THE MAID'S HOPE, THE COURTIER'S LOVE, AND THE SAGE'S COMFORT.
Fair are thy fields, O England; fair the rural farm and the orchards
in which the blossoms have ripened into laughing fruits; and fairer
than all, O England, the faces of thy soft-eyed daughters!
From the field where Sibyll and her father had wandered amidst the
dead, the dismal witnesses of war had vanished; and over the green
pastures roved the gentle flocks. And the farm to which Hastings had
led the wanderers looked upon that peaceful field through its leafy
screen; and there father and daughter had found a home.
It was a lovely summer evening; and Sibyll put aside the broidery
frame, at which, for the last hour, she had not worked, and gliding to
the lattice, looked wistfully along the winding lane. The room was in
the upper story, and was decorated with a care which the exterior of
the house little promised, and which almost approached to elegance.
The fresh green rushes that strewed the floor were intermingled with
dried wild thyme and other fragrant herbs. The bare walls were hung
with serge of a bright and cheerful blue; a rich carpet de cuir
covered the oak table, on which lay musical instruments, curiously
inlaid, with a few manuscripts, chiefly of English and Provencal
poetry. The tabourets were covered with cushions of Norwich worsted,
in gay colours. All was simple, it is true, yet all betokened a
comfort--ay, a refinement, an evidence of wealth--very rare in the
houses even of the second order of nobility.
As Sibyll gazed, her face suddenly brightened; she uttered a joyous
cry, hurried from the room, descended the stairs, and passed her
father, who was seated without the porch, and seemingly plunged in one
of his most abstracted reveries. She kissed his brow (he heeded her
not), bounded with a light step over the sward of the orchard, and
pausing by a wicket gate, listened with throbbing heart to the
advancing sound of a horse's hoofs. Nearer came the sound, and
nearer. A cavalier appeared in sight, sprang from his saddle, and,
leaving his palfrey to find his way to the well-known stable, sprang
lightly over the little gate.
"And thou hast watched for me, Sibyll?"
The girl blushingly withdrew from the eager embrace, and said
touchingly, "My heart watcheth for thee alway. Oh, shall I thank or
chide thee for so much care? Thou wilt see how thy craftsmen have
changed the rugged homestead into the daintiest bower!"
"Alas! my Sibyll! would that it were worthier of thy beauty, and our
mutual troth! Blessings on thy trust and sweet patience; may the day
soon come when I may lead thee to a nobler home, and hear knight and
baron envy the bride of Hastings!"
"My own lord!" said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes;
but, after a pause, she added timidly, "Does the king still bear so
stern a memory against so humble a subject?"
"The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick's
restless machinations in France have soured his temper. He cannot
hear thy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent
of Lancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,--as, in
truth, thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the
influence of Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our
good swords, she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the
dispersion of our foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet
feeds Edward's suspicions of thy harmless father. The king chides
himself for having suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even
recalls the disastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that
from the first thy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret.
Nay, sure I am, that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he
would condemn thee as a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate
of my old foes the Woodvilles. But fie! be not so appalled, my
Sibyll; Edward's passions, though fierce, are changeful, and patience
will reward us both."
"Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!" said Sibyll, with great
emotion. "Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence!
I see thee surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to
myself, 'Is it possible that he can remember me?' But thou lovest me
still--still--still, and ever! Dost thou not?"
And Hastings said and swore.
"And the Lady Bonville?" asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but
with the faltering tone of jealous fear.
"I have not seen her for months," replied the noble, with a slight
change of countenance. "She is at one of their western manors. They
say her lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout
hypocrite, and plays the tender wife. But enough of such ancient and
worn-out memories. Thy father--sorrows he still for his Eureka? I
can learn no trace of it."
"See," said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to
Warner as they now drew near the house, "see, he shapes another Eureka
from his thoughts!"
"How fares it, dear Warner?" asked the noble, taking the scholar's
hand.
"Ah," cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerful
protector, "bringest thou tidings of IT? Thy cheerful eye tells me
that--no--no--thy face changes! They have destroyed it! Oh, that I
could be young once more!"
"What!" said the world-wise man, astonished. "If thou hadst another
youth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through a
life of hardship, persecution, and wrong?"
"My noble son," said the philosopher, "for hours when I have felt the
wrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the
nights when I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy! God is
kinder to us all than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow
on the surface, and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the
unwitnessed soul."
Sibyll had left Hastings by her father's side, and tripped lightly to
the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners who
supplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,--the happy
banquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst
such sparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.
And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under the
honeysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over his
sated mind. The pure soul of the student, released a while from the
tyranny of an earthly pursuit,--the drudgery of a toil, that however
grand, still but ministered to human and material science,--had found
for its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and
eternal mysteries. Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden
cage, into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and
spiritual eloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made
familiar to his thoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he
indulged in his large ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that
now came forth in heaven; of the laws that gave harmony to the
universe; of the evidence of a God in the mechanism of creation; of
the spark from central divinity, that, kindling in a man's soul, we
call "genius;" of the eternal resurrection of the dead, which makes
the very principle of being, and types, in the leaf and in the atom,
the immortality of the great human race. He was sublimer, that gray
old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his words, than ever
is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and deeds but
blunderingly and lamely seek it.
And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from its
little ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked, "What
can courts and a king's smile give me in exchange for serene
tranquillity and devoted love?"