This a love-meeting? See the maiden mourns,
And the sad suitor bends his looks on earth.
There’s more hath pass’d between them than belongs
To Love’s sweet sorrows.
--OLD PLAY.
As he approached the monument of Goddard Crovan, Julian cast many an
anxious glance to see whether any object visible beside the huge grey
stone should apprise him, whether he was anticipated, at the appointed
place of rendezvous, by her who had named it. Nor was it long before
the flutter of a mantle, which the breeze slightly waved, and the motion
necessary to replace it upon the wearer’s shoulders, made him aware that
Alice had already reached their place of meeting. One instant set the
palfrey at liberty, with slackened girths and loosened reins, to pick
its own way through the dell at will; another placed Julian Peveril by
the side of Alice Bridgenorth.
That Alice should extend her hand to her lover, as with the ardour of a
young greyhound he bounded over the obstacles of the rugged path, was
as natural as that Julian, seizing on the hand so kindly stretched
out, should devour it with kisses, and, for a moment or two, without
reprehension; while the other hand, which should have aided in the
liberation of its fellow, served to hide the blushes of the fair owner.
But Alice, young as she was, and attached to Julian by such long habits
of kindly intimacy, still knew well how to subdue the tendency of her
own treacherous affections.
“This is not right,” she said, extricating her hand from Julian’s grasp,
“this is not right, Julian. If I have been too rash in admitting such a
meeting as the present, it is not you that should make me sensible of my
folly.”
Julian Peveril’s mind had been early illuminated with that touch of
romantic fire which deprives passion of selfishness, and confers on it
the high and refined tone of generous and disinterested devotion. He let
go the hand of Alice with as much respect as he could have paid to that
of a princess; and when she seated herself upon a rocky fragment, over
which nature had stretched a cushion of moss and lichen, interspersed
with wild flowers, backed with a bush of copsewood, he took his place
beside her, indeed, but at such distance as to intimate the duty of an
attendant, who was there only to hear and to obey. Alice Bridgenorth
became more assured as she observed the power which she possessed over
her lover; and the self-command which Peveril exhibited, which other
damsels in her situation might have judged inconsistent with intensity
of passion, she appreciated more justly, as a proof of his respectful
and disinterested sincerity. She recovered, in addressing him, the
tone of confidence which rather belonged to the scenes of their early
acquaintance, than to those which had passed betwixt them since Peveril
had disclosed his affection, and thereby had brought restraint upon
their intercourse.
“Julian,” she said, “your visit of yesterday--your most ill-timed visit,
has distressed me much. It has misled my father--it has endangered you.
At all risks, I resolved that you should know this, and blame me not
if I have taken a bold and imprudent step in desiring this solitary
interview, since you are aware how little poor Deborah is to be
trusted.”
“Can you fear misconstruction from me, Alice?” replied Peveril warmly;
“from me, whom you have thus highly favoured--thus deeply obliged?”
“Cease your protestations, Julian,” answered the maiden; “they do but
make me the more sensible that I have acted over boldly. But I did for
the best.--I could not see you whom I have known so long--you, who say
you regard me with partiality----”
“_Say_ that I regard you with partiality!” interrupted Peveril in his
turn. “Ah, Alice, with a cold and doubtful phrase you have used to
express the most devoted, the most sincere affection!”
“Well, then,” said Alice sadly, “we will not quarrel about words; but
do not again interrupt me.--I could not, I say, see you, who, I believe,
regard me with sincere though vain and fruitless attachment, rush
blindfold into a snare, deceived and seduced by those very feelings
towards me.”
“I understand you not, Alice,” said Peveril; “nor can I see any danger
to which I am at present exposed. The sentiments which your father
has expressed towards me, are of a nature irreconcilable with hostile
purposes. If he is not offended with the bold wishes I may have
formed,--and his whole behaviour shows the contrary,--I know not a
man on earth from whom I have less cause to apprehend any danger or
ill-will.”
