Volume Ii Part 5 (1/2)
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. ”G.o.d 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 Ma.s.singberd's.”
”May G.o.d'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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l, 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. a.s.suring 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 Ma.s.singberd 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 Ma.s.singberd'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 kins.h.i.+p 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 Ma.s.singberd'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 Ma.s.singberd 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ma.s.singberd 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 inc.u.mbent 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.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PROCESSION.
At the time of which I write, a dweller in the midlands who wanted to go to town, did not drive down to the nearest railway station, to be transported from thence by the fiery dragon to his destination. Railways had been long heard of, and indeed there was one within twenty miles of Fairburn, which we should now call a tramway only, for engine it had none. Locomotives were the subject of debate in scientific circles, and of scorn among the rest of the community. A journey such as that my tutor and myself were about to undertake, is scarcely to be understood by readers of the present generation. Not only did it consume an amount of time which would now suffice for six times the distance, but it was surrounded by difficulties and dangers that have now no existence whatever--”extinct Satans,” as a writer calls them, who is now scarcely held to be ”modern,” but who at that time had never written a line. The coach for which Mr. Long had thought it advisable not to wait, had met in its time with a thousand-and-one strange casualties, and the guard was a very Scheherazade at relating them. The ”Highflyer” had come to dreadful grief in racing with an empty stomach, but many ”outsides,”
against its rival, the ”Rapid,” which traversed a portion of the same road. It had often to open both its doors, to let the water through, in crossing Crittenden Ford, by neglect of which precaution upon one occasion, four ”insides” had the misfortune to be suffocated. It had been dug out of snow-drifts a hundred times, and now and then it had _not_ been dug out, and the pa.s.sengers had been frost-bitten. In winter it was usual enough for them to spend a day or two perforce at some country inn, because the roads were ”not open.” The ”Highflyer” had once been attacked by a tiger (out of a travelling caravan), which killed the off-leader; but this was an exceptional adventure. It was attacked by highwaymen at least once a year, but in this respect was considered rather a fortunate coach. Only a few weeks previously, there had been found by the reapers, in one of Farmer Arabel's wheat-fields, mail-bags with letters containing many thousand pounds in drafts and bills, which had been taken by gentlemen of the road from the custody of the guard of the ”Highflyer” in the early summer. These persons had gone into the standing wheat to divide their booty, and left there what was to them unavailable property, or too difficult to negotiate.
In the two trips I had already taken to the metropolis, I had gone by this curious conveyance, of which all Fairburn had something to say; but I was now to journey even more gloriously still: so thoroughly had Mr.
Long got to be convinced that some immediate danger was imminent to Marmaduke at the hands of his uncle, that he could not bear the least unnecessary delay in giving him warning. We posted with four horses, and generally at full gallop. I agree with the Great Lexicographer in thinking that sensation very pleasurable indeed. The express-train, it is true, goes five times as fast, but you do not feel that there is any credit due to the steam-horse for that; you take it as a matter of course, and would do so, no matter what exertions it should make for you, short of bursting. But when you heard the ring of the sixteen hoofs upon the iron road, and the sharp crack of the whips in the frosty air, or leaned out of the window for a moment; and beheld the good steeds smoking in your behalf, you said to yourself, or to your companion, if you had one: ”This is wonderful fine travelling.” Perhaps you contrasted such great speed with that attained by the Exeter flying-coaches in your ancestors' time, and smiled with contemptuous pity at their five miles an hour, stoppages excluded.