Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=GtVAAQAAMAAJ
(University of Minnesota)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
THE MAN IN BLACK.
AN
Historical Novel of the Days of Queen Anne.
BY
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G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
AUTHOR OF "LORD MONTAGU'S PAGE," "THE CAVALIER," "ARRAN NEIL," "EVA
ST. CLAIR," "MARY OF BURGUNDY," "PHILIP AUGUSTUS," ETC., ETC.
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COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
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Philadelphia:
T. B. PETERSON AND BROTHERS,
306 CHESTNUT STREET.
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, to
and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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THE MAN IN BLACK.
CHAPTER I.
Let me take you into an old-fashioned country house, built by
architects of the early reign of James the First. It had all the
peculiarities--I might almost say the oddities--of that particular
epoch in the building art. Chimneys innumerable had it. Heaven only
knows what rooms they ventilated; but their name must have been
legion. The windows were not fewer in number, and much more irregular:
for the chimneys were gathered together in some sort of symmetrical
arrangement, while the windows were scattered all over the various
faces of the building, with no apparent arrangement at all. Heaven
knows, also, what rooms they lighted, or were intended to light, for
they very little served the purpose, being narrow, and obstructed by
the stone mullions of the Elizabethan age. Each, too, had its label of
stone superincumbent, and projecting from the brick-work, which might
leave the period of construction somewhat doubtful--but the gables
decided the fact.
They, too, were manifold; for although the house had been built all at
once, it seemed, nevertheless, to have been erected in detached
masses, and joined together as best the builder could; so that there
were no less than six gables, turning north, south, east, and west,
with four right angles, and flat walls between them. These gables were
surmounted--topped, as it were, by a triangular wall, somewhat higher
than the acute roof, and this wall was constructed with a row of
steps, coped with freestone, on either side of the ascent, as if the
architect had fancied that some man or statue would, one day or
another, have to climb up to the top of the pyramid, and take his
place upon the crowning stone.
It was a gloomy old edifice: the bricks had become discolored; the
livery of age, yellow and gray lichen, was upon it; daws hovered round
the chimney tops; rooks passed cawing over it, on the way to their
conventicle hard by; no swallow built under the eaves; and the trees,
as if repelled by its stern, cold aspect, retreated from it on three
sides, leaving it alone on its own flat ground, like a moody man
amidst a gay society. On the fourth side, indeed, an avenue--that is
to say, two rows of old elms--crept cautiously up to it in a winding
and sinuous course, as if afraid of approaching too rapidly; and at
the distance of some five or six hundred yards, clumps of old trees,
beeches, and ever-green oaks, and things of sombre foliage, dotted the
park, only enlivened by here and there a herd of deer.
Now and then, a milk-maid, a country woman going to church or market,
a peasant, or at game-keeper, might be seen traversing the dry brown
expanse of grass, and but rarely deviating from a beaten path, which
led from one stile over the path wall to another. It was all sombre
and monotonous: the very spirit of dulness seemed to hang over it; and
the clouds themselves--the rapid sportive clouds, free denizens of the
sky, and playmates of the wind and sunbeam--appeared to grow dull and
tardy, as they passed across the wide space open to the view, and to
proceed with awe and gravity, like timid youth in the presence of
stern old age.
Enough of the outside of the house. Let me take you into the interior,
reader, and into one particular room--not the largest and the finest;
but one of the highest. It was a little oblong chamber, with one
window, which was ornamented--the only ornament the chamber had--with
a decent curtain of red and white checked linen. On the side next the
door, and between it and the western wall, was a small bed. A
walnut-tree table and two or three chairs were near the window. In one
corner stood a washing-stand, not very tidily arranged, in another
chest of drawers; and opposite the fire-place, hung from nails driven
into the wall, two or three shelves of the same material as the table,
each supporting a row of books, which, by the dark black covers, brown
edges, and thumbed corners, seemed to have a right to boast of some
antiquity and much use.
