Part 15 (2/2)

Beaumont and his family, with the fervent piety, though not with the success of Moses, held up their hands in prayer to the G.o.d of battle.

The result disappointed their ardent hopes; and the more grateful duty of thanksgiving was thus changed to humble resignation. The fugitive Loyalists and their vindictive pursuers scoured along the valleys. The present situation of the Beaumonts was highly unsafe; and they eagerly hurried along to regain the melancholy shelter of their ruinous abode.

The shades of evening fell as they entered Waverly Park, agonized with sorrow and commiseration of the calamities they had beheld. A squadron of cavalry rode rapidly by them, which they guessed were part of the King's northern horse, so celebrated in the early periods of the civil war. Isabel's anxiety to see if they were closely pursued conquered her female terrors. She ran from her friends and climbed a little eminence, by which means she discovered a sight which roused the liveliest feelings of compa.s.sion. She saw an officer falling from his horse, dead, as she believed. Perceiving that he bled profusely, she called to her uncle to go back with her and try if they could render him any a.s.sistance. On such an occasion even Constance was courageous, and they all hastened to the spot where he lay. Mrs. Mellicent remarked, that though he had lost the distinguis.h.i.+ng insignia, she feared, by his being so well accoutered, he was a rebel. His helmet was fallen off, his countenance entirely disfigured with blood, and the hand which grasped his broad-sword seemed stiffened instead of being relaxed by death. ”It matters not what he is,” replied Dr. Beaumont, ”his present state requires immediate a.s.sistance.” Constantia seized one of his hands to see if life still fluttered in the pulse, but dropped it in an agony, exclaiming, ”Merciful Heaven, it is Eustace! I know him by the ring he always wore.” Dr. Beaumont immediately recognized the well-known crest of the Earls of Bellingham. ”Dear unfortunate youth,” said he; ”yet, my child, be comforted; he has died in a most righteous cause.” By this time Isabel, who had ran to fetch some water, returned, and began to wash his face, and staunch the blood, while the distracted Constance clung, screaming, to the bosom of her aunt, wildly lamenting the fate of her beloved. With more self-command, but equal anxiety, Isabel removed the clotted gore, and pulled the matted hair from off his brow. ”These,”

said she, ”are not my brother's features, but indeed I know them well.

Our n.o.ble protector, the good Barton's pupil--” She paused a moment, and gasped for her own breath, while eagerly watching if he respired. A deep sob gave indication of life. ”He is alive,” continued she, in a low whisper, as if fearing to precipitate a spirit that was fluttering between time and eternity; ”let us gently raise, and try to restore him.”

There was not one of the party who did not anxiously join in expressing, by their active services, the sense they entertained of former kindness.

Williams hastened to bring a wain and mattress; Mrs. Mellicent ran for bandages and styptics; and the wounded gentleman was safely conveyed to the house, still in a state of insensibility. Mrs. Mellicent's skill had stopped the hemorrhage; and a more scientific surgeon, who was called in, p.r.o.nounced that, with proper care, his wounds would not prove mortal. Isabel claimed the office of chief nurse; the patient's senses gradually returned; and his eyes, when again capable of distinguis.h.i.+ng objects, recognized one which had long been impressed on his heart. He rewarded her benevolent ministration with a grateful smile and feeble pressure of her hand; and Isabel felt happier at that moment than she had ever done since her dear mother was interred among Fourness Fells, when, with a voice convulsed with grief, she joined in the requiem, filled her coffin with funeral herbs, and scattered the emblems of sorrow on her grave.

”You must not speak,” said Isabel; ”the Doctor has prescribed the utmost quietness; you must only listen while I tell you, that for a thousand worlds I would not have lost the pleasure of saving your life. Had I not turned back you would have bled to death in a few minutes. Alas!”

continued she, recollecting herself, ”the hope of your recovery transports me too far. I forget that your exertions probably contributed to make the battle of Preston end so fatally to our cause? Why are you the enemy of my King and of my father?”

”I will never be the enemy of those you love,” replied he, with a look of languis.h.i.+ng pain and grateful anxiety. Isabel burst into tears. ”Say that again,” said she; ”just those words and no more, lest your wounds should bled afresh; and if you die--”

”Sweet Isabel, finish that sentence.”

”I shall surely die of grief,” said she, rus.h.i.+ng out of the room to call her aunt to take her office, ashamed that her joy at her patient's recovery of his senses had overpowered her habitual self-command.

