Peveril of the Peak by Walter Scott (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📕

“Christian,” she replied, “I owe you much. Had I not felt I did so, I would, as I have been often tempted to do, have denounced thee to the fierce Countess, who would have gibbeted you on her feudal walls of Castle Rushin, and bid your family seek redress from the eagles, that would long since have thatched their nest with your hair, and fed their young ospreys with your flesh.”

“I am truly glad you have had so much forbearance for me,” answered Christian.

“I have it, in truth and in sincerity,” replied Zarah—“Not for your benefits to me—such as they were, they were every one interested, and conferred from the most selfish considerations. I have overpaid them a thousand times by the devotion to your will, which I have displayed at the greatest personal risk. But till of late I respected your powers of mind—your inimitable command of passion—the force of intellect which I have ever seen you exercise over all others, from the bigot Bridgenorth to the debauched Buckingham—in that, indeed, I have recognised my master.”

“And those powers,” said Christian, “are unlimited as ever; and with thy assistance, thou shalt see the strongest meshes that the laws of civil society ever wove to limit the natural dignity of man, broke asunder like a spider’s web.”

She paused and answered, “While a noble motive fired thee—ay, a noble motive, though irregular—for I was born to gaze on the sun which the pale daughters of Europe shrink from—I could serve thee—I could have followed, while revenge or ambition had guided thee—but love of wealth, and by what means acquired!—What sympathy can I hold with that?—Wouldst thou not have pandered to the lust of the King, though the object was thine own orphan niece?—You smile?—Smile again when I ask you whether you meant not my own prostitution, when you charged me to remain in the house of that wretched Buckingham?—Smile at that question, and by Heaven, I stab you to the heart!” And she thrust her hand into her bosom, and partly showed the hilt of a small poniard.

“And if I smile,” said Christian, “it is but in scorn of so odious an accusation. Girl, I will not tell thee the reason, but there exists not on earth the living thing over whose safety and honour I would keep watch as over thine. Buckingham’s wife, indeed, I wished thee; and through thy own beauty and thy wit, I doubted not to bring the match to pass.”

“Vain flatterer,” said Zarah, yet seeming soothed even by the flattery which she scoffed at, “you would persuade me that it was honourable love which you expected the Duke was to have offered me. How durst you urge a gross a deception, to which time, place, and circumstance gave the lie?—How dare you now again mention it, when you well know, that at the time you mention, the Duchess was still in life?”

“In life, but on her deathbed,” said Christian; “and for time, place, and circumstance, had your virtue, my Zarah, depended on these, how couldst thou have been the creature thou art? I knew thee all-sufficient to bid him defiance—else—for thou art dearer to me than thou thinkest—I had not risked thee to win the Duke of Buckingham; ay, and the kingdom of England to boot. So now, wilt thou be ruled and go on with me?”

Zarah, or Fenella, for our readers must have been long aware of the identity of these two personages, cast down her eyes, and was silent for a long time. “Christian,” she said at last, in a solemn voice, “if my ideas of right and of wrong be wild and incoherent, I owe it, first, to the wild fever which my native sun communicated to my veins; next, to my childhood, trained amidst the shifts, tricks, and feats of jugglers and mountebanks; and then, to a youth of fraud and deception, through the course thou didst prescribe me, in which I might, indeed, hear everything, but communicate with no one. The last cause of my wild errors, if such they are, originates, O Christian, with you alone; by whose intrigues I was placed with yonder lady, and who taught me, that to revenge my father’s death, was my first great duty on earth, and that I was bound by nature to hate and injure her by whom I was fed and fostered, though as she would have fed and caressed a dog, or any other mute animal. I also think—for I will deal fairly with you—that you had not so easily detected your niece, in the child whose surprising agility was making yonder brutal mountebank’s fortune; nor so readily induced him to part with his bond-slave, had you not, for your own purposes, placed me under his charge, and reserved the privilege of claiming me when you pleased. I could not, under any other tuition, have identified myself with the personage of a mute, which it has been your desire that I should perform through life.”

“You do me injustice, Zarah,” said Christian—“I found you capable of the avenging of your father’s death—I consecrated you to it, as I consecrated my own life and hopes; and you held the duty sacred, till these mad feeling towards a youth who loves your cousin——”

“Who—loves—my—cousin,” repeated Zarah (for we will continue to call her by her real name) slowly, and as if the words dropped unconsciously from her lips. “Well—be it so!—Man of many wiles, I will follow thy course for a little, a very little farther; but take heed—tease me not with remonstrances against the treasure of my secret thoughts—I mean my most hopeless affection to Julian Peveril—and bring me not as an assistant to any snare which you may design to cast around him. You and your Duke shall rue the hour most bitterly, in which you provoke me. You may suppose you have me in your power; but remember, the snakes of my burning climate are never so fatal as when you grasp them.”

“I care not for these Peverils,” said Christian—“I care not for their fate a poor straw, unless where it bears on that of the destined woman, whose hands are red in your father’s blood. Believe me, I can divide her fate and theirs. I will explain to you how. And for the Duke, he may pass among men of the town for wit, and among soldiers for valour, among courtiers for manners and for form; and why, with his high rank and immense fortune, you should throw away an opportunity, which, as I could now improve it——”

“Speak not of it,” said Zarah, “if thou wouldst have our truce—remember it is no peace—if, I say, thou wouldst have our truce grow to be an hour old!”

“This, then,” said Christian, with a last effort to work upon the vanity of this singular being, “is she who pretended such superiority to human passion, that she could walk indifferently and unmoved through the halls of the prosperous, and the prison cells of the captive, unknowing and unknown, sympathising neither with the pleasures of the one, nor the woes of the other, but advancing with sure, though silent steps, her own plans, in despite and regardless of either!”

“My own plans!” said Zarah—“Thy plans, Christian—thy plans of extorting from the surprised prisoners, means whereby to convict them—thine own plans, formed with those more powerful than thyself, to sound men’s secrets, and, by using them as a matter of accusation, to keep up the great delusion of the nation.”

“Such access was indeed given you as my agent,” said Christian, “and for advancing a great national change. But how did you use it?—to advance your