Part 21 (1/2)
The affectionate Jobson burst into tears as he spoke, while De Vallance was extremely struck at the re-appearance of the animal. He reminded Jobson that dogs were often extremely alike, and inquired how he knew that this actually belonged to Eustace.
”How do I know,” replied he, ”that I am Ralph Jobson? Why it knew me, and seemed to wag its tail; nay, made as though it would lick my hand.”
”And did you not permit him?” said De Vallance.
The terrified trooper turned pale, and his teeth chattered with horror.
”I did not say that it was Fido's living self,” exclaimed he; ”and what would have become of me, had I been touched by a ghost? why my arm would have withered directly. I knew a man in village that had his nose beat flat to his face, only for peeping into the belfry, while a ghost was dancing among the bell-ropes.--No, to be sure, I flung a stone at it, and it ran away setting up a howl.”
De Vallance now laboured to convince Jobson, that admitting the reality of spectral appearances in the human form, animals were not endowed with a vital principle, capable of existing distinct from their bodies.
Jobson was shocked at his master's presumptuous neglect of warnings, and he vehemently urged the impossibility of a living dog being at Worcester in September, and in Wales at Christmas. He stated the privilege of spirits to take any shape; and not nicely attending to the question of ident.i.ty, shewed from oral testimony, that they sometimes appeared as a glazed pipkin, and sometimes as the skeleton of a horse's head. The exertion of endeavouring to enlighten wilful absurdity increased the debility of De Vallance. Jobson's forebodings were turned into certainties, and he walked into the church-yard to see in what spot he should bury his master, and hoping to hear the death-watch, as a sign that he should rest beside him.
The landlady at the little inn, where the forlorn Arthur languished, pitying the sufferings of her interesting guest, and the inactive grief of his attendant, requested she might be permitted to send for an excellent gentleman, who was come to live in the neighbourhood, and had done many extraordinary cures.--”You need not,” said she, ”fear troubling him, he takes no pay but the blessings of those he heals; and he is said to be as useful to a wounded spirit, as he is to a diseased body.” De Vallance was weary of life; but the soldier must not quit his post, till his discharge be duly signed by his Commander; he yielded therefore to the proposal. Jobson had a rooted dislike to all doctors; but reluctance to his master's employing one was changed into consternation, when he saw in the benevolent volunteer-Esculapius, the Doctor Lloyd against whom he had conceived an inveterate antipathy, verily believing him capable of poisoning a patient for the sake of converting him into an anatomy. He rushed into his master's chamber to announce his ident.i.ty, and when he found the intelligence only increased his eagerness to see him, he resolved however to prevent his taking any of his medicines.
The diseases brought on by fatigue and distress are seldom obstinate, when resisted by youth, a good const.i.tution, a clear conscience, and a calm judgment. Dr. Lloyd dealt in potent cordials. He possessed the essential qualities of a true friend; and the behaviour of De Vallance soon induced him to exert his talents in that capacity. He had hardly felt his pulse, before he p.r.o.nounced that little was necessary besides tranquillity and generous support. Arthur's heart panted with impatience to commence a confidential intimacy; but he recollected he must inspire confidence, before he could venture to require it. A sick stranger, languis.h.i.+ng at a village-inn, was as likely to be the enemy as the friend of a cause it was now dangerous to espouse. Strongly pre-possessed in favour of a man, who courageously ventured among a mult.i.tude of hostile and infuriated soldiers, avowed his attachment to the victim they had just slaughtered, and bestowed on his corpse the decent sepulture they meant to deny, De Vallance felt no apprehension at trusting his own life ta such tried fidelity. He spoke of himself as friendless, distressed, and in the utmost need of advice and protection.
He declared himself to be a Loyalist, who, having engaged in the King's last attempt, would be excepted from the expected amnesty. By this means he drew Dr. Lloyd into a guarded communication of his former residence at Pembroke, and his acquaintance with Eustace Evellin. De Vallance owned himself to be a friend to that family. He even used the word brother. Dr. Lloyd turned on him a significant glance, when, to justify the claim, De Vallance drew from his bosom the letter of Isabel, and explained the hopes that had been defeated by the death of Eustace. ”You will not wonder,” added he, ”that I have a painful eagerness to know every circ.u.mstance of that lamentable event.”
Dr. Lloyd regarded his patient with scrutinizing attention. ”You know,”
said he, ”that the resolute defence of Pembroke-Castle provoked the parliamentary General to adopt measures that were intended to strike terror into the King's party; and from the particular manner in which you apply to me, you possibly also know that, influenced by compa.s.sion, I removed the body of Eustace, and performed those offices which friends.h.i.+p required.”
The undefined, unacknowledged hopes which had floated in the mind of Arthur vanished at this reply, and as they disappeared, convinced him, that he had cherished a vain romantic illusion. A long pause ensued; De Vallance heaved a deep sigh, and asked if the n.o.ble youth was resigned to his fate.
”Life was very dear to him,” answered Dr. Lloyd, ”and no wonder.--Talent, personal beauty, lively and generous feelings, the purest sense of honour, and the n.o.blest aspirings after fame, were combined in his character. He loved too, and he knew himself beloved.
