Part 16 (2/2)

A more honourable and praise-worthy principle than doubt or curiosity now led Sedley to discover what the treasure was which Isabel thus clandestinely visited. On his return, he mentioned to the family the dreadful situation of Humphreys, and described the spectral appearance to which it was imputed, ”Absurd and impossible!” exclaimed Isabel, while a deep crimson flushed her face. Mrs. Mellicent turned very pale, and remarked that she did not entirely disbelieve all accounts of visionary notices of the future world. They might act as warnings to sinners, or as a call to an unbeliever. ”True,” replied Isabel, ”but the contradiction of this is evident. Why should a good angel be connected with the apparition of Sir William Waverly? And, far from tending to reform Humphreys, the impression on his mind has produced distraction.”

Dr. Beaumont, who had remained silent and meditative during this conversation, now required Isabel to attend him before he went to offer his services to the afflicted farmer.

Sedley embraced the opportunity of their absence to examine more minutely the ruins of Waverly Hall. The thickness of one of the remaining walls struck him as singular; it was an abutment behind the chimney of what had been the banqueting-room, the wainscot of which was left in this place entire. Sedley inspected every pannel, and at last found one which slided, and afforded him an entrance into a small but perfect apartment, lighted from the ceiling, and which had probably served as a secret chamber to conceal the plate and valuables of the family, being so completely concealed by the contrivance of the architecture as not to be discernible on the outside. Was it not strange, that, with so secure and convenient a lodging close at hand, Isabel should chuse to deposit her treasure at such a distance? Had she overlooked this asylum, or avoided the use of it as a lure to deceive the vigilance of Morgan? Sedley proceeded in his search, explored every subterraneous vault and recess; but no signs of recent inhabitation could be found. He returned again to Morgan, commended his zeal for the good cause, but a.s.sured him, that though he had discovered many places proper for concealment, not a ghost of a royalist could any where be found.

”You say well, excellently well, my young Lord,” replied Morgan, chuckling at the idea of his own superior sagacity; ”yet for all that there is a ghost, aye, and he chuses a proper scene for his pranks, but we will lay him to-morrow morning.” He then informed Sedley that Priggins had just been with him to say their neighbour Humphreys was troubled in the spirit, and, in a late wrestling with Satan, had been favoured with a vision, in which he had seen the ghost of Sir William Waverly in torment, complaining that there was a royalist in his grave who would not let him rest. ”I believe not a word of the business,” said he, ”and defy the whole tribe of apparitions; but, as Your Lords.h.i.+p must see, it is my duty to search the burying-place, and the old church immediately.”

Sedley suppressed his apprehensions, and coolly answered, he had reconnoitred the outside, and believed he had never seen a more desolate and unfrequented spot. ”All the better for such a purpose,” answered Morgan; ”these b.l.o.o.d.y fugitives would not chuse highways and market-places for their cabals. But I don't like to venture among these terrible fellows without being protected; so I have sent for the Preston horse, and ordered them to bring the blood-hounds; and as Your Lords.h.i.+p has been there, I will thank you to be our guide. But, hark! not a word to the Beaumonts, or the birds will be flown.”

Sedley preserved the serenity of his features, promised punctual attendance, and remarked that, to prevent any alarm from suspicion of an intercourse with Morgan, it would be expedient for him to hurry back.

His anxiety to rescue the threatened victim was nearly as lively as the a.s.siduity of Isabel; yet not daring again to request the confidence she had so peremptorily refused, he thought his best plan would be to watch the cemetery; and, pretending to retire indisposed to his chamber, as soon as it was evening he hurried, un.o.bserved, down the avenue, entered the church, and concealed himself behind a pillar, from whence he had a full view of a door partially obstructed with rubbish which, he supposed, opened into the mausoleum.

A little before midnight, he heard the sound of feet; the shade was withdrawn from a dark lanthorn; and he discovered Isabel by its feeble light, as she held it up, and with cautious anxiety seemed to explore the ruins, to be a.s.sured that all was safe before she ventured on her nocturnal employment. She then approached the door, and whispered to the invisible inhabitant of the sepulchre. Sedley heard a bar fall, and saw her remove a portion of the rubbish, enter the dreary abode, and re-close the door. Listening, he heard voices conversing in low murmurs.

Could a lover resist making a further discovery? He determined to open the door sufficiently to steal a view of the object concealed, and afterwards to join Isabel on her return, and apprize her of the necessity of selecting another asylum.

The stolen view was aweful and impressive. The inside of the cemetery was lighted by a lamp that shewed it was furnished with those articles of comfort which rendered it an habitable abode. On a neat pallet lay an aged gentleman, corresponding, in his appearance and infirmities, with one of the fugitives from Pontefract described by Morgan. Isabel had already spread a table, on which were placed the refreshments she had just brought, and a prayer-book. She was at that moment employed in chafing his benumbed limbs, and at the same time looking up at her patient with the tenderest affection, smiling through the tears of anxiety and compa.s.sion; while, as he bent over her, shrinking with acute pain from her light and tender touch, a glow of sublime affection illuminated his pale and furrowed features.

