LOST SIR MASSINGBERD.
A Romance of Real Life.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON,
14, LUDGATE HILL.
1864.
The uncommon favour with which the story of "LOST SIR
MASSINGBERD" has been received while appearing in the
columns of a popular periodical, has induced its author to
solicit the suffrages of that more critical Public who "hate
to read novels bit by bit."
CONTENTS.
PREFATORY
CHAPTER I. GIANT DESPAIR
CHAPTER II. MY FIRST INTERVIEW
CHAPTER III. THE DREAM BY THE BROOK
CHAPTER IV. THE DUMB WITNESS
CHAPTER V. THE STATE BEDROOM
CHAPTER VI. HEAD OVER HEELS
CHAPTER VII. AT THE DOVECOT
CHAPTER VIII. MEETING HIS MATCH
CHAPTER IX. MR. HARVEY GERARD
CHAPTER X. LOVE THE LIFEGIVER
CHAPTER XI. WOOING BY PROXY
CHAPTER XII. THE COUNCIL OF WAR
CHAPTER XIII. THE GIPSY CAMP
CHAPTER XIV. WHY SIR MASSINGBERD DID NOT MARRY
CHAPTER XV. THE REASON CONTINUED
CHAPTER XVI. I DO SIR MASSINGBERD A LITTLE FAVOUR
LOST SIR MASSINGBERD.
PREFATORY.
In these days, when every man and woman becomes an author upon the least
provocation, it is not necessary to make an apology for appearing in
print. Perhaps there was always something affected in those prefatorial
justifications; although they did disclaim any literary merit, it is
probable that the writers would have been indignant enough had the
critics taken them at their word; and perhaps the publication was not
entirely owing to "the warmly-expressed wishes of numerous friends."
But, at all events, we have done with all such excuses now. Not to have
written anything for the press, is no small claim to being an Original.
Neither sex nor age seems to exempt from the universal passion of
authorship. My niece, Jessie (<i>ætat.</i> sixteen), writes heart-rending
narratives for the "Liliputian Magazine;" her brother, whom I have
always looked upon as a violent, healthy hobbledehoy whose highest
virtue was Endurance, and whose darkest experience was Skittles,
produces the most thrilling romances for the "Home Companion." Even my
housekeeper makes no secret of forwarding her most admired recipes to
the "Family Intelligencer;" while my stable-boy, it is well known, is a
prominent poetical contributor to the "Turf Times," having also the gift
of prophecy with reference to the winner of all the racing events of any
importance. And yet, I believe, my household is not more addicted to
publication than those of my neighbours.
What becomes of authors by profession in such a state of things literary
as this, I shudder to think; I feel it almost a sin to add one more to
the long list of competitors with whom they have to struggle; but still,
if I do not now set down the story which I have in my mind, I am certain
that, sooner or later, my nephew will do so for me, and very likely
spoil it in the telling. He writes in a snappy, jerky, pyrotechnic way,
which they tell me is now popular, but which is not suited to my
old-fashioned taste; and although he dare not make, at present, what he
calls "copy" of the stories with which I am perhaps too much accustomed
to regale his ears, he keeps a note-book, and a new terror is added to
Death from that circumstance. When I am gone, he will publish my best
things, under some such title as "After-dinner Tales," I feel certain;
and they will appear at the railway book-stalls in a yellow cover
bordered with red, or with even a frontispiece displaying a counterfeit
and libellous presentment of his departed relative in the very act of
narration. The gem of that collection would undoubtedly be the story
which I am now about to anticipate the young gentleman by relating
myself. If I am somewhat old-world in my style, perhaps it may be
forgiven me, in consideration of the reality of the circumstances
narrated, and the very strong interest which I do not doubt they will
arouse.
It is not necessary to state the exact locality where they occurred, nor
the number of years which have elapsed since their occurrence; it is
enough to premise that what I tell is true, and that some of the
principal personages in the--well, the melodrama, if you will--are yet
alive, and will peruse these words before they meet the public eye. If
nothing therein offends <i>them</i>, therefore, it need not, upon the score
of indiscreet revelation at least, offend my readers.
CHAPTER I.
GIANT DESPAIR.
