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Uncertain in what manner to address her whom he had been lately so anxious to meet with, and embarrassed by a TETE-A-TETE to which his own timid inexperience, gave some awkwardness, the party had proceeded more than a hundred yards before Darsie assumed courage to accost, or even to look at, his companion. Sensible, however, of the impropriety of his silence, he turned to speak to her; and observing that, although she wore her mask, there was something like disappointment and dejection in her manner, he was moved by self-reproach for his own coldness, and hastened to address her in the kindest tone he could assume.
‘You must think me cruelly deficient in gratitude, Miss Lilias, that I have been thus long in your company, without thanking you for the interest which you have deigned to take in my unfortunate affairs?’
‘I am glad you have at length spoken,’ she said, ‘though I owe it is more coldly than I expected. MISS Lilias! DEIGN to take interest! In whom, dear Darsie, CAN I take interest but in you; and why do you put this barrier of ceremony betwixt us, whom adverse circumstances have already separated for such a length of time?’
Darsie was again confounded at the extra candour, if we may use the term, of this frank avowal. ‘One must love partridge very well,’ thought he, ‘to accept it when thrown in one’s face – if this is not plain speaking, there is no such place as downright Dunstable in being!’
Embarrassed with these reflections, and himself of a nature fancifully, almost fastidiously, delicate, he could only in reply stammer forth an acknowledgement of his companion’s goodness, and his own gratitude. She answered in a tone partly sorrowful and partly impatient, repeating, with displeased emphasis, the only distinct words he had been able to bring forth – ‘Goodness – gratitude! – O Darsie! should these be the phrases between you and me? Alas! I am too sure you are displeased with me, though I cannot even guess on what account. Perhaps you think I have been too free in venturing upon my visit to your friend. But then remember, it was in your behalf, and that I knew no better way to put you on your guard against the misfortunes and restraint which you have been subjected to, and are still enduring.’
‘Dear Lady’ – said Darsie, rallying his recollection, and suspicious of some error in apprehension, – a suspicion which his mode of address seemed at once to communicate to Lilias, for she interrupted him, —
‘LADY! dear LADY! For whom, or for what, in Heaven’s name, do you take me, that you address me so formally?’
Had the question been asked in that enchanted hall in fairyland, where all interrogations must be answered with absolute sincerity, Darsie had certainly replied, that he took her for the most frank-hearted and ultra-liberal lass that had ever lived since Mother Eve eat the pippin without paring. But as he was still on middle-earth, and free to avail himself of a little polite deceit, he barely answered that he believed he had the honour of speaking to the niece of Mr. Redgauntlet.
‘Surely,’ she replied; ‘but were it not as easy for you to have said, to your own only sister?’
Darsie started in his saddle, as if he had received a pistol-shot.
‘My sister!’ he exclaimed.
‘And you did NOT know it, then?’ said she. ‘I thought your reception of me was cold and indifferent!’
A kind and cordial embrace took place betwixt the relatives; and so light was Darsie’s spirit, that he really felt himself more relieved, by getting quit of the embarrassments of the last half-hour, during which he conceived himself in danger of being persecuted by the attachment of a forward girl, than disappointed by the vanishing of so many day-dreams as he had been in the habit of encouraging during the time when the green-mantled maiden was goddess of his idolatry. He had been already flung from his romantic Pegasus, and was too happy at length to find himself with bones unbroken, though with his back on the ground. He was, besides, with all his whims and follies, a generous, kind-hearted youth, and was delighted to acknowledge so beautiful and amiable a relative, and to assure her in the warmest terms of his immediate affection and future protection, so soon as they should be extricated from their present situation. Smiles and tears mingled on Lilias’s cheeks, like showers and sunshine in April weather.
‘Out on me,’ she said, ‘that I should be so childish as to cry at what makes me so sincerely happy! since, God knows, family-love is what my heart has most longed after, and to which it has been most a stranger. My uncle says that you and I, Darsie, are but half Redgauntlets, and that the metal of which our father’s family was made, has been softened to effeminacy in our mother’s offspring.’
‘Alas!’ said Darsie, ‘I know so little of our family story, that I almost doubted that I belonged to the House of Redgauntlet, although the chief of the family himself intimated so much to me.’
