Nellie Netterville.
Chapter XII.
When first O'More unfolded the cloak in which he had brought Nellie safely through the flames, she lay so white and still that, for one brief, terrible moment, he almost fancied she was dead. The fresh air, however, soon revived her, and, opening her eyes, filled with a look of terror which afterward haunted them for months, she fixed them upon Roger, and whispered nervously:
"Where are the rest—the priest and all? Where are they?"
"They are with their God, I trust," he answered solemnly. At that awful moment he felt that he could say nothing but the truth, terrible as he knew that truth must sound in the ears of the pale girl beside him. His words, in fact, seemed to cut through her like a knife, and she fell upon her knees, exclaiming: "I only saved—I only saved! O my God, my God! have mercy on their souls!" Then suddenly remembering that, if she were safe, she owed it entirely to Roger, she added earnestly, "You have risked your life for mine. How shall I thank you?"
"By helping me once more to save it," he answered curtly. "Nellie," he went on rapidly, for he knew too well that every moment they lingered there was fraught with peril—"Nellie, you are saved, and yet not safe yet! Your life, however, is in your own hands now, and with courage and good trust in Providence, I doubt not we shall pull safely through."
Nellie seemed to gather up her mind for a great effort, and said calmly:
"Only say what I must do, and I will do it."
"The case is this," said Roger shortly: "Yonder tower," and he pointed to the burning pile overhead—"yonder tower must fall soon, and, if we linger here, will crush us in its ruins. On the other hand, even if we could creep round to the opposite side of the church, a thing in itself almost impossible, the fanatical demons who guard the gates will probably shoot us down like dogs. The cliff, therefore, is our best—almost our only chance. Nevertheless I leave the choice in your own hands. Only remember you must decide at once."
"The cliff, then, be it!" said Nellie, with white lips but flashing eyes. "God is more merciful than man. He will save us, perhaps; if not, his will be done—not mine. I will trust entirely to him—entirely to him and you."
Almost ere she had finished speaking, Roger had undone the rope which he carried round his waist, and was looking eagerly about him for some means of securing it in such a way as to make it useful to Nellie in her descent. Fortunately for his purpose, a thorny tree had planted itself, some hundreds of years before, in a fissure of the rocks so close to the walls of the tower that, old, and gray, and stunted, as it now was, its roots had in all probability penetrated beneath their broad foundation, and were quite as firmly settled in the ground. Upon this Roger pounced at once, and having tried it sufficiently to make tolerably sure of its powers of endurance, he passed one end of his rope round the thickest and lowest portions of the stem, and made it fast with a sailor's knot. The other end he threw over the cliff, and then watched its fall with a terrible, silent fear at his heart lest it should prove shorter than his need required. Down it went and down, and he stooped over to mark its progress until Nellie felt sick with fear, and turned away to avoid the giddiness which she knew would be fatal to them both.
At last she heard him say, "Thank God, it has reached the platform!" Then he turned round and anxiously scanned her features.
"Nellie," he said, "this thing is difficult, but not impossible. I have seen you bound like a deer down cliffs almost as steep, if not so high. The great, the only real peril, is in the eyesight. Lot's wife perished by a look. You must promise me neither to glance up nor down, but to keep your eyes fixed on the rocks before you. Hold well by the rope; take it hand over hand like a sailor, (I remember that you know the trick;) and leave the rest to me. There is really a path, though you can hardly see it from this spot; and there are chinks and crevices besides, in which you will easily find footing. You must feel for them as you descend; and when you are at a loss, I shall be below to help you. Neither will you be quite alone, for I am going to fasten you by this cord, so that, if you should happen to let go, I may perhaps be able to support you."
"My God!" said Nellie, white with terror, as he passed a strong, light cord, first round her waist and then his own, in such a way that there was length sufficient to enable them to act independently of each other, while, at the same time, neither could have fallen without almost to a certainty insuring the destruction of both. "My God, I cannot consent to this. Go by yourself; my fall would kill you."
"But you will not fall—you shall not fall," he pleaded anxiously, "if only you will abide by my directions."
"Go alone, I do beseech you!" she answered, with a shiver. "You cannot save me, and I shall but insure your destruction with my own."
"Nay, then, I give it up," he answered, almost sullenly. "We will stay here and die together, for never shall it be said of an O'More that, in seeking safety for himself, he left a woman thus to perish."
"Then, in God's name, let us try!" said Nellie; "only tell me what to do, and I will do it—if I can."
"Hold fast the rope, that is all. Never let one hand go until the other has grasped it firmly, and leave the rest to me. I will help to place your feet in safe resting-places as we go down. Only trust me, and all will yet be well."
