Part 2 (1/2)
Evellin gnawed his lip, and angrily struck his fawning spaniel. ”True,”
replied he, ”the King would have him so. He forced these honours on him; and if is thus, by prejudice and injustice, that he tampers with the loyalty of a brave nation. Canst thou blame De Vallance for catching my coronet before it fell to the ground by a false attainder? Why should the t.i.tle lie in abeyance? Is it not better worn by one allied to our house than by an alien? Who so fit to sit in the baronial chair of our common ancestor as my sister's son, now I am exscinded as a diseased branch.”
”He is a lad of the fairest promise,” answered Williams, ”but he will never live to be Earl of Bellingham. Grant that no singular judgments fall on the house of usurpation, yet the honourable blood which he inherits from the Nevilles will so strive with the foul current of De Vallance, that the ill-compounded body will not grow to manhood.”
Evellin smiled: ”Thou thinkest then,” said he, ”that Walter has played the thief's part, and stolen what he could not honestly acquire.”
”'Tis past thinking about,” answered Williams; ”the blame rests not on the King's Majesty, whom Heaven prosper. He is too much raised above the common intercourse of life to look into the hearts of those who take care to approach him with a fair outside. His days are consumed by cares and perplexities, and those who are apt and courteous in business must needs have his ear. I well know that De Vallance gained the royal favour by appearing to be your devoted friend, and by praising you for those qualities in which it was Heaven's will to leave you somewhat defective.
Thus he praised your prudence, and produced your flight in proof of your innocence; yet, in the same breath, gave some instance of your rashness, and shewed that flight was ever the villain's resource. So contrariwise were his pleadings and his praises, that His Grace said one day of him, jestingly, 'Whatever my council may decide about Neville, I must keep De Vallance in my service; for though he is an unapt advocate, he is a right trusty friend.'”
”We are now,” returned Evellin, ”acting as jurors, deciding upon the better part of a man's possessions, his honour. Let us then be candid and wary. Zeal, like anger, often overshoots the mark. The lively prompt.i.tude of feeling hurries our judgment beyond its natural pace. Let us admit that the stern character of that b.l.o.o.d.y conclave, before whom De Vallance often pleaded my cause, might confuse a man, among whose natural defects I have noted a const.i.tutional timidity, apt to tremble at the frown of a fellow-creature. Before a court const.i.tuted like the Star-chamber, armed with unlimited powers to impose fines, imprisonment, sequestration, banishment, nay even the punishment of personal mutilation, no wonder the sole friend and unsupported advocate of a man, whom they were bent to ruin, took improper methods of serving him.”
”It is too true,” returned Williams, ”that this court has of late stretched its originally unconst.i.tutional powers, and has further provoked the unwarrantable licence of the times by trying to restrain it. The King's best friends allow that it has in many instances 'held that for honourable which pleased, and that for just which profited; and being the same persons who composed the council, the same individuals acted in two courts; in one, enjoining the people what was not law, and prohibiting what was not prohibited; and, in the other, censuring disobedience to their own decrees by heavy fines and severe imprisonments. But the tendency of these proceedings has been rather to supply the King's necessities with money, which, since his breach with his parliament he cannot legally obtain, than wantonly to sport with the rights of his people, from which no advantage can be derived to the crown[1].' And truly, those n.o.ble persons who compose this a.s.sembly are too well aware of the unpopularity and odium of their proceedings to give any needless cause of complaint; nor would they have dared to commit such a foul misdemeanor, as to condemn and sentence a peer of the realm for a capital offence, without giving him a solemn and public trial. Now, my dear master, has your clear understanding been so misled as to make you suppose their misdoings ever reached such atrocity, or that they would unwisely give contention such a handle.”
Evellin's judgment had ever contradicted Walter's statements, and the conclusions which remaining affection, and his own unwillingness to own himself a dupe, laboured to draw, he now inquired how his estates came to be confiscated, and his person cast out of the protection of the law.
”On account of your contumacy,” answered Williams; ”you did not surrender when the royal proclamation called upon you to take your trial, and then a writ of outlawry was required by your prosecutor.”
”Was it not Walter's duty to convey that proclamation to me?” said Evellin. Williams replied, it was; he mentioned its date, and Evellin knew it tallied with that of his marriage, at which time Walter more earnestly conjured him to remain in the closest concealment. A heavy groan burst from his heart, he rested his head on his folded hands, and bade Williams proceed.
”Yet though a long term of years had elapsed,” continued he, ”so unwilling was the King to proceed to extremities, that from term to term the cause stood over, and the hungry vulture who longed to gorge your possessions grew weary of acting the dove's part. I had long seen his base nature. In vain did he dress his face and his person in the solemn hue of mourning, or your false-hearted sister shed Hyaena tears,”--
”Tears! For what did she weep?”
”For your death.”
”My death,” said Evellin, starting up; ”De Vallance knew I was alive.”
