Book: The Last Of The Barons, Volume 10.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Last Of The Barons, Volume 10.



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BOOK X.

THE RETURN OF THE KING-MAKER.




CHAPTER I.

THE MAID'S HOPE, THE COURTIER'S LOVE, AND THE SAGE'S COMFORT.

Fair are thy fields, O England; fair the rural farm and the orchards
in which the blossoms have ripened into laughing fruits; and fairer
than all, O England, the faces of thy soft-eyed daughters!

From the field where Sibyll and her father had wandered amidst the
dead, the dismal witnesses of war had vanished; and over the green
pastures roved the gentle flocks. And the farm to which Hastings had
led the wanderers looked upon that peaceful field through its leafy
screen; and there father and daughter had found a home.

It was a lovely summer evening; and Sibyll put aside the broidery
frame, at which, for the last hour, she had not worked, and gliding to
the lattice, looked wistfully along the winding lane. The room was in
the upper story, and was decorated with a care which the exterior of
the house little promised, and which almost approached to elegance.
The fresh green rushes that strewed the floor were intermingled with
dried wild thyme and other fragrant herbs. The bare walls were hung
with serge of a bright and cheerful blue; a rich carpet de cuir
covered the oak table, on which lay musical instruments, curiously
inlaid, with a few manuscripts, chiefly of English and Provencal
poetry. The tabourets were covered with cushions of Norwich worsted,
in gay colours. All was simple, it is true, yet all betokened a
comfort--ay, a refinement, an evidence of wealth--very rare in the
houses even of the second order of nobility.

As Sibyll gazed, her face suddenly brightened; she uttered a joyous
cry, hurried from the room, descended the stairs, and passed her
father, who was seated without the porch, and seemingly plunged in one
of his most abstracted reveries. She kissed his brow (he heeded her
not), bounded with a light step over the sward of the orchard, and
pausing by a wicket gate, listened with throbbing heart to the
advancing sound of a horse's hoofs. Nearer came the sound, and
nearer. A cavalier appeared in sight, sprang from his saddle, and,
leaving his palfrey to find his way to the well-known stable, sprang
lightly over the little gate.

"And thou hast watched for me, Sibyll?"

The girl blushingly withdrew from the eager embrace, and said
touchingly, "My heart watcheth for thee alway. Oh, shall I thank or
chide thee for so much care? Thou wilt see how thy craftsmen have
changed the rugged homestead into the daintiest bower!"

"Alas! my Sibyll! would that it were worthier of thy beauty, and our
mutual troth! Blessings on thy trust and sweet patience; may the day
soon come when I may lead thee to a nobler home, and hear knight and
baron envy the bride of Hastings!"

"My own lord!" said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes;
but, after a pause, she added timidly, "Does the king still bear so
stern a memory against so humble a subject?"

"The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick's
restless machinations in France have soured his temper. He cannot
hear thy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent
of Lancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,--as, in
truth, thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the
influence of Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our
good swords, she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the
dispersion of our foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet
feeds Edward's suspicions of thy harmless father. The king chides
himself for having suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even
recalls the disastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that
from the first thy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret.
Nay, sure I am, that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he
would condemn thee as a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate
of my old foes the Woodvilles. But fie! be not so appalled, my
Sibyll; Edward's passions, though fierce, are changeful, and patience
will reward us both."

"Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!" said Sibyll, with great
emotion. "Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence!
I see thee surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to
myself, 'Is it possible that he can remember me?' But thou lovest me
still--still--still, and ever! Dost thou not?"

And Hastings said and swore.

"And the Lady Bonville?" asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but
with the faltering tone of jealous fear.

"I have not seen her for months," replied the noble, with a slight
change of countenance. "She is at one of their western manors. They
say her lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout
hypocrite, and plays the tender wife. But enough of such ancient and
worn-out memories. Thy father--sorrows he still for his Eureka? I
can learn no trace of it."

"See," said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to
Warner as they now drew near the house, "see, he shapes another Eureka
from his thoughts!"

"How fares it, dear Warner?" asked the noble, taking the scholar's
hand.

"Ah," cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerful
protector, "bringest thou tidings of IT? Thy cheerful eye tells me
that--no--no--thy face changes! They have destroyed it! Oh, that I
could be young once more!"

