Volume I Part 4 (1/2)
HEAD OVER HEELS.
I obeyed my tutor and my friend in keeping all I knew regarding Sir Ma.s.singberd 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 Ma.s.singberd, who, with his huge arms resting on a gate by the roadside, watched us pa.s.s 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 Ma.s.singberd,” 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 Ma.s.singberd, 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 Ma.s.singberd 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 Ma.s.singberd was much engaged with his guests, pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 s.h.i.+ed 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 gra.s.sy 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 hoa.r.s.e, 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 G.o.d'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 Ma.s.singberd 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 G.o.d 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 Ma.s.singberd 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!”