Thaddeus of Warsaw Part 55

Agitated by a suspense which bordered on agony, with a beating heart she heard his quick step descending the stairs. The door opened, and Pembroke, flying into the room, caught up his hat. As he was darting away again, unable to restrain her impatience, Miss Beaufort with an imploring voice e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his name. He turned, and displayed to her amazed sight a countenance in which no vestige of his former animation could be traced. His cheek was flushed, and his eyes shot a wild fire that struck to her heart. Unconscious what she did, she ran up to him; but Pembroke, pus.h.i.+ng her back, exclaimed, "Don't ask me any questions, if you would not drive me to madness."

"O Heaven!" cried she, catching his arm, and clinging to him, while the eagerness of his motion dragged her into the hall. "Tell me! Has anything happened to my guardian--to your friend--to Constantine?"

"No," replied he, looking at her with a face full of desperation; "but my father commands me to treat him like a villain."

She could hardly credit her senses at this confirmation that Constantine and Sobieski were one. Turning giddy with the tumultuous delight that rushed over her soul, she staggered back a few paces, and leaning against the open door, tried to recover breath to regain the room she had left.

Pembroke, having escaped from her grasp, ran furiously down the hill, mounted his horse, and forbidding any groom to attend him, galloped towards the high road with the impetuosity of a madman. All the powers of his soul were in arms, Wounded, dishonored, stigmatized with ingrat.i.tude and baseness, he believed himself to be the most degraded of men.

It appeared that Sir Robert Somerset had long cherished a hatred to the Poles, in consequence of some injury he affirmed he had received in early youth from one of that nation. In this instance his dislike was implacable; and when his son set out for the continent, he positively forbade him to enter Poland. Notwithstanding his remembrance of this violated injunction, when Pembroke joined the baronet in his library, he did it with confidence. With a bounding heart and animated countenance, he recapitulated how he had been wrought upon by his young Russian friends to take up arms in their cause and march into Poland. At these last words his father turned pale, and though he did not speak, the denunciation was on his brow.

Pembroke, who expected some marks of displeasure, hastened to obliterate his disobedience by narrating the event which had introduced not only the young Count Sobieski to his succor, but the consequent friends.h.i.+p of the whole of that princely family.

Sir Robert still made no verbal reply, but his countenance deepened in gloom; and when Pembroke, with all the pathos of a deep regret, attempted to describe the death of the palatine, the horrors which attended the last hours of the countess, and the succeeding misery of Thaddeus, who was now in England, no language can paint the frenzy which burst at once from the baronet. He stamped on the ground, he covered his face with his clenched hands; then turning on his son with a countenance no longer recognizable, he exclaimed with fury, "Pembroke! you have outraged my commands! Never will I pardon you if that young man ever blasts me with his sight."

"Merciful Heaven!" cried Pembroke, thunderstruck at a violence which he almost wished might proceed from real madness: "surely something has agitated my father! What can this mean?"

Sir Robert shook his head, whilst his teeth ground against each other. "Don't mistake me," replied he, in a firm voice "I am perfectly in my senses. It depends on _you_ that I continue so.

You know my oath against all of that nation! and I repeat again, if you ever bring that young man into my presence, you shall never see me more."

A cold dew overspread the body of Pembroke. He would have caught his father's hand, but he held it back. "O sir," said he, "you surely cannot intend that I shall treat with ingrat.i.tude the man who saved my life?"

Sir Robert did not vouchsafe him an answer, but continued walking up and down the room, until, his hesitation increasing at every step, he opened the door of an interior apartment and retired, bidding his son remain where he left him.

The horror-struck Pembroke waited a quarter of an hour before his father re-entered. When he did appear, the deep gloom of his eye gave no encouragement to his son, who, hanging down his head, recoiled from speaking first. Sir Robert approached with a composed but severe countenance, and said, "I have been seeking every palliation that your conduct might admit, but I can find none. Before you quitted England, you knew well my abhorrence of Poland. One of that country many years ago wounded my happiness in a way I shall never recover.

From that hour I took an oath never to enter its borders, and never to suffer one of its people to come within my doors. Rash, disobedient boy! You know my disposition, and you have seen the emotion with which this dilemma has shaken my soul! I But be it on your own head that you have incurred obligations which I cannot repay. I will not perjure myself to defray a debt contracted against my positive and declared principles. I never will see this Polander you speak of; and it is my express command, on pain of my eternal malediction, that you break with him entirely."

Pembroke fell into a seat. Sir Robert proceeded.

"I pity your distress, but my resolution cannot be shaken. Oaths are not to be broken with impunity. You must either resign him or resign me. We may compromise your debt of grat.i.tude. I will give you deeds to put your friend in possession of five hundred pounds a-year for life forever; nay, I would even double it to give you satisfaction; but from the hour in which you tell him so, you must see him no more."