The news of Dr. Beaumont's having preserved the life of a wounded officer, soon reached the ears of Morgan, who concluding it must be one of his own party, imagined he should now have ample opportunity to wreak his vengeance on a man whom he had marked for destruction, in revenge for the insult he had received from Eustace, and the disappointment of his hopes of obtaining Constantia. It was, however, necessary to ascertain the fact of his harbouring a Royalist taken in arms, before he proceeded to frame the information. Not satisfied with the Doctor's solemn a.s.surance that the person whose life he had preserved was in reality a Parliamentary officer, he insisted on examining him himself; and also that he might interrogate him without the intrusion of any witness. The danger which the sufferer's health might undergo, was beneath his notice; he entered the room with an air of domineering cruelty, ready to pounce on a victim unable to escape; but, after a short interview, he returned with the softened accents of obsequious respect to the stranger, and affable condescension to the Beaumonts. He desired that they would spare no trouble and expence in attending the gentleman, and a.s.sured them they would be well rewarded for their pains.

He lamented that their poor abode did not afford suitable convenience, and hinted that as soon as the stranger was able to be removed he would have him conveyed to Saints' Rest, his own mansion. He then announced that their guest was the Lord Sedley, only son of the Earl of Bellingham, who at that time commanded the forces sent to subdue the Welsh insurgents, and was himself a personal favourite of Cromwell, and attached to his staff. ”He gives,” continued Morgan, ”a very favourable account of your principles and conduct, and I shall not fail to announce your proper behaviour to their honours the Committee-men, and I hope Government will be disposed to overlook your past offences. The Earl is a staunch supporter of the good cause, and the young gentleman a youth of very fair promise.”

If Morgan expected his intelligence would be received with the transport of minds subdued by adversity, and suddenly elated by a prospect of better times, he mistook the characters of those he addressed. The circ.u.mstance of Sedley wearing a seal-ring impressed with the crest of Bellingham, had led Dr. Beaumont to suspect who he was; but since in his former intercourse with the family he had studiously avoided all discovery, the worthy Rector thought it would be indecorous to take any advantage of his misfortunes, and therefore evaded the inquiries of Constantia, how he came to wear the same crest as Eustace, by remarking that many families adopted armorial bearings nearly similar. Totally free from all the malignant pa.s.sions, he felt no animosity to the son of that traitor who had wrested a coronet and princely demesne from the injured Neville, but rejoiced at the consideration that it had been in his power to render the most important services gratuitously to one who had so essentially a.s.sisted his family, and was beside the darling pupil of his respected friend Barton. Mrs. Mellicent's feelings were of a more vindictive cast, but her asperity had been so softened by the fine person and pleasing manners of young Sedley, that she could not determine on the expediency of immediately turning him out of doors, as she possibly might have done had he been uncouth and vulgar; she even kept her resolution till sight of his necessity and helplessness had a.s.sisted her benevolence to vanquish the warmth of temper, and taught her to respect the claims of a fellow creature in distress. Isabel had by this time discovered the state of her own heart; and the superior rank of the object of her affections was not the only reason for changing love into despair. Her dear father had often in his former ravings mentioned Lord Bellingham as the ally of Lucifer, and likely to succeed him on the infernal throne. At those times it must indeed be remembered, that he mistook his own children for dancing fiends, but his aversion to Bellingham was rooted, and at every eclipse of reason he renewed his execrations on a person, whose name, in his tranquil moments, never pa.s.sed his lips. She loved the son of this man; this villain; for so she must think him, as her father, even in his most eccentric moments, never so confounded the distinctions of honour and guilt as to misrepresent characters. Nor could his rooted aversion proceed from the difference in their political principles, for it was in her early years, before the troubles commenced, that he mentioned Bellingham as the infernal spirit who had driven him to the mountains; and in every allusion he confirmed the idea of a private rather than a public quarrel. Time and absence had increased rather than weakened the affection and reverence which Isabel bore to her father. His eminent services to the King, his bravery and activity, unimpaired by wounds, imprisonment, or declining years, made her prouder of such a parent than she would have been of one seated on the right hand of power. And had she cherished and avowed an affection for the son of a cruel enemy to her honoured father!--What a want of filial piety, what a shameful inattention to his wrongs would it be, knowingly to confirm such an unnatural inclination! Whatever pain it cost her, she determined to release her heart from the fetters which grat.i.tude and pity had combined to form.

