James Payn, one of the most prolific literary workers of the
second half of the nineteenth century, was born at Cheltenham,
England, Feb. 28, 1830, and died March 23, 1898. After a false
start in education for the army, he went to Cambridge
University, where he was president of the Union, and published
some poems. The acceptance of his contributions by "Household
Words" turned him to his true vocation. After writing some
years for "Chambers's Journal" he became its editor from 1850
till 1874. His first work of fiction, "The Foster Brothers," a
story founded on his college life, appeared in 1859, but it
was not until five years later that Payn's name was
established as a novelist. This was on the publication of
"Lost Sir Massingberd, a Romance of Real Life." The story
first appeared in "Chambers's Journal," and is marked by all
his good qualities--ingenious construction, dramatic
situations, and a skilful arrangement of incidents.
Altogether, Payn wrote about sixty volumes of novels and short
stories.
_I.--Neither Fearing God Nor Regarding Man_
In a Midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a
village called Fairburn, which at the time I knew it first had for its
squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Massingberd Heath. Its rector, at
that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long, into whose wardship I, Peter
Meredith, an Anglo-Indian lad, was placed by my parents. I loved Mr.
Long, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Mr.
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. Like the unjust judge, he
neither feared God nor regarded man.
He had been a fast, very fast friend of the regent; but they were no
longer on speaking terms. Sir Massingberd had left the gay, wicked world
for good, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country seat in spite
of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, and house and land being
entailed upon his nephew Marmaduke, he had nothing but a life interest
in anything.
Marmaduke Heath was Mr. Long's pupil as well as myself, and he resided
with his uncle at the Hall. He dreaded his relative beyond measure. All
the pretended frankness with which the old man sometimes treated the lad
was unable to hide the hate with which Sir Massingberd really regarded
him; but for this heir-presumptive to the entail, the baronet might
raise money to any extent, and once more take his rightful station in
the world.
Abject terror obscured the young existence of Marmaduke Heath. The
shadow of Sir Massingberd cast itself over him alike when he went out
from his hated presence and when he returned to it.
Soon after my first meeting with Marmaduke, Sir Massingberd unexpectedly
appeared before me. He was a man of Herculean proportions, dressed like
an under-gamekeeper, but with the face of one who was used to command.
On his forehead was a curious indented frown like the letter V, and his
lips curled contemptuously upward in the same shape. These two together
gave him a weird, demoniacal look, which his white beard, although long
and flowing, had not enough of dignity to do away with. He ordered his
nephew to go home, and the boy instantly obeyed, as though he almost
dreaded a blow from his uncle. Then the baronet strode away, and his
laugh echoed again and again, for it was joy to know that he was feared.
Mr. Long determined to buy a horse for me, and upon my suggestion that I
wished Marmaduke Heath to spend more time in my company, he and I went
up to the Hall to ask Sir Massingberd if he were willing. The squire
received us curtly, and upon hearing of my tutor's intention, declared
that he himself would select a horse for Marmaduke. Then, since he
wished to talk with Mr. Long concerning Mr. Chint, the family lawyer, he
bade me go to his nephew's room, calling upon Grimjaw, a loathsome old
dog, to act as my guide. This beast preceded me up the old oak staircase
to a chamber door, before which it sat and whined. Marmaduke opened this
and admitted me, and we sat talking together.
My tutor found us together, and knowing the house better than the heir
did, offered to play cicerone and show me over. In the state bed-room, a
great room facing the north, he disclosed to us a secret stairway that
opened behind a full-length portrait. Marmaduke, who had been unaware of
its existence, grew ghastly pale.
"The foot of the stairway is in the third bookcase on the left of the
library door," said Mr. Long. "I dare say that nobody has moved the
picture for twenty years."
"Yes, yes!" said Marmaduke passionately. "My uncle has moved it. When I
was ill, upon my coming to Fairburn, I slept here, and I had terrible
visions. I see it all now. He wanted to frighten me to death, or to make
me mad. He would come and stand by my bedside and stare at me. Cruel--
cruel coward!"
