Mrs. Coningsby found the Marquis and his son seated amongst some pine-clad rocks on the southern side of the Parsonage. She made an apology for the length of her absence, and the continuation of Mr. Athelstone\'s, by relating to his Lordship much of what her nephew had communicated.
Meanwhile, Cornelia and her sister had joined Ferdinand, and sat with him in a recess of the cliff which fronted the sea. Its genial airs, warm from the south, suggested the more balmy ones of Italy and Spain, to the imagination of Alice, and she soon saw all vestiges of gloom pass from the brow of the young Spaniard, as with encreasing animation he answered her various questions on the subject of his[194] travels and of his country. Cornelia enquired about the remains of ancient Rome, the eruptions of Vesuvius, and who, amongst the celebrated living characters of Italy and France, he personally knew. Alice paid little attention to his replies on these subjects, but made him describe the gardens of Naples, and the luxuriant landscapes which double their beauties in the translucent waters of its bay. She then talked of the orange groves of his own country; and asked whether it were true the Spanish ladies reposed every day after dinner by the sides of fountains, under the shade of these delicious arbours. He listened to her questions with delight. It was the ingenuous curiosity of fifteen, seeking information with the confidence of innocence; and he answered her with a minuteness, that shewed his pleasure in dwelling on themes congenial to her taste.
Cornelia perceived that the share she[195] wished to take in the discourse, was almost wholly disregarded; but pleased to see their guest restored to good humour, and Alice interested in such improving conversation; she cheerfully moved towards her mother and the Marquis, and soon became wholly absorbed in their discussions.
The dinner-hour of the Parsonage once more assembled its family and guests around the social board. Peace had resumed her sway in every breast. The voice of unconscious tenderness had soothed the jealous irritability of Ferdinand, and his smiles diffused a complacency over the seriousness of his father, that harmonized with the beneficent serenity of their host. Mrs. Coningsby discoursed with the energy of an imagination whose first fires still glowed in their embers. The equable Cornelia looked around with satisfaction on the general cheerfulness, while Alice, whatever might be her volatile changes of[196] place, always found herself settle by the side of the entertaining Spaniard. Gay as joy itself, and vibrating in every nerve the happiness she bestowed, she sported, like the young halcyon on waves of sunshine.
Louis was not less animated. His heart no longer upbraided him; and in his own element of blameless enjoyment, with unchecked delight his eyes followed the movements of Alice, as Ferdinand instructed her emulous curiosity in the native dances of his country. The young Spaniard seemed to have passed through the cave of Trophonius, so completely was he transformed from the reserved, frigid being of the morning. His late sallow complexion now flashed with the tints of health, and the vivacity of his conversation almost obliterated from Cornelia\'s remembrance the moody wretch who had rushed from her presence only a few hours before. Alice hovered round him, like one of the[197] zephyrs which fanned their evening festivity; and at her desire he took her mother\'s lute, and played and sung to it several Spanish ditties. He reclined on a low sofa, beneath the open ivied-window, through whose Gothic interlacing the breeze entered, with the soft light of the stars. The tender melancholy of the airs shed a similar influence on the spirits of the youthful party; and while they listened with pensive delight to the last stanza of a plaintive seguedilla, the church clock struck twelve.
From the distant quarter of the room where Mrs. Coningsby sat with her uncle and the Marquis, she had observed the amusements on the opposite side. On hearing the hour strike, she rose from her chair, and telling the young people, it was not merely the witching time of night, but that the sabbath morning was begun; she broke up their revels, and dismissed them to their pillows.
Cornelia alone found uninterrupted[198] slumber; Ferdinand did not sleep that night; Alice wondered why she did not close her eyes; and Louis lay meditating on the last four-and-twenty hours, till day dawned, and wearied nature sank into repose.
