WHAT WAS IN THE COVERED CART.
If this true narrative of mine should chance to find its channel of
publication in a hebdomadal periodical, and the end of the last chapter
coincide with the end of the week, I am afraid I shall have unduly
aroused the expectation of my readers, and kept them upon tenter-hooks
during that period upon false pretences, or rather what may seem to be
so. They will doubtless have promised themselves some ghastly spectacle
(and I give them my honour that if they will only have patience they
shall have it) to be presented in the very next page or two. It may
disappoint them temporarily, to hear that though we searched the
coppice, tree by tree, and left not one heap of leaves unstirred by our
feet, that we found nothing, nothing. And yet I will venture to say,
that if we had come upon that sight which all were so prepared for, the
stiffened limbs of murdered Sir Massingberd, with his cruel face set for
ever in death, and his hard eyes scowling up at the sky, it would
scarcely have filled us with greater awe. It would have been a terrible
sight, doubtless, but with every minute the terror would have faded,
until at last it might have even melted into pity. He could at least
have hurt no man more, being dead. But now that he was only Lost--still
Lost--we looked at one another with dumb surprise, and over our own
shoulders with misgivings. He was not above ground in all Fairburn
Chase, that was certain; nor under water, for the dragging-parties had
discovered no more than we. Any idea of suicide was quite out of the
question; Sir Massingberd Heath was the last man to leave life before he
was summoned, even if he really felt, as he averred, that there was no
sort of risk in doing so. Wicked men have a tolerably high opinion of
this world, notwithstanding their low views of the people that inhabit
it; and the French philosopher who put an end to his not invaluable
existence upon the ground that he had had enough of everything, was an
exceptional case.
At the same time, the probabilities were immensely against the baronet's
having voluntarily undertaken any expedition, considering the
circumstances under which he must have set out--on foot, fatigued, and
at so late an hour. If secrecy had been his object, it would have been
far more easily secured by his departure at a less extraordinary time.
In the meanwhile, day after day passed by without any tidings, and the
mystery of his disappearance deepened and spread. Mr. Long was rather
reserved upon the matter at first, professing to entertain little doubt
that the wilful Squire would presently return, malicious and grim as
ever; but as time went on, he began to grow uneasy, and seemed to find
relief in conversing upon the subject, and suggesting more or less
impossible contingencies.
"Do you remember, Peter," said he one morning at breakfast-time,
"reading out to me, some months ago, an account of the murder of a
certain lieutenant of the coast-guard by smugglers on the east coast;
how he oppressed them and treated them with unnecessary cruelty for
many, many months, until at last they took him away out of his bed by
force, and carried him no man knew whither, and put him to death with
tortures?"
"Yes," returned I, "perfectly well. They buried the poor wretch up to
his neck in the sea-sand, and bowled stones at his head."
"Well, Peter, that frightful scene is constantly representing itself
whenever I shut my eyes; only the head is that of Sir Massingberd. You
cannot imagine how distressing it is to me now to go to bed, with the
expectation of this re-enacting itself before I can get to sleep."
"Dear me, how dreadful!" returned I. "But does not the fact of your only
recognizing the victim, convince you of the unreality of the thing? If
you knew the faces of the smugglers, then indeed----"
"I do know them, Peter," interrupted my tutor gravely; "that is the
worst of it; although it should, as you say, rather convince me of the
imaginary character of the scene, since the actors in it have long been
dead and gone, I believe. They are not smugglers, but gipsies. There is
on Carew in particular, one unhappy man, into whose history I need not
enter, but who once incurred the baronet's vengeance, and I am afraid it
is but too likely perished in consequence. It is a sad story of
deception on both sides; but it is certain that Sir Massingberd richly
earned the hatred of the wandering people. I have no right, of course,
to make any such charge, but Peter, I cannot help thinking that it is
they who have made away with the Squire. I casually inquired in the
village yesterday about the tribe that generally inhabit the fir-grove
on the Crittenden Road, and it seems they left the place by night, on or
about the very date of Sir Massingberd's disappearance."
My heart grew cold and heavy as a stone at these words, delivered though
they were with vagueness, and without any threat of action to follow
them, for the suspicion which my tutor now suggested had long ago taken
firm root in my own mind. I would not, however, have given expression to
it upon any account, and my present wish was to do away with this notion
of the rector's as much as possible. I would not, perhaps, have assisted
in the escape of the Cingari from punishment, if punishment they
deserved, but neither would I have put out my hand to deliver them up.
The law had taken its wicked will of them often enough already, and in
connection with this very man.