"I will trust to you and to God, and our Lady," said Nellie, unconsciously repeating the password of the morning. Her color was rising fast, and her eyes had begun to sparkle with excitement. O'More seized the propitious moment, and, almost before Nellie knew it, she had begun her perilous descent.
"Are you steady now—quite steady?" he asked, in as low a voice as if he feared to startle the air with motion by speaking louder. Yes! with the natural instinct of a mountain climber Nellie had already found a rough indented spot in which her foot was firmly planted, and he descended a step lower. Thus inch by inch they went, Nellie ever clinging to the rope, and O'More guiding her descent with a success he had hardly looked for, and which he felt to be almost miraculous. His heart at last beat high with hope; for he saw by the distance which they had descended that they must be nearing a sort of shelf or platform formed by a sudden bulging out of the lower strata of the cliffs, and he knew that they were safe if they could only reach that spot, the rest of the path being so well marked that, even without his aid, Nellie could easily have found her way from thence to the sands beneath.
But the surge of the sea boomed louder and louder as she approached it, and at last, fairly forgetting Roger's caution, she turned her head a little, and glanced downward. Then, for the first time, she became fully conscious of the terrible position she occupied, suspended as it seemed by a very thread between earth and sky, and with the great, deep, awful ocean rolling hundreds of feet below her. Her head swam, her eyesight failed her, she had just enough presence of mind left to grasp the rope firmly by both hands, when, feeling as if her senses were utterly deserting her, she cried out:
"O my God, I am going! Save me, Roger, I am going!"
"No, no!" he cried, in agony, for he knew only too well the danger of the thought. "Hold fast—hold on; for Christ's dear sake, hold on! One step—two steps more, and you are safe. There!" he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, as he felt his own foot touch the platform; and seizing Nellie by the waist, he drew her, hardly conscious of what he was doing, by main strength to his side. "There, oh! thank God—thank God, you are safe at last!"
He was just in time. Nellie had that very moment let go the rope, and if he had not caught her, would inevitably have been dashed to pieces on the rocks below. As it was, he landed her safely and gently on the ledge where he himself was standing, and without venturing to loose her entirely from his grasp, laid her down, that she might recover from her nervous panic.
"You are safe," he kept repeating, as if it required the assurance of his own voice to make certain of the fact. "You are safe!" and then with an instinctive yet entirely unacknowledged consciousness on his part, that his own safety might perhaps be at least a portion of her care, he added—"we are safe now. You can stay here until you are quite yourself again; only do not look up or down—at least not just yet, not until the giddiness is gone. You forgot Lot's wife, or this never would have happened."
Nellie was not insensible, though she looked so. She only felt as if she were in a dream. She understood perfectly all that Roger said; the shadow even of a smile seemed to pass over her white lips as he alluded to Lot's wife; but his voice fell with a muffled sound, as if it came from a great distance, on her ear; and earth, and sky, and cliff, and ocean, all seemed blending and floating in a wild fantasy through her brain. By degrees, however, a sort of awakening seemed to creep over her, but she did not use it at first either to look up or speak. Possibly she felt that words would be powerless to express her thoughts, and was glad of any excuse for silence. Roger did not like to hurry her, and he therefore employed the next few minutes in scanning the sea in search of Henrietta. She was there, exactly in the place in which he had bidden her to wait for him; but she was watching the burning tower overhead, and had evidently very little notion that any of its victims had escaped. From the spot where he was standing, he could easily have made her hear him; but fearing that his voice might rouse up some hidden foe, he turned to Nellie for assistance.
"Have you a handkerchief," he asked, "or anything of that kind which you could give me for a signal?"
Without answering, without even looking up, (so obedient had she grown, poor Nellie!) she untied the scarlet kerchief, which, in her harmless vanity, she had that morning thrown over her head and knotted beneath her chin, as the last thing wanting to her costume of a native girl, and gave it into Roger's hand. He waved it for some time without success; but at last Henrietta saw it, and began to row vigorously into shore.
"Now you may look," cried Roger joyfully, helping Nellie to stand up; "now you may look; for you will see nothing but what it is good for you to see. Henrietta Hewitson is waiting for us in the boat below, and the sooner we leave this resting-place the better."
"Henrietta Hewitson!" cried Nellie, roused effectually to life again by the mention of her name. "His daughter! How kind, how noble! Shall we not go to her at once?"
"If you are able," he answered. "The rest of the way is easy—easier far than the cliffs of Clare Island, which you climbed with me yesterday."