“My father,” said Alice, “means well by his country, and well by you;
yet I sometimes fear he may rather injure than serve his good cause; and
still more do I dread, that in attempting to engage you as an auxiliary,
he may forget those ties which ought to bind you, and I am sure which
will bind you, to a different line of conduct from his own.”
“You lead me into still deeper darkness, Alice,” answered Peveril. “That
your father’s especial line of politics differs widely from mine, I
know well; but how many instances have occurred, even during the bloody
scenes of civil warfare, of good and worthy men laying the prejudice of
party affections aside, and regarding each other with respect, and even
with friendly attachment, without being false to principle on either
side?”
“It may be so,” said Alice; “but such is not the league which my father
desires to form with you, and that to which he hopes your misplaced
partiality towards his daughter may afford a motive for your forming
with him.”
“And what is it,” said Peveril, “which I would refuse, with such a
prospect before me?”
“Treachery and dishonour!” replied Alice; “whatever would render you
unworthy of the poor boon at which you aim--ay, were it more worthless
than I confess it to be.”
“Would your father,” said Peveril, as he unwillingly received the
impression which Alice designed to convey,--“would he, whose views of
duty are so strict and severe--would he wish to involve me in aught, to
which such harsh epithets as treachery and dishonour can be applied with
the lightest shadow of truth?”
“Do not mistake me, Julian,” replied the maiden; “my father is incapable
of requesting aught of you that is not to his thinking just and
honourable; nay, he conceives that he only claims from you a debt, which
is due as a creature to the Creator, and as a man to your fellow-men.”
“So guarded, where can be the danger of our intercourse?” replied
Julian. “If he be resolved to require, and I determined to accede to,
nothing save what flows from conviction, what have I to fear, Alice? And
how is my intercourse with your father dangerous? Believe not so; his
speech has already made impression on me in some particulars, and
he listened with candour and patience to the objections which I made
occasionally. You do Master Bridgenorth less than justice in confounding
him with the unreasonable bigots in policy and religion, who can listen
to no argument but what favours their own prepossessions.”
“Julian,” replied Alice; “it is you who misjudge my father’s powers,
and his purpose with respect to you, and who overrate your own powers of
resistance. I am but a girl, but I have been taught by circumstances to
think for myself, and to consider the character of those around me. My
father’s views in ecclesiastical and civil policy are as dear to him as
the life which he cherishes only to advance them. They have been, with
little alteration, his companions through life. They brought him at one
period into prosperity, and when they suited not the times, he suffered
for having held them. They have become not only a part, but the very
dearest part, of his existence. If he shows them not to you at first,
in the flexible strength which they have acquired over his mind, do
not believe that they are the less powerful. He who desires to make
converts, must begin by degrees. But that he should sacrifice to an
inexperienced young man, whose ruling motive he will term a childish
passion, any part of those treasured principles which he has maintained
through good repute and bad repute--Oh, do not dream of such an
impossibility! If you meet at all, you must be the wax, he the seal--you
must receive, he must bestow, an absolute impression.”
“That,” said Peveril, “were unreasonable. I will frankly avow to you,
Alice, that I am not a sworn bigot to the opinions entertained by my
father, much as I respect his person. I could wish that our Cavaliers,
or whatsoever they are pleased to call themselves, would have some more
charity towards those who differ from them in Church and State. But to
hope that I would surrender the principles in which I have lived, were
to suppose me capable of deserting my benefactress, and breaking the
hearts of my parents.”
“Even so I judged of you,” answered Alice; “and therefore I asked this
interview, to conjure that you will break off all intercourse with our
family--return to your parents--or, what will be much safer, visit the
continent once more, and abide till God send better days to England, for
these are black with many a storm.”
