Book: The Last Of The Barons, Volume 3.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Last Of The Barons, Volume 3.



This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net





BOOK III.

IN WHICH THE HISTORY PASSES FROM THE KING'S COURT TO THE STUDENT'S
CELL, AND RELATES THE PERILS THAT BEFELL A PHILOSOPHER FOR MEDDLING
WITH THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD.




CHAPTER I.

THE SOLITARY SAGE AND THE SOLITARY MAID.

While such the entrance of Marmaduke Nevile into a court, that if far
less intellectual and refined than those of later days, was yet more
calculated to dazzle the fancy, to sharpen the wit, and to charm the
senses,--for round the throne of Edward IV. chivalry was magnificent,
intrigue restless, and pleasure ever on the wing,--Sibyll had ample
leisure in her solitary home to muse over the incidents that had
preceded the departure of the young guest. Though she had rejected
Marmaduke's proffered love, his tone, so suddenly altered, his abrupt,
broken words and confusion, his farewell, so soon succeeding his
passionate declaration, could not fail to wound that pride of woman
which never sleeps till modesty is gone. But this made the least
cause of the profound humiliation which bowed down her spirit. The
meaning taunt conveyed in the rhyme of the tymbesteres pierced her to
the quick; the calm, indifferent smile of the stranger, as he regarded
her, the beauty of the dame he attended, woke mingled and contrary
feelings, but those of jealousy were perhaps the keenest: and in the
midst of all she started to ask herself if indeed she had suffered her
vain thoughts to dwell too tenderly upon one from whom the vast
inequalities of human life must divide her evermore. What to her was
his indifference? Nothing,--yet had she given worlds to banish that
careless smile from her remembrance.

Shrinking at last from the tyranny of thoughts till of late unknown,
her eye rested upon the gipsire which Alwyn had sent her by the old
servant. The sight restored to her the holy recollection of her
father, the sweet joy of having ministered to his wants. She put up
the little treasure, intending to devote it all to Warner; and after
bathing her heavy eyes, that no sorrow of hers might afflict the
student, she passed with a listless step into her father's chamber.

There is, to the quick and mercurial spirits of the young, something
of marvellous and preternatural in that life within life, which the
strong passion of science and genius forms and feeds,--that passion so
much stronger than love, and so much more self-dependent; which asks
no sympathy, leans on no kindred heart; which lives alone in its works
and fancies, like a god amidst his creations.

The philosopher, too, had experienced a great affliction since they
met last. In the pride of his heart he had designed to show Marmaduke
the mystic operations of his model, which had seemed that morning to
open into life; and when the young man was gone, and he made the
experiment alone, alas! he found that new progress but involved him in
new difficulties. He had gained the first steps in the gigantic
creation of modern days, and he was met by the obstacle that baffled
so long the great modern sage. There was the cylinder, there the
boiler; yet, work as he would, the steam failed to keep the cylinder
at work. And now, patiently as the spider re-weaves the broken web,
his untiring ardour was bent upon constructing a new cylinder of other
materials. "Strange," he said to himself, "that the heat of the mover
aids not the movement;" and so, blundering near the truth, he laboured
on.

Sibyll, meanwhile, seated herself abstractedly on a heap of fagots
piled in the corner, and seemed busy in framing characters on the
dusty floor with the point of her tiny slipper. So fresh and fair and
young she seemed, in that murky atmosphere, that strange scene, and
beside that worn man, that it might have seemed to a poet as if the
youngest of the Graces were come to visit Mulciber at his forge.

The man pursued his work, the girl renewed her dreams, the dark
evening hour gradually stealing over both. The silence was unbroken,
for the forge and the model were now at rest, save by the grating of
Adam's file upon the metal, or by some ejaculation of complacency now
and then vented by the enthusiast. So, apart from the many-noised,
gaudy, babbling world without, even in the midst of that bloody,
turbulent, and semi-barbarous time, went on (the one neglected and
unknown, the other loathed and hated) the two movers of the ALL that
continues the airy life of the Beautiful from age to age,--the Woman's
dreaming Fancy and the Man's active Genius.




CHAPTER II.

MASTER ADAM WARNER GROWS A MISER, AND BEHAVES SHAMEFULLY.

