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#144 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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Title: The Last Of The Barons, Volume 3.

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7717]
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[This file was first posted on May 6, 2003]

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Language: English

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BOOK III.

IN WHICH THE HISTORY PASSES FROM THE KING'S COURT TO THE STUDENT'S
CELL, AND RELATES THE PERILS THAT BEFELL A PHILOSOPHER FOR MEDDLING
WITH THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD.




CHAPTER I.

THE SOLITARY SAGE AND THE SOLITARY MAID.

While such the entrance of Marmaduke Nevile into a court, that if far
less intellectual and refined than those of later days, was yet more
calculated to dazzle the fancy, to sharpen the wit, and to charm the
senses,--for round the throne of Edward IV. chivalry was magnificent,
intrigue restless, and pleasure ever on the wing,--Sibyll had ample
leisure in her solitary home to muse over the incidents that had
preceded the departure of the young guest. Though she had rejected
Marmaduke's proffered love, his tone, so suddenly altered, his abrupt,
broken words and confusion, his farewell, so soon succeeding his
passionate declaration, could not fail to wound that pride of woman
which never sleeps till modesty is gone.  But this made the least
cause of the profound humiliation which bowed down her spirit.  The
meaning taunt conveyed in the rhyme of the tymbesteres pierced her to
the quick; the calm, indifferent smile of the stranger, as he regarded
her, the beauty of the dame he attended, woke mingled and contrary
feelings, but those of jealousy were perhaps the keenest: and in the
midst of all she started to ask herself if indeed she had suffered her
vain thoughts to dwell too tenderly upon one from whom the vast
inequalities of human life must divide her evermore.  What to her was
his indifference?  Nothing,--yet had she given worlds to banish that
careless smile from her remembrance.

Shrinking at last from the tyranny of thoughts till of late unknown,
her eye rested upon the gipsire which Alwyn had sent her by the old
servant.  The sight restored to her the holy recollection of her
father, the sweet joy of having ministered to his wants.  She put up
the little treasure, intending to devote it all to Warner; and after
bathing her heavy eyes, that no sorrow of hers might afflict the
student, she passed with a listless step into her father's chamber.

There is, to the quick and mercurial spirits of the young, something
of marvellous and preternatural in that life within life, which the
strong passion of science and genius forms and feeds,--that passion so
much stronger than love, and so much more self-dependent; which asks
no sympathy, leans on no kindred heart; which lives alone in its works
and fancies, like a god amidst his creations.

The philosopher, too, had experienced a great affliction since they
met last. In the pride of his heart he had designed to show Marmaduke
the mystic operations of his model, which had seemed that morning to
open into life; and when the young man was gone, and he made the
experiment alone, alas! he found that new progress but involved him in
new difficulties.  He had gained the first steps in the gigantic
creation of modern days, and he was met by the obstacle that baffled
so long the great modern sage.  There was the cylinder, there the
boiler; yet, work as he would, the steam failed to keep the cylinder
at work.  And now, patiently as the spider re-weaves the broken web,
his untiring ardour was bent upon constructing a new cylinder of other
materials.  "Strange," he said to himself, "that the heat of the mover
aids not the movement;" and so, blundering near the truth, he laboured
on.

Sibyll, meanwhile, seated herself abstractedly on a heap of fagots
piled in the corner, and seemed busy in framing characters on the
dusty floor with the point of her tiny slipper.  So fresh and fair and
young she seemed, in that murky atmosphere, that strange scene, and
beside that worn man, that it might have seemed to a poet as if the
youngest of the Graces were come to visit Mulciber at his forge.

The man pursued his work, the girl renewed her dreams, the dark
evening hour gradually stealing over both.  The silence was unbroken,
for the forge and the model were now at rest, save by the grating of
Adam's file upon the metal, or by some ejaculation of complacency now
and then vented by the enthusiast. So, apart from the many-noised,
gaudy, babbling world without, even in the midst of that bloody,
turbulent, and semi-barbarous time, went on (the one neglected and
unknown, the other loathed and hated) the two movers of the ALL that
continues the airy life of the Beautiful from age to age,--the Woman's
dreaming Fancy and the Man's active Genius.




CHAPTER II.

MASTER ADAM WARNER GROWS A MISER, AND BEHAVES SHAMEFULLY.

For two or three days nothing disturbed the outward monotony of the
recluse's household.  Apparently all had settled back as before the
advent of the young cavalier.  But Sibyll's voice was not heard
singing, as of old, when she passed the stairs to her father's room.
She sat with him in his work no less frequently and regularly than
before; but her childish spirits no longer broke forth in idle talk or
petulant movements, vexing the good man from his absorption and his
toils.  The little cares and anxieties, which had formerly made up so
much of Sibyll's day by forethought of provision for the morrow, were
suspended; for the money transmitted to her by Alwyn in return for the
emblazoned manuscripts was sufficient to supply their modest wants for
months to come.  Adam, more and more engrossed in his labours, did not
appear to perceive the daintier plenty of his board, nor the purchase
of some small comforts unknown for years.  He only said one morning,
"It is strange, girl, that as that gathers in life (and he pointed to
the model), it seems already to provide, to my fantasy, the luxuries
it will one day give to us all in truth.  Methought my very bed last
night seemed wondrous easy, and the coverings were warmer, for I woke
not with the cold."

"Ah," thought the sweet daughter, smiling through moist eyes, "while
my cares can smooth thy barren path through life, why should I cark
and pine?"

Their solitude was now occasionally broken in the evenings by the
visits of Nicholas Alwyn.  The young goldsmith was himself not
ignorant of the simpler mathematics; he had some talent for invention,
and took pleasure in the construction of horologes, though, properly
speaking, not a part of his trade.  His excuse for his visits was the
wish to profit by Warner's mechanical knowledge; but the student was
so rapt in his own pursuits, that he gave but little instruction to
his visitor.  Nevertheless Alwyn was satisfied, for he saw Sibyll.  He
saw her in the most attractive phase of her character,--the loving,
patient, devoted daughter; and the view of her household virtues
affected more and more his honest English heart.  But, ever awkward
and embarrassed, he gave no vent to his feelings.  To Sibyll he spoke
little, and with formal constraint; and the girl, unconscious of her
conquest, was little less indifferent to his visits than her
abstracted father.

But all at once Adam woke to a sense of the change that had taken
place; all at once he caught scent of gold, for his works were brought
to a pause for want of some finer and more costly materials than the
coins in his own possession (the remnant of Marmaduke's gift) enabled
him to purchase.  He had stolen out at dusk, unknown to Sibyll, and
lavished the whole upon the model; but in vain!  The model in itself
was, indeed, completed; his invention had mastered the difficulty that
it had encountered.  But Adam had complicated the contrivance by
adding to it experimental proofs of the agency it was intended to
exercise.  It was necessary in that age, if he were to convince
others, to show more than the principle of his engine,--he must show
also something of its effects; turn a mill without wind or water, or
set in motion some mimic vehicle without other force than that the
contrivance itself supplied.  And here, at every step, new obstacles
arose.  It was the misfortune to science in those days, not only that
all books and mathematical instruments were enormously dear, but that
the students, still struggling into light, through the glorious
delusions of alchemy and mysticism, imagined that, even in simple
practical operations, there were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and
certain precious stones.  A link in the process upon which Adam was
engaged failed him; his ingenuity was baffled, his work stood still;
and in poring again and again over the learned manuscripts--alas! now
lost--in which certain German doctors had sought to explain the
pregnant hints of Roger Bacon, he found it inculcated that the axle of
a certain wheel must be composed of a diamond.  Now, in truth, it so
happened that Adam's contrivance, which (even without the appliances
which were added in illustration of the theory) was infinitely more
complicated than modern research has found necessary, did not even
require the wheel in question, much less the absent diamond; it
happened, also, that his understanding, which, though so obtuse in
common life, was in these matters astonishingly clear, could not trace
any mathematical operations by which the diamond axle would in the
least correct the difficulty that had suddenly started up; and yet the
accursed diamond began to haunt him,--the German authority was so
positive on the point, and that authority had in many respects been
accurate.  Nor was this all,--the diamond was to be no vulgar diamond;
it was to be endowed, by talismanic skill, with certain properties and
virtues; it was to be for a certain number of hours exposed to the
rays of the full moon; it was to be washed in a primitive and wondrous
elixir, the making of which consumed no little of the finest gold.
This diamond was to be to the machine what the soul is to the body,--a
glorious, all-pervading, mysterious principle of activity and life.
Such were the dreams that obscured the cradle of infant science!  And
Adam, with all his reasoning powers, big lore in the hard truths of
mathematics, was but one of the giant children of the dawn.  The
magnificent phrases and solemn promises of the mystic Germans got firm
hold of his fancy.  Night and day, waking or sleeping, the diamond,
basking in the silence of the full moon, sparkled before his eyes.
Meanwhile all was at a stand.  In the very last steps of his discovery
he was arrested.  Then suddenly looking round for vulgar moneys to
purchase the precious gem, and the materials for the soluble elixir,
he saw that MONEY had been at work around him,--that he had been
sleeping softly and faring sumptuously.  He was seized with a divine
rage.  How had Sibyll dared to secrete from him this hoard; how
presumed to waste upon the base body what might have so profited the
eternal mind?  In his relentless ardour, in his sublime devotion and
loyalty to his abstract idea, there was a devouring cruelty, of which
this meek and gentle scholar was wholly unconscious.  The grim iron
model, like a Moloch, ate up all things,--health, life, love; and its
jaws now opened for his child.  He rose from his bed,--it was
daybreak,--he threw on his dressing-robe, he strode into his
daughter's room; the gray twilight came through the comfortless,
curtainless casement, deep sunk into the wall.  Adam did not pause to
notice that the poor child, though she had provoked his anger by
refitting his dismal chamber, had spent nothing in giving a less
rugged frown to her own.

The scanty worm-worn furniture, the wretched pallet, the poor attire
folded decently beside,--nothing save that inexpressible purity and
cleanliness which, in the lowliest hovel, a pure and maiden mind
gathers round it; nothing to distinguish the room of her whose
childhood had passed in courts from the but of the meanest daughter of
drudgery and toil!  No,--he who had lavished the fortunes of his
father and big child into the grave of his idea--no--he saw nothing of
this self-forgetful penury--the diamond danced before him!  He
approached the bed; and oh! the contrast of that dreary room and
peasant pallet to the delicate, pure, enchanting loveliness of the
sleeping inmate.  The scanty covering left partially exposed the snow-
white neck and rounded shoulder; the face was pillowed upon the arm,
in an infantine grace; the face was slightly flushed, and the fresh
red lips parted into a smile,--for in her sleep the virgin dreamed,--a
happy dream!  It was a sight to have touched a father's heart, to have
stopped his footstep, and hushed his breath into prayer.  And call not
Adam hard--unnatural--that he was not then, as men far more harsh than
he--for the father at that moment was not in his breast, the human man
was gone--he himself, like his model, was a machine of iron!--his life
was his one idea!

"Wake, child, wake!" he said, in a loud but hollow voice.  "Where is
the gold thou hast hidden from me?  Wake! confess!"

Roused from her gracious dreams thus savagely, Sibyll started, and saw
the eager, darkened face of her father.  Its expression was peculiar
and undefinable, for it was not threatening, angry, stern; there was a
vacancy in the eyes, a strain in the features, and yet a wild, intense
animation lighting and pervading all,--it was as the face of one
walking in his sleep, and, at the first confusion of waking, Sibyll
thought indeed that such was her father's state.  But the impatience
with which he shook the arm he grasped, and repeated, as he opened
convulsively his other hand, "The gold, Sibyll, the gold!  Why didst
thou hide it from me?" speedily convinced her that her father's mind
was under the influence of the prevailing malady that made all its
weakness and all its strength.

"My poor father!" she said pityingly, "wilt thou not leave thyself the
means whereby to keep strength and health for thine high hopes?  Ah,
Father, thy Sibyll only hoarded her poor gains for thee!"

"The gold!" said Adam, mechanically, but in a softer voice,--"all--all
thou hast!  How didst thou get it,--how?"

"By the labours of these hands.  Ah, do not frown on me!"

"Thou--the child of knightly fathers--thou labour!" said Adam, an
instinct of his former state of gentle-born and high-hearted youth
flashing from his eyes.  "It was wrong in thee!"

"Dost thou not labour too?"

"Ay, but for the world.  Well, the gold!"

Sibyll rose, and modestly throwing over her form the old mantle which
lay on the pallet, passed to a corner of the room, and opening a
chest, took from it the gipsire, and held it out to her father.

"If it please thee, dear and honoured sir, so be it; and Heaven
prosper it in thy hands!"

Before Adam's clutch could close on the gipsire, a rude hand was laid
on his shoulder, the gipsire was snatched from Sibyll, and the gaunt,
half-clad form of old Madge interposed between the two.

"Eh, sir!" she said, in her shrill, cracked tone, "I thought when I
heard your door open, and your step hurrying down, you were after no
good deeds.  Fie, master, fie!  I have clung to you when all reviled,
and when starvation within and foul words without made all my hire;
for I ever thought you a good and mild man, though little better than
stark wode.  But, augh! to rob your child thus, to leave her to starve
and pine!  We old folks are used to it.  Look round, look round!  I
remember this chamber, when ye first came to your father's hall.
Saints of heaven!  There stood the brave bed all rustling with damask
of silk; on those stone walls once hung fine arras of the Flemings,--a
marriage gift to my lady from Queen Margaret, and a mighty show to
see, and good for the soul's comforts, with Bible stories wrought on
it.  Eh, sir! don't you call to mind your namesake, Master Adam, in
his brave scarlet hosen, and Madam Eve, in her bonny blue kirtle and
laced courtpie? and now--now look round, I say, and see what you have
brought your child to!"

"Hush! hush! Madge, bush!" cried Sibyll, while Adam gazed in evident
perturbation and awakening shame at the intruder, turning his eyes
round the room as she spoke, and heaving from time to time short, deep
sighs.

