HARROWBY ABBEY.
Whilst the two anxious travellers were pursuing their sad journey,
the inhabitants of the Abbey were distracted with apprehension lest
the countess might expire before their arrival. Ever since Lady
Tinemouth received information that Mr. Somerset was gone to the
Wolds, hope and fear agitated her by turns, till, wearied out with
solicitude and expectation, she turned her dim eyes upon Thaddeus,
and said, in a languid voice, "My dear friend, it must be near
midnight. I shall never see the morning; I shall never in this world
see my child. I pray you, thank Mr. Somerset for all the trouble I
have occasioned; and my daughter--my Albina! O father of mercies!"
cried she, holding up her clasped hands, "pour all thy blessings upon
her head! She never wilfully gave this broken heart a pang!"
The countess had hardly ended speaking when Thaddeus heard a bustle
on the stairs. Suspecting that it might be the arrival of his friend,
he made a sign to Dr. Cavendish to go and inquire. His heart beat
violently whilst he kept his eye fixed on the door, and held the
feeble pulse of Lady Tinemouth in his hand. The doctor re-entered,
and in a low voice whispered, "Lady Albina is here."
The words acted like magic on the fading senses of the countess. With
preternatural strength she started from her pillow, and catching hold
of Sobieski's arm with both hers, cried, "O give her to me whilst I
have life."
Lady Albina appeared, led in by Pembroke, but instantly quitting his
hand, with an agonizing shriek she rushed towards the bed, and flung
herself into the extended arms of her mother, whose arms closed on
her, and the head of the countess rested on her bosom.
Dr. Cavendish perceived by the struggles of the young lady that she
was in convulsions; and taking her off the bed, he consigned her to
Pembroke and his friend, who, between them, carried her into another
apartment. He remained to assist the countess.
Albina was removed; but the eyes of her amiable and injured mother
were never again unclosed: she had breathed her last sigh, in
grateful ecstasy, on the bosom of her daughter; and Heaven had taken
her spotless soul to Himself.
Being convinced that the countess was indeed no more, the good doctor
left her remains in charge of the women; and repairing to the
adjoining room, found Lady Albina yet senseless in the arms of his
two friends. She was laid on a sofa, and Cavendish was pouring some
drops into her mouth, when he descried Thaddeus gliding out of the
room. Desirous to spare him the shock of suddenly seeing the corpse
of one whom he loved so truly, he said, "Stop, Mr. Constantine! I
conjure you, do not go into the countess's room!"
The eyes of Thaddeus turned with emotion on the distressed face of
the physician; one glance explained what the doctor durst not speak.
Faintly answering, "I will obey you," he hurried from the apartment.
In the count's silent descent from Lady Albina's room to the
breakfast-parlor, he too plainly perceived by the tears of the
servants that he had now another sorrow to add to his mournful list.
He hastened from participation in their clamorous laments, almost
unseen, into the parlor, and shutting the door, threw himself into a
chair; but rest induced thought, and thought subdued his soul. He
started from his position; he paced the room in a paroxysm of
anguish; he would have given worlds for one tear to relieve his
oppressed heart. Ready to suffocate, he threw open a window and
leaned out. Not a star was visible to light the darkness. The wind
blew freshly, and with parched lips he inhaled it as the reviving
breath of Heaven.
He was sitting on the window-seat, with his head leaning against the
casement, when Pembroke entered unobserved; walking up to him, he
laid his hand upon his arm, and ejaculated in a tremulous voice,
"Thaddeus, dear Thaddeus!"
Thaddeus rose at the well-known sounds: they reminded him that he was
not yet alone in the world for his soul had been full of the dying
image of his own mother. Clasping Somerset in his arms, he exclaimed,
"Heaven has still reserved thee, faithful and beloved, to be my
comforter! In thy friendship and fond memories," he added, with a yet
heaving breast, "I shall find tender bonds of the past still to
endear me to the world."
Pembroke received the embrace of his friend; he felt his tears upon
his cheek; but he could neither return the one nor sympathize with
the other. The conviction that he was soon to sever that cord, that
he was to deprive the man who had preserved his life of the only stay
of his existence, and abandon him to despair, struck to his soul.
Grasping the hand of his friend, he gazed on his averted and dejected
features with a look of desperate horror. "Sobieski," cried he,
"whatever may happen, never forget that I swear I love you dearer
than my life! And when I am forced to abandon my friend, I shall not
be long of abandoning what will then be worthless to me."