"Easy! oh! yes, surely it is easy," cried Nellie wildly. "O my mother—my mother!" she sobbed, with a little gasp; "I shall see her once again—and my grandfather! the poor old man will not be left desolate, after all."
Roger saw that she was growing every moment more and more excited, and he cut the matter short by carrying her down to the beach and laying her in the boat, as if she had been a baby. Henrietta received her with a look of remorse, as if she felt that she herself must seem, somehow or other, responsible in Nellie's eyes for the pain and misery she had been enduring for the last few hours; and while she wrapt her tenderly and affectionately in a cloak taken from her own shoulders, Roger sent the boat, by a few vigorous strokes of the oar, to a safe distance from the rocks near which they had embarked. This manoeuvre placed them in full view of the burning tower, and he dropped his oar and gazed upon it as if irresistibly attracted by the spectacle. The body of the church was by this time a smouldering heap of ruins, but the tower, wrapt in its terrible robes of fire, still stood bravely up as if in defiance of its coming doom. For a single second it remained thus, unyielding and apparently uninjured, than it began visibly to totter. Another moment, and it was swaying backward and forward like a leaf in an autumn storm; and yet another, and, as if in a last wild effort to escape from the flames that swathed it, it plunged right over the cliffs, the fragments of its ruined walls crashing and crumbling from rock to rock till they fell with a roar like thunder into the waters underneath. Both girls, at the first symptom of the catastrophe impending, had instinctively shut their eyes; but Roger, on the contrary, looked on as steadily as if he were keeping a count of every falling stone in order to set it down in his debt of vengeance against those who had done the deed. Not a syllable, however, did he utter, until the last stone had fallen, and the last fiery gleam disappeared from the cliff; but then, as if unable any longer to endure in silence, he threw up his arms toward heaven, and exclaimed:
"Men, women, and children all sent before their time to judgment! O God! what punishment hast Thou reserved in this world or the next that shall be heavy enough for such a deed as this!"
"Curse me not—curse not!" cried Henrietta, with anguish in her voice, "The doom, God knows, is heavy enough already."
"Curse you!" said the astonished Roger, "you, to whom I owe more than my own life a thousand times. Nay, Mistress Henrietta, what madness has made you fear it?"
"I fear! I fear! Why should I not?" sobbed Henrietta. "The sin of the parents shall be visited on the children, and he is my father, after all!"
"Your father! your father!" Roger muttered, trying to keep down the storm of passion that was choking him. "Well, well, he is, as you say, your father, and so I must perforce be silent."
"Alas! alas!" Henrietta pleaded, "if you did but know the completeness of his religious mania, you would also comprehend how easily a man, merciful in all things else, can in this one thing be merciless."
"Nay," said Roger bitterly; "it needs, I think, no great stretch of intellect to understand it thoroughly. A man, fresh from the siege of Tredagh, where children were dashed from the battlements, lest, 'like nits, they should become troublesome if suffered to increase,' will, doubtless, merely consider the holocaust of human life which lies buried beneath yonder ruins as a whole burnt-offering, smelling sweet in the nostrils of the Lord, which he, as his high-priest, has been deputed to offer up."
He broke off suddenly, for a hand was laid upon his arm, and a white face lifted pleadingly to his. "Speak not thus of her father," whispered Nellie. "Speak not thus; see how she is weeping!"
"Her tears are his best plea for mercy, then," said he in a gentler tone, and seizing the oars, he began to row as vigorously as if he hoped to quiet his boiling spirit by the mere fact of bodily exhaustion. Nellie made no answer, and silence fell upon them all.
The deed just done was not of a nature lightly to be forgotten, and they went quietly on their way, as people will, upon whom the shadow of a great terror still hangs heavily. Just, however, as they entered the harbor of Clare Island, Nellie caught sight of a well-known figure, and uttered a cry of joy. It was Hamish, and, in her impatience, she scarcely waited until the boat was fastened ere she was at his side. But there was no gladness in his eye as he turned to greet her. He was deadly pale, and his left arm hung powerless at his side. Nellie saw nothing of this at first, however, she was thinking so entirely of her mother.
"Is she come, dear Hamish?" she cried. "Where is she?"
"In Dublin," he answered curtly.
"In Dublin—and you here?" cried Nellie in dismay.
"Because she sent me," he replied.
"What is it, Hamish? What is it?" faltered Nellie, struggling with a sense of some new and terrible misfortune impending over her.
"She is sore sick—sick even unto death," Hamish reluctantly replied. He could not bring himself to utter the terrible truth as yet.
