Traditions of Lancashire Volume I Part 38

Saying this he approached the bed: a spring was concealed in one of the posts communicating with the secret door behind which Tyrone was hidden.

As he turned aside the drapery to ascertain precisely its situation, Constance, no longer able to control her apprehension of discovery, rushed before him. Her terror, for the time, threw her completely from her guard.

"Do not, my father:--he must not look there. For my sake, oh, spare _this_"----

She was silent:--her lips grew deadly pale; and she leaned against the pillar for support. The officer's suspicions were awakened, and he gave a shrewd guess at the truth.

"Now, fair dame," he cried: "it is but an ungracious office to thwart a lady of her will, but I must see what lurks in that same secret recess.

Master Holt, I prythee help me to a peep behind the curtain."

But Holt was too much astonished to comply. What could exist there to excite his daughter's apprehensions so powerfully, puzzled him greatly.

He had not a thought, the most remote, that could affect her fidelity;--yet he hesitated. The officer, in a more peremptory tone, demanded admission. Rousing from his stupor, and mortified at the folly of these girlish fancies, he struck the spring: in a trice, a portion of the bed's head flew open, displaying a dark chasm beyond. Swift as thought the officer darted through the aperture; but the door was immediately shut, and with great violence. A scuffle was heard within, but not a word was spoken. Holt, in doubt and consternation gazed with a wild and terrific aspect on the devoted Constance, who, covering her face, sought to avoid seeing the expected result of her imprudence. Her father now listened. There was a dread suspense in his look more fearful than even the most violent outburst of his wrath. He seemed every moment to expect some irrefragable proof,--some visible and overwhelming conviction of his daughter's infamy. The door was still closed. Groans were plainly audible, telling of some terrible strife within. Suddenly these indications ceased. Holt shuddered. He fancied some foul act was perpetrating--perhaps even now consummated--under his own roof; and swift would be the vengeance required at his hands. Constance, too, seemed to apprehend the commission of some deadly crime, as she threw herself imploringly before her father.

"Save them,--oh, save them!--their strife is mortal!"

He shook her from him with a glance of abhorrence, and the maiden fell heavily on the floor. He was preparing to enter when the door flew open, and a form rushed through in the gaudy apparel of the officer. He leaped on the floor, and, ere Holt could utter a word, he heard him descending the stairs with great precipitation.

"Whom hast thou concealed in thy bedchamber?" inquired the almost frantic father. Constance sat on the ground, her head resting on the chair beside which she had fallen. She wept not, but her heart was full even to bursting.

"What is the name of thy paramour?--Thou hast been somewhat eager, methinks, to accomplish thine own and a father's disgrace?"

This cutting address roused her. She replied, but in a firm tone--

"A stranger,--an exile. Misfortune appeals not to woman's heart unalleviated. He threw himself on my protection; and where the feelings own no taint, their purity is not sullied,--even in a lady's bedchamber!"

A glance of insulted pride pa.s.sed over her beautifully-formed features.

It was but for a moment. The agony of her spirit soon drank up the slender rill her feelings had gushed forth, and she stood withered and drooping before the angry frown of her father.

"Surely, 'tis not the rebel Tyrone that my daughter harbours in the privacy of her chamber? Speak!--Nay, then hast thou indeed brought an old man's grey hairs to the grave in sorrow! Treason!--Oh, that I have lived for this,--and my own flesh and blood hath done it. Out of my sight, unnatural monster. Dare not to crawl again across my path, lest I kill thee!"

"O my father! I am indeed innocent." She again threw herself at his feet, but he spurned her from him as though he loathed her beyond endurance. Boiling and maddened with rage at the presumption of this daring rebel, Holt, forgetful of his own danger, seized the light. He burst open the secret door; but what was his astonishment on beholding, not the hated form of Tyrone, but the officer of justice himself, gagged, pinioned, and deprived of his outer dress. The cap and mantle of Tyrone, by his side, told too plainly of the daring and dangerous exploit by which his escape had been effected.

The outlaw, soon after his enlargement, finding that the cause he had espoused was hopeless, and that matters were at the last extremity in his own fate, and that of his unhappy country,--fearful, too, of drawing the innocent Constance and her father into the deep vortex of his own ruin,--made all haste to the capital, where, through the powerful interest excited in his behalf, aided by his well-known valour and the influence he was known to possess amongst his countrymen, he received a free pardon from the Queen.

Yet his thoughts lingered on the remembrance of her to whose heroic and confiding spirit he owed his safety. Never had his proud bosom been so enthralled. Though nurtured in camps, amid the din of arms, and the shout of the battle, yet his knowledge of the female heart was almost intuitive. He had loved more than once, but in every case the attachment ended unhappily, terminating either by the death of the object or by some calamity his own evil fate had unavoidably brought upon its victim.

Though fearful the same operation of his destiny would ensue, and that misery and misfortune would still follow the current of his affections, yet he resolved to behold once more the maiden he loved with an ardour almost surpa.s.sing his own belief.

One cold dull morning, towards the wane of the year, when the heavy drops lay long on the rank herbage; no sunbeam yet loitering through the damp chill atmosphere, but the sky one wide and unvarying expanse--a sea of cloud--here and there a black scud pa.s.sing over, like a dim bark sweeping across the bosom of that "waveless deep," a stranger stood by a low wicket near the mansion of Grislehurst. He looked wistfully at the gloomy windows, unlighted by a single reflection from without, like the rayless night of his own soul:--they were mostly closed. A mysterious and unusual stillness prevailed. The brown leaves fluttered about, unswept from the dreary avenues. Decayed branches obstructed the paths; and every object wore a look of wretchedness and dilapidation. The only sign of occupancy and life was one grey wreath of smoke, curling heavily from its vent, as if oppressed with the gloom by which it was surrounded. The melancholy note of the redbreast was the only living sound, as the bird came hopping towards him with its usual air of familiarity and respect. Enveloped in a military cloak, and in his cap a dark feather drooping gently over his proud features, the stranger slowly approached the house: a side-door stood partly open. He entered.