"What!" said the world-wise man, astonished. "If thou hadst another
youth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through a
life of hardship, persecution, and wrong?"

"My noble son," said the philosopher, "for hours when I have felt the
wrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the
nights when I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy! God is
kinder to us all than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow
on the surface, and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the
unwitnessed soul."

Sibyll had left Hastings by her father's side, and tripped lightly to
the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners who
supplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,--the happy
banquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst
such sparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.

And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under the
honeysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over his
sated mind. The pure soul of the student, released a while from the
tyranny of an earthly pursuit,--the drudgery of a toil, that however
grand, still but ministered to human and material science,--had found
for its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and
eternal mysteries. Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden
cage, into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and
spiritual eloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made
familiar to his thoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he
indulged in his large ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that
now came forth in heaven; of the laws that gave harmony to the
universe; of the evidence of a God in the mechanism of creation; of
the spark from central divinity, that, kindling in a man's soul, we
call "genius;" of the eternal resurrection of the dead, which makes
the very principle of being, and types, in the leaf and in the atom,
the immortality of the great human race. He was sublimer, that gray
old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his words, than ever
is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and deeds but
blunderingly and lamely seek it.

And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from its
little ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked, "What
can courts and a king's smile give me in exchange for serene
tranquillity and devoted love?"




CHAPTER II.

THE MAN AWAKES IN THE SAGE, AND THE SHE-WOLF AGAIN HATH TRACKED THE
LAMB.

From the night in which Hastings had saved from the knives of the
tymbesteres Sibyll and her father, his honour and chivalry had made
him their protector. The people of the farm (a widow and her
children, with the peasants in their employ) were kindly and simple
folks. What safer home for the wanderers than that to which Hastings
had removed them? The influence of Sibyll over his variable heart or
fancy was renewed. Again vows were interchanged and faith plighted.
Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who, however gallant an enemy, was
still more than ever, since Warwick's exile, a formidable one, and who
shared his sister's dislike to Hastings, was naturally at that time in
the fullest favour of King Edward, anxious to atone for the brief
disgrace his brother-in-law had suffered during the later days of
Warwick's administration. And Hastings, offended by the manners of
the rival favourite, took one of the disgusts so frequent in the life
of a courtier, and, despite his office of chamberlain, absented
himself much from his sovereign's company. Thus, in the reaction of
his mind, the influence of Sibyll was greater than it otherwise might
have been. His visits to the farm were regular and frequent. The
widow believed him nearly related to Sibyll, and suspected Warner to
be some attainted Lancastrian, compelled to hide in secret till his
pardon was obtained; and no scandal was attached to the noble's
visits, nor any surprise evinced at his attentive care for all that
could lend a grace to a temporary refuge unfitting the quality of his
supposed kindred.

And, in her entire confidence and reverential affection, Sibyll's very
pride was rather soothed than wounded by obligations which were but
proofs of love, and to which plighted troth gave her a sweet right.
As for Warner, he had hitherto seemed to regard the great lord's
attentions only as a tribute to his own science, and a testimony of
the interest which a statesman might naturally feel in the invention
of a thing that might benefit the realm. And Hastings had been
delicate in the pretexts of his visits. One time he called to relate
the death of poor Madge, though he kindly concealed the manner of it,
which he had discovered, but which opinion, if not law, forbade him to
attempt to punish: drowning was but the orthodox ordeal of a suspected
witch, and it was not without many scruples that the poor woman was
interred in holy ground. The search for the Eureka was a pretence
that sufficed for countless visits; and then, too, Hastings had
counselled Adam to sell the ruined house, and undertaken the
negotiation; and the new comforts of their present residence, and the
expense of the maintenance, were laid to the account of the sale.
Hastings had begun to consider Adam Warner as utterly blind and
passive to the things that passed under his eyes; and his astonishment
was great when, the morning after the visit we have just recorded,
Adam, suddenly lifting his eyes, and seeing the guest whispering soft
tales in Sibyll's ear, rose abruptly, approached the nobleman, took
him gently by the arm, led him into the garden, and thus addressed
him,--

"Noble lord, you have been tender and generous in our misfortunes.
The poor Eureka is lost to me and the world forever. God's will be
done! Methinks Heaven designs thereby to rouse me to the sense of
nearer duties; and I have a daughter whose name I adjure you not to
sully, and whose heart I pray you not to break. Come hither no more,
my Lord Hastings."