"But I will not hush," pursued the old woman; "I will say my say, for
I love ye both, and I loved my poor mistress who is dead and gone.
Ah, sir, groan! it does you good.  And now when this sweet damsel is
growing up, now when you should think of saving a marriage dower for
her (for no marriage where no pot boils), do you rend from her the
little that she has drudged to gain!--She!  Oh, out on your heart! And
for what,--for what, sir?  For the neighbours to set fire to your
father's house, and the little ones to--"

"Forbear, woman!" cried Adam, in a voice of thunder; "forbear!
Heavens!" And he waved his hand as he spoke, with so unexpected a
majesty that Madge was awed into sudden silence, and, darting a look
of compassion at Sibyll, she hobbled from the room.  Adam stood
motionless an instant; but when he felt his child's soft arms round
his neck, when he heard her voice struggling against tears, praying
him not to heed the foolish words of the old servant,--to take--to
take all, that it would be easy to gain more,--the ice of his
philosophy melted at once; the man broke forth, and, clasping Sibyll
to his heart, and kissing her cheek, her lips, her hands, he faltered
out, "No! no! forgive me! Forgive thy cruel father!  Much thought has
maddened me, I think,--it has indeed!  Poor child, poor Sibyll," and
he stroked her cheek gently, and with a movement of pathetic pity--
"poor child, thou art pale, and so slight and delicate!  And this
chamber--and thy loneliness--and--ah! my life hath been a curse to
thee, yet I meant to bequeath it a boon to all!

"Father, dear father, speak not thus.  You break my heart.  Here,
here, take the gold--or rather, for thou must not venture out to
insult again, let me purchase with it what thou needest. Tell me,
trust me--"

"No!" exclaimed Adam, with that hollow energy by which a man resolves
to impose restraint on himself; "I will not, for all that science ever
achieved,--I will not lay this shame on my soul!  Spend this gold on
thyself, trim this room, buy thee raiment,--all that thou needest,--I
order, I command it!  And hark thee, if thou gettest more, hide it
from me, hide it well; men's desires are foul tempters!  I never knew,
in following wisdom, that I had a vice.  I wake and find myself a
miser and a robber!"

And with these words he fled from the girl's chamber, gained his own,
and locked the door.




CHAPTER III.

A STRANGE VISITOR.--ALL AGES OF THE WORLD BREED WORLD-BETTERS.

Sibyll, whose soft heart bled for her father, and who now reproached
herself for having concealed from him her little hoard, began hastily
to dress that she might seek him out, and soothe the painful feelings
which the honest rudeness of Madge had aroused.  But before her task
was concluded, there pealed a loud knock at the outer door.  She heard
the old housekeeper's quivering voice responding to a loud clear tone;
and presently Madge herself ascended the stairs to Warner's room,
followed by a man whom Sibyll instantly recognized--for he was not one
easily to be forgotten--as their protector from the assault of the
mob.  She drew back hastily as he passed her door, and in some wonder
and alarm awaited the descent of Madge.  That venerable personage
having with some difficulty induced her master to open his door and
admit the stranger, came straight into her young lady's chamber.
"Cheer up, cheer up, sweetheart," said the old woman; "I think better
days will shine soon; for the honest man I have admitted says he is
but come to tell Master Warner something that will redound much to his
profit.  Oh, he is a wonderful fellow, this same Robin!  You saw how
he turned the cullions from burning the old house!"

"What! you know this man, Madge!  What is he, and who?"

Madge looked puzzled.  "That is more than I can say, sweet mistress.
But though he has been but some weeks in the neighbourhood, they all
hold him in high count and esteem.  For why--it is said he is a rich
man and a kind one.  He does a world of good to the poor."

While Sibyll listened to such explanations as Madge could give her,
the stranger, who had carefully closed the door of the student's
chamber, after regarding Adam for a moment with silent but keen
scrutiny, thus began,--

"When last we met, Adam Warner, it was with satchells on our backs.
Look well at me!"

"Troth," answered Adam, languidly, for he was still under the deep
dejection that had followed the scene with Sibyll, "I cannot call you
to mind, nor seems it veritable that our schooldays passed together,
seeing that my hair is gray and men call me old; but thou art in all
the lustihood of this human life."

"Nathless," returned the stranger, "there are but two years or so
between thine age and mine.  When thou wert poring over the crabbed
text, and pattering Latin by the ell, dost thou not remember a lack-
grace good-for-naught, Robert Hilyard, who was always setting the
school in an uproar, and was finally outlawed from that boy-world, as
he hath been since from the man's world, for inciting the weak to
resist the strong?"

"Ah," exclaimed Adam, with a gleam of something like joy on his face,
"art thou indeed that riotous, brawling, fighting, frank-hearted, bold
fellow, Robert Hilyard?  Ha! ha!--those were merry days!  I have known
none like them--"  The old schoolfellows shook hands heartily.

"The world has not fared well with thee in person or pouch, I fear me,
poor Adam," said Hilyard; "thou canst scarcely have passed thy
fiftieth year, and yet thy learned studies have given thee the weight
of sixty; while I, though ever in toil and bustle, often wanting a
meal, and even fearing the halter, am strong and hearty as when I shot
my first fallow buck in the king's forest, and kissed the forester's
pretty daughter.  Yet, methinks, Adam, if what I hear of thy tasks be
true, thou and I have each been working for one end; thou to make the
world other than it is, and I to--"

"What! hast thou, too, taken nourishment from the bitter milk of
Philosophy,--thou, fighting Rob?"

"I know not whether it be called philosophy, but marry, Edward of York
would call it rebellion; they are much the same, for both war against
rules established!" returned Hilyard, with more depth of thought than
his careless manner seemed to promise.  He paused, and laying his
broad brown hand on Warner's shoulder, resumed, "Thou art poor, Adam!"
"Very poor,--very, very!"

"Does thy philosophy disdain gold?"

"What can philosophy achieve without it?  She is a hungry dragon, and
her very food is gold!"

"Wilt thou brave some danger--thou went ever a fearless boy when thy
blood was up, though so meek and gentle--wilt thou brave some danger
for large reward?"

"My life braves the scorn of men, the pinchings of famine, and, it may
be, the stake and the fagot.  Soldiers brave not the dangers that are
braved by a wise man in an unwise age!"

"Gramercy! thou hast a hero's calm aspect while thou speakest, and thy
words move me!  Listen!  Thou wert wont, when Henry of Windsor was
King of England, to visit and confer with him on learned matters.  He
is now a captive in the Tower; but his jailers permit him still to
receive the visits of pious monks and harmless scholars.  I ask thee
to pay him such a visit, and for this office I am empowered, by richer
men than myself, to award thee the guerdon of twenty broad pieces of
gold."

"Twenty!--A mine! a Tmolus!" exclaimed Adam, in uncontrollable glee.
"Twenty!  O true friend, then my work will be born at last!"

"But hear me further, Adam, for I will not deceive thee; the visit
hath its peril!  Thou must first see if the mind of King Henry, for
king he is, though the usurper wear his holy crown, be clear and
healthful.  Thou knowest he is subject to dark moods,--suspension of
man's reason; and if he be, as his friends hope, sane and right-
judging, thou wilt give him certain papers, which, after his hand has
signed them, thou wilt bring back to me.  If in this thou succeedest,
know that thou mayst restore the royalty of Lancaster to the purple
and the throne; that thou wilt have princes and earls for favourers
and protectors to thy learned life; that thy fortunes and fame are
made!  Fail, be discovered,--and Edward of York never spares!--thy
guerdon will be the nearest tree and the strongest rope!"

"Robert," said Adam, who had listened to this address with unusual
attention, "thou dealest with me plainly, and as man should deal with
man.  I know little of stratagem and polity, wars and kings; and save
that King Henry, though passing ignorant in the mathematics, and more
given to alchemists than to solid seekers after truth, was once or
twice gracious to me, I could have no choice, in these four walls,
between an Edward and a Henry on the throne.  But I have a king whose
throne is in mine own breast, and, alack, it taxeth me heavily, and
with sore burdens."

"I comprehend," said the visitor, glancing round the room,--"I
comprehend: thou wantest money for thy books and instruments, and thy
melancholic passion is thy sovereign.  Thou wilt incur the risk?"

"I will," said Adam.  "I would rather seek in the lion's den for what
I lack than do what I well-nigh did this day."

"What crime was that, poor scholar?" said Robin, smiling.

"My child worked for her bread and my luxuries--I would have robbed
her, old schoolfellow.  Ha, ha! what is cord and gibbet to one so
tempted?"

A tear stood in the bright gray eyes of the bluff visitor.  "Ah,
Adam," he said sadly, "only by the candle held in the skeleton hand of
Poverty can man read his own dark heart.  But thou, Workman of
Knowledge, hast the same interest as the poor who dig and delve.
Though strange circumstance hath made me the servant and emissary of
Margaret, think not that I am but the varlet of the great."  Hilyard
paused a moment, and resumed,--

"Thou knowest, peradventure, that my race dates from an elder date
than these Norman nobles, who boast their robber-fathers.  From the
renowned Saxon Thane, who, free of hand and of cheer, won the name of
Hildegardis, [Hildegardis, namely, old German, a person of noble or
generous disposition.  Wotton's "Baronetage," art. Hilyard, or
Hildyard, of Pattrington.] our family took its rise.  But under these
Norman barons we sank with the nation to which we belonged.  Still
were we called gentlemen, and still were dubbed knights.  But as I
grew up to man's estate, I felt myself more Saxon than gentleman, and,
as one of a subject and vassal race, I was a son of the Saxon people.
My father, like thee, was a man of thought and bookcraft.  I dare own
to thee that he was a Lollard; and with the religion of those bold
foes to priest-vice, goes a spirit that asks why the people should be
evermore the spoil and prey of lords and kings.  Early in my youth, my
father, fearing rack and fagot in England, sought refuge in the Hans
town of Lubeck.  There I learned grave truths,--how liberty can be won
and guarded.  Later in life I saw the republics of Italy, and I asked
why they were so glorious in all the arts and craft of civil life,
while the braver men of France and England seemed as savages by the
side of the Florentine burgess, nay, of the Lombard vine-dresser.  I
saw that, even when those republics fell a victim to some tyrant or
podesta, their men still preserved rights and uttered thoughts which
left them more free and more great than the Commons of England after
all their boasted wars.  I came back to my native land and settled in
the North, as my franklin ancestry before me.  The broad lands of my
forefathers had devolved on the elder line, and gave a knight's fee to
Sir Robert Hilyard, who fell afterwards at Towton for the
Lancastrians.  But I had won gold in the far countree, and I took farm
and homestead near Lord Warwick's tower of Middleham.  The feud
between Lancaster and York broke forth; Earl Warwick summoned his
retainers, myself amongst them, since I lived upon his land; I sought
the great earl, and I told him boldly--him whom the Commons deemed a
friend, and a foe to all malfaisance and abuse--I told him that the
war he asked me to join seemed to me but a war of ambitious lords, and
that I saw not how the Commons were to be bettered, let who would be
king.  The earl listened and deigned to reason; and when he saw I was
not convinced, he left me to my will; for he is a noble chief, and I
admired even his angry pride, when he said, 'Let no man fight for
Warwick whose heart beats not in his cause.'  I lived afterwards to
discharge my debt to the proud earl, and show him how even the lion
may be meshed, and how even the mouse may gnaw the net.  But to my own
tragedy.  So I quitted those parts, for I feared my own resolution
near so great a man; I made a new home not far from the city of York.
So, Adam, when all the land around bristled with pike and gisarme, and
while my own cousin and namesake, the head of my House, was winning
laurels and wasting blood--I, thy quarrelsome, fighting friend--lived
at home in peace with my wife and child (for I was now married, and
wife and child were dear to me), and tilled my lands.  But in peace I
was active and astir, for my words inflamed the bosoms of labourers
and peasants, and many of them, benighted as they were, thought with
me.  One day--I was absent from home, selling my grain in the marts of
York--one day there entered the village a young captain, a boy-chief,
Edward Earl of March, beating for recruits.  Dost thou heed me, Adam?
Well, man--well, the peasants stood aloof from tromp and banner, and
they answered, to all the talk of hire and fame, 'Robin Hilyard tells
us we have nothing to gain but blows,--leave us to hew and to delve.'
Oh, Adam, this boy, this chief, the Earl of March, now crowned King
Edward, made but one reply, 'This Robin Hilyard must be a wise man,--
show me his house.'  They pointed out the ricks, the barns, the
homestead, and in five minutes all--all were in flames.  'Tell the
hilding, when he returns, that thus Edward of March, fair to friends
and terrible to foes, rewards the coward who disaffects the men of
Yorkshire to their chief.' And by the blazing rafters, and the pale
faces of the silent crowd, he rode on his way to battle and the
throne!"

Hilyard paused, and the anguish of his countenance was terrible to
behold.

"I returned to find a heap of ashes; I returned to find my wife a
maniac; I returned to find my child--my boy--great God!--he had run to
hide himself, in terror at the torches and the grim men; they had
failed to discover him, till, too late, his shrieks, amidst the
crashing walls, burst on his mother's ear,--and the scorched, mangled,
lifeless corpse lay on that mother's bosom!"

Adam rose; his figure was transformed.  Not the stooping student, but
the knight-descended man, seemed to tower in the murky chamber; his
hand felt at his side, as for a sword; he stifled a curse, and
Hilyard, in that suppressed low voice which evinces a strong mind in
deep emotion, continued his tale.

"Blessed be the Divine Intercessor, the mother of the dead died too!
Behold me, a lonely, ruined, wifeless, childless wretch!  I made all
the world my foe!  The old love of liberty (alone left me) became a
crime; I plunged into the gloom of the forest, a robber-chief,
sparing--no, never-never--never one York captain, one spurred knight,
one belted lord!  But the poor, my Saxon countrymen, they had
suffered, and were safe!

"One dark twilight--thou hast heard the tale, every village minstrel
sets it to his viol--a majestic woman, a hunted fugitive, crossed my
path; she led a boy in her hand, a year or so younger than my murdered
child.  'Friend!' said the woman, fearlessly, 'save the son of your
king; I am Margaret, Queen of England!' I saved them both.  From that
hour the robber-chief, the Lollard's son, became a queen's friend.
Here opened, at least, vengeance against the fell destroyer.  Now see
you why I seek you, why tempt you into danger?  Pause, if you will,
for my passion heats my blood,--and all the kings since Saul, it may
be, are not worth one scholar's life!  And yet," continued Hilyard,
regaining his ordinary calm tone, "and yet, it seemeth to me, as I
said at first, that all who labour have in this a common cause and
interest with the poor.  This woman-king, though bloody man, with his
wine-cups and his harlots, this usurping York--his very existence
flaunts the life of the sons of toil.  In civil war and in broil, in
strife that needs the arms of the people, the people shall get their
own."

"I will go," said Adam, and he advanced to the door.  Hilyard caught
his arm.  "Why, friend, thou hast not even the documents, and how
wouldst thou get access to the prison?  Listen to me; or," added the
conspirator, observing poor Adam's abstracted air, "or let me rather
speak a word to thy fair daughter; women have ready wit, and are the
pioneers to the advance of men!  Adam, Adam! thou art dreaming!"--He
shook the philosopher's arm roughly.

"I heed you," said Warner, meekly.