Then he begged us to go away. "My uncle will wonder at your long delay.
He will suspect something," he said.
"Peter," observed my tutor gravely, as we went homeward, "whatever you
may think of what has passed to-day, say nothing. I am not so ignorant
of the wrongs of that poor boy as I appear, but there is nothing for it
but patience."
_II.--A Gypsy's Curse_
In a few days I was in possession of an excellent horse, and Marmaduke
had the like fortune. My tutor examined the steed Sir Massingberd had
bought with great attention, and after commenting on the tightness of
the curb, declared that he would accompany us on our first ride. After
we had left the village, he expressed a wish to change mounts with
Marmaduke, and certainly if he had been a horsebreaker he could not have
taken more pains with the animal. In the end he expressed himself highly
satisfied. Some days afterwards, however, Panther, for so we called the
horse, behaved in a strange and incomprehensible fashion, and at last
became positively fiendish. Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at
headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched
head-first over a declivity. When I found Marmaduke blood was at his
mouth, blood at his ears, blood everywhere.
"Marmaduke, Marmaduke!" I cried. "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. "The
devil would never suffer a Heath of Fairburn to die at his age!"
"Woman," cried I, for it was an old gypsy, who had somehow transported
herself to the spot, "for God's sake go for help! There is a house
yonder amongst the 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 dogs?"
Then she cursed Sir Massingberd as the oppressor of her kith and kin,
concluding with the terrible words, "May he perish, inch by inch, within
reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him
into His hand!"
"If you hate Sir Massingberd Heath," said I despairingly, "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 unknown riches!"
Revenge accomplished what pity had failed to work. She knelt at his
side, from a pocket 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 cheeks. She disappeared; during her absence I noted
that the tarnished silver top of the flask bore upon it a facsimile of
one of the identical griffins which guarded each side of the broad steps
that led to Fairburn Hall.
After a short interval, a young and lovely girl appeared, accompanied by
a groom and butler, who bore between them a small sofa, on which
Marmaduke was lifted and gently carried to the house. The master came in
soon, accompanied by the local doctor, who at last delivered the verdict
that my friend "would live to be a baronet."
He said, moreover, that the youth must be kept perfectly quiet, and not
moved thence on any consideration--it might be for weeks. Harvey Gerard,
a noble-looking gentleman, refused to admit Sir Massingberd under his
roof.
The baronet, however, did appear towards twilight, and forced his way
into the house, where Harvey Gerard met him with great severity. Soon
hatred took the place of all other expressions on the baronet's face,
and he swore that he would see his nephew.
"That you shall not do, Sir Massingberd," said the gentleman. "If you
attempt to do so, my servants will put you out of the house by force."
"Before night, then, I shall send for him, and he shall be carried back
to Fairburn, to be nursed in his proper home."
"Nursed!" repeated Harvey Gerard hoarsely. "Nursed by the gravedigger!"
Sir Massingberd turned livid.
"To hear you talk one would think that I had tried to murder the boy,"
he said.
"I _know_ you did!" cried Harvey Gerard solemnly. "To-day you sent your
nephew forth upon that devil with a snaffle-bridle instead of a curb!
See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian, begone from beneath
this roof, false coward!"
Sir Massingberd started up like one stung by an adder.
"Yes, I say coward!" continued Harvey Gerard. "Heavens, that this
creature should still feel touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not
anyone within this house at peril of your life! Murderer!"
For once Sir Massingberd had met his match--and more. He seized his hat,
and hurried from the room.
_III.--A Wife Undesired_
When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible
fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching
demise.
"I have seen a vision in the night," he said, "far too sweet and fair
not to have been sent from heaven itself. They say the Heaths have
always ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a
gentle messenger."
"Your angel is Lucy Gerard," replied I quietly, "and we are at this
moment in her father's house."
He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which
he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.
"It would indeed be bitter for me to die _now_," he said.