You seem, Sir, about his age; my sensibility has been blunted by time; but I will appeal to your own susceptibility, to conceive the sensations of his impa.s.sioned heart, when he found himself suddenly arrested in the bloom of manhood, by a summons to an ignominious death. This, too, at a distance from all his kindred, and after having sustained for many months the most severe warfare, and the cruellest privations. But if you ask me if he discovered any unmanly weakness at this awful moment--I answer none. He looked and moved like a hero going to mount the car of triumph. The l.u.s.tre of his dauntless eye appalled the musketeers, who were drawn up in the court. 'Take sure aim,' said he; 'Your commander spares not youth and loyalty; therefore be like him, pitiless.'”
”Detestable act, infernal ma.s.sacre!” exclaimed De Vallance.--”Retributive Heaven, I own thy justice! That murderous volley, Bellingham, slew thy son!” Dr. Lloyd clasped the clenched hands with which he seemed prepared to beat his own bosom, and requested an explanation.
”Do not, do not,” said the tortured Arthur, ”believe me capable of repaying your kind commiseration with ingrat.i.tude, if I own myself descended from the most cruel and treacherous of men. The murdered Eustace was rightful heir to the t.i.tle and fortunes which, as the son of Bellingham, I might claim. Shall I own, though my heart recoils at the confession, that I strongly fear a base private motive urged my father to select this victim, as a sacrifice to what he called public expedience.--Oh! Dr. Lloyd, had I never been born, had my ambitious parents laid no base projects for my aggrandizement, the n.o.ble Eustace had still lived.”
”My good Sir,” returned the kind physician, ”we must debate this point a little. In the first place, let me a.s.sure you the lots were fairly cast.
I do not justify, indeed I severely reprobate the cruel policy which required the sacrifice of three victims; but it was resolved on in full council, the blame therefore is divided among all the officers. I also know that Lord Bellingham committed his own safety by endeavouring to preserve the life of Eustace.”
An overwhelming load of infamy seemed, at this a.s.surance, removed from the oppressed De Vallance. ”Speak it again, dear worthy man, again repeat that my father would have saved him. You know he would? You can swear to the fact? But soft--was not he supreme commander? What, then, prevented him from signing his pardon?”
Dr. Lloyd replied--”The limited power which a general possesses over troops, who, in obeying him, have cancelled the previous obligations of duty and conscience. He who accepts the command of a revolutionary army is ever fearful of being sacrificed by his own soldiers. His office makes him the ostensible champion of liberty; but his army claim a greater licence than consists with the requisite exercise of discipline and authority. His subordinate officers envy his supremacy; for the chain of prescriptive gradation is dissolved by the pretext of preferring merit; and what soldier of fortune is there who does not think himself equal to the highest posts which his machinations and enterprize can procure. We Loyalists (for such, Sir, I now in confidence own myself to be) have often said that Lord Bellingham was only half wicked. He retained too much of the gentleman to practise extortion, or to connive at the rapacity by which his subalterns tried to make the most of their brief authority. He enforced discipline without condescending to that familiarity and occasional indulgence which make severity palatable. He was an agent of the new system, trying to introduce the manners of the old. He saw his own danger when it was too late. He discovered that he served villains who, despising honest praise, renounced every honourable bond of amity, to whom treachery and cruelty were become habitual; and that he commanded desperadoes, who, setting no value on their own lives, kept his in their power. Such, Sir, was the state of your father's army, and such the secret hostility of those for whom he fought. You may condemn his embarking in their cause, his timidity, his irresolution, his fluctuating variableness, but not his deliberate cruelty or private malice. After Eustace had drawn the lot of death, the power of the general could not save him from an army lost to every generous feeling, and thirsting for revenge.”
To know that his father had rather been guilty of the transgressions of frail man than of the horrible enormities of a demon, was an invaluable consolation to De Vallance. But still Eustace had fallen under the sentence of Bellingham, and himself consequently been banished from Isabel. Dr. Lloyd interrupted his mournful reverie by inquiring what were his future views.
”When you described Eustace going to execution,” returned he, ”you appealed to the sympathy of a heart eternally separated from the object of a pure, cherished affection. Read that letter. Conceive it written by a woman whose beauty is her smallest praise, and then advise me how to bestow the unvalued remnant of a life which must be spent in exile from her.”
Dr. Lloyd perused Isabel's farewel, and inquired if her brother's death was the only obstacle to their union.
”Yes,” replied De Vallance. ”I had renounced the principles in which I was educated, abjured the aggrandizement and affluence which my parents'
crimes had purchased; I had her promise, sanctioned by her father's full consent, as a reward for services I was so fortunate as to render them.
We were to have fled to Holland, rich in the possession of domestic happiness and decent competence, when that fatal intelligence----”
”Come, young gentleman,” interrupted Dr. Lloyd, ”you meditate too deeply. I see you want society. The hards.h.i.+ps you have undergone have overwhelmed you. I must remove you to my own cottage. I keep a cordial there which I never trust out of my own custody. I see your disease, and know my remedy will complete your cure.”
”Sir,” returned De Vallance, ”we are talking of something infinitely more important than life. I know my disease is at present trifling, the effect of anxiety acting too forcibly on a fatigued body. I could say it consoles me, as a proof that my const.i.tution will not be always invincible to the attacks of these mental agonies; and you answer the communications which your sympathy has extorted from me on the soul-piercing subjects of my honour and my love, by telling me you have a nostrum that will relieve my head-aches, and ease my frame of this debilitating languor.”