On the evening of the second day after his departure from Morewick,
Louis found himself clasped to the veteran bosom of Santa Cruz;
ardently embraced by Ferdinand; and caressed with maternal fondness, by
the enraptured Marchioness.
"We are come to live amongst you for a long time;" cried she, "to seek
those blessings of health at Lindisfarne for my beloved Marcella, which
her brother found so abundantly."
Louis assured her of the happiness such an intention would bring to
his family; and he soon read in the looks of Ferdinand, that it was
as a privileged lover, he was now returning to the feet of Alice. The
present grief which Louis had in the depths of his heart, he hid
there, and smiled his congratulations to the animated eyes of his
friend.
"Our Marcella," said the Marquis, "is suffering under sorrow as well as
illness. While I went to Rome on a mission of consequence to us all, I
left her with my wife, under the care of my sister, the abbess of the
Ursalines; and on my return, I found I had lost my sister by a sudden
death; and that my daughter, from the shock, was reduced to the brink
of the grave."
"But she is now out of danger, I trust?" replied Louis in a tone, which
could not be mistaken.
"And a letter from you, was our first comfort!" was the inward response
of the Marchioness, though her lips made no reply. She left that to the
calmer reason of her husband.
The letter, her thoughts referred to, was from de Montemar to
Ferdinand, in answer to one, wherein he enlarged on Marcella's changed
wishes with regard to a monastic life. When Louis came to that subject,
without being aware of the clearness with which his words unfolded his
own heart, he wrote as follows:
"I begin to think my probationary conflicts, instead of confirming my
spirit, have, in some cases at least, a contrary effect. I felt so
much in reading your sister's _wish_ to bury herself from all she has
hitherto blessed with her virtues, that--I wish I could for ever be
kept in ignorance of the time when she is really professed. At least,
Ferdinand, do you refrain from telling it to me, and I shall not dread
to open your letters."
Ferdinand shewed this paragraph to his mother. The lamp in his own
soul had discovered sleeping love, in every unconscious line. The
Marchioness had observed the powerful impression which de Montemar
made on the memory of her daughter, when she first admired his filial
enthusiasm in the Val del Uzeda. From that hour, her distaste, as well
as her religious opinions, was adverse to a monastic vow. But when her
awakened sensibility comprehended the feelings of her brother; though
unconscious of the new principle within her, which pleaded his cause
even against her own heart, she became willing to sacrifice herself
for his happiness. In Barbary, as in Spain, she found nothing but
what increased her admiration, even to reverence, in the devoted son
of the misled Duke de Ripperda. And, being so devoted a son, it never
crossed the pure heaven of her mind, that any idea of her, but as a
_sister of Mercy_, could ever occur to his heart. She believed, that
she also thought of him as a "thing enskied and sainted," and that
his remembrance would be as innoxious to her peace, after they had
separated for ever in this world, as that of the most lovely characters
she had read of, who were now in the grave; but whose society would be
one of her felicities in the life to come.
But she deceived herself. The sting was in her heart. She saw Louis
de Montemar no more, but his image was ever before her, his words,
his looks, his actions; and, finding the secret of her soul, in its
anguish and her despair; she every hour urged her parents to shut her
up from the world, which contained the object who made her feel that
she was no longer mistress of herself. This fatal secret she revealed
to no one. It preyed upon her heart, and her life; and, not until the
Marchioness was secluded with her in the convent of the Ursalines, did
she penetrate its depth and power. She also had wept in silence, over
what she had too soon discerned; this unhappy, unuttered passion: and
a sad immature grave, seemed ever opening before the feet of her most
loved child.
But, when her eyes fell on the paragraph concerning Marcella, in
the letter from Louis to Ferdinand, she became convinced that the
tenderness was mutual; and that mutual was the hopelessness and misery.
Without appearing to design any peculiar communication to her daughter,
she read the letter to her; and dwelt with particular emphasis on that
comprehensive sentence. Marcella listened, as if transfixed by a shaft.
She durst not receive its import; she feared there would be crime in
even wishing it real; although her abbess aunt had put a decisive on
her monastic intentions, by telling her there would be positive guilt
in her becoming a Catholic nun, with her religious reservations.
"Not a nun!" murmured she to herself, "but I have never been allowed
to consider myself with any connection with the world. I feel as if
I sinned in the very wish! and I must be a recluse." She leaned her
throbbing head upon her hand. "My child," said her mother, tenderly
drawing near her; "what do you think of de Montemar's animated
gratitude, in these touching sentiments?"