“And can you bid me go, Alice?” said the young man, taking her
unresisting hand; “can you bid me go, and yet own an interest in my
fate?--Can you bid me, for fear of dangers, which, as a man, as a
gentleman, and a loyal one, I am bound to show my face to, meanly
abandon my parents, my friends, my country--suffer the existence of
evils which I might aid to prevent--forego the prospect of doing such
little good as might be in my power--fall from an active and honourable
station, into the condition of a fugitive and time-server--Can you bid
me do all this, Alice? Can you bid me do all this, and, in the same
breath, bid farewell for ever to you and happiness?--It is impossible--I
cannot surrender at once my love and my honour.”
“There is no remedy,” said Alice, but she could not suppress a sigh
while she said so--“there is no remedy--none whatever. What we might
have been to each other, placed in more favourable circumstances, it
avails not to think of now; and, circumstanced as we are, with open
war about to break out betwixt our parents and friends, we can be but
well-wishers--cold and distant well-wishers, who must part on this spot,
and at this hour, never meet again.”
“No, by Heaven!” said Peveril, animated at the same time by his own
feelings, and by the sight of the emotions which his companion in
vain endeavoured to suppress,--“No, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, “we part
not--Alice, we part not. If I am to leave my native land, you shall
be my companion in my exile. What have you to lose?--Whom have you to
abandon?--Your father?--The good old cause, as it is termed, is dearer
to him than a thousand daughters; and setting him aside, what tie is
there between you and this barren isle--between my Alice and any spot of
the British dominions, where her Julian does not sit by her?”
“O Julian,” answered the maiden, “why make my duty more painful by
visionary projects, which you ought not to name, or I to listen to? Your
parents--my father--it cannot be!”
“Fear not for my parents, Alice,” replied Julian, and pressing close
to his companion’s side, he ventured to throw his arm around her; “they
love me, and they will soon learn to love, in Alice, the only being on
earth who could have rendered their son happy. And for your own father,
when State and Church intrigues allow him to bestow a thought upon you,
will he not think that your happiness, your security, is better cared
for when you are my wife, than were you to continue under the mercenary
charge of yonder foolish woman? What could his pride desire better
for you, than the establishment which will one day be mine? Come then,
Alice, and since you condemn me to banishment--since you deny me a share
in those stirring achievements which are about to agitate England--come!
do you--for you only can--do you reconcile me to exile and inaction, and
give happiness to one, who, for your sake, is willing to resign honour.”
“It cannot--it cannot be,” said Alice, faltering as she uttered her
negative. “And yet,” she said, “how many in my place--left alone and
unprotected, as I am--But I must not--I must not--for your sake, Julian,
I must not.”
“Say not for my sake you must not, Alice,” said Peveril eagerly; “this
is adding insult to cruelty. If you will do aught for my sake, you will
say yes; or you will suffer this dear head to drop on my shoulder--the
slightest sign--the moving of an eyelid, shall signify consent. All
shall be prepared within an hour; within another the priest shall
unite us; and within a third, we leave the isle behind us, and seek our
fortunes on the continent.” But while he spoke, in joyful anticipation
of the consent which he implored, Alice found means to collect together
her resolution, which, staggered by the eagerness of her lover,
the impulse of her own affections, and the singularity of her
situation,--seeming, in her case, to justify what would have been most
blamable in another,--had more than half abandoned her.
The result of a moment’s deliberation was fatal to Julian’s proposal.
She extricated herself from the arm which had pressed her to his
side--arose, and repelling his attempts to approach or detain her, said,
with a simplicity not unmingled with dignity, “Julian, I always knew I
risked much in inviting you to this meeting; but I did not guess that I
could have been so cruel to both to you and to myself, as to suffer
you to discover what you have to-day seen too plainly--that I love you
better than you love me. But since you do know it, I will show you that
Alice’s love is disinterested--She will not bring an ignoble name into
your ancient house. If hereafter, in your line, there should arise some
who may think the claims of the hierarchy too exorbitant, the powers of
the crown too extensive, men shall not say these ideas were derived from
Alice Bridgenorth, their whig granddame.”
