The World's Greatest Books_ Volume 3 Part 47

Tancred, the Marquis of Montacute, was certainly strangely distracted on his twenty-first birthday. He stood beside his father, the Duke of Bellamont, in the famous Crusaders' gallery in the Castle of Montacute, listening to the congratulations which the mayor and corporation of Montacute town were addressing to him; but all the time he kept his eyes fixed on the magnificent tapestries from which the name of the gallery was derived. His namesake, Tancred of Montacute, had distinguished himself in the Third Crusade by saving the life of King Richard at the siege of Ascalon, and his exploits were depicted on the fine Gobelins work hanging on the walls of the great hall. Oblivious of the gorgeous ceremony in which he was playing the princ.i.p.al part, the young Marquis of Montacute stared at the pictures of the Crusader, and a wild, fantastical idea took hold of him.

He was the only child of the Duke of Bellamont, and all the high n.o.bility of England were a.s.sembled to celebrate his coming of age.

Everything that fortune could bestow seemed to have been given to him.

He was the heir of the greatest and richest of English dukes, and his life was made smooth and easy. His father had got a seat in parliament waiting for him, and his mother had already selected a n.o.ble and beautiful young lady for his wife. Neither of them had yet consulted their son, but Tancred was so sweet and gentle a boy that they did not dream he would oppose their wishes. They had planned out his life for him ever since he was born, with the view to educating him for the position which he was to occupy in the English aristocracy, and he had always taken the path which they had chosen for him.

In the evening, the duke summoned his son into his library.

"My dear Tancred," he said, "I have a piece of good news for you on your birthday. Hungerford feels that he cannot represent our const.i.tuency now that you have come of age, and, with great kindness, he is resigning his seat in your favour. He says that the Marquis of Montacute ought to stand for the town of Montacute, so you will be able to enter parliament at once."

"But I do not wish to enter parliament," said Tancred.

The duke leant back from his desk with a look of painful surprise on his face.

"Not enter parliament?" he exclaimed. "Every Lord Montacute has gone into the House of Commons before taking his seat in the House of Lords.

It is an excellent training."

"I am not anxious to enter the House of Lords either," said Tancred.

"And I hope, my dear father," he added, with a smile that lit up his young, grave, beautiful face, "that it will be very, very long before I succeed to your place there."

"What, then, do you intend to do, my boy?" said Bellamont, in intense perplexity. "You are the heir to one of the greatest positions in the state, and you have duties to perform. How are you going to fit yourself for them?"

"That is what I have been thinking of for years," said Tancred. "Oh, my dear father, if you knew how long and earnestly I have prayed for guidance! Yes, I have duties to perform! But in this wild, confused, and aimless age of ours, what man can see what his duties are? For my part, I cannot find that it is my duty to maintain the present order of things. In nothing in our religion, our government, our manners, do I find faith. And if there is no faith, how can there be any duty? We have ceased to be a nation. We are a mere crowd, kept from utter anarchy by the remains of an old system which we are daily destroying."

"But what would you do, my dear boy?" said the duke, pale with anxiety.

"Have you found any remedy?"

"No," said Tancred mournfully. "There is no remedy to be found in England. Oh, let me save myself, father! Let me save our people from the corruption and ruin that threaten us!"

"But what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?" said the duke.

"I want to go to G.o.d!" cried the young n.o.bleman, his blue eyes flaming with a strange light "How is it that the Almighty Power does not send down His angels to enlighten us in our perplexities? Where is the Paraclete, the Comforter Who was promised us? I must go and seek him."

"You are a visionary, my boy," said the duke, gazing at him in blank astonishment.

"Was the Montacute that fought by the side of King Richard in the Holy Land a visionary?" said Tancred. "All I ask is to be allowed to follow in his footsteps. For three days and three nights he knelt in prayer at the tomb of his Redeemer. Six centuries and more have gone by since then. It is high time that we renewed our intercourse with the Most High in the country of His chosen people. I, too, would kneel at that tomb.

I, too, surrounded by the holy hills and groves of Jerusalem, would lift my voice to Heaven, and ask for inspiration."

"But surely G.o.d will hear your prayers in England as well as in Palestine?"

"No," said his son. "He has never raised up a prophet or a great saint in this country. If we want Him to speak to us as He spoke to the men of old, we must go, like the Crusaders, to the Holy Land."

Finding that he could not turn his son from the strange course on which he was bent, the duke got a great prelate to try and persuade him that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

"We live in an age of progress," reasoned the philosophic bishop.

