The Last of the Barons — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (popular ebook readers .txt) 📗

conjured up softer words than these, and more purfled periods wherein to dress the iron truth. But in these two sentences the truth lay. He arrived at the farm, he entered the house; he felt it as a reprieve that he met not the bounding step of the welcoming Sibyll. He sat down in the humble chamber, and waited a while in patience,—no voice was heard. The silence at length surprised and alarmed him. He proceeded farther. He was met by the widowed owner of the house, who was weeping; and her first greeting prepared him for what had chanced. “Oh, my lord, you have come to tell me they are safe, they have not fallen into the hands of their enemies,—the good gentleman, so meek, the poor lady, so fair!”

Hastings stood aghast; a few sentences more explained all that he already guessed. A strange man had arrived the evening before at the house, praying Adam and his daughter to accompany him to the Lord Hastings, who had been thrown from his horse, and was now in a cottage in the neighbouring lane,—not hurt dangerously, but unable to be removed, and who had urgent matters to communicate. Not questioning the truth of this story, Adam and Sibyll had hurried forth, and returned no more. Alarmed by their long absence, the widow, who at first received the message from the stranger, went herself to the cottage, and found that the story was a fable. Every search had since been made for Adam and his daughter, but in vain. The widow, confirmed in her previous belief that her lodgers had been attainted Lancastrians, could but suppose that they had been thus betrayed to their enemies. Hastings heard this with a dismay and remorse impossible to express. His only conjecture was that the king had discovered their retreat, and taken this measure to break off the intercourse he had so sternly denounced. Full of these ideas, he hastily remounted, and stopped not till once more at the gates of the Tower. Hastening to Edward’s closet, the moment he saw the king, he exclaimed, in great emotion, “My liege, my liege, do not at this hour, when I have need of my whole energy to serve thee, do not madden my brain, and palsy my arm. This old man—the poor maid—Sibyll—Warner,—speak, my liege—only tell me they are safe; promise me they shall go free, and I swear to obey thee in all else! I will thank thee in the battlefield!”

“Thou art mad, Hastings!” said the king, in great astonishment. “Hush!” and he glanced significantly at a person who stood before several heaps of gold, ranged upon a table in the recess of the room. “See,” he whispered, “yonder is the goldsmith, who hath brought me a loan from himself and his fellows! Pretty tales for the city thy folly will send abroad!”

But before Hastings could vent his impatient answer, this person, to Edward’s still greater surprise, had advanced from his place, and forgetting all ceremony, had seized Hastings by the hem of his surcoat, exclaiming,—

“My lord, my lord, what new horror is this? Sibyll!—methought she was worthless, and had fled to thee!”

“Ten thousand devils!” shouted the king, “am I ever to be tormented by that damnable wizard and his witch child? And is it, Sir Peer and Sir Goldsmith, in your king’s closet that ye come, the very eve before he marches to battle, to speer and glower at each other like two madmen as ye are?”

Neither peer nor goldsmith gave way, till the courtier, naturally recovering himself the first, fell on his knee; and said, with firm though profound respect: “Sire, if poor William Hastings has ever merited from the king one kindly thought, one generous word, forgive now whatever may displease thee in his passion or his suit, and tell him what prison contains those whom it would forever dishonour his knighthood to know punished and endangered but for his offence.”

“My lord,” answered the king, softened but still surprised, “think you seriously that I, who but reluctantly in this lovely month leave my green lawns of Shene to save a crown, could have been vexing my brain by stratagems to seize a lass, whom I swear by Saint George I do not envy thee in the least? If that does not suffice, incredulous dullard, why then take my kingly word, never before passed for so slight an occasion, that I know nothing whatsoever of thy damsel’s whereabout nor her pestilent father’s,—where they abode of late, where they now be; and, what is more, if any man has usurped his king’s right to imprison the king’s subjects, find him out, and name his punishment. Art thou convinced?”

“I am, my liege,” said Hastings.

“But—” began the goldsmith.

“Holloa, you, too, sir! This is too much! We have condescended to answer the man who arms three thousand retainers—”

“And I, please your Highness, bring you the gold to pay them,” said the trader, bluntly.

The king bit his lip, and then burst into his usual merry laugh.

“Thou art in the right, Master Alwyn. Finish counting the pieces, and then go and consult with my chamberlain,—he must off with the cock-crow; but, since ye seem to understand each other, he shall make thee his lieutenant of search, and I will sign any order he pleases for the recovery of the lost wisdom and the stolen beauty. Go and calm thyself, Hastings.”

“I will attend you presently, my lord,” said Alwyn, aside, “in your own apartment.”

“Do so,” said Hastings; and, grateful for the king’s consideration, he sought his rooms. There, indeed, Alwyn soon joined him, and learned from the nobleman what filled him at once with joy and terror. Knowing that Warner and Sibyll had left the Tower, he had surmised that the girl’s virtue had at last succumbed; and it delighted him to hear from Lord Hastings, whose word to men was never questionable, the solemn assurance of her unstained chastity. But he trembled at this mysterious disappearance, and knew not to whom to impute the snare, till the penetration of Hastings suddenly alighted near, at least, to the clew. “The Duchess of Bedford,” said he, “ever increasing in superstition as danger increases, may have desired to refind so great a scholar and reputed an astrologer and magician; if so, all is safe. On the other hand, her favourite, the friar, ever bore a jealous grudge to poor Adam, and may have sought to abstract him from her grace’s search; here there may be molestation to Adam, but surely no danger to Sibyll. Hark ye, Alwyn, thou lovest the maid more worthily, and—” Hastings stopped short; for such is infirm human nature, that, though he had mentally resigned Sibyll forever, he could not yet calmly face the thought of resigning her to a rival. “Thou lovest her,” he renewed, more coldly, “and to thee, therefore, I may safely trust the search which time and circumstance and a soldier’s duty forbid to me. And believe—oh, believe that I say not this from a passion which may move thy jealousy, but rather with a brother’s holy love. If thou canst but see her safe, and lodged where no danger nor wrong can find her, thou hast no friend in the wide world whose service through life thou mayst command like mine.”

“My lord,” said Alwyn, dryly, “I want no friends! Young as I am, I have lived long enough to see that friends follow fortune, but never make it! I will find this poor maid and her honoured father, if I spend my last groat on the search. Get me but such an order from the king as may place the law at my control, and awe even