Nellie stood for a moment mute with terror. She read upon her foster-brother's face that worse news than even this was about to follow; but when she would have asked what it was, courage and voice completely failed her. She knew it, however, soon enough. From his seat by the door of the tower, Lord Netterville had caught a glimpse of Hamish, and came down at once to greet him. Excitement seemed for one brief moment to have restored all his faculties, and he cried out eagerly:
"You here, good Hamish! I am heartily glad to see you! And what news bring you from Netterville? How goes my lady daughter? Ill, do you say—sore stricken? Nay, man, remember that she is still but young. It cannot surely be an illness unto death?"
"Yea, but it is, my lord," said Hamish, speaking almost roughly in his agony. "Death, and nothing short of death, as surely as that I am here to say it."
"Art thou a prophet?" asked Roger, bending his dark brows upon him, and half tempted to suspect a snare. "Art thou a prophet, that thou darest to speak thus confidently of the future?"
"Sir," said Hamish, driven at last beyond his patience, and hardly knowing how to break his news more gently, "it needs not to be a prophet to foresee that the widow of a royalist and a Catholic to boot, shut up in prison and condemned on a false charge of murder, is in danger—nay, said I danger?—and is as certain of her doom as if she were already in her coffin."
Nellie uttered a wild cry, the first and last that escaped her lips that day, and Lord Netterville repeated faintly, "Murder!"
"Ay, murder; and in another week she dies," Hamish answered, now desperate as to the consequences of his revelation.
Nellie turned short round toward Roger:
"I must go!" she said. "I must go at once."
"Of course you must," he answered, in that helpful tone which had so often that morning already reassured her.
"She has sent me hither to conduct you," Hamish—with some latent jealousy of the interference of a stranger—was beginning, when, unable any longer to conceal the bodily anguish he was enduring, he uttered a moan of pain, and leaned back against the low wall of the pier.
Then for the first time Nellie looked into his face, and saw that he was as white as ashes.
"My God! my God!" she cried in her perplexity. "What is to become of us? He is dying too."
"No, no," Hamish mustered his failing strength to answer, "It is nothing. They shot at me as I took boat from the beach, and hit me in the arm; but it is not broken, and if only I could stop the bleeding, I should be well enough to start at once."
But he grew paler and paler as he spoke, and the blood gushed in torrents from his arm, as he tried to lift it for their inspection. Roger shouted to Norah to bring down a cordial from the tower, and he then helped Nellie and Henrietta in their nervous and not very efficient endeavors to check the bleeding with their kerchiefs. Hamish was by this time well-nigh insensible, but a cup of wine revived him, and having ascertained that he was merely suffering from a flesh-wound, Roger sent back Norah to rummage out some bandages which he remembered were among his soldier stores. With these he stanched the blood, and carefully bound up the wounded arm, assuring Nellie at the same time that her faithful follower was merely suffering from loss of blood, and that in a few days he would be as well again as ever. Nellie must be forgiven if at that moment she had no thought excepting for her mother.
"A few days," she cried despairingly; "then I must go back alone; for my mother will be dead by that time."
Hamish did not hear her. He was leaning back in that half-dreamy state which often follows upon loss of blood; but Roger answered instantly:
"You shall go at once; but certainly not alone." He turned round to look for Lord Netterville; the poor old man had sunk upon the ground, and in his helplessness and perplexity was weeping like a child.
"Lord Netterville!" said Roger suddenly.
Lord Netterville dashed the tears from his eyes, and looked up anxiously in the young man's face.
"Lord Netterville," Roger repeated, giving him his hand and helping him to stand up, "you see how the case stands; your granddaughter must go to her mother, and go at once. Any delay were fatal. This poor fellow is totally unable to accompany her. Will you trust her to my care? I swear to you that she shall be as dear and precious to me as a sister, and that I will watch over her and wait upon her as if I were in very deed her brother."
With a look of relief and confidence that was touching to behold, the old man wrung the hand which Roger gave him, and then silently turned toward Nellie. Roger did did not ask her if she would accept him as an escort; he felt that after the events of the morning she would need no protestations of loyalty at his hand, and merely said:
"In two hours we can start; but I shall have to go first to the mainland to look for horses."
"Nay, that shall be my business," said Henrietta suddenly. "In two hours hence, at the foot of the round tower, you will find them waiting; and I will bring you at the same time a letter to a friend, who may, I think, prove useful to you in Dublin. Follow me not now," she added in a tone that admitted of no reply, as Roger made a movement as if he would have gone with her to the boat, "follow me not now; I can best arrange matters if I go alone; but in two hours hence I shall expect you."
Chapter XIII.