I myself was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid
down my life to kiss her finger-tips. Nearly half a century has passed
over my head since the time of which I write, and yet, I swear to you,
my old heart glows again, and on my withered cheeks there comes a blush
as I call to mind the time when I first met that pure and lovely girl.
But from the moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his
bed of sickness, of our host's daughter, I determined within myself not
only to stand aside, and let him win if he could, but to help him by all
the means within my power. And so it came about that later I told Lucy
that his recovery depended upon her kindness, and won her to look upon
him with compassion and with tenderness.
Mr. Clint, the lawyer, came from London, and arrangements were made for
Marmaduke to continue in Harvey Gerard's care, and when Marmaduke was
convalescent the Gerards removed him to their residence in Harley
street. After I had bidden them farewell, I rode slowly towards
Fairburn, but was stopped at some distance by a young gypsy boy, who
summoned me to the encampment to converse with the aged woman whom I had
seen on the occasion of the accident. She bade me sit down beside her,
and after a time produced the silver-mounted flask, concerning whose
history I felt great curiosity. I asked her how it came into her
possession, and she herself asked a question in turn.
"Has it never struck you why Sir Massingberd has not long ago taken to
himself a young wife, and begotten an heir for the lands of Fairburn, in
despite of his nephew?"
"If that be so," said I, "why does not Sir Massingberd marry?"
Thereupon she told me that many years ago he had joined their company,
and shared their wandering fortune. Her sister Sinnamenta, a beautiful
girl beloved by the handsome Stanley Carew, had fascinated him, and he
would have married her according to gypsy rites; but since her father
did not believe that he meant to stay with the tribe longer than it
suited him, he peremptorily refused his request. Sir Massingberd left
them; they struck tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in
Roxburghshire, a mile from the frontier of Northumberland. There the
wretch followed her, and again proposed to go through the Cingari
ceremony, and this time the father consented. It was on the wedding-day
that he gave my informant the shooting-flask as a remembrance, just
before he and his wife went away southward. Long months afterwards
Sinnamenta returned heart-stricken, woebegone, about to become a mother,
with nothing but wretchedness in the future, and even her happy past a
dream dispelled.
The gypsies were at Fairburn again, and Sinnamenta's father sent for Sir
Massingberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm
being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir
Massingberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was
well-nigh strangled with passion. At last he caught Sinnamenta's Wrist
with fingers of steel.
"What man shall stop me from doing what I will with my own?" he cried.
"Come along with me, my pretty one!"
Stanley Carew flung himself upon him, knife in hand; but the others
plucked him backward, and Sir Massingberd signed to his wife to followed
him, and she obeyed. That night Stanley Carew was arrested on a false
charge of horse-stealing, and lying witnesses soon afterwards brought
him to the gallows.
"I know not what she suffered immediately after she was taken from us,"
concluded the old woman. "But this I have heard, that when he told her
of the death of Stanley Carew, she fell down like one dead, and
presently, being delivered of a son, the infant died after a few hours.
Yonder," she looked menacingly towards Fairburn Hall, "the mother
lives--a maniac. What else could keep me here in a place that tortures
me with memories of my youth, and of loving faces that have crumbled
into dust? What else but the hope of one day seeing my little sister
yet, and the vengeance of Heaven upon him who has worked her ruin? If
Massingberd Heath escape some awful end, there is no Avenger on high. I
am old, but I shall see it yet, I shall see it before I die."
_IV.--The Curse Fulfilled_
I returned to Fairburn, and soon Sir Massingberd, finding that all
correspondence with his nephew was interrupted by Harvey Gerard, began
to pay small attentions to my tutor and myself. At last he appeared at
the rectory, and desired me to forward a letter to Marmaduke.
This--finding nothing objectionable in the contents--I agreed to do, and
he departed, after inviting me to make use of his grounds whenever I
pleased. On the morrow I yielded to curiosity, and after wandering to
and fro in the park, came near a small stone house with unglazed,
iron-grated windows. A short, sharp shriek clove the humid air, and
approaching, I looked into a sitting-room, where an ancient female sat
eating a chicken without knife or fork. Her hair was scanty and white as
snow, but hung almost to the ground.