Not perceiving the frenzied look which accompanied this energetic
declaration, Thaddeus gave no other meaning to the words than a
renewed assurance of his friend's affection.
The entrance of Dr. Cavendish disturbed the two young men, to whom he
communicated the increased indisposition of Lady Albina.
"The shock she has received," said he, "has so materially shaken her
frame, I have ordered her to bed and administered an opiate, which I
hope will procure her repose; and you, my dear sir," added he,
addressing the count, "you had better seek rest! The stoutest
constitution might sink under what you have lately endured. Pray
allow Mr. Somerset and myself to prevail with you, on our accounts,
if not on your own, to retire for half an hour!"
Thaddeus, in disregard of his personal comfort, never infringed on
that of others; he felt that he could not sleep, but he knew it would
gratify his benevolent friends to suppose that he did; and
accordingly he went to a room, and throwing himself on a bed, lay for
an hour, ruminating on all that had passed.
There is an omnipresence in thought, or a celerity producing nearly
the same effect, which brings within the short space of a few minutes
the images of many foregoing years. In almost the same moment,
Thaddeus reflected on his strange meeting with the countess; the
melancholy story; her forlorn death-bed; the fatal secret that her
vile husband and son were his father and brother; and that her
daughter, whom his warm heart acknowledged as a sister, was with him
under the same roof, and, like him, the innocent inheritor of her
father's shame.
Whilst these multifarious and painful meditations were agitating his
perturbed mind, Dr. Cavendish found repose on a couch; and Pembroke
Somerset, resolving once more to try the influence of entreaty on the
hitherto generous spirit of his father, with mingled hope and
despondence commenced a last attempt to shake his fatal resolution,
in the following letter:
"TO SIR ROBERT SOMERSET, BART, SOMERSET CASTLE.
"I have not ventured into the presence of my dear father since he
uttered the dreadful words which I would give my existence to believe
I had never heard. You denounced a curse upon me if I opposed your
will to have me break all connection with the man who preserved my
life! When I think on this, when I remember that it was from
_you_ I received a command so inexplicable from one of your
character, so disgraceful to mine, I am almost mad; and what I shall
be should you, by repeating your injunctions, force me to obey them,
Heaven only knows! but I am certain that I cannot survive the loss of
my honor; I cannot survive the sacrifice of all my principles of
virtue which such conduct must forever destroy.
"Oh, my father! I conjure you, reflect, before, in compliance with an
oath it was almost guilt to make, you decree your only son to
everlasting shame and remorse. Act how I will, I shall never be happy
more. I cannot live under your malediction; and should I give up my
friend, my conscience will reproach me every instant of my existence.
Can I draw the breath which he prolonged and cease to remember that I
have abandoned him to want and misery? It were vain to flatter myself
that he will condescend to escape either by the munificence which you
offer as a compensation for my friendship. No; I cannot believe that
his sensible and independent nature is so changed; circumstances
never had any power over the nobility of his soul.
"Misfortune, which threw the Count Sobieski on the bounty of England,
cannot make him appear otherwise in my eyes than as the idol of
Warsaw, whose smile was honor and whose friendship conferred
distinction.
"Though deprived of the splendor of command; though the eager circle
of friends no longer cluster round him; though a stranger in this
country, and without a home; though, in place of an equipage and
retinue, he is followed by calamit and neglect, yet, in my mind, I
still see him in a car of triumph I see not only the opposer of his
nation's enemies, but the vanquisher of his own desires. I see the
heir of a princely house, who, when mankind have deserted him, is yet
encompassed by his virtues. I see him, though cast out from a
hardened and unjust society, still surrounded by the lingering
spirits of those who were called to better worlds!
"And this is the man, my dear father, (whom I am sure, had he been of
any other country than Poland, you would have selected from all other
men to be the friend and example of your son),--this is he whom you
command me to thrust away.
"I beseech you to examine this injunction! I am now writing under the
same roof with him; it depends on you, my ever-revered father,
whether I am doing so for the last time; whether this is the last day
in which your son is to consider himself a man of honor, or whether
he is henceforth to be a wretch overwhelmed with shame and sorrow!