Henrietta was as good as her word, and, thanks to her energy and kindness, Nellie, with Roger for an escort, was enabled to commence her journey that very afternoon, both she and her companion being mounted upon good swift steeds, which the young English girl had made no scruple of abstracting for the purpose from her father's stable. She had done even more than this; for she had conquered her pride and petulance sufficiently to write a letter to Major Ormiston, in which she entreated him, by the love he once professed to bear her, to do all he could for Nellie, and to procure her every facility for access to her mother. This she had given to Roger, hinting to him at the same time that her correspondent was high in favor of the Lord Deputy, and might possibly be able to induce the latter to commute the sentence of death hanging over Mrs. Netterville into one of fine or imprisonment, even if he could not or would not grant her a full pardon. Of this hope, however, Roger said not a syllable to Nellie, fearful, if it should come to naught, of adding the bitterness of disappointment to the terrible measure of misery which in that case would be her portion.
The journey to Dublin was a difficult and a long one, and if Nellie had been allowed to act according to her own wishes, she would probably have used up both herself and her horse long before she had reached its end. Fortunately, however, for the accomplishment of her real object, Roger took a more exact measure of the strength of both than, under the circumstances, she was capable of doing for herself, and he insisted every night upon her seeking a few hours' repose in any habitation, however poor, which presented itself for the purpose.
With this precaution, and supported also in some measure by the very excitement of her misery, Nellie bore up bravely against the inevitable fatigues and discomforts of the journey. The horses, however, proved less untiring. In spite of Roger's best care and grooming, both at last began to show symptoms of distress, and they were a long day's journey yet from Dublin when it became evident to him that his own in particular was failing rapidly. Henrietta had chosen it chiefly for its quality of speed; but it was too light for a tall and powerfully-built man like Roger; and more than once that day he had been compelled to dismount, and proceed at a walking pace, in order to allow it to recover itself. Night was rapidly closing in, and Nellie, who, preoccupied by her own anxieties, had not as yet remarked the state of the poor animal, ventured to remonstrate with Roger upon the slowness of their proceedings. Then for the first time he pointed out to her the exhaustion of their steeds, acknowledging his conviction that his own in particular was in a dying state, and that two hours more, if he survived so long, would be the utmost measure of the work that he could expect him to accomplish. Nellie was for a moment in despair, and then a bold thought struck her—why not ride straight for Netterville? They had been for some hours in the country of the Pale, and they could not be very far from her old home now. Every feature in the landscape was becoming more and more familiar to her eyes, and she was certain that, in less than the two hours which Roger had assigned as the utmost limit of his steed's endurance, they would have reached her native valley. Once there, they would not only be in the direct road to Dublin, but they would also have a better chance of finding horses than they could have in a place where they were entirely unknown. Netterville, it was true, was now wholly and entirely, with its fields and stock, in the hands of the Parliamentarians; but she was certain of the fidelity of the poor people there, and as certain as she was of her own existence, not only that they would not betray her, but that they would also do all they could to help and speed her on her way. The plan seemed feasible; at all events, no other presented itself at the moment to Roger's mind, and accordingly, after having done all he could to relieve his horse, and prepare him for a fresh spurt, they struck right across the country eastward toward the sea. Nellie proved right in her conjectures. In even less than two hours from the moment in which they started, they reached the valley of Netterville—reached it, in fact, just in time; for Roger had barely leaped from his horse's back ere the poor animal was rolling on the turf in the agonies of death. Nellie then proposed that they should walk to the cottage of old Grannie, and dismounted in her turn. Her horse was not so exhausted as that of Roger, nevertheless it was even then unfit for work, and would in all probability be still more so on the morrow. Roger therefore thought it better to leave it to its fate than to run the risk of attracting notice by bringing it with them to Grannie's habitation. He hoped, as Nellie did, that they would have a good chance of finding fresh steeds at Netterville next morning; and after carefully hiding the two saddles in a clump of gorse, they set out on their way on foot. The old woman received Nellie with a cry of joy. No sooner, however, did the latter mention the business which had brought her there, than the faithful creature stifled all her gladness at this unexpected meeting with her foster-child, and turned to weep in good and sorrowful earnest over the woe and shame impending upon the house of Netterville, in the person of its unhappy mistress. While Nellie ate, or tried to eat, the simple fare set before her by her hostess, Roger told the latter of the fate which had befallen their horses, and inquired as to the possibility of replacing them by fresh ones. Grannie shook her head despondingly. Royalists and Parliamentarians alternately, she said, had seized upon every available horse they could find in the country, until, as far as she knew, there was not a "garran" fit for a two hours' journey within ten miles of Netterville. As to Netterville itself, if there were any horses left in its stables, (which she doubted,) they must of necessity belong to the English soldier to whose lot, in the drawing of the debentures, the castle and its grounds had fallen; much, the old woman added with a chuckle, to the disgust of the officer who commanded them at the time of the recent murder, and who, having coveted the place exceedingly for himself, was supposed to have pressed the matter heavily against Mrs. Netterville for the facilitating of his own selfish wish.
