The Last of the Barons — Volume 10 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (fantasy books to read .txt) 📕

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!