The most capricious gift of heaven is sleep--That is a very bad
expression--unphilosophical--not logical; but yet it expresses what I
mean, perhaps, better than any other form I could have used. A gift
can not be capricious, though the giver may; and yet, in this
instance, the giver is never capricious, and the gift, as if instinct
with life, and will, and perversity itself, seems to have no rule, no
regularity, no consequence of effect.
One is always inclined to repeat or copy the opening of Young's Night
Thoughts when one speaks of sleep; and yet the owl-poet, soft and
solemn as he was, did not always direct his thoughts aright. Sleep
does not always "his ready visit pay where Fortune smiles;" nor does
he always forsake the wretched to light on lids unsullied by a tear.
Far, far from it. Shakspeare knew the world, waking and sleeping,
better than Young; for sleep does often "knit up the raveled sleave of
care," and bestows his balmy blessing, as the gift of Heaven, upon
wearied eyelids, and aching hearts, and care-worn brains, which naught
of earth earthly could ever soothe. Ay, and he does so, too, in
circumstances where the blessed boon could never be expected; unless
man could calculate finely, and to the utmost nicety, all the varied
shades of the heart's feelings, all the different hues of the mind's
thoughts, all the delicate outlines of the body's sensations, and
balance the harmonies existing through the whole as in a goldsmith's
scale.
Ralph Woodhall lay down to rest--to rest, mark me, I say--not to
sleep. Sleep he never calculated upon. His mind was as busy and as
active when his head touched the pillow as his body had been during
the four or five days preceding. But his body was weary; there was a
dull numbness in his limbs, an oppressive weight upon his corporeal
energies that pressed them down, and he thought he could find repose,
though not slumber. In a moment, however, there came a vacancy of
thought--a dead leaden lapse in mind's existence--a space in which
intellect and feeling were still and silent. Suddenly the mind or the
heart, I know not which, woke up, and the body itself was roused by
the start of its companions. He raised himself upon his arm, gazed
wildly round upon the darkness, half remembered, half forgot where he
was, sunk slowly back upon his pillow, and slept profoundly.
His sleep was long as well as deep. The morning sun rose and shone
into the room; the summer birds began their song, and caroled at his
window all unheard; his servant came in, gazed at, but would not wake
him, and retired, saying to himself, "Would that I could sleep so;"
the breakfast table was laid in the small room below; the church clock
even struck nine, and Ralph was sleeping still.
It was not exhaustion of body, for he was accustomed to hard and
robust exercise, often repeated, long continued; but it was exhaustion
of body and mind together.
The immortal spirit, bound up in the fleshy clay, partakes of the
infirmity of its fellowship; and that which, liberate from earth, must
necessarily be unconscious of weariness or needful of repose, when
linked in the bond of life with dust, feels a part of the weight
which hangs upon its mortal brother. Both were weary with Ralph
Woodhall--both slept. There was an utter vacancy of all things in that
dull, leaden repose. There was no movement--no tossing to and fro--no
murmuring of the lips--no dream--no thought--no feeling, waking. All
was still. The beating of the heart went on--the mere mechanism of
life was there: the wheel was not still, the silver chain was not
broken; there was existence without life--without the living life,
deprived of which existence is but a gap in time.
It was nearly ten when he awoke; but then, the shortened shadow on the
floor, the brightness of the sunshine as it streamed through the
window with its warm, yellowish, unempurpled light, showed him how
long he had slept; and he proceeded to dress himself eagerly and in
haste.
As he stood by the window at the toilet table, bestowing no great
pains upon his attire--for mind had by this time recovered the full
mastery of her mortal ally--he saw a horseman crossing with speed the
open space of the park which lay between the house and the little
bridge that spanned the river some half a mile further up The man was
dressed in the livery of Lady Danvers, which, as most liveries were in
those days, was somewhat gay, if not gaudy; and the horse seemed tired
enough to require frequently the whip and spur.
Ralph took no great heed, for his mind was busy within its own
peculiar sphere of thought, and sent forth few scouts to notice what
was passing without. He saw the man gallop up to the terrace and pass
round to the back of the house, without any comment, even merely
mental. He did not ask himself who he could be, why he rode so fast,
or what intelligence he brought. It was but to him that a something
had arrived at the mansion--that a horse and man had passed rapidly
before his eyes, and that they were gone. He was still absorbed in the
thoughts of the preceding day, when a gentle knock at the door roused
him, and, turning round, he saw Mr. Drayton entering with some letters
in his hand.
"I beg pardon for intruding, sir," said the steward, with a bow of
profound respect; "but a servant has brought some letters from my
lady, among which is this one for yourself, marked, 'with the utmost
speed.' I therefore made bold to break in upon your rest, for your
servant told me you were still sleeping."