A narrow pa.s.sage led into the hall. No embers brightened the huge chimney. The table showed no relics of the feast,--no tokens of the past night's revel. The deer's antlers still hung over the master's place at the board, but the oaken chair was gone. Dust and desertion had played strange antics in these "high places." The busy spider had wreathed her dingy festoons in mockery over the pomp she degraded.

He listened, but there was no sound, save the last faint echo of his footstep. Turning towards the staircase, a beautiful spaniel, a sort of privileged favourite of Constance, came, with a deep growl, as if to warn away the intruder. But the sagacious animal suddenly fawned upon him, and with a low whine ascended the stairs, looking back wistfully, as though inviting him to follow.

Scarcely knowing why, or bestowing one thought on the nature of his intrusion, he ascended. The place seemed familiar to him. He entered a narrow gallery, where he paused, overcome by some sudden and overwhelming emotion. The dog stood too, looking back with a low and sorrowful whine. With a sudden effort he grappled with and shook off the dark spirit that threatened to overpower him. A low murmur was heard apparently from a chamber at no great distance. Without reflecting a moment on the impropriety of his situation, he hastily approached the door. His guide, with a look of almost irresistible persuasion, implored him to enter.

It was the chamber of Constance. A female was kneeling by the bed, too much absorbed to be conscious of his approach: she was in the att.i.tude of prayer. He recognised the old nurse,--her eye glistening in the fervour of devotion, whilst pouring forth, to her FATHER in secret, the agony of soul that words are too feeble to express.

Bending over the bed, as if for the support of some frail victim of disease, he beheld the lord of the mansion. His look was wild and haggard;--no moisture floated over his eyeb.a.l.l.s: they were glazed and motionless; arid as the hot desert,--no refres.h.i.+ng rain dropped from their burning orbs, dimmed with the shadows of despair.

Stretched on the bed, her pale cheek resting on the bosom of her father, lay the yet beauteous form of Constance Holt. A hectic flush at times pa.s.sed across her features. Her lip, shrunk and parched with the fever that consumed her, was moistened by an attendant with unremitting and unwearied a.s.siduity; her eye often rose in tenderness on her parent, as if anxious to impart to him the consolation she enjoyed.

"Oh, I am happy, my father!" Here a sudden change was visible,--some chord of sorrow was touched, and it vibrated to her soul.

Her father spoke not.

"I _have_ loved!--Oh, faithfully. But, now--let me die without a murmur to Thee, or one wish but Thy will, and I am happy!" She raised her soft and streaming eyes towards the throne of that Mercy she addressed. The cloud pa.s.sed, but she sank back on her pillow, exhausted with the conflict. Her father bent over her in silent terror, antic.i.p.ating the last struggle. Suddenly he exclaimed, as if to call back the yet lingering spirit:--

"Live, my Constance! Could I save thee, thou blighted bud--blighted by my"--His lip grew pale; he struck his forehead, and a groan like the last expiring throe of nature escaped him.

"Would the destroyer of my peace were here!--'Tis too late--or I would not now forbid thy love. But he was a traitor, a rebel--else"----

Constance gradually revived from her insensibility. A sudden flash from the departing spirit seemed to have animated her--a new and vehement energy, which strangely contrasted with her weak and debilitated frame.

"I have seen him," she cried. "Oh, methought his form pa.s.sed before me;--but it is gone!" She looked eagerly round the apartment; other eyes involuntarily followed,--but no living object could be distinguished through the chill and oppressive gloom that brooded over that chamber of death.

"It was a vision--a shadowy messenger from the tomb. Yet, once more if I might see him--ere I die." A deep sob, succeeded by a rapid gush of tears, relieved her; but it told of the powerful and all-pervading pa.s.sion not yet extinguished in her breast.

"We shall meet!" again she raised her eyes towards that throne to which the sigh of the sufferer never ascended in vain.

"Yes, my own--my loved Constance, now!" cried the stranger, rus.h.i.+ng from his concealment. He clasped her in his arms. A gleam, like sunlight across the wave, shot athwart the shadow that was gathering on her eye.

It seemed the forerunner of a change. The anxious father forbore to speak, but he looked on his daughter with an agony that seemed to threaten either reason or existence. Constance gazed on her lover, but her eye gradually became more dim. Her band relaxed in his grasp, yet her features wore a look of serenity and happiness.

"O most merciful Father! Thou hast heard my prayer, through Him whose merits have found me a place in that glory to which I come. Be merciful to him whose love is true as mine own, and faithful unto death. Tyrone, we meet again!--Oh, how have I prayed for thee!" Her eyes seemed to brighten even in this world with the glories of another.

"Farewell!--I hear the hymns of yon ransomed ones around the throne.

They beckon my spirit from these dark places of sorrow. Now--farewell!"

She cast one look towards her lover: it was the last glimpse of earth.

The next moment her gaze was on the brightness of that world whence sorrow and sighing flee away. So sudden was the transition, that the first smile of the disembodied spirit seemed to linger on the abode she had left, like the evening cloud, reflecting the glories of another sky, ere it fades for ever into the darkness and solitude of night.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOGHTON TOWER.

_Drawn by G. Pickering. Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] c.o.x, p. 415.

[23] Sydney's Letters.

[24] Camden.

[25] Camden.

[26] Camden, p. 645.

[27] Winwood, vol. i. p. 369.

[28] In the parish church of St Chad, Rochdale, is a marble tablet, erected by John Entwisle, Esquire, a descendant of Sir Bertine, on which is the following inscription:--