‘The chief of the family!’ said Lilias. ‘You must know little of your own descent indeed, if you mean my uncle by that expression. You yourself, my dear Darsie, are the heir and representative of our ancient House, for our father was the elder brother – that brave and unhappy Sir Henry Darsie Redgauntlet, who suffered at Carlisle in the year 1746. He took the name of Darsie, in conjunction with his own, from our mother, heiress to a Cumberland family of great wealth and antiquity, of whose large estates you are the undeniable heir, although those of your father have been involved in the general doom of forfeiture. But all this must be necessarily unknown to you.’
‘Indeed I hear it for the first time in my life,’ answered Darsie.
‘And you knew not that I was your sister?’ said Lilias. ‘No wonder you received me so coldly. What a strange, wild, forward young person you must have thought me – mixing myself in the fortunes of a stranger whom I had only once spoken to – corresponding with him by signs – Good Heaven! what can you have supposed me?’
‘And how should I have come to the knowledge of our connexion?’ said Darsie. ‘You are aware I was not acquainted with it when we danced together at Brokenburn.’
‘I saw that with concern, and fain I would have warned you,’ answered Lilias; ‘but I was closely watched, and before I could find or make an opportunity of coming to a full explanation with you on a subject so agitating, I was forced to leave the room. What I did say was, you may remember, a caution to leave the southern border, for I foresaw what has since happened. But since my uncle has had you in his power, I never doubted he had communicated to you our whole family history.’
‘He has left me to learn it from you, Lilias; and assure yourself that I will hear it with more pleasure from your lips than from his. I have no reason to be pleased with his conduct towards me.’
‘Of that,’ said Lilias, ‘you will judge better when you have heard what I have to tell you;’ and she began her communication in the following manner.
CHAPTER XVIII
NARRATIVE OF DARSIE LATIMER, CONTINUED
‘The House of Redgauntlet,’ said the young lady, ‘has for centuries been supposed to lie under a doom, which has rendered vain their courage, their talents, their ambition, and their wisdom. Often making a figure in history, they have been ever in the situation of men striving against both wind and tide, who distinguish themselves by their desperate exertions of strength, and their persevering endurance of toil, but without being able to advance themselves upon their course by either vigour or resolution. They pretend to trace this fatality to a legendary history, which I may tell you at a less busy moment.’
Darsie intimated that he had already heard the tragic story of Sir Alberick Redgauntlet.
‘I need only say, then,’ proceeded Lilias, ‘that our father and uncle felt the family doom in its full extent. They were both possessed of considerable property, which was largely increased by our father’s marriage, and were both devoted to the service of the unhappy House of Stuart; but (as our mother at least supposed) family considerations might have withheld her husband from joining openly in the affair of 1745, had not the high influence which the younger brother possessed over the elder, from his more decided energy of character, hurried him along with himself into that undertaking.
‘When, therefore, the enterprise came to the fatal conclusion which bereaved our father of his life and consigned his brother to exile, Lady Redgauntlet fled from the north of England, determined to break off all communication with her late husband’s family, particularly his brother, whom she regarded as having, by their insane political enthusiasm, been the means of his untimely death; and determined that you, my brother, an infant, and that I, to whom she had just given birth, should be brought up as adherents of the present dynasty. Perhaps she was too hasty in this determination – too timidly anxious to exclude, if possible, from the knowledge of the very spot where we existed, a relation so nearly connected with us as our father’s only brother. But you must make allowance for what she had suffered. See, brother,’ she said, pulling her glove off, ‘these five blood-specks on my arm are a mark by which mysterious Nature has impressed, on an unborn infant, a record of its father’s violent death and its mother’s miseries.’ [Several persons have brought down to these days the impressions which Nature had thus recorded, when they were yet babes unborn. One lady of quality, whose father was long under sentence of death previous to the Rebellion, was marked on the back of the neck by the sign of a broad axe. Another whose kinsmen had been slain in battle and died on the scaffold to the number of seven, bore a child spattered on the right shoulder and down the arm with scarlet drops, as if of blood. Many other instances might be quoted.]
‘You were not, then, born when my father suffered?’ said Darsie.
