MORE TROUBLE AT CLOPTON.
Meanwhile, as misfortunes seldom come but in battalions, Sir Hugh Clopton (even before he had heard of the appearance of the disease) had been arrested of high treason, and carried off to London with several other gentlemen of condition in the county, and who had likewise been mixed up in the confession of Master Walter Neville.
It is indeed hardly possible to describe the dire confusion which ensued upon this unexpected event taking place on the night of the feast at Clopton Hall. Sir Hugh himself was the only person of his household and family who seemed to retain his self-command. Walter Arderne would, at first, have fain struck down the Queen's officer and expelled his men. The faithful Martin was almost distraught. The serving men and retainers were scared and indignant at the same time; and the guests in a state of astonishment and dismay.
"Heed it not, my masters all," said Sir Hugh, "'tis a mistake altogether. I a traitor to our blessed Queen! pah. I would she had but such traitors in all her foes; methinks I know where this matter originates, and shall set it right upon examination."
"I hope so," said the officer; "Nevertheless, there is one other I am to secure within your household, but my people have just learnt he hath fled on our approach."
"In the name of Heaven," said Sir Hugh, "who else lays under this strange misconception?"
"A priest but lately come from over sea, commonly called Father Eustace," said the officer.
"Eustace!" said Sir Hugh, "why he was here but now. Is he too accused?"
"He is," said the officer, "and must, if possible, be apprehended; some of my party have followed on his trail."
"Any more of my family, household, or personal friends implicated?" said Sir Hugh, somewhat bitterly. "I trust I shall set my accuser, whoever he be, before my rapier's point, when I promise him such mercy as it affords no more."
"I feel sorry to put any force upon you, Sir Hugh," said the officer, "especially before this goodly company, but my orders are peremptory, and I must convey you to Warwick to-night; to-morrow with all speed towards London."
"Nay," said Sir Hugh, "good sir, you but express my own wishes in this matter. To the Tower with me at once. An there be any limb or member o' my body found guilty of this sin—torture it: an the Queen find that my head hath entertained a thought against her—off with it: an my heart hath conceived treason—tear it out. To horse then in God's name, and let us put on without delay."
And truly did the good Sir Hugh bespeak himself, whilst most of the guests standing in amaze around, and, with tears in their eyes, beheld him made prisoner, and conveyed from his own domain. Under the circumstances in which he found himself, it was a great relief to the good knight that his daughter was saved from the grief and misery of seeing and taking leave of him.
The coming of the officers and the arrest of her father it was hastily arranged should be carefully concealed, and her attendants were enjoined to say that a sudden summons from the Queen had obliged Sir Hugh instantly to depart.
Meantime the faithful Martin undertook to remain in watchful attendance upon her, whilst Arderne, whose feelings would not permit him to stay behind, accompanied the party in charge of the old knight, and whom he swore never to leave till he was again at liberty.
"I will gain audience of the Queen," he said, "instantly, and not leave the Court until I know the vile traducer who hath thus denounced thee, uncle. Thou a traitor, indeed! Thou soul of honour, loyalty and truth! Treason hath no existence—no place to hide in aught where thou abidest."
And thus (as is oft the case in life) the scene became on the sudden overcast. At the moment of its brightness—the gaiety, the splendour, and the happiness of the party were dashed; whilst those who had met together with light hearts and fantastic spirits, dispersed with evil foreboding and slow and heavy footsteps.
In a party of this sort, in Warwickshire, it was customary oft-times to keep up the revel till dawn, whilst every nook and corner of the dwelling was made available for those of the guests who chose to remain afterwards.
With the good old English hospitality which despised form, Sir Hugh had previously arranged for many of his most intimate friends to stay a few days at Clopton and partake in the sport his preserves afforded. The dogs and falcons were to have been put in requisition, and the heronry and the thick covers around beat for game.
Indeed two or three did remain at Clopton the next day; not for the purpose of recreating themselves with the old knight's hawks, but from their anxiety about the illness of the fair Charlotte, and in the hope of seeing her re-appear from her room with renewed health.
Such, however, was not to be the case, as she grew rapidly worse, and it was found necessary to summon the leech from Stratford. Soon after his arrival, the faithful Martin, with a face of alarm, took upon himself to dismiss the guests. His charge, he said, was extremely ill. Her complaint was pronounced by the leech to be both infectious and dangerous, and under such circumstances, it was advisable for them to shorten their visit. "Neither should I be acting rightly," he added, "if I concealed it, although the rumour may possibly be without foundation, but I have just heard the plague hath broken out in Stratford."
Thus were the halls of Clopton—and which but a few short hours before had displayed such a scene of gaiety and revelling,—as suddenly changed to gloom and melancholy.