Roger listened to all this in silence, privately resolving to risk his own detention, if discovered, as an outlaw, and to visit the stable of Netterville next morning, in hopes of procuring a fresh mount. As nothing, however, could be done till then, he entreated Nellie to lie down and rest, after which he left the hut, there not being a second chamber in it, and throwing himself on a bank of heather on the outside, was soon fast asleep. It was long before Nellie could follow his example, but at last she fell into that state of dreamless stupor which often, in cases of extreme exhaustion, takes the place of healthy slumber. Such as it was, at all events, it was rest—rest of body and rest of mind—a truce to the aching of weary limbs, and to the yet more intolerable weariness of a mind, wincing and shivering beneath a coming woe. The first gleam of daylight roused her from it. There was never any pleasant twilight now, between sleeping and waking, in Nellie's mind! With the first gleam of consciousness came ever the pale image of her mother, and there was neither rest nor sleep for her after that. In the present instance, anxiety as to the chance of being able to prosecute her journey at all, was added to her other troubles; and, unable to endure suspense upon such a vital point even for a moment, she opened the door quietly, so as not to disturb old Granny, and looked out for Roger. He was nowhere to be seen, and she guessed at once that he had gone up to the castle. Then a longing seized her to look once more upon the old place where she had been so happy formerly; and, without giving herself time to waver, she walked hurriedly up the valley. She did not, however, venture to the front of the house, but resolved instead to take a path which, skirting round it, would lead her to the offices behind. It was, by one of those strange accidents which we call chance, but for which the angels perhaps have quite another name, the very path which her mother had always taken when visiting the sick soldier. The door of the room which he had occupied was slightly ajar as Nellie passed it; and, moved by an impulse for which she could never afterward thoroughly account, she pushed it open without noise, and entered. The room was not uninhabited, as she had at first supposed. A woman, evidently in the last stage of some mortal malady, lay stretched upon the bed, and a soldier of the Cromwellian type was seated with an open Bible in his hand beside her. He had probably been employed either in reading or exhorting, but at the moment when Nellie entered, it was the woman who was speaking.
"I tell you, soldier!" Nellie heard her querulously murmur—"I tell you, soldier, it is mere waste of breath, your preaching. So long as that woman's death lies heavy on my soul, so long I can look for nothing better in the next world than hell."
At that very moment Nellie noiselessly advanced, and stood in silence at the foot of the bed.
The woman recognized her at once, and with a wild shriek flung herself out of the bed at her feet. The girl recoiled in horror and dismay. She had learned the whole story of her mother's condemnation from Hamish ere she left Clare Island.
"Murderess of my mother!" she cried, in a voice hoarse with anguish. "Dare not to lay hands upon her daughter."
"Mercy! mercy!" cried the woman, grovelling on the ground, and seeking with her white shrunken fingers to lay hold of the hem of Nellie's garment. "Mercy! mercy!"
"Where shall I find mercy for my mother?" Nellie asked, as white as ashes, and shaking from head to foot in the agony of her struggle between conscience and resentment—the one urging her to forgive her foe, the other to leave her to her fate. "Where shall I find mercy for my mother?"
"You see, soldier—you see," moaned the poor wretch upon the floor, "the daughter cannot pardon me; why then should God?"
"What would you have?" cried Nellie, almost maddened by the mental conflict. "What would you have? I cannot cure you. What can I do?"
"You can forgive," the woman answered feebly; "then perhaps God will pardon also."
"O my God! my God! give me strength and grace sufficient!" cried Nellie; and then, by an effort of almost superhuman charity, she stooped, put her arms round the dying creature's neck, and kissed her.
The woman uttered a cry of joy, and fell back heavily out of Nellie's arms. A long silence followed.
Nellie looked at the dead, white face, lying quietly on the floor beside her, and felt as if she were dying also, so utterly did her senses seem to fail her, and so dead and numbed were all her faculties in the heavy strain that had been put upon them. A hand was laid at last upon her shoulder. Nellie started violently. She had totally forgotten even the existence of the soldier.
"Nay, fear not, maiden, nor yet grieve inordinately," he said, in a voice of mingled pity and admiration. "Thou hast acted in all this business (I am bound to bear testimony to the truth) in a way worthy of thy mother's daughter."
