Patient _yourself_, madam, and pardon _me_.--Shakspere.
Now, doubtless, every romance-reading person into whose hands this
book may fall will conclude and determine, and feel perfectly
convinced in their own minds, that the scream mentioned in the last
chapter announces no less important a being than the heroine of the
tale, and will be very much surprised, as well as disappointed, to
hear that when the traveller rode through the open gate into the
little garden attached to the cottage, he perceived a group which
certainly did not derive any interest it might possess from the graces
of youth and beauty. It consisted simply of an old woman, of the
poorest class, striving, with weak hands, to stay a stout, rosy youth,
of mean countenance but good apparel, from repeating a buffet he had
bestowed upon the third person of the group, a venerable old man, who
seemed little calculated to resist his violence. Angry words were
evidently still passing on both parts, and before the traveller could
hear to what they referred, the youth passed the woman, and struck the
old man a second blow, which levelled him with the ground.
If one might judge from that traveller's appearance, he had seen many
a sight of danger and of horror; but there was something in the view
of the old man's white hair, mingling with the mould of the earth,
that blanched his cheek, and made his blood run cold. In a moment he
was off his horse, and by the young man's side. "How now, sir
villain!" cried he, "art thou mad, to strike thy father?"
"He's no father of mine," replied the sturdy youth, turning away his
head with a sort of dogged feeling of shame. "He's no father of mine;
I'm better come."
"Better come, misbegotten knave!" cried the traveller; "then thy
father might blush to own thee. Strike an old man like that! Get thee
gone, quick, lest I flay thee!"
"Get thee gone thyself!" answered the other, his feeling of
reprehension being quickly fled; and turning sharply round, with an
air of effrontery which nought but the insolence of office could
inspire, he added: "Who art thou, with thy get thee gones? I am here
in right of Sir Payan Wileton, to turn these old vermin out; so get
thee gone along with them!" And he ran his eye over the stranger's
simple garb with a sneer of sturdy defiance.
The traveller gazed at him for a moment, as if in astonishment at his
daring; then, with a motion as quick as light, laid one hand upon the
yeoman's collar, the other upon the thick band of his kersey slop
breeches, raised him from the ground, and giving him one swing back,
to allow his arms their full sweep, he pitched him at once over the
low wall of the garden into the heath-bushes beyond.
Without affording a look to his prostrate adversary, the stranger
proceeded to assist the old man in rising, and amidst the blessings of
the good dame, conveyed him into the cottage. He then returned to the
little garden, lest his horse should commit any ravages upon the
scanty provision of the old couple (for he was, it seems, too good a
soldier even to allow his horse to live by plunder), and while tying
him to the gate-post, his eye naturally turned to the bushes into
which he had thrown his opponent.
The young man had just risen on his feet, and in unutterable rage, was
stamping furiously on the ground; without, however, daring to re-enter
the precincts from which he had been so unceremoniously ejected. The
stranger contented himself with observing that he was not much hurt;
and after letting his eye dwell for a moment on the cognisance of a
serpent twined round a crane, which was embroidered on the yeoman's
coat, he again entered the cottage, while the other proceeded slowly
over the common, every now and then turning round to shake his
clenched fist towards the garden, in the last struggles of impotent
passion.
"Well, good father, how fares it with thee?" demanded the traveller,
approaching the old man. "I fear that young villain has hurt thee."
"Nay, sir, nay," replied the other, "not so; in faith he did not
strike hard: an old man's limbs are soon overthrown. Ah! well, I
remember the day when I would have whacked a score of them. But I'm
broken now. Kate, give his worship the settle. If our boy had seen him
lift his hand against his father, 'faith, he'd have broken his pate.
Though your worship soon convinced him: God's blessing upon your head
for it!"
The stranger silently sat himself down in the settle, which the old
woman placed for him with a thousand thanks and gratulations, and
suffered them to proceed undisturbed with all the garrulity of age,
while his own thoughts seemed, from some unapparent cause, to have
wandered far upon a different track. Whether it was that the swift
wings of memory had retraced in a moment a space that, in the dull
march of time, had occupied many a long year, or that the lightning
speed of hope had already borne him to a goal which was still far
beyond probability's short view, matters little. Most likely it was
one or the other; for the present is but a point to which but little
thought appertains, while the mind hovers backwards and forwards
between the past and the future, expending the store of its regrets
upon the one, and wasting all its wishes on the other. He awoke with a
sigh. "But tell me," said he to the old man, "what was the cause of
all this?"
"Why, heaven bless your worship!" replied the cottager, who had been
talking all the time, "I have just been telling you."
