Lost Sir Massingberd: A Romance of Real Life. v. 1/2 Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  GIANT DESPAIR.

  In a midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands avillage called Fairburn, which, at the time I knew it first--many, manyyears ago--had for its squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir MassingberdHeath. Its rector, at that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long; and at theRectory, when my story commences, there was in pupilage to the saidrector a youth, one Peter Meredith, who has since grown up to be thepresent writer. When we are small, all things seem vast to our youngminds; good men are saints, and evil ones are demons. I loved Mr. Long,therefore, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated SirMassingberd! It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me tohold this man as a monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which thewhole county entertained of him, more or less. The people of Fairburntrembled before him, as a ship's company before some cruel captain offifteen years back--I mean, of fifteen years before the period of whichI write. Press-gangs had not very long ceased to do their cruel mission;there were old men in our village who had served their time in HisMajesty's ships, very much against their will; there were gaps in poorfamilies still, which might or might not be filled up; empty chairs thathad so stood for a score of years perhaps, waiting for still expectedoccupiers; fathers of families, or the props of families, in sons andbrothers, had been spirited away from Fairburn (even a little whileago), and had not come back again yet. They had been poachers, orradicals, or sectaries (as Dissenters were then called), or somethingelse distasteful to Sir Massingberd's father; and they had been carriedoff to sea at his command. Let not my young readers imagine that I amexaggerating matters; I write of a state of things of which they havenot the remotest conception, but which I remember perfectly well. Theyhave reason to thank Heaven that they did not live in those times, ifthey happen to belong to those unprosperous classes which were thentermed collectively, "the mob;" there were no such things as "skilledworkmen," or "respectable artisans," in those days. The "people" were"the Great Unwashed." To build a Crystal Palace for such as they wereheld to be, would have seemed to be the height of folly; they would havetaken no other pleasure in it than to smash every pane withbrickbats--for were they not "the dangerous classes"? Such opinions werebeginning to die out, indeed, but they were held still by many greatpeople, and Sir Massingberd Heath was one of them. Reared in aclergyman's family, and a clergyman myself, I have been a Conservativein politics all my life, and in that belief I shall die; but rank andpower are no excuse with me for evil deeds. In the chamber of my nephewJohn, who "takes in everything," as the phrase goes, I once discovered ademocratic magazine, edited by a gentleman whose surname I forget, butwho had a great multitude of initials. All the poor people described inthis work were pious and moral, and all the rich people were infidel andprofligate; but for the noblemen--and there were a good many persons ofhigh rank in the various stories--were reserved all the choicestinvectives and most superlative abuse. Nothing, of course, can be moreunfair than this treatment of a class of persons who, considering theirtemptations, are really more than respectable. As a general rule, theportraits were extravagantly malicious, but they had this attraction forme--they were all exceedingly like Sir Massingberd Heath. He was thevery type of that bloated aristocracy that is held up in scarecrowfashion, by republican writers. There were not many living specimens tobe met with even at the date of my tale, and the old baronet, perhapshimself perceiving that he was one of the last of them, determined thathe should not be the least in infamy. Like the Unjust Judge, he neitherfeared God nor regarded man, and, worse than he, he would not perform agood action on account of the importunity of any person. She must havebeen a brave woman who importuned Sir Massingberd Heath, and couldscarcely have been brought up in Fairburn.

  Whether George IV. was king or not, at the period of which I write, itmatters not, for his connection with our squire had terminated yearsbefore; but at one time they had been fast, very fast friends. When aking and a baronet run a race of extravagance, the king generally wins,and so it had been in this case; His Majesty, or rather His RoyalHighness the Regent, had distanced Sir Massingberd, and they were notnow upon even speaking terms. Friendships of this sort do not last whenone of the parties has spent all his money. What was the use of a poorman at White's who could only look on while his old friends played whistfor one hundred pound points, and five hundred pounds upon the rubber?What business--let alone pleasure--could one have in London, whenHoward and Gribbs would not lend one fifty pounds even at fifty percent.? Sir Massingberd had left that gay, wicked world for good, that isto say, for ever, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country-seatin spite of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, so far as his courtprospects were concerned, for he had no ready money. He owned allFairburn, and many hundreds of rich acres about it, beside the Park andthe river; he had the great tithes of the place, and manorial rights(which he exercised, too) innumerable. Nobody quite knew--he did notknow himself--what privileges he had or had not, what pathways he couldclose at pleasure, what heriots he could demand, or what preciseproperty he had in Fairburn gravel-pits; but in all cases he gavehimself the benefit of the doubt. It was a very foolish thing to leaveany disputed point to the sense of justice, or the good feeling of oursquire, and yet this was generally done. Where it was not done, wheresome honest fellow had ventured to oppose his high prerogative, eventhough he gained his end, he was always, as the village people said,"paid out" for it. I don't mean to say Sir Massingberd murderedhim--although he would have done that, I am confident, without theslightest scruple, if it could have been effected with safety tohimself--but he took his revenge of him, sooner or later, in a verysimple way. He caught his children trespassing--having caused them to beenticed upon his land--and committed them to prison; or he broke downhis fences, and spoiled his corn in the night; for he had dependentsdevoted to his wicked will, and upon whose false witness he could alwaysrely.