“Can you speak thus, Alice?” said her lover. “Can you use such
expressions? and are you not sensible that they show plainly it is your
own pride, not regard for me, that makes you resist the happiness of
both?”
“Not so, Julian; not so,” answered Alice, with tears in her eyes; “it
is the command of duty to us both--of duty, which we cannot transgress,
without risking our happiness here and hereafter. Think what I, the
cause of all, should feel, when your father frowns, your mother weeps,
your noble friends stand aloof, and you, even you yourself, shall have
made the painful discovery, that you have incurred the contempt and
resentment of all to satisfy a boyish passion; and that the poor
beauty, once sufficient to mislead you, is gradually declining under the
influence of grief and vexation. This I will not risk. I see distinctly
it is best we should here break off and part; and I thank God, who gives
me light enough to perceive, and strength enough to withstand, your
folly as well as my own. Farewell, then, Julian; but first take the
solemn advice which I called you hither to impart to you:--Shun my
father--you cannot walk in his paths, and be true to gratitude and to
honour. What he doth from pure and honourable motives, you cannot aid
him in, except upon the suggestion of a silly and interested passion, at
variance with all the engagements you have formed at coming into life.”
“Once more, Alice,” answered Julian, “I understand you not. If a course
of action is good, it needs no vindication from the actor’s motives--if
bad, it can derive none.”
“You cannot blind me with your sophistry, Julian,” replied Alice
Bridgenorth, “any more than you can overpower me with your passion. Had
the patriarch destined his son to death upon any less ground than faith
and humble obedience to a divine commandment, he had meditated a murder
and not a sacrifice. In our late bloody and lamentable wars, how many
drew swords on either side, from the purest and most honourable motives?
How many from the culpable suggestions of ambition, self-seeking, and
love of plunder? Yet while they marched in the same ranks, and spurred
their horses at the same trumpet-sound, the memory of the former is
dear to us as patriots or loyalists--that of those who acted on mean or
unworthy promptings, is either execrated or forgotten. Once more, I warn
you, avoid my father--leave this island, which will be soon agitated
by strange incidents--while you stay, be on your guard--distrust
everything--be jealous of every one, even of those to whom it may
seem almost impossible, from circumstances, to attach a shadow of
suspicion--trust not the very stones of the most secret apartment in
Holm-Peel, for that which hath wings shall carry the matter.”
Here Alice broke off suddenly, and with a faint shriek; for, stepping
from behind the stunted copse which had concealed him, her father stood
unexpectedly before them.
The reader cannot have forgotten that this was the second time in
which the stolen interviews of the lovers had been interrupted by the
unexpected apparition of Major Bridgenorth. On this second occasion
his countenance exhibited anger mixed with solemnity, like that of the
spirit to a ghost-seer, whom he upbraids with having neglected a charge
imposed at their first meeting. Even his anger, however, produced no
more violent emotion than a cold sternness of manner in his speech and
action. “I thank you, Alice,” he said to his daughter, “for the pains
you have taken to traverse my designs towards this young man, and
towards yourself. I thank you for the hints you have thrown out before
my appearance, the suddenness of which alone has prevented you from
carrying your confidence to a pitch which would have placed my life and
that of others at the discretion of a boy, who, when the cause of God
and his country is laid before him, has not leisure to think of them,
so much is he occupied with such a baby-face as thine.” Alice, pale as
death, continued motionless, with her eyes fixed on the ground, without
attempting the slightest reply to the ironical reproaches of her father.
“And you,” continued Major Bridgenorth, turning from his daughter to her
lover,--“you sir, have well repaid the liberal confidence which I
placed in you with so little reserve. You I have to thank also for some
lessons, which may teach me to rest satisfied with the churl’s blood
which nature has poured into my veins, and with the rude nurture which
my father allotted to me.”
“I understand you not, sir,” replied Julian Peveril, who, feeling the
necessity of saying something, could not, at the moment, find anything
more fitting to say.
