Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/The Heirloom - Part 1
THE HEIRLOOM.
IN TWO PARTS.
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PART I.
There was always something peculiar about our family. As a child, I knew it well. The earliest recollections which my memory treasures up have reference to that mysterious barrier which divided the Sherringhams from the common sympathies of humanity. Mine was a prosperous lot when measured by earthly standards. I was the infant possessor of not only a considerable estate, but great accumulations. I was also the chief of an old and honoured name, and the holder of an ancient baronetcy.
I must not omit to reckon the love and care of a most fond and devoted mother, who was left my sole guardian at my father’s early death. Of that father I remembered nothing, nor was his name familiar to my ears, for my surviving parent never once mentioned, to my recollection, the slightest trait or memory connected with him she had lost. The servants observed the same strange reticence. Even the garrulous old nurse, who poured into my greedy ears her stores of gossip and tradition, never spoke of my dead father. His portrait did not hang among the many family pictures on the walls. Closely locked in a cabinet, and covered by a veil, my mother kept the likeness of the husband of her youth; nor did I ever become, during her lifetime, aware of its existence.
That father, unmentioned but unforgotten, must have died when I was in my fifth year, but not at Sherringham Priors. I have seldom doubted of the date, because, though I seem to remember my poor mother never dressed otherwise than in deep mourning, I can recollect that my white frock and pretty blue sash were exchanged for black, and that I was no longer called “Master Willy” by the menials about me. “Sir Wilfred” was my new designation; and I can recall that, child as I was, I was proud of the implied promotion, and provoked because no one would explain to me its cause or meaning.
If I may trust to the vague impressions of infancy, I was an object of affection, but also of something very like fear, to those about me. My mother, I am sure, was afraid of me; at least, such was the idea that I derived from the timid glances which she would cast at me as I sat apparently absorbed in my lesson-books or my toys. She was of a most gentle nature, but to me she behaved with a studied gentleness, an excess of patient kindness, that suggested even to an unformed mind the notion of extreme precaution. Although tenderly reared, I may say that I was humoured rather than indulged, and met with more compliance than spontaneous caresses. These are subtle distinctions to have suggested themselves to one so young, but children have a surprising keenness of instinct, especially when bred up alone. Such was my case.
I had no brothers or sisters whose play, and studies, and baby quarrels and reconciliations I could share: mine was a moody and wayward infancy, and my mind became the more active because healthy play seemed to be denied me. No one chid me; harshness and injustice were unknown to me, but at the same time I met with no real sympathy. With all my mother’s affection for me, I knew, I felt, that there was a gulf between us two. And with a strange perverseness I began to think of my dead father, to long for his presence, to canvass in my own mind his probable aspect and disposition. I should have loved him, I thought, better than I loved the fond patient mother. For I felt that he must have resembled myself, that there would have been a fellow-feeling between us.
It seems wonderful to me, in looking back, that I should, at so early an age, have so clearly comprehended my relationship to a person never openly mentioned. But children are for ever on the look-out for some fresh information about the new marvellous world which they have lately entered, and they catch up and piece together broken scraps of their elders’ talk in a manner hardly explicable. No doubt the servants at the Priors had been well drilled, but no authority can quite padlock women’s lips. Here and there I caught a stray phrase, such as—“how like old master,” or—“a true Sherringham all over,” and the warning “hush!” of the other persons present seldom failed to give point and weight to such utterances.