Sir Robert was quitting the room, when Pembroke, starting from his chair, threw himself in agony on his knees, and catching by the skirt of his father's coat, implored him for G.o.d's sake to recall his words; to remember that he was affixing everlasting dishonor on his son! "Remember, dear sir!" cried he, holding his struggling hand, "that the man to whom you offer money as a compensation for insult is of a nature too n.o.ble to receive it. He will reject it, and spurn me; and I shall know that I deserve his scorn. For mercy's sake, spare me the agony of harrowing up the heart of my preserver--of meeting reproach from his eyes!"

"Leave me!" cried the baronet, breaking from him; "I repeat, unless you wish to incur my curse, do as I have commanded."

Thus outraged, thus agonised, Pembroke had appeared before the eyes of his cousin Mary more like a distracted creature than a man possessed of his senses. Shortly after his abrupt departure, her apprehension was petrified to a dreadful certainty of some cruel ruin to her hopes, by an order she received in the handwriting of her uncle, commanding her not to attempt visiting Lady Tinemouth whilst the Count Sobieski continued to be her guest, and under peril of his displeasure never to allow that name to pa.s.s her lips.

Hardly knowing whither he went, Pembroke did not arrive at the ruined aisle which leads to the habitable part of the Abbey until near three o'clock. He inquired of the groom that took his horse whether the countess and Mr. Constantine were at home. The man replied in the affirmative, but added, with a sad countenance, he feared neither of them could be seen.

"For what reason?" demanded Somerset.

"Alas! sir," replied the servant, "about an hour ago my lady was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel. It continued to flow so long, that Mr. Constantine told the apothecary, whom he had summoned, to send for a physician.

The doctor is not yet arrived, and Mr. Constantine won't leave my lady,"

Though Mr. Somerset was truly concerned at the illness of the countess, the respite it afforded him from immediately declaring the ungrateful message of Sir Robert gave him no inconsiderable degree of ease. Somewhat relieved by the hope of being for one day spared the anguish of displaying his father in a disgraceful light, he entered the Abbey, and desired that a maid-servant might be sent to her ladys.h.i.+p's room to inform his friend that Mr. Somerset was below.

In a few minutes the girl returned with the following lines on a slip of paper:

"To Pembroke Somerset, Esq.

"I am grieved that I cannot see my dear Somerset to-day I fear my revered friend is on her death-bed. I have sent for Dr. Cavendish, who is now at Stanford; doubtless you know he is a man of the first abilities. If human skill can preserve her, I may yet have hopes; but her disorder is on the lung and in the heart, and I fear the stroke is sure. I am now sitting by her bedside, and writing what she dictates to her husband, her son, and her daughter. Painful, you may believe, is this task! I cannot, my dear Somerset, add more than my hope of seeing you soon, and that you will join in prayers to Heaven for the restoration of my inestimable friend, with your faithful and affectionate

"Sobieski."

"Alas! unhappy, persecuted Sobieski!" thought Pembroke, as he closed the paper; "to what art thou doomed! Some friends are torn from thee by death; others desert thee in the hour of trouble."

He took out his pencil to answer this distressing epistle, but he stopped at the first word; he durst not write that his father would fulfil any one of those engagements which he had so largely promised; and throwing away the pencil and the paper, he left a verbal declaration of his sorrow at what had happened, and an a.s.surance of calling next day. Turning his back on a house which he had left on the preceding night with so many joyful hopes, he remounted his horse, and, melancholy and slow, rode about the country until evening,--so unwilling was he to return to that home which now threatened him with the frowns of his father, the tears of Mary Beaufort, and the miserable reflections of his own wretched heart.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE MATERNAL HEART.

Doctor Cavendish having been detained beyond his expected time with his invalid friend at Stanford, was happily still there, and set off for Harrowby the instant Mr. Constanine's messenger arrived, and before midnight alighted at the Abbey.

When he entered Lady Tinemouth's chamber he found her supported in the arms of Thaddeus, and struggling with a second rupture of her lungs. As he approached the bed, Thaddeus turned his eyes on him with an expression that powerfully told his fears. Dr. Cavendish silently pressed his hand; then taking from his pocket some styptic drops, he made the countess swallow them, and soon saw that they succeeded in stopping the hemorrhage.

Thaddeus and her physician remained by the side of the patient sufferer until ten in the morning, when she sunk into a gentle sleep.

Complete stillness being necessary to continue this repose, the good doctor proposed leaving the maid to watch by her ladys.h.i.+p, and drawing the count out of the room, descended the stairs.

