HEAD OVER HEELS.
I obeyed my tutor and my friend in keeping all I knew regarding Sir
Massingberd to myself; but the knowledge weighed heavily upon my spirits
for several days. Soon, however, my mind recovered its youthful
elasticity. I began to think that Marmaduke's morbid disposition had
perhaps exaggerated matters; that the baronet was not so black as was
painted; that my friend would soon be his own master; and, in short, I
laid all that flattering unction to my soul which is so abundant in the
case of the misfortunes of others, and so difficult to be procured when
the calamity is our own. Moreover, in a few days I was in possession of
an excellent horse, and there is nothing more antagonistic to
melancholy--especially when it is vicarious--than a good gallop. Nay,
more, after a little, Marmaduke had a horse also. He came to call for
me, that we should go out for a ride together the first day, and I shall
not easily forget it. How handsome and happy he looked! As if the
high-conditioned animal he bestrode had imparted to him some of his own
fire and freedom, he wore scarcely any trace of his habitual depression.
"This is our 4th of July," said he gaily; "my day of independence, as
the rebels say!"
It happened to be his birthday also, he was seventeen, so that all
things conspired to make it a gala-day. My tutor, who was a judge of
horseflesh, examined the new steed with great attention. "He is superb,"
said he, "and you sit him, Marmaduke, considering your scanty
experience, like a young centaur. No one could imagine that your
equestrianism had been heretofore limited to a keeper's pony; and,
moreover, Oliver's ponies are not apt to be very high-couraged. But what
a tight curb has this Bucephalus! He will not give you much trouble to
hold him. So-ho, so-ho, my nag! Are you a hypocrite, then, that you need
be so alarmed at being inspected?" The sleek bay plunged and curveted,
so that my own sober brown began to dance in rivalry. "By the by,"
continued Mr. Long, as though a sudden thought had struck him, "I have
occasion to visit Mr. Jervis of the farm at Staplehurst some day this
week; if it is the same to you, let us go there to-day; it will be an
object for your ride, while I shall have the pleasure of your company."
In a few minutes, my tutor's old white mare was brought round to the
Rectory door by the gardener, who was groom and butler also, and we set
out together at a foot's pace. Mr. Long never took his eyes off the bay,
and therefore did not observe Sir Massingberd, who, with his huge arms
resting on a gate by the roadside, watched us pass with a grim smile.
"Well, parson," exclaimed he--and at the sound of his voice I perceived
my tutor start in his saddle--"what think you of the little Londoner?"
"I cannot say at present, Sir Massingberd," returned my tutor with
deliberation. "He is a beauty to look at; and if he has no vice, is a
bargain at five-and-thirty pounds."
"Vice! Why should he have vice, man? A child might ride him for that
matter. I got him with the best of characters. But you'll never teach
those lads to ride if you are always at their stirrup-leather, like
this. Let them ride alone, and race together. Don't treat them like a
brace of mollycoddles. Why, at their age, I could have backed any horse
in Christendom without a saddle. I wonder you don't give Miss Marmaduke
a leading-rein."
The colour, which had faded from the lad's cheeks, returned to them
again at this sneer; but Mr. Long only remarked: "If you had had a
leading-rein yourself, Sir Massingberd, at seventeen, it would have been
a great deal better for you," and rode on without the least
consciousness, as I believe, of having made any such observation.
When we had advanced about a mile, and had left the village quite behind
us, my tutor expressed a wish to change horses with Marmaduke.
"I want to try his paces," said he; and certainly, if he had been a
horse-breaker by profession, he could not have taken more pains with the
animal. He trotted, he cantered, he galloped; he took him into a field,
and over some fences; he forced him by a wind-mill in full work; and, in
short, he left no means untried to test his temper. In the end, he
expressed himself highly satisfied. "Really," said he, "Sir Massingberd
has got you a first-rate steed, with plenty of courage, yet without
vice; he makes me quite dissatisfied with my poor old mare."
The next day, and the next, we rode again without my tutor; and on the
fourth day it was agreed that we should take an expedition as far as
Crittenden, some ten miles away, where Mr. Long wished us to do some
commissions for him. By this time, Marmaduke was quite accustomed to his
recent acquisition; enjoyed the exercise greatly; and since Sir
Massingberd was much engaged with his guests, passed altogether more
agreeable days. On the afternoon in question, the Hall party were out
shooting, and had taken with them all the stable domestics except a raw
lad who scarcely knew how to saddle a horse.
"I cannot think what is the matter this afternoon with 'Panther'" (we so
called his skittish animal), exclaimed Marmaduke, as he rode up to the
Rectory door. "I could scarcely get him to start from the yard, and he
came here mostly upon his hind-legs. Is there anything wrong with his
girths, think you? Ned did not know where to lay his hands on anything,
and my uncle has taken William with him to 'mark.'"
"Nay," said I, "I see nothing the matter. We will soon take off his
superfluous energy over Crittenden Common."