"Religion is spreading with the spread of civilisation. How all our towns are growing! We shall soon see a bishop in Manchester."

"I want to see an angel in Manchester," replied Tancred.

It was no use arguing with a man who talked in this way, and the duke gave Tancred permission to set out on his new crusade.

_II.--The Vigil by the Tomb_

The moon sank behind the Mount of Olives, leaving the towers, minarets, and domes of Jerusalem in deep shadow; the lamps in the city went out, and every outline was lost in gloom; but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre still shone in the darkness like a beacon light. There, while every soul in Jerusalem slumbered, Tancred knelt in prayer by the tomb of Christ, under the lighted dome, waiting for the fire from heaven to strike into his soul.

His strange vigil was the talk of Syria. It is remarkable how quickly news travels in the East.

"Do you know," said Besso, Rothschild's agent, to his foster-son Fakredeen, an emir of Lebanon, as they sat talking in a house near the gate of Sion, "the young Englishman has brought me such a letter that if he were to tell me to rebuild Solomon's temple, I must do it!"

"He must be fabulously rich!" said Fakredeen, with a sigh. "What has he come here for? The English do not come on pilgrimages. They are all infidels."

"Well, he has come on a pilgrimage," said Besso, "and he is the greatest of English princes. He kneels all night and day in the church over there."

Yes, after a week of solitude, fasting, and prayer, Tancred was keeping vigil before the empty Sepulchre, where Tancred of Montacute had knelt six hundred years before. Day after day, night after night, he prayed for inspiration, but no divine voice broke in upon his impa.s.sioned reveries. It was for him that Alonzo Lara, the prior of Terra Santa, kept the light burning all night long at the Holy Sepulchre, for the Spaniard had been moved by the deep faith of the young English n.o.bleman.

And one day he said to him:

"Sinai led to Calvary. I think it would be wise for you to trace the path backward from Calvary to Sinai."

It was extremely perilous at that time to adventure into the great desert, for the wild Bedouin tribes were encamped there. But, in spite of this, Tancred made arrangements with an Arabian chief, Sheikh Ha.s.san, and set out for Sinai at the head of a well-armed band of Arabs.

"Ah!" said the sheikh, as they entered the mountainous country, after a three days' march across the wilderness. "Look at these tracks of horses and camels in the defile. The marks are fresh. See that your guns are primed!" he cried to his men.

As he spoke a troop of wild hors.e.m.e.n galloped down the ravine.

"Ha.s.san," one of them shouted, "is that the brother of the Queen of the English with you? Let him ride with us, and you may return in peace."

"He is my brother, too," said Ha.s.san. "Stand aside, you sons of Eblis, or you shall bite the earth."

A wild shout from every height of the defile was the answer. Tancred looked up. The crest on either side was lined with Bedouins, each with his musket levelled.

"There is only one thing for us to do," said Tancred to Ha.s.san. "Let us charge through the defile, and die like men!"

Seizing his pistols, he shot the first horseman through the head, and disabled another. Then he charged down the ravine, and Ha.s.san and his men followed, and scattered the hors.e.m.e.n before them. The Bedouins fired down on them from the crests, and, in a few moments, the place was filled with smoke, and Tancred could not see a yard around him. Still he galloped on, and the smoke suddenly drifted, and he found himself at the mouth of the defile, with a few followers behind him. A crowd of Bedouins were waiting for him.

"Die fighting! Die fighting!" he shouted. Then his horse stumbled, stabbed from beneath by a Bedouin dagger, and fell in the sand. Before he could get his feet out of the stirrups, he was overpowered and bound.

"Don't hurt him," said the Bedouin chief. "Every drop of his blood is worth ten thousand piastres."

Late that night, as Amalek, the great Rechabite Bedouin sheikh, was sitting before his tent, a horseman rode up to him.

"Salaam," he cried. "Sheikh of sheikhs, it is done! The brother of the Queen of England is your slave!"

"Good!" said Amalek. "May your mother eat the hump of a young camel! Is the brother of the queen with Sheikh Salem?"

"No," said the horseman, "Sheikh Salem is in paradise, and many of our men are with him. The brother of the Queen of the English is a mighty warrior. He fought like a lion, but we brought his horse down at last and took him alive."

"Good!" said Amalek. "Camels shall be given to all the widows of the men he has killed, and I will find them new husbands. Go and tell Fakredeen the good news!"