As I grew older, still stronger became the wish to learn what it was that made the Sherringhams a race apart, and why I was treated with a deference which instinct rather than experience assured me to be unusual. The servants were not only obsequious to their young master,—that was perhaps natural,—but they were grave and cautious, and never ventured on the jocose remarks so often heard from the old and privileged retainers who have known the heir from his cradle. The gardener was never testy when I trampled his flower-beds and made havoc among his peaches. The gamekeeper and grooms touched their hats as seriously as to a grown man. No provocation could induce my nurse to scold me, though I have often seen her crimson with anger, actually biting her lips to keep down the tart reproofs that rose to her tongue. My mother, hitherto my sole instructress, let me learn as much or as little as I pleased. If I complained of headache, or even if I had a whim for a walk or other pastime, the book was closed at once. It so chanced that I was a studious child, and I learned fast, but no coercion was ever attempted; my will was law, and I was in a fair way to become what is vulgarly called a spoiled urchin. That I did not become such was owing to the very peculiarity which made the curse and the burden of my life, to that viewless something that I was always trying, with my half-formed intellect, to grasp and grapple with, and which filled me with the first and only fear I have ever known.
I saw that the servants treated me less as a fellow-creature than as some valuable and frail property which might sustain injury from careless handling. My mother’s conduct was even harder to endure. She loved me, I knew, but she gave no free expansion to her love. Good conduct met with no hearty praise, such as wins a child’s allegiance when judiciously bestowed; idleness and peevishness elicited no blame. My mother watched me as if I had been a young wild beast, tame indeed, and reared in silken captivity, but which might at any unguarded moment break out into the bloodthirsty fierceness of its savage stock.
She was not a Sherringham, and therefore I felt that she could not be as I was, for I had gathered from hints and morsels of talk that I was the true type of my race. We lived in a midland county; the house and gardens of the Priors were one of the boasts of the countryside, and on certain days they were free to the public. On these occasions, I remember that there always seemed to exist a wish on the part of the household to keep me from mixing, as my boyish curiosity prompted, with the groups of casual sight seers.
There were other visitors, however, from whom it was impossible to seclude me. The gentry of the shire paid formal visits at the Priors, and then alone did I see strangers of my own rank, for I never accompanied my mother in her rare drives to return these attentions, and no hospitalities were exchanged. How well I recollect the drawing-room, with its store of guests, the artificial intercourse, my mother’s efforts at lively converse, and the cold caresses which the high-born matrons of the county aristocracy were wont to bestow on me—the lonely child.
Sometimes the visitors brought children with them, and then I bitterly felt my isolation. The little boys and girls held aloof from me, gazed at me fearfully, despite the polite encouragement of their mammas, and I could read in their wondering eyes that they knew I was not a fit playmate for them, not one of themselves. It may seem surprising that I did not speak out respecting the weight on my heart, that I did not question the domestics, or even boldly inquire of my mother what it was that severed the Sherringhams from the rest of mankind. But to this I was averse; I shrank from avowing that I perceived myself to be an object, if not of suspicion, at least of peculiar care. It was not for me to cause scandal or to bring on explanations which could not be of a pleasant kind. Besides, distrust is apt to be contagious. I was never quite open and frank with my mother, because of the restraint in her manner towards myself.
Thus I grew up, more alone than if I had been a dweller in the wilderness, a melancholy, large-eyed boy, with a face of the sickly character which premature thought imparts. My health was not good, nor my disposition amiable, but I was a quick learner, and had a power of commanding my temper which is rare in the young. I became taciturn, vindictive, and very proud, but with a hidden pride quite unlike the usual arrogance of conceited children. Altogether, I was very selfish, and in a fair way to become a hater of my species, when an illness, during which my mother nursed me with untiring assiduity, brought about a change in my life. The family physician, old Dr. West, shook his head very seriously during my convalescence, as he marked how wan and thin were my face and hands, as well as the unnatural size and lustre of my eyes.
“He’s moped to death here, my lady,” said the old man, as he adjusted his spectacles on his nose; “send him to Eton, ma’am; send him to Eton!”
And to Eton I went.
Five years at Eton did wonders for me. In the merry, active boy of the playing fields, always at cricket, boating, or football, you would never have recognised the pining recluse of Sherringham Priors. The bustle, the cares and interests of the great school, the healthful companionship, above all, with youthful and frank natures, took me out of my track of gloomy egotism. I was a little teased and tormented at first on account of my solitary habits and dark looks, but, to my great joy, I found myself treated as an equal, as a responsible person, for the first time. I had been apt, at home, to fancy myself a monster cut off from humanity: at school, I soon found myself one of the many.
