CHAPTER CIX.
The Meeting of the Lovers.
Sir Francis Hartleton’s officers paid but little heed to the loud and angry remonstrances of Albert Seyton, but hurried him the short distance between the park and the magistrate’s house, at which in a few minutes they arrived, and in obedience to their orders fastened him in the same room from where he had come so recently.
As Sir Francis stood for a moment on the threshold of the apartment, Albert turned to him and said—
“Sir Francis Hartleton, for the treacherous and ungentlemanly conduct of which I have been the victim, I will now denounce you as a disgrace to the office you hold. I look upon you as—”
“Nay, nay—hold,” cried the magistrate, “I will hear no more. The less you say, the less you will have to retract and ask my pardon for.”
“Your pardon?” cried Albert; “I—”
“Shut the door, he is raving,” interposed the magistrate, and in a moment Albert was alone.
The young man stood in the middle of the floor, in deep disgust with Sir Francis, and revolving in his own mind what he should do in the situation he was now placed in. He walked to the window which overlooked a garden, but there were iron bars across the frame-work, which appeared too firmly let into solid oak to be removed without appropriate tools.
“I will not, however, be caged here if I can help it,” thought Albert; and he seized one of the bars, and exerted all his strength to move it, but it was in vain, for it showed no signs of giving way. Albert then glanced around him for some weapon, but none such was in the room. He then threw himself into a chair, and after a few hasty expressions of indignation, relapsed into melancholy silence. Suddenly, then, he recollected a small knife that he had in his pocket, and he thought he might possibly be able to cut away sufficient of the wood-work to wrench out one of the bars from the window, which, could he accomplish it, would leave a space sufficiently large for him to get through, and drop into the garden, which was at no very great depth, although amply sufficient to make any one, not labouring under the excitement of mind that Albert was, pause ere they adventured the leap.
He found the job of cutting away the wood-work at the window a long and a tedious one, for he could only get the oak away in small pieces, and the iron bars were very deeply imbedded.
“I have heard,” thought Albert, “of these things being done with more inefficient tools than a tolerably good knife, aided by perseverance, I shall rejoice to give this tricky magistrate the slip, even if I walk directly to another, and claim an inquiry into the causes of my present most unjustifiable detention.”
“When the heart is in any work, it makes good progress,” says Lord Bacon; and so it seemed in the present instance, for Albert was rapidly getting towards the end of the bar, when an unhappy circumstance retarded his labours. In getting out a large piece of the wood, he struck the blade of the knife on one side, and snapped it short off by the handle. In the excitement, then, of the moment, he seized the bar, and did what, at a cooler time, he could not have done, namely, wrenched one end of it from its hold. The powerful leverage he now had, soon enabled him to free it at the other extremity, and a prospect of escape seemed on the instant opened to him.
In a moment he threw up the window, and glancing into the garden, he was on the point of springing out, when he saw that there were some iron rails covering some underground part of the premises, upon which he must have fell, had he adventured the leap. Albert paused for a moment, and the sudden thought struck him that he could make a means of descending in safety. He took Gray’s cloak, which had been left hanging on the back of a chair, and firmly tying one corner of it to one of the remaining bars of the window, he let the remainder hang out, intending to slide down by it.
“Now, Sir Francis Hartleton,” he exclaimed, “with all your power I am able once more to defy you; and lest my flight should give occasion to surmises of my guilt, on account of Jacob Gray’s murder, I will betake me to the nearest magistrate, and allow him to hold me in custody if he pleases.”
He flung himself out at the window. His weight cut the cloak across, and there fell at his feet a folded paper. The young man lay stunned for a moment by his sudden fall. Then he slowly rose, and his eye fell upon the paper; it was addressed—“To Sir Francis Hartleton, with speed.”
Albert clasped his hands, and a cry of surprise escaped him. He knew the endorsement—it was Jacob Gray’s confession.
We must now leave Albert for some few moments to his mingled feelings of surprise, and joy, and grief, for such were all struggling in his breast, in order to follow Sir Francis Hartleton to his own private study, whither he instantly repaired after seeing Albert, as he thought, properly secured for the present.
He sat down, and covering his eyes with his hands, a habit he had when he wished a steady communion with his own thoughts, he remained silent for some time. Then he spoke in a low voice, and with a confident tone.
“This young man’s honesty and honour,” he said, “has been sufficiently tested, and the noble confidence of Ada in his love and sincerity is, thank Heaven, not misplaced. The mystery that envelopes Ada’s name and history, I fear now will never be disclosed; but I must make these two young people happy, and they will be foolish to torment themselves about the past, when the present will be so dear to them, and the future so full of hope. There shall be no sense of dependence, for I will exert all my interest to procure Albert Seyton some honourable employment; and although the solution of the mysterious conduct of Learmont and his strange connection with Gray and Britton may go to the grave with him, yet she, the long suffering, persecuted girl will be happy with the object of her heart’s choice. I must see her and prepare her for the interview which she shall have with him. How will his anger at his detention here change its complexion when he knows its cause.”
Sir Francis then summoned an attendant, and desired that Ada might be requested to come to him as soon as possible. The message was duly delivered, and in a few moments our heroine, to whose fortunes we have clung so long, and who holds so large a place in our hearts, glided like a spirit of beauty into the magistrate’s study.
Sir Francis Hartleton, when he had offered her a seat, looked with kindly interest in her face, and said—
“Ada; you look unhappy; you are paler than you were.”
A slight increase of colour visited Ada’s cheek, as she replied in her sweet, low musical voice,—
“I am all unused to cloak my feelings either of joy or of sorrow; I am not happy. I have told myself often that I am most ungrateful to you for your great kindness to me, by being unhappy; but the heart will not be reasoned with, and the subtlest logic of the mind will fail to stop a tear from dimming the eye, when the full heart says ‘weep.’”
