CHAPTER I. THE MAID'S HOPE, THE COURTIER'S LOVE, AND THE SAGE'S COMFORT.
Fair are thy fields, O England; fair the rural farm and the orchards inwhich the blossoms have ripened into laughing fruits; and fairer thanall, O England, the faces of thy soft-eyed daughters!
From the field where Sibyll and her father had wandered amidst the dead,the dismal witnesses of war had vanished; and over the green pasturesroved the gentle flocks. And the farm to which Hastings had led thewanderers looked upon that peaceful field through its leafy screen; andthere father and daughter had found a home.
It was a lovely summer evening; and Sibyll put aside the broidery frame,at which, for the last hour, she had not worked, and gliding to thelattice, looked wistfully along the winding lane. The room was in theupper story, and was decorated with a care which the exterior of thehouse little promised, and which almost approached to elegance. Thefresh green rushes that strewed the floor were intermingled with driedwild thyme and other fragrant herbs. The bare walls were hung with sergeof a bright and cheerful blue; a rich carpet de cuir covered the oaktable, on which lay musical instruments, curiously inlaid, with a fewmanuscripts, chiefly of English and Provencal poetry. The tabouretswere covered with cushions of Norwich worsted, in gay colours. All wassimple, it is true, yet all betokened a comfort--ay, a refinement, anevidence of wealth--very rare in the houses even of the second order ofnobility.
As Sibyll gazed, her face suddenly brightened; she uttered a joyous cry,hurried from the room, descended the stairs, and passed her father, whowas seated without the porch, and seemingly plunged in one of his mostabstracted reveries. She kissed his brow (he heeded her not), boundedwith a light step over the sward of the orchard, and pausing by a wicketgate, listened with throbbing heart to the advancing sound of a horse'shoofs. Nearer came the sound, and nearer. A cavalier appeared in sight,sprang from his saddle, and, leaving his palfrey to find his way to thewell-known stable, sprang lightly over the little gate.
"And thou hast watched for me, Sibyll?"
The girl blushingly withdrew from the eager embrace, and saidtouchingly, "My heart watcheth for thee alway. Oh, shall I thank orchide thee for so much care? Thou wilt see how thy craftsmen havechanged the rugged homestead into the daintiest bower!"
"Alas! my Sibyll! would that it were worthier of thy beauty, and ourmutual troth! Blessings on thy trust and sweet patience; may the daysoon come when I may lead thee to a nobler home, and hear knight andbaron envy the bride of Hastings!"
"My own lord!" said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes; but,after a pause, she added timidly, "Does the king still bear so stern amemory against so humble a subject?"
"The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick'srestless machinations in France have soured his temper. He cannot hearthy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent ofLancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,--as, in truth,thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the influenceof Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our good swords,she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the dispersion ofour foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet feeds Edward'ssuspicions of thy harmless father. The king chides himself forhaving suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even recalls thedisastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that from the firstthy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret. Nay, sure I am,that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he would condemn theeas a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate of my old foes theWoodvilles. But fie! be not so appalled, my Sibyll; Edward's passions,though fierce, are changeful, and patience will reward us both."
"Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!" said Sibyll, with great emotion."Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence! I see theesurrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to myself, 'Isit possible that he can remember me?' But thou lovest mestill--still--still, and ever! Dost thou not?"
And Hastings said and swore.
"And the Lady Bonville?" asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but withthe faltering tone of jealous fear.
"I have not seen her for months," replied the noble, with a slightchange of countenance. "She is at one of their western manors. They sayher lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout hypocrite, andplays the tender wife. But enough of such ancient and worn-out memories.Thy father--sorrows he still for his Eureka? I can learn no trace ofit."
"See," said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to Warneras they now drew near the house, "see, he shapes another Eureka from histhoughts!"
"How fares it, dear Warner?" asked the noble, taking the scholar's hand.
"Ah," cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerfulprotector, "bringest thou tidings of IT? Thy cheerful eye tells methat--no--no--thy face changes! They have destroyed it! Oh, that I couldbe young once more!"
"What!" said the world-wise man, astonished. "If thou hadst anotheryouth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through alife of hardship, persecution, and wrong?"
"My noble son," said the philosopher, "for hours when I have felt thewrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the nightswhen I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy! God is kinder to usall than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow on the surface,and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the unwitnessed soul."
Sibyll had left Hastings by her father's side, and tripped lightlyto the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners whosupplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,--the happybanquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst suchsparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.
And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under thehoneysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over hissated mind. The pure soul of the student, released a while from thetyranny of an earthly pursuit,--the drudgery of a toil, that howevergrand, still but ministered to human and material science,--had foundfor its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and eternalmysteries. Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden cage,into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and spiritualeloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made familiar to histhoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he indulged in his largeideas upon life and nature: of the stars that now came forth in heaven;of the laws that gave harmony to the universe; of the evidence of a Godin the mechanism of creation; of the spark from central divinity, that,kindling in a man's soul, we call "genius;" of the eternal resurrectionof the dead, which makes the very principle of being, and types, in theleaf and in the atom, the immortality of the great human race. He wassublimer, that gray old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in hiswords, than ever is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, anddeeds but blunderingly and lamely seek it.
And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from itslittle ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked,"What can courts and a king's smile give me in exchange for serenetranquillity and devoted love?"
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