The morning brought him a letter before he had quitted his bed. Its seal was Wharton\'s manche and ducal coronet. Louis held it some time unopened in his hand. What new contention might it demand of him? Was it to upbraid him for his flight? or was it an apology from the Duke for his attempt to detain him? Whatever were its errand, the sight of the letter recalled to him all the fascinations of its writer; and with trepidation he broke the seal. His heart clung to every line, while that of the volatile writer seemed winged, and lightly skimming the surface he professed to dwell on. The latter ran thus,
"Et hi Brute! was a mighty dextrous Parthian bolt, but it whistled away, I[199] know not whither. Would C?sar have been so bad a marksman, as not to have distinguished his own Anthony from the wretch who played the brute part in the capitol? Why, de Montemar you are as much like the lantern-jawed Cassius, as I to that nose-led Stoic! You are too profound in canonization not to have read of a certain saint, no matter his name, who, with a pair of convenient red-hot pincers, clutched the devil by his feature of honour, and so dragged him roaring round the world. Cassius was no saint, whatever he might be of a conjuror; but I never hear your king-killing demagogues vaunting of their prince of patriots, without seeing the pincers at his nose. So, prithee, my dainty C?sar, no more misnomers if you would not have me requite you in kind!
"And so, you even took the flood! I would not for happier hours, than even those your stubbornness wrested from me, I would not have lost that proof of your[200] substance. You know I am a being of vapour! People who say so, must not wonder that I should be glad to play the atmosphere round something worth my while. Louis! had you not believed them, would you have fled me like a pestilence?
"Being of a gentle nature, as full of ruth as perhaps I ought to be of ruefulness, I will not bristle the grey locks of your venerable uncle this Saturday night, by likening him to any old woman on earth or in heaven. But I have a shrewd guess, that like the good lady Calphurnia, he pretends to dream; and on the evidence of such whimsies will report you my orisons!
—— Pulchra Laverna, Da mihi fallere, da justum sanctumque videri.
—Oh, wizards, how little do you know the mettle of Philip Wharton!—In the face of day, and of these darkling augurs, I avow that it is my object to make you my own! My true spirit, wearied[201] with the tricks of men, and their sordid chemistry,
Delights to quaff the yet untasted spring, And pluck the virgin flower!
"Is there a cloak over this dagger, my panic-struck C?sar?
"However, that there may be no more alarms in. Saint Cuthbert\'s sanctuary, tell the holy man I have met Romulus\'s fate. If you look for me to-night it must be amongst the stars; for, after this is dispatched, neither Bamborough nor England, will hold your faithful.
"Bamborough Castle, Saturday night."
"Gone!" cried Louis, pressing the letter between his folded hands, "neither Bamborough nor England now holds its noble writer!" He turned towards the window, which commanded a view of the sea. The distant waves were sparkling beneath the beams of the morning sun: "beyond those he is sailing away, far from dark suspicion, and ungrateful de Montemar.—Ah, if he, indeed, knew[202] I had so readily imbibed my uncle\'s belief, that he is deceitful, and seeking to betray me in the dearest interests of man!—would he thus subscribe himself my Faithful?—Does he not, by that single word, avow his trust in my honour, and his own disinterested attachment to me?"
Again he read the letter; it contained nothing which he might not shew to Mr. Athelstone. There was not a word in it, excepting the declaration of reciprocal fidelity in that of the signature, which implied a confidence; or even hinted at the preservation of his secret; and this implicit trust still more affected Louis.—"Noble Wharton!" cried he, "this is Alexander drinking the suspected bowl!—and you shall find that I am faithful."
He sprang out of bed, and hastily dressed himself. But just as he was hurrying out of the door with the letter in his hand, he paused.—"Why should I be thus eager to put myself into purga[203]tory?"—He returned into the room.—"My dear, good, but precise uncle," continued he, "cannot understand this man! He will find an argument to blame all that I admire in this open, daring spirit. But at least, he must acknowledge that here he is no hypocritical designer! I will shew it to him."
Louis continued to fluctuate amidst a variety of reflections and resolutions, till the bell for family morning prayers roused him from his indecisive meditations; and putting the letter in his breast, he descended to the library.