The domestics seemed to glide about with noiseless step, hardly having heart to arrange the different rooms, so that many of them were left in the confusion and disarray they had been in when the mirth of the party was so suddenly interrupted; and, if the succeeding day was fraught with melancholy, the night was filled with terrors. Strange and awful sounds were heard in some of the rooms. Sounds which none could account for or discover the meaning of, although, at first attributing them to natural causes, the domestics made search through those parts of the house where they had been heard.
Coming thus at a time of grief and misfortune, and following sickness and the rumours of so dire a disease as the plague, these sounds had an ominous and awful appearance. The domestics, much as they loved their employers, and commiserated them in their present distress, were so much scared, that several fled from the Hall to their own homes; and, as the mysterious sounds continued night after night growing more violent, and even extending from the part of the house to which they had at first been confined; with the exception of two or three of the upper servants, the numerous domestics of the establish meat had almost all deserted it.
The faithful Martin was sorely troubled. Living in an age when men's minds were easily affected by superstitious terrors, and a general belief existed in supernatural agency, he however possessed an uncommon degree of firmness and mental energy. At first he tried to laugh at the terrors and complaints of the different servants, as they brought continued reports of dreadful sounds existing in the western wing of the Hall, and where the secret hiding-places existed. Then, as his own ears confirmed their reports, he shut himself up, well armed, for a whole night in the apartments where the spirit was said to be most troublesome.
On this night, which was the third after the departure of Sir Hugh, the sounds were most terrific and awful. As if the evil genius of the house of Clopton was either rejoicing over the present state of the family, or impatient for their utter destruction, it seemed inclined to drive the inmates to despair by its violence.
Martin, having thrown himself upon the bed in the apartment we have before seen tenanted by the maniac Parry, was reclining in a half-dozing state, a couple of huge petronels in his belt and a drawn rapier upon tho table, when he was suddenly conscious of some one entering the room, and sitting down beside the bed.
As he had carefully locked the door he was in something surprised at this visitation; but suspecting that some influence from without was at work, and distrusting the Jesuitical priest Eustace, after a while he quietly and cautiously rose, and then leaping suddenly from the bed, confronted the supposed visitant petronel in hand.
To his astonishment, however, no person was there,—"He looked but on a stool." The door, which had been violently burst in, was still wide open, but no one was in the room besides himself. This was the more extraordinary as Martin was confident he had distinctly heard the person enter, and with swift step passing into the apartment, seat itself by his bedside. Nay, so quick and sudden seemed the visit, that though a bold and determined man, Martin had felt paralyzed and unable to move for the first minute or two. His heart beat violently; he was certain some one was within a few inches of him as he lay, and yet he could not move a limb; till at length, shaking off the feeling, he rose to confront the intruder. Pistol in hand, he looked in every part of the small room, "searching impossible places" in his anxiety. He then descended the narrow staircase, and looked into every nook and corner of the apartment beneath, but found not even a cobweb amiss.
Returning to his couch he re-fastened the door, trimmed his lamp, placed it in the chair beside his bed, examined his petronel, and again lay down with the weapon firmly grasped in his hand. "If there be any deceit in this," he said to himself, "and which I feel inclined to believe is the case, I will make sure work of it with the practiser. A bullet through his heart or lungs, will lay his ghostship in the Red Sea."
There had never been much good feeling in existence between the shrewd Martin and the priest Eustace. At the present moment the former held the Jesuit in especial dislike. He had a suspicion that the difficulties in which Sir Hugh was now placed, arose from some intrigues of the priest, whom he knew to be of an unscrupulous and designing nature. The present noises he conceived to be some contrivance of this iron-hearted bigot, in order to scare the servants of the establishment from that wing of the building, and he accordingly resolved to make a severe example of whoever he detected. This idea nerved him to so great a degree, that the extraordinary sounds he heard at first failed in completely frightening him. The situation, however, was not altogether a pleasant one. The silence, the loneliness, the dangerous illness of his favourite Charlotte, the peril in which the old knight was placed, all crowded themselves upon his imagination as he lay and watched.
For some time nothing occurred to disturb his melancholy reflections, reflections which at length took him from the present horror of the time; and led on to other thoughts, till, at length, the heavy summons of sleep began to weigh upon his eyelids.
At this moment the clock from the old tower in the stabling struck two. Scarcely had it done so when a distant whirling sound was heard; it seemed at first like a rushing wind stirring the trees in the shrubbery without, and steadily advancing towards the house. It increased in sound as it did so, till it appeared to enter the house, and rushing up the staircase with fearful violence the door again was dashed open with a tremendous burst, the lamp was extinguished at the same moment, and the room seemed filled with some strange and unnatural visitants.
Starting up at the moment of the door being burst in, Martin discharged his pistol full at the entrance, and at the very instant the light was extinguished. He then jumped, sword in hand, into the middle of the room, whilst a rushing sound, as of persons moving about, was all around him.