"Nay, but I mean, why you came to live here?" said the traveller, "for
this is but a poor place;" and he glanced his eye over the interior of
the cottage, which was wretched enough. Its floor formed of hardened
clay; its small lattice windows, boasting no glass in the wicker
frames of which they were composed, but showing in its place some thin
plates of horn (common enough in the meaner cottages of those times),
admitting but a dull and miserable light to the interior; its bare
walls of lath, through the crevices of which appeared the mud that had
been plastered on the outside: all gave an air of poverty and
uncomfort difficult to find in the poorest English cottage of to-day.
"I think you said that you had been in better circumstances?"
continued the traveller.
"I did not say so, your worship," replied the old man, "but it was
easy to guess; yet for twelve long years have I known little but
misery. I was once gate-porter to my good Lord Fitzbernard, at Chilham
Castle, here hard-by; your worship knows it, doubtless. Oh! 'twas a
fair place in those days, for my lord kept great state, and never a
day but what we had the tilt-yard full of gallants, who would bear
away the ring from the best in the land. My old lord could handle a
lance well, too, though he waxed aged; but 'twas my young Lord Osborne
that was the darling of all our hearts. Poor youth! he was not then
fourteen, yet so strong, he'd break a lance and bide a buffet with the
best. He's over the seas now, alas! and they say, obliged to win his
food at the sword's point."
"Nay, how so?" asked the traveller. "If he were heir of Chilham
Castle, how is it he fares so hardly, this Lord Osborne?"
"We call him still Lord Osborne," answered the old woman, "for I was
his nurse, when he was young, your worship, and his christened name
was Osborne. But his title was Lord Darnley, by those who called him
properly. God bless him for ever! Now, Richard, tell his honour how
all the misfortunes happened."
"'Twill but tire his honour," said the old man. "In his young day he
must have heard how Empson and Dudley, the two blackest traitors that
ever England had, went through all the country, picking holes in every
honest man's coat, and sequestrating their estates, as 'twas then
called. Lord bless thee, Kate! his worship knows it all."
"I have heard something of the matter, but I would fain understand it
more particularly," said the stranger. "I had learned that the
sequestrated estates had been restored, and the fines remitted, since
this young king was upon the throne."
"Ay, truly, sir, the main part of them," answered the old man; "but
there were some men who, being in the court's displeasure, were not
likely to have justice done them. Such a one was my good lord and
master, who, they say, had been heard to declare, that he held Perkyn
Warbeck's title as good as King Harry the Seventh's. So, when they
proved the penal statutes against him, as they called it, instead of
calling for a fine, which every peasant on his land would have brought
his mite to pay, they took the whole estate, and left him a beggar in
his age. But that was not the worst, for doubtless the whole would
have been given back again when the good young king did justice on
Empson and Dudley; but as this sequestration was a malice, and not an
avarice like the rest, instead of transferring the estate to the
king's own hand, they gave it to one Sir Payan Wileton, who, if ever a
gallows was made higher than Haman's, would well grace it. This man
has many a friend at the court, gained they say by foul means; and
though much stir was made some eight years agone, by the Lord Stafford
and the good Duke of Buckingham, to have the old lord's estates given
back again, Sir Payan was strong enough in abettors to outstand them
all, and then----; but I hear horses' feet. 'Tis surely Sir Payan sent
to hound me out even from this poor place."
As he spoke, the loud neighing of the stranger's horse announced the
approach of some of his four-footed fraternity, and opening the
cottage door, the old man looked forth to ascertain if his
apprehensions were just.
The cloud, however, was cleared off his brow in a moment, by the
appearance of the person who rode into the garden.
"Joy, good wife! joy!" cried the old man; "it is Sir Cesar! It is Sir
Cesar! We are safe enough now!"
"Sir Cesar!" cried the traveller; "that is a strange name!" and he
turned to the cottage door to examine the person that approached.
Cantering through the garden on a milk-white palfrey, adorned with
black leather trapping, appeared a little old man, dressed in singular
but elegant habiliments. His doublet was of black velvet, his hose of
crimson stuff, and his boots of buff. His cloak was black like his
coat, but lined with rich miniver fur, of which also was his bonnet.
He wore no arms except a small dagger, the steel hilt of which
glittered in his girdle; and to turn and guide his palfrey he made use
of neither spur nor rein, but seemed more to direct than urge him with
a peeled osier stick, with which he every now and then touched the
animal on either ear.