"Permit me to introduce myself," she said. "I am Sinnamenta, Lady Heath.
You are not Stanley Carew, are you? They told me that he was hung, but I
know better than that. To be hung for nothing must be a terrible thing;
but how much worse to be hung for love! It is not customary to watch a
lady when she is partaking of refreshment."
Then the poor mad creature turned her back, and I withdrew from the sad
scene. A day or two afterwards the post carried misfortune from me to
Harley Street. The wily baronet had fooled me, and had substituted a
terrible letter for that which he had persuaded me to enclose to his
nephew.
"Return hither, sir, at once," he had written. "It is far worse than
idle to attempt to cross my will. I give you twenty-four hours to arrive
after the receipt of this letter. I shall consider your absence to be
equivalent to a contumacious refusal. However well it may seem with you,
it will not be well. Whenever you think yourself safest, you will be
most in danger. There is, indeed, but one place of safety for you; come
you home."
Very soon afterwards, and before we knew of this villainy, word reached
us that the baronet was lost, and could not be found. He had started on
his usual nocturnal rounds in the preserves, and nobody had seen him
since midnight. Old Grimjaw, the dog, had been found on the doorstep,
nigh frozen to death.
The news spread like wild-fire through Fairburn village. I myself joined
the searchers, but soon separated from them, and passing the home
spinney, near by which was the famous Wolsey oak, a tree of great age. I
heard a sound that set my heart beating, and fluttering like the wings
of a prisoned bird against its cage. Was it a strangled cry for "Help!"
repeated once, twice, thrice, or was it the cold wind clanging and
grinding the naked branches of the spinney? But nought living was to be
seen; a bright wintry sun completely penetrated the leafless woodland.
At last I came upon the warm but lifeless body of Grimjaw lying on the
grass, and I hurried madly from the accursed place to where the men were
dragging the lake.
No clue was found, and my tutor began to fear that the gypsies had made
away with their enemy. Word came that they had passed through the
turnpike with a covered cart, and we rode out to interview them. The old
woman met us, and conducted us to the vehicle, when we found Sinnamenta,
Lady Heath, weaving rushes into crowns.
"My little sister is not beaten now," said the beldam. "May God's curse
have found Sir Massingberd! I would that I had his fleshless bones to
show you. Where he may be we know not; we only hope that in some hateful
spot he may be suffering unimagined pains!"
By the next post I received bitter news from Harley Street. A copy of
the menacing epistle reached me from Harvey Gerard. In a postscript Lucy
added that Marmaduke was too ill to write. An hour later Mr. Long and I
set off to town, where we found the lad in a less morbid state than we
had expected. He had asked, and gained, Harvey Gerard's permission to
marry his daughter, and the beautiful girl was supporting him with all
her strength.
The services of Townsend, the great Bow street runner, were called for;
but in spite of his endeavours, no solution was discovered to the
mystery of Sir Massingberd's disappearance. Fairburn Hall remained
without a master, occupied only by the servants.
At last Marmaduke came of age, and as he and Lucy were now man and wife,
it was decreed that they must return to the old home. Art changed that
sombre house into a comfortable and splendid mansion, and when Lucy
brought forth a son, the place seemed under a blessing, and no longer
under a curse. But it was not until the christening feast of the young
heir was celebrated with due honour that the secret of Sir Massingberd's
disappearance was discovered.
Some young boys, playing at hide-and-seek, were using the Wolsey oak for
"home," and, whilst waiting there, dug a hole with their knives, and
came upon a life-preserver that the baronet had always carried. Then a
keeper climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was
a skeleton inside.
"It's my belief," said the man, "that Sir Massingberd must have climbed
up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave
way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."
Later, as I looked upon the ghastly relics of humanity, the old gypsy's
curse recurred to my mind with dreadful distinctness. "May he perish,
inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God
of the poor take him into His hand."