This speech, almost the only one which showed plain sense and judgment
in the affairs of this life that the man of genius had ever uttered,
so confounded Hastings, that he with difficulty recovered himself
enough to say,--

"My poor scholar, what hath so suddenly kindled suspicions which wrong
thy child and me?"

"Last eve, when we sat together, I saw your hand steal into hers, and
suddenly I remembered the day when I was young, and wooed her mother!
And last night I slept not, and sense and memory became active for my
living child, as they were wont to be only for the iron infant of my
mind, and I said to myself, 'Lord Hastings is King Edward's friend;
and King Edward spares not maiden honour. Lord Hastings is a mighty
peer, and he will not wed the dowerless and worse than nameless girl!'
Be merciful! Depart, depart!"

"But," exclaimed Hastings, "if I love thy sweet Sibyll in all honesty,
if I have plighted to her my troth--"

"Alas, alas!" groaned Adam.

"If I wait but my king's permission to demand her wedded hand, couldst
thou forbid me the presence of my affianced?"

"She loves thee, then?" said Adam, in a tone of great anguish,--"she
loves thee,--speak!"

"It is my pride to think it."

"Then go,--go at once; come back no more till thou hast wound up thy
courage to brave the sacrifice; no, not till the priest is ready at
the altar, not till the bridegroom can claim the bride. And as that
time will never come--never--never--leave me to whisper to the
breaking heart, 'Courage; honour and virtue are left thee yet, and thy
mother from heaven looks down on a stainless child!'"

The resuscitation of the dead could scarcely have startled and awed
the courtier more than this abrupt development of life and passion and
energy in a man who had hitherto seemed to sleep in the folds of his
thought, as a chrysalis in its web. But as we have always seen that
ever, when this strange being woke from his ideal abstraction, he
awoke to honour and courage and truth, so now, whether, as he had
said, the absence of the Eureka left his mind to the sense of
practical duties, or whether their common suffering had more endeared
to him his gentle companion, and affection sharpened reason, Adam
Warner became puissant and majestic in his rights and sanctity of
father,--greater in his homely household character, than when, in his
mania of inventor, and the sublime hunger of aspiring genius, he had
stolen to his daughter's couch, and waked her with the cry of "Gold!"

Before the force and power of Adam's adjuration, his outstretched
hand, the anguish, yet authority, written on his face, all the art and
self-possession of the accomplished lover deserted him, as one spell-
bound.

He was literally without reply; till, suddenly, the sight of Sibyll,
who, surprised by this singular conference, but unsuspecting its
nature, now came from the house, relieved and nerved him; and his
first impulse was then, as ever, worthy and noble, such as showed,
though dimly, how glorious a creature he had been, if cast in a time
and amidst a race which could have fostered the impulse into habit.

"Brave old man!" he said, kissing the hand still raised in command,
"thou hast spoken as beseems thee; and my answer I will tell thy
child." Then hurrying to the wondering Sibyll, he resumed: "Your
father says well, that not thus, dubious and in secret, should I visit
the home blest by thy beloved presence. I obey; I leave thee, Sibyll.
I go to my king, as one who hath served him long and truly, and claims
his guerdon,--thee!"

"Oh, my lord!" exclaimed Sibyll, in generous terror, "bethink thee
well; remember what thou saidst but last eve. This king so fierce, my
name so hated! No, no! leave me. Farewell forever, if it be right,
as what thou and my father say must be. But thy life, thy liberty,
thy welfare,--they are my happiness; thou hast no right to endanger
them!" And she fell at his knees. He raised and strained her to his
heart; then resigning her to her father's arms, he said in a voice
choked with emotion,--

"Not as peer and as knight, but as man, I claim my prerogative of home
and hearth. Let Edward frown, call back his gifts, banish me his
court,--thou art more worth than all! Look for me, sigh not, weep
not, smile till we meet again!" He left them with these words,
hastened to the stall where his steed stood, caparisoned it with his
own hands, and rode with the speed of one whom passion spurs and goads
towards the Tower of London.