No one had ever heard of the Sherringhams and their peculiarities. No one watched me; no one humoured me. I received praise or blame when I merited either, and I declare in all sincerity, that at first one was as sweet to my ears as the other. I wish to pass lightly over this, the pleasantest time of my life. The holidays were not to me the pleasant treat which they were to my schoolfellows. I did not like going back to the Priors; but there was no help for it. And yet, after a time there arose a new sense of satisfaction in these visits to the home of my childhood. People began to treat me differently from the old artificial system. My altered bearing, more decided, more cheerful, and more boyish, produced its effect. The servants seemed to lose their awe of me. The gamekeeper ventured to crack a joke at my misses when he taught me to shoot; and the gardener begged Sir Wilfred not to damage certain shrubs, because Lady Sherringham was fond of them, just as he would have spoken to any other master of twelve years old. Even my mother began to be less constrained with me, and the old look of watchfulness was but seldom to be noted in her eyes.
I left Eton a tall and blooming youth, having entered it a sickly child. After a year or two at a tutor’s in Gloucestershire, I went to Oxford, where I wore my velvet cap for the usual number of terms, and took my “ordinary” degree in the usual fashion. I had no need to toil for Double Firsts and college prizes. I was Sir Wilfred Sherringham, master of a noble property. And yet, how often have I envied the poor servitors and Bible clerks, the red-fisted sons of Cumberland curates, to whom I may often have been in turn an object of envy. The snake was scotched, but not killed. I was improved, but still a Sherringham, and I knew now that with our ancient blood went an Heirloom—never mind what! No one had told me the truth: I was left to puzzle it out for myself. There was that in my ancestry which set their descendant apart from the rest of the world. We had a good old name, great alliances to boast of, ample means, but there was a canker in the flower. It was a subject I did not love to think of, yet I thought of it. I often fancied, too, that others were thinking of it, speaking of it, sneering about it. And it stung me as an adder’s tooth: still, I was not unhappy, not unpopular.
Soon after I took my degree, my mother died. There had always been reserve and mistrust between us, and yet we loved one another. My tears—not easily drawn forth, for mine is a stubborn nature—fell like rain upon the wasted hand she stretched towards me as I hurried to her bed-side, and she smiled with a fond, wan smile, and seemed to forget her former terror of me. And yet—she lingered for two days after my arrival—I saw it in her eyes on the very morning that she died, the old haunting look of fear, and I bowed my head as if in shame, and my heart was cold and hard.
She passed away, and breathed not a word of the secret. But it was needless. I knew the worst without being told—knew it long before. I found in desks and closets, under lock and key, a quantity of papers bearing on the Heirloom. I did not peruse them. I sealed them all up, unread, and sent them to my mother’s lawyer for safe keeping. I would have burned them, ay, and the house and pictures too, if in that blaze I could have annihilated all proof and memory of the taint. But what was the use of destroying miserable papers? Every gossip in farm or cottage, every knot of alehouse guests, all the county, knew the worst that could be known.
In the cabinet I spoke of before, veiled and muffled, was my father’s picture. His name was on it—Sir Percy, seventh baronet. I was the eighth. It was with a thrill of awe that I looked upon that face, the very likeness of which had been so carefully hidden from the day. Myself! and yet different. The brow, the mouth, the complexion, were the same; but there was a difference in the eyes. Mine were large, but thoughtful and sad; his were glittering and prominent, fraught with wild meaning; in them the secret was revealed. I could not bear to look at them. And yet, odd as it may seem, this picture I took with me when I left the house, never to return. The portraits of bygone Sherringhams remained in peace to moulder on the walls: I only cared to remove that one likeness.