“Yes, sir, I thank you,” said Major Bridgenorth, in the same cold
sarcastic tone, “for having shown me that breach of hospitality,
infringement of good faith, and such like peccadilloes, are not utterly
foreign to the mind and conduct of the heir of a knightly house of
twenty descents. It is a great lesson to me, sir: for hitherto I had
thought with the vulgar, that gentle manners went with gentle blood. But
perhaps courtesy is too chivalrous a quality to be wasted in intercourse
with a round-headed fanatic like myself.”
“Major Bridgenorth,” said Julian, “whatever has happened in this
interview which may have displeased you, has been the result of feelings
suddenly and strongly animated by the crisis of the moment--nothing was
premeditated.”
“Not even your meeting, I suppose?” replied Bridgenorth, in the same
cold tone. “You, sir, wandered hither from Holm-Peel--my daughter
strolled forth from the Black Fort; and chance, doubtless, assigned you
a meeting by the stone of Goddard Crovan?--Young man, disgrace yourself
by no more apologies--they are worse than useless.--And you, maiden,
who, in your fear of losing your lover, could verge on betraying what
might have cost a father his life--begone to your home. I will talk with
you at more leisure, and teach you practically those duties which you
seem to have forgotten.”
“On my honour, sir,” said Julian, “your daughter is guiltless of all
that can offend you; she resisted every offer which the headstrong
violence of my passion urged me to press upon her.”
“And, in brief,” said Bridgenorth, “I am not to believe that you met in
this remote place of rendezvous by Alice’s special appointment?”
Peveril knew not what to reply, and Bridgenorth again signed with his
hand to his daughter to withdraw.
“I obey you, father,” said Alice, who had by this time recovered from
the extremity of her surprise,--“I obey you; but Heaven is my witness
that you do me more than injustice in suspecting me capable of betraying
your secrets, even had it been necessary to save my own life or that of
Julian. That you are walking in a dangerous path I well know; but you
do it with your eyes open, and are actuated by motives of which you
can estimate the worth and value. My sole wish was, that this young man
should not enter blindfold on the same perils; and I had a right to warn
him, since the feelings by which he is hoodwinked had a direct reference
to me.”
“‘Tis well, minion,” said Bridgenorth, “you have spoken your
say. Retire, and let me complete the conference which you have so
considerately commenced.”
“I go, sir,” said Alice.--“Julian, to you my last words are, and I would
speak them with my last breath--Farewell, and caution!”
She turned from them, disappeared among the underwood, and was seen no
more.
“A true specimen of womankind,” said her father, looking after her, “who
would give the cause of nations up, rather than endanger a hair of her
lover’s head.--You, Master Peveril, doubtless, hold her opinion, that
the best love is a safe love!”
“Were danger alone in my way,” said Peveril, much surprised at the
softened tone in which Bridgenorth made this observation, “there are few
things which I would not face to--to--deserve your good opinion.”
“Or rather to win my daughter’s hand,” said Bridgenorth. “Well, young
man, one thing has pleased me in your conduct, though of much I have
my reasons to complain--one thing _has_ pleased me. You have surmounted
that bounding wall of aristocratical pride, in which your father, and,
I suppose, his fathers, remained imprisoned, as in the precincts of a
feudal fortress--you have leaped over this barrier, and shown yourself
not unwilling to ally yourself with a family whom your father spurns as
low-born and ignoble.”
However favourable this speech sounded towards success in his suit, it
so broadly stated the consequences of that success so far as his parents
were concerned, that Julian felt it in the last degree difficult to
reply. At length, perceiving that Major Bridgenorth seemed resolved
quietly to await his answer, he mustered up courage to say, “The
feelings which I entertain towards your daughter, Master Bridgenorth,
are of a nature to supersede many other considerations, to which in
any other case, I should feel it my duty to give the most reverential
attention. I will not disguise from you, that my father’s prejudices
against such a match would be very strong; but I devoutly believe they
would disappear when he came to know the merit of Alice Bridgenorth, and
to be sensible that she only could make his son happy.”
