Devereux — Complete

But I have sad news for thee, my child, or rather it is sad for me to tell thee my tidings. It is sad for the old birds to linger in their nest when the young ones take wing and leave them; but it is merry for the young birds to get away from the dull old tree, and frisk it in the sunshine,—merry for them to get mates, and have young themselves. Now, do not think, Morton, that by speaking of mates and young I am going to tell thee thy brothers are already married; nay, there is time enough for those things, and I am not friendly to early weddings, nor to speak truly, a marvellous great admirer of that holy ceremony at any age; for the which there may be private reasons too long to relate to thee now. Moreover, I fear my young day was a wicked time,—a heinous wicked time, and we were wont to laugh at the wedded state, until, body of me, some of us found it no laughing matter.

But to return, Morton,—to return to thy brothers: they have both left me; and the house seems to me not the good old house it did when ye were all about me; and, somehow or other, I look now oftener at the churchyard than I was wont to do. You are all gone now,—all shot up and become men; and when your old uncle sees you no more, and recollects that all his own contemporaries are out of the world, he cannot help saying, as William Temple, poor fellow, once prettily enough said, “Methinks it seems an impertinence in me to be still alive.” You went first, Morton; and I missed you more than I cared to say: but you were always a kind boy to those you loved, and you wrote the old knight merry letters, that made him laugh, and think he was grown young again (faith, boy, that was a jolly story of the three Squires at Button’s!), and once a week comes your packet, well filled, as if you did not think it a task to make me happy, which your handwriting always does; nor a shame to my gray hairs that I take pleasure in the same things that please thee! So, thou seest, my child, that I have got through thy absence pretty well, save that I have had no one to read thy letters to; for Gerald and thou are still jealous of each other,—a great sin in thee, Morton, which I prithee to reform. And Aubrey, poor lad, is a little too rigid, considering his years, and it looks not well in the dear boy to shake his head at the follies of his uncle. And as to thy mother, Morton, I read her one of thy letters, and she said thou wert a graceless reprobate to think so much of this wicked world, and to write so familiarly to thine aged relative. Now, I am not a young man, Morton; but the word aged has a sharp sound with it when it comes from a lady’s mouth.

Well, after thou hadst been gone a month, Aubrey and Gerald, as I wrote thee word long since, in the last letter I wrote thee with my own hand, made a tour together for a little while, and that was a hard stroke on me. But after a week or two Gerald returned; and I went out in my chair to see the dear boy shoot,—‘sdeath, Morton, he handles the gun well. And then Aubrey returned alone: but he looked pined and moping, and shut himself up, and as thou dost love him so, I did not like to tell thee till now, when he is quite well, that he alarmed me much for him; he is too much addicted to his devotions, poor child, and seems to forget that the hope of the next world ought to make us happy in this. Well, Morton, at last, two months ago, Aubrey left us again, and Gerald last week set off on a tour through the sister kingdom, as it is called. Faith, boy, if Scotland and England are sister kingdoms, ‘tis a thousand pities for Scotland that they are not co-heiresses!

I should have told thee of this news before, but I have had, as thou knowest, the gout so villanously in my hand that, till t’ other day, I have not held a pen, and old Nicholls, my amanuensis, is but a poor scribe; and I did not love to let the dog write to thee on all our family affairs, especially as I have a secret to tell thee which makes me plaguy uneasy. Thou must know, Morton, that after thy departure Gerald asked me for thy rooms; and though I did not like that any one else should have what belonged to thee, yet I have always had a foolish antipathy to say “No!” so thy brother had them, on condition to leave them exactly as they were, and to yield them to thee whenever thou shouldst return to claim them. Well, Morton, when Gerald went on his tour with thy youngest brother, old Nicholls—you know ‘tis a garrulous fellow—told me one night that his son Hugh—you remember Hugh, a thin youth and a tall—lingering by the beach one evening, saw a man, wrapped in a cloak, come out of the castle cave, unmoor one of the boats, and push off to the little island opposite. Hugh swears by more than yea and nay that the man was Father Montreuil. Now, Morton, this made me very uneasy, and I saw why thy brother Gerald wanted thy rooms, which communicate so snugly with the sea. So I told Nicholls, slyly, to have the great iron gate at the mouth of the passage carefully locked; and when it was locked, I had an iron plate put over the whole lock, that the lean Jesuit might not creep even through the keyhole. Thy brother returned, and I told him a tale of the smugglers, who have really been too daring of late, and insisted on the door being left as I had ordered; and I told him, moreover, though not as if I had suspected his communication with the priest, that I interdicted all further converse with that limb of the Church. Thy brother heard me with an indifferently bad grace; but I was peremptory, and the thing was agreed on.