When the duty was done, and he arose from his knees, he found the young Spaniard by his side; and rising from the same posture, which he had taken between him and Alice. Louis looked surprised: Ferdinand smiled; and without waiting to be questioned, said, that the preceding night he had enquired of Miss Coningsby what was meant by the vesper and matin bell, which rang after he and[204] his father had withdrawn to rest, and before they appeared in the morning. She was so good as to explain it to him; and he had thus taken the liberty to join the family devotion. While the domestics were making their reverential bows to the Pastor as they retired, Mrs. Coningsby observed her young guest. She expressed her pleasure at meeting him in so sacred an hour; "but you are not of the church of Calvin or of Luther?" asked she.
"No," replied he, "but I am of the church of their master. And that, I trust, does not exclude me from yours!"
"That plea will open the gates of Heaven to you!" cried the Pastor with a benign smile, as he passed from the reading-desk into the breakfast-room.
It was some time before the Marquis came from his chamber; but when he did join the morning group, being ignorant of his son having mingled in what he would have deemed an heretical rite,[205] he contemplated that son\'s renovated appearance with comfort unalloyed. He could not account to himself how such a change from weakness to activity; from despairing melancholy to gay cheerfulness; could have been wrought in the short space of two days; unless he might attribute it to the influence of the Saint, before whose defaced shrine he had knelt the preceding day, when he wandered alone to the solitary abbey. While he sat absorbed in these thoughts, Mrs. Coningsby mentioned to the younger part of the circle what had been discussed the evening before between herself and Mr. Athelstone.
As the season approached when she and her family usually emigrated to Morewick-hall, she now proposed going earlier; and that the Marquis and his son, accompanied by her nephew, should make a tour with herself and her daughters to the interesting scenery in the neighbourhood. "You will find the Hall[206] more befitting your reception than this lonely rock," continued she, addressing the Marquis; "but Lindisfarne is my uncle\'s Patmos; and when here, he loves to live like a hermit in his cell."
"Rather," returned Ferdinand, with an answering smile: "like the privileged saint, emparadised with angels!"
Louis guessed that one view in this scheme, was to take him out of the way of the Duke; and with something between a sigh and a smile, in thinking the precaution was no longer necessary; he warmly seconded his aunt\'s proposal. The eyes of Alice and of Ferdinand met in pleased sympathy. And Cornelia, addressing the Marquis, soon awakened an interest, in him, he did not expect to find in the projected excursion. She talked to him of Alnwick, of its chivalrous trophies; and of the stone chair of Hotspur, which still overlooks its battlements. She then passed to the Castle of Warkworth: and spoke of the ancho[207]rite\'s chapel, dug in the heart of its rock. As she discoursed of the hero of Halidown; and narrated the sorrows of his friend, the devout penitent of the hermitage, her share of the Percy blood glowed on her cheek and in her language: and the Marquis, aroused to all his military and religious enthusiasm, often grasped the cross of his sword, and mingled a prayer with the aspirations of a soldier.
Meanwhile Alice enumerated to Ferdinand, the charming variety of their walks at Morewick; particularly along the meandering banks of the Coquet, and in view of the very hermitage Cornelia was describing to his father. Ferdinand accepted with delight her promise of conducting him to the cell by her own favourite path; over a little rustic bridge that joined the Morewick-grounds to an old romantic mill, which stood on an island embowered in trees, and dashed the foaming waters of its wheels through[208] the pendant branches which swept the surface of the water. A boat, paddled by the miller\'s son, would convey them, under as deep a shade, to the opposite shore; and then, by a winding walk, traced in the wild wooded scenery by the hand of the hermit himself, she would lead him over the rocky heights to the cell; where for sixty years the mourning lover of murdered beauty had fed upon his tears day and night! "I know the pleasure with which Louis will accompany us;" added she, "and if it be moon-light he will like it better, for he often tells me, the garish hour of sunshine is no time for visiting the hermitage of Warkworth."