It was at this moment that the wind, rus.h.i.+ng down the aisles of the church, forced the door out of Sedley's hand, and revealed him to the father and daughter as a witness of their affecting interview. The reader must have antic.i.p.ated that no motive less potent than filial piety could have stimulated the heroism of Isabel. Surprise extorted from her a loud shriek; and the disabled Evellin s.n.a.t.c.hed a carbine, which stood charged within his reach, and pointed it at the invader of their retreat. Isabel hung upon his arm. ”'Tis my preserver! 'Tis my father!” exclaimed she, addressing them alternately. ”Oh! Sedley, how durst you disobey me!”

”Young man,” said the stern veteran, in a voice which denoted that an unconquered soul still tenanted his decaying body, ”instantly tell your motive for this intrusion. My daughter addresses you as a friend, but your name announces a double traitor.”

”Then it belies my heart,” answered Sedley, ”for I come devoted to your service, impatient to a.s.sist in the preservation of persecuted worth.

The generous bravery of the renowned Colonel Evellin must endear him to every soldier, even if he were not the father of that matchless excellence who kneels beside you, and stays your arm from taking the life of one whose purpose is to preserve yours.”

”I have seen too much of the world,” answered Evellin, ”to trust smooth talkers. Sentiments are easily uttered; they are all the fas.h.i.+on; and the butcher now uses them to the lamb he slaughters. I am a disabled soldier of that King whom regicides are now subjecting to the mockery of a public trial; and I am as ready to follow my Prince to the scaffold as I have been to fly to his banner when thousands were false. Hear me yet further. I am one of the proscribed victims who escaped from Pontefract.

The hards.h.i.+ps I have endured have deprived me of the use of my limbs; yet I am still dangerous to usurpers. A price is set upon my head; I am hunted from the abodes of man, denied the light of heaven, and, at this rigorous season, compelled to seek the shelter of a tomb, even while alive to anguish and sorrow. Approach, young man; you see my child has disarmed me. I have no other weapon; infirmity chains me to this pallet.

I was born to the possession of a princely inheritance, but it was wrested from me by traitors foul as those who have overthrown the glory of England. I have nothing left but an honest heart, and enmity to traitors. Yes!” continued he, folding Isabel in his arms; ”I have this weeping girl, who ought to have been a bright gem sparkling in a royal court, instead of a sickly lamp beaming in a monument.”

Sedley wept. ”You know,” said he, ”what side I have espoused; yet a mind so magnanimous must be candid; nor will you confound the errors and prejudices of early education with the turpitude of guilt. I was tutored by one who pa.s.sionately wors.h.i.+pped civil and religious liberty; a man whose heart was generous and sincere as your own, and only mistook the means by which the desired objects were attainable. He now deeply mourns the enormous oppression which has originated from what he deemed perfect theories. Filial duty, joined to the instructions of my preceptor, made me join the Parliamentary army. You are a father. Think what agonies you would feel had your son refused to obey you, and falsified the hopes you had formed of his acting as your a.s.sociate in what you deemed the career of glory.”

”Cease, dearest Sedley,” cried Isabel, ”his weak frame cannot bear these strong emotions.” ”I have a son,” said the agonized Evellin, ”and he refused to obey me. He has falsified the hopes I entertained, that he would be the restorer of my house. Sedley, I would exchange sons with thy father. Come nearer, and I will tell thee what will make thee renounce the traitor who gave thee birth. Hast thou ever heard of thy uncle Allan Neville, the man from whom thy father stole his coronet and lands?”

”I have heard,” said Sedley, ”that he was unfortunate, very criminal, and long since dead.”

”Unfortunate indeed,” returned the Colonel, ”but neither dead nor criminal. I am Allan Neville, a living witness of thy father's crimes, the least of which is usurpation. I accuse him as the foul slanderer of my fame, as the inhuman villain who betrayed my confidence. He knew my woes, my wants, my dependence on his friends.h.i.+p; nay, that I trusted to him only. He smiled, promised, cajoled, and destroyed me. My daughter has told me that thou art warm, ingenuous, sincere, and affectionate.

Such, at thy age, was he that now lies before thee, the victim of thy mother's ambition and thy father's hypocrisy.”