At the table, as you perceive, there is seated a boy of some fifteen
years of age, with pen and ink and paper, and an open book. If you
look over his shoulder, you will perceive that the words are Latin.
Yet he reads it with ease and facility, and seeks no aid from the
dictionary. It is the "Cato Major" of Cicero. Heaven! what a book for
a child like that to read! Boyhood studying old age!
But let us turn from the book, and examine the lad himself more
closely. See that pale face, with a manlike unnatural gravity upon it.
Look at that high broad brow, towering as a monument above the eyes.
Remark those eyes themselves, with their deep eager thought; and then
the gleam in them--something more than earnestness, and less than
wildness--a thirsty sort of expression, as if they drank in that they
rested on, and yet were unsated.
The brow rests upon the pale fair hand, as if requiring something to
support the heavy weight of thoughts with which the brain is burdened.
He marks nothing but the lines of that old book. His whole soul is in
the eloquent words. He hears not the door open; he sees not that tall,
venerable, but somewhat stiff and gaunt figure, enter and approach
him. He reads on, till the old man's Geneva cloak brushes his arm, and
his hand is upon his shoulder. Then he starts up--looks around--but
says nothing. A faint smile, pleasant yet grave, crosses his finely
cut lip; but that is the only welcome, as he raises his eyes to the
face that bends over him. Can that boy in years be already aged in
heart?
It is clear that the old man--the old clergyman, for so he evidently
is--has no very tender nature. Every line of his face forbids the
supposition. The expression itself is grave, not to say stern. There
is powerful thought about it, but small gentleness. He seems one of
those who have been tried and hardened in some one of the many fiery
furnaces which the world provides for the test of men of strong minds
and strong hearts. There has been much persecution in the land; there
have been changes, from the rigid and severe to the light and
frivolous--from the light and frivolous to the bitter and cruel. There
have been tyrants of all shapes and all characters within the last
forty years, and fools, and knaves, and madmen, to cry them on in
every course of evil. In all these chances and changes, what fixed and
rigid mind could escape the fangs of persecution and wrong? He had
known both; but they had changed him little. His was originally an
unbending spirit: it grew more tough and stubborn by the habit of
resistance; but its original bent was still the same.
Fortune--heaven's will--or his own inclination, had denied him wife or
child; and near relation he had none. A friend he had: that boy's
father, who had sheltered him in evil times, protected him as far as
possible against the rage of enemies, and bestowed upon him the small
living which afforded him support. He did his duty therein
conscientiously, but with a firm unyielding spirit, adhering to the
Calvinistic tenets which he had early received, in spite of the
universal falling off of companions and neighbors. He would not have
yielded an iota to have saved his head.
With all his hardness, he had one object of affection, to which all
that was gentle in his nature was bent. That object wits the boy by
whom he now stood, and for whom he had a great--an almost parental
regard. Perhaps it was that he thought the lad not very well treated;
and, as such had been his own case, there was sympathy in the matter.
But besides, he had been intrusted with his education from a very
early period, had taken a pleasure in the task, had found his scholar
apt, willing, and affectionate, with a sufficient touch of his own
character in the boy to make the sympathy strong, and yet sufficient
diversity to interest and to excite.
The old man was tenderer toward him than toward any other being upon
earth; and he sometimes feared that his early injunctions to study and
perseverance were somewhat too strictly followed--even to the
detriment of health. He often looked with some anxiety at the
increasing paleness of the cheek, at the too vivid gleam of the eye,
at the eager nervous quivering of the lip, and said within himself,
"This is overdone."
