Ye towers of Julius! London's lasting shame;
With many a foul and midnight murder fed!
_Gray._
Such is the exclamation of Gray. Bandello, long before him, has said
something like it; and the same sentiment must, in some shape or other,
have frequently occurred to those, who, remembering the fate of other
captives in that memorable state-prison, may have had but too much
reason to anticipate their own. The dark and low arch, which seemed,
like the entrance to Dante's Hell, to forbid hope of regress--the
muttered sounds of the warders, and petty formalities observed in
opening and shutting the grated wicket--the cold and constrained
salutation of the Lieutenant of the fortress, who showed his prisoner
that distant and measured respect which authority pays as a tax to
decorum, all struck upon Nigel's heart, impressing on him the cruel
consciousness of captivity.
"I am a prisoner," he said, the words escaping from him almost unawares;
"I am a prisoner, and in the Tower!"
The Lieutenant bowed--"And it is my duty," he said, "to show your
lordship your chamber, where, I am compelled to say, my orders are
to place you under some restraint. I will make it as easy as my duty
permits."
Nigel only bowed in return to this compliment, and followed the
Lieutenant to the ancient buildings on the western side of the parade,
and adjoining to the chapel, used in those days as a state-prison, but
in ours as the mess-room of the officers of the guard upon duty at the
fortress. The double doors were unlocked, the prisoner ascended a few
steps, followed by the Lieutenant, and a warder of the higher class.
They entered a large, but irregular, low-roofed, and dark apartment,
exhibiting a very scanty proportion of furniture. The warder had orders
to light a fire, and attend to Lord Glenvarloch's commands in all things
consistent with his duty; and the Lieutenant, having made his reverence
with the customary compliment, that he trusted his lordship would not
long remain under his guardianship, took his leave.
Nigel would have asked some questions of the warder, who remained to
put the apartment into order, but the man had caught the spirit of his
office. He seemed not to hear some of the prisoner's questions, though
of the most ordinary kind, did not reply to others, and when he did
speak, it was in a short and sullen tone, which, though not
positively disrespectful, was such as at least to encourage no farther
communication.
Nigel left him, therefore, to do his work in silence, and proceeded
to amuse himself with the melancholy task of deciphering the names,
mottoes, verses, and hieroglyphics, with which his predecessors in
captivity had covered the walls of their prison-house. There he saw
the names of many a forgotten sufferer mingled with others which will
continue in remembrance until English history shall perish. There were
the pious effusions of the devout Catholic, poured forth on the eve of
his sealing his profession at Tyburn, mingled with those of the firm
Protestant, about to feed the fires of Smithfield. There the slender
hand of the unfortunate Jane Grey, whose fate was to draw tears from
future generations, might be contrasted with the bolder touch which
impressed deep on the walls the Bear and Ragged Staff, the proud emblem
of the proud Dudleys. It was like the roll of the prophet, a record of
lamentation and mourning, and yet not unmixed with brief
interjections of resignation, and sentences expressive of the firmest
resolution.[Footnote: These memorials of illustrious criminals, or of
innocent persons who had the fate of such, are still preserved, though
at one time, in the course of repairing the rooms, they were in some
danger of being whitewashed. They are preserved at present with becoming
respect, and have most of them been engraved.--_See_ BAYLEY'S _History
and Antiquities of the Tower of London._]
In the sad task of examining the miseries of his predecessors in
captivity, Lord Glenvarloch was interrupted by the sudden opening of
the door of his prison-room. It was the warder, who came to inform him,
that, by order of the Lieutenant of the Tower, his lordship was to
have the society and attendance of a fellow-prisoner in his place of
confinement. Nigel replied hastily, that he wished no attendance, and
would rather be left alone; but the warder gave him to understand, with
a kind of grumbling civility, that the Lieutenant was the best judge how
his prisoners should be accommodated, and that he would have no trouble
with the boy, who was such a slip of a thing as was scarce worth turning
a key upon.--"There, Giles," he said, "bring the child in."
Another warder put the "lad before him" into the room, and, both
withdrawing, bolt crashed and chain clanged, as they replaced these
ponderous obstacles to freedom. The boy was clad in a grey suit of the
finest cloth, laid down with silver lace, with a buff-coloured cloak
of the same pattern. His cap, which was a Montero of black velvet, was
pulled over his brows, and, with the profusion of his long ringlets,
almost concealed his face. He stood on the very spot where the warder
had quitted his collar, about two steps from the door of the apartment,
his eyes fixed on the ground, and every joint trembling with confusion
and terror. Nigel could well have dispensed with his society, but it was
not in his nature to behold distress, whether of body or mind, without
endeavouring to relieve it.