Well, child, the day before Gerald last left us, I went to take leave of him in his own room,—to tell thee the truth, I had forgotten his travelling expenses; when I was on the stairs of the tower I heard—by the Lord I did—Montreuil’s voice in the outer room, as plainly as ever I heard it at prayers. Ods fish, Morton, I was an angered, and I made so much haste to the door that my foot slipped by the way: thy brother heard me fall, and came out; but I looked at him as I never looked at thee, Morton, and entered the room. Lo, the priest was not there: I searched both chambers in vain; so I made thy brother lift up the trapdoor, and kindle a lamp, and I searched the room below, and the passage. The priest was invisible. Thou knowest, Morton, that there is only one egress in the passage, and that was locked, as I have said before, so where the devil—the devil indeed—could thy tutor have escaped? He could not have passed me on the stairs without my seeing him; he could not have leaped the window without breaking his neck; he could not have got out of the passage without making himself a current of air. Ods fish, Morton, this thing might puzzle a wiser man, than thine uncle. Gerald affected to be mighty indignant at my suspicions; but, God forgive him, I saw he was playing a part. A man does not write plays, my child, without being keen-sighted in these little intrigues; and, moreover, it is impossible I could have mistaken thy tutor’s voice, which, to do it justice, is musical enough, and is the most singular voice I ever heard,—unless little Sid’s be excepted.

A propos of little Sid. I remember that in the Mall, when I was walking there alone, three weeks after my marriage, De Grammont and Sid joined me. I was in a melancholic mood (‘sdeath, Morton, marriage tames a man as water tames mice!)—“Aha, Sir William,” cried Sedley, “thou hast a cloud on thee; prithee now brighten it away: see, thy wife shines on thee from the other end of the Mall.” “Ah, talk not to a dying man of his physic!” said Grammont (that Grammont was a shocking rogue, Morton!) “Prithee, Sir William, what is the chief characteristic of wedlock? is it a state of war or of peace?” “Oh, peace to be sure!” cried Sedley, “and Sir William and his lady carry with them the emblem.” “How!” cried I; for I do assure thee, Morton, I was of a different turn of mind. “How!” said Sid, gravely, “why, the emblem of peace is the cornucopia, which your lady and you equitably divide: she carries the copia, and you the cor—.” Nay, Morton, nay, I cannot finish the jest; for, after all, it was a sorry thing in little Sid, whom I had befriended like a brother, with heart and purse, to wound me so cuttingly; but ‘tis the way with your jesters.

Ods fish, now how I have got out of my story! Well, I did not go back to my room, Morton, till I had looked to the outside of the iron door, and seen that the plate was as firm as ever: so now you have the whole of the matter. Gerald went the next day, and I fear me much lest he should already be caught in some Jacobite trap. Write me thy advice on the subject. Meanwhile, I have taken the precaution to have the trap-door removed, and the aperture strongly boarded over.

But ‘tis time for me to give over. I have been four days on this letter, for the gout comes now to me oftener than it did, and I do not know when I may again write to thee with my own hand; so I resolved I would e’en empty my whole budget at once. Thy mother is well and blooming; she is, at the present, abstractedly employed in a prodigious piece of tapestry which old Nicholls informs me is the wonder of all the women.

Heaven bless thee, my child! Take care of thyself, and drink moderately. It is hurtful, at thy age, to drink above a gallon or so at a sitting. Heaven bless thee again, and when the weather gets warmer, thou must come with thy kind looks, to make me feel at home again. At present the country wears a cheerless face, and everything about us is harsh and frosty, except the blunt, good-for-nothing heart of thine uncle, and that, winter or summer, is always warm to thee.