In a midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a
village called Fairburn, which, at the time I knew it first--many, many
years ago--had for its squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Massingberd
Heath. Its rector, at that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long; and at the
Rectory, when my story commences, there was in pupilage to the said
rector a youth, one Peter Meredith, who has since grown up to be the
present writer. When we are small, all things seem vast to our young
minds; 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 Sir
Massingberd! It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me to
hold this man as a monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which the
whole county entertained of him, more or less. The people of Fairburn
trembled before him, as a ship's company before some cruel captain of
fifteen years back--I mean, of fifteen years before the period of which
I 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 His
Majesty's ships, very much against their will; there were gaps in poor
families still, which might or might not be filled up; empty chairs that
had so stood for a score of years perhaps, waiting for still expected
occupiers; fathers of families, or the props of families, in sons and
brothers, had been spirited away from Fairburn (even a little while
ago), and had not come back again yet. They had been poachers, or
radicals, or sectaries (as Dissenters were then called), or something
else distasteful to Sir Massingberd's father; and they had been carried
off to sea at his command. Let not my young readers imagine that I am
exaggerating matters; I write of a state of things of which they have
not the remotest conception, but which I remember perfectly well. They
have reason to thank Heaven that they did not live in those times, if
they happen to belong to those unprosperous classes which were then
termed collectively, "the mob;" there were no such things as "skilled
workmen," or "respectable artisans," in those days. The "people" were
"the Great Unwashed." To build a Crystal Palace for such as they were
held to be, would have seemed to be the height of folly; they would have
taken no other pleasure in it than to smash every pane with
brickbats--for were they not "the dangerous classes"? Such opinions were
beginning to die out, indeed, but they were held still by many great
people, and Sir Massingberd Heath was one of them. Reared in a
clergyman's family, and a clergyman myself, I have been a Conservative
in politics all my life, and in that belief I shall die; but rank and
power are no excuse with me for evil deeds. In the chamber of my nephew
John, who "takes in everything," as the phrase goes, I once discovered a
democratic magazine, edited by a gentleman whose surname I forget, but
who had a great multitude of initials. All the poor people described in
this work were pious and moral, and all the rich people were infidel and
profligate; but for the noblemen--and there were a good many persons of
high rank in the various stories--were reserved all the choicest
invectives and most superlative abuse. Nothing, of course, can be more
unfair than this treatment of a class of persons who, considering their
temptations, are really more than respectable. As a general rule, the
portraits were extravagantly malicious, but they had this attraction for
me--they were all exceedingly like Sir Massingberd Heath. He was the
very type of that bloated aristocracy that is held up in scarecrow
fashion, by republican writers. There were not many living specimens to
be met with even at the date of my tale, and the old baronet, perhaps
himself perceiving that he was one of the last of them, determined that
he should not be the least in infamy. Like the Unjust Judge, he neither
feared God nor regarded man, and, worse than he, he would not perform a
good action on account of the importunity of any person. She must have
been a brave woman who importuned Sir Massingberd Heath, and could
scarcely have been brought up in Fairburn.
Whether George IV. was king or not, at the period of which I write, it
matters not, for his connection with our squire had terminated years
before; but at one time they had been fast, very fast friends. When a
king 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 Royal
Highness the Regent, had <i>distanced</i> Sir Massingberd, and they were not
now upon even speaking terms. Friendships of this sort do not last when
one of the parties has spent all his money. What was the use of a poor
man at White's who could only look on while his old friends played whist
for one hundred pound points, and five hundred pounds upon the rubber?
What business--let alone pleasure--could one have in London, when
Howard and Gribbs would not lend one fifty pounds even at fifty per
cent.? Sir Massingberd had left that gay, wicked world for good, that is
to say, for ever, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country-seat
in spite of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, so far as his court
prospects were concerned, for he had no ready money. He owned all
Fairburn, and many hundreds of rich acres about it, beside the Park and
the river; he had the great tithes of the place, and manorial rights
(which he exercised, too) innumerable. Nobody quite knew--he did not
know himself--what privileges he had or had not, what pathways he could
close at pleasure, what heriots he could demand, or what precise
property he had in Fairburn gravel-pits; but in all cases he gave
himself the benefit of the doubt. It was a very foolish thing to leave
any disputed point to the sense of justice, or the good feeling of our
squire, and yet this was generally done. Where it was not done, where
some honest fellow had ventured to oppose his high prerogative, even
though he gained his end, he was always, as the village people said,
"paid out" for it. I don't mean to say Sir Massingberd murdered
him--although he would have done that, I am confident, without the
slightest scruple, if it could have been effected with safety to
himself--but he took his revenge of him, sooner or later, in a very
simple way. He caught his children trespassing--having caused them to be
enticed upon his land--and committed them to prison; or he broke down
his fences, and spoiled his corn in the night; for he had dependents
devoted to his wicked will, and upon whose false witness he could always
rely.
And yet, with all this power, the baronet, as I have said, was a poor
man; he had borrowed all the money he could, and was even said to have
overreached the London Jews in these transactions; and it was all
gone--absolutely all. It was seldom that this great lord of acres had a
ten-pound note in his pocket, for his house and land were all entailed
upon his nephew Marmaduke, and he had only a life-interest in anything.
