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.”