WILLIAM DEVEREUX.

P. S. I thank thee heartily for the little spaniel of the new breed thou gottest me from the Duchess of Marlborough. It has the prettiest red and white, and the blackest eyes possible. But poor Ponto is as jealous as a wife three years married, and I cannot bear the old hound to be vexed, so I shall transfer the little creature, its rival, to thy mother.

This letter, tolerably characteristic of the blended simplicity, penetration, and overflowing kindness of the writer, occasioned me much anxious thought. There was no doubt in my mind but that Gerald and Montreuil were engaged in some intrigue for the exiled family. The disguised name which the former assumed, the state reasons which D’Alvarez confessed that Barnard, or rather Gerald, had for concealment, and which proved, at least, that some state plot in which Gerald was engaged was known to the Spaniard, joined to those expressions of Montreuil, which did all but own a design for the restoration of the deposed line, and the power which I knew he possessed over Gerald, whose mind, at once bold and facile, would love the adventure of the intrigue, and yield to Montreuil’s suggestions on its nature,—these combined circumstances left me in no doubt upon a subject deeply interesting to the honour of our house, and the very life of one of its members. Nothing, however, for me to do, calculated to prevent or impede the designs of Montreuil and the danger of Gerald, occurred to me. Eager alike in my hatred and my love, I said, inly, “What matters it whether one whom the ties of blood never softened towards me, with whom, from my childhood upwards, I have wrestled as with an enemy, what matters it whether he win fame or death in the perilous game he has engaged in?” And turning from this most generous and most brotherly view of the subject, I began only to think whether the search or the society of Isora also influenced Gerald in his absence from home. After a fruitless and inconclusive meditation on that head, my thoughts took a less selfish turn, and dwelt with all the softness of pity, and the anxiety of love, upon the morbid temperament and ascetic devotions of Aubrey. What, for one already so abstracted from the enjoyments of earth, so darkened by superstitious misconceptions of the true nature of God and the true objects of His creatures,—what could be anticipated but wasted powers and a perverted life? Alas! when will men perceive the difference between religion and priestcraft? When will they perceive that reason, so far from extinguishing religion by a more gaudy light, sheds on it all its lustre? It is fabled that the first legislator of the Peruvians received from the Deity a golden rod, with which in his wanderings he was to strike the earth, until in some destined spot the earth entirely absorbed it, and there—and there alone—was he to erect a temple to the Divinity. What is this fable but the cloak of an inestimable moral? Our reason is the rod of gold; the vast world of truth gives the soil, which it is perpetually to sound; and only where without resistance the soil receives the rod which guided and supported us will our altar be sacred and our worship be accepted.

CHAPTER X

BEING A SHORT CHAPTER, CONTAINING A MOST IMPORTANT EVENT

SIR WILLIAM’S letter was still fresh in my mind, when, for want of some less noble quarter wherein to bestow my tediousness, I repaired to St. John. As I crossed the hall to his apartment, two men, just dismissed from his presence, passed me rapidly; one was unknown to me, but there was no mistaking the other,—it was Montreuil. I was greatly startled; the priest, not appearing to notice me, and conversing in a whispered yet seemingly vehement tone with his companion, hurried on and vanished through the street door. I entered St. John’s room: he was alone, and received me with his usual gayety.

“Pardon me, Mr. Secretary,” said I; “but if not a question of state, do inform me what you know respecting the taller one of those two gentlemen who have just quitted you.”

“It is a question of state, my dear Devereux, so my answer must be brief,—very little.”

“You know who he is?”

“Yes, a Jesuit, and a marvellously shrewd one: the Abbe Montreuil.”

“He was my tutor.”

“Ah, so I have heard.”

“And your acquaintance with him is positively and bona fide of a state nature?”

“Positively and bona fide.”

“I could tell you something of him; he is certainly in the service of the Court at St. Germains, and a terrible plotter on this side the Channel.”

“Possibly; but I wish to receive no information respecting him.”