For two or three days nothing disturbed the outward monotony of the
recluse's household. Apparently all had settled back as before the
advent of the young cavalier. But Sibyll's voice was not heard
singing, as of old, when she passed the stairs to her father's room.
She sat with him in his work no less frequently and regularly than
before; but her childish spirits no longer broke forth in idle talk or
petulant movements, vexing the good man from his absorption and his
toils. The little cares and anxieties, which had formerly made up so
much of Sibyll's day by forethought of provision for the morrow, were
suspended; for the money transmitted to her by Alwyn in return for the
emblazoned manuscripts was sufficient to supply their modest wants for
months to come. Adam, more and more engrossed in his labours, did not
appear to perceive the daintier plenty of his board, nor the purchase
of some small comforts unknown for years. He only said one morning,
"It is strange, girl, that as that gathers in life (and he pointed to
the model), it seems already to provide, to my fantasy, the luxuries
it will one day give to us all in truth. Methought my very bed last
night seemed wondrous easy, and the coverings were warmer, for I woke
not with the cold."

"Ah," thought the sweet daughter, smiling through moist eyes, "while
my cares can smooth thy barren path through life, why should I cark
and pine?"

Their solitude was now occasionally broken in the evenings by the
visits of Nicholas Alwyn. The young goldsmith was himself not
ignorant of the simpler mathematics; he had some talent for invention,
and took pleasure in the construction of horologes, though, properly
speaking, not a part of his trade. His excuse for his visits was the
wish to profit by Warner's mechanical knowledge; but the student was
so rapt in his own pursuits, that he gave but little instruction to
his visitor. Nevertheless Alwyn was satisfied, for he saw Sibyll. He
saw her in the most attractive phase of her character,--the loving,
patient, devoted daughter; and the view of her household virtues
affected more and more his honest English heart. But, ever awkward
and embarrassed, he gave no vent to his feelings. To Sibyll he spoke
little, and with formal constraint; and the girl, unconscious of her
conquest, was little less indifferent to his visits than her
abstracted father.

But all at once Adam woke to a sense of the change that had taken
place; all at once he caught scent of gold, for his works were brought
to a pause for want of some finer and more costly materials than the
coins in his own possession (the remnant of Marmaduke's gift) enabled
him to purchase. He had stolen out at dusk, unknown to Sibyll, and
lavished the whole upon the model; but in vain! The model in itself
was, indeed, completed; his invention had mastered the difficulty that
it had encountered. But Adam had complicated the contrivance by
adding to it experimental proofs of the agency it was intended to
exercise. It was necessary in that age, if he were to convince
others, to show more than the principle of his engine,--he must show
also something of its effects; turn a mill without wind or water, or
set in motion some mimic vehicle without other force than that the
contrivance itself supplied. And here, at every step, new obstacles
arose. It was the misfortune to science in those days, not only that
all books and mathematical instruments were enormously dear, but that
the students, still struggling into light, through the glorious
delusions of alchemy and mysticism, imagined that, even in simple
practical operations, there were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and
certain precious stones. A link in the process upon which Adam was
engaged failed him; his ingenuity was baffled, his work stood still;
and in poring again and again over the learned manuscripts--alas! now
lost--in which certain German doctors had sought to explain the
pregnant hints of Roger Bacon, he found it inculcated that the axle of
a certain wheel must be composed of a diamond. Now, in truth, it so
happened that Adam's contrivance, which (even without the appliances
which were added in illustration of the theory) was infinitely more
complicated than modern research has found necessary, did not even
require the wheel in question, much less the absent diamond; it
happened, also, that his understanding, which, though so obtuse in
common life, was in these matters astonishingly clear, could not trace
any mathematical operations by which the diamond axle would in the
least correct the difficulty that had suddenly started up; and yet the
accursed diamond began to haunt him,--the German authority was so
positive on the point, and that authority had in many respects been
accurate. Nor was this all,--the diamond was to be no vulgar diamond;
it was to be endowed, by talismanic skill, with certain properties and
virtues; it was to be for a certain number of hours exposed to the
rays of the full moon; it was to be washed in a primitive and wondrous
elixir, the making of which consumed no little of the finest gold.
This diamond was to be to the machine what the soul is to the body,--a
glorious, all-pervading, mysterious principle of activity and life.
Such were the dreams that obscured the cradle of infant science! And
Adam, with all his reasoning powers, big lore in the hard truths of
mathematics, was but one of the giant children of the dawn. The
magnificent phrases and solemn promises of the mystic Germans got firm
hold of his fancy. Night and day, waking or sleeping, the diamond,
basking in the silence of the full moon, sparkled before his eyes.
Meanwhile all was at a stand. In the very last steps of his discovery
he was arrested. Then suddenly looking round for vulgar moneys to
purchase the precious gem, and the materials for the soluble elixir,
he saw that MONEY had been at work around him,--that he had been
sleeping softly and faring sumptuously. He was seized with a divine
rage. How had Sibyll dared to secrete from him this hoard; how
presumed to waste upon the base body what might have so profited the
eternal mind? In his relentless ardour, in his sublime devotion and
loyalty to his abstract idea, there was a devouring cruelty, of which
this meek and gentle scholar was wholly unconscious. The grim iron
model, like a Moloch, ate up all things,--health, life, love; and its
jaws now opened for his child. He rose from his bed,--it was
daybreak,--he threw on his dressing-robe, he strode into his
daughter's room; the gray twilight came through the comfortless,
curtainless casement, deep sunk into the wall. Adam did not pause to
notice that the poor child, though she had provoked his anger by
refitting his dismal chamber, had spent nothing in giving a less
rugged frown to her own.