"Cheer up," he said, "my pretty lad. We are to be companions, it seems,
for a little time--at least I trust your confinement will be short,
since you are too young to have done aught to deserve long restraint.
Come, come--do not be discouraged. Your hand is cold and trembles? the
air is warm too--but it may be the damp of this darksome room. Place you
by the fire.--What! weeping-ripe, my little man? I pray you, do not be
a child. You have no beard yet, to be dishonoured by your tears, but yet
you should not cry like a girl. Think you are only shut up for playing
truant, and you can pass a day without weeping, surely."
The boy suffered himself to be led and seated by the fire, but, after
retaining for a long time the very posture which he assumed in sitting
down, he suddenly changed it in order to wring his hands with an air of
the bitterest distress, and then, spreading them before his face, wept
so plentifully, that the tears found their way in floods through his
slender fingers.
Nigel was in some degree rendered insensible to his own situation, by
his feelings for the intense agony by which so young and beautiful
a creature seemed to be utterly overwhelmed; and, sitting down close
beside the boy, he applied the most soothing terms which occurred,
to endeavour to alleviate his distress; and, with an action which the
difference of their age rendered natural, drew his hand kindly along the
long hair of the disconsolate child. The lad appeared so shy as even
to shrink from this slight approach to familiarity--yet, when Lord
Glenvarloch, perceiving and allowing for his timidity, sat down on the
farther side of the fire, he appeared to be more at his ease, and to
hearken with some apparent interest to the arguments which from time to
time Nigel used, to induce him to moderate, at least, the violence of
his grief. As the boy listened, his tears, though they continued to flow
freely, seemed to escape from their source more easily, his sobs were
less convulsive, and became gradually changed into low sighs, which
succeeded each other, indicating as much sorrow, perhaps, but less
alarm, than his first transports had shown.
"Tell me who and what you are, my pretty boy," said Nigel.--"Consider
me, child, as a companion, who wishes to be kind to you, would you but
teach him how he can be so."
"Sir--my lord, I mean," answered the boy, very timidly, and in a voice
which could scarce be heard even across the brief distance which divided
them, "you are very good--and I--am very unhappy--"
A second fit of tears interrupted what else he had intended to say, and
it required a renewal of Lord Glenvarloch's good-natured expostulations
and encouragements, to bring him once more to such composure as rendered
the lad capable of expressing himself intelligibly. At length, however,
he was able to say--"I am sensible of your goodness, my lord--and
grateful for it--but I am a poor unhappy creature, and, what is worse,
have myself only to thank for my misfortunes."
"We are seldom absolutely miserable, my young acquaintance," said Nigel,
"without being ourselves more or less responsible for it--I may well say
so, otherwise I had not been here to-day--but you are very young, and
can have but little to answer for."
"O sir! I wish I could say so--I have been self-willed and
obstinate--and rash and ungovernable--and now--now, how dearly do I pay
the price of it!"
"Pshaw, my boy," replied Nigel; "this must be some childish frolic--some
breaking out of bounds--some truant trick--And yet how should any of
these have brought you to the Tower?--There is something mysterious
about you, young man, which I must inquire into."
"Indeed, indeed, my lord, there is no harm about me," said the boy, more
moved it would seem to confession by the last words, by which he seemed
considerably alarmed, than by all the kind expostulations and arguments
which Nigel had previously used. "I am innocent--that is, I have done
wrong, but nothing to deserve being in this frightful place."
"Tell me the truth, then," said Nigel, in a tone in which command
mingled with encouragement; "you have nothing to fear from me, and as
little to hope, perhaps--yet, placed as I am, I would know with whom I
speak."
"With an unhappy--boy, sir--and idle and truantly disposed, as your
lordship said," answered the lad, looking up, and showing a countenance
in which paleness and blushes succeeded each other, as fear and
shamefacedness alternately had influence. "I left my father's house
without leave, to see the king hunt in the Park at Greenwich; there came
a cry of treason, and all the gates were shut--I was frightened, and
hid myself in a thicket, and I was found by some of the rangers and
examined--and they said I gave no good account of myself--and so I was
sent hither."