Sedley tried to conceal the burning blushes of shame with his hands, while his recollection of past circ.u.mstances confirmed his uncle's accusation. Ambition was the crime of both his parents; hypocrisy the means used by the cautious Lord Bellingham in seeking to compa.s.s those ends which his bolder consort pursued with the effrontery of determined versatility. Sedley remembered his mother a court-beauty, the favourite of the Queen, and the gla.s.s which reflected the smiles and frowns of royalty. He afterwards saw her the idol of the party which opposed government, sung by Waller, flattered by Holland, presiding with all the frivolity and pride of a pretty trifler at the dark divan, while Pym and St. John disclosed their hopes of extending their aggressions to seizing the remaining prerogatives of the alarmed and conceding King. Weak, vain, pa.s.sionate, and unprincipled, with no determined object but her own aggrandizement--no claim to attention but an attractive person and soft courtliness of manner (which polished insincerity often a.s.sumes to disguise a stubborn, wayward, ungoverned temper),--Lady Bellingham supplied by a shew of benevolence her total want of the reality. He had seen her, without even the affectation of compa.s.sion, listen to a detail of the measures which were intended to drag Lord Strafford to the block; and though she boasted of that n.o.bleman as her earliest lover, she made no attempt to procure him the respite for which his afflicted master ineffectually solicited. No storm of public calamity, no sympathizing pity for murdered friends, no sentiment of grat.i.tude for her royal benefactors, ever disturbed the suavity of Lady Bellingham's deportment.

Nothing could interrupt the dead calm of her unfeeling heart but opposition to her will, or the apprehension of danger to her effects or person. In the former case the gentle beauty was loud and pertinacious; in the latter, terrified to the extreme, and clamorous in her complaints; in both, perfectly regardless of the means she employed to promote her purposes, or insure her safety.

Sedley had long discovered a guarded circ.u.mspection in his father's conduct, which, as it exceeded prudence, must be called timidity. His perplexed look and restless manner spoke a soul ill at ease with itself, and more suspicious of persons, and the motives of their actions, than was consistent with fort.i.tude and integrity. From the period of his a.s.suming the t.i.tle of Bellingham, Sedley could date a gradual increase of domestic misery. Even in his childhood he had been obliged to interfere in the disputes of his parents, each complaining to him of the faults of the other, and of their own injuries. The Earl ever spake of the sacrifices he had made to oblige his wife; the Countess, of the t.i.tle, fortune, and importance she had bestowed on her husband. Many circ.u.mstances led him to fear that mutual guilt was the only bond which kept them from separation, as they often hinted in their quarrels that they were equally in each other's power for some punishable offences; and once, in an ungovernable transport of rage, Lady Bellingham bade her trembling Lord ”remember her brother.” These recollections made it impossible for Sedley to doubt the criminality of his parents, especially as their accuser was Colonel Evellin, whose gallantry and unquestioned honour had extorted alike the terror and admiration of his enemies. And was the admirable Isabel the victim of their crimes, who now, in all the unaffected loveliness of tender duty, wiped the cold dew from the face of her agonized father, beseeching him to consider his weakness, and forbear convulsing his tortured limbs by these mental throes, still a.s.suring him, that if she could preserve his life, her own would be worth valuing?

Impelled by that homage which virtuous emulation ever pays to acknowledged worth, Sedley knelt by the side of Isabel. ”Here,” said he, ”I devote myself to your service, and abjure your enemies, though my heart recoils when I consider who they are. In this sacred, this aweful abode, I drop all t.i.tles but that of your kinsman: now for your dear daughter's sake, listen to the intelligence I come to disclose; you are in the most imminent danger, and prompt measures for your security must be devised. I will never more partic.i.p.ate in the guilt of those who wronged you, or partake of those luxuries which proved irresistible temptations to those who caused your ruin. Suffer me to supply the place of your lost Eustace, and to relieve the pious duties of your daughter.

You shall then know that my immediate progenitors have not corrupted that pure blood which I, with you, derive from one common stock of eminent ancestors, distinguished alike by fidelity to their friends, their country, and their King.”

Isabel scarcely waited for the reconciling embrace, which proved that her generous father knew not his own heart when he thought it capable of eternal enmity to the blood of De Vallance. Her transport at seeing the two dearest objects in the world known and esteemed by each other, was allayed by her eager anxiety to know what Sedley meant by imminent danger. He now disclosed what had pa.s.sed between him and Morgan, and the discovery himself had made of another and nearer asylum for the brave fugitive. No time was lost in expediting his removal. Incapable of rising from his pallet, the whole family were employed in conveying him to the secret chamber, and in removing from the mausoleum every vestige of its having been inhabited. Rubbish was piled against the door; and, to prevent the path from being traced, the small stock of cattle the Beaumonts possessed were driven into the burying-ground. The rising sun saw their labours completed an hour before Morgan and his soldiers arrived to execute their inhuman inquisition. The care of Williams had frustrated the sagacity of the blood-hounds by a chemical preparation; and a night of inexpressible alarm and emotion was succeeded by a happy day, in which Isabel had the transport of having her dear father lodged close to her own dwelling, in a more comfortable place of concealment, where she could pay a more minute attention to his wants, and have an a.s.sistant in the task of ministering to his infirmities; that a.s.sistant too the lord of her affections, to whom she was ha longer compelled to wear the air of cold reserve so uncongenial to her ingenuous temper.

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