‘Alas, no!’ she replied; ‘nor were you a twelvemonth old. It was no wonder that my mother, after going through such scenes of agony, became irresistibly anxious for the sake of her children – of her son in particular; the more especially as the late Sir Henry, her husband, had, by a settlement of his affairs, confided the custody of the persons of her children, as well as the estates which descended to them, independently of those which fell under his forfeiture, to his brother Hugh, in whom he placed unlimited confidence.’
‘But my mother had no reason to fear the operation of such a deed, conceived in favour of an attainted man,’ said Darsie.
‘True,’ replied Lilias; ‘but our uncle’s attainder might have been reversed, like that of so many other persons, and our mother, who both feared and hated him, lived in continual terror that this would be the case, and that she should see the author, as she thought him, of her husband’s death come armed with legal powers, and in a capacity to use them for the purpose of tearing her children from her protection. Besides, she feared, even in his incapacitated condition, the adventurous and pertinacious spirit of her brother-in-law, Hugh Redgauntlet, and felt assured that he would make some attempt to possess himself of the persons of the children. On the other hand, our uncle, whose proud disposition might, perhaps, have been soothed by the offer of her confidence, revolted against the distrustful and suspicious manner in which Lady Darsie Redgauntlet acted towards him. She basely abused, he said, the unhappy circumstances in which he was placed, in order to deprive him of his natural privilege of protecting and educating the infants, whom nature and law, and the will of their father, had committed to his charge, and he swore solemnly he would not submit to such an injury. Report of his threats was made to Lady Redgauntlet, and tended to increase those fears which proved but too well founded. While you and I, children at that time of two or three years old, were playing together in a walled orchard, adjacent to our mother’s residence which she had fixed somewhere in Devonshire, my uncle suddenly scaled the wall with several men, and I was snatched up; and carried off to a boat which waited for them. My mother, however, flew to your rescue, and as she seized on and held you fast, my uncle could not, as he has since told me, possess himself of your person, without using unmanly violence to his brother’s widow. Of this he was incapable; and, as people began to assemble upon my mother’s screaming, he withdrew, after darting upon you and her one of those fearful looks, which, it is said, remain with our family, as a fatal bequest of Sir Alberick, our ancestor.’
‘I have some recollection of the scuffle which you mention,’ said Darsie; ‘and I think it was my uncle himself (since my uncle he is) who recalled the circumstance to my mind on a late occasion. I can now account for the guarded seclusion under which my poor mother lived – for her frequent tears, her starts of hysterical alarm, and her constant and deep melancholy. Poor lady! what a lot was hers, and what must have been her feelings when it approached to a close!’
‘It was then that she adopted,’ said Lilias, ‘every precaution her ingenuity could suggest, to keep your very existence concealed from the person whom she feared – nay, from yourself; for she dreaded, as she is said often to have expressed herself, that the wildfire blood of Redgauntlet would urge you to unite your fortunes to those of your uncle, who was well known still to carry on political intrigues, which most other persons had considered as desperate. It was also possible that he, as well as others, might get his pardon, as government showed every year more lenity towards the remnant of the Jacobites, and then he might claim the custody of your person, as your legal guardian. Either of these events she considered as the direct road to your destruction.’
‘I wonder she had not claimed the protection of Chancery for me,’ said Darsie; ‘or confided me to the care of some powerful friend.’
‘She was on indifferent terms with her relations, on account of her marriage with our father,’ said Lilias, ‘and trusted more to secreting you from your uncle’s attempts, than to any protection which law might afford against them. Perhaps she judged unwisely, but surely not unnaturally, for one rendered irritable by so many misfortunes and so many alarms. Samuel Griffiths, an eminent banker, and a worthy clergyman now dead were, I believe, the only persons whom she intrusted with the execution of her last will; and my uncle believes that she made them both swear to observe profound secrecy concerning your birth and pretensions, until you should come to the age of majority, and, in the meantime, to breed you up in the most private way possible, and that which was most likely to withdraw you from my uncle’s observation.’