Long, however, before we reached that spot, we had had galloping enough
and to spare. Twice had Panther fairly taken the bit between his teeth
(as the romance-writers term it, and Heaven forbid that a mere sportsman
should correct them), and sped along the hard high-road at racing pace;
and twice had Marmaduke, by patience and hard pulling, recovered the
mastery, albeit with split gloves and blistered hands. It was not
enjoyment to ride in this fashion, of course, and had it not been for
the commissions which had been entrusted to us, it is probable that we
should have returned home. It puzzled us beyond measure to account for
the change of conduct in the bay. The difference was as decided as that
between a high-spirited child who requires, as we say, "careful
treatment," and a vicious dwarf: heretofore he had been frisky, now he
was positively fiendish. He shied and started, not only at every object
on the roadside, but before he arrived at them. At the end of the high
table-land which is called Crittenden Common, and descends into the
quiet little market-town of the same name, there really was something to
shy at. A gipsy encampment, with fire and caldron, and tethered donkey,
which had been concealed in a hollow, came suddenly into view as we
cantered by; an old crone, with a yellow handkerchief in lieu of a
bonnet, and shading her beady eyes with her hand, watched with malicious
enjoyment the struggle between man and horse which her own appearance
had gone far to excite. In a very few moments, Marmaduke's already
overtaxed muscles gave way, and the bay, maddened with resistance, and
released from all control, rushed at headlong speed down the steep
chalk-road that led by many a turn and zigzag into Crittenden. It was
frightful to watch from the summit of this tamed precipice--this cliff
compelled into a road--the descent of that doomed pair. No mule could be
surer footed than was Panther, but the laws of gravitation had
nevertheless to be obeyed. At the second turning, the bay, after one
vain effort to follow the winding of the road, pitched, head first, down
the grassy wall which everywhere separated the zigzags from one another;
over and over rolled horse and rider to the hard road below, and there
lay, their horrible and abnormal movements exchanged for a stony quiet.
I jumped off my horse, and ran down the two steep slopes, which at
another time I should have descended hand over hand. Yet on my way I had
time to think with what sorrow this news would be received at Fairburn
Rectory, with what joy at the Hall! Marmaduke's hand still held the
rein, which I disentangled from it with feverish haste, lest that
four-footed fiend, which snorted yet through its fiery nostrils, and
glared defiance from its glazing eyes, should arise and drag the dear
lad's corpse among the cruel stones. After what I had seen of his fall,
I had scarcely a hope that he was alive. There was blood at his mouth,
blood at his ears, blood everywhere upon the white and dazzling road.
"Marmaduke, Marmaduke," cried I, "speak, speak, if it be but a single
word! Great Heaven, he is dead!"
"Dead! no, not he," answered a hoarse, cracked voice at my ear. "He'll
live to do a power of mischief yet to woman and man. The devil would
never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age."
"Woman," cried I, for it was the old gipsy crone, who had somehow
transported herself to the spot with incredible speed, "for God's sake,
go for help! There is a house yonder among those trees."
"And why should I stir a foot," replied she fiercely, "for the child of
a race that has ever treated me and mine as though we were dogs?"
"Because," said I, at a venture, "you have children yourself."
"You are right," exclaimed she, clapping her skinny hands together, and
seating herself calmly on the turf. "It is well that you have mentioned
my kith and kin. One lad is across the seas, and will never see the
green lanes and breezy commons of England more; another lies caged in
yonder jail--and both for taking the wild creatures of the earth and
air, to which such men as Massingberd Heath lay claim; while my little
sister--ah, my Sinnamenta, my fair pearl!--may the lightning strike him
in his wickedest hour! nay, let him perish, inch by inch, within reach
of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the Poor takes him into
his hand!--Boy, you may talk to that flintstone, and it will rise up and
get you help for that lad there--bonny as he is, and the bonnier the
worse for them he sets his wilful eyes on--before you get this hand to
wag a finger for him."
"Woman," said I, despairingly, "if you hate Massingberd Heath, and want
to do him the worst service that lies in your power, flee, flee to that
house, and bid them save this boy's life, which alone stands between his
beggared uncle and untold riches."
"Is it so?" cried the old woman, rising up with an agility for which no
one would have given her credit, and looking at me with furious eyes.
"Is it indeed so, boy?"
"Yes, woman, upon my soul!"
Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. In an instant, she
was with me down by Marmaduke's side; from her pocket she produced a
spirit-flask in a leathern case, and applied it to his lips: after a
painful attempt to swallow, he succeeded; his eyelids began tremulously
to move, and the colour to return to his pallid lips.
"Keep his head up," cried she, "and give him another drop of this, if
assistance does not arrive within five minutes."
Before she had finished speaking, she had lifted the latch of the gate
that opened from the road into the grounds of the house in question, and
in another instant I was alone--alone with what I believed to be a dying
man, and surrounded with the blood that had flowed in a mingled stream
from him and the dead horse, for Panther had ceased to move--alone with
recollections and anticipations scarcely less horrible than the visible
scene; and yet, so strangely constituted is the human mind, that I could
not forbear to glance with some sort of curiosity at the flask the gipsy
had left with me, and to wonder exceedingly that its worn and tarnished
top of silver bore upon it a fac-simile of one of those identical
griffins which guarded each side of the broad stone steps that led to
Fairburn Hall.