"I am an unhappy, a most unhappy being," said Lord Glenvarloch, rising
and walking through the apartment; "nothing approaches me but shares my
own bad fate! Death and imprisonment dog my steps, and involve all who
are found near me. Yet this boy's story sounds strangely.--You say you
were examined, my young friend--Let me pray you to say whether you told
your name, and your means of gaining admission into the Park--if so,
they surely would not have detained you?"
"O, my lord," said the boy, "I took care not to tell them the name of
the friend that let me in; and as to my father--I would not he knew
where I now am for all the wealth in London!"
"But do you not expect," said Nigel, "that they will dismiss you till
you let them know who and what you are?"
"What good will it do them to keep so useless a creature as myself?"
said the boy; "they must let me go, were it but out of shame."
"Do not trust to that--tell me your name and station--I will communicate
them to the Lieutenant--he is a man of quality and honour, and will not
only be willing to procure your liberation, but also, I have no doubt,
will intercede with your father. I am partly answerable for such poor
aid as I can afford, to get you out of this embarrassment, since I
occasioned the alarm owing to which you were arrested; so tell me your
name, and your father's name."
"My name to you? O never, never!" answered the boy, in a tone of deep
emotion, the cause of which Nigel could not comprehend.
"Are you so much afraid of me, young man," he replied, "because I am
here accused and a prisoner? Consider, a man may be both, and deserve
neither suspicion nor restraint. Why should you distrust me? You seem
friendless, and I am myself so much in the same circumstances, that I
cannot but pity your situation when I reflect on my own. Be wise; I have
spoken kindly to you--I mean as kindly as I speak."
"O, I doubt it not, I doubt it not, my lord," said the boy, "and I could
tell you all--that is, almost all."
"Tell me nothing, my young friend, excepting what may assist me in being
useful to you," said Nigel.
"You are generous, my lord," said the boy; "and I am sure--O sure,
I might safely trust to your honour--But yet--but yet--I am so sore
beset--I have been so rash, so unguarded--I can never tell you of
my folly. Besides, I have already told too much to one whose heart I
thought I had moved--yet I find myself here."
"To whom did you make this disclosure?" said Nigel.
"I dare not tell," replied the youth.
"There is something singular about you, my young friend," said Lord
Glenvarloch, withdrawing with a gentle degree of compulsion the hand
with which the boy had again covered his eyes; "do not pain yourself
with thinking on your situation just at present--your pulse is high, and
your hand feverish--lay yourself on yonder pallet, and try to compose
yourself to sleep. It is the readiest and best remedy for the fancies
with which you are worrying yourself."
"I thank you for your considerate kindness, my lord," said the boy;
"with your leave I will remain for a little space quiet in this chair--I
am better thus than on the couch. I can think undisturbedly on what I
have done, and have still to do; and if God sends slumber to a creature
so exhausted, it shall be most welcome."
So saying, the boy drew his hand from Lord Nigel's, and, drawing around
him and partly over his face the folds of his ample cloak, he resigned
himself to sleep or meditation, while his companion, notwithstanding the
exhausting scenes of this and the preceding day, continued his pensive
walk up and down the apartment.
Every reader has experienced, that times occur, when far from being lord
of external circumstances, man is unable to rule even the wayward realm
of his own thoughts. It was Nigel's natural wish to consider his own
situation coolly, and fix on the course which it became him as a man
of sense and courage to adopt; and yet, in spite of himself, and
notwithstanding the deep interest of the critical state in which he was
placed, it did so happen that his fellow-prisoner's situation occupied
more of his thoughts than did his own. There was no accounting for this
wandering of the imagination, but also there was no striving with it.
The pleading tones of one of the sweetest voices he had ever heard,
still rung in his ear, though it seemed that sleep had now fettered the
tongue of the speaker. He drew near on tiptoe to satisfy himself whether
it were so. The folds of the cloak hid the lower part of his face
entirely; but the bonnet, which had fallen a little aside, permitted him
to see the forehead streaked with blue veins, the closed eyes, and the
long silken eyelashes.
"Poor child," said Nigel to himself, as he looked on him, nestled up as
it were in the folds of his mantle, "the dew is yet on thy eyelashes,
and thou hast fairly wept thyself asleep. Sorrow is a rough nurse to one
so young and delicate as thou art. Peace be to thy slumbers, I will
not disturb them. My own misfortunes require my attention, and it is to
their contemplation that I must resign myself."
He attempted to do so, but was crossed at every turn by conjectures
which intruded themselves as before, and which all regarded the sleeper
rather than himself. He was angry and vexed, and expostulated with
himself concerning the overweening interest which he took in the
concerns of one of whom he knew nothing, saving that the boy was forced
into his company, perhaps as a spy, by those to whose custody he was
committed--but the spell could not be broken, and the thoughts which he
struggled to dismiss, continued to haunt him.
