"O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
This place is worse than haunted."
The library was the first room we entered, which, even in the palmiest days of Fairburn Hall had been a dreary room, because the least in use. Except Marmaduke himself, no one ever sat there; the wicked books, which were the only sort read and patronized by Sir Massingberd, were all in the Squire's private sitting-room, and the gaps in the shelves that lined the present apartment, revealed that the Heaths had laid in a considerable stock of them. Old Sir Wentworth, a miser in his old age, had been a dunce in his youth, and was once heard openly to regret that circumstance from the fact, that he was unable to peruse the loose continental literature which his ancestors had provided for his delectation, free of expense. In the rare cases when the Oak Parlour had not sufficient accommodation for the guests of the missing Squire, they had been wont to adjourn to the present apartment, to smoke and lounge through half the night; but it bore no trace of having been so used. Every chair and sofa were in their appointed place, as though they had grown up like trees through the dusty carpet. Upon the tables and mantelpieces, the dust had settled inches thick. The grate was laid ready for lighting; but over the coals and sticks hung a sort of mildew, that looked as if it would have defied a pine-torch to set light to it. These things we remarked gradually, one by one, for the butler had only opened the shutters of one window, and the extent of the apartment was prodigious. The shelves were filled almost entirely with quartos—books were not hand-books in those days—rich with plates, and "meadows of margin;" you could not have sent a child on an errand to bring one of them; if he had managed to extricate a tome at all by painfully loosening it at head and foot, it might have fallen out and brained him. A fourth of the entire stock was composed of books of Catholic theology. "Those," observed Mr. Long, "are the most valuable things in the library. Sir Nicholas is supposed to have won his bride by paying that costly tribute to her faith. The illuminations are most rare and splendid. Why, what is this, Gilmore? I can't get this volume down. It seems stuck to the others."
The butler grinned maliciously. "I think you will find them all like that, sir. There's nothing but the wood-backs left. The Squire disposed of these books soon after Mr. Marmaduke left, and got this imitation stuff put up instead."
Mr. Long broke out into wrathful indignation, but the young heir kept silence, only smiling bitterly.
"Perhaps he was afraid that their heterodoxy might do his nephew harm," remarked I, rather tickled, I confess, by this characteristic fraud.
"No, sir," replied Gilmore, drily; "he merely observed, that, being theological works, there was as much in them now as before."
"Impious wretch!" exclaimed the Rector. "See, he has bartered the Fathers of the Church for a set of empty backgammon boards, and lettered them with their venerable names."
"Here, however, is the Family Bible," said I; "he has not sold that."
The spider had spun his web across the sacred volume, but it opened readily enough at the only place, perhaps, into which its late owner had ever looked—the huge yellow fly-leaf, upon which were inscribed the names of the later generations of the Heaths; Sir Massingberd's birth in his father's own handwriting, and Sir Wentworth's death in that of his son's, and only too probably his murderer's. The autograph was bold and flaring, quite different from the crabbed hand of the parent, is which the names of Gilbert Heath and Marmaduke's mother were also written, as likewise that of Marmaduke himself. There was a little space beneath the last; and the young heir, looking over my shoulder, pointed to it, significantly; doubtless, it had been hoped by the last possessor of the volume that this might one day have been filled up by the date of his nephew's, demise.
We were about to leave the room, when Mr. Long suddenly exclaimed, "Nay, let us try the secret way. You told me, I remember, that you did not know of Jacob's ladder, Marmaduke. The spring lies in the index of Josephus, a wooden volume, which perhaps put this notion of wholesale 'dumbies' into Sir Massingberd's head." This practical satire upon the unpopularity of the Jewish historian was presently discovered, hidden away upon one of those ground-floor shelves, which, if the enthusiastic student investigates at all, it must be upon his knees. After a little manipulation, the spring obeyed, and with a surly creak, as if in protest, the whole compartment of shelves above moved slowly outward on some hidden hinge, and disclosed the narrow stairs that ended in the shepherdess of the state chamber. The steps were worm-eaten, and the wall on both sides hung with moth-devoured and ragged tapestry. Marmaduke shrank back, and gazed upon the aperture with abhorrence and dismay. To what vile purposes might it not have been used, besides that of attempting to overthrow a poor child's reason; nay, was it not possible that what we had sought, yet feared to find for so long, might be in this very place, where no eye could have looked or thought of looking! Might it not have hidden there, and been imprisoned alive in righteous retribution, by the very spring which had ministered to hate and cruelty? "I went up here," said Mr. Long, divining the young man's thoughts, "when I searched the house with Gilmore, and put on the seals. I think we should climb Jacob's ladder, Marmaduke; as you will make the Hall your home, it is well to leave no spot in it associated with any unpleasantness, unfamiliar." So saying, the rector led the way, and we all followed: there was some delay while he opened the door above, and certainly it was not a cheerful position for us in the meantime, cooped up in the darkness, with the arras touching us with its ghostly folds on either side the narrow way; but I think that my tutor's advice was good, and that his old pupil experienced a feeling of satisfaction when the thing was done. Once more we stood together in that state bedroom where Marmaduke had suffered such ghastly terrors when a boy.