“You are full of regret, Ada, that I think harshly of young Albert Seyton.”
“I am, I am,” said Ada. “Oh, sir! You do not know him as I know him, or you would seek some other cause for his conduct than faithlessness.”
“Hear me, Ada,” added Sir Francis with emotion. “Since I last saw you, I have had occasion to alter my opinion.”
A half suppressed cry of joy escaped the lips of Ada, and then she clasped her hands; and while the rapid beating of her heart testified to the emotion occasioned by Sir Francis’s words, she fixed upon his face her beautiful eloquent eyes, and eagerly dwelt on every word he uttered.
“Believe me, Ada,” he said, “my deep concern for your happiness alone made me anxious that he who was to make or mar your happiness in this world should be proved pure as virgin gold, ere with joy I could see you become his. I have tested him.”
“And—and—” said Ada.
“And believe him true,” continued Sir Francis, “although the victim of as strange a series of circumstances as ever fell to the lot of mortal man.”
Ada burst into tears, and sobbed for very joy, while the magistrate turned his head aside to conceal his own emotion.
“My dear Ada,” he said, after a pause, “I have much, very much to tell you that concerns you mostly, but I will not now detain you to listen to me. Take this key; it opens the little eastern room which looks into the garden. Release the prisoner you will find there.”
“It is Albert?” said Ada.
“It is—”
She rose and placed both her hands in those of Sir Francis Hartleton, and smiling upon him through her tears, she said,—
“Dear friend; can I ever thank you—can the poor Ada ever hope even in words to convey to you the full gratitude of her heart?”
“Let me see you happy, Ada,” said Sir Francis, “and I am more than repaid. Go to you lover, who is, I fear, a very impatient prisoner, and tell him, from me, that I will never interfere with him again, let him do what he may.”
Ada could not understand what Sir Francis meant by his last words, but at that moment she was not much inclined to ask explanations, but taking the key while her hand trembled, and her lustrous eyes seemed swimming in an ocean of tenderness as she glided from the room to rescue her lover.
Ada knew the room well to which Sir Francis had directed her, and her eager footsteps in a few moments brought her to the door. For one brief moment then she paused to recover herself from her state of agitation. In the next she had opened the door—the room was tenantless. Ada flew to the window—there hung the torn cloak.
“Albert, Albert,” she cried, and sunk upon the floor in an agony of grief.
Sir Francis Hartleton heard the cry of Ada, and hastening from his room, the truth shot across his mind in a moment when he saw the cloak hanging by the iron bar.
“Who could have imagined this?” he cried. “Ada, Ada, be of good cheer; all will be well. He cannot leave the garden.”
“Oh, Sir Francis,” cried Ada; “for Heaven’s sake explain to me the meaning of all this—what could induce him to fly thus strangely?”
“Think nothing of it, Ada, all will be well. I meditated giving Albert Seyton an agreeable surprise, and he has given us a disagreeable one, that is all—hark!”
As Sir Francis spoke, there arose a confused noise in the garden, and upon his going to the window, he saw Albert in the grasp of two of his officers. Without any remark concerning what he was to say, he turned to Ada and said,—
“Leave all to me. Do you remain here, Ada, until I come to you. I pledge you my word all shall be explained to your satisfaction within this present hour.”
Sir Francis then hurried from the room, leaving Ada in a greater state of bewilderment than ever, and, hastening to the garden, he met the officers who had recaptured Albert.
“So, sir,” said Sir Francis, “you have, methinks, a small amount of patience.”
“Patience, sir,” cried Albert. “Why should I have any under a tyranny as unexampled as it is despicable? In plain words, sir, tell me what you mean by detaining me?”
“Young man, it is for your own good. Let me advise you now, for your own benefit. I shall send some one to you, to talk you out of your unreasonable humour.”
“I warn you, Sir Francis Hartleton,” said Albert. “I am now upon my defence, and, if you send any of your myrmidons to me, they may chance to regret coming within the reach of my arm.”
“Indeed! Now, I will wager you my head that you will be in a more complaisant humour shortly. Bring him in, and confine him in my parlour.”
Resistance against the powerful men who held him, Albert felt would be quite absurd, and merely wasting his energies to no purpose; so he suffered himself, although boiling with rage, to be led into a room on the ground floor.
“Now my young friend,” said Sir Francis, “I shall send some one to you to tame your proud spirit.”
“I defy your utmost malice,” cried Albert.
“Oh!—Let him rave—let him rave. Shut him in,” said Sir Francis calmly.
The moment the door was closed upon the prisoner, he drew from his breast the confession of Gray, and was upon the point of opening it, when his high sense of honour forbade him breaking the seal of a communication addressed to another, and he dropped it on the floor, as he said,—
“No, no! Although this magistrate, from some inexplicable cause, is my enemy, I must not forget that I am a gentleman.”
The words were scarcely out from his mouth, when he heard the door unlock gently, and arming himself then, with all the indignation he felt, he cried in a loud voice,—
“Whoever you are, advance here, at your peril!”
The door opened very slowly, and when it was just wide enough for the person to enter Ada glided into the room.
“At my peril, Albert?” she said.
The colour forsook the cheek of Albert, and he stood gazing at her for a few moments, incapable of thought or action; then, with a gush of joy, he flew towards her.
“Ada, Ada! My dear Ada, are you in life or am I mocked by some vision: My Ada, speak!”
“Albert.”
He clasped her to his heart. He kissed her cheek, her brow, her hands. Tears gushed from his eyes, and mingled with those of the long-lost, fondly cherished idol of his heart. They could neither of them speak, and nothing was heard for many minutes in that room, but sobs of gushing joy, such as make the heart leap in extacy, and give humanity a glimpse of heaven.