One great virtue of business did St. John possess, and I have never known any statesman who possessed it so eminently: it was the discreet distinction between friends of the statesman and friends of the man. Much and intimately as I knew St. John, I could never glean from him a single secret of a state nature, until, indeed, at a later period, I leagued myself to a portion of his public schemes. Accordingly I found him, at the present moment, perfectly impregnable to my inquiries; and it was not till I knew Montreuil’s companion was that celebrated intriguant, the Abbe Gaultier, that I ascertained the exact nature of the priest’s business with St. John, and the exact motive of the civilities he had received from Abigail Masham.22 Being at last forced, despairingly, to give over the attempt on his discretion, I suffered St. John to turn the conversation upon other topics, and as these were not much to the existent humour of my mind, I soon rose to depart.

“Stay, Count,” said St. John; “shall you ride to-day?”

“If you will bear me company.”

“Volontiers,—to say the truth, I was about to ask you to canter your bay horse with me first to Spring Gardens,23 where I have a promise to make to the director; and, secondly, on a mission of charity to a poor foreigner of rank and birth, who, in his profound ignorance of this country, thought it right to enter into a plot with some wise heads, and to reveal it to some foolish tongues, who brought it to us with as much clatter as if it were a second gunpowder project. I easily brought him off that scrape, and I am now going to give him a caution for the future. Poor gentleman, I hear that he is grievously distressed in pecuniary matters, and I always had a kindness for exiles. Who knows but that a state of exile may be our own fate! and this alien is sprung from a race as haughty as that of St. John or of Devereux. The res angusta domi must gall him sorely!”

“True,” said I, slowly. “What may be the name of the foreigner?”

“Why—complain not hereafter that I do not trust you in state matters—I will indulge—D’Alvarez—Don Diego,—a hidalgo of the best blood of Andalusia; and not unworthy of it, I fancy, in the virtues of fighting, though he may be in those of council. But—Heavens! Devereux—you seem ill!”

“No, no! Have you ever seen this man?”

“Never.”

At this word a thrill of joy shot across me, for I knew St. John’s fame for gallantry, and I was suspicious of the motives of his visit.

“St. John, I know this Spaniard; I know him well, and intimately. Could you not commission me to do your errand, and deliver your caution? Relief from me he might accept; from you, as a stranger, pride might forbid it; and you would really confer on me a personal and essential kindness, if you would give me so fair an opportunity to confer kindness upon him.”

“Very well, I am delighted to oblige you in any way. Take his direction; you see his abode is in a very pitiful suburb. Tell him from me that he is quite safe at present; but tell him also to avoid, henceforth, all imprudence, all connection with priests, plotters, et tous ces gens-la, as he values his personal safety, or at least his continuance in this most hospitable country. It is not from every wood that we make a Mercury, nor from every brain that we can carve a Mercury’s genius of intrigue.”

“Nobody ought to be better skilled in the materials requisite for such productions than Mr. Secretary St. John!” said I; “and now, adieu.”

“Adieu, if you will not ride with me. We meet at Sir William Wyndham’s to-morrow.”

Masking my agitation till I was alone, I rejoiced when I found myself in the open streets. I summoned a hackney-coach, and drove as rapidly as the vehicle would permit to the petty and obscure suburb to which St. John had directed me. The coach stopped at the door of a very humble but not absolutely wretched abode. I knocked at the door. A woman opened it, and, in answer to my inquiries, told me that the poor foreign gentleman was very ill,—very ill indeed,—had suffered a paralytic stroke,—not expected to live. His daughter was with him now,—would see no one,—even Mr. Barnard had been denied admission.

At that name my feelings, shocked and stunned at first by the unexpected intelligence of the poor Spaniard’s danger, felt a sudden and fierce revulsion. I combated it. “This is no time,” I thought, “for any jealous, for any selfish, emotion. If I can serve her, if I can relieve her father, let me be contented.”—“She will see me,” I said aloud, and I slipped some money in the woman’s hand. “I am an old friend of the family, and I shall not be an unwelcome intruder on the sickroom of the sufferer.”

“Intruder, sir,—bless you, the poor gentleman is quite speechless and insensible.”