He did not like to check, after he had encouraged--to draw the rein
where he had been using the spur. There is something of vanity in us
all, and the sternest is not without that share which makes man shrink
from the imputation of error, even when made by his own heart. He did
not choose to think that the lad had needed no urging forward and yet
he would fain have had him relax a little more, and strove at times to
make him do so. But the impulse had been given: it had carried the
youth over the difficulties and obstacles in the way to knowledge, and
now he went on to acquire it, with an eagerness, a thirst, that had
something fearful in it. A bent, too, had been given to his mind--nay,
to his character, partly by the stern uncompromising character of him
to whom his education had been solely intrusted, partly by his own
peculiar situation, and partly by the subjects on which his reading
had chiefly turned.
The stern old Roman of the early republic; the deeds of heroic
virtue--as virtue was understood by the Romans; the sacrifice of all
tender affections, all the sensibilities of our nature to the rigid
thought of what is right; the remorseless disregard of feelings
implanted by God, when opposed to the notion of duties of man's
creation, excited his wonder and his admiration, and would have
hardened and perverted his heart, had not that heart been naturally
full of kindlier affections. As it was, there often existed a
struggle--a sort of hypothetical struggle--in his bosom, between the
mind and the heart. He asked himself sometimes, if he could sacrifice
any of those he knew and loved--his father, his mother, his brother,
to the good of his country, to some grave duty; and he felt pained and
roused to resistance of his own affections when he perceived what a
pang it would cost him.
Yet his home was not a very happy one; the kindlier things of domestic
life had not gathered green around him. His father was varying and
uneven in temper, especially toward his second son; sometimes stern
and gloomy, sometimes irascible almost to a degree of insanity.
Generous, brave, and upright, he was; but every one said, that a wound
he had received on the head in the wars, had marvelously increased the
infirmities of his temper.
The mother, indeed, was full of tenderness and gentleness; and
doubtless it was through her veins that the milk of human kindness had
found its way into that strange boy's heart. But yet she loved her
eldest son best, and unfortunately showed it.
The brother was a wild, rash, reckless young man, some three years
older; fond of the other, yet often pleased to irritate--or at least
to try, for he seldom succeeded. He was the favorite, however,
somewhat spoiled, much indulged; and whatever was done, was done for
him. He was the person most considered in the house; his were the
parties of pleasure: his the advantages. Even now the family was
absent, in order to let him see the capital of his native land, to
open his mind to the general world, to show him life on a more
extended scale than could be done in the country; and his younger
brother was left at home, to pursue his studies in dull solitude.
Yet he did not complain; there was not even a murmur at his heart. He
thought it all quite right. His destiny was before him. He was to
form his fortune for himself, by his own abilities, his own learning,
his own exertions. It was needful he should study, and his greatest
ambition for the time was to enter with distinction at the University;
his brightest thoughts of pleasure, the comparative freedom and
independence of a collegiate life.
Not that he did not find it dull; that gloomy old house, inhabited by
none but himself and few servants. Sometimes it seemed to oppress him
with a sense of terrible loneliness; sometimes it drove him to think
of the strange difference of human destinies, and why it should be
that--because it had pleased Heaven one man should be born a little
sooner or a little later than another, or in some other place--such a
wide interval should be placed between the different degrees of
happiness and fortune.
He felt, however, that such speculations were not good; they led him
beyond his depth; he involved himself in subtilties more common in
those days than in ours; he lost his way; and with passionate
eagerness flew to his books, to drive the mists and shadows from his
mind. Such had been the case even now: and there he sat, unconscious
that a complete and total change was coming over his destiny.
Oh, the dark workshop of Fate! what strange things go on therein,
affecting human misery and joy, repairing or breaking shackles for the
mind, the means of carrying us forward in a glorious cause, the
relentless weights which hurry us down to destruction! While you sit
there and read--while I sit here and write, who can say what strange
alterations, what combinations in the must discrepant things may be
going on around--without our will, without our knowledge--to alter the
whole course of our future existence? Doubtless, could man make his
own fate, he would mar it; and the impossibility of doing so is good.