But as Sibyll started from her father's arms, when she heard the
departing hoofs of her lover's steed,--to listen and to listen for the
last sound that told of him,--a terrible apparition, ever ominous of
woe and horror, met her eye. On the other side of the orchard fence,
which concealed her figure, but not her well-known face, which peered
above, stood the tymbestere, Graul. A shriek of terror at this
recognition burst from Sibyll, as she threw herself again upon Adam's
breast; but when he looked round to discover the cause of her alarm,
Graul was gone.




CHAPTER III.

VIRTUOUS RESOLVES SUBMITTED TO THE TEST OF VANITY AND THE WORLD.

On reaching his own house, Hastings learned that the court was still
at Shene. He waited but till the retinue which his rank required were
equipped and ready, and reached the court, from which of late he had
found so many excuses to absent himself, before night. Edward was
then at the banquet, and Hastings was too experienced a courtier to
disturb him at such a time. In a mood unfit for companionship, he
took his way to the apartments usually reserved for him, when a
gentleman met him by the way, and apprised him, with great respect,
that the Lord Scales and Rivers had already appropriated those
apartments to the principal waiting-lady of his countess,--but that
other chambers, if less commodious and spacious, were at his command.

Hastings had not the superb and more than regal pride of Warwick and
Montagu; but this notice sensibly piqued and galled him.

"My apartments as Lord Chamberlain, as one of the captain-generals in
the king's army, given to the waiting-lady of Sir Anthony Woodville's
wife! At whose orders, sir?"

"Her highness the queen's; pardon me, my lord," and the gentleman,
looking round, and sinking his voice, continued, "pardon me, her
highness added, 'If my Lord Chamberlain returns not ere the week ends,
he may find not only the apartment, but the office, no longer free.'
My lord, we all love you--forgive my zeal, and look well if you would
guard your own."

"Thanks, sir. Is my lord of Gloucester in the palace?"

"He is,--and in his chamber. He sits not long at the feast."

"Oblige me by craving his grace's permission to wait on him at
leisure; I attend his answer here."

Leaning against the wall of the corridor, Hastings gave himself up to
other thoughts than those of love. So strong is habit, so powerful
vanity or ambition, once indulged, that this puny slight made a sudden
revulsion in the mind of the royal favourite; once more the agitated
and brilliant court life stirred and fevered him,--that life, so
wearisome when secure, became sweeter when imperilled. To counteract
his foes, to humble his rivals, to regain the king's countenance, to
baffle, with the easy art of his skilful intellect, every hostile
stratagem,--such were the ideas that crossed and hurtled themselves,
and Sibyll was forgotten.

The gentleman reappeared. "Prince Richard besought my lord's presence
with loving welcome;" and to the duke's apartment went Lord Hastings.
Richard, clad in a loose chamber robe, which concealed the defects of
his shape, rose from before a table covered with papers, and embraced
Hastings with cordial affection.

"Never more gladly hail to thee, dear William. I need thy wise
counsels with the king, and I have glad tidings for thine own ear."

"Pardieu, my prince; the king, methinks, will scarce heed the counsels
of a dead man."

"Dead?"

"Ay. At court it seems men are dead,--their rooms filled, their
places promised or bestowed,--if they come not, morn and night, to
convince the king that they are alive." And Hastings, with
constrained gayety, repeated the information he had received.

"What would you, Hastings?" said the duke, shrugging his shoulders,
but with some latent meaning in his tone. "Lord Rivers were nought in
himself; but his lady is a mighty heiress, [Elizabeth secured to her
brother, Sir Anthony, the greatest heiress in the kingdom, in the
daughter of Lord Scales,--a wife, by the way, who is said to have been
a mere child at the time of the marriage.] and requires state, as she
bestows pomp. Look round, and tell me what man ever maintained
himself in power without the strong connections, the convenient dower,
the acute, unseen, unsleeping woman-influence of some noble wife? How
can a poor man defend his repute, his popular name, that airy but all
puissant thing we call dignity or station, against the pricks and
stings of female intrigue and female gossip? But he marries, and, lo,
a host of fairy champions, who pinch the rival lozels unawares: his
wife hath her army of courtpie and jupon, to array against the dames
of his foes! Wherefore, my friend, while thou art unwedded, think not
to cope with Lord Rivers, who hath a wife with three sisters, two
aunts, and a score of she-cousins!"

