The World's Greatest Books - Volume 6 Part 56

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 Ma.s.singberd left them; they struck tent at once, and travelled to Kirk Yetholm, in Roxburghs.h.i.+re, 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 Ma.s.singberd, and he was told that the marriage was legal, Kirk Yetholm being over the border. An awful silence succeeded this disclosure. Sir Ma.s.singberd turned livid, and twice in vain essayed to speak; he was well-nigh strangled with pa.s.sion. 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 Ma.s.singberd 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 Ma.s.singberd 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 Ma.s.singberd, 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 subst.i.tuted 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 n.o.body had seen him since midnight. Old Gr.i.m.j.a.w, 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 pa.s.sing 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 Gr.i.m.j.a.w lying on the gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d's curse have found Sir Ma.s.singberd! 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 Ma.s.singberd'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 Ma.s.singberd'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 Ma.s.singberd 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 G.o.d of the poor take him into His hand."