"The first thing required," renewed Hilyard, "is a permit to see King
Henry.  This is obtained either from the Lord Worcester, governor of
the Tower, a cruel man, who may deny it, or the Lord Hastings,
Edward's chamberlain, a humane and gentle one, who will readily grant
it.  Let not thy daughter know why thou wouldst visit Henry; let her
suppose it is solely to make report of his health to Margaret; let her
not know there is scheming or danger,--so, at least, her ignorance
will secure her safety.  But let her go to the lord chamberlain, and
obtain the order for a learned clerk to visit the learned prisoner--
to--ha! well thought of--this strange machine is, doubtless, the
invention of which thy neighbours speak; this shall make thy excuse;
thou wouldst divert the prisoner with thy mechanical--comprehendest
thou, Adam?"

"Ah, King Henry will see the model, and when he is on the throne--"

"He will protect the scholar!" interrupted Hilyard.  "Good! good!
Wait here; I will confer with thy daughter."  He gently pushed aside
Adam, opened the door, and on descending the stairs, found Sibyll by
the large casement where she had stood with Marmaduke, and heard the
rude stave of the tymbesteres.

The anxiety the visit of Hilyard had occasioned her was at once
allayed, when he informed her that he had been her father's
schoolmate, and desired to become his friend.  And when he drew a
moving picture of the exiled condition of Margaret and the young
prince, and their natural desire to learn tidings of the health of the
deposed king, her gentle heart, forgetting the haughty insolence with
which her royal mistress had often wounded and chilled her childhood,
felt all the generous and compassionate sympathy the conspirator
desired to awaken.  "The occasion," added Hilyard, "for learning the
poor captive's state now offers!  He hath heard of your father's
labours; he desires to learn their nature from his own lips.  He is
allowed to receive, by an order from King Edward's chamberlain, the
visits of those scholars in whose converse he was ever wont to
delight.  Wilt thou so far aid the charitable work as to seek the Lord
Hastings, and crave the necessary license?  Thou seest that thy father
has wayward and abstract moods; he might forget that Henry of Windsor
is no longer king, and might give him that title in speaking to Lord
Hastings,--a slip of the tongue which the law styles treason."

"Certes," said Sibyll, quickly, "if my father would seek the poor
captive, I will be his messenger to my Lord Hastings.  But oh, sir, as
thou hast known my father's boyhood, and as thou hopest for mercy in
the last day, tempt to no danger one so guileless!"

Hilyard winced as he interrupted her hastily,

"There is no danger if thou wilt obtain the license.  I will say
more,--a reward awaits him, that will not only banish his poverty but
save his life."

"His life!"

"Ay! seest thou not, fair mistress, that Adam Warner is dying, not of
the body's hunger, but of the soul's?  He craveth gold, that his toils
may reap their guerdon.  If that gold be denied, his toils will fret
him to the grave!"

"Alas! alas! it is true."

"That gold he shall honourably win!  Nor is this all.  Thou wilt see
the Lord Hastings: he is less learned, perhaps, than Worcester, less
dainty in accomplishments and gifts than Anthony Woodville, but his
mind is profound and vast; all men praise him save the queen's kin.
He loves scholars; he is mild to distress; he laughs at the
superstitions of the vulgar.  Thou wilt see the Lord Hastings, and
thou mayst interest him in thy father's genius and his fate!"

"There is frankness in thy voice, and I will trust thee," answered
Sibyll.  "When shall I seek this lord?"

"This day, if thou wilt.  He lodges at the Tower, and gives access, it
is said, to all who need his offices, or seek succour from his power."

"This day, then, be it!" answered Sibyll, calmly.

Hilyard gazed at her countenance, rendered so noble in its youthful
resignation, in its soft firmness of expression, and muttering,
"Heaven prosper thee, maiden; we shall meet tomorrow," descended the
stairs, and quitted the house.

His heart smote him when he was in the street.  "If evil should come
to this meek scholar, to that poor child's father, it would be a sore
sin to my soul.  But no; I will not think it.  The saints will not
suffer this bloody Edward to triumph long; and in this vast chessboard
of vengeance and great ends, we must move men to and fro, and harden
our natures to the hazard of the game."

Sibyll sought her father; his mind had flown back to the model.  He
was already living in the life that the promised gold would give to
the dumb thought.  True that all the ingenious additions to the
engine--additions that were to convince the reason and startle the
fancy--were not yet complete (for want, of course, of the diamond
bathed in moonbeams); but still there was enough in the inventions
already achieved to excite curiosity and obtain encouragement.  So,
with care and diligence and sanguine hope the philosopher prepared the
grim model for exhibition to a man who had worn a crown, and might
wear again.  But with that innocent and sad cunning which is so common
with enthusiasts of one idea, the sublime dwellers of the narrow
border between madness and inspiration, Adam, amidst his excitement,
contrived to conceal from his daughter all glimpse of the danger he
ran, of the correspondence of which he was to be the medium,--or
rather, may we think that he had forgotten both!  Not the stout
Warwick himself, in the roar of battle, thought so little of peril to
life and limb as that gentle student, in the reveries of his lonely
closet; and therefore, all unsuspicious, and seeing but diversion to
Adam's recent gloom of despair, an opening to all his bright
prospects, Sibyll attired herself in her holiday garments, drew her
wimple closely round her face, and summoning Madge to attend her, bent
her way to the Tower.  Near York House, within view of the Sanctuary
and the Palace of Westminster, they took a boat, and arrived at the
stairs of the Tower.




CHAPTER IV.

LORD HASTINGS.

William Lord Hastings was one of the most remarkable men of the age.
Philip de Comines bears testimony to his high repute for wisdom and
virtue.  Born the son of a knight of ancient lineage but scanty lands,
he had risen, while yet in the prime of life, to a rank and an
influence second, perhaps, only to the House of Nevile.  Like Lord
Montagu, he united in happy combination the talents of a soldier and a
courtier.  But as a statesman, a schemer, a thinker, Montagu, with all
his craft, was inferior to Hastings.  In this, the latter had but two
equals,--namely, George, the youngest of the Nevile brothers,
Archbishop of York; and a boy, whose intellect was not yet fully
developed, but in whom was already apparent to the observant the dawn
of a restless, fearless, calculating, and subtle genius.  That boy,
whom the philosophers of Utrecht had taught to reason, whom the
lessons of Warwick had trained to arms, was Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, famous even now for his skill in the tilt-yard and his
ingenuity in the rhetoric of the schools.

The manners of Lord Hastings had contributed to his fortunes.  Despite
the newness of his honours, even the haughtiest of the ancient nobles
bore him no grudge, for his demeanour was at once modest and manly.
He was peculiarly simple and unostentatious in his habits, and
possessed that nameless charm which makes men popular with the lowly
and welcome to the great.  [On Edward's accession so highly were the
services of Hastings appreciated by the party, that not only the king,
but many of the nobility, contributed to render his wealth equal to
his new station, by grants of lands and moneys.  Several years
afterwards, when he went with Edward into France, no less than two
lords, nine knights, fifty-eight squires, and twenty gentlemen joined
his train.--Dugdale: Baronage, p. 583.  Sharon Turner: History of
England, vol. iii. p. 380.]  But in that day a certain mixture of vice
was necessary to success; and Hastings wounded no self-love by the
assumption of unfashionable purism.  He was regarded with small favour
by the queen, who knew him as the companion of Edward in his
pleasures, and at a later period accused him of enticing her faithless
lord into unworthy affections.  And certain it is, that he was
foremost amongst the courtiers in those adventures which we call the
excesses of gayety and folly, though too often leading to Solomon's
wisdom and his sadness.  But profligacy with Hastings had the excuse
of ardent passions: he had loved deeply, and unhappily, in his earlier
youth, and he gave in to the dissipation of the time with the restless
eagerness common to strong and active natures when the heart is not at
ease; and under all the light fascination of his converse; or the
dissipation of his life, lurked the melancholic temperament of a man
worthy of nobler things.  Nor was the courtly vice of the libertine
the only drawback to the virtuous character assigned to Hastings by
Comines.  His experience of men had taught him something of the
disdain of the cynic, and he scrupled not at serving his pleasures or
his ambition by means which his loftier nature could not excuse to his
clear sense.  [See Comines, book vi., for a curious anecdote of what
Mr. Sharon Turner happily calls "the moral coquetry" of Hastings,--an
anecdote which reveals much of his character.]  Still, however, the
world, which had deteriorated, could not harden him.  Few persons so
able acted so frequently from impulse; the impulses were for the most
part affectionate and generous, but then came the regrets of caution
and experience; and Hastings summoned his intellect to correct the
movement of his heart,--in other words, reflection sought to undo what
impulse had suggested.  Though so successful a gallant, he had not
acquired the ruthless egotism of the sensualist; and his conduct to
women often evinced the weakness of giddy youth rather than the cold
deliberation of profligate manhood.  Thus in his veriest vices there
was a spurious amiability, a seductive charm; while in the graver
affairs of life the intellectual susceptibility of his nature served
but to quicken his penetration and stimulate his energies, and
Hastings might have said, with one of his Italian contemporaries,
"That in subjection to the influences of women he had learned the
government of men."  In a word, his powers to attract, and his
capacities to command, may be guessed by this,--that Lord Hastings was
the only man Richard III. seems to have loved, when Duke of
Gloucester, [Sir Thomas More, "Life of Edward V.," speaks of "the
great love" Richard bore to Hastings.] and the only man he seems to
have feared, when resolved to be King of England.

Hastings was alone in the apartments assigned to him in the Tower,
when his page, with a peculiar smile, announced to him the visit of a
young donzell, who would not impart her business to his attendants.

The accomplished chamberlain looked up somewhat impatiently from the
beautiful manuscripts, enriched with the silver verse of Petrarch,
which lay open on his table, and after muttering to himself, "It is
only Edward to whom the face of a woman never is unwelcome," bade the
page admit the visitor.  The damsel entered, and the door closed upon
her.

"Be not alarmed, maiden," said Hastings, touched by the downcast bend
of the hooded countenance, and the unmistakable and timid modesty of
his visitor's bearing.  "What hast thou to say to me?"

At the sound of his voice, Sibyll Warner started, and uttered a faint
exclamation.  The stranger of the pastime-ground was before her.
Instinctively she drew the wimple yet more closely round her face, and
laid her hand upon the bolt of the door as if in the impulse of
retreat.

The nobleman's curiosity was roused.  He looked again and earnestly on
the form that seemed to shrink from his gaze; then rising slowly, he
advanced, and laid his band on her arm.  "Donzell, I recognize thee,"
he said, in a voice that sounded cold and stern.  "What service
wouldst thou ask me to render thee?  Speak!  Nay!  I pray thee,
speak."

"Indeed, good my lord," said Sibyll, conquering her confusion; and,
lifting her wimple, her dark blue eyes met those bent on her, with
fearless truth and innocence, "I knew not, and you will believe me,--I
knew not till this moment that I had such cause for gratitude to the
Lord Hastings.  I sought you but on the behalf of my father, Master
Adam Warner, who would fain have the permission accorded to other
scholars, to see the Lord Henry of Windsor, who was gracious to him in
other days, and to while the duress of that princely captive with the
show of a quaint instrument he has invented."

"Doubtless," answered Hastings, who deserved his character (rare in
that day) for humanity and mildness--"doubt less it will pleasure me,
nor offend his grace the king, to show all courtesy and indulgence to
the unhappy gentleman and lord, whom the weal of England condemns us
to hold incarcerate.  I have heard of thy father, maiden, an honest
and simple man, in whom we need not fear a conspirator; and of thee,
young mistress, I have heard also, since we parted."

"Of me, noble sir?"

"Of thee," said Hastings, with a smile; and, placing a seat for her,
he took from the table an illuminated manuscript.  "I have to thank
thy friend Master Alwyn for procuring me this treasure!"

"What, my lord!" said Sibyll, and her eyes glistened, were you--you
the--the--"

"The fortunate person whom Alwyn has enriched at so slight a cost?
Yes.  Do not grudge me my good fortune in this.  Thou hast nobler
treasures, methinks, to bestow on another!"

"My good lord!"

"Nay, I must not distress thee.  And the young gentleman has a fair
face; may it bespeak a true heart!"

These words gave Sibyll an emotion of strange delight.  They seemed
spoken sadly, they seemed to betoken a jealous sorrow; they awoke the
strange, wayward woman-feeling, which is pleased at the pain that
betrays the woman's influence: the girl's rosy lips smiled
maliciously.  Hastings watched her, and her face was so radiant with
that rare gleam of secret happiness,--so fresh, so young, so pure, and
withal so arch and captivating, that hackneyed and jaded as he was in
the vulgar pursuit of pleasure, the sight moved better and tenderer
feelings than those of the sensualist. "Yes," he muttered to
himself, "there are some toys it were a sin to sport with and cast
away amidst the broken rubbish of gone passions!"

He turned to the table, and wrote the order of admission to Henry's
prison, and as he gave it to Sibyll, he said, "Thy young gallant, I
see, is at the court now.  It is a perilous ordeal, and especially to
one for whom the name of Nevile opens the road to advancement and
honour.  Men learn betimes in courts to forsake Love for Plutus, and
many a wealthy lord would give his heiress to the poorest gentleman
who claims kindred to the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick."

"May my father's guest so prosper," answered Sibyll, "for he seems of
loyal heart and gentle nature!"

"Thou art unselfish, sweet mistress," said Hastings; and, surprised by
her careless tone, he paused a moment: "or art thou, in truth,
indifferent?  Saw I not thy hand in his, when even those loathly
tymbesteres chanted warning to thee for loving, not above thy merits,
but, alas, it may be, above thy fortunes?"

Sibyll's delight increased.  Oh, then, he had not applied that hateful
warning to himself!  He guessed not her secret.  She blushed, and the
blush was so chaste and maidenly, while the smile that went with it
was so ineffably animated and joyous, that Hastings exclaimed, with
unaffected admiration, "Surely, fair donzell, Petrarch dreamed of
thee, when he spoke of the woman-blush and the angel-smile of Laura.
Woe to the man who would injure thee!  Farewell!  I would not see thee
too often, unless I saw thee ever."

He lifted her hand to his lips with a chivalrous respect as he spoke;
opened the door, and called his page to attend her to the gates.

Sibyll was more flattered by the abrupt dismissal than if he had knelt
to detain her.  How different seemed the world as her light step
wended homeward!




CHAPTER V.

MASTER ADAM WARNER AND KING HENRY THE SIXTH.

The next morning Hilyard revisited Warner with the letters for Henry.
The conspirator made Adam reveal to him the interior mechanism of the
Eureka, to which Adam, who had toiled all night, had appended one of
the most ingenious contrivances he had as yet been enabled (sans the
diamond) to accomplish, for the better display of the agencies which
the engine was designed to achieve.  This contrivance was full of
strange cells and recesses, in one of which the documents were placed.
And there they lay, so well concealed as to puzzle the minutest
search, if not aided by the inventor, or one to whom he had
communicated the secrets of the contrivance.