Louis did not hear what was passing, for he had chosen the opportunity of his uncle\'s guests being engaged in conversation with his cousins, to inform Mr. Athelstone that Duke Wharton had left Bamborough. When the good old man had read the Duke\'s letter, he pressed[209] his nephew\'s hand as he returned it, and said with a playful smile, "It is well, and we will not grudge him his apotheosis!"
The remainder of the sabbath passed in the Pastor\'s family, as became the purity of its master\'s faith, and the simplicity of his manners. At the usual hours for the public celebration of divine worship, he and his little household, all excepting his Roman Catholic guests, repaired to the parish church.
Towards the close of the afternoon service, (while the Marquis had again absented himself, and was retired to the interior ruins of the abbey;) Ferdinand placed himself at the window of his bedchamber, which commanded a view of the church-path, to watch the re-appearance of the only saint which now engaged his idolatry. With what pleasureable curiosity, excited by his sentiments for Alice, which gave him an interest in all that concerned her, did he see the[210] massy oaken doors unfold from under the low Saxon arch, and the island train issue forth in their clean but coarse Sunday attire! Four generations in one family, first met his eye. A hale old fisherman, with grizzled locks and a ruddy though weather-ploughed cheek, supported on his sinewy arm the decent steps of his dame; who, dressed in a camlet gown of her own spinning and a linen apron and cap of spotless white, looked smilingly behind on the group that closely followed:—Her athletic son, and his comely wife; each restraining the capering steps of a chubby boy and girl, as they led them forth from the house of God. The aged patriarch of the race, his head whitened by the winters of nearly a century, closed the procession; leaning one hand on a staff, and the other on the arm of his youngest grandchild; a pretty young woman, whose down-cast eyes shewed how cautiously she was guiding the faultering steps of her venerable[211] grand sire.—Of such simple and sincere worshippers was the congregation of Lindisfarne; and as Ferdinand observed their composed and happy countenances, he felt that their\'s must be the religion of peace.
"Yes;" cried he, "where innocence dwells, there must be genuine piety. Nothing is there to impede the free communion between earth and heaven. The blameless spirit does not fear to lift up its eyes in the presence of its Creator: it is still clothed in the brightness of His beams. But the guilty wretch—polluted—bereft!—Oh, what can hide his nakedness from the Omniscient eye?—Not the unction of man.—I have had enough of that.—What breath of mortal absolution can still this raging fire!" He smote his breast as he spoke, and tore himself from the window.
Mrs. Coningsby and her daughters had prepared tea in the drawing-room a long time before the different members of her[212] little circle drew their chairs around it. The Pastor was paying his customary sabbath visitations to the infirm from age, sickness, or sorrow. Ferdinand was yet in his chamber; struggling with an agony of soul, more grievous than penance that priest ever inflicted. And Louis, having accompanied his uncle to the door of one of the fisher\'s huts, instead of returning home, walked on unconsciously, till he found himself in the cemetery of the old monastery, and saw the Marquis approaching him from the western aisle.
Supposing his Lordship had come there, merely as an admirer of antiquity, Louis did not hesitate to join him; and entering into conversation on this idea, he began to point out the most perfect specimens of its ancient architecture; and to name the periods of British history which they commemorated, as the times of the abbey\'s erection, enlargement, or repairing. As he was master of his sub[213]ject; and spoke of its early founders, Oswald and Aidan, with not merely historical accuracy, but reverence for their holy zeal; Santa Cruz pressed the hand of his young companion; and attended with questioning complacency, till he almost forgot he was not listening to a good Catholic. He could not comprehend how a disciple of heresy, could have more toleration for the professors of the Roman creed, than he had for heretical infidelity; and therefore, with a hope that the Catholic Faith, which Baron de Ripperda had abjured, was latent in his son, the Marquis willingly gave way to the predilection he had conceived for him; and strolled with him over the whole ruin. After having been ascertained of the place where rested the mortal part of the exemplary Saint Aidan; he again bowed to the vacant spot, at the right side of the high altar, which had once contained the stone shrine of the holy Cuthbert.—Louis[214] conducted him to a cell, now choaked with docks and nettles, which had once been the penitentiary of a King. Near this half-buried vault, lay several flat crosiered tomb-stones of different dates; and amongst them were two mitred brothers of the Barons of Athelstone and of Bamborough.