Poverty perhaps made him bitterer and more savage than he would
otherwise have been; but, for my part, I cannot imagine him to have been
agreeable under any circumstances. I have heard, however, that at
Carlton 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 may
be, was not quite so coarse in those days of prosperity. He took a
delight in his old age in retailing his infamous experiences, before
women, if possible, and if not, before clergymen or boys. I remember to
have heard of Mr. Long once venturing to reprove his squire upon an
occasion of this very kind. The rector had been dining at the Hall--an
exceptional occurrence, and under exceptional circumstances--when, after
dinner, the host began one of his disgraceful reminiscences, whereupon
my tutor rose and said, "Sir Massingberd, you should be ashamed to talk
of such matters to me; but before this boy, it is infamous. I thank you
for your hospitality; but I shall go home."
"Very well; go, and be hanged!" replied the baronet; "and Marmaduke and
I will make a jolly night of it."
Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided
with his uncle at the Hall. He would very much rather have retired with
his tutor on that occasion, and indeed have resided at the Rectory, for
he dreaded his relative beyond measure. All the pretended frankness with
which the old man sometimes treated the boy was unable to hide the hate
with which Sir Massingberd really regarded him; but for this
heir-presumptive to the entail, this milk-and-water lad of seventeen,
the baronet might raise money to any extent, nay, sell all Fairburn, if
he 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 Lord
Thanet at écarté. He could still drink, for the cellars of Fairburn Hall
were well-nigh inexhaustible; but if that chit of a lad was but carried
off, he might have the best in the land to drink with him. It is true
that a ruined man in Sir Massingberd's position can still afford a good
table; game is plentiful with him, and fish, and he grows his own
mutton and venison, so that neither himself nor his friends need starve;
but servants must be maintained to wait upon these, and a great
country-house without a carriage is as a lobster without a claw.
Consequently, except in the shooting-season, there were no guests at
Fairburn 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 lady
had not set foot in the Park, far less the house, for the last twelve
years; the manner in which Sir Massingberd lived forbade such a thing. A
few bachelors of the County Hunt, and half-a-dozen roués from town, were
all the company that could be enticed to Fairburn in September and
October; all the rest of the year, the grass grew in the avenue
untouched by wheel or hoof, and even sprang up among the stone steps
that led to the front-door. Somehow or other, I never saw it thus
without thinking of the parable of the Sower and the Seed, with some
distant and uncharitable reference to our squire! I wondered whether it
was possible that in any far-back time any good seed of any sort had
found its way into the crannies of his stony heart, and if so, what had
become of it. I used to try and picture that violent wicked man as a
child in his cot, or saying his prayers at his mother's knee. I believe
she had died soon after her marriage, and that, short as her wedded life
had been, it was a very unhappy one.
Fairburn Hall had never been a house for tender, honest women; the
Heaths, who are celebrated like another noble race of the same sort, for
their hard hearts and excellent digestions, had never been good
husbands. Fortunately, daughters were rare in the family. How Sir
Massingberd would have brought up a daughter, I shudder to think. One
son had been the sole offspring vouchsafed to the baronets of this line
for many generations, except the last; and in the present case, there
was 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 seemed
somehow certain that with him the immediate succession from father to
son would cease. His brother Gilbert had married young in Italy, and had
died in that country within the same year. His widow had brought his
posthumous child, when a few months old, to the Hall, at the invitation
of Sir Massingberd, and had remained there for some time. The villagers
still spoke of the dark foreign lady as being the most beautiful
creature they had ever beheld; the Park keepers used to come upon her
in solitary glades, singing sweetly; but ah! so sorrowfully, to her
child in a tongue that they did not understand. The baronet himself was
absent, not yet cast out of the court whirlpool, and the lonely vastness
of the place was not displeasing to the young widow, wishing, perhaps,
to be left undisturbed with her grief; but after Sir Massingberd came
down, she remained but a very few days. It was said that she fled with
her babe in a winter's night, and that her little footprints were traced
in the snow to the cross-roads where the mail went by, by which she had
arrived. She was not rich, and had come down in a manner quite different
from 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 county
travelled in those days; even the very barristers on circuit indulged,
and were obliged to do so, in a chaise and a pair. The mother of
Marmaduke Heath, however, who was heir-presumptive to the largest landed
property in Midshire, was very poor. Whether the late baronet had
omitted to make a proper provision for his younger son, or whether
Gilbert had made away with it after the usual manner of the Heaths, I do
not know; but his widow and child betook themselves into
Devonshire--selected, perhaps, from its climate approaching nearer than
any other part of England to that of her native land--and, there lived
in 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 the
entire management of the Heath property, had in the first instance
taken possession of the lad; but Sir Massingberd had claimed his right
to be the guardian of his nephew, and it could not be disallowed.
Such were mainly the circumstances, I believe; but all sorts of stories
were in circulation concerning "Giant Despair," as the savage old
baronet was called, and his nephew; the general opinion agreeing only
upon one point--that no sane person would change places with Master
Marmaduke Heath at Doubting Castle, notwithstanding the greatness of his
expectations.