  And yet, with all this power, the baronet, as I have said, was a poorman; he had borrowed all the money he could, and was even said to haveoverreached the London Jews in these transactions; and it was allgone--absolutely all. It was seldom that this great lord of acres had aten-pound note in his pocket, for his house and land were all entailedupon his nephew Marmaduke, and he had only a life-interest in anything.Poverty perhaps made him bitterer and more savage than he wouldotherwise have been; but, for my part, I cannot imagine him to have beenagreeable under any circumstances. I have heard, however, that atCarlton House he was once the first favourite--after Brummell--and that,of course, made him sought after by many people. He had a wicked wit,which was doubtless acceptable in some circles, and his tongue, it maybe, was not quite so coarse in those days of prosperity. He took adelight in his old age in retailing his infamous experiences, beforewomen, if possible, and if not, before clergymen or boys. I remember tohave heard of Mr. Long once venturing to reprove his squire upon anoccasion of this very kind. The rector had been dining at the Hall--anexceptional occurrence, and under exceptional circumstances--when, afterdinner, the host began one of his disgraceful reminiscences, whereuponmy tutor rose and said, "Sir Massingberd, you should be ashamed to talkof such matters to me; but before this boy, it is infamous. I thank youfor your hospitality; but I shall go home."

  "Very well; go, and be hanged!" replied the baronet; "and Marmaduke andI will make a jolly night of it."

  Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he residedwith his uncle at the Hall. He would very much rather have retired withhis tutor on that occasion, and indeed have resided at the Rectory, forhe dreaded his relative beyond measure. All the pretended frankness withwhich the old man sometimes treated the boy was unable to hide the hatewith which Sir Massingberd really regarded him; but for thisheir-presumptive to the entail, this milk-and-water lad of seventeen,the baronet might raise money to any extent, nay, sell all Fairburn, ifhe chose, and so might once more take his rightful station in the world,rejoin the Four-in-hand Club, and demand his "revenge" from my LordThanet at ecarte.
He could still drink, for the cellars of Fairburn Hallwere well-nigh inexhaustible; but if that chit of a lad was but carriedoff, he might have the best in the land to drink with him. It is truethat a ruined man in Sir Massingberd's position can still afford a goodtable; game is plentiful with him, and fish, and he grows his ownmutton and venison, so that neither himself nor his friends need starve;but servants must be maintained to wait upon these, and a greatcountry-house without a carriage is as a lobster without a claw.Consequently, except in the shooting-season, there were no guests atFairburn Hall; the folks that did come were men of a certain stamp;current indeed, in good society, but only in that of males; a real ladyhad not set foot in the Park, far less the house, for the last twelveyears; the manner in which Sir Massingberd lived forbade such a thing. Afew bachelors of the County Hunt, and half-a-dozen roues from town, wereall the company that could be enticed to Fairburn in September andOctober; all the rest of the year, the grass grew in the avenueuntouched by wheel or hoof, and even sprang up among the stone stepsthat led to the front-door. Somehow or other, I never saw it thuswithout thinking of the parable of the Sower and the Seed, with somedistant and uncharitable reference to our squire! I wondered whether itwas possible that in any far-back time any good seed of any sort hadfound its way into the crannies of his stony heart, and if so, what hadbecome of it. I used to try and picture that violent wicked man as achild in his cot, or saying his prayers at his mother's knee. I believeshe had died soon after her marriage, and that, short as her wedded lifehad been, it was a very unhappy one.

  Fairburn Hall had never been a house for tender, honest women; theHeaths, who are celebrated like another noble race of the same sort, fortheir hard hearts and excellent digestions, had never been goodhusbands. Fortunately, daughters were rare in the family. How SirMassingberd would have brought up a daughter, I shudder to think. Oneson had been the sole offspring vouchsafed to the baronets of this linefor many generations, except the last; and in the present case, therewas no such direct heir. Some said Sir Massingberd had married secretly,but was separated from his wife, and some said he had not; but it seemedsomehow certain that with him the immediate succession from father toson would cease. His brother Gilbert had married young in Italy, and haddied in that country within the same year. His widow had brought hisposthumous child, when a few months old, to the Hall, at the invitationof Sir Massingberd, and had remained there for some time. The villagersstill spoke of the dark foreign lady as being the most beautifulcreature they had ever beheld; the Park keepers used to come upon herin solitary glades, singing sweetly; but ah! so sorrowfully, to herchild in a tongue that they did not understand. The baronet himself wasabsent, not yet cast out of the court whirlpool, and the lonely vastnessof the place was not displeasing to the young widow, wishing, perhaps,to be left undisturbed with her grief; but after Sir Massingberd camedown, she remained but a very few days. It was said that she fled withher babe in a winter's night, and that her little footprints were tracedin the snow to the cross-roads where the mail went by, by which she hadarrived. She was not rich, and had come down in a manner quite differentfrom that of her brother-in-law, who, broken and ruined though he was,had posted with four horses. That was how all gentlefolks of the countytravelled in those days; even the very barristers on circuit indulged,and were obliged to do so, in a chaise and a pair. The mother ofMarmaduke Heath, however, who was heir-presumptive to the largest landedproperty in Midshire, was very poor. Whether the late baronet hadomitted to make a proper provision for his younger son, or whetherGilbert had made away with it after the usual manner of the Heaths, I donot know; but his widow and child betook themselves intoDevonshire--selected, perhaps, from its climate approaching nearer thanany other part of England to that of her native land--and, there livedin a very humble fashion. How Marmaduke ever got into his uncle's hands,I never could clearly understand; his mother had died suddenly,whereupon the family lawyer, Mr. Clint of Russell Square, who had theentire management of the Heath property, had in the first instancetaken possession of the lad; but Sir Massingberd had claimed his rightto be the guardian of his nephew, and it could not be disallowed.

  Such were mainly the circumstances, I believe; but all sorts of storieswere in circulation concerning "Giant Despair," as the savage oldbaronet was called, and his nephew; the general opinion agreeing onlyupon one point--that no sane person would change places with MasterMarmaduke Heath at Doubting Castle, notwithstanding the greatness of hisexpectations.