The scanty worm-worn furniture, the wretched pallet, the poor attire
folded decently beside,--nothing save that inexpressible purity and
cleanliness which, in the lowliest hovel, a pure and maiden mind
gathers round it; nothing to distinguish the room of her whose
childhood had passed in courts from the but of the meanest daughter of
drudgery and toil! No,--he who had lavished the fortunes of his
father and big child into the grave of his idea--no--he saw nothing of
this self-forgetful penury--the diamond danced before him! He
approached the bed; and oh! the contrast of that dreary room and
peasant pallet to the delicate, pure, enchanting loveliness of the
sleeping inmate. The scanty covering left partially exposed the snow-
white neck and rounded shoulder; the face was pillowed upon the arm,
in an infantine grace; the face was slightly flushed, and the fresh
red lips parted into a smile,--for in her sleep the virgin dreamed,--a
happy dream! It was a sight to have touched a father's heart, to have
stopped his footstep, and hushed his breath into prayer. And call not
Adam hard--unnatural--that he was not then, as men far more harsh than
he--for the father at that moment was not in his breast, the human man
was gone--he himself, like his model, was a machine of iron!--his life
was his one idea!

"Wake, child, wake!" he said, in a loud but hollow voice. "Where is
the gold thou hast hidden from me? Wake! confess!"

Roused from her gracious dreams thus savagely, Sibyll started, and saw
the eager, darkened face of her father. Its expression was peculiar
and undefinable, for it was not threatening, angry, stern; there was a
vacancy in the eyes, a strain in the features, and yet a wild, intense
animation lighting and pervading all,--it was as the face of one
walking in his sleep, and, at the first confusion of waking, Sibyll
thought indeed that such was her father's state. But the impatience
with which he shook the arm he grasped, and repeated, as he opened
convulsively his other hand, "The gold, Sibyll, the gold! Why didst
thou hide it from me?" speedily convinced her that her father's mind
was under the influence of the prevailing malady that made all its
weakness and all its strength.

"My poor father!" she said pityingly, "wilt thou not leave thyself the
means whereby to keep strength and health for thine high hopes? Ah,
Father, thy Sibyll only hoarded her poor gains for thee!"

"The gold!" said Adam, mechanically, but in a softer voice,--"all--all
thou hast! How didst thou get it,--how?"

"By the labours of these hands. Ah, do not frown on me!"

"Thou--the child of knightly fathers--thou labour!" said Adam, an
instinct of his former state of gentle-born and high-hearted youth
flashing from his eyes. "It was wrong in thee!"

"Dost thou not labour too?"

"Ay, but for the world. Well, the gold!"

Sibyll rose, and modestly throwing over her form the old mantle which
lay on the pallet, passed to a corner of the room, and opening a
chest, took from it the gipsire, and held it out to her father.

"If it please thee, dear and honoured sir, so be it; and Heaven
prosper it in thy hands!"

Before Adam's clutch could close on the gipsire, a rude hand was laid
on his shoulder, the gipsire was snatched from Sibyll, and the gaunt,
half-clad form of old Madge interposed between the two.