"I thank you, Mr. Drayton," replied Ralph; "I have a good deal
overslept myself. What says your lady?"
"But little to me, sir," replied the steward, "except to give you this
letter immediately, and to send the other to Lady Di Fullerton, who
often stays here; but I thought this needed immediate notice, and
therefore, as I have said, I brought it up."
Ralph took the letter with more indifference than Mr. Drayton thought
altogether proper toward the hand and seal of his fair influential
mistress, and then, having opened it, he read as follows:
"I write to you in haste, dear friend, for since you left me I have
heard much which requires to be spoken of between you and me
immediately. Some mistakes have evidently been committed--where or how
I can not stop to inquire; and it is needful, before you take any step
whatever, that you should consult with some one, even though it be so
humble a counselor as myself. There are more dangers surrounding you
than you at all imagine, very different from those which alarmed me on
the day that you left me, and which have now passed away from my mind.
These can not be explained by letter; but you must now--I enjoin and
require you, by courtesy and gallantry, which I know you possess, if
you would but show them--to remain a close prisoner in my house till
you see me without doing act or deed which can bring any one to know
where you are concealed. I may add that there are warrants out against
you for crimes less merciable than the simply fighting of a duel, and
that you must not be found at present, till the doubts and fears which
shake men's minds have passed away. Do not suppose that I will keep
you long waiting, although I do not choose to commit the facts of
which I am cognizant to the peril of a letter; but I am following you
as rapidly as may be, bold in my independence, and, I trust, in my
right purposes. Nevertheless, to escape the world's forked tongue, I
have written to an amiable but antique cousin--married and widowed--to
come over to Danvers's New Church. Should she arrive before myself,
show her all courtesy and kindness, and believe me, if you will let me
be so, your kind sister,
"HORTENSIA DANVERS."
Ralph studied the letter with much attention; read and re-read every
sentence several times, and ultimately resolved to abide by the
counsel it contained, and to await the coming of his fair hostess ere
he took any step whatever. It was evident--so he argued--that Lady
Danvers was disabused of the idea that he had killed his cousin Henry
in a duel; but what were the circumstances of peril to which she
alluded, he could not divine.
Could it be, he asked himself, that the influence of Lord Woodhall,
attributing to him his son's death, had been exerted with such effect
as to have a factitious accusation of some other offense against the
laws brought against him to secure vengeance? Such an idea would never
occur to any Englishman in the present day, and the very mention of it
would be laughed to scorn. But we must recollect that this was no vain
and improbable fancy in the times of which we are speaking. Trumped-up
charges, for the purpose of destroying a political adversary or a
private enemy, had been for more than twenty years, and still were, as
common as daisies; nor had such villainy yet reached its height; for
the three succeeding years displayed an amount of villainous practices
of this kind which probably never before, and certainly never after,
stained the history of any Christian country. Courts of law, too, were
notoriously corrupt; judges were bought, sold, and influenced. Scroggs
and Jeffries had befouled the judgment-seat; attorneys general were at
the beck and call of every political enmity or court intrigue; and
corrupt sheriffs selected, packed, and instructed the juries of the
day on the basest motives for the most infamous purposes. It was no
chimera of the imagination, then, that Ralph Woodhall dreaded, but a
real and substantial danger, which might affect any man who had
incurred the enmity of power and influence.
There could be no great harm done, he thought, by delay; and he
determined not to send the letters which he had written on the
preceding evening till Lady Danvers had arrived.
On questioning the man who had brought her letters, he found that she
might be expected in two days more; and, to follow her directions
exactly, he took a strong resolution to confine himself to the house
till after he was made more fully aware of the peril that menaced him.
But alas for human resolutions, and for the young man's above all!
Ralph was uneasy and restless. The anxiety of his mind left him no
repose. He tried to read, and the fine library of Danvers's New Church
afforded ample opportunity; but he soon found that the delight in
books was for the time gone. He thought of Margaret, and of his poor
cousin Henry, and, with a feeling of sympathy and pity, of old Lord
Woodhall himself. He knew well that the first effect of his son's
violent death would be to produce rage and a thirst for vengeance,
which might be turned against him by the slightest accident; but he
knew also that this would subside, and that profound grief would take
the place of anger, and very probably affect the old man's health, if
not his intellect.
He paced up and down the room. He gazed forth from the window, full of
thought. He tasted very little of the dinner set before him. He looked
at his watch often to see how the dull day went. In fact, to use a
vulgar but significant expression, "he could settle to nothing."