"Those who know these people best," said I, "such as Bradford and the
keepers, do not think it at all probable that they would have had the
courage to face Sir Massingberd. Even if they possessed it, what could
they have done but have slain him? and if slain, where have they put him
to?"
"God alone knows," said my tutor solemnly; "but the man at the pike at
Crittenden says, I believe, that they had a covered cart with them,
which they have never been known to have before."
I murmured something to the effect that the winter was coming on, and
that it was likely enough that they should have procured for themselves
some peripatetic shelter of that kind; but a nameless horror took hold
upon me, in spite of myself, when Mr. Long rejoined, that he should
think it his duty to have the gipsies followed, and a thorough
examination of their effects to be made. I had not another word to say.
I seemed already to see poor old Rachel Liversedge standing in the
felon's dock, avowing and glorying in her guilt, and defiant of the
sentence which would consign her and hers to the same fate that had
overtaken, with no such justice, Stanley Carew. Any hope of escape for
them, I knew, was out of the question. They had not the means for speedy
travel, while, in those days of superstition and intolerance, the
Cingari were an object of animadversion and alarm, whithersoever they
moved. That very day--acting upon information received concerning their
present whereabouts--Mr. Long set out on horseback, accompanied by the
parish constable, and Came up with the party whom he sought upon a
certain common within twenty miles of Fairburn. The tribe, of whom I had
only seen three grown-up members, were tolerably numerous, and the
constable evinced his fitness for being a peace-officer by counselling
the rector to do nothing rash, at least until reinforcements should
permit of his doing so with safety. The sight, however, of the covered
cart, placed, as it seemed, jealously in the very centre of the
encampment, was too much for Mr. Long, who, to do him justice, was as
bold as a lion, except where conventional "position," as in the case of
Sir Massingberd, made him indisposed for action. He turned his horse
straight for the desired object, in spite of the threatening looks of
several men, who were tinkering about an immense fire, and was only
stopped by the youngest of them starting up, and laying his hand
imperatively upon his bridle-rein.
"Have you a warrant, Mr. Long," inquired the gipsy sternly, "that you
ride through our camp, when all the rest of the common is open to you,
and wish to pry into that poor place yonder, which is all we have of
house and home?"
The rector had no sort of right for what he did, and was therefore
proportionally indignant.
"Unhand my bridle, sirrah!" cried he. "What is your name, who seem to
know mine so well, and yet who knows me so little, that you can imagine
I am here in any other cause than that of Right and Justice?"
"My name is Walter Carew," replied the gipsy, still retaining his hold.
"Then that is warrant sufficient for what I do," cried my tutor
excitedly, and raising his riding-whip as he spoke.
The swarthy face of the gipsy gleamed with passion, and his unoccupied
right hand sought his side, as if for a weapon. Mischief would
undoubtedly have ensued, but that at that moment the curtains of the
covered cart were parted by a skinny hand, and the voice of Rachel
Liversedge was heard bidding the young man let the bridle go, and not
spill parson's blood, which was as bad as wasting milk and water. Then
she added, with mock courtesy: "Pray, come hither, Mr. Long; our doors
are always open, and there can be no intrusion where there are only
females and sickness."
"If that be all," returned my tutor in a softened tone, for though
somewhat arbitrary, as it would now be thought, towards his inferiors,
he was ever gentle to the sex; "if that indeed be all, I shall not
inflict my presence upon you long."[1]
With those words, he threw himself from his horse, and climbed up into
the cart; it was rather a roomy one, but all that was in it was clearly
to be seen at the first glance. It was carpeted with rushes a foot
thick, from which Rachel Liversedge was busily engaged in weaving
chair-bottoms. Opposite to her sat another female, engaged with the same
articles, but constructing out of them crowns and necklaces, which,
though they did not very much resemble the ornaments for which they were
intended, appeared to afford her exquisite satisfaction.
"Why don't you introduce me, Rachel?" exclaimed she testily, as Mr. Long
looked in. "Don't you see the gentleman is bowing? Sinnamenta--Lady
Heath." The secret of the gipsies' sudden removal, as well as of their
use of the vehicle which had excited his suspicions, was at once
apparent to the rector.
"Is she better, happier in your custody?" inquired my tutor, in a
whisper, of the chair-maker. "God knows I would not disturb her, if she
be."
"My little sister is not beaten now," observed Rachel bitterly;
"although, of course, we have not those luxuries with which her husband
has always surrounded her."
"Only four times, Sister Rachel!" observed the afflicted one, in a tone
of remonstrance, "one, two, three, four," checking them off on her poor
fingers, covered with worthless gewgaws. "I don't consider Gilmore's
beatings anything, only Sir Massingberd's."