“In the meanwhile, you are desirous to complete the union which you
propose without the knowledge of your parents, and take the chance
of their being hereafter reconciled to it? So I understand, from the
proposal which you made but lately to my daughter.”
The turns of human nature, and of human passion, are so irregular and
uncertain, that although Julian had but a few minutes before urged
to Alice a private marriage, and an elopement to the continent, as
a measure upon which the whole happiness of his life depended, the
proposal seemed not to him half so delightful when stated by the calm,
cold, dictatorial accents of her father. It sounded no longer like the
dictates of ardent passion, throwing all other considerations aside, but
as a distinct surrender of the dignity of his house to one who seemed
to consider their relative situation as the triumph of Bridgenorth over
Peveril. He was mute for a moment, in the vain attempt to shape his
answer so as at once to intimate acquiescence in what Bridgenorth
stated, and a vindication of his own regard for his parents, and for the
honour of his house.
This delay gave rise to suspicion, and Bridgenorth’s eye gleamed, and
his lip quivered while he gave vent to it. “Hark ye, young man--deal
openly with me in this matter, if you would not have me think you the
execrable villain who would have seduced an unhappy girl, under promises
which he never designed to fulfil. Let me but suspect this, and you
shall see, on the spot, how far your pride and your pedigree will
preserve you against the just vengeance of a father.”
“You do me wrong,” said Peveril--“you do me infinite wrong, Major
Bridgenorth, I am incapable of the infamy which you allude to. The
proposal I made to your daughter was as sincere as ever was offered
by man to woman. I only hesitated, because you think it necessary to
examine me so very closely; and to possess yourself of all my purposes
and sentiments, in their fullest extent, without explaining to me the
tendency of your own.”
“Your proposal, then, shapes itself thus,” said Bridgenorth:--“You are
willing to lead my only child into exile from her native country, to
give her a claim to kindness and protection from your family, which you
know will be disregarded, on condition I consent to bestow her hand on
you, with a fortune sufficient to have matched your ancestors, when
they had most reason to boast of their wealth. This, young man, seems
no equal bargain. And yet,” he continued, after a momentary pause, “so
little do I value the goods of this world, that it might not be utterly
beyond thy power to reconcile me to the match which you have proposed to
me, however unequal it may appear.”
“Show me but the means which can propitiate your favour, Major
Bridgenorth,” said Peveril,--“for I will not doubt that they will be
consistent with my honour and duty--and you shall soon see how eagerly I
will obey your directions, or submit to your conditions.”
“They are summed in few words,” answered Bridgenorth. “Be an honest man,
and the friend of your country.”
“No one has ever doubted,” replied Peveril, “that I am both.”
“Pardon me,” replied the Major; “no one has, as yet, seen you show
yourself either. Interrupt me not--I question not your will to be
both; but you have hitherto neither had the light nor the opportunity
necessary for the display of your principles, or the service of your
country. You have lived when an apathy of mind, succeeding to the
agitations of the Civil War, had made men indifferent to state affairs,
and more willing to cultivate their own ease, than to stand in the gap
when the Lord was pleading with Israel. But we are Englishmen; and with
us such unnatural lethargy cannot continue long. Already, many of those
who most desired the return of Charles Stewart, regard him as a King
whom Heaven, importuned by our entreaties, gave to us in His anger. His
unlimited licence--and example so readily followed by the young and the
gay around him--has disgusted the minds of all sober and thinking men.
I had not now held conference with you in this intimate fashion, were
I not aware that you, Master Julian, were free from such stain of the
times. Heaven, that rendered the King’s course of license fruitful,
had denied issue to his bed of wedlock; and in the gloomy and stern
character of his bigoted successor, we already see what sort of monarch
shall succeed to the crown of England. This is a critical period, at
which it necessarily becomes the duty of all men to step forward, each
in his degree, and aid in rescuing the country which gave us birth.”