At length, as the sun began to go down, he felt that longing for the
free, open air which is so hard to be resisted. He persuaded himself
that there could be no harm in wandering out into the park. He would
go no further, he thought; and, as he had seen no one throughout
the whole livelong day but the servants coming to and fro, or a
game-keeper, with a gun on his shoulder, crossing the wide expanse
within the walls, his walk, he fancied, was likely to be solitary and
uninterrupted. Resolution soon gave way under such reasoning, and out
he went, wandering quietly along, and soon losing himself amid the
scattered trees and undulations of the ground. It is very pleasant to
lose one's self sometimes, to shake us free from every thing habitual,
to lose sight of houses and men, and the busy scene of mortal coil, to
comrade with nature, and see naught but nature's handiwork around; and
Ralph certainly had ample opportunity of doing so; for, quitting the
path, and taking his way across the green turf, he was soon out of
sight of the house, and wandering on among the old fantastic
hawthorns, with the fern waving its plumes up to his knees, and here
and there a chestnut or an oak spreading its green branches over his
head. Every now and then a rabbit or a hare would dart away from his
foot, and cunningly gallop through the tall, concealing fern, marking
its course by a long wavy line. A herd of deer, here and there, would
stand and gaze at him as he passed, keeping him at a fearful distance,
or trot away with increasing speed if he came suddenly near. A
solitary doe, too, started up as he approached her lair among the
longest leaves, and scampered off in a different direction from the
herd; and Ralph would moralize upon her somewhat in the vein of
Jacques, asking himself what she had done to be thus shut out from
fellowship with her kind--what offense she had committed against the
laws and proprieties of the deer.
There were all these things around him, but there was no trace of man.
If the scene had ever been embellished by man's hand, the vestiges of
his handiwork had passed away, and it all seemed Nature's doing.
Clouds, too, were flitting over the sky--large, grand, fleecy summer
clouds, low down in the air, and looking like the island of the
Laputan sages. Ralph's fancy played with them too. He made flying
thrones of them, and winged chariots, and longed to have some
enchanter's spell to call one down to receive him and float away upon
that soft, calm coach till he could step gently down at Margaret's
side.
This pleasant amusement of the mind--this refreshing solitude had no
long time to last. After walking about half a mile through the fern,
the wall of the park appeared in sight, and Ralph, turning a little to
the left, resolved to follow its course and return to the house by the
other side. He soon heard voices speaking beyond the wall, however,
and judged rightly that beyond it lay some public road. An instant
after, as he looked on, he saw a figure leap the wall at the distance
of about a hundred yards further up the hill, and immediately crouch
down among the fern and long grass which was there particularly tall.
Ralph paused for a moment to watch what would follow, and, standing
under an old chestnut-tree, could see without being seen. Running feet
were heard immediately after, and then the head and shoulders of a man
appeared above the wall. After gazing quickly round, the last comer
exclaimed, "He has run on! he has run on! he must have either taken
down over the bridge, or among the cottages by old Mother Diamond's."
Thus saying, he let go his hold of the wall and disappeared; and Ralph
could hear the sound of many persons running fast and calling to each
other as they went. His curiosity was excited by the scene he had
witnessed, and he connected it in his own mind with some vague
information which Gaunt Stilling had brought him in the morning of a
rising on the sea-board of Dorsetshire, which Ralph had judged from
the man's account to be of no greater importance than a riot in a
country town. He walked straightforward, then, toward the spot where
the man who had leaped the wall lay concealed, when the stranger
started upon his feet with a large horse-pistol in his hand, warning
him to stand back: "I will not be taken by a single man," he said; "I
will die first, with arms in my hand."
"I do not seek to take you, my good friend," replied Ralph, in a calm
tone; "I have no commission for such a thing. But you had belter put
up your pistol; for, if you should be foolish enough to fire it, it
would bring back to the spot those who apparently are seeking you, and
servants and game-keepers enough to render your other arms useless."
"Then will you swear not to touch me if I do put it up--not to attempt
to take me, I mean," said the stranger, after having eyed him
attentively for a moment.
"I will give you my honor," replied Ralph, "and that must satisfy
you; but I should much like to know, if you please, what you are
doing here within the walls of this park, where I imagine you have no
business, and where you are exceedingly likely to be apprehended as a
deer-stealer?"
"I am the most unfortunate of men," cried the other, "and only escaped
one peril to fall into another. Sir, I assure you I came not to steal
your deer, but merely to escape from those bloodhounds of a tyrant who
are following me to death."
Lamentable as his reply was, there was something almost ludicrous in
the tone in which it was delivered, and Ralph smiled slightly as he
replied, "The deer are not mine, my good friend, nor am I the
proprietor of this park, but merely a guest at the house."