Mr. Somerset had been arrived half an hour, and met them in the breakfast parlor. After a few kind words exchanged between the parties, they sat down with dejected countenances to their melancholy meal. Thaddeus was too much absorbed in the scene he had left to take anything but a dish of coffee.

"Do you think Lady Tinemouth is in imminent danger?" inquired Pembroke of the doctor.

Dr. Cavendish sighed, and turning to Thaddeus, directed to him the answer which his friend's question demanded. "I am afraid, my dear Mr. Constantine," said he, in a reluctant voice, "that you are to sustain a new trial! I fear she cannot live eight-and-forty hours."

Thaddeus cast down his eyes and shuddered, but made no reply. Further remarks were prevented by a messenger from the countess, who desired Mr. Constantine's immediate attendance at her bedside. He obeyed. In half an hour he returned, with the mark of tears upon his cheek.

"Dearest Thaddeus!" cried Pembroke, "I trust the countess is not worse? This threatened new bereavement is too much: it afflicts my very heart." Indeed it rent it; for Pembroke could not help internally acknowledging that when Sobieski should close the eyes of Lady Tinemouth, he would be paying the last sad office to his last friend. That dear distinction he durst no longer arrogate to himself.

Denied the fulfilment of its duties, he thought that to retain the t.i.tle would be an a.s.sumption without a right.

Thaddeus drew his hand over his again filling eyes. "The countess herself," said he, "feels the truth of what Dr. Cavendish told us.

She sent for me, and begged me, as I loved her or would wish to see her die in peace, to devise some means for bringing her daughter to the Abbey to-night. As for Lord Harwold, she says his behavior since he arrived at manhood has been of a nature so cruel and unnatural, that she would not draw on herself the misery, nor on him the added guilt, of a refusal; but with regard to Lady Albina, who has been no sharer in those barbarities, she trusts a daughter's heart might be prevailed on to seek a last embrace from a dying parent. It is this request," continued he, "that agitates me. When she pictured to me, with all the fervor of a mother, her doating fondness for this daughter, (on whom, whenever she did venture to hope, all those hopes rested;) when she wrung my hand, and besought me, as if I had been the sole disposer of her fate, to let her see her child before she died, I could only promise every exertion to effect it, and with an aching heart I came to consult you."

Dr. Cavendish was opening his lips to speak, but Somerset, in his eagerness to relieve his friend, did not perceive it, and immediately answered, "This very hour I will undertake what you have promised. I know Lord Tinemouth's family are now at the Wolds. It is only thirty miles distant; I will send a servant to have relays of horses ready.

My curricle, which is now at the door, will be more convenient than a chaise; and I will engage to be back before to-morrow morning. Write a letter, Thaddeus," added he, "to Lady Albina; tell her of her mother's situation; and though I have never seen the young lady, I will give it into her own hand, and then bring her off, even were it in the face of her villanous father."

The pale cheeks of Sobieski flushed with a conscious scarlet. Turning to Dr. Cavendish, he requested him, as the most proper person, to write to Lady Albina, whilst he would walk out with his friend to order the carriage. Pembroke was thanked for his zeal, but it was not by words; they are too weak vehicles to convey strong impressions.

Thaddeus pressed his hand, and accompanied the action with a look which spoke volumes. The withered heart of Pembroke expanded under the animated grat.i.tude of his friend. Receiving the letter, he sprang into his seat, and, until he lost sight of Harrowby Hill, forgot how soon he must appear to that friend the most ungrateful of men.

It was near six in the evening before Mr. Somerset left his curricle at the little inn which skirts the village of Harthorpe. He affected to make some inquiries respecting the families in the neighborhood; and his host informed him that the ladies of the earl's family were great walkers, pa.s.sing almost the whole of the day in the grounds.

The measures to be adopted were now obvious. The paling belonging to Lord Tinemouth's park was only a few yards distant; but fearful of being observed, Pembroke sought a more obscure part. Scaling a wall which was covered by the branches of high trees, he found his way to the house through an almost impa.s.sable thicket.

He watched nearly an hour in vain for the appearance of Lady Albina, whose youth and elegance, he thought, would unequivocally distinguish her from the rest of the earl's household. Despairing of success, he was preparing to change his station, when he heard a sound among the dry leaves, and the next moment a beautiful young creature pa.s.sed the bush behind which he was concealed. The fine symmetry of her profile a.s.sured him that she must be the daughter of Lady Tinemouth. She stooped to gather a china-aster. Knowing that no time should be lost, Pembroke gently emerged from his recess, but not in so quiet a manner as to escape the ear of Lady Albina, who instantly looking round, screamed, and would have fled, had he not thrown himself before her, and exclaimed, "Stay, Lady Albina! For heaven's sake, stay! I come from your mother!"