The darkness, added to the horrors of his situation, almost unmanned the bold Martin, and spite of his determined character his heart now beat violently and his hair bristled on his head. Nay, so impressed was he with the idea that some spectral beings were in the apartment, and even in his own vicinity,—nay, perhaps, that the enemy of mankind was at his very elbow and about to clutch him, that, as he uttered a hasty prayer for the protection of Heaven, he executed several furious backstrokes round the apartment, cutting a huge gash in the bed furniture, demolishing the back of an elaborately carved oaken chair, and bringing down a cumbrous mirror, smashed into a dozen pieces with as many blows. Indeed, the natural sounds of this ruin in some measure did away with the awe the supernatural noises had created. There is always some relief in action in such cases. The coward, for instance, makes use of his legs, in the midst of apprehension, the brave man takes to his arms, and as the strange sounds gradually subsided, seeming to traverse through the rooms below in their progress, Martin ceased from his exertions.
He was, however, now completely converted to the opinion of the domestics that there was something most strange and most unnatural in this visitation. He felt awed and struck with dread, and, lowering the point of his weapon, he stood in the centre of the apartment listening attentively as the noise passed through the lower rooms. "There is surely something in all this," he said to himself, "which is beyond my comprehension. 'Tis a sound of warning. I fear me some dire misfortune is in store. Peradventure Sir Hugh is dead: great Heaven, perhaps executed on the scaffold! Alas, my poor Charlotte! But no, it cannot be so. Heaven help us in our need, for we seem a doomed people here."
A deep sigh sounded close to his ears as he finished his soliloquy, so heavy, so long drawn, and so startling, that his blood curdled in his veins. He felt that he could no longer remain in the apartment, and hastily leaving it he descended the stairs, and opening the sliding pannel, passed into the rooms usually habited when Sir Hugh was at home.
Here he felt in something reassured, and groping his way to the door which admitted to the garden, he threw it open and sought relief in the free air.
The night was dark and a drizzling rain descended; he stepped on to the grass-plat and looked up at the apartment of his sick charge. A light was in the room, a pale and sickly gleam, which seemed to speak of watching and woe at that dead hour. As he passed beneath the window he thought he perceived a figure gliding away, but the night was too dark for him to be quite certain; still he felt sure that he had seen the outline of a form which, gloomy as was the night, he recognized.
"'Tis he, I feel assured," said Martin. "I cannot mistake that form, even so indistinctly seen, for there is none other like him. Alas! alas! 'tis even so. He watches her window even in such a night as this. I saw they loved each other from the first. Well, we are in the hands of heaven, and 'tis wrong to murmur. If our ills are reparable, to complain is ungrateful; if irremediable, 'tis vain. Whatever happens must have first pleased God, and most pleased him; or it had not happened. There is no affliction which resignation cannot conquer or death cure."
As Martin resigned himself to this comfortable doctrine he turned and re-entered the house.
The dawn was now beginning to break, and he resolved to knock at the chamber door of the invalid and make some inquiry after her.
The first grey tint of morning began to render objects in the room visible as he passed through it. There stood the spinnet upon which Charlotte had so lately played, the music-book open. There was her lute lying beside the music, and where it had been laid on the night of the party, and beside that lay the hood and jesses of her favourite hawk.
Whilst Martin regarded these remembrances of one now unable to use or enjoy them, a pang of grief shot through his heart, that sorrowful feeling with which we look upon the relics of the dead, and whom we have loved dearly when in life; and with that feeling came the conviction that she who once played so sweetly on that instrument, and so bravely wore those trappings of her gallant bird,—she, the young, the beautiful, was already parted perhaps for ever from the pleasures of the earth,—sick, prostrate, dying,—nay, even at that moment perhaps dead.
With heavy heart and evil foreboding he ascended the great staircase and sought Charlotte's room. His step was heard by the nurse who attended on the invalid, and gently opening the door she came forth to meet him.
The nurse was one of the old servants of the family; she was pale as death Martin observed as he advanced along the corridor. "We have had a fearful night," she said.
"But your charge?" said Martin, "I trust in Heaven she is better."
"Worse, Martin, worse," she replied; "worse than I can bring myself to tell thee. She is now asleep, but hath been delirious all the night."
"Now the gods help us," said Martin.
"Amen," said the nurse; "she hath raved much and talked wildly. To thee, Martin, I will confess it, she hath spoken much of one she loves."
"I dare to say so," said Martin, musing.
"But not of him of whom she should so speak," said the nurse.
"Not of him our good old master would like to have heard her speak in such loving terms. Mayhap I should surprise you were I to say on whom her affections seem fixed."
"I think not," said Martin, significantly.
"You think not?" said the nurse, "and wherefore?"
"Because I know her secret as well as if she had told it me," said Martin. "I have seen it from the first."