Thus passed half an hour, or more; at the conclusion of which, the
harsh sound of the revolving bolts was again heard, and the voice of the
warder announced that a man desired to speak with Lord Glenvarloch. "A
man to speak with me, under my present circumstances!--Who can it be?"
And John Christie, his landlord of Paul's Wharf, resolved his doubts, by
entering the apartment. "Welcome--most welcome, mine honest landlord!"
said Lord Glenvarloch. "How could I have dreamt of seeing you in my
present close lodgings?" And at the same time, with the frankness of
old kindness, he walked up to Christie and offered his hand; but John
started back as from the look of a basilisk.
"Keep your courtesies to yourself, my lord," said he, gruffly; "I have
had as many of them already as may serve me for my life."
"Why, Master Christie," said Nigel, "what means this? I trust I have not
offended you?"
"Ask me no questions, my lord," said Christie, bluntly. "I am a man of
peace--I came not hither to wrangle with you at this place and season.
Just suppose that I am well informed of all the obligements from your
honour's nobleness, and then acquaint me, in as few words as may be,
where is the unhappy woman--What have you done with her?"
"What have I done with her!" said Lord Glenvarloch--"Done with whom? I
know not what you are speaking of."
"Oh, yes, my lord," said Christie; "play surprise as well as you will,
you must have some guess that I am speaking of the poor fool that was my
wife, till she became your lordship's light-o'-love."
"Your wife! Has your wife left you? and, if she has, do you come to ask
her of me?"
"Yes, my lord, singular as it may seem," returned Christie, in a tone
of bitter irony, and with a sort of grin widely discording from the
discomposure of his features, the gleam of his eye, and the froth which
stood on his lip, "I do come to make that demand of your lordship.
Doubtless, you are surprised I should take the trouble; but, I cannot
tell, great men and little men think differently. She has lain in
my bosom, and drunk of my cup; and, such as she is, I cannot forget
that--though I will never see her again--she must not starve, my lord,
or do worse, to gain bread, though I reckon your lordship may think I am
robbing the public in trying to change her courses."
"By my faith as a Christian, by my honour as a gentleman," said Lord
Glenvarloch, "if aught amiss has chanced with your wife, I know nothing
of it. I trust in Heaven you are as much mistaken in imputing guilt to
her, as in supposing me her partner in it."
"Fie! fie! my lord," said Christie, "why will you make it so tough? She
is but the wife of a clod-pated old chandler, who was idiot enough to
marry a wench twenty years younger than himself. Your lordship cannot
have more glory by it than you have had already; and, as for
advantage and solace, I take it Dame Nelly is now unnecessary to
your gratification. I should be sorry to interrupt the course of your
pleasure; an old wittol should have more consideration of his condition.
But, your precious lordship being mewed up here among other choice
jewels of the kingdom, Dame Nelly cannot, I take it, be admitted
to share the hours of dalliance which"--Here the incensed husband
stammered, broke off his tone of irony, and proceeded, striking his
staff against the ground--"O that these false limbs of yours, which I
wish had been hamstrung when they first crossed my honest threshold,
were free from the fetters they have well deserved! I would give you the
odds of your youth, and your weapon, and would bequeath my soul to
the foul fiend if I, with this piece of oak, did not make you such an
example to all ungrateful, pick-thank courtiers, that it should be a
proverb to the end of time, how John Christie swaddled his wife's fine
leman!"
"I understand not your insolence," said Nigel, "but I forgive it,
because you labour under some strange delusion. In so far as I can
comprehend your vehement charge, it is entirely undeserved on my part.
You seem to impute to me the seduction of your wife--I trust she is
innocent. For me, at least, she is as innocent as an angel in bliss.
I never thought of her--never touched her hand or cheek, save in
honourable courtesy."
"O, ay--courtesy!--that is the very word. She always praised your
lordship's honourable courtesy. Ye have cozened me between ye, with your
courtesy. My lord--my lord, you came to us no very wealthy man--you know
it. It was for no lucre of gain I took you and your swash-buckler, your
Don Diego yonder, under my poor roof. I never cared if the little room
were let or no; I could live without it. If you could not have paid for
it, you should never have been asked. All the wharf knows John Christie
has the means and spirit to do a kindness. When you first darkened my
honest doorway, I was as happy as a man need to be, who is no youngster,
and has the rheumatism. Nelly was the kindest and best-humoured
wench--we might have a word now and then about a gown or a ribbon, but
a kinder soul on the whole, and a more careful, considering her years,
till you come--and what is she now!--But I will not be a fool to cry, if
I can help it. _What_ she is, is not the question, but where she is; and
that I must learn, sir, of you."