After repeated warnings and exhortations to discretion, Hilyard then,
whose busy, active mind had made all the necessary arrangements,
summoned a stout-looking fellow, whom he had left below, and with his
aid conveyed the heavy machine across the garden, to a back lane,
where a mule stood ready to receive the burden.

"Suffer this trusty fellow to guide thee, dear Adam; he will take thee
through ways where thy brutal neighbours are not likely to meet and
molest thee.  Call all thy wits to the surface.  Speed and prosper!"

"Fear not," said Adam, disdainfully.  "In the neighbourhood of kings,
science is ever safe.  Bless thee, child," and he laid his hand upon
Sibyll's head, for she had accompanied them thus far in silence, "now
go in."

"I go with thee, Father," said Sibyll, firmly.  "Master Hilyard, it is
best so," she whispered; "what if my father fall into one of his
reveries?"

"You are right: go with him, at least, to the Tower gate.  Hard by is
the house of a noble dame and a worthy, known to our friend Hugh,
where thou mayest wait Master Warner's return.  It will not suit thy
modesty and sex to loiter amongst the pages and soldiery in the yard.
Adam, thy daughter must wend with thee."

Adam had not attended to this colloquy, and mechanically bowing his
head, he set off, and was greatly surprised, on gaining the river-side
(where a boat was found large enough to accommodate not only the human
passengers, but the mule and its burden), to see Sibyll by his side.

The imprisonment of the unfortunate Henry, though guarded with
sufficient rigour against all chances of escape, was not, as the
reader has perceived, at this period embittered by unnecessary
harshness.  His attendants treated him with respect, his table was
supplied more abundantly and daintily than his habitual abstinence
required, and the monks and learned men whom he had favoured, were, we
need not repeat, permitted to enliven his solitude with their grave
converse.

On the other hand, all attempts at correspondence between Margaret or
the exiled Lancastrians and himself had been jealously watched, and
when detected, the emissaries had been punished with relentless
severity.  A man named Hawkins had been racked for attempting to
borrow money for the queen from the great London merchant, Sir Thomas
Cook.  A shoemaker had been tortured to death with red-hot pincers for
abetting her correspondence with her allies.  Various persons had been
racked for similar offences; but the energy of Margaret and the zeal
of her adherents were still unexhausted and unconquered.

Either unconscious or contemptuous of the perils to which he was
subjected, the student, with his silent companions, performed the
voyage, and landed in sight of the Fortress-Palatine.  And now Hugh
stopped before a house of good fashion, knocked at the door, which was
opened by an old servitor, disappeared for a few moments, and
returning, informed Sibyll, in a meaning whisper, that the gentlewoman
within was a good Lancastrian, and prayed the donzell to rest in her
company till Master Warner's return.

Sibyll, accordingly, after pressing her father's hand without fear--
for she had deemed the sole danger Adam risked was from the rabble by
the way--followed Hugh into a fair chamber, strewed with rushes, where
an aged dame, of noble air and aspect, was employed at her broidery
frame.  This gentlewoman, the widow of a nobleman who had fallen in
the service of Henry, received her graciously, and Hugh then retired
to complete his commission.  The student, the mule, the model, and the
porter pursued their way to the entrance of that part of the gloomy
palace inhabited by Henry.  Here they were stopped, and Adam, after
rummaging long in vain for the chamberlain's passport, at last happily
discovered it, pinned to his sleeve, by Sibyll's forethought.  On this
a gentleman was summoned to inspect the order, and in a few moments
Adam was conducted to the presence of the illustrious prisoner.

"And what," said a subaltern officer, lolling by the archway of the
(now styled) "Bloody Tower," hard by the turret devoted to the
prisoner, [The Wakefield Tower] and speaking to Adam's guide, who
still mounted guard by the model,--"what may be the precious burden of
which thou art the convoy?"

"Marry, sir," said Hugh, who spoke in the strong Yorkshire dialect,
which we are obliged to render into intelligible English--"marry, I
weet not,--it is some curious puppet-box, or quiet contrivance, that
Master Warner, whom they say is a very deft and ingenious personage,
is permitted to bring hither for the Lord Henry's diversion."

"A puppet-box!" said the officer, with much animated curiosity.
"'Fore the Mass! that must be a pleasant sight.  Lift the lid,
fellow!"

"Please your honour, I do not dare," returned Hugh,--"I but obey
orders."

"Obey mine, then.  Out of the way," and the officer lifted the lid of
the pannier with the point of his dagger, and peered within.  He drew
back, much disappointed.  "Holy Mother!" said he, "this seemeth more
like an instrument of torture than a juggler's merry device.  It looks
parlous ugly!"

"Hush!" said one of the lazy bystanders, with whom the various
gateways and courts of the Palace-Fortress were crowded, "hush--thy
cap and thy knee, sir!"

The officer started; and, looking round, perceived a young man of low
stature, followed by three or four knights and nobles, slowly
approaching towards the arch, and every cap in the vicinity was off,
and every knee bowed.

The eye of this young man was already bent, with a searching and keen
gaze, upon the motionless mule, standing patiently by the Wakefield
Tower; and turning from the mule to the porter, the latter shrunk, and
grew pale, at that dark, steady, penetrating eye, which seemed to
pierce at once into the secrets and hearts of men.

"Who may this young lord be?" he whispered to the officer.

"Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, man," was the answer.  "Uncover,
varlet!"

"Surely," said the prince, pausing by the gate, "surely this is no
sumpter-mule, bearing provisions to the Lord Henry of Windsor.  It
would be but poor respect to that noble person, whom, alas the day!
his grace the king is unwillingly compelled to guard from the
malicious designs of rebels and mischief-seekers, that one not bearing
the king's livery should attend to any of the needful wants of so
worshipful a lord and guest!"

"My lord," said the officer at the gate, "one Master Adam Warner hath
just, by permission, been conducted to the Lord Henry's presence, and
the beast beareth some strange and grim-looking device for my lord's
diversion."

The singular softness and urbanity which generally characterized the
Duke of Gloucester's tone and bearing at that time,--which in a court
so full of factions and intrigues made him the enemy of none and
seemingly the friend of all, and, conjoined with abilities already
universally acknowledged, had given to his very boyhood a pre-eminence
of grave repute and good opinion, which, indeed, he retained till the
terrible circumstances connected with his accession to the throne,
under the bloody name of Richard the Third, roused all men's hearts
and reasons into the persuasion that what before had seemed virtue was
but dissimulation,--this singular sweetness, we say, of manner and
voice, had in it, nevertheless, something that imposed and thrilled
and awed.  And in truth, in our common and more vulgar intercourse
with life, we must have observed, that where external gentleness of
bearing is accompanied by a repute for iron will, determined
resolution, and a serious, profound, and all-inquiring intellect, it
carries with it a majesty wholly distinct from that charm which is
exercised by one whose mildness of nature corresponds with the outward
humility; and, if it does not convey the notion of falseness, bears
the appearance of that perfect self-possession, that calm repose of
power, which intimidates those it influences far more than the
imperious port and the loud voice.  And they who best knew the duke,
knew also that, despite this general smoothness of mien, his
temperament was naturally irritable, quick, and subject to stormy
gusts of passion, the which defects his admirers praised him for
labouring hard and sedulously to keep in due control.  Still, to a
keen observer, the constitutional tendencies of that nervous
temperament were often visible, even in his blandest moments, even
when his voice was most musical, his smile most gracious.  If
something stung or excited him, an uneasy gnawing of the nether lip, a
fretful playing with his dagger, drawing it up and down from its
sheath, [Pol. Virg. 565] a slight twitching of the muscles of the
face, and a quiver of the eyelid, betokened the efforts he made at
self-command; and now, as his dark eyes rested upon Hugh's pale
countenance, and then glanced upon the impassive mule, dozing quietly
under the weight of poor Adam's model, his hand mechanically sought
his dagger-hilt, and his face took a sinister and sombre expression.

"Thy name, friend?"

"Hugh Withers, please you, my lord duke."

"Um!  North country, by thine accent.  Dost thou serve this Master
Warner?"

"No, my lord, I was only hired with my mule to carry--"

"Ah, true! to carry what thy pannier contains; open it.  Holy Paul! a
strange jonglerie indeed!  This Master Adam Warner,--methinks, I have
heard his name--a learned man--um--let me see his safe conduct.
Right,--it is Lord Hastings's signature."  But still the prince held
the passport, and still suspiciously eyed the Eureka and its
appliances, which, in their complicated and native ugliness of doors,
wheels, pipes, and chimney, were exposed to his view.  At this moment,
one of the attendants of Henry descended the stairs of the Wakefield
Tower, with a request that the model might be carried up to divert the
prisoner.

Richard paused a moment, as the officer hesitatingly watched his
countenance before giving the desired permission.  But the prince,
turning to him, and smoothing his brow, said mildly, "Certes! all that
can divert the Lord Henry must be innocent pastime.  And I am well
pleased that he hath this cheerful mood for recreation.  It gainsayeth
those who would accuse us of rigour in his durance.  Yes, this warrant
is complete and formal;" and the prince returned the passport to the
officer, and walked slowly on through that gloomy arch ever more
associated with Richard of Gloucester's memory, and beneath the very
room in which our belief yet holds that the infant sons of Edward IV.
breathed their last; still, as Gloucester moved, he turned and turned,
and kept his eye furtively fixed upon the porter.

"Lovell," he said to one of the gentlemen who attended him, and who
was among the few admitted to his more peculiar intimacy, "that man is
of the North."

"Well, my lord?"

"The North was always well affected to the Lancastrians.  Master
Warner hath been accused of witchcraft.  Marry, I should like to see
his device--um; Master Catesby, come hither,--approach, sir.  Go back,
and the instant Adam Warner and his contrivance are dismissed, bring
them both to me in the king's chamber.  Thou understandest?  We too
would see his device,--and let neither man nor mechanical, when once
they reappear, out of thine eye's reach.  For divers and subtle are
the contrivances of treasonable men!"

Catesby bowed, and Richard, without speaking further, took his way to
the royal apartments, which lay beyond the White Tower, towards the
river, and are long since demolished.

Meanwhile the porter, with the aid of one of the attendants, had
carried the model into the chamber of the august captive.  Henry,
attired in a loose robe, was pacing the room with a slow step, and his
head sunk on his bosom,--while Adam with much animation was enlarging
on the wonders of the contrivance he was about to show him.  The
chamber was commodious, and furnished with sufficient attention to the
state and dignity of the prisoner; for Edward, though savage and
relentless when his blood was up, never descended into the cool and
continuous cruelty of detail.

The chamber may yet be seen,--its shape a spacious octagon; but the
walls now rude and bare were then painted and blazoned with scenes
from the Old Testament.  The door opened beneath the pointed arch in
the central side (not where it now does), giving entrance from a small
anteroom, in which the visitor now beholds the receptacle for old
rolls and papers.  At the right, on entering, where now, if our memory
mistake not, is placed a press, stood the bed, quaintly carved, and
with hangings of damascene.  At the farther end the deep recess which
faced the ancient door was fitted up as a kind of oratory.  And there
were to be seen, besides the crucifix and the Mass-book, a profusion
of small vessels of gold and crystal, containing the relics, supposed
or real, of saint and martyr, treasures which the deposed king had
collected in his palmier days at a sum that, in the minds of his
followers, had been better bestowed on arms and war-steeds.  A young
man named Allerton--one of the three gentlemen personally attached to
Henry, to whom Edward had permitted general access, and who, in fact,
lodged in other apartments of the Wakefield Tower, and might be said
to share his captivity--was seated before a table, and following the
steps of his musing master, with earnest and watchful eyes.

One of the small spaniels employed in springing game--for Henry,
despite his mildness, had been fond of all the sports of the field--
lay curled round on the floor, but started up, with a shrill bark, at
the entrance of the bearer of the model, while a starling in a cage by
the window, seemingly delighted at the disturbance, flapped his wings,
and screamed out, "Bad men!  Bad world!  Poor Henry!"

The captive paused at that cry, and a sad and patient smile of
inexpressible melancholy and sweetness hovered over his lips.  Henry
still retained much of the personal comeliness he possessed at the
time when Margaret of Anjou, the theme of minstrel and minne singer,
left her native court of poets for the fatal throne of England.  But
beauty, usually so popular and precious a gift to kings, was not in
him of that order which commanded the eye and moved the admiration of
a turbulent people and a haughty chivalry.  The features, if regular,
were small; their expression meek and timid; the form, though tall,
was not firm-knit and muscular; the lower limbs were too thin, the
body had too much flesh, the delicate hands betrayed the sickly
paleness of feeble health; there was a dreamy vagueness in the clear
soft blue eyes, and a listless absence of all energy in the habitual
bend, the slow, heavy, sauntering tread,--all about that benevolent
aspect, that soft voice, that resigned mien, and gentle manner, spoke
the exquisite, unresisting goodness, which provoked the lewd to taunt,
the hardy to despise, the insolent to rebel; for the foes of a king in
stormy times are often less his vices than his virtues.

"And now, good my lord," said Adam, hastening, with eager hands, to
assist the bearer in depositing the model on the table--"now will I
explain to you the contrivance which it hath cost me long years of
patient toil to shape from thought into this iron form."

"But first," said Allerton, "were it not well that these good people
withdrew?  A contriver likes not others to learn his secret ere the
time hath come to reap its profits."

"Surely, surely!" said Adam, and alarmed at the idea thus suggested,
he threw the folds of his gown over the model.

The attendant bowed and retired; Hugh followed him, but not till he
had exchanged a significant look with Allerton.  As soon as the room
was left clear to Adam, the captive, and Master Allerton, the last
rose, and looking hastily round the chamber, approached the
mechanician.  "Quick, sir!" said he, in a whisper, "we are not often
left without witnesses."

"Verily," said Adam, who had now forgotten kings and stratagems, plots
and counterplots, and was all absorbed in his invention, "verily,
young man, hurry not in this fashion,--I am about to begin.  Know, my
lord," and he turned to Henry, who, with an indolent, dreamy gaze,
stood contemplating the Eureka,--"know that more than a hundred years
before the Christian era, one Hero, an Alexandrian, discovered the
force produced by the vapour begot by heat on water.  That this power
was not unknown to the ancient sages, witness the contrivance, not
otherwise to be accounted for, of the heathen oracles; but to our
great countryman and predecessor, Roger Bacon, who first suggested
that vehicles might be drawn without steeds or steers, and ships
might--"

"Marry, sir," interrupted Allerton, with great impatience, "it is not
to prate to us of such trivial fables of Man, or such wanton sports of
the Foul Fiend, that thou hast risked limb and life.  Time is
precious.  I have been prevised that thou hast letters for King Henry;
produce them, quick!"