For more than two years I travelled far and wide. On this portion of my life I shall not linger, nor does it bear upon the crisis of my fatal history. What I have hitherto told it was needful to tell, lest what followed should fail of being understood. The task has not been painless. That must be a singular nature to which the task of anatomising one’s own heart, of spreading one’s own weakness and failings before the world’s gaze, is free from pain. Let me hasten on.
The late summer of the year 185— found me at Ryde, where my yacht was lying. Of aquatic amusements I had ever been passionately fond, having caught the boating mania at Eton and at Oxford, and enjoyed several cruises in the Mediterranean. My new vessel, the Calypso, was one of the most superb in the Royal Yacht Squadron, and was backed at heavy odds to carry away the prize at the next races of that holiday flotilla.
But another attraction more potent than emulation had drawn me to the Isle of Wight; I knew that a family, whose acquaintance I had made, the winter before, at Rome, would be at Ryde during the gay yachting season. The name of this family was Digby,—it consisted of four persons. The parents were commonplace enough, worldly, pretentious people, who contrived to make a considerable display with a moderate fortune; a random, extravagant son, and a daughter,—Lucy. Despite the stern training which I have had in the school of misfortune, despite the self-discipline which has become a part of myself, it is hard to write her name calmly, and to discuss her attributes as I should do those of a stranger. How I loved her, and how fatal, to myself at least, that love has proved. But for her, I might still occupy a place of honour among my fellows. But for her, should I now be what I am? Who can tell! The mine was laid and ready long ago, and only a spark was needed to ignite it.
Lucy was in her twentieth year, and perhaps ought rather to have been called lovely than beautiful. I shall not describe her, suffice it that she was a fair and gentle girl, with something in her eyes of the placid softness of summer moonlight, and a nature as tender and good as mine was wayward and capricious. I loved her, how strongly I will not say, but it was a love that twined its roots among my very heartstrings. It is not, nay, it never was, a matter of surprise to me that my love was not returned. Lucy was utterly unfit for me. Her delicate, pliant character instinctively sought to lean for support on some powerful but honest mind, on some bold and affectionate nature. What sympathy was there between her and me? Her repugnance to me was perfectly reasonable; my temper, my cast of intellect, my very talents, were such as frightened and repelled, instead of attracting her.
And here let me put in a disclaimer. From the stern indictment I have drawn up against myself, the reader may probably think me a very odious individual; such, however, was not the prevailing opinion of society. A rich and titled bachelor is seldom harshly regarded. The club men with whom I lived voted me a good fellow, seeing that I neither won their money at cards nor refused a loan to an embarrassed friend, while my dinners disarmed criticism. Nor did ladies avoid me. Many bright eyes grew brighter at my approach; many musical voices described me to mutual friends as a dear, delightful, talented creature, so odd, and so fascinating. Few mothers would have objected to Sir Wilfred Sherringham as a son-in-law.
And yet, and yet! the one heart that I strove and cared to win was closed to me. I am convinced, now that I can take a calm retrospect of the past, that Lucy was actually afraid of me, and that she never felt happy when I was near her. I was wilfully blind to this; I chose to attribute her reserve to maiden coyness, and have often drawn false hopes from the timid drooping of her eyes before mine. Poor Lucy! she had much to endure, for those who should have been her protectors against my hateful suit were my devoted allies. Mr. and Mrs. Digby were resolved on securing so advantageous a settlement for their daughter as my courtship offered. The former, at once pompous and niggardly, dreaded nothing so much as that his child should wed a poor man, in which case the opinion of the world which he worshipped would compel him to make some sacrifices towards her comfort. Mrs. Digby was a hard managing woman, who valued station much and money more, and who had quietly made up her mind that the rich baronet should not woo in vain.