"I have not yet dared to utter one word of your cruel orders to my
unhappy friend. He is now retired to seek some rest, after the new
anguish of having witnessed the almost sudden death of Lady
Tinemouth. Should I have to tell him that he is to lose me too-but I
cannot add more. Your own heart, my father, must tell you that my
soul is on the rack until I have an answer to this letter."
"Before I shut my paper, let me implore you on my knees, whatever you
may decide, do not hate me; do not load my breaking heart with a
parent's curse! Whatever I may be, however low and degraded in my own
eyes, still, that I sacrificed what is most precious to me, to my
father, will impart the only consolation which will then have power
to reach your dutiful and afflicted son.
"P. SOMERSET.
"HARROWBY ABBEY, TWO O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING."
Dr. Cavendish remained in a profound sleep, whilst Pembroke, with an
aching heart having written the above letter, and dispatched it by a
man and horse, tried to compose himself to half an hour's
forgetfulness of life and its turmoils; but he found his attempts as
ineffectual as those of his friend.
Thaddeus had found no repose on his restless pillow. Reluctant to
disturb the doctor and Somerset, who, he hoped, having less cause for
regret, were sleeping tranquilly, he remained in bed; but he longed
for morning. To his fevered nerves, any change of position, with
movement, seemed better than where he was, and with some gleams of
pleasure he watched the dawn, and the rising of the son behind the
opposite hill. He got up, opened the window to inhale the air, and
looking out, saw a man throw himself off a horse, which was all in
foam, and enter the house.
Surprised at this circumstance, he descended to the parlor to make
inquiry, and met the man in the hall, who, being Pembroke's
messenger, had returned express from the Castle, bearing an order
from Sir Robert (who was taken alarmingly ill) that his son must come
back immediately.
Dismayed with this new distress, Mr. Somerset, on its instant
information, pressed the count so closely to his breast when he bade
him farewell, that a more suspicious person might have apprehended it
was a final parting; but Thaddeus discerned nothing more in the
anguish of his friend's countenance than fear for the safety of Sir
Robert; and fervently wishing his recovery, he bade Pembroke remember
that should more assistance be necessary, Dr. Cavendish would remain
at the Abbey until Lady Albina's return to the Wolds.
Mr. Somerset being gone, towards noon, when the count was anxiously
awaiting the appearance of the physician from the room of the new
invalid, he was disappointed by the abrupt entrance of two gentlemen.
He rose, and with his usual courtesy to strangers, inquired their
business? The elder of the men, with a fierce countenance and a voice
of thunder, announced himself to be the Earl of Tinemouth, and the
other his son.
"We are come," said he, standing at a haughty distance--"we are come
to carry from this nest of infamy Lady Albina Stanhope, whom some one
of her mother's paramours--perhaps you, sir--dared to steal from her
father's home yesterday evening. And I am come to give you, sir, who
I guess to be some fugitive vagabond! the chastisement your audacity
deserves."
With difficulty the Count Sobieski suppressed the passions which were
rising in his breast. He turned a scornful glance on the person of
Lord Harwold (who, with an air of insufferable derision, was coolly
measuring his figure through an eyeglass); and then, replying to the
earl, said, in a firm voice, "My lord, whoever you suppose me to be,
it matters not; I now stand in the place of Lady Tinemouth's
confidential friend, and to my last gasp I will prove myself the
defender of he injured name."
"Her lover!" interrupted Lord Harwold, turning on his heel.
"Her defender, sir!" repeated Thaddeus, with a tremendous frown; "and
shame and sorrow will pursue that son who requires a stranger to
supply his duty."
"Wretch!" cried the earl, forgetting his assumed loftiness, and
advancing passionately towards Thaddeus, with his stick held up; "how
dare you address such language to an English nobleman?"
"By the right of nature, which holds her laws over all mankind,"
returned Thaddeus, calmly looking on the raised stick. "When an
English nobleman forgets that he is a son, he deserves reproach from
his meanest vassal."
"You see, my lord," cried Harwold, sliding behind his father, "what
we bring on ourselves by harboring these democratic foreigners! Sir,"
added he, addressing himself to Thaddeus, "your dangerous principles
shall be communicated to Government. Such traitors ought to hanged."
Sobieski eyed the enraged little lord with contempt; and turning to
the earl, who was again going to speak, he said, in an unaltered
tone, "I cannot guess, Lord Tinemouth, what is the reason of this
attack on me. I came hither by accident; I found the countess ill;
and, from respect to her excellent qualities, I remained with her
until her eyes were closed forever. She desired to see her daughter
before she died,--what human heart could deny a mother such a
request?--and Pembroke Somerset, her kinsman, undertook to bring Lady
Albina to the Abbey.