A deep glow of indignation had overspread the enthusiast's face at the
commencement of this address; but the close reminded him, in truth, of
his errand.

"Hot youth," said he, with dignity, "a future age may judge
differently of what thou deemest trivial fables, and may rate high
this poor invention when the brawls of York and Lancaster are
forgotten."

"Hear him," said Henry, with a soft smile, and laying his hand on the
shoulder of the young man, who was about to utter a passionate and
scornful retort,--"hear him,  sir.  Have I not often and ever said
this same thing to thee?  We children of a day imagine our contests
are the sole things that move the world.  Alack! our fathers thought
the same; and they and their turmoils sleep forgotten!  Nay, Master
Warner,"--for here Adam, poor man, awed by Henry's mildness into shame
at his discourteous vaunting, began to apologize,--"nay, sir, nay--
thou art right to contemn our bloody and futile struggles for a crown
of thorns; for--"

    'Kingdoms are but cares,
       State is devoid of stay
     Riches are ready snares,
       And hasten to decay.'

[Lines ascribed to Henry VI., with commendation "as a prettie verse,"
by Sir John Harrington, in the "Nugae Antiquate."  They are also given,
with little alteration, to the unhappy king by Baldwin, in his tragedy
of "King Henry VI."]

"And yet, sir, believe me, thou hast no cause for vain glory in thine
own craft and labours; for to wit and to lere there are the same
vanity and vexation of spirit as to war and empire.  Only, O would-be
wise man, only when we muse on Heaven do our souls ascend from the
fowler's snare!"

"My saint-like liege," said Allerton, bowing low, and with tears in
his eyes, "thinkest thou not that thy very disdain of thy rights makes
thee more worthy of them?  If not for thine, for thy son's sake,
remember that the usurper sits on the throne of the conqueror of
Agincourt!--Sir Clerk, the letters."

Adam, already anxious to retrieve the error of his first
forgetfulness, here, after a moment's struggle for the necessary
remembrance, drew the papers from the labyrinthine receptacle which
concealed them; and Henry uttered an exclamation of joy as, after
cutting the silk, his eye glanced over the writing--

"My Margaret! my wife!"  Presently he grew pale, and his hands
trembled.  "Saints defend her!  Saints defend her!  She is here,
disguised, in London!"

"Margaret! our hero-queen! the manlike woman!" exclaimed Allerton,
clasping his hands.  "Then be sure that--"  He stopped, and abruptly
taking Adam's arm, drew him aside, while Henry continued to read--
"Master Warner, we may trust thee,--thou art one of us; thou art sent
here, I know; by Robin of Redesdale,--we may trust thee?"

"Young sir," replied the philosopher, gravely, "the fears and hopes of
power are not amidst the uneasier passions of the student's mind.  I
pledged myself but to bear these papers hither, and to return with
what may be sent back."

"But thou didst this for love of the cause, the truth, and the right?"

"I did it partly from Hilyard's tale of wrong, but partly, also, for
the gold," answered Adam, simply; and his noble air, his high brow,
the serene calm of his features, so contrasted with the meanness
implied in the latter words of his confession, that Allerton stared at
him amazed, and without reply.

Meanwhile Henry had concluded the letter, and with a heavy sigh
glanced over the papers that accompanied it.  "Alack! alack! more
turbulence, more danger and disquiet, more of my people's blood!"  He
motioned to the young man, and drawing him to the window, while Adam
returned to his model, put the papers in his hand.  "Allerton," he
said, "thou lovest me, but thou art one of the few in this distraught
land who love also God.  Thou art not one of the warriors, the men of
steel.  Counsel me.  See: Margaret demands my signature to these
papers; the one, empowering and craving the levy of men and arms in
the northern counties; the other, promising free pardon to all who
will desert Edward; the third--it seemeth to me more strange and less
kinglike than the others--undertaking to abolish all the imposts and
all the laws that press upon the commons, and (is this a holy and
pious stipulation?) to inquire into the exactions and persecutions of
the priesthood of our Holy Church!"

"Sire!" said the young man, after he had hastily perused the papers,
"my lady liege showeth good argument for your assent to two, at least,
of these undertakings.  See the names of fifty gentlemen ready to take
arms in your cause if authorized by your royal warrant.  The men of
the North are malcontent with the usurper, but they will not yet stir,
unless at your own command.  Such documents will, of course, be used
with discretion, and not to imperil your Grace's safety."

"My safety!" said Henry, with a flash of his father's hero soul in his
eyes--"of that I think not!  If I have small courage to attack, I have
some fortitude to bear.  But three months after these be signed, how
many brave hearts will be still! how many stout hands be dust!  O
Margaret!  Margaret! why temptest thou?  Wert thou so happy when a
queen?"  The prisoner broke from Allerton's arm, and walked, in great
disorder and irresolution, to and fro the chamber; and strange it was
to see the contrast between himself and Warner,--both in so much
alike, both so purely creatures out of the common world, so gentle,
abstract, so utterly living in the life apart: and now the student so
calm, the prince so disturbed!  The contrast struck Henry himself!  He
paused abruptly, and, folding his arms, contemplated the philosopher,
as, with an affectionate complacency, Adam played and toyed, as it
were, with his beloved model; now opening and shutting again its
doors, now brushing away with his sleeve some particles of dust that
had settled on it, now retiring a few paces to gaze the better on its
stern symmetry.

"Oh, my Allerton!" cried Henry, "behold! the kingdom a man makes out
of his own mind is the only one that it delighteth man to govern!
Behold, he is lord over its springs and movements; its wheels revolve
and stop at his bidding.  Here, here, alone, God never asketh the
ruler, 'Why was the blood of thousands poured forth like water, that a
worm might wear a crown?'"

"Sire," said Allerton, solemnly, "when our Heavenly King appoints his
anointed representative on earth, He gives to that human delegate no
power to resign the ambassade and trust. What suicide is to a man,
abdication is to a king!  How canst thou dispose of thy son's rights?
And what becomes of those rights if thou wilt prefer for him the
exile, for thyself the prison, when one effort may restore a throne!"

Henry seemed struck by a tone of argument that suited both his own
mind and the reasoning of the age.  He gazed a moment on the face of
the young man, muttered to himself, and suddenly moving to the table,
signed the papers, and restored them to Adam, who mechanically
replaced them in their iron hiding-place.

"Now begone, Sir!" whispered Allerton, afraid that Henry's mind might
again change.

"Will not my lord examine the engine?" asked Warner, half-
beseechingly.

"Not to-day!  See, he has already retired to his oratory, he is in
prayer!" and, going to the door, Allerton summoned the attendants in
waiting to carry down the model.

"Well, well, patience, patience! thou shalt have thine audience at
last," muttered Adam, as he retired from the room, his eyes fixed upon
the neglected infant of his brain.




CHAPTER VI.

HOW, ON LEAVING KING LOG, FOOLISH WISDOM RUNS A-MUCK ON KING STORK.

At the outer door of the Tower by which he had entered, the
philosopher was accosted by Catesby,--a man who, in imitation of his
young patron, exhibited the soft and oily manner which concealed
intense ambition and innate ferocity.

"Worshipful my master," said he, bowing low, but with a half sneer on
his lips, "the king and his Highness the Duke of Gloucester have heard
much of your strange skill, and command me to lead you to their
presence.  Follow, sir, and you, my men, convey this quaint
contrivance to the king's apartments."

With this, not waiting for any reply, Catesby strode on.  Hugh's face
fell; he turned very pale, and, imagining himself unobserved, turned
round to slink away.  But Catesby, who seemed to have eyes at the back
of his head, called out, in a mild tone,--

"Good fellow, help to bear the mechanical--you, too, may be needed."

"Cog's wounds!" muttered Hugh, "an' I had but known what it was to set
my foot in a king's palace!  Such walking may do for the silken shoon,
but the hobnail always gets into a hobble."  With that, affecting a
cheerful mien, he helped to replace the model on the mule.

Meanwhile, Adam, elated, poor man! at the flattery of the royal
mandate, persuaded that his fame had reached Edward's ears, and chafed
at the little heed paid by the pious Henry to his great work, stalked
on, his head in the air.  "Verily," mused the student, "King Edward
may have been a cruel youth, and over hasty; it is horrible to think
of Robert Hilyard's calamities!  But men do say he hath an acute and
masterly comprehension.  Doubtless, he will perceive at a glance how
much I can advantage his kingdom."  With this, we grieve to say,
selfish reflection--which, if the thought of his model could have
slept a while, Adam would have blushed to recall, as an affront to
Hilyard's wrongs--the philosopher followed Catesby across the spacious
yard, along a narrow passage, and up a winding turret-stair, to a room
in the third story, which opened at one door into the king's closet,
at the other into the spacious gallery, which was already a feature in
the plan of the more princely houses.  In another minute Adam and his
model were in the presence of the king.  The part of the room in which
Edward sat was distinguished from the rest by a small eastern carpet
on the floor (a luxury more in use in the palaces of that day than it
appears to have been a century later); [see the Narrative of the Lord
Grauthuse, before referred to] a table was set before him, on which
the model was placed.  At his right hand sat Jacquetta, Duchess of
Bedford, the queen's mother; at his left, Prince Richard.  The
duchess, though not without the remains of beauty, had a stern,
haughty, scornful expression in her sharp aquiline features,
compressed lips, and imperious eye.  The paleness of her complexion,
and the careworn, anxious lines of her countenance, were ascribed by
the vulgar to studies of no holy cast. Her reputation for sorcery and
witchcraft was daily increasing, and served well the purpose of the
discontented barons, whom the rise of her children mortified and
enraged.

"Approach, Master--What say you his name is, Richard?"

"Adam Warner," replied the sweet voice of the Duke of Gloucester; "of
excellent skill in the mathematics."

"Approach, sir, and show us the nature of this notable invention."

"I desire nothing better, my lord king," said Adam, boldly; "but first
let me crave a small modicum of fuel.  Fire, which is the life of the
world, as the wise of old held it, is also the soul of this, my
mechanical."

"Peradventure," whispered the duchess, "the wizard desireth to consume
us."

"More likely," replied Richard, in the same undertone, "to consume
whatever of treasonable nature may lurk concealed in his engine."

"True," said Edward, and then, speaking aloud, "Master Warner," he
added, "put thy puppet to its purpose without fire,--we will it."

"It is impossible, my lord," said Adam, with a lofty smile.  "Science
and nature are more powerful than a king's word."

"Do not say that in public, my friend," said Edward, dryly, "or we
must hang thee!  I would not my subjects were told anything so
treasonable.  Howbeit, to give thee no excuse in failure, thou shalt
have what thou needest."

"But surely not in our presence," exclaimed the duchess.  "This may be
a device of the Lancastrians for our perdition."

"As you please, belle mere," said Edward, and he motioned to a
gentleman, who stood a few paces behind his chair, and who, from the
entrance of the mechanician, had seemed to observe him with intense
interest. "Master Nevile, attend this wise man; supply his wants, and
hark, in thy ear, watch well that he abstract nothing from the womb of
his engine; observe what he doeth; be all eyes."  Marmaduke bowed low
to conceal his change of countenance, and, stepping forward, made a
sign to Adam to follow him.

"Go also, Catesby," said Richard to his follower, who had taken his
post near him, "and clear the chamber."

As soon as the three members of the royal family were left alone, the
king, stretching himself, with a slight yawn, observed, "This man
looks not like a conspirator, brother Richard, though his sententiary
as to nature and science lacked loyalty and respect."

"Sire and brother," answered Richard, "great leaders often dupe their
own tools; at least, meseemeth that they would reason well so to do.
Remember, I have told thee that there is strong cause to suppose
Margaret to be in London.  In the suburbs of the city has also
appeared, within the last few weeks, that strange and dangerous
person, whose very objects are a mystery, save that he is our foe,--
Robin of Redesdale.  The men of the North have exhibited a spirit of
insurrection; a man of that country attends this reputed wizard, and
he himself was favoured in past times by Henry of Windsor.  These are
ominous signs when the conjunctions be considered!"

"It is well said; but a fair day for breathing our palfrey is half-
spent!" returned the indolent prince.  "By'r Lady!  I like the fashion
of thy super-tunic well, Richard; but thou hast it too much puffed
over the shoulders."

Richard's dark eye shot fire, and he gnawed his lip as he answered,
"God hath not given to me the fair shape of my kinsmen."

"Thy pardon, dear boy," said Edward, kindly; "yet little needest thou
our broad backs and strong sinews, for thou hast a tongue to charm
women and a wit to command men."

Richard bowed his face, little less beautiful than his brother's,
though wholly different from it in feature, for Edward had the long
oval countenance, the fair hair, the rich colouring, and the large
outline of his mother, the Rose of Raby.  Richard, on the contrary,
had the short face, the dark brown locks, and the pale olive
complexion of his father, whom he alone of the royal brothers
strikingly resembled.  [Pol. Virg. 544.]

The cheeks, too, were somewhat sunken, and already, though scarcely
past childhood, about his lips were seen the lines of thoughtful
manhood.  But then those small features, delicately aquiline, were so
regular; that dark eye was so deep, so fathomless in its bright,
musing intelligence; that quivering lip was at once so beautifully
formed and so expressive of intellectual subtlety and haughty will;
and that pale forehead was so massive, high, and majestic,--that when,
at a later period, the Scottish prelate [Archibald Quhitlaw.--"Faciem
tuam summo imperio principatu dignam inspicit, quam moralis et
heroica, virtus illustrat," etc.--We need scarcely observe that even a
Scotchman would not have risked a public compliment to Richard's face,
if so inappropriate as to seem a sarcasm, especially as the orator
immediately proceeds to notice the shortness of Richard's stature,--a
comment not likely to have been peculiarly acceptable in the Rous
Roll, the portrait of Richard represents him as undersized, but
compactly and strongly built, and without any sign of deformity,
unless the inelegant defect of a short neck can be so called.]
commended Richard's "princely countenance," the compliment was not one
to be disputed, much less contemned.  But now as he rose, obedient to
a whisper from the duchess, and followed her to the window, while
Edward appeared engaged in admiring the shape of his own long,
upturned shoes, those defects in his shape which the popular hatred
and the rise of the House of Tudor exaggerated into the absolute
deformity that the unexamining ignorance of modern days and
Shakspeare's fiery tragedy have fixed into established caricature,
were sufficiently apparent.  Deformed or hunchbacked we need scarcely
say he was not, for no man so disfigured could have possessed that
great personal strength which he invariably exhibited in battle,
despite the comparative slightness of his frame.  He was considerably
below the ordinary height, which the great stature of his brother
rendered yet more disadvantageous by contrast; but his lower limbs
were strong-jointed and muscular.  Though the back was not curved, yet
one shoulder was slightly higher than the other, which was the more
observable from the evident pains that he took to disguise it, and the
gorgeous splendour, savouring of personal coxcombry--from which no
Plantagenet was ever free,--that he exhibited in his dress.  And as,
in a warlike age, the physical conformation of men is always
critically regarded, so this defect and that of his low stature were
not so much redeemed as they would be in our day by the beauty and
intelligence of his face.  Added to this, his neck was short, and a
habit of bending his head on his bosom (arising either from thought,
or the affectation of humility, which was a part of his character)
made it seem shorter still.  But this peculiarity, while taking from
the grace, added to the strength of his frame, which, spare, sinewy,
and compact, showed to an observer that power of endurance, that
combination of solid stubbornness and active energy, which, at the
battle of Barnet, made him no less formidable to encounter than the
ruthless sword of the mighty Edward.