"That it is gratitude!" replied Marcella, rising with a forced smile,
"and I am obliged to him for anticipating a pity, which my aunt teaches
me, I cannot with conscience put myself into the condition to merit."
"And do you see no more than gratitude and compassion here?" asked the
Marchioness, re-reading the passage, and holding her daughter's arm
while she did so. "Were I to speak what I think, this matchless young
man loves you!"
These words, from the lips of her mother, were more than Marcella could
bear; she gasped and fell into her arms.
When the Marquis returned from his successful mission to Rome, he found
his sister dead; and his wife in possession of his daughter's unlimited
confidence; but that timid and self-accusing daughter, was brought to
the verge of the grave by sorrow for the deceased, and shame at the
weakness of her heart.
His first communication to the Marchioness was to prepare her family
for crossing with him to England.
"I have given my sanction to Ferdinand's attachment to the niece of
Mr. Athelstone;" said he, "travelling and change of scene will be
beneficial to Marcella; and our friends of Lindisfarne will give us the
welcome of kindred."
Marcella obeyed the commands of her father in these preparations: and
perhaps the more readily, since her mother's irrepressible and constant
representations of Louis's demonstrations of a peculiar sentiment
for her, had in spite of her own prepossessions to the contrary, and
what she would not acknowledge to herself, given her an idea of the
possibility of what her mother believed, being true. In urging these
sometimes visionary arguments, the Marchioness at last said to her.
"Should you and the Marquis de Montemar meet as I expect, it is not
probable that your father would be more inexorable to his daughter and
best loved friend, than he has proved himself to Ferdinand and Alice
Coningsby!"
"If I go to England," returned Marcella, and she believed she spoke the
truth, "I will never meet the Marquis de Montemar at all, if you, my
dear mother, are to draw any conclusions from that, that I expect, or
even wish him to consider me in any other light than as a _professed
nun_. That sin of my imagination is now over: I shall see my father's
friend with the confidence of a sister. But no more."
If the Marchioness thought otherwise, she did not express it; and
Marcella was not again persecuted on the subject.
Being in England; and learning from her mother, (who glided out of
the room with the information;) that the preserver of her father and
her brother, was then in the house; she did not deny the next request,
that she would obey her father's wish in joining the party in the
drawing-room. She felt confident in her own resolves; and with a serene
aspect, put her arm on her mother's to comply.
She was in black.--It was the first time Louis had seen her out of the
dress of a nun; and, on her entrance, he started with an emotion that
surprized him, at so unexpected a change.
Her face and hands were pale; but a gentle colour, like the soft
reflection from the rose, passed over her cheek, as he approached her.
She tried to meet him with tranquillity; and to look at him with the
open eye of friendly cognizance. But the moment his hand touched hers,
her eye-lids fell; and a chill ran through her whole frame, to blanch
her cheeks; and shook her with such a trembling, that the Marchioness
made a sign to her husband to assist her in bearing her to the sofa.
The Marquis sat for same time, rubbing his daughter's cold hands in
his; and the Marchioness touched her forehead and lips with essence.
Louis did not venture to follow her to the sofa, but remaining standing
where the group left him; and, as she lay, like a lilly on a velvet
pall; so fair and fragile, in her mourning garments, he felt the
possibility of his feeling a yet bitterer pang, than the death of his
false friend. But the moment he thought so, he checked the selfish
sentiment; and said in anguish of spirit to himself.--"O no! For with
that gentle being dwells innocence and virtue.--When she goes hence her
translation is to heaven:--And, can I mourn with bitterness, her who is
in blessedness? But when the deluding, the betrayer, the impenitent!
are called away! then my cry may be that of David--Oh, thou who wert
once my friend--_would to God, I could have died for thee_!"
Ferdinand observed his countenance, and touched his arm.--"Why do you
gaze with such despair on my sister?" whispered he, "Her illness is
merely weakness, from fatigue. Lindisfarne will restore us all!"
"Heaven grant it!" was the response of Louis, as he recalled himself
from the momentary wandering of his thoughts.
Marcella soon after re-opened her eyes; and having recovered her
perfect recollection, she also strove to rally her self possession;
and, though with still down-cast lids, she stretched out her hand
to her father's friend, as he again advanced to impress it with his
lips;--and in a calm, but low voice, expressed her pleasure at seeing
him returned in safety to the country of his dearest relations. Louis,
without attending to all the import of his words, replied by saying,
that he trusted she would consider them as her own.