"Thank God, at least, that I forgave her," Nellie murmured beneath her breath, scarce conscious of what he was saying.
"Nay, and in very deed," he answered, "thy presence here has been a crowning and a saving mercy for the poor wretch whom we have seen expire. Ever since I found her here last night, dying alone and in despair, I have been striving for her with the Lord, and praying and exhorting, but, as it seemed to me, all in vain, until thy kiss of peace fell like a balm more precious even than that of Gilead on her soul, and restored it, I cannot doubt, (for I saw a light as of exceeding gladness settle upon her dying features,) restored it to long banished peace."
"Thank God that he gave me grace to do it!" Nellie once more whispered. It seemed as if she were powerless to think of aught besides.
"They who do mercy shall in due time find it!" rejoined the soldier, putting a small scrap of written paper into her hand. "In this very room thy mother tended me, when my own comrades had deserted me, fearing the infection; in this very room yonder woman, having been expelled the other portions of the mansion, since order has been taken for the separation of God's elect from the sinful daughters of the land, took up her abode some three days since; and in this very room I last night found her, dying of the malady of which, but for thy mother's care, I must have also perished, and so moved by the prospect of eternal retribution which lay before her, that she of her own accord did dictate, and did suffer me to write down on the spot, a full confession of her own guilt in the matter of the murdered Tomkins, She told me then—and many times afterward in the course of the long night she did continue to aver it—that she herself it was who did the deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die; she having, in a drunken squabble. seized the man's pistol and shot him dead upon the spot. And she furthermore avowed, with unspeakable groanings and many tears, that, terrified at the consequences of her own act, and moved besides by a fiendish desire of vengeance against thy mother, who had in some way unwittingly, in times past, offended her, she not only accused her of the murder, but maintained that accusation afterward upon oath when examined before the High Court of Commissioners in Dublin. Now then, maiden, rise up and speed. Thy mother's life is in thy hands; for with that paper, writ and witnessed by one who, however humble, is not altogether unknown as a zealous soldier in the camp of Israel—with that paper, I say, to attest her innocence, they must of a certainty acknowledge it, and let her go."
"How shall I thank thee, O my God!" cried Nellie, scarcely able to believe her ears that she had heard the soldier rightly.
"It is good to praise God always," he replied sententiously, "but at this moment briefly. Thy present care must be to get to Dublin with what speed thou mayest."
"Alas!" said Nellie, "how shall I get there? I have ridden day and night ever since I heard this unhappy news, and only yesterday evening our horses were so knocked up, that I and my companion had to find our way hither as best we could on foot."
"There are but two horses in these stables, and neither of them are mine to offer," said the soldier, evidently distressed and anxious at the dilemma in which his protégée was placed. "Nevertheless, and the Lord aiding me in my endeavors, I will do what I can. Come with me to the courtyard—I doubt not but thou knowest the way well enough already."
Yes, indeed! poor Nellie knew it well enough, and at any other time she might have wept at revisiting on so sad an errand a spot hitherto pleasantly associated in her mind with many a childish frolic, and many a petted animal, the favorites of the days gone by. Just now, however, she had no inclination to dwell on the memories of the past. Joy at the proved innocence of her mother, and a wild fear lest she herself should arrive too late in Dublin to allow of her profiting by the disclosure, filled her whole soul, and left no room there for sentimental sorrows. She found Roger already in the yard, engaged in hot discussion with an officer of the English army, a coal-black charger, which the latter was holding carelessly by the bridle, being the apparent object of the dispute.
"Ay," muttered her conductor, as he glanced toward the group; "it is, I see, even as I suspected, and I shall have to pay dearly for Black Cromwell." Then leaving Nellie a little in the background, he went up to the English officer and said:
"Here is an unhappy maiden, Captain Rippel, bound upon an errand of life and death, and sorely in need of a good steed to bear her. The fate of a grave, God-fearing woman, even of Mistress Netterville herself, the late owner of this mansion, is dependent on her speed, and, had I twenty horses in the stable, as I have not one, I declare unto thee as God liveth and seeth, that she should have her choice among them all."
"Yea, and undoubtedly," the other answered with a sneer. "Nevertheless, since it is even as thou sayest, and that thou hast them not, I fear me, good master sergeant, that this young daughter of Moab, who has been lucky enough to find favor in your eyes, will be none the better for your good intentions."