"So, prince," said the duchess, "this new gentleman of the king's is,
it seems, a Nevile.  When will Edward's high spirit cast off that
hateful yoke?"

Richard sighed and shook his head.  The duchess, encouraged by these
signs of sympathy, continued,--

"Your brother Clarence, Prince Richard, despises us, to cringe to the
proud earl.  But you--"

"I am not suitor to the Lady Isabel; Clarence is overlavish, and
Isabel has a fair face and a queenly dowry."

"May I perish," said the duchess, "ere Warwick's daughter wears the
baudekin of royalty, and sits in as high a state as the queen's
mother!  Prince, I would fain confer with thee; we have a project to
abase and banish this hateful lord.  If you but join us, success is
sure; the Count of Charolois--"

"Dear lady," interrupted Richard, with an air of profound humility,
"tell me nothing of plot or project; my years are too few for such
high and subtle policy; and the Lord Warwick hath been a leal friend
to our House of York."

The duchess bit her lip--"Yet I have heard you tell Edward that a
subject can be too powerful?"

"Never, lady! you have never heard me."

"Then Edward has told Elizabeth that you so spoke."

"Ah," said Richard, turning away with a smile, "I see that the king's
conscience hath a discreet keeper.  Pardon me, Edward, now that he
hath sufficiently surveyed his shoon, must marvel at this prolonged
colloquy.  And see, the door opens."

With this, the duke slowly moved to the table, and resumed his seat.

Marmaduke, full of fear for his ancient host, had in vain sought an
opportunity to address a few words of exhortation to him to forbear
all necromancy, and to abstain from all perilous distinctions between
the power of Edward IV. and that of his damnable Nature and Science;
but Catesby watched him with so feline a vigilance, that he was unable
to slip in more than--"Ah, Master Warner, for our blessed Lord's sake,
recollect that rack and cord are more than mere words here!"  To the
which pleasant remark, Adam, then busy in filling his miniature
boiler, only replied by a wistful stare, not in the least recognizing
the Nevile in his fine attire, and the new-fashioned mode of dressing
his long hair.

But Catesby watched in vain for the abstraction of any treasonable
contents in the engine, which the Duke of Gloucester had so shrewdly
suspected.  The truth must be told.  Adam had entirely forgotten that
in the intricacies of his mechanical lurked the papers that might
overthrow a throne!  Magnificent Incarnation was he (in that oblivion)
of Science itself, which cares not a jot for men and nations, in their
ephemeral existences; which only remembers THINGS,--things that endure
for ages; and in its stupendous calculations loses sight of the unit
of a generation!  No, he had thoroughly forgotten Henry, Edward, his
own limbs and life,--not only York and Lancaster, but Adam Warner and
the rack.  Grand in his forgetfulness, he stood before the tiger and
the tiger-cat,--Edward and--Richard,--A Pure Thought, a Man's Soul;
Science fearless in the presence of Cruelty, Tyranny, Craft, and
Power.

In truth, now that Adam was thoroughly in his own sphere, was in the
domain of which he was king, and those beings in velvet and ermine
were but as ignorant savages admitted to the frontier of his realm,
his form seemed to dilate into a majesty the beholders had not before
recognized; and even the lazy Edward muttered involuntarily, "By my
halidame, the man has a noble presence!"

"I am prepared now, sire," said Adam, loftily, "to show to my king and
to this court, that, unnoticed and obscure, in study and retreat,
often live those men whom kings may be proud to call their subjects.
Will it please you, my lords, this way!" and he motioned so
commandingly to the room in which he had left the Eureka, that his
audience rose by a common impulse, and in another minute stood grouped
round the model in the adjoining chamber.  This really wonderful
invention--so wonderful, indeed, that it will surpass the faith of
those who do not pause to consider what vast forestallments of modern
science have been made and lost in the darkness of ages not fitted to
receive them--was, doubtless, in many important details not yet
adapted for the practical uses to which Adam designed its application.
But as a mere model, as a marvellous essay, for the suggestion of
gigantic results, it was, perhaps, to the full as effective as the
ingenuity of a mechanic of our own day could construct.  It is true
that it was crowded with unnecessary cylinders, slides, cocks, and
wheals--hideous and clumsy to the eye--but through this intricacy the
great simple design accomplished its main object.  It contrived to
show what force and skill man can obtain from the alliance of nature;
the more clearly, inasmuch as the mechanism affixed to it, still more
ingenious than itself, was well calculated to illustrate practically
one of the many uses to which the principle was destined to be
applied.

Adam had not yet fathomed the secret by which to supply the miniature
cylinder with sufficient steam for any prolonged effect,--the great
truth of latent heat was unknown to him; but he had contrived to
regulate the supply of water so as to make the engine discharge its
duties sufficiently for the satisfaction of curiosity and the
explanation of its objects.  And now this strange thing of iron was in
full life.  From its serpent chimney issued the thick rapid smoke, and
the groan of its travail was heard within.

"And what propose you to yourself and to the kingdom in all this,
Master Adam?" asked Edward, curiously bending his tall person over the
tortured iron.

"I propose to make Nature the labourer of man," answered Warner.
"When I was a child of some eight years old, I observed that water
swelleth into vapour when fire is applied to it.  Twelve years
afterwards, at the age of twenty, I observed that while undergoing
this change it exerts a mighty mechanical force.  At twenty-five,
constantly musing, I said, 'Why should not that force become subject
to man's art?'  I then began the first rude model, of which this is
the descendant.  I noticed that the vapour so produced is elastic,--
that is, that as it expands, it presses against what opposes it; it
has a force applicable everywhere force is needed by man's labour.
Behold a second agency of gigantic resources!  And then, still
studying this, I perceived that the vapour thus produced can be
reconverted into water, shrinking necessarily, while so retransformed,
from the space it filled as vapour, and leaving that space a vacuum.
But Nature abhors a vacuum; produce a vacuum, and the bodies that
surround rush into it.  Thus, the vapour again, while changing back
into water, becomes also a force,--our agent.  And all the while these
truths were shaping themselves to my mind, I was devising and
improving also the material form by which I might render them useful
to man; so at last, out of these truths, arose this invention!"

"Pardie," said Edward, with the haste natural to royalty, "what in
common there can be between thy jargon of smoke and water and this
huge ugliness of iron passeth all understanding.  But spare us thy
speeches, and on to thy puppet-show."

Adam stared a moment at the king in the surprise that one full of his
subject feels when he sees it impossible to make another understand
it, sighed, shook his head, and prepared to begin.

"Observe," he said, "that there is no juggling, no deceit.  I will
place in this deposit this small lump of brass--would the size of this
toy would admit of larger experiment!  I will then pray ye to note, as
I open door after door, how the metal passes through various changes,
all operated by this one agency of vapour.  Heed and attend.  And if
the crowning work please thee, think, great king, what such an agency
upon the large scale would be to thee; think how it would multiply all
arts and lessen all labour; think that thou hast, in this, achieved
for a whole people the true philosopher's stone.  Now note!"

He placed the rough ore in its receptacle, and suddenly it seemed
seized by a vice within, and vanished.  He proceeded then, while
dexterously attending to the complex movements, to open door after
door, to show the astonished spectators the rapid transitions the
metal underwent, and suddenly, in the midst of his pride, he stopped
short, for, like a lightning-flash, came across his mind the
remembrance of the fatal papers.  Within the next door he was to open,
they lay concealed.  His change of countenance did not escape Richard,
and he noted the door which Adam forbore to open, as the student
hurriedly, and with some presence of mind, passed to the next, in
which the metal was shortly to appear.

"Open this door," said the prince, pointing to the handle.  "No!
forbear!  There is danger! forbear!" exclaimed the mechanician.

"Danger to thine own neck, varlet and impostor!" exclaimed the duke;
and he was about himself to open the door, when suddenly a loud roar,
a terrific explosion was heard.  Alas! Adam Warner had not yet
discovered for his engine what we now call the safety-valve.  The
steam contained in the miniature boiler had acquired an undue
pressure; Adam's attention had been too much engrossed to notice the
signs of the growing increase, and the rest may be easily conceived.
Nothing could equal the stupor and the horror of the spectators at
this explosion, save only the boy-duke, who remained immovable, and
still frowning.  All rushed to the door, huddling one on the other,
scarcely knowing what next was to befall them, but certain that the
wizard was bent upon their destruction.  Edward was the first to
recover himself; and seeing that no lives were lost, his first impulse
was that of ungovernable rage.

"Foul traitor!" he exclaimed, "was it for this that thou hast
pretended to beguile us with thy damnable sorceries?  Seize him!  Away
to the Tower Hill! and let the priest patter an ave while the doomsman
knots the rope."

Not a hand stirred; even Catesby would as lief have touched the king's
lion before meals, as that poor mechanician, standing aghast, and
unheeding all, beside his mutilated engine.

"Master Nevile," said the king, sternly, "dost thou hear us?

"Verily," muttered the Nevile, approaching very slowly, "I knew what
would happen; but to lay hands on my host, an' he were fifty times a
wizard--No!  My liege," he said in a firm tone, but falling on his
knee, and his gallant countenance pale with generous terror, "my
liege, forgive me.  This man succoured me when struck down and wounded
by a Lancastrian ruffian; this man gave me shelter, food, and healing.
Command me not, O gracious my lord, to aid in taking the life of one
to whom I owe my own."

"His life!" exclaimed the Duchess of Bedford,--"the life of this most
illustrious person!  Sire, you do not dream it!"

"Heh! by the saints, what now?" cried the king, whose choler, though
fierce and ruthless, was as short-lived as the passions of the
indolent usually are, and whom the earnest interposition of his
mother-in-law much surprised and diverted.  "If, fair belle-mere, thou
thinkest it so illustrious a deed to frighten us out of our mortal
senses, and narrowly to 'scape sending us across the river like a bevy
of balls from a bombard, there is no disputing of tastes.  Rise up,
Master Nevile, we esteem thee not less for thy boldness; ever be the
host and the benefactor revered by English gentlemen and Christian
youth.  Master Warner may go free."

Here Warner uttered so deep and hollow a groan, that it startled all
present.

"Twenty-five years of labour, and not to have seen this!" he
ejaculated.  "Twenty and five years, and all wasted!  How repair this
disaster?  O fatal day!"

"What says he?  What means he?" said Jacquetta.

"Come home!--home!" said Marmaduke, approaching the philosopher, in
great alarm lest he should once more jeopardize his life.  But Adam,
shaking him off, began eagerly, and with tremulous hands, to examine
the machine, and not perceiving any mode by which to guard in future
against a danger that he saw at once would, if not removed, render his
invention useless, tottered to a chair and covered his face with his
hands.

"He seemeth mightily grieved that our bones are still whole!" muttered
Edward.  "And why, belle-mere mine, wouldst thou protect this pleasant
tregetour?"

"What!" said the duchess, "see you not that a man capable of such
devices must be of doughty service against our foes?"

"Not I.  How?"

"Why, if merely to signify his displeasure at our young Richard's
over-curious meddling, he can cause this strange engine to shake the
walls,--nay, to destroy itself,--think what he might do were his power
and malice at our disposing.  I know something of these nigromancers."

"And would you knew less! for already the commons murmur at your
favour to them.  But be it as you will.  And now--ho, there! let our
steeds be caparisoned."

"You forget, sire," said Richard, who had hitherto silently watched
the various parties, "the object for which we summoned this worthy
man.  Please you now, sir, to open that door."

"No, no!" exclaimed the king, hastily, "I will have no more provoking
the foul fiend; conspirator or not, I have had enough of Master
Warner.  Pah!  My poor placard is turned lampblack.  Sweet mother-in-
law, take him under thy protection; and Richard, come with me."

So saying, the king linked his arm in that of the reluctant
Gloucester, and quitted the room.  The duchess then ordered the rest
also to depart, and was left alone with the crest-fallen philosopher.




CHAPTER VII.

MY LADY DUCHESS'S OPINION OF THE UTILITY OF MASTER WARNER'S INVENTION,
AND HER ESTEEM FOR ITS--EXPLOSION.

Adam, utterly unheeding, or rather deaf to, the discussion that had
taken place, and his narrow escape from cord and gibbet, lifted his
head peevishly from his bosom, as the duchess rested her hand almost
caressingly on his shoulder, and thus addressed him,--

"Most puissant Sir, think not that I am one of those who, in their
ignorance and folly, slight the mysteries of which thou art clearly so
great a master.  When I heard thee speak of subjecting Nature to Man,
I at once comprehended thee, and blushed for the dulness of my
kindred."

"Ah, lady, thou hast studied, then, the mathematics.  Alack! this is a
grievous blow; but it is no inherent fault in the device.  I am
clearly of mind that it can be remedied.  But oh! what time, what
thought, what sleepless nights, what gold will be needed!"

"Give me thy sleepless nights and thy grand thoughts, and thou shalt
not want gold."

"Lady," cried Adam, starting to his feet, "do I hear aright?  Art
thou, in truth, the patron I have so long dreamed of?  Hast thou the
brain and the heart to aid the pursuits of science?"

"Ay! and the power to protect the students!  Sage, I am the Duchess of
Bedford, whom men accuse of witchcraft,--as thee of wizardy.  From the
wife of a private gentleman, I have become the mother of a queen.  I
stand amidst a court full of foes; I desire gold to corrupt, and
wisdom to guard against, and means to destroy them.  And I seek all
these in men like thee!"

Adam turned on her his bewildered eyes, and made no answer.

"They tell me," said the duchess, "that Henry of Windsor employed
learned men to transmute the baser metals into gold.  Wert thou one of
them?"

"No."

"Thou knowest that art?"