Many mutual inquiries now took place, and her share of the conversation
was carried on for nearly an hour, with a composure, on the side of her
daughter, that surprised and pleased the Marchioness. When she appeared
exhausted, her mother rose; and she, following her example, took the
parental arm, and with a bend of her head to her father, quitted the
room.
Santa Cruz turned towards Louis, as his daughter disappeared; and
observed, with a solemn emotion at his heart, that his eyes followed
with anxiety, the slow progress of Marcella from the room; that he
gazed on the door, a long time after it was closed on her; and then
withdrew his attention, with a heavy, and deep-drawn sigh.
"De Montemar," said the Marquis, "come with me into my chamber; for I
have much to say to you." The conference lasted many hours.--Santa
Cruz assured him, that he had left no power unexerted, day or night, to
bring the prejudiced mind of the King of Spain, to a fair judgment on
the Duke de Ripperda's political integrity, great exasperations, and
religious penitence.--"The Queen was more placable on your behalf;"
continued the Marquis, "since the subject in debate was a handsome
young man, who admired her.--At least so Duke Wharton made her believe!"
"Duke Wharton!" echoed Louis.
"Yes," replied the Marquis, "that man was ever a Proteus; and never
more so, than in the present instance. When I, and all the Spanish
ministry, thought him the most active enemy you had; he became master
of all the malignancy that was in arms or in ambuscade against you;
and, by a generalship as effective as it was surprising, turned the
whole battery against its inventors." "Marquis!" cried Louis, starting
from his chair; "What is it you say?"
"The truth, though a strange one," replied Santa Cruz, "and this _ruse
de guerre_ of his was so artfully managed, that not a man in the
Spanish cabinet is aware of the hand that gave the overthrow. Being one
in all their secret counsels, he influenced the separate members, to
certain exaggerated conduct; and playing the one off against the other,
in their allegations against your father, managed that contradictions
should occur in every hearing before the King. And, by himself accusing
you to the Queen, in terms to awaken her vanity against your enemies,
and to influence it with a belief in your personal loyalty to her; he
gained your point there. With your personal enemies, and his political
friends, he affected to wonder at the Marquis de Montemar's restitution
to the royal favour; while with me, he rejoiced in private,--laughing
at the absurdity of such grey-beards, as the frowning de Castellor,
and that earthworm de Paz, making any tilt against the armed virtue of
├ćneas and his Achates.
"And his cloud is a bright one!" continued the Marquis, kindling with
his subject. "It has absorbed the follies of his youth. And, gazing
with wonder at his capacity, I beheld with admiration, the man I once
despised. In short, his genius, with a sort of supernatural cognizance,
darts into the views of men, and turns their devices to the side of
justice and honour!"
Louis's deep groans burst upon the ear of Santa Cruz. His face, for
some time, had been covered with his hands. An amazed inquiry, and an
agonized reply, soon informed the Marquis of its cause. Wharton, that
unalienable, that energetic friend, was then at the point of death,
in the house of his uncle at Morewick! was dying, under an impression
that Louis was estranged from him; nay, had united with his father in
denouncing him as a traitor! He might now be dead!--And he, who loved
him to the last, never be able to pour out his gratitude for such noble
assertion of that father's fame!
This information astonished, and distressed Santa Cruz; and the greater
the extremity of the Duke, the more he thought himself called upon, to
relate every thing explicitly to his agonized friend. In the course of
this protracted conversation, he gave a brief account of all he knew
of Wharton's conduct throughout the whole transactions relative to the
Duke de Ripperda.
Wharton frankly acknowledged, that from the period he was convinced
no impressions in behalf of the Stuart or Bavarian interests, could
be made on Spain, he determined to overthrow the political power of
him, who avowed himself the root of this obstinacy. Ripperda had
proclaimed his devotion to the House of Brunswick, more than once, at
the great councils of Vienna. He had affirmed his implacability to both
pretenders, at the table of the Cardinal Giovenozzi; and he did it,
with circumstances of such personal insult to Wharton, that the English
Duke, at once laid a comprehensive plan to make him feel his power.
Routemberg's conspiracy against the Spanish minister, did not originate
with Wharton; but it was modified by him; he mounted the guns, and
planted the circular batteries; and he did it, to bring Ripperda to a
point, where none could preserve him but the man who held the springs
of every movement in his own hands. This man was Wharton's self. Twice,
at critical moments, in Vienna and at Madrid, he offered his terms:--to
unmask every machination against Ripperda; and to maintain him in his
seat against all the world; if he would at last oppose the house of
Brunswick in the empire and in England. Both overtures were rejected
with disdain; and events took their course. Ripperda's was a fall, not
a descent, and the ruin was terrible. The new ministers of Spain, who
had bought their elevation by embracing Wharton's views, triumphed in
every way over their disgraced predecessor. But the English politician
was of another spirit. His enemy, once down, his care might be to
prevent his rising to the same adverse station; but he told his
coadjutors, he was not of the herd to strike his heel against the
fallen lion.