"You are nobly descended, Mr. de Montemar!" observed the Marquis; "By your mother\'s side from these powerful Northumbrian Barons.—By your father\'s, from the princely house of Nassau, and the more illustrious Ripperda of Andalusia. These were all faithful sons of the cross!—but now that their posterity have embraced the schisms of infidelity—oh, my ingenuous young friend, are you not at this moment ready to exclaim, How am I fallen!"
"No, my Lord," returned Louis, "I have too British a spirit, to regret the feudal power which was founded on the vassalage of my fellow-creatures,—and[215] though my father may have forfeited all claim to the restitution of his paternal rights in Spain, by having become a proselyte to the religion in which I have been educated; I cannot deem any depression of rank a debasement, which is incurred in so sacred a cause."
Santa Cruz drew his arm from his companion. Such adherence to principle, had it been on his side of the argument, would have filled the Marquis with admiration; but in the present case, it gave his growing partiality for the son of Ripperda, so severe a shock, that he sunk into stern silence and turned out of the abbey. Not a word was spoken during their walk homeward. And when they entered the Parsonage, the Marquis bowed coldly to the Pastor; while, with a similar air of reserve, he accepted the seat presented to him by the side of Mrs. Coningsby.
The whole party were now assembled; but an embarrassing gravity pervaded[216] them all. None knew exactly how to explain it; but it arose, rather from the several individuals thinking too intensely of each other, than from indifference to each other\'s society. Louis alone had straying thoughts; and they were wandering far and wide:—sometimes with his noble friend, throwing himself in loyal gallantry at the feet of a dethroned Queen and her Son. Then the image of his father, and of Spain, would occupy his mind. He seemed to be present with him in that country; where, though denied the honours of his race, the fame of his services proclaimed that he did more than possess them—he deserved them!—"I am not fallen;" said Louis to himself; "when sprung from such a father! What is there in mere title or station, to render a man truly great?—It is action, that makes the post, that of honour, or disgrace.—And, God of my fathers! give me but the opportunity to serve my country; and no man[217] shall say the name of Ripperda has suffered degradation!"
Louis started from his chair, in the fulness of his emotion, and hastily crossed the room. He chanced to take the direction to a recess between the book-case and the porcelain cabinet.
"You are right to remind Cornelia of her duty," cried the Pastor, "open the door; and she will then recollect, that nearly an hour has elapsed since she ought to have given us our Sunday\'s evening anthem."
Louis immediately threw open a pair of small folding-doors, and discovered an organ, with the oratorios of Handel on its music-stand. Cornelia did not require a second reminder.—She took her seat before the instrument; and with tones that might—
"Create a soul under the ribs of death,"
sang the divine strains of "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
As the pealing organ swelled the note[218] of praise, the Marquis almost imagined himself in his own oratory; and that he heard the seraphic voice of his daughter Marcella, chaunting her evening hymn to the Virgin. Tears Filled the father\'s eyes; he drew near the instrument; and crossing his arms over his breast, with the silent responses of the heart, he re-echoed every word and every note of the holy song. When Cornelia struck its last triumphant chords, and was rising from her seat, he entreated her to prolong strains so well suited to the vesper-hour, and the feelings with which he listened.
Mr. Athelstone joined in the request; remarking, that as he loved a peculiar consecration of the instruments of worship, he never permitted this organ to be opened but on the seventh-day, or other holy festivals; and, that when it was once touched by his Saint Cecilia, his greatest pleasure was to hear its sounds, till the hour of night closed them in prayer.[219] Cornelia re-commenced, with the overture of the Messiah; and the evening ended in unison with the piety of her uncle and his guest: in hymns to the great Author of universal harmony.