"How can you, when I tell you," replied Nigel, "that I am as ignorant as
yourself, or rather much more so? Till this moment, I never heard of any
disagreement betwixt your dame and you."
"That is a lie," said John Christie, bluntly.
"How, you base villain!" said Lord Glenvarloch--"do you presume on my
situation? If it were not that I hold you mad, and perhaps made so
by some wrong sustained, you should find my being weaponless were no
protection, I would beat your brains out against the wall."
"Ay, ay," answered Christie, "bully as ye list. Ye have been at the
ordinaries, and in Alsatia, and learned the ruffian's rant, I doubt not.
But I repeat, you have spoken an untruth, when you said you knew not of
my wife's falsehood; for, when you were twitted with it among your gay
mates, it was a common jest among you, and your lordship took all the
credit they would give you for your gallantry and gratitude."
There was a mixture of truth in this part of the charge which
disconcerted Lord Glenvarloch exceedingly; for he could not, as a man
of honour, deny that Lord Dalgarno, and others, had occasionally jested
with him on the subject of Dame Nelly, and that, though he had not
played exactly _le fanfaron des vices qu'il n'avoit pas_, he had not
at least been sufficiently anxious to clear himself of the suspicion of
such a crime to men who considered it as a merit. It was therefore with
some hesitation, and in a sort of qualifying tone, that he admitted that
some idle jests had passed upon such a supposition, although without
the least foundation in truth. John Christie would not listen to his
vindication any longer. "By your own account," he said, "you permitted
lies to be told of you injest. How do I know you are speaking truth,
now you are serious? You thought it, I suppose, a fine thing to wear the
reputation of having dishonoured an honest family,--who will not think
that you had real grounds for your base bravado to rest upon? I will not
believe otherwise for one, and therefore, my lord, mark what I have to
say. You are now yourself in trouble--As you hope to come through
it safely, and without loss of life and property, tell me where this
unhappy woman is. Tell me, if you hope for heaven--tell me, if you fear
hell--tell me, as you would not have the curse of an utterly ruined
woman, and a broken-hearted man, attend you through life, and bear
witness against you at the Great Day, which shall come after death. You
are moved, my lord, I see it. I cannot forget the wrong you have done
me. I cannot even promise to forgive it--but--tell me, and you shall
never see me again, or hear more of my reproaches."
"Unfortunate man," said Lord Glenvarloch, "you have said more, far more
than enough, to move me deeply. Were I at liberty, I would lend you my
best aid to search out him who has wronged you, the rather that I do
suspect my having been your lodger has been in some degree the remote
cause of bringing the spoiler into the sheepfold."
"I am glad your lordship grants me so much," said John Christie,
resuming the tone of embittered irony with which he had opened
the singular conversation; "I will spare you farther reproach and
remonstrance--your mind is made up, and so is mine.--So, ho, warder!"
The warder entered, and John went on,--"I want to get out, brother. Look
well to your charge--it were better that half the wild beasts in their
dens yonder were turned loose upon Tower Hill, than that this same
smooth-faced, civil-spoken gentleman, were again returned to honest
men's company!"
So saying, he hastily left the apartment; and Nigel had full leisure
to lament the waywardness of his fate, which seemed never to tire of
persecuting him for crimes of which he was innocent, and investing him
with the appearances of guilt which his mind abhorred. He could not,
however, help acknowledging to himself, that all the pain which he
might sustain from the present accusation of John Christie, was so far
deserved, from his having suffered himself, out of vanity, or rather an
unwillingness to encounter ridicule, to be supposed capable of a
base inhospitable crime, merely because fools called it an affair of
gallantry; and it was no balsam to the wound, when he recollected what
Richie had told him of his having been ridiculed behind his back by the
gallants of the ordinary, for affecting the reputation of an intrigue
which he had not in reality spirit enough to have carried on. His
simulation had, in a word, placed him in the unlucky predicament of
being rallied as a braggart amongst the dissipated youths, with whom the
reality of the amour would have given him credit; whilst, on the other
hand, he was branded as an inhospitable seducer by the injured husband,
who was obstinately persuaded of his guilt.