"May God's curse have found him!" exclaimed Rachel Liversedge fervently;
"may He have avenged her wrongs upon him at last! Don't look at me, sir,
as though I were a witch wishing a good man ill. I wish I _were_ a
witch. How he should pine, and rave, and writhe, and suffer ten thousand
deaths in one!"
She spoke with such hate and fury, that Mr. Long involuntarily cast once
more a suspicious glance around him, as though in reality she possessed
the means of vengeance which she so ardently desired. "Did you expect to
find him here?" continued she. "That was it, was it? I wish you had. I
would that I had his fleshless bones to show you. It is not _my_ fault
that I have them not, be sure. If there were any manliness left among my
people--but there is not; they are curs all--if any memory of the
persecuted and the murdered had dwelt within them, as with me, let alone
this work of his," she pointed to her unconscious sister, "for which,
had he done nought else, I would have torn his heart out;--he would not
have lived thus long by forty years. For aught we know, however, he
lives yet; only hearing he was gone, we went and took my little sister
from her wretchedness, and thus will keep her if you give us leave, you
Christian gentlemen. Where he may be, we know not; we only hope that in
some hateful spot--in hell, if such a place there be--he may be
suffering unimagined pains."
The fervour and energy of her words, however reprehensible in a moral
point of view, were such as left no doubt in the mind of Mr. Long that
the gipsy woman spoke truth. Assuring her, therefore, that, so far as he
was concerned, she should not be molested in the custody of her
unfortunate sister, my tutor rode back to Fairburn, relieved from the
dread burden of his late suspicion, but more at his wit's end for an
elucidation of the disappearance of Sir Massingberd than ever. Right
glad was I to hear that his errand among my dusky friends had been
bootless; but by the next morning's post I had received bitter news
from Harley Street. A copy of that menacing epistle which I had so
unwittingly enclosed to Marmaduke from his uncle, reached me from Mr.
Gerard. His words were kind, and intended to be comforting. He knew, of
course, that I had been deceived; he well knew, and they all knew, he
said, that my hand was the last to do Marmaduke hurt, to do aught but
protect and uphold him. But I could see that some grievous harm had
occurred, nevertheless, through me, as Sir Massingberd's catspaw. It was
more apparent to me because there was not one accompanying word from my
dear friend himself, whom I knew too well to imagine capable of blaming
me. It was most apparent of all because of the postscript written in
Lucy's own hand--so fair, so clear, so brave, so like her own sweet
self, saying that I must not reproach myself because I had been
overreached by a base man. "Marmaduke will write soon," she said; "he
does not love you less because he is silent upon this matter, and must
be kept so for a little while." He was ill, then, thanks to my dull
wits; and out of pity she had written "Marmaduke." Ah me, would _I_ not
have been ill! Would _I_ not have welcomed kinship with a score of
wicked uncles for such pity! "He does not love you less because he is
silent;" was that a quotation culled from her own heart's whisperings?
"A most unfortunate business," said Mr. Long reflectively, when he had
possessed himself of this intelligence. "That letter of Sir
Massingberd's will undo all the good of the last twelve months. With
what a devilish ingenuity for torment has he framed every phrase. '_'My
arm will reach you wheresoever you are; at the time you least expect
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.'_ How thoroughly he knew
his nephew! This will make Marmaduke Heath a wretched man for life."
"Not if Sir Massingberd be dead," said I, "and can be proved to be so."
"That is true," responded my tutor, drily; then added, without, I think,
intending me to hear it, "But what will be worse than anything, is this
doubt as to whether he be dead or not."
I felt convinced of this too, and bowed my head in sorrow and silence.
There was a long pause. Then my tutor suddenly started up, and
exclaimed, with animation, "Peter, will you go with me to London? I
certainly shall be doing more good there, just now, than here; and I
think that your presence will be welcome, nay, needful, in Harley
Street."
"I shall be ready to start this very evening," returned I, thinking of
the mail which passed at night.
"We will be off within an hour," replied my tutor; "I will order posters
from the inn at once. Too much time has been lost already; we should
have started when Sir Massingberd himself did."
"Do you think he is gone to town, then, with any evil purpose?" inquired
I, aghast.
"If he has gone at all, it is certain it is for no good," rejoined the
rector, gravely. "It is more than likely that this disappearance may be
nothing but a ruse to throw us off our guard. The cat that despaired of
attaining her end by other means, pretended to be dead."
[1] In those days, it was not thought incumbent upon ministers of the
Gospel to look after gipsy-folk, whose souls, in case they had any, were
not opined to be much worth saying.