‘And I have no doubt,’ said Darsie, ‘that betwixt change of name and habitation, they might have succeeded perfectly, but for the accident – lucky or unlucky, I know not which to term it – which brought me to Brokenburn, and into contact with Mr. Redgauntlet. I see also why I was warned against England, for in England’ —
‘In England alone, if I understand rightly,’ said Miss Redgauntlet, ‘the claims of your uncle to the custody of your person could have been enforced, in case of his being replaced in the ordinary rights of citizenship, either by the lenity of the government or by some change in it. In Scotland, where you possess no property, I understand his authority might; have been resisted, and measures taken to put you under the protection of the law. But, pray, think it not unlucky that you have taken the step of visiting Brokenburn – I feel confident that the consequences must be ultimately fortunate, for have they not already brought us into contact with each other?’
So saying, she held out her hand to her brother, who grasped it with a fondness of pressure very different from the manner in which they first clasped hands that morning. There was a moment’s pause, while the hearts of both were overflowing with a feeling of natural affection, to which circumstances had hitherto rendered them strangers.
At length Darsie broke silence; ‘I am ashamed,’ he said, ‘my dearest Lilias, that I have suffered you to talk so long about matters concerning myself only, while I remain ignorant of your story, and your present situation.’
‘The former is none of the most interesting, nor the latter the most safe or agreeable,’ answered Lilias; ‘but now, my dearest brother, I shall have the inestimable support of your countenance and affection; and were I but sure that we could weather the formidable crisis which I find so close at hand, I should have little apprehensions for the future.’
‘Let me know,’ said Darsie, ‘what our present situation is; and rely upon my utmost exertions both in your defence and my own. For what reason can my uncle desire to detain me a prisoner? If in mere opposition to the will of my mother, she has long been no more; and I see not why he should wish, at so much trouble and risk, to interfere with the free will of one, to whom a few months will give a privilege of acting for himself, with which he will have no longer any pretence to interfere.’
‘My dearest Arthur,’ answered Lilias – ‘for that name, as well as Darsie, properly belongs to you – it is the leading feature in my uncle’s character, that he has applied every energy of his powerful mind to the service of the exiled family of Stuart. The death of his brother, the dilapidation of his own fortunes, have only added to his hereditary zeal for the House of Stuart a deep and almost personal hatred against the present reigning family. He is, in short, a political enthusiast of the most dangerous character, and proceeds in his agency with as much confidence, as if he felt himself the very Atlas who is alone capable of supporting a sinking cause.’
‘And where or how did you, my Lilias, educated, doubtless, under his auspices, learn to have a different view of such subjects?’
‘By a singular chance,’ replied Lilias, ‘in the nunnery where my uncle placed me. Although the abbess was a person exactly after his own heart, my education as a pensioner devolved much on an excellent old mother who had adopted the tenets of the Jansenists, with perhaps a still further tendency towards the reformed doctrines, than those of Port Royal. The mysterious secrecy with which she inculcated these tenets, gave them charms to my young mind, and I embraced them the rather that they were in direct opposition to the doctrines of the abbess, whom I hated so much for her severity, that I felt a childish delight in setting her control at defiance, and contradicting in my secret soul all that I was openly obliged to listen to with reverence. Freedom of religious opinion brings on, I suppose, freedom of political creed; for I had no sooner renounced the Pope’s infallibility, than I began to question the doctrine of hereditary and indefeasible right. In short, strange as it may seem, I came out of a Parisian convent, not indeed an instructed Whig and Protestant, but with as much inclination to be so as if I had been bred up, like you, within the Presbyterian sound of Saint Giles’s chimes.’
‘More so, perhaps,’ replied Darsie; ‘for the nearer the church – the proverb is somewhat musty. But how did these liberal opinions of yours agree with the very opposite prejudices of my uncle?’
‘They would have agreed like fire and water,’ answered Lilias, ‘had I suffered mine to become visible; but as that would have subjected me to constant reproach and upbraiding, or worse, I took great care to keep my own secret; so that occasional censures for coldness, and lack of zeal for the good cause, were the worst I had to undergo; and these were bad enough.’
‘I applaud your caution,’ said Darsie.