"Pembroke Somerset!" echoed the earl. "A pretty guard for my
daughter, truly! I have no doubt that he is just such a fellow as his
father--just such a person as yourself! I am not to be imposed upon.
I know Lady Tinemouth to have been a disgrace to me, and you to be
that German adventurer on whose account I sent her from London."
Shocked at this calumny on the memory of a woman whose fame from any
other mouth came as unsullied as purity itself, Thaddeus gazed with
horror at the furious countenance of the man whom he believed to be
his father. His heart swelled; but not deigning to reply to a charge
as unmanly as it was false, he calmly took out of his pocket two
letters which the countess had dictated to her husband and her son.
Lord Harwold tore his open, cast his eyes over the first words, then
crumpling it in his hand, threw it from him, exclaiming, "I am not to
be frightened either by her arts or the falsehoods of the fellows
with whom she dishonored her name."
Thaddeus, no longer master of himself, sprang towards his unnatural
son, and seized his arm with an iron grasp. "Lord Harwold!" cried he,
in a dreadful voice, "were it not that I have some mercy on you for
that parent's sake, to whom, like a parricide, you are giving a
second death by such murderous slander, I would resent her wrongs at
the hazard of your worthless life!"
"My lord! my lord!" cried the trembling Harwold, quaking under the
gripe of Thaddeus, and shrinking from the terrible brightness of his
eye,--"my lord! my lord, rescue me!"
The earl, almost suffocated with rage, called out, "Ruffian! let go
my son!" and again raising his arm, aimed a blow at the head of
Thaddeus, who, wrenching the stick out of the foaming lord's hand,
snapped it in two, and threw the pieces out of the open window.
Lord Harwold took this opportunity to ring the bell violently, on
which summons two of his servants entered the room.
"Now, you low-born, insolent scoundrel," cried the disarmed earl,
stamping with his feet, and pointing to the men who stood at the
door; "you shall be turned by the neck and heels out of this house.
Richard, James, collar that fellow instantly."
Thaddeus only extended his arm to the men (who were looking
confusedly on each other), and calmly said, "If either of you attempt
to obey this command of your lord, you shall have cause to repent
it."
The men retreated. The earl repeated his orders.
"Rascals! do as I command you, or instantly quit my service. I will
teach you," added he, clenching his fist at the count, who stood
resolutely and serenely before him, "I will teach you how to behave
to a man of high birth."
The footmen were again deterred from approaching by a glance from the
intimidating eyes of Thaddeus, who, turning with stern dignity to the
storming earl, said, "You can teach me nothing about high birth that
I do not already know. Could it be of any independent benefit to a
man, then had I not received the taunts and insults which you have
dared to cast upon me."
At that moment Dr. Cavendish, having heard a bustle, made his
appearance. Amazed at the sight of two strangers, who from their
enraged countenances and the proud elevation with which Thaddeus was
standing between them, he rightly judged to be the earl and his son,
he advanced towards his friend, intending to support him in the
attack which he saw was menaced by the violent gestures of these
visitors.
"Dr. Cavendish," said Thaddeus, speaking to him as he approached,
"your name must be a passport to the confidence of any man; I
therefore shall gratify the husband of my ever lamented friend by
quitting this house; but I delegate to you the office with which she
entrusted me. I leave you in charge of her sacred remains, and of the
jewels which you will find in her apartment. She desired that half of
them might be given with her blessing, to her daughter, and the other
half, with her pardon, to her son."
"Tell me. Dr. Cavendish," cried the earl, as Thaddeus was passing him
to leave the room, "who is that insolent fellow? By heaven, he shall
smart for this!"
"Ay, that he shall," rejoined Lord Harwold, "if I have any interest
with the Alien-office."
Dr. Cavendish was preparing to speak, when Thaddeus, turning round at
this last threat of the viscount, said, "If I did not know myself to
be above Lord Harwold's power, perhaps he might provoke me to treat
him according to his deserts; but I abjure resentment, while I pity
his delusions. For you, my lord," added he, addressing the earl with
a less calm countenance, "there is an angel in heaven who pleads
against the insults you have uninquiringly and unjustly heaped upon
an innocent man!"