It did not, at this juncture, accord with the interests of his two
royal friends, James Stuart, and Maria of Bavaria, to make a full
disclosure in favour of the overthrown Duke; but he made secret
visits to the King's confessor, and to the Queen's, not to incense,
as was supposed, but to propitiate each sovereign against the cabinet
ministers' rancorous persecution of their fallen rival. He denied all
the circumstances which had been alleged by these men, to prove that
Ripperda had negociated with him against the existing orders of Philip.
He positively asserted, there had never been any amicable private
meeting between them. He explained the adventure in the Carinthian
post-house, where he returned the dispatches to the Duke; also another
rencounter in the mountains of Genoa where he accidentally rescued him
from a band of assassins, to whom he had been betrayed by a man who was
a Spaniard; "and therefore," said Wharton, "I will not name him."
It were not possible to describe the varied anguish of Louis de
Montemar, during this discourse, and the new discoveries it made at
every sentence. He did not utter it, for he was on the rack. But when
he found that it was Wharton's arm which had saved his father amongst
the maritime Alps; that it was to him, though unknown, Ripperda had
bequeathed the _Gratitude_ of his son;--then Louis felt the iron enter
his soul.
In short, Santa Cruz informed him, that Wharton proved to the King and
Queen, that his enmity was against Ripperda's politics, not against
himself; though he protested, there was not a man on earth who detested
another with more determined hatred than the ex-minister detested him.
Things were in this state, when the Duke was summoned by the Chevalier
St. George, to a conference at Rome, and the field being left open to
Grimaldo and his colleagues, their violent proceedings ended in the
flight of their proposed victim.
In this pause of the narrative, Louis wrung his hands, and bitterly
exclaimed:
"What an extreme and false judge have I been of this unexampled friend!
And just is my punishment, that I should lose him for ever, in the
moment I know his invaluable worth!" "Be not unjust to yourself, my
dear de Montemar," answered the Marquis, "Philip Wharton did not open
to me only half his soul. When we pledged our faith to each other, on
two sacred subjects, (one of which was your restitution to your rights;
but which coalition to your advantage, was not to be revealed to you
till it was successful:) he confessed to me, that he deserved your
warmest resentment; for, the sin of his life, since he knew you, was
an incessant attempt at rendering you in _all things_ like himself! De
Montemar was bright and ambitious," said he, "too likely to outshine
his master, unless I gave his towering soul a little of my own ballast.
I tried him, where man is most vulnerable. Marquis! I was so very a
wretch, that the clearer I saw my power over him, with a more devilish
zeal I thrust him into the fire. In the garden of the Chateau de
Phaffenberg was the scene of my last attempt! His resolution, not only
to meet ruin himself, but to consign his idolized father to the same,
rather than rescue either by a dereliction from virtue, was a sword,
that cut asunder marrow and spirit! Since that hour, I have regarded
that boy as a Mentor, worth all the bearded sages, from Socrates to the
Cambray Bishop!"--
"So spoke the animated Duke," continued Santa Cruz; "and he has
honoured his model! For, from that time, (although it was long before I
shared his secret,) he has been your unsuspected and efficient friend.
The re-enrolment of your father's name in the national archives;
and, these parchments, containing your own restituted rights without
condition or substraction, but the Dukedom of Ripperda, (which none but
a Catholic can bear,) are undeniable witnesses of this fact."
"Marquis!" replied Louis, walking the room in insupportable agony of
spirit; "you heap coals of fire upon my head! Oh, why must I remember,
whose voice denounced him to this government; who proclaimed him a
traitor to the House of Hanover!--His own rights in this country are
wrested from him by that hand!--a price is set on his head,--and hidden
like a thief, he lies, murdered by assassins, under the very roof which
ought to have been rent with acclamations, when he sought it as a
refuge!--Oh, my venerable friend, I cannot bear what is pressing on my
brain!"
The Marquis saw that Louis was in no condition to listen with
attention, much less with complacency, to any thing else he had to
impart; and aware that his greatest proof of kindness would be to
hasten his return to Morewick, to yield him some chance of seeing his
friend alive; he declared that such was first in his thoughts; and he
soon withdrew, to give corresponding directions to his family.