His person was as singular as his dress. Extremely diminutive in
stature, his limbs appeared well formed, and even graceful. He was not
a dwarf, but still considerably below the middle size; and though not
misshapen in body, his face had that degree of prominence, and his eye
that keen vivacious sparkle, generally discovered in the deformed. In
complexion he was swarthy to excess, while his long black hair,
slightly mingled with gray, escaped from under his bonnet and fell
upon his shoulders. Still, the most remarkable feature was his eye,
which, though sunk deep in his head, had a quickness and a fire that
contradicted the calm, placid expression of the rest of his
countenance, and seemed to indicate a restless, busy spirit; for,
glancing rapidly from object to object, it rested not a moment upon
any one thing, but appeared to collect the information it sought with
the quickness of lightning, and then fly off to something new.
In this manner he approached the cottage, his look at first rapidly
running over the figures of the two cottagers and their guest; but
then turning to their faces, his eye might be seen scanning every
feature, and seeming to extract their meaning in an instant: as in the
summer we see the bee darting into every flower, and drawing forth its
sweet essence, while it scarcely pauses to fold its wings. It seemed
as if the face was to him a book, where each line was written with
some tale or some information, but in a character so legible, and a
language so well known, that a moment sufficed him for the perusal of
the whole.
At the cottage-door the palfrey stopped of itself, and slipping down
out of the saddle with extraordinary activity, the old gentleman stood
before the traveller and his host with that sort of sharp, sudden
motion which startles although expected. The old man and his wife
received their new guest with reverence almost approaching to awe; but
before noticing them farther than by signing them each with the cross,
he turned directly towards the traveller, and doffing his cap of
miniver, he made him a profound bow, while his long hair, parted from
the crown, fell over his face and almost concealed it. "Sir Osborne
Maurice," said he, "well met!"
The traveller bowed in some surprise to find himself recognised by the
singular person who addressed him. "Truly, sir," he answered, "you
have rightly fallen upon the name I bear, and seem to know me well,
though in truth I can boast no such knowledge in regard to you. To my
remembrance, this is the first time we have met."
"Within the last thousand years," replied the old man, "we have met
more than a thousand times; but I remember you well before that, when
you commanded a Roman cohort in the first Punic war."
"He's mad!" thought the traveller, "profoundly insane!" and he turned
an inquiring glance to the old cottager and his wife; but far from
showing any surprise, they stood regarding their strange visiter with
looks of deep awe and respect. However, the traveller at length
replied, "Memory, with me, is a more treacherous guardian of the past;
but may I crave the name of so ancient an acquaintance?"
"In Britain," answered the old man, "they call me Sir Cesar; in Spain,
Don Cesario; and in Padua, simply Cesario il dotto."
"What!" cried Sir Osborne, "the famous----?"
"Ay, ay!" interrupted the old man; "famous if it may so be called. But
no more of that. Fame is but like a billow on a sandy shore, that when
the tide is in, it seems a mighty thing, and when 'tis out, 'tis
nothing. If I have learned nought beside, I have learned to despise
fame."
"That your learning must have taught you far more, needs no farther
proof than your knowledge of a stranger that you never saw, at least
with human eyes," said Sir Osborne; "and in truth, this your knowledge
makes me a believer in that art which, hitherto, I had held as
emptiness."
"Cast from you no ore till you have tried it seven times in the fire,"
replied Sir Cesar; "hold nothing as emptiness that you have not
essayed. But, hark! bend down thine ear, and thou shalt hear more
anon."
The young traveller bowed his head till his ear was on a level with
the mouth of the diminutive speaker, who seemed to whisper not more
than one word, but that was of such a nature as to make Sir Osborne
start back, and fix his eyes upon him with a look of inquiring
astonishment, that brought a smile upon the old man's lip. "There is
no magic here," said Sir Cesar: "you shall hear more hereafter. But,
hush! come into the cottage, for hunger, that vile earthly want, calls
upon me for its due: herein, alas! we are all akin unto the hog:
come!"
They accordingly entered the lowly dwelling, and sat down to a small
oaken table placed in the midst; Sir Cesar, as if accustomed to
command there, seating the traveller as his guest, and demanding of
the old couple a supply of those things he deemed necessary. "Set down
the salt in the middle, Richard Heartley; now bring the bread; take
the bacon from the pot, dame, and if there be a pompion yet not
mouldy, put it down to roast in the ashes. Whet Sir Osborne's dagger,
Richard. Is it all done? then sit with us, for herein are men all
alike. Now tell me, Richard Heartley, while we eat, what has happened
to thee this morning, for I learn thou hast been in jeopardy."