"I studied it in my youth, but the ingredients of the crucible were
too costly."

"Thou shalt not lack them with me.  Thou knowest the lore of the
stars, and canst foretell the designs of enemies,--the hour whether to
act or to forbear?"

"Astrology I have studied, but that also was in youth; for there
dwelleth in the pure mathematics that have led me to this invention--"

"Truce with that invention, whatever it be; think of it no more,--it
has served its end in the explosion, which proved thy power of
mischief.  High objects are now before thee.  Wilt thou be of my
household, one of my alchemists and astrologers?  Thou shalt have
leisure, honour, and all the moneys thou canst need."

"Moneys!" said Adam, eagerly, and casting his eyes upon the mangled
model.  "Well, I agree; what you will,--alchemist, astrologist,
wizard,--what you will.  This shall all be repaired,--all; I begin to
see now, all!  I begin to see; yes, if a pipe by which the too-
excessive vapour could--ay, ay!--right, right," and he rubbed his
hands.

Jacquetta was struck with his enthusiasm.  "But surely, Master Warner,
this has some virtue you have not vouchsafed to explain; confide in
me, can it change iron to gold?"

"No; but--"

"Can it predict the future?"

"No; but--"

"Can it prolong life?"

"No; but--"

"Then, in God's name let us waste no more time about it!" said the
duchess, impatiently,--"your art is mine now.  Ho, there!--I will send
my page to conduct thee to thy apartments, and thou shalt lodge next
to Friar Bungey, a man of wondrous lere, Master Warner, and a worthy
confrere in thy researches.  Hast thou any one of kith and kin at home
to whom thou wilt announce thy advancement?"

"Ah, lady!  Heaven forgive me, I have a daughter,--an only child,--my
Sibyll; I cannot leave her alone, and--"

"Well, nothing should distract thy cares from thine art,--she shall be
sent for.  I will rank her amongst my maidens.  Fare-thee-well, Master
Warner!  At night I will send for thee, and appoint the tasks I would
have thee accomplish."

So saying, the duchess quitted the room, and left Adam alone, bending
over his model in deep revery.

From this absorption it was the poor man's fate to be again aroused.

The peculiar character of the boy-prince of Gloucester was that of one
who, having once seized upon an object, never willingly relinquished
it.  First, he crept and slid and coiled round it as the snake.  But
if craft failed, his passion, roused by resistance, sprang at his prey
with a lion's leap: and whoever examines the career of this
extraordinary personage, will perceive, that whatever might be his
habitual hypocrisy, he seemed to lose sight of it wholly when once
resolved upon force.  Then the naked ferocity with which the
destructive propensity swept away the objects in his path becomes
fearfully and startlingly apparent, and offers a strange contrast to
the wily duplicity with which, in calmer moments, he seems to have
sought to coax the victim into his folds.  Firmly convinced that
Adam's engine had been made the medium of dangerous and treasonable
correspondence with the royal prisoner, and of that suspicious,
restless, feverish temperament which never slept when a fear was
wakened, a doubt conceived, he had broke from his brother, whose more
open valour and less unquiet intellect were ever willing to leave the
crown defended but by the gibbet for the detected traitor, the sword
for the declared foe; and obtaining Edward's permission "to inquire
further into these strange matters," he sent at once for the porter
who had conveyed the model to the Tower; but that suspicious
accomplice was gone.  The sound of the explosion of the engine had no
less startled the guard below than the spectators above.  Releasing
their hold of their prisoner, they had some taken fairly to their
heels, others rushed into the palace to learn what mischief had
ensued; and Hugh, with the quick discretion of his north country, had
not lost so favourable an opportunity for escape.  There stood the
dozing mule at the door below, but the guide was vanished.  More
confirmed in his suspicions by this disappearance of Adam's companion,
Richard, giving some preparatory orders to Catesby, turned at once to
the room which still held the philosopher and his device.  He closed
the door on entering, and his brow was dark and sinister as he
approached the musing inmate.  But here we must return to Sibyll.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE OLD WOMAN TALKS OF SORROWS, THE YOUNG WOMAN DREAMS OF LOVE; THE
COURTIER FLIES FROM PRESENT POWER TO REMEMBRANCES OF PAST HOPES, AND
THE WORLD-BETTERED OPENS UTOPIA, WITH A VIEW OF THE GIBBET FOR THE
SILLY SAGE HE HAS SEDUCED INTO HIS SCHEMES,--SO, EVER AND EVERMORE,
RUNS THE WORLD AWAY!

The old lady looked up from her embroidery-frame, as Sibyll sat musing
on a stool before her; she scanned the maiden with a wistful and
somewhat melancholy eye.

"Fair girl," she said, breaking a silence that had lasted for some
moments, "it seems to me that I have seen thy face before.  Wert thou
never in Queen Margaret's court?"

"In childhood, yes, lady."

"Do you not remember me, the dame of Longueville?" Sibyll started in
surprise, and gazed long before she recognized the features of her
hostess; for the dame of Longueville had been still, when Sibyll was a
child at the court, renowned for matronly beauty, and the change was
greater than the lapse of years could account for.  The lady smiled
sadly: "Yes, you marvel to see me thus bent and faded.  Maiden, I lost
my husband at the battle of St. Alban's, and my three sons in the
field of Towton.  My lands and my wealth have been confiscated to
enrich new men; and to one of them--one of the enemies of the only
king whom Alice de Longueville will acknowledge--I owe the food for my
board and the roof for my head.  Do you marvel now that I am so
changed?"

Sibyll rose and kissed the lady's hand, and the tear that sparkled on
its surface was her only answer.

"I learn," said the dame of Longueville, "that your father has an
order from the Lord Hastings to see King Henry.  I trust that he will
rest here as he returns, to tell me how the monarch-saint bears his
afflictions.  But I know: his example should console us all."  She
paused a moment, and resumed, "Sees your father much of the Lord
Hastings?"

"He never saw him that I weet of," answered Sibyll, blushing; "the
order was given, but as of usual form to a learned scholar."

"But given to whom?" persisted the lady.  "To--to me," replied Sibyll,
falteringly.  The dame of Longueville smiled.

"Ah, Hastings could scarcely say no to a prayer from such rosy lips.
But let me not imply aught to disparage his humane and gracious heart.
To Lord Hastings, next to God and his saints, I owe all that is left
to me on earth.  Strange that he is not yet here!  This is the usual
day and hour on which he comes, from pomp and pleasurement, to visit
the lonely widow."  And, pleased to find an attentive listener to her
grateful loquacity, the dame then proceeded, with warm eulogies upon
her protector, to inform Sibyll that her husband had, in the first
outbreak of the Civil War, chanced to capture Hastings, and, moved by
his valour and youth, and some old connections with his father, Sir
Leonard, had favoured his escape from the certain death that awaited
him from the wrath of the relentless Margaret.  After the field of
Towton, Hastings had accepted one of the manors confiscated from the
attainted House of Longueville, solely that he might restore it to the
widow of the fallen lord; and with a chivalrous consideration, not
contented with beneficence, he omitted no occasion to show to the
noblewoman whatever homage and respect might soothe the pride, which,
in the poverty of those who have been great, becomes disease.  The
loyalty of the Lady Longueville was carried to a sentiment most rare
in that day, and rather resembling the devotion inspired by the later
Stuarts.  She made her home within the precincts of the Tower, that,
morning and eve, when Henry opened his lattice to greet the rising and
the setting sun, she might catch a dim and distant glance of the
captive king, or animate, by that sad sight, the hopes and courage of
the Lancastrian emissaries, to whom, fearless of danger, she scrupled
not to give counsel, and, at need, asylum.

While Sibyll, with enchanted sense, was listening to the praise of
Hastings, a low knock at the door was succeeded by the entrance of
that nobleman himself.  Not to Elizabeth, in the alcoves of Shene, or
on the dais of the palace hall, did the graceful courtier bend with
more respectful reverence than to the powerless widow, whose very
bread was his alms; for the true high-breeding of chivalry exists not
without delicacy of feeling, formed originally by warmth of heart; and
though the warmth may lose its glow, the delicacy endures, as the
steel that acquires through heat its polish retains its lustre, even
when the shine but betrays the hardness.

"And how fares my noble lady of Longueville?  But need I ask? for her
cheek still wears the rose of Lancaster.  A companion?  Ha!  Mistress
Warner, I learn now how much pleasure exists in surprise!"

"My young visitor," said the dame, "is but an old friend; she was one
of the child-maidens reared at the court of Queen Margaret."

"In sooth!" exclaimed Hastings; and then, in an altered tone, he
added, "but I should have guessed so much grace had not come all from
Nature.  And your father has gone to see the Lord Henry, and you rest,
here, his return?  Ah, noble lady, may you harbour always such
innocent Lancastrians!"  The fascinations of this eminent person's
voice and manner were such that they soon restored Sibyll, to the ease
she had lost at his sudden entrance.  He conversed gayly with the old
dame upon such matters of court anecdote as in all the changes of
state were still welcome to one so long accustomed to court air; but
from time to time he addressed himself to Sibyll, and provoked replies
which startled herself--for she was not yet well aware of her own
gifts--by their spirit and intelligence.

"You do not tell us," said the Lady Longueville, sarcastically, "of
the happy spousailles of Elizabeth's brother with the Duchess of
Norfolk,--a bachelor of twenty, a bride of some eighty-two.  [The old
chronicler justly calls this a "diabolical marriage."  It greatly
roused the wrath of the nobles and indeed of all honourable men, as a
proof of the shameless avarice of the queen's family.]  Verily, these
alliances are new things in the history of English royalty.  But when
Edward, who, even if not a rightful king, is at least a born
Plantagenet, condescended to marry Mistress Elizabeth, a born
Woodville, scarce of good gentleman's blood, naught else seems strange
enough to provoke marvel."

"As to the last matter," returned Hastings, gravely, "though her grace
the queen be no warm friend to me, I must needs become her champion
and the king's.  The lady who refused the dishonouring suit of the
fairest prince and the boldest knight in the Christian world thereby
made herself worthy of the suit that honoured her; it was not
Elizabeth Woodville alone that won the purple.  On the day she mounted
a throne, the chastity of woman herself was crowned."

"What!" said the Lady Longueville, angrily, "mean you to say that
there is no disgrace in the mal-alliance of kite and falcon, of
Plantagenet and Woodville, of high-born and mud-descended?"

"You forget, lady, that the widow of Henry the Fifth, Catherine of
Valois, a king's daughter, married the Welsh soldier, Owen Tudor; that
all England teems with brave men born from similar spousailles, where
love has levelled all distinctions, and made a purer hearth, and
raised a bolder offspring, than the lukewarm likings of hearts that
beat but for lands and gold.  Wherefore, lady, appeal not to me, a
squire of dames, a believer in the old Parliament of Love; whoever is
fair and chaste, gentle and loving, is, in the eyes of William de
Hastings, the mate and equal of a king!"

Sibyll turned involuntarily as the courtier spoke thus, with animation
in his voice, and fire in his eyes; she turned, and her breath came
quick; she turned, and her look met his, and those words and that look
sank deep into her heart; they called forth brilliant and ambitious
dreams; they rooted the growing love, but they aided to make it holy;
they gave to the delicious fancy what before it had not paused, on its
wing, to sigh for; they gave it that without which all fancy sooner or
later dies; they gave it that which, once received in a noble heart,
is the excuse for untiring faith; they gave it,--HOPE!

"And thou wouldst say," replied the lady of Longueville, with a
meaning smile, still more emphatically--"thou wouldst say that a
youth, brave and well nurtured, ambitious and loving, ought, in the
eyes of rank and pride, to be the mate and equal of--"

"Ah, noble dame," interrupted Hastings, quickly, "I must not prolong
encounter with so sharp a wit.  Let me leave that answer to this fair
maiden, for by rights it is a challenge to her sex, not to mine."

"How say you, then, Mistress Warner?" said the dame.  "Suppose a young
heiress, of the loftiest birth, of the broadest lands, of the
comeliest form--suppose her wooed by a gentleman poor and stationless,
but with a mighty soul, born to achieve greatness, would she lower
herself by hearkening to his suit?"

"A maiden, methinks," answered Sibyll, with reluctant but charming
hesitation, "cannot love truly if she love unworthily; and if she love
worthily, it is not rank nor wealth she loves."

"But her parents, sweet mistress, may deem differently; and should not
her love refuse submission to their tyranny?" asked Hastings.

"Nay, good my lord, nay," returned Sibyll, shaking her head with
thoughtful demureness.  "Surely the wooer, if he love worthily, will
not press her to the curse of a child's disobedience and a parent's
wrath!"

"Shrewdly answered," said the dame of Longueville.  "Then she would
renounce the poor gentleman if the parent ordain her to marry a rich
lord.  Ah, you hesitate, for a woman's ambition is pleased with the
excuse of a child's obedience."

Hastings said this so bitterly that Sibyll could not but perceive that
some personal feeling gave significance to his words.  Yet how could
they be applied to him,--to one now in rank and repute equal to the
highest below the throne?

"If the demoiselle should so choose," said the dame of Longueville,
"it seemeth to me that the rejected suitor might find it facile to
disdain and to forget."

Hastings made no reply; but that remarkable and deep shade of
melancholy which sometimes in his gayest hours startled those who
beheld it, and which had, perhaps, induced many of the prophecies that
circulated as to the untimely and violent death that should close his
bright career, gathered like a cloud over his brow.  At this moment
the door opened gently, and Robert Hilyard stood at the aperture.  He
was clad in the dress of a friar, but the raised cowl showed his
features to the lady of Longueville, to whom alone he was visible; and
those bold features were literally haggard with agitation and alarm.
He lifted his finger to his lips, and motioning the lady to follow
him, closed the door.

The dame of Longueville rose, and praying her visitors to excuse her
absence for a few moments, she left Hastings and Sibyll to themselves.

"Lady," said Hilyard, in a hollow whisper, as soon as the dame
appeared in the low hall, communicating on the one hand with the room
just left, on the other with the street, "I fear all will be detected.
Hush!  Adam and the iron coffer that contains the precious papers have
been conducted to Edward's presence.  A terrible explosion, possibly
connected with the contrivance, caused such confusion among the guards
that Hugh escaped to scare me with his news.  Stationed near the gate
in this disguise, I ventured to enter the courtyard, and saw--saw--the
TORMENTOR! the torturer, the hideous, masked minister of agony, led
towards the chambers in which our hapless messenger is examined by the
ruthless tyrants.  Gloucester, the lynx-eyed mannikin, is there!"

"O Margaret, my queen," exclaimed the lady of Longueville, "the papers
will reveal her whereabout."

"No, she is safe!" returned Hilyard; "but thy poor scholar, I tremble
for him, and for the heads of all whom the papers name."