Thaddeus disappeared from the apartment while uttering the last word;
hastening from the house and park, he stopped near the brow of the
hill, at the porch of his lately peaceful little hotel. The landlady
was a sister of John Jacobs, the faithful servant of his lamented
friend, and who was then watching the door of the neglected chamber
in which the sacred remains of his dear mistress lay, as he would
have guarded her life, had the foes who had now destroyed it been
still menacing its flickering flame. The worthy couple were also
attached to that benevolent lady; and with sad looks, but respectful
welcoming, they saw Mr. Constantine re-enter their humble home, and
assured him of its retirement as long as he might wish to abide in
the neighborhood of the Abbey. Any prospect of repose promised
elysium to him; and with harassed and torn nerves he took possession
of his apartment, which looked down the road that led from the old
monastic structure to the town of Grantham. The rapidity of the
recent events bewildered his senses, like the illusions of a dream.
He had seen his father, his sister, his brother; and most probably he
had parted from them forever!--at least, he hoped he should never
again be tortured with the sight of Lord Tinemouth or his son.
"How," thought he, whilst walking up and down his solitary parlor,
"could the noble nature of my mother love such a man? and how could
he have held so long an empire over the pure heart he has just now
broken."
He could nowhere discern, in the bloated visage and rageful gestures
of the earl, any of that beauty of countenance or grace of manners
which had alike charmed Therese Sobieski and the tender Acleliza.
Like those hideous chasms which are dug deep in the land by the
impetuous sweep of a torrent, the course of violent passions leaves
vast and irreparable traces on the features and in the soul. So it
was with Lord Tinemouth.
"How legibly does vice or virtue," ejaculated Thaddeus, "write itself
on the human face! The earl's might once have been fine, but the
lineaments of selfishness and sin have degraded every part of him.
Mysterious Providence! Can he be my father--can it be his blood that
is now running in my veins? Can it be his blood that rises at this
moment with detestation against him?"
Before the sun set, Sobieski was aroused from these painful
soliloquies by still more painful feelings. He saw from his window a
hearse driving at full speed up the road that ascended to the Abbey,
and presently return at a slower pace, followed by a single black
coach.
"Inhuman men!" exclaimed he, while pursuing with his eyes the tips of
the sable plumes as the meagre cavalcade of mourners wound down the
hill; "could you not allow this poor corse a little rest? Must her
persecution be extended to the grave? Must her cold relics be
insulted, be hurried to the tomb without reverence--without decency?"
The filial heart that uttered this thought also of his own injured
mother, and shrunk with horror at this climax of the earl's
barbarity. Dr. Cavendish entered with a flushed countenance. He spoke
indignantly of the act he still saw from the window, which he
denounced as a sacrilege against the dead. "Not four-and-twenty hours
since," cried he, "she expired! and she is hurried into the cold
bosom of the earth, like a criminal, or a creature whose ashes a
moment above ground might spread a pestilence. Oh, how can that sweet
victim, Lady Albin, share such peccant blood?"
Thaddeus, whose soul had just writhed under a similar question with
regard to himself, could little bear the repetition and interrupted
the good physician by tenderly inquiring how she had borne that so
abrupt removal of her mother's remains.
"With mute anguish," returned Dr. Cavendish, in a responding, calmer
voice of pity; "and though I had warned her father that the shock of
so suddenly tearing his daughter from such beloved relics might peril
her own life, he continued obdarate; and putting her into his
travelling chariot in a state of insensibility, along with her maid,
in a few minutes afterwards I saw him set off in a hired post-chaise,
accompanied by his detestable son, loaded with more than one curse,
muttered by the honest rustics. Only servants followed in that
mourning coach."
In the midst of this depressing conversation a courier arrived from
Stamford to Dr. Cavendish, recalling him immediately to return
thither, the invalid there having sustained an alarming relapse. The
good doctor, sincerely reluctant to quit Thaddeus (whom he still knew
by no other name than Constantine), ordered the dispatch-chaise to
the hotel door. When it was announced, he shook hands with the now
lonely survivor of his departed friend in this stranger land,
requested that he might hear from him before he left that part of the
country for London again, and bidding him many cordial adieus,
continued to look out of the back window of the carriage, until the
faint light of the moon and the receding glimmer of the village
candles finally hid the little spot that yet contained this young and
sadly-stricken exile from his lingering eyes.