"Eh, sir!" she said, in her shrill, cracked tone, "I thought when I
heard your door open, and your step hurrying down, you were after no
good deeds. Fie, master, fie! I have clung to you when all reviled,
and when starvation within and foul words without made all my hire;
for I ever thought you a good and mild man, though little better than
stark wode. But, augh! to rob your child thus, to leave her to starve
and pine! We old folks are used to it. Look round, look round! I
remember this chamber, when ye first came to your father's hall.
Saints of heaven! There stood the brave bed all rustling with damask
of silk; on those stone walls once hung fine arras of the Flemings,--a
marriage gift to my lady from Queen Margaret, and a mighty show to
see, and good for the soul's comforts, with Bible stories wrought on
it. Eh, sir! don't you call to mind your namesake, Master Adam, in
his brave scarlet hosen, and Madam Eve, in her bonny blue kirtle and
laced courtpie? and now--now look round, I say, and see what you have
brought your child to!"

"Hush! hush! Madge, bush!" cried Sibyll, while Adam gazed in evident
perturbation and awakening shame at the intruder, turning his eyes
round the room as she spoke, and heaving from time to time short, deep
sighs.

"But I will not hush," pursued the old woman; "I will say my say, for
I love ye both, and I loved my poor mistress who is dead and gone.
Ah, sir, groan! it does you good. And now when this sweet damsel is
growing up, now when you should think of saving a marriage dower for
her (for no marriage where no pot boils), do you rend from her the
little that she has drudged to gain!--She! Oh, out on your heart! And
for what,--for what, sir? For the neighbours to set fire to your
father's house, and the little ones to--"

"Forbear, woman!" cried Adam, in a voice of thunder; "forbear!
Heavens!" And he waved his hand as he spoke, with so unexpected a
majesty that Madge was awed into sudden silence, and, darting a look
of compassion at Sibyll, she hobbled from the room. Adam stood
motionless an instant; but when he felt his child's soft arms round
his neck, when he heard her voice struggling against tears, praying
him not to heed the foolish words of the old servant,--to take--to
take all, that it would be easy to gain more,--the ice of his
philosophy melted at once; the man broke forth, and, clasping Sibyll
to his heart, and kissing her cheek, her lips, her hands, he faltered
out, "No! no! forgive me! Forgive thy cruel father! Much thought has
maddened me, I think,--it has indeed! Poor child, poor Sibyll," and
he stroked her cheek gently, and with a movement of pathetic pity--
"poor child, thou art pale, and so slight and delicate! And this
chamber--and thy loneliness--and--ah! my life hath been a curse to
thee, yet I meant to bequeath it a boon to all!

"Father, dear father, speak not thus. You break my heart. Here,
here, take the gold--or rather, for thou must not venture out to
insult again, let me purchase with it what thou needest. Tell me,
trust me--"

"No!" exclaimed Adam, with that hollow energy by which a man resolves
to impose restraint on himself; "I will not, for all that science ever
achieved,--I will not lay this shame on my soul! Spend this gold on
thyself, trim this room, buy thee raiment,--all that thou needest,--I
order, I command it! And hark thee, if thou gettest more, hide it
from me, hide it well; men's desires are foul tempters! I never knew,
in following wisdom, that I had a vice. I wake and find myself a
miser and a robber!"

And with these words he fled from the girl's chamber, gained his own,
and locked the door.




CHAPTER III.

A STRANGE VISITOR.--ALL AGES OF THE WORLD BREED WORLD-BETTERS.

Sibyll, whose soft heart bled for her father, and who now reproached
herself for having concealed from him her little hoard, began hastily
to dress that she might seek him out, and soothe the painful feelings
which the honest rudeness of Madge had aroused. But before her task
was concluded, there pealed a loud knock at the outer door. She heard
the old housekeeper's quivering voice responding to a loud clear tone;
and presently Madge herself ascended the stairs to Warner's room,
followed by a man whom Sibyll instantly recognized--for he was not one
easily to be forgotten--as their protector from the assault of the
mob. She drew back hastily as he passed her door, and in some wonder
and alarm awaited the descent of Madge. That venerable personage
having with some difficulty induced her master to open his door and
admit the stranger, came straight into her young lady's chamber.
"Cheer up, cheer up, sweetheart," said the old woman; "I think better
days will shine soon; for the honest man I have admitted says he is
but come to tell Master Warner something that will redound much to his
profit. Oh, he is a wonderful fellow, this same Robin! You saw how
he turned the cullions from burning the old house!"

"What! you know this man, Madge! What is he, and who?"

Madge looked puzzled. "That is more than I can say, sweet mistress.
But though he has been but some weeks in the neighbourhood, they all
hold him in high count and esteem. For why--it is said he is a rich
man and a kind one. He does a world of good to the poor."

While Sibyll listened to such explanations as Madge could give her,
the stranger, who had carefully closed the door of the student's
chamber, after regarding Adam for a moment with silent but keen
scrutiny, thus began,--

"When last we met, Adam Warner, it was with satchells on our backs.
Look well at me!"