The resolution was extremely n.o.ble, but to execute it was superlatively difficult. Lord Sedley was daily before her eyes in the interesting characters of suffering magnanimity or ardent attachment. When his unclosed wounds throbbed with extreme anguish, could she refuse to minister to his relief? When returning ease allowed him to direct the grateful acknowledgments of a devoted heart, to the protecting angel who had rescued him from death, could she deny the confessed affection surprise had drawn from her, and resolve to hate or even forget him on account of a supposed hereditary feud? The struggle of her soul was apparent to Sedley, who, ignorant of his father's crimes, attributed her affected reserve to the alarm she felt lest the claims of his exalted station should prove incompatible with love. To alleviate this fear he was more explicit in his declarations, and energetic in his vows of devoting to her the life she had preserved. She attempted to look cold and determined, while she answered that she feared insuperable objections would prevent their union. In the weak state to which Lord Sedley was reduced, the least agitation of mind was dangerous; after one of these conversations he fainted, and was thought expiring, but the first object he saw on his recovery was Isabel, in such an agony of grief as convinced him that indifference had no share in the alteration of her behaviour.

The first opportunity which she again afforded him of speaking to her, he resolved to use to bring on a complete eclairciss.e.m.e.nt, and as he should require perfect frankness, he resolved to set her a similar example. But to execute his design was now very difficult; for Isabel, with virgin modesty, blended with the restrictions imposed by filial duty, now avoided being alone with the object of her tenderest regard.

Her uncle had deemed it right to inform her, that it was a lively sense of irreparable injuries, which pointed her father's incoherent ravings at Lord Bellingham. His wrongs, the Doctor observed, were of a nature which only Christian charity could forgive, or Christian fort.i.tude endure; and he warned her against cheris.h.i.+ng any sentiment more ardent than pity for Sedley's sufferings, and grat.i.tude for his former services. She promised to endeavour to comply, in a manner which evinced that this advice came too late. She tried to recollect the pains he had formerly taken to avoid her, and the marked precaution of Barton in concealing his name. She wished to think him a scion of a cankered tree, which would transfuse infection wherever it was engrafted. The surgeon had just p.r.o.nounced him at liberty to remove, and Isabel endeavoured to hope he would avail himself of that permission. ”His declarations of love and grat.i.tude may,” thought she, ”be bribes to induce us to be more careful of his preservation, or he may think himself bound in honour to offer me a partners.h.i.+p in his fortunes, as the preserver of his life. I will owe nothing to his pity or his grat.i.tude. I will recollect, that I am the daughter of a n.o.ble Loyalist, irreparably injured by his rebel father, restrain the ebullitions of youthful sensibility and unweighed preference, and if he leaves us, part without a tear.”

Nothing could be more foreign to the purposes of Lord Sedley than to quit his adored preserver. He made no use of his release from restraint, but to follow Isabel in her domestic occupations, nor of his returning strength, but to try to lighten her labours. ”Am I troublesome to you,”

he would say, ”that you look on me less kindly; if so, I shall regret the restoration of health and ease, and the power of again enjoying the refres.h.i.+ng air and blessed light of heaven. The tenderness which made the chamber of infirmity paradise, is withheld from me, now I have a prospect of living to reward it.”

Isabel attempted to reply, but only stammered out, ”Lord Sedley!”--”I will be known to you,” said he, ”by no other name than that by which I will plight my troth, Arthur de Vallance.--What has my Isabel to say to me in that character? I will not allow her to retract the sweet encouragement she gave me when I was the helpless object of her tender care. Her compa.s.sion and a.s.siduity looked so much like love, as to cheat me into a belief, that she who said she would die with me would consent to make the life she preserved a blessing.”

Surely, thought Isabel, this is not the language of hereditary baseness.

She cast a look on her lover which confirmed that opinion. Yet, how could she tell him that his father's crimes formed an insuperable barrier to their union. After much hesitation, she resolved to be as explicit as her own respect for the feelings of filial piety would permit. ”I will own,” said she, ”that what fell from me in a transport of joyful surprise, was not an unmeaning exclamation, but the confession of a strong preference. But now that I have had time for reflection, I must remember that you long struggled against your partiality for me, and even now you seem rather vanquished by a combination of circ.u.mstances and a sense of obligation, than led to make me your free unquestioned choice. This indicates that you know of some secret reason, some family animosity, perhaps, which ought to prevent my ever being your wife. I am the daughter of a Loyalist, unfortunate indeed, but brave and n.o.ble; I will not reproach you with your father's faults. His prosperity, the trust he exercises under the Usurper, are in my eyes reasons, if not of hating you, at least of resolving not to unite myself to principles so opposite to those I have ever cherished.”