Thus speaking, he carved the bacon with his dagger, and distributed to
every one a portion, while Sir Osborne Maurice looked on, not a little
interested in the scene, one of the most curious parts of which was
the profound taciturnity that had succeeded to garrulity in the two
old cottagers, and the promptitude and attention with which they
executed all their guest's commands.
The old gentleman's question seemed to untie Richard Heartley's lips,
and he communicated, in a somewhat circumlocutory phrase, that though
he had built his house and enclosed his garden on common land, which,
as he took it, "was free to every one, yet within the last year Sir
Payan Wileton had demanded for it a rent of two pounds per annum,
which was far beyond his means to pay, as Sir Payan well knew; but he
did it only in malice," the old man said, "because he was the last of
the good old lord's servants who was left upon the ground; and he, Sir
Payan, was afraid, that even if he were to die there, his bones would
keep possession for his old master; so he wished to drive him away
altogether."
"Go forth on no account!" interrupted Sir Cesar. "Without he take thee
by force and lead thee to the bound, and put thee off, go not beyond
the limits of the lordship of Chilham Castle; neither pay him any
rent, but live house free and land free, as I have commanded you."
"In truth," answered the old man, "he has not essayed to put me off;
but he sent his bailiff this morning to demand the rent, and to drive
me out of the cottage, and to pull off the thatch, though our Richard,
who has returned from the army beyond the seas, is up at the manor to
do him man service for the sum."
"Hold!" cried Sir Cesar, "let thy son do him man service, if he will,
but do thou him no man service, and own to him no lordship. Sir Payan
Wileton has but his day; that will soon be over, and all shall be
avenged; own him no lordship, I say!"
"Nay, nay, sir, I warrant you," replied the old man; "'twas even that
that provoked Peter Wilson, the young bailiff, to strike me, because I
said Sir Payan was not my lord, and I was not his tenant, and that if
he stood on right, I had as much a right to the soil as he."
"Strike thee! strike thee! Did he strike thee?" cried Sir Cesar, his
small black eyes glowing like red-hot coals, and twinkling like stars
on a frosty night. "Sure he did not dare to strike thee?"
"He felled him, Sir Cesar," cried the old woman, whose tongue could
refrain no longer; "he felled him to the ground. He, a child I have
had upon my knee, felled old Richard Heartley with a heavy blow!"
"My curse upon him!" cried the old knight, while anger and indignation
gave to his features an expression almost sublime; "my curse upon him!
May he wither heart and limb like a blasted oak! like it, may he be
dry and sapless, when all is sunshine and summer, without a green leaf
to cover the nakedness of his misery; without flower or fruit may he
pass away, and fire consume the rottenness of his core!"
"Oh! your worship, curse him not so deeply; we know how heavy your
curses fall, and he has had some payment already," said the old
cottager: "this honourable gentleman heard my housewife cry, and came
riding up. So, when he saw the clumsy coward strike a feeble old man
like me, he takes him up by the jerkin and the slops, and casts him as
clean over the wall on the heath as I've seen Hob Johnson cast a truss
out of a hay-cart."
"Sir Osborne, you did well," said the old knight; "you acted like your
race. But yet I could have wished that this had not happened; 'twould
have been better that your coming had not been known to your enemies
before your friends, which I fear me will now be the case. He with
whom you have to do is one from whose keen eye nought passes without
question. The fly may as well find its way through the spider's web,
without wakening the crafty artist of the snare, as one on whom that
man has fixed his eye may stir a step without his knowing it. But
there is one who sees more deeply than even he does."
"Yourself, of course," replied Sir Osborne; "and indeed I cannot doubt
that it is so; for I sit here in mute astonishment to find that all I
held most secret is as much known to you as to myself."
"Oh, this is all simplicity!" replied the old man; "these are no
wonders, though I may teach you some hereafter. At present I will tell
you the future, against which you must guard, for your fortune is
a-making."
"But if our fate be fixed," said Sir Osborne, "so that even mortal
eyes can see it in the stars, prudence and caution, wisdom and action,
are in vain; for how can we avoid what is certainly to be?"
"Not so, young man," replied Sir Cesar: "some things are certain, some
are doubtful: some fixed by fate, some left to human will; and those
who see such things are certain, may learn to guide their course
through things that are not so. Thus, even in life, my young friend,"
he continued, speaking more placidly, for at first Sir Osborne's
observation seemed to have nettled him; "thus, even in life, each
ordinary mortal sees before him but one thing sure, which is death. It
he cannot avoid; yet, how wholesome the sight to guide us in
existence! So, in man's destiny, certain points are fixed, some of
mighty magnitude, some that seem but trivial; and the rest are
determined by his own conduct. Yet there are none so clearly marked
that they may not be influenced by man's own will, so that when the
stars are favourable he may carry his good fortune to the highest
pitch by wisely seizing opportunity; and when they threaten evil or
danger, he may fortify himself against the misfortunes that must
occur, by philosophy; and guard against the peril that menaces, by
prudence. Thus, what study is nobler, or greater, or more beneficial,
than that which lays open to the eye the book of fate?"