"And if," replied Hastings, more and more unquiet under the duke's
truthful irony,--"if I were now to come to ask the king permission to
wed--"

"If thou wert, and the bride-elect were a lady with power and wealth
and manifold connections, and the practice of a court, thou wouldst be
the mightiest lord in the kingdom since Warwick's exile."

"And if she had but youth, beauty, and virtue?"

"Oh, then, my Lord Hastings, pray thy patron saint for a war,--for in
peace thou wouldst be lost amongst the crowd. But truce to these
jests; for thou art not the man to prate of youth, virtue, and such
like, in sober earnest, amidst this work-day world, where nothing is
young and nothing virtuous;--and listen to grave matters."

The duke then communicated to Hastings the last tidings received of
the machinations of Warwick. He was in high spirits; for those last
tidings but reported Margaret's refusal to entertain the proposition
of a nuptial alliance with the earl, though, on the other hand, the
Duke of Burgundy, who was in constant correspondence with his spies,
wrote word that Warwick was collecting provisions, from his own means,
for more than sixty thousand men; and that, with Lancaster or without,
the earl was prepared to match his own family interest against the
armies of Edward.

"And," said Hastings, "if all his family joined with him, what foreign
king could be so formidable an invader? Maltravers and the Mowbrays,
Fauconberg, Westmoreland, Fitzhugh, Stanley, Bonville, Worcester--"

"But happily," said Gloucester, "the Mowbrays have been allied also to
the queen's sister; Worcester detests Warwick; Stanley always murmurs
against us, a sure sign that he will fight for us; and Bonville--I
have in view a trusty Yorkist to whom the retainers of that House
shall be assigned. But of that anon. What I now wish from thy wisdom
is, to aid me in rousing Edward from his lethargy; he laughs at his
danger, and neither communicates with his captains nor mans his
coasts. His courage makes him a dullard."

After some further talk on these heads, and more detailed account of
the preparations which Gloucester deemed necessary to urge on the
king, the duke, then moving his chair nearer to Hastings, said with a
smile,--

"And now, Hastings, to thyself: it seems that thou hast not heard the
news which reached us four days since. The Lord Bonville is dead,--
died three months ago at his manor house in Devon. [To those who have
read the "Paston Letters" it will not seem strange that in that day
the death of a nobleman at his country seat should be so long in
reaching the metropolis,--the ordinary purveyors of communication were
the itinerant attendants of fairs; and a father might be ignorant for
months together of the death of his son.] Thy Katherine is free, and
in London. Well, man, where is thy joy?"

"Time is, time was!" said Hastings, gloomily. "The day has passed
when this news could rejoice me."

"Passed! nay, thy good stars themselves have fought for thee in delay.
Seven goodly manors swell the fair widow's jointure; the noble dowry
she brought returns to her. Her very daughter will bring thee power.
Young Cecily Bonville [afterwards married to Dorset], the heiress,
Lord Dorset demands in betrothal. Thy wife will be mother-in-law to
thy queen's son; on the other hand, she is already aunt to the Duchess
of Clarence; and George, be sure, sooner or later, will desert
Warwick, and win his pardon. Powerful connections, vast possessions,
a lady of immaculate name and surpassing beauty, and thy first love!--
(thy hand trembles!)--thy first love, thy sole love, and thy last!"

"Prince--Prince! forbear! Even if so--In brief, Katherine loves me
not!"

"Thou mistakest! I have seen her, and she loves thee not the less
because her virtue so long concealed the love." Hastings uttered an
exclamation of passionate joy, but again his face darkened.

Gloucester watched him in silence; besides any motive suggested by the
affection he then sincerely bore to Hastings, policy might well
interest the duke in the securing to so loyal a Yorkist the hand and
the wealth of Lord Warwick's sister; but, prudently not pressing the
subject further, he said, in an altered and careless voice, "Pardon me
if I have presumed on matters on which each man judges for himself.
But as, despite all obstacle, one day or other Anne Nevile shall be
mine, it would have delighted me to know a near connection in Lord
Hastings. And now the hour grows late, I prithee let Edward find thee
in his chamber."

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