”Aye, my n.o.ble master, and so did I too, or I should never have lived to drag my bones to the banks of Windermere; grief would have killed me ere I had gone half my journey. I caught the villain destroying your letters; I saw the date of one; you were alive at Ribblesdale in November, so could not have died the preceding month at Launceston.”
”Who durst affirm that I did?”
”Walter De Vallance.--He claimed an audience of the King, and shewed an attested certificate, stating that Allan Neville had there deceased. An account was subjoined of his person, his way of living, and the time he had resided in that borough, all made to correspond with your likeness and history. I had followed him to the door of the privy-chamber, and waited among the pages. Methinks I see him now screw up his hypocritical face and wink his eyes, as if he wept.” ”Your Majesty,” said he, ”will be no more persecuted with my suit for my ill-fated brother-in-law.--Lady Eleanor commends her duty to the Queen.--Alas, I fear the same stroke will leave me friendless and a widower.--Never was such love.” He went on, sobbing aloud--”A broken heart brought him to his grave.--One, only error; else the very mirror of honourable faculties.” Thus he stood as one beside himself with anguish, holding out the certificate, which a gentleman read to His Highness. And then, my n.o.ble master, you might have seen how true pity looks by the side of its vile counterfeit. ”I knew Allan Neville well,” said the King, ”and I once truly loved him.
Ill rest the calumniators of those who can no longer justify themselves!
His faults die with him. The pardon I meant to have granted to his offences, if he would have sought my mercy, shall turn into favours to those who share his blood.” Walter answered, he could scarce be comforted even by such gracious words; but he acted his part ill, for though the King's goodness was too n.o.ble to suspect him, the courtiers nicknamed him the merry-mourner.
”Why speaks not my n.o.ble master,” said Williams, observing the fixed posture and quenched eye of Evellin. At last he exclaimed--”I am not dead;” and bursting into an hysterical laugh, he swore De Vallance should find he was not dead.
”That is the point,” replied Williams, ”to which I have long wished to urge you. Only appear and prove your ident.i.ty; nothing more is wanting.
But rest on my arm, your whole frame is convulsed. Ah, woe is me, that a base upstart should thus destroy so true a sample of old English worth!”
”I have survived the loss of my patrimony,” said Evellin; ”I have bowed my aspiring mind to the lowliness of which I was born to be the protector; I have a good King, a good cause, a faithful wife, dear lovely children. De Vallance shall not long triumph. But say, Williams, didst than ever hear of treachery so complicated, so deep, so totally void of even a twinkling ray of common rect.i.tude.”
”I know but one character more vile and unnatural,” returned Williams, ”and that is the Lady Eleanor.”
”I pa.s.s her by,” said Evellin. ”Nature cast her mind in its most sordid mould; and her heart is capable only of mean inclinations and low desires; I have, from my youth, reproved her follies, and as she never loved me, she would see no crime in plotting my destruction.”
”What--because you strove to render her worthy her lineage,” answered Williams. ”If a bad nature is an excuse for crimes, may not Satan object to the severity of his sentence. Beauty made her vain, and adulation made her haughty. Yet other ladies on the same personal graces have engrafted the lovelier stock of truly n.o.ble virtues. The husband whom she deigned to marry, because she found him a ready slave to her designs, will live to rue the day when he made marriage a ladder to ambition. May Heaven guard our Queen from so dangerous a friend. Never did a falser serpent with a beautiful outside dart its poisons into the ear of Majesty.”
Williams went on repeating anecdotes, which proved the degeneracy of the new Countess from the antient stock of n.o.ble ladies who were better pleased to act as faithful and provident stewards of the bounty of Heaven, than, like greedy whirlpools, to absorb every thing within their reach. He contrasted their circ.u.mspect liberality with her thoughtless waste; the matronly sobriety and tempered magnificence of their attire with her new fangled fickleness and wanton costliness; their modest dignified courtesy with her wayward perverseness; their gravity with her lightness, in acting at court-revels and maskings, familiar with every gallant, and accepting praise from the most polluted sources. He spoke to the winds; the full proof of that perfidy which Evellin had so long struggled to disbelieve, fell like a thundering cataract on his mind, and swept away all power of attention. Long-indulged sorrow had preyed on his mental and corporeal functions, and rendered him ill able to support that severe blow. Williams sincerely repented the circ.u.mstantial disclosure he had made. A feverish listlessness seized on the unhappy Evellin, which yielded only to the visitation of a more dreadful calamity. It was not decided insanity, but it dispelled the hopes which had been formed of his being able to reclaim his usurped birth-right.
His bodily health was in time restored, and his mental infirmity became a wild humoursome eccentricity, preserving traces of his n.o.ble character, but querulously impatient of controul, subject to extravagant transports, and incapable of steady exertion or connected thought. Still magnanimous, independent and honourable, but moody, rash, and intractable, he was the automaton of generous instinct, no longer animated by reason.