Peveril remembered the warning which he had received from Alice, and
bent his eyes on the ground, without returning any reply. “How is it,
young man,” continued Bridgenorth, after a pause--“so young as thou
art, and bound by no ties of kindred profligacy with the enemies of your
country, you can be already hardened to the claims she may form on you
at this crisis?”
“It were easy to answer you generally, Major Bridgenorth,” replied
Peveril--“It were easy to say that my country cannot make a claim on me
which I will not promptly answer at the risk of lands and life. But in
dealing thus generally, we should but deceive each other. What is the
nature of this call? By whom is it to be sounded? And what are to be the
results? for I think you have already seen enough of the evils of civil
war, to be wary of again awakening its terrors in a peaceful and happy
country.”
“They that are drenched with poisonous narcotics,” said the Major, “must
be awakened by their physicians, though it were with the sound of the
trumpet. Better that men should die bravely, with their arms in their
hands, like free-born Englishmen, than that they should slide into the
bloodless but dishonoured grave which slavery opens for its vassals--But
it is not of war that I was about to speak,” he added, assuming a milder
tone. “The evils of which England now complains, are such as can be
remedied by the wholesome administration of her own laws, even in the
state in which they are still suffered to exist. Have these laws not a
right to the support of every individual who lives under them? Have they
not a right to yours?”
As he seemed to pause for an answer, Peveril replied, “I have to learn,
Major Bridgenorth, how the laws of England have become so far weakened
as to require such support as mine. When that is made plain to me, no
man will more willingly discharge the duty of a faithful liegeman to
the law as well as the King. But the laws of England are under the
guardianship of upright and learned judges, and of a gracious monarch.”
“And of a House of Commons,” interrupted Bridgenorth, “no longer doting
upon restored monarchy, but awakened, as with a peal of thunder, to the
perilous state of our religion, and of our freedom. I appeal to your
own conscience, Julian Peveril, whether this awakening hath not been in
time, since you yourself know, and none better than you, the secret but
rapid strides which Rome has made to erect her Dagon of idolatry within
our Protestant land.”
Here Julian seeing, or thinking he saw, the drift of Bridgenorth’s
suspicions, hastened to exculpate himself from the thought of favouring
the Roman Catholic religion. “It is true,” he said, “I have been
educated in a family where that faith is professed by one honoured
individual, and that I have since travelled in Popish countries;
but even for these very reasons I have seen Popery too closely to be
friendly to its tenets. The bigotry of the laymen--the persevering arts
of the priesthood--the perpetual intrigue for the extension of the forms
without the spirit of religion--the usurpation of that Church over the
consciences of men--and her impious pretensions to infallibility, are
as inconsistent to my mind as they can seem to yours, with common-sense,
rational liberty, freedom of conscience, and pure religion.”
“Spoken like the son of your excellent mother,” said Bridgenorth,
grasping his hand; “for whose sake I have consented to endure so much
from your house unrequited, even when the means of requital were in my
own hand.”
“It was indeed from the instructions of that excellent parent,” said
Peveril, “that I was enabled, in my early youth, to resist and repel the
insidious attacks made upon my religious faith by the Catholic priests
into whose company I was necessarily thrown. Like her, I trust to live
and die in the faith of the reformed Church of England.”
“The Church of England!” said Bridgenorth, dropping his young friend’s
hand, but presently resuming it--“Alas! that Church, as now constituted,
usurps scarcely less than Rome herself upon men’s consciences and
liberties; yet, out of the weakness of this half-reformed Church,
may God be pleased to work out deliverance to England, and praise to
Himself. I must not forget, that one whose services have been in the
cause incalculable, wears the garb of an English priest, and hath had
Episcopal ordination. It is not for us to challenge the instrument, so
that our escape is achieved from the net of the fowler. Enough, that I
find thee not as yet enlightened with the purer doctrine, but prepared
to profit by it when the spark shall reach thee. Enough, in especial,
that I find thee willing to uplift thy testimony to cry aloud and spare
not, against the errors and arts of the Church of Rome. But remember,
what thou hast now said, thou wilt soon be called upon to justify, in a
manner the most solemn--the most awful.”