‘You have reason,’ replied his sister; ‘but I got so terrible a specimen of my uncle’s determination of character, before I had been acquainted with him for much more than a week, that it taught me at what risk I should contradict his humour. I will tell you the circumstances; for it will better teach you to appreciate the romantic and resolved nature of his character, than anything which I could state of his rashness and enthusiasm.
‘After I had been many a long year at the convent, I was removed from thence, and placed with a meagre old Scottish lady of high rank, the daughter of an unfortunate person whose head had in the year 1715 been placed on Temple Bar. She subsisted on a small pension from the French Court, aided by an occasional gratuity from the Stuarts; to which the annuity paid for my board formed a desirable addition. She was not ill-tempered, nor very covetous – neither beat me nor starved me – but she was so completely trammelled by rank and prejudices, so awfully profound in genealogy, and so bitterly keen, poor lady, in British, politics, that I sometimes thought it pity that the Hanoverians, who murdered, as she used to tell me, her poor dear father, had left his dear daughter in the land of the living. Delighted, therefore, was I, when my uncle made his appearance, and abruptly announced his purpose of conveying me to England. My extravagant joy at the idea of leaving Lady Rachel Rougedragon was somewhat qualified by observing the melancholy look, lofty demeanour, and commanding tone of my near relative. He held more communication with me on the journey, however, than consisted with his taciturn demeanour in general, and seemed anxious to ascertain my tone of character, and particularly in point of courage. Now, though I am a tamed Redgauntlet, yet I have still so much of our family spirit as enables me to be as composed in danger as most of my sex; and upon two occasions in the course of our journey – a threatened attack by banditti, and the overturn of our carriage – I had the fortune so to conduct myself, as to convey to my uncle a very favourable idea of my intrepidity. Probably this encouraged him to put in execution the singular scheme which he had in agitation.
‘Ere we reached London we changed our means of conveyance, and altered the route by which we approached the city, more than once; then, like a hare which doubles repeatedly at some distance from the seat she means to occupy, and at last leaps into her form from a distance so great as she can clear by a spring, we made a forced march, and landed in private and obscure lodgings in a little old street in Westminster, not far from the Cloisters.
‘On the morning of the day on which we arrived my uncle went abroad, and did not return for some hours. Meantime I had no other amusement than to listen to the tumult of noises which succeeded each other, or reigned in confusion together during the whole morning. Paris I had thought the most noisy capital in the world, but Paris seemed midnight silence compared to London. Cannon thundered near and at a distance – drums, trumpets, and military music of every kind, rolled, flourished, and pierced the clouds, almost without intermission. To fill up the concert, bells pealed incessantly from a hundred steeples. The acclamations of an immense multitude were heard from time to time, like the roaring of a mighty ocean, and all this without my being able to glean the least idea of what was going on, for the windows of our apartment looked upon a waste backyard, which seemed totally deserted. My curiosity became extreme, for I was satisfied, at length, that it must be some festival of the highest order which called forth these incessant sounds.
‘My uncle at length returned, and with him a man of an exterior singularly unprepossessing. I need not describe him to you, for – do not look round – he rides behind us at this moment.’
‘That respectable person, Mr. Cristal Nixon, I suppose?’ said Darsie.
‘The same,’ answered Lilias; ‘make no gesture, that may intimate we are speaking of him.’
Darsie signified that he understood her, and she pursued her relation.
‘They were both in full dress, and my uncle, taking a bundle from Nixon, said to me, “Lilias, I am come to carry you to see a grand ceremony – put on as hastily as you can the dress you will find in that parcel, and prepare to attend me.” I found a female dress, splendid and elegant, but somewhat bordering upon the antique fashion. It might be that of England, I thought, and I went to my apartment full of curiosity, and dressed myself with all speed.
‘My uncle surveyed me with attention – “She may pass for one of the flower-girls,” he said to Nixon, who only answered with a nod.
‘We left the house together, and such was their knowledge of the lanes, courts, and bypaths, that though there was the roar of a multitude in the broad streets, those which we traversed were silent and deserted; and the strollers whom we met, tired of gazing upon gayer figures, scarcely honoured us with a passing look, although, at any other time, we should, among these vulgar suburbs, have attracted a troublesome share of observation. We crossed at length a broad street, where many soldiers were on guard, while others, exhausted with previous duty, were eating, drinking, smoking, and sleeping beside their piled arms.