Sedley thanked her for allowing him an opportunity of explaining the past. It was most true, that at their first interview he felt the power of her fort.i.tude and generous regard to others, nor did he overlook the complacency with which she received his services. Though at that time hearty in the Parliamentary cause, it was owing to the advice (or he should rather say, the commands) of Barton, under whose guidance he was placed by his father, that he deputed him to execute the plan he had formed for the safe conduct of the Beaumonts through the seat of war, instead of being himself their escort, as he at first intended. The same interference had again prevented him from renewing an acquaintance with them, on the rescue of Constantia. The principles he had imbibed from Barton forbade every deviation from the path of honour; and an alliance with a conspicuous royalist, would either have estranged him from his family or exposed them to ruin. Isabel inquired if the same impediments did not still exist. ”A great change has taken place,” replied Lord Sedley; ”I am now like you, a child of misfortune; but were it not so, 'Love is become the lord of all,' and when he reigns, he reigns unrivalled.”

He proceeded to inform her, that the violent feuds of the predominant factions had infected the privacies of domestic life. His mother was warmly attached to Cromwell's party, while his father adhered to that of the Presbyterian republicans; the differences between whom were now grown irreconcileable. He knew that the command intrusted to Lord Bellingham was given him as a snare, and that he was so surrounded by spies, as to be virtually in the power of any common serjeant, who, in the two-fold capacity of Agitator and Preacher, could denounce his general at the drum-head, and under the pretence of his having sacrificed the Lord's cause, and the rights of the army, to an unG.o.dly Parliament, could send him prisoner to London. Lord Sedley confessed, with shame, that his mother, by giving information that his father was in secret not well disposed to Cromwell, had caused him to be placed in a situation where the greatest circ.u.mspection could not ensure his safety. The sentiments he had imbibed from Barton led him to prefer the more moderate counsels, and in the conduct of the contending factions he had seen so much to condemn, that he wished to abstain from all interference in public affairs. But his mother misinterpreting his seclusion into a preference of his father's party, invited Cromwell to Castle Bellingham, on his march against the Duke of Hamilton, and requested that he would take her son with him as one of his suite. More like a captive than a volunteer, Lord Sedley was compelled to acquiesce in her proposal; but the intimate view which his situation gave him of Cromwell's character, inspired him with the most revolting disgust. The domestic situation of his parents dispirited him on the one side, while something more than indifference to the cause for which he fought operated on the other, till, hopeless of better times, careless of safety, and desirous rather of losing life than of gaining glory, he rushed into the battle; yet, when the conflict began, he felt roused by a mechanical impulse, and, engaging in a hot pursuit of some of the northern horse, he received those wounds from one of the troopers, which nearly terminated his existence.

”Such, Isabel,” continued he, ”is the present condition of him, who must again owe his life to your pity. I have no home, but one occupied by a mother, engaged in plots for the destruction of her husband, and determined to render her son the creature of an ambitious hypocrite, rather than serve whom, he would die. I cannot join my father, for that would be to add a second victim to the one, whom Cromwell has resolved to expose to the sharpest ordeal. My hereditary claim to rank and t.i.tle is now merely the vision of a shadow, for I know it is the secret intention of the fanatics to abolish the Peers as a political body, and estates are now held by permission rather than right, nor are the possessors secure of their inheritance for a single day. Greatness is thus reduced to the bare simplicity of individual desert. In you, Isabel, I see the genuine loveliness of unsophisticated virtue, the qualities of fort.i.tude, discretion, and sincerity, which these arduous times peculiarly require. At present I have had little opportunity to shew you my character, but let me intreat permission to be sheltered under your uncle's roof, till I can arrange some plan for my future conduct, and shew you more of the heart which is irrevocably yours.”

The plea of anxious distress revived all the tenderness of Isabel; and he whom, she believed, she could reject as the heir of a coronet, and the favourite of an Usurper, became the object of inviolable attachment when viewed as an outcast, seeking an asylum from the misfortunes brought on him by the crimes of his parents. Considering it to be her duty, she explained his situation to her uncle and aunt, and they agreed that it would be inhuman to deny him the refuge he craved. But still, as he was at present rather a probationary than an a.s.sured penitent, and in some points of view an object of suspicion, Dr. Beaumont felt it would be endangering his own security to converse with him freely on political topics. Still more hazardous would it be to admit him to a partic.i.p.ation of their family-secrets, and at this time there was one which engrossed their minds, and threw an unusual air of mystery and anxious solicitude into Isabel's behaviour.

[1] Especially Bishop Sanderson.

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