, and letteredthem 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 openedreadily enough at the only place, perhaps, into which its late owner hadever looked--the huge yellow fly-leaf, upon which were inscribed thenames of the later generations of the Heaths; Sir Massingberd's birth inhis father's own handwriting, and Sir Wentworth's death in that of hisson's, and only too probably his murderer's. The autograph was bold andflaring, quite different from the crabbed hand of the parent, is whichthe names of Gilbert Heath and Marmaduke's mother were also written, aslikewise that of Marmaduke himself. There was a little space beneath thelast; and the young heir, looking over my shoulder, pointed to it,significantly; doubtless, it had been hoped by the last possessor of thevolume that this might one day have been filled up by the date of hisnephew'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 r
emember, that you did notknow of Jacob's ladder, Marmaduke. The spring lies in the index ofJosephus, a wooden volume, which perhaps put this notion of wholesale'dumbies' into Sir Massingberd's head." This practical satire upon theunpopularity of the Jewish historian was presently discovered, hiddenaway upon one of those ground-floor shelves, which, if the enthusiasticstudent investigates at all, it must be upon his knees. After a littlemanipulation, the spring obeyed, and with a surly creak, as if inprotest, the whole compartment of shelves above moved slowly outward onsome hidden hinge, and disclosed the narrow stairs that ended in theshepherdess of the state chamber. The steps were worm-eaten, and thewall on both sides hung with moth-devoured and ragged tapestry.Marmaduke shrank back, and gazed upon the aperture with abhorrence anddismay. To what vile purposes might it not have been used, besides thatof attempting to overthrow a poor child's reason; nay, was it notpossible that what we had sought, yet feared to find for so long, mightbe in this very place, where no eye could have looked or thought oflooking! Might it not have hidden there, and been imprisoned alive inrighteous retribution, by the very spring which had ministered to hateand cruelty? "I went up here," said Mr. Long, divining the young man'sthoughts, "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 theHall your home, it is well to leave no spot in it associated with anyunpleasantness, unfamiliar." So saying, the rector led the way, and weall followed: there was some delay while he opened the door above, andcertainly it was not a cheerful position for us in the meantime, coopedup in the darkness, with the arras touching us with its ghostly folds oneither side the narrow way; but I think that my tutor's advice wasgood, and that his old pupil experienced a feeling of satisfaction whenthe thing was done. Once more we stood together in that state bedroomwhere Marmaduke had suffered such ghastly terrors when a boy.
"Shall I ever forget those nights!" muttered he with a shudder. "Canthis room ever be otherwise than hateful to me! It was here, as I satweak and ill in that arm-chair, that my uncle struck me for losing----.Stay, now I remember it all. Remove this skirting-board, Gilmore; takethe poker; do not spare the rotting wood. Ay, there it is." A yellowsomething lay amid the dust and rubbish, which on inspection turned outto be a gold pencil-case. "That was lent me by my uncle, a dozen yearsago," said Marmaduke musing, "and he chastised me for losing it. It hadrolled under yonder skirting-board, but I was too terrified at the timeto recollect the fact. I wish I could forget things now. Undo the othershutters, Richard. Light, more light."
And thus we let the blessed sunlight into all the shuttered rooms. Itglanced in galleries on knights in all their panoply, and smote thesteel upon their visors, as though the flame of battle once more dartedfrom their eyes; it made their tattered pennons blush again, and tippedtheir rusted spears with sudden fire. It flashed upon the sternancestral faces on the wall, and through their dust evoked a look oflife. That winter sun had not the power to warm, however; all thingsstruck 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 ourmarrow. His lady opposite, upon her knees in her "devout oratory," gaveus cold looks, as though we had interrupted her devotions. In vain thepainted windows, high and triple arched, cast down "warm gules" upon hermarble breast, and filled the sacred place with glorious hues. In vainthe gilded scroll, "Praie for hys Soule," appealed to us through dustand damp, and his memorial pane blushed scarlet in its endeavour toperpetuate his infamy. All things seemed cursed in that accursed house;the hallowed places desecrated, and those where hospitality and goodfellowship were meant to reign, solitary and barren. There was oneapartment still which had been left by common consent to be visited lastof all--Sir Massingberd's oak parlour. There he might have been said tohave lived, for it was the only sitting-room he used from earlymorning--and he was no great sleeper--until very late at night. There,as we have seen, he had held his audiences, and dined, and sometimesslept after any deep debauch. By all the household, except Gilmore, itwas held as a Bluebeard's chamber, and would not have been entered uponany account, even had it not had the rector's seal upon it. It was herethat the lost baronet had passed his last hours within the house, andthither he had intended to return--if he had meant to return atall--before he retired for the night. The butler entered it first, andlet the light in; then Mr. Long, then I, then Marmaduke. Although I hadbeen there once before, I scarcely recognized the place, for upon thatoccasion the squire himself had occupied it, and I had had no eyesexcept for him. It was doubtless a comfortable room enough when thefire was shining on its polished walls, and the red curtains snuglydrawn over the windows; but with that thin December light--for it wasafternoon by this time--creeping coldly in upon the three-year-old ashesof 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 readinessfor the prey that rarely came, and the slanting pillars of motes andlight that streamed into the gloom seemed almost as palpable as they. Adoor led up by three or four steps into Sir Massingberd's bedroom--abare unfurnished place, where skins of wild animals, instead of carpet,were spread for a banquet to the moth. His shooting-boots stood upstill stiff and strong beside the empty grate, although they were whitewith mildew, and his night-gear lay folded upon the rotting pillow, inpreparation for his rest. The sitting-room, however, bore the morestriking vestiges of its late proprietor.
The huge arm-chair stood a little aside from the fender, where he hadpushed it back as he rose to leave the room; and the book which he hadbeen reading lay open with its face to the table, ready for him toresume its perusal upon his return. A spirit-case with the stoppers in,the couple of cigars which it had been Sir Massingberd's invariablecustom 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 upthe volume, and with one involuntary glance towards the fire-place,tore the wrinkled and blue-spotted leaves to fragments. A scurrilousFrench novel had engaged the last hours of the wretched old man, ere hewent forth--to his doom.