‘“One day, Nixon,” whispered my uncle, “we will make these redcoated gentry stand to their muskets more watchfully.”
‘“Or it will be the worse for them,” answered his attendant, in a voice as unpleasant as his physiognomy.
‘Unquestioned and unchallenged by any one, we crossed among the guards; and Nixon tapped thrice at a small postern door in a huge ancient building, which was straight before us. It opened, and we entered without my perceiving by whom we were admitted. A few dark and narrow passages at length conveyed us into an immense Gothic hall, the magnificence of which baffles my powers of description.
‘It was illuminated by ten thousand wax lights, whose splendour at first dazzled my eyes, coming as we did from these dark and secret avenues. But when my sight began to become steady, how shall I describe what I beheld? Beneath were huge ranges of tables, occupied by princes and nobles in their robes of state – high officers of the crown, wearing their dresses and badges of authority – reverend prelates and judges, the sages of the church and law, in their more sombre, yet not less awful robes – with others whose antique and striking costume announced their importance, though I could not even guess who they might be. But at length the truth burst on me at once – it was, and the murmurs around confirmed it, the Coronation Feast. At a table above the rest, and extending across the upper end of the hall, sat enthroned the youthful sovereign himself, surrounded by the princes of the blood, and other dignitaries, and receiving the suit and homage of his subjects. Heralds and pursuivants, blazing in their fantastic yet splendid armorial habits, and pages of honour, gorgeously arrayed in the garb of other days, waited upon the princely banqueters. In the galleries with which this spacious hall was surrounded, shone all, and more than all, that my poor imagination could conceive, of what was brilliant in riches, or captivating in beauty. Countless rows of ladies, whose diamonds, jewels, and splendid attire were their least powerful charms, looked down from their lofty seats on the rich scene beneath, themselves forming a show as dazzling and as beautiful as that of which they were spectators. Under these galleries, and behind the banqueting tables, were a multitude of gentlemen, dressed as if to attend a court, but whose garb, although rich enough to have adorned a royal drawing room, could not distinguish them in such a high scene as this. Amongst these we wandered for a few minutes, undistinguished and unregarded. I saw several young persons dressed as I was, so was under no embarrassment from the singularity of my habit, and only rejoiced, as I hung on my uncle’s arm, at the magical splendour of such a scene, and at his goodness for procuring me the pleasure of beholding it.
‘By and by, I perceived that my uncle had acquaintances among those who were under the galleries, and seemed, like ourselves, to be mere spectators of the solemnity. They recognized each other with a single word, sometimes only with a grip of the hand-exchanged some private signs, doubtless – and gradually formed a little group, in the centre of which we were placed.
‘“Is it not a grand sight, Lilias?” said my uncle. “All the noble, and all the wise, and all the wealthy of Britain, are there assembled.”
‘“It is indeed,” said I, “all that my mind could have fancied of regal power and splendour.”
‘“Girl,” he whispered, – and my uncle can make his whispers as terribly emphatic as his thundering voice or his blighting look – “all that is noble and worthy in this fair land are there assembled – but it is to bend like slaves and sycophants before the throne of a new usurper.”
‘I looked at him, and the dark hereditary frown of our unhappy ancestor was black upon his brow.
‘“For God’s sake,” I whispered, “consider where we are.”
‘“Fear nothing,” he said; “we are surrounded by friends.” As he proceeded, his strong and muscular frame shook with suppressed agitation. “See,” he said, “yonder bends Norfolk, renegade to his Catholic.faith; there stoops the Bishop of – , traitor to the Church of England; and, – shame of shames! yonder the gigantic form of Errol bows his head before the grandson of his father’s murderer! But a sign shall be seen this night amongst them – MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, shall be read on these walls, as distinctly as the spectral handwriting made them visible on those of Belshazzar!”
‘“For God’s sake,” said I, dreadfully alarmed, “it is impossible you can meditate violence in such a presence!”
‘“None is intended, fool,” he answered, “nor can the slightest mischance happen, provided you will rally your boasted courage, and obey my directions. But do it coolly and quickly, for there are a hundred lives at stake.”