The freedom of his own actions is sufficient, nay, somewhat too much;
and it is well for the world, aye, and for himself--that there is an
overruling Providence which so shapes circumstances around him, that
he cannot go beyond his limit, flutter as he will.
There is something in that old man's face more than is common with
him--a deeper gravity even than ordinary, yet mingled with a
tenderness that is rare. There is something like hesitation,
too--ay, hesitation even in him who during a stormy life has seldom
known what it is to doubt or to deliberate: a man of strict and ready
preparation, whose fixed, clear, definite mind was always prompt and
competent to act.
"Come, Philip, my son," he said, laying his hand, as I have stated, on
the lad's shoulder, "enough of study for to-day. You read too hard.
You run before my precepts. The body must have thought as well as the
mind; and if you let the whole summer day pass without exercise, you
will soon find that under the weight of corporeal sickness the
intellect will flag and the spirit droop. I am going for a walk. Come
with me; and we will converse of high things by the way."
"Study is my task and my duty, sir." replied the boy; "my father tells
me so, you have told me so often, and as for health I fear not. I seem
refreshed when I get up from reading, especially such books as this.
It is only when I have been out long, riding or walking, that I feel
tired."
"A proof that you should ride and walk the more," replied the old man.
"Come, put on your hat and cloak. You shall read no more to-day. There
are other thoughts before you; you know, Philip," he continued, "that
by reading we get but materials, which we must use to build up an
edifice in our own minds. If all our thoughts are derived from others
gone before us, we are but robbers of the dead, and live upon labors
not our own."
"Elder sons," replied the boy, with a laugh, "who take an inheritance
for which they toiled not."
"Something worse than that," replied the clergyman, "for we gather
what we do not employ rightly--what we have every right to possess,
but upon the sole condition of using well. Each man possessed of
intellect is bound to make his own mind, not to have it made for him;
to adapt it to the times and circumstances in which he lives, squaring
it by just rules, and employing the best materials he can find."
"Well, sir, I am ready," replied the youth, after a moment of deep
thought; and he and his old preceptor issued forth together down the
long staircase, with the slant sunshine pouring through the windows
upon the unequal steps, and illuminating the motes in the thick
atmosphere we breathe, like fancy brightening the idle floating things
which surround us in this world of vanity.
They walked across the park toward the stile. The youth was silent,
for the old man's last words seemed to have awakened a train of
thought altogether new.
His companion was silent also; for there was something working within
him which embarrassed and distressed him. He had something to tell
that young man, and he knew not how to tell it. For the first time in
his life he perceived, from the difficulty he experienced in deciding
upon his course, how little he really knew of his pupil's character.
He had dealt much with his mind, and that he comprehended well--its
depth, its clearness, its powers; but his heart and disposition he had
not scanned so accurately. He had a surmise, indeed, that there were
feelings strong and intense within; but he thought that the mind ruled
them with habitual sway that nothing could shake. Yet he paused and
pondered; and once he stopped, as if about to speak, but went on again
and said nothing.
At length, as they approached the park wall, he laid his finger on his
temple, muttering to himself, "Yes, the quicker the better. 'Tis well
to mingle two passions. Surprise will share with grief--if much grief
there be." Then turning to the young man, he said, "Philip, I think
you loved your brother Arthur?"
He spoke loudly, and in plain distinct tones; but the lad did not seem
to remark the past tense he used. "Certainly, sir," he said, "I love
him dearly. What of that?"
"Then you will be very happy to hear," replied the old man, "that he
had been singularly fortunate--I mean that he has been removed from
earth and all its allurements--the vanities, the sins, the follies of
the world in which he seemed destined to move, before he could be
corrupted by its evils, or his spirit receive a taint from its vices."
The young man turned and gazed on him with inquiring eyes, as if still
he did not comprehend what he meant.
"He was drowned," said the clergyman, "on Saturday last, while sailing
with a party of pleasure on the Thames;" and Philip fell at his feet
as senseless as if he had shot him.