"Hark!" said the nurse, "she is again in one of those fits. Hear you that name, and thus called on."
"I do," said Martin; "'tis as I thought. May I see her? Methinks I cannot be satisfied till I look upon her sweet face, if but for a moment."
"Remain here whilst I go in, and I will then summon you," said the nurse. "Ah me, 'tis very sad!" and the nurse passed into the room, closing the door behind her.
Martin seated himself on the bench beneath the window at the end of the corridor, and as he gazed upon the portraits of the Clopton family hanging on either hand, his reflections became even more saddened. In that array of beautiful females and noble-looking cavaliers, how many died early! Amongst those scowling and bearded men of middle age, arrayed in all the panoply of war, how many had perished in their harness! There was Hugo de Clopton, the crusader, the fiercest of a brave race, who had smote even a crowned king in Palestine rather than brook dishonour. There was the templar, who had died at the stake in France, true to his vow; and Blanch Clopton, whom the lascivious John had solicited in vain, and who had been celebrated at tilt and tourney throughout Christendom as "La belle des belles."
Each and all of these portraits, it seemed to him, had a curious history attached to them—a sad and stern tale in life's romance—and as he sat and regarded them he thought upon their descendant now lying sick in their close vicinity—her father accused of treason and a prisoner, at a time so inopportune.
"Strange," he thought to himself, "that this family, so noble in disposition, so high in their sense of honour, should seem thus marked out and pursued by fate.
"'Tis true the good Sir Hugh hath been called, by the clergy of his own persuasion, but a luke-warm member of the true Church; an irreligious man.
"Nay, Eustace hath upbraided him with leaning towards heresy; and the Protestant churchmen at Stratford, again, hath accused him of being neither of the one religion or the other—altogether a heathen.
"These churchmen are both men, however, who wrangle and fight so much about religion, vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other; whilst the good Sir Hugh hath, during life, been so fully engaged in acts of benevolence, that saving the hours he hath spent amongst his horses and dogs, he hath indeed little leisure to think about such controversies."
Whilst Martin sat thus chewing the cud of bitter fancy, the old attendant returned to him. "She again sleeps," she said, weeping, and you may look upon her sweet face once more. "But oh, Martin, I fear me we are indeed in trouble; you will scarce behold that countenance, even yet so beautiful, without terror."
"Is she already so changed?" said Martin. "In the name of Heaven, what can be her complaint?"
"No noise," said the attendant, "but go in, and judge for yourself."
In a few moments Martin returned. Horror was in his countenance. "Her face is filled with livid spots!" he said. "We are indeed unhappy; she has caught——"
"The plague," said the nurse, as Martin hesitated, apparently unable to repeat the words. "The plague; 'tis even so, and she will not outlive this day."
"I will hasten to Stratford, and bid the leech again visit her instantly," said Martin.
"'Twere best," said the attendant, "be quick; but I fear me it is of little avail." And Martin, with fearful and hasty steps, left the corridor, and descended to the stabling of the Hall.
Besides Martin and the attending nurse, there was one other who watched with anxiety over the fate of the poor invalid, and who, albeit circumstances made it unpleasing to him openly to display the interest he felt, yet who sought in every way to gather some tidings of her state of health.
Amidst the general trouble in which the town was now involved, private griefs were less thought of, and consequently, although the inhabitants of the Hall were, by the good folks of Stratford-upon-Avon, known to be in some strait, whilst everybody was in apprehension for himself, commiseration there was little of, and intercourse there was none. Nay, the small remaining portion of domestics at Clopton had become so greatly alarmed by the visitation of the previous night, that they neglected their duties on this day, and remaining huddled together in the servants' hall, meditated altogether deserting the locality.
In addition to the supernatural sounds, they were now scared by a suspicion of the nature of the disease which had seized their young lady.
It was under such circumstances that, when Martin descended to the stables in order to dispatch a messenger for the doctor, he could at first find no one willing to undertake the message.
"I would willingly do anything I could to benefit the young lady," said one, "but I am about to leave the Hall."
"I cannot go into the town," said another, "for it is said that death is rife in its streets; and the folks are stricken as they walk. It would be a tempting of the disease an I were to run into it."
"Nay! we have had warning enough here," said another; "and albeit I respect Sir Hugh, I fear to remain, after what we have heard last night. Besides, if the truth must out, I believe the sickness hath come to Clopton; and folks must look to themselves. I have friends at Kenilworth, and I must seek them. They say too, that Sir Hugh hath been found guilty of a conspiracy against the life of the Queen, and I like it not."
"Hounds!" said Martin—"unworthy even to tend upon the generous animals you are hired to feed. Begone! pack—seek another roof, where you can batten on cold bits, and return kindness with base ingratitude." So saying, Martin saddled one of the steeds, and mounting himself, galloped into the town.