At hearing this I could refrain no longer. Isora’s disconsolate, solitary, destitute condition broke irresistibly upon me, and all scruple of more delicate and formal nature vanished at once. I ascended the stairs, followed by the old woman—she stopped me by the threshold of a room on the second floor, and whispered “There!” I paused an instant,—collected breath and courage, and entered. The room was partially darkened. The curtains were drawn closely around the bed. By a table, on which stood two or three phials of medicine, I beheld Isora, listening with an eager, a most eager and intent face to a man whose garb betrayed his healing profession, and who, laying a finger on the outstretched palm of his other hand, appeared giving his precise instructions, and uttering that oracular breath which—mere human words to him—was a message of fate itself,—a fiat on which hung all that makes life life to his trembling and devout listener. Monarchs of earth, ye have not so supreme a power over woe and happiness as one village leech! As he turned to leave her, she drew from a most slender purse a few petty coins, and I saw that she muttered some words indicative of the shame of poverty, as she tremblingly tended them to the outstretched palm. Twice did that palm close and open on the paltry sum; and the third time the native instinct of the heart overcame the later impulse of the profession. The limb of Galen drew back, and shaking with a gentle oscillation his capitalian honours, he laid the money softly on the table, and buttoning up the pouch of his nether garment, as if to resist temptation, he pressed the poor hand still extended towards him, and bowing over it with a kind respect for which I did long to approach and kiss his most withered and undainty cheek, he turned quickly round, and almost fell against me in the abstracted hurry of his exit.

“Hush!” said I, softly. “What hope of your patient?”

The leech glanced at me meaningly, and I whispered to him to wait for me below. Isora had not yet seen me. It is a notable distinction in the feelings, that all but the solitary one of grief sharpen into exquisite edge the keenness of the senses, but grief blunts them to a most dull obtuseness. I hesitated now to come forward; and so I stood, hat in hand, by the door, and not knowing that the tears streamed down my cheeks as I fixed my gaze upon Isora. She too stood still, just where the leech had left her, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her head drooping. The right hand, which the man had pressed, had sunk slowly and heavily by her side, with the small snowy fingers half closed over the palm. There is no describing the despondency which the listless position of that hand spoke, and the left hand lay with a like indolence of sorrow on the table, with one finger outstretched and pointing towards the phials, just as it bad, some moments before, seconded the injunctions of the prim physician. Well, for my part, if I were a painter I would come now and then to a sick chamber for a study.

At last Isora, with a very quiet gesture of self-recovery, moved towards the bed, and the next moment I was by her side. If my life depended on it, I could not write one, no, not one syllable more of this scene.

CHAPTER XI

CONTAINING MORE THAN ANY OTHER CHAPTER IN THE SECOND BOOK OF THIS HISTORY

MY first proposal was to remove the patient, with all due care and gentleness, to a better lodging, and a district more convenient for the visits of the most eminent physicians. When I expressed this wish to Isora, she looked at me long and wistfully, and then burst into tears. “You will not deceive us,” said she, “and I accept your kindness at once,—from him I rejected the same offer.”

“Him?—of whom speak you?—this Barnard, or rather—but I know him!” A startling expression passed over Isora’s speaking face.

“Know him!” she cried, interrupting me, “you do not,—you cannot!”

“Take courage, dearest Isora,—if I may so dare to call you,—take courage: it is fearful to have a rival in that quarter; but I am prepared for it. This Barnard, tell me again, do you love him?”

“Love—O God, no!”

“What then? do you still fear him?—fear him, too, protected by the unsleeping eye and the vigilant hand of a love like mine?”

“Yes!” she said falteringly, “I fear for you!”

“Me!” I cried, laughing scornfully, “me! nay, dearest, there breathes not that man whom you need fear on my account. But, answer me; is not—”

“For Heaven’s sake, for mercy’s sake!” cried Isora, eagerly, “do not question me; I may not tell you who, or what this man is; I am bound, by a most solemn oath, never to divulge that secret.”

“I care not,” said I, calmly, “I want no confirmation of my knowledge: this masked rival is my own brother!”

I fixed my eyes full on Isora while I said this, and she quailed beneath my gaze: her cheek, her lips, were utterly without colour, and an expression of sickening and keen anguish was graven upon her face. She made no answer.