"Troth," answered Adam, languidly, for he was still under the deep
dejection that had followed the scene with Sibyll, "I cannot call you
to mind, nor seems it veritable that our schooldays passed together,
seeing that my hair is gray and men call me old; but thou art in all
the lustihood of this human life."

"Nathless," returned the stranger, "there are but two years or so
between thine age and mine. When thou wert poring over the crabbed
text, and pattering Latin by the ell, dost thou not remember a lack-
grace good-for-naught, Robert Hilyard, who was always setting the
school in an uproar, and was finally outlawed from that boy-world, as
he hath been since from the man's world, for inciting the weak to
resist the strong?"

"Ah," exclaimed Adam, with a gleam of something like joy on his face,
"art thou indeed that riotous, brawling, fighting, frank-hearted, bold
fellow, Robert Hilyard? Ha! ha!--those were merry days! I have known
none like them--" The old schoolfellows shook hands heartily.

"The world has not fared well with thee in person or pouch, I fear me,
poor Adam," said Hilyard; "thou canst scarcely have passed thy
fiftieth year, and yet thy learned studies have given thee the weight
of sixty; while I, though ever in toil and bustle, often wanting a
meal, and even fearing the halter, am strong and hearty as when I shot
my first fallow buck in the king's forest, and kissed the forester's
pretty daughter. Yet, methinks, Adam, if what I hear of thy tasks be
true, thou and I have each been working for one end; thou to make the
world other than it is, and I to--"

"What! hast thou, too, taken nourishment from the bitter milk of
Philosophy,--thou, fighting Rob?"

"I know not whether it be called philosophy, but marry, Edward of York
would call it rebellion; they are much the same, for both war against
rules established!" returned Hilyard, with more depth of thought than
his careless manner seemed to promise. He paused, and laying his
broad brown hand on Warner's shoulder, resumed, "Thou art poor, Adam!"
"Very poor,--very, very!"

"Does thy philosophy disdain gold?"

"What can philosophy achieve without it? She is a hungry dragon, and
her very food is gold!"

"Wilt thou brave some danger--thou went ever a fearless boy when thy
blood was up, though so meek and gentle--wilt thou brave some danger
for large reward?"

"My life braves the scorn of men, the pinchings of famine, and, it may
be, the stake and the fagot. Soldiers brave not the dangers that are
braved by a wise man in an unwise age!"

"Gramercy! thou hast a hero's calm aspect while thou speakest, and thy
words move me! Listen! Thou wert wont, when Henry of Windsor was
King of England, to visit and confer with him on learned matters. He
is now a captive in the Tower; but his jailers permit him still to
receive the visits of pious monks and harmless scholars. I ask thee
to pay him such a visit, and for this office I am empowered, by richer
men than myself, to award thee the guerdon of twenty broad pieces of
gold."

"Twenty!--A mine! a Tmolus!" exclaimed Adam, in uncontrollable glee.
"Twenty! O true friend, then my work will be born at last!"

"But hear me further, Adam, for I will not deceive thee; the visit
hath its peril! Thou must first see if the mind of King Henry, for
king he is, though the usurper wear his holy crown, be clear and
healthful. Thou knowest he is subject to dark moods,--suspension of
man's reason; and if he be, as his friends hope, sane and right-
judging, thou wilt give him certain papers, which, after his hand has
signed them, thou wilt bring back to me. If in this thou succeedest,
know that thou mayst restore the royalty of Lancaster to the purple
and the throne; that thou wilt have princes and earls for favourers
and protectors to thy learned life; that thy fortunes and fame are
made! Fail, be discovered,--and Edward of York never spares!--thy
guerdon will be the nearest tree and the strongest rope!"

"Robert," said Adam, who had listened to this address with unusual
attention, "thou dealest with me plainly, and as man should deal with
man. I know little of stratagem and polity, wars and kings; and save
that King Henry, though passing ignorant in the mathematics, and more
given to alchemists than to solid seekers after truth, was once or
twice gracious to me, I could have no choice, in these four walls,
between an Edward and a Henry on the throne. But I have a king whose
throne is in mine own breast, and, alack, it taxeth me heavily, and
with sore burdens."

"I comprehend," said the visitor, glancing round the room,--"I
comprehend: thou wantest money for thy books and instruments, and thy
melancholic passion is thy sovereign. Thou wilt incur the risk?"

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.