He was going on, when the other interrupted him with a theatrical
gesture, saying, "Then I beseech you, sir, if you have any generosity
or chivalry in your disposition, aid an unfortunate stranger, who is
only persecuted on account of his political and religious opinions. I
have committed no crime. They can charge me with no other fault but
that of hating tyranny and popery."
"If that be all your offense," replied Ralph, "there is many a man in
the land who would be chargeable with the same, and myself among the
rest. But I really know not how to serve you, unless it be by leading
you to a way out of the park, in a different direction from that which
your pursuers have taken. I saw a gate a few minutes ago, up the
stream. They have gone down below toward the bridge, and will very
likely search the park when they find themselves disappointed there.
You had better follow me, therefore, as fast as possible, in order to
have a fair start."
"Without delay--without delay," replied the stranger, waving his hand
in what he conceived a very graceful manner; and, pursuing his course
onward by the wall, Ralph conducted him toward a gate of the park,
which was visible from the house. As they went, the stranger, who
seemed somewhat given to babble, entered into more conversation than
the young gentleman perhaps desired. Nor was the style exactly well
suited to compensate for the defects of the manner. His language was a
mixture of bad French and somewhat vulgar English, with the
assistance, every now and then, of a word or two of Low Dutch; and in
this jargon he went on to inform Ralph of a variety of particulars
which, had our young friend's loyalty been very rampant, might have
induced him to cause his arrest upon the spot. He boasted that a
fortnight would not pass before the crown of England was upon the head
of a good, true Protestant king; that the whole land was rising in
favor of the legitimate heir to the throne, and that the army itself
was full of disaffection to the reigning monarch.
Ralph interrupted him as soon as he could, half inclined to believe
that he was insane, and only anxious to get rid of him as soon as
possible; but, before they reached the gate toward which their steps
were directed, they were encountered by a game-keeper, who stopped
full in their way, looking at them both sternly as they approached.
Suddenly, however, the man's face changed, and he exclaimed with a
laugh, "Ah, Tom Dare! when did you come back from beyond sea? I
thought you dared not venture. Why, do you know, man, you are
proclaimed, and all the lads of Taunton are looking for you?"
Tom Dare, as the keeper called him, had at first shrunk into himself
in evident consternation; but the last words seemed to rouse him, and,
resuming his high-flown tone, he answered, "They shall soon find me,
for I am going there tout droit."
"But who is this gentleman?" asked the keeper, looking at Ralph with
some degree of suspicion, and addressing his question to the man he
called Tom Dare.
Ralph, however, took upon himself to answer, saying, "I am a guest of
Lady Danvers, my good friend, and finding this person in the park, I
undertook to show him the way to the gate."
"Oh, sir, you are the gentleman staying at the house," said the
keeper, doffing his hat; "as to Tommy Dare here, the sooner he is out
of the park the better--indeed, I don't know what he does here at
all."
To this uncivil speech Mr. Dare only replied by a rueful shake of the
head, and by some muttered words in regard to a certain lady of
Babylon who had a very unpleasant reputation. In the mean time he sped
on, however, the game-keeper turning in the direction of the gate also,
as if to see him out of the park. There was an air of doubt and
hesitation about the keeper's face, and once or twice he muttered to
himself, "I don't know--I'm not sure but I ought--but, hang it, one's
own townsman! No, no, I can't do it."
As soon as they came in sight of the gate at the upper part of the
park, both Ralph and the keeper stopped, and the latter said, "There's
the gate, Master Dare; and I'll give you a word of advice: take care
of your neck if you get to Taunton. I don't believe you'll find the
folks bide any nonsense there, especially when there are riots going
on in the country."
Mr. Dare, who was a step or two in advance, waved his hand solemnly,
and Ralph thought he could hear the word "Fool" uttered in a low tone.
The fugitive hurried on, however, and passed the gates, and Ralph
turned back with the game-keeper on his way to the house.
"Who is that man?" he asked, as they proceeded.
"He is a bad fellow, sir," replied the game-keeper, somewhat abruptly;
"his name is Thomas Dare, who had at one time a little money in
Taunton, my native town, but he could not keep himself quiet, for he
was a great talker and orator, as they call them, and got a number of
folks into a scrape in the last king's reign, then left them to shift
for themselves, and ran away to Holland. I am not at all sure that I
ought not, by rights, to have apprehended him, for he is a proclaimed
outlaw, and is here for no good, depend upon it."
Ralph made no comment, but strolled back again toward the house,
feeling a little dissatisfied with himself for not having adhered to
his resolution of the morning. The sun was setting when he reached the
door, purpling the slopes of the park, and making the river glow like
a ruby. Another day had passed; and as he stood there and looked for a
moment round, he could not help thinking of how different was the
scene, and the spot, and the circumstances in which that day had gone
by, from any thing he could have anticipated but a few weeks before.