Did Mrs. Digby know of the Heirloom? was a question I many times asked of myself. She may have done so. She had made it her business, most prudently, to learn the amount of my rent-roll, and the fact of the property being clear of mortgages. It is hard to believe, that along with these financial statistics, no whisper of the Sherringham peculiarities should ever have reached her maternal ears. But she was resolutely bent on having her own way. Have I said that the Digbys were nobodies, in the polite acceptation of the term? such was the case; but they were of that class of aspiring nobodies who contrive to hang on to the skirts of society, and who are tolerated by some because they are endured by others. Lucy had no such pitiful ambition as this, but her mother had decided that her child should be Lady Sherringham.
Events took the usual course, when a soft and yielding character is compressed between two opposite forms of selfishness tending towards a common end. I proposed, and was accepted, with what a tearful, shuddering, reluctant acceptance, I do not like to think. Father, mother, brother—for even that hopeful heir of the Digbys, who found it convenient to borrow my money and ride my horses, was on my side—father, mother, and brother were able to browbeat or cajole Lucy into a mockery of consent.
She only made one stipulation. The crowning mockery of marriage that was the necessary result of the first mockery of consent was to be deferred—deferred till the middle of the winter. In vain I pleaded, in vain Mrs. Digby expostulated, urging with affected hilarity that the murky winter was a cheerless season for such a festive ceremony.
“The fitter time for my marriage, mamma,” said Lucy, and she was pressed no more.
And now I ought to have been happy, but I was not so. I had gained my point, Lucy had promised; she was too honourable to draw back; and besides, her family would hold her to her word. But I began now to see more clearly how she shrank front me, feared me, avoided me, and that as the bright days of early autumn passed, my utmost assiduity could not conquer her innate dislike to her future husband.
This would have been a bitter discovery for any man,—it was gall and wormwood to me. Did she, Lucy, know of the Heirloom? Impossible, unless a friend had whispered it in her ear. Mrs. Digby was too worldly-wise to have spoken on the topic, and the majority of our friends neither knew nor cared to suspect anything amiss. Still, I felt there was a barrier between us, invisible, but strong as adamant. I sometimes saw in Lucy’s eyes the old look of watchful fear that I had so early detected in those of my mother; but in the poor mother’s eyes there was love, deep, yearning love, to soften that detested scrutiny. Not so in Lucy’s frightened gaze. Worse, almost, than this, I was jealous. Jealousy is a mean passion, and I do not think it would have taken root in my breast, had I been as others. I was not. A gnawing sense of my inferiority, in consequence of the accursed Heirloom, to the very clowns who tilled my estate, to the servants who did my bidding, made me morbidly sensitive on this score.
A nephew of Mrs. Digby’s, and of course a cousin of Lucy’s, had returned from India, and was a guest in the house. His name was Captain Harold Langley, and he had a high reputation for courage, ability, and honour. I must own that he deserved his reputation. He was a fine soldierly fellow, with a bronzed face and frank bearing. He stole Lucy’s heart from me; no, let me be just even here, and fully admit that even if Captain Langley had never come back, Lucy’s aversion to myself would have been insuperable. I soon saw the truth, knew it sooner than either Lucy or Langley. Each of those two had grown dear to the other, almost insensibly, without the exchange of a word of sentimental feeling. I alone saw the growth of this affection, for Lucy’s engagement to myself served to shut the eyes of her relations, and only the hateful future husband knew how Lucy’s colour rose and fell, how Lucy’s eye and mouth brightened and dimpled into smiles, at the approach of the handsome cousin.
It was enough, more than enough, I did not seek to dissemble with myself. My glimpse of happiness grew dim, but other and darker thoughts assumed an empire over my troubled soul. I proposed a yachting expedition, sent out numerous invitations, and prepared to give a sumptuous fête on board the Calypso. Mrs. Digby did not care to thwart me, but she said something about the ungenial season,—it was already November.
That mattered little to me; the stormy and uncertain weather matched well with my own perturbed spirit. I was slowly maturing in my stricken brain the details of a horrid design.