“What I have said,” replied Julian Peveril, “being the unbiassed
sentiments of my heart, shall, upon no proper occasion, want the support
of my open avowal; and I think it strange you should doubt me so far.”
“I doubt thee not, my young friend,” said Bridgenorth; “and I trust to
see that name rank high amongst those by whom the prey shall be rent
from the mighty. At present, thy prejudices occupy thy mind like the
strong keeper of the house mentioned in Scripture. But there shall
come a stronger than he, and make forcible entry, displaying on
the battlements that sign of faith in which alone there is found
salvation.--Watch, hope, and pray, that the hour may come.”
There was a pause in the conversation, which was first broken by
Peveril. “You have spoken to me in riddles, Major Bridgenorth; and I
have asked you for no explanation. Listen to a caution on my part, given
with the most sincere good-will. Take a hint from me, and believe it,
though it is darkly expressed. You are here--at least are believed to be
here--on an errand dangerous to the Lord of the island. That danger will
be retorted on yourself, if you make Man long your place of residence.
Be warned, and depart in time.”
“And leave my daughter to the guardianship of Julian Peveril! Runs not
your counsel so, young man?” answered Bridgenorth. “Trust my safety,
Julian, to my own prudence. I have been accustomed to guide myself
through worse dangers than now environ me. But I thank you for
your caution, which I am willing to believe was at least partly
disinterested.”
“We do not, then, part in anger?” said Peveril.
“Not in anger, my son,” said Bridgenorth, “but in love and strong
affection. For my daughter, thou must forbear every thought of seeing
her, save through me. I accept not thy suit, neither do I reject it;
only this I intimate to you, that he who would be my son, must first
show himself the true and loving child of his oppressed and deluded
country. Farewell; do not answer me now, thou art yet in the gall of
bitterness, and it may be that strife (which I desire not) should fall
between us. Thou shalt hear of me sooner than thou thinkest for.”
He shook Peveril heartily by the hand, and again bid him farewell,
leaving him under the confused and mingled impression of pleasure,
doubt, and wonder. Not a little surprised to find himself so far in the
good graces of Alice’s father, that his suit was even favoured with a
sort of negative encouragement, he could not help suspecting, as well
from the language of the daughter as of the father, that Bridgenorth was
desirous, as the price of his favour, that he should adopt some line of
conduct inconsistent with the principles in which he had been educated.
“You need not fear, Alice,” he said in his heart; “not even your
hand would I purchase by aught which resembled unworthy or truckling
compliance with tenets which my heart disowns; and well I know, were I
mean enough to do so, even the authority of thy father were insufficient
to compel thee to the ratification of so mean a bargain. But let me
hope better things. Bridgenorth, though strong-minded and sagacious, is
haunted by the fears of Popery, which are the bugbears of his sect. My
residence in the family of the Countess of Derby is more than enough to
inspire him with suspicions of my faith, from which, thank Heaven, I can
vindicate myself with truth and a good conscience.”
So thinking, he again adjusted the girths of his palfrey, replaced
the bit which he had slipped out of its mouth, that it might feed at
liberty, and mounting, pursued his way back to the Castle of Holm-Peel,
where he could not help fearing that something extraordinary might have
happened in his absence.
But the old pile soon rose before him, serene, and sternly still, amid
the sleeping ocean. The banner, which indicated that the Lord of Man
held residence within its ruinous precincts, hung motionless by the
ensign-staff. The sentinels walked to and fro on their posts, and hummed
or whistled their Manx airs. Leaving his faithful companion, Fairy, in
the village as before, Julian entered the Castle, and found all within
in the same state of quietness and good order which external appearances
had announced.