The impressive tone and manner of the old man, joined even with the
singularity of his appearance, and a certain indescribable, almost
unearthly fire, that burned in his eye, went greatly in the minds of
his hearers to supply any deficiency in the chain of his reasoning.
The extraordinary, if it be not ludicrous, is always easily
convertible into the awful; and where, as in the present instance, it
becomes intimately interwoven with all the doubtful, the mysterious,
and the fearful in our state of being, it reaches that point of the
sublime to which the heart of every man is most sensible. Those always
who see the least of what is true are most likely to be influenced by
what is doubtful; and in an age where little was certainly known, the
remote, the uncertain, and the wild, commanded man's reason by his
imagination.
Sir Osborne Maurice mused. If it be asked whether he believed
implicitly in that art which many persons were then said to possess,
of reading in the stars the future fate of individuals or nations, it
may be answered, No. But if it be demanded whether he rejected it
absolutely, equally No. He doubted; and that was a stretch of
philosophy to which few attained in his day, when the study of
judicial astrology was often combined with the most profound learning
in other particulars; when, as a science, it was considered the
highest branch of human knowledge, and its professors were regarded as
almost proceeding a step beyond the just boundary of earthly research:
we might say even more, when they produced such evidence of their
extraordinary powers as might well convince the best-informed of an
unlettered age, and which affords curious subjects of inquiry even to
the present time.
In the mean while, Sir Cesar proceeded: "I speak thus as preface to
what I have to tell you; not that I suppose you will be dismayed when
you hear that immediate danger menaces you, because I know you are
incapable of fear; but it is because I would have you wisely guard
against what I foretell. Know, then, I have learned that you are
likely to be in peril to-morrow, towards noon; therefore, hold
yourself upon your guard. Divulge not your proceedings to any one.
Keep a watchful eye and a shrewd ear. Mark well your company, and see
that your sword be loose in the sheath."
"Certainly, good Sir Cesar, will I follow your counsel," replied Sir
Osborne. "But might I not crave that you would afford me farther
information, and by showing me what sort of danger threatens me, give
me the means of avoiding it altogether?"
"What you ask I cannot comply with," answered the old man. "Think not
that the book of the stars is like a child's horn-book, where every
word is clearly spelled. Vague and undefined are the signs that we
gain. Certain it is, that some danger threatens you; but of what
nature, who can say? Know that, at the same time as yourself, were
born sixty other persons, to whom the planets bore an equal
ascendancy; and at the same hour to-morrow, each will undergo some
particular peril. Be you on your guard against yours."
"Most assuredly I will, and I give you many thanks," replied Sir
Osborne. "But I would fain know for what reason you take an interest
in my fate more than in any of the other sixty persons you have
mentioned."
"How know you that I do so?" demanded Sir Cesar drily. "Perchance had
I met any one of them in this cottage, I might have done him the same
good turn. However, 'tis not so. I own I do take an interest in your
fate, more than that of any mortal being. Look not surprised, young
man, for I have cause: nay more--you shall know more. Mark me! our
fates are united for ever in this world, and I _will_ serve you;
though I see, darkling through the obscurity of time, that the moment
which crowns all your wishes and endeavours is the last that I shall
draw breath of life. Yet your enemy is my enemy, your friends are my
friends, and I will serve you, though I die!"
He rose and grasped Sir Osborne's hand, and fixed his dark eye upon
his face. "'Tis hard to part with existence--the warm ties of life,
the soft smiling realities of a world we know--and to begin it all
again in forms we cannot guess. Yet, if my will could alter the law of
fate, I would not delay your happiness an hour; though I know, I feel,
that this thrilling blood must then chill, that this quick heart must
stop, that the golden light and the glorious world must fade away; and
that my soul must be parted from its fond companion of earth for ever
and for ever. Yet it shall be so. It is said. Reply not! Speak not!
Follow me! Hush! hush!" And proceeding to the door of the cottage, he
mounted his palfrey, which stood ready, and motioned Sir Osborne to do
the same. The young knight did so in silence, and rode along with him
to the garden-gate, followed by the old cottagers. There Richard
Heartley, as if accustomed so to do, held out his hand; Sir Cesar
counted into it nine nobles of gold, and proceeded on the road in
silence.