"What can be done!  Ha!  Lord Hastings is here,--he is ever humane and
pitiful.  Dare we confide in him?"

A bright gleam shot over Hilyard's face.  "Yes, yes; let me confer
with him alone.  I wait him here,--quick!"  The lady hastened back.
Hastings was conversing in a low voice with Sibyll.  The dame of
Longueville whispered in the courtier's ear, drew him into the hall,
and left him alone with the false friar, who had drawn the cowl over
his face.

"Lord Hastings," said Hilyard, speaking rapidly, "you are in danger,
if not of loss of life, of loss of favour.  You gave a passport to one
Warner to see the ex-king Henry.  Warner's simplicity (for he is
innocent) hath been duped,--he is made the bearer of secret
intelligence from the unhappy gentlemen who still cling to the
Lancaster cause.  He is suspected, he is examined; he may be
questioned by the torture.  If the treason be discovered, it was thy
hand that signed the passport; the queen, thou knowest, hates thee,
the Woodvilles thirst for thy downfall.  What handle may this give
them!  Fly! my lord,--fly to the Tower; thou mayst yet be in time; thy
wit can screen all that may otherwise be bare.  Save this poor
scholar, conceal this correspondence.  Hark ye, lord! frown not so
haughtily,--that correspondence names thee as one who hast taken the
gold of Count Charolois, and whom, therefore, King Louis may outbuy.
Look to thyself!"

A slight blush passed over the pale brow of the great statesman, but
he answered with a steady voice, "Friar or layman, I care not which,
the gold of the heir of Burgundy was a gift, not a bribe.  But I need
no threats to save, if not too late, from rack and gibbet the life of
a guiltless man.  I am gone.  Hold! bid the maiden, the scholar's
daughter, follow me to the Tower."




CHAPTER IX.

HOW THE DESTRUCTIVE ORGAN OF PRINCE RICHARD PROMISES GOODLY
DEVELOPMENT.

The Duke of Gloucester approached Adam as he stood gazing on his
model.  "Old man," said the prince, touching him with the point of his
sheathed dagger, "look up and answer.  What converse hast thou held
with Henry of Windsor, and who commissioned thee to visit him in his
confinement?  Speak, and the truth! for by holy Paul, I am one who can
detect a lie, and without that door stands--the Tormentor!"

Upon a pleasing and joyous dream broke these harsh words; for Adam
then was full of the contrivance by which to repair the defect of the
engine, and with this suggestion was blent confusedly the thought that
he was now protected by royalty, that he should have means and leisure
to accomplish his great design, that he should have friends whose
power could obtain its adoption by the king.  He raised his eyes, and
that young dark face frowned upon him,--the child menacing the sage,
brute force in a pigmy shape, having authority of life and death over
the giant strength of genius.  But these words, which recalled Warner
from his existence as philosopher, woke that of the gentle but brave
and honourable man which he was, when reduced to earth.

"Sir," he said gravely, "if I have consented to hold converse with the
unhappy, it was not as the tell-tale and the spier.  I had formal
warrant for my visit, and I was solicited to render it by an early
friend and comrade, who sought to be my benefactor in aiding with gold
my poor studies for the king's people."

"Tut!" said Richard, impatiently, and playing with his dagger hilt;
"thy words, stealthy and evasive, prove thy guilt!  Sure am I that
this iron traitor with its intricate hollows and recesses holds what,
unless confessed, will give thee to the hangman!  Confess all, and
thou art spared."

"If," said Adam, mildly, "your Highness--for though I know not your
quality, I opine that no one less than royal could so menace--if your
Highness imagines that I have been intrusted by a fallen man, wrong me
not by supposing that I could fear death more than dishonour; for
certes!" continued Adam, with innocent pedantry, "to put the case
scholastically, and in the logic familiar, doubtless, to your
Highness, either I have something to confess or I have not; if I have--"

"Hound!" interrupted the prince, stamping his foot, "thinkest thou to
banter me,--see!" As his foot shook the floor, the door opened, and a
man with his arms bare, covered from head to foot in a black gown of
serge, with his features concealed by a hideous mask, stood ominously
at the aperture.

The prince motioned to the torturer (or tormentor, as he was
technically styled) to approach, which he did noiselessly, till he
stood, tall, grim, and lowering, beside Adam, like some silent and
devouring monster by its prey.

"Dost thou repent thy contumacy?  A moment, and I render my
questioning to another!"

"Sir," said Adam, drawing himself up, and with so sudden a change of
mien, that his loftiness almost awed even the dauntless Richard,--
"sir, my fathers feared not death when they did battle for the throne
of England; and why?--because in their loyal valour they placed not
the interests of a mortal man, but the cause of imperishable honour!
And though their son be a poor scholar, and wears not the spurs of
gold; though his frame be weak and his hairs gray, he loveth honour
also well eno' to look without dread on death!"

Fierce and ruthless, when irritated and opposed, as the prince was, he
was still in his first youth,--ambition had here no motive to harden
him into stone.  He was naturally so brave himself that bravery could
not fail to win from him something of respect and sympathy, and he was
taken wholly by surprise in hearing the language of a knight and hero
from one whom he had regarded but as the artful impostor or the
despicable intriguer.

He changed countenance as Warner spoke, and remained a moment silent.
Then as a thought occurred to him, at which his features relaxed into
a half-smile, he beckoned to the tormentor, said a word in his ear,
and the horrible intruder nodded and withdrew.

"Master Warner," then said the prince, in his customary sweet and
gliding tones, "it were a pity that so gallant a gentleman should be
exposed to peril for adhesion to a cause that can never prosper, and
that would be fatal, could it prosper, to our common country.  For
look you, this Margaret, who is now, we believe, in London" (here he
examined Adam's countenance, which evinced surprise), "this Margaret,
who is seeking to rekindle the brand and brennen of civil war, has
already sold for base gold to the enemy of the realm, to Louis XI.,
that very Calais which your fathers, doubtless, lavished their blood
to annex to our possessions.  Shame on the lewd harlot!  What woman so
bloody and so dissolute?  What man so feeble and craven as her lord?"

"Alas! sir," said Adam, "I am unfitted for these high considerations
of state.  I live but for my art, and in it.  And now, behold how my
kingdom is shaken and rent!" he pointed with so touching a smile, and
so simple a sadness, to the broken engine, that Richard was moved.

"Thou lovest this, thy toy?  I can comprehend that love for some dumb
thing that we have toiled for.  Ay!" continued the prince,
thoughtfully,--"ay!  I have noted myself in life that there are
objects, senseless as that mould of iron, which if we labour at them
wind round our hearts as if they were flesh and blood.  So some men
love learning, others glory, others power.  Well, man, thou lovest
that mechanical?  How many years hast thou been about it?"

"From the first to the last, twenty-five years, and it is still
incomplete."

"Um!" said the prince, smiling, "Master Warner, thou hast read of the
judgment of Solomon,--how the wise king discovered the truth by
ordering the child's death?"

"It was indeed," said Adam, unsuspectingly, "a most shrewd suggestion
of native wit and clerkly wisdom."

"Glad am I thou approvest it, Master Warner," said Richard.  And as he
spoke the tormentor reappeared with a smith, armed with the implements
of his trade.

"Good smith, break into pieces this stubborn iron; bare all its
receptacles; leave not one fragment standing on the other!  'Delenda
est tua Carthago,' Master Warner.  There is Latin in answer to thy
logic."

It is impossible to convey any notion of the terror, the rage, the
despair, which seized upon the unhappy sage when these words smote his
ear, and he saw the smith's brawny arms swing on high the ponderous
hammer.  He flung himself between the murderous stroke and his beloved
model.  He embraced the grim iron tightly.  "Kill me!" he exclaimed
sublimely, "kill me!--not my THOUGHT!"

"Solomon was verily and indeed a wise king," said the duke, with a low
inward laugh.  "And now, man, I have thee!  To save thy infant, thine
art's hideous infant, confess the whole!"

It was then that a fierce struggle evidently took place in Adam's
bosom.  It was, perhaps--O reader! thou whom pleasure, love, ambition,
hatred, avarice, in thine and our ordinary existence, tempt--it was,
perhaps, to him the one arch-temptation of a life.  In the changing
countenance, the heaving breast, the trembling lip, the eyes that
closed and opened to close again, as if to shut out the unworthy
weakness,--yea, in the whole physical man,--was seen the crisis of the
moral struggle.  And what, in truth, to him an Edward or a Henry, a
Lancaster or a York?  Nothing.  But still that instinct, that
principle, that conscience, ever strongest in those whose eyes are
accustomed to the search of truth, prevailed.  So he rose suddenly and
quietly, drew himself apart, left his work to the Destroyer, and
said,--

"Prince, thou art a boy!  Let a boy's voice annihilate that which
should have served all time.  Strike!"

Richard motioned; the hammer descended, the engine and its
appurtenances reeled and crashed, the doors flew open, the wheels
rattled, the sparks flew.  And Adam Warner fell to the ground, as if
the blow had broken his own heart.  Little heeding the insensible
victim of his hard and cunning policy, Richard advanced to the
inspection of the interior recesses of the machinery.  But that which
promised Adam's destruction saved him.  The heavy stroke had battered
in the receptacle of the documents, had buried them in the layers of
iron.  The faithful Eureka, even amidst its injuries and wrecks,
preserved the secret of its master.

The prince, with impatient hands, explored all the apertures yet
revealed, and after wasting many minutes in a fruitless search, was
about to bid the smith complete the work of destruction, when the door
suddenly opened and Lord Hastings entered.  His quick eye took in the
whole scene; he arrested the lifted arm of the smith, and passing
deliberately to Gloucester, said, with a profound reverence, but a
half-reproachful smile, "My lord! my lord! your Highness is indeed
severe upon my poor scholar."

"Canst thou answer for thy scholar's loyalty?" said the duke,
gloomily.

Hastings drew the prince aside, and said, in a low tone, "His loyalty!
poor man, I know not; but his guilelessness, surely, yes.  Look you,
sweet prince, I know the interest thou hast in keeping well with the
Earl of Warwick, whom I, in sooth, have slight cause to love.  Thou
hast trusted me with thy young hopes of the Lady Anne; this new Nevile
placed about the king, and whose fortunes Warwick hath made his care,
hath, I have reason to think, some love passages with the scholar's
daughter,--the daughter came to me for the passport.  Shall this
Marmaduke Nevile have it to say to his fair kinswoman, with the
unforgiving malice of a lover's memory, that the princely Gloucester
stooped to be the torturer of yon poor old man?  If there be treason
in the scholar or in yon battered craft-work, leave the search to me!"

The duke raised his dark, penetrating eyes to those of Hastings, which
did not quail; for here world-genius encountered world-genius, and
art, art.

"Thine argument hath more subtlety and circumlocution than suit with
simple truth," said the prince, smiling.  "But it is enough to Richard
that Hastings wills protection even to a spy!"

Hastings kissed the duke's hand in silence, and going to the door, he
disappeared a moment and returned with Sibyll.  As she entered, pale
and trembling, Adam rose, and the girl with a wild cry flew to his
bosom.

"It is a winsome face, Hastings," said the duke, dryly.  "I pity
Master Nevile the lover, and envy my Lord Chamberlain the protector."

Hastings laughed, for he was well pleased that Richard's suspicion
took that turn.

"And now," he said, "I suppose Master Nevile and the Duchess of
Bedford's page may enter.  Your guard stopped them hitherto.  They
come for this gentleman from her highness the queen's mother."

"Enter, Master Nevile, and you, Sir Page.  What is your errand?"

"My lady, the duchess," said the page, "has sent me to conduct Master
Warner to the apartments prepared for him as her special multiplier
and alchemist."

"What!" said the prince, who, unlike the irritable Clarence, made it
his policy to show all decorous homage to the queen's kin, "hath that
illustrious lady taken this gentleman into her service?  Why announced
you not, Master Warner, what at once had saved you from further
questioning?  Lord Hastings, I thank you now for your intercession."

Hastings, in answer, pointed archly at Marmaduke, who was aiding
Sibyll to support her father.  "Do you suspect me still, prince?" he
whispered.

The duke shrugged his shoulders, and Adam, breaking from Marmaduke and
Sibyll, passed with tottering steps to the shattered labour of his
solitary life.  He looked at the ruin with mournful despondence, with
quivering lips.  "Have you done with me?" then he said, bowing his
head lowlily, for his pride was gone; "may we--that is, I and this, my
poor device--withdraw from your palace?  I see we are not fit for
kings!"

"Say not so," said the young duke, gently: "we have now convinced
ourselves of our error, and I crave thy pardon, Master Warner, for my
harsh dealings.  As for this, thy toy, the king's workmen shall set it
right for thee.  Smith, call the fellows yonder, to help bear this
to--"  He paused, and glanced at Hastings.

"To my apartments," said the chamberlain.  "Your Highness may be sure
that I will there inspect it.  Fear not, Master Warner; no further
harm shall chance to thy contrivance."

"Come, sir, forgive me," said the duke.  With gracious affability the
young prince held out his hand, the fingers of which sparkled with
costly gems, to the old man.  The old man bowed as if his beard would
have swept the earth, but he did not touch the hand.  He seemed still
in a state between dream and reason, life and death: he moved not,
spoke not, till the men came to bear the model; and he then followed
it, his arms folded in his gown, till, on entering the court, it was
borne in a contrary direction from his own, to the chamberlain's
apartment; then wistfully pursuing it with his eyes, he uttered such a
sigh as might have come from a resigned father losing the last glimpse
of a beloved son.

Richard hesitated a moment, loth to relinquish his research, and
doubtful whether to follow the Eureka for renewed investigation; but
partly unwilling to compromise his dignity in the eyes of Hastings,
should his suspicions prove unfounded, and partly indisposed to risk
the displeasure of the vindictive Duchess of Bedford by further
molestation of one now under her protection, he reluctantly trusted
all further inquiry to the well-known loyalty of Hastings.  "If
Margaret be in London," he muttered to himself as he turned slowly
away, "now is the time to seize and chain the lioness!  Ho, Catesby,--
hither (a valuable man that Catesby--a lawyer's nurturing with a
bloodhound's nature!)--Catesby, while King Edward rides for pleasure,
let thou and I track the scent of his foes.  If the she-wolf of Anjou
hath ventured hither, she hides in some convent or monastery, be sure.
See to our palfreys, Catesby!  Strange," added the prince, muttering
to himself, "that I am more restless to guard the crown than he who
wears it!  Nay, a crown is a goodly heirloom in a man's family, and a
fair sight to see near--and near--and near--"

The prince abruptly paused, opened and shut his right hand
convulsively, and drew a long sigh.





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