"Sir, if you be a man—a gentleman—you cannot, you will not refuse!" cried the indignant Roger. "Consider, this young lady is here a suppliant where once she dwelt the honored mistress of the mansion, and you cannot of a surety say nay! Remember it is no gift we crave, for this purse contains double the value of your steed, strong and of admirable breeding as undoubtedly he is."
He held up a purse as he spoke, the parting gift of Henrietta, from whom, however, he had accepted it merely as a loan, to be afterward repaid in some of the most valuable of the articles yet left him in his tower. It was well filled and heavy; but with a little smile of scorn the officer waved it quietly on one side.
"And how am I to be certified, I pray you, that this young maiden—who seems to have cast witchcraft on you both—is in reality Mistress Netterville, or any other indeed than a base impostor?" he asked with a most offensive leer. "Scarce five days have as yet elapsed since I came hither, sent by the Lord High Deputy himself, to put order in this garrison, and to separate the elect of God from the sinful daughters of the land, and—"
"Sir, do you dare!" cried Roger, suddenly cutting short his speech; and, raising his hand, he would have struck him to the ground if the soldier had not placed himself hastily between them, saying in a monitory tone to Roger:
"If thou wouldst not destroy the young maiden's hopes altogether, sir, leave this affair to me. Another look or word of thine, and it will utterly miscarry."
Roger felt the man was right. It was not by violence or angry words that he could best serve Nellie. He checked himself at once, therefore, and fell back, while the soldier said quietly to his superior officer:
"Thou hast not, peradventure, captain, forgotten the offer which thou didst make to me some three days since, when first the way in which the Lord had disposed of our lots was made known to us at Netterville?"
"Forgotten—no, in sooth—not I!" the other answered roughly. "Nor have I forgotten either with what manifest folly and ingratitude thou didst reject it; better though it was by a hundred pieces of good gold, than that which one of thy comrades didst thankfully accept from Major Pepper."
"Throw Black Cromwell and the white mare Daylight into the bargain, and I accept," the soldier answered quietly.
"What, part with Black Cromwell? Black Cromwell, who hath carried me unhurt through more battles than David himself ever fought against the Philistines?" the officer demanded with well-affected astonishment. "Verily and indeed, master sergeant, thou art, as I do perceive, notwithstanding thy good odor for most punctilious sanctity—thou art, I say, but an extortioner after all. Had it been the mare alone, now, though she also is a very marvel for strength and speed—I had never said thee nay; but to talk to me of parting with Black Cromwell is to prick me, so to speak, upon the very apple of the eye."
"Nevertheless I have a fancy for him, and if I cannot get him, I will still hold fast to Netterville, the inheritance which the Lord himself hath of late assigned me in this new land of promise," the other steadily replied.
"There is the good horse. Battle of Worcester, he is stronger than Black Cromwell, and would altogether suit the maiden better," his superior rejoined in a coaxing tone.
"Yea, but he hath an ugly trick of going lame ere the first mile is over," Sergeant Jackson responded with a knowing smile, and then he added in a tone which was evidently intended to bring the discussion to an end, "It will be all in vain to dispute this matter any further. Captain Rippel. If you have in truth, as you seem to say, made up your mind to keep Black Cromwell for your own riding, I, on the other hand, am equally resolved not to part with this house of Netterville, which will serve me well enough, I doubt not, as a residence, once I have brought my old mother hither to help me in its keeping."
"Nay, then, usurer, take the horse and thy money with it!" cried the officer, in a tone far less expressive of vexation than of triumph at the result of the discussion. "Take thy money and hand me over that debenture which, with the loss of such a charger as Black Cromwell, is, I fear me, but too dearly purchased."
Without deigning to utter a single syllable in return, Sergeant Jackson took the purse which the other in his affected indignation almost flung at his head, with one hand, while with the other he drew forth from the breast-pocket of his coat a paper, being the identical debenture in question, and presented it to his officer. Captain Rippel snatched it hastily from him, ran his eye over it to make sure that it was the right one, and then, turning on his heel, sauntered out of the courtyard, without even condescending to glance toward the spot where Nellie stood anxiously awaiting the result.
Sergeant Jackson instantly dived into one of the stables, and seizing a side-saddle, (Nellie's own saddle of the olden times,) he led forth a strong, handsome mare, as white as milk, and began to saddle it in hot haste; while Roger, taking the hint, did the same for Cromwell.
"I am afraid I have cost you very dear," Nellie said in a low, grateful tone, as she stood beside the sergeant. "Believe me, for nothing less than a mother's life would I have suffered you to make such a sacrifice."
"Nay, maiden, call it not a sacrifice," he answered without looking round, and giving a pull to the girths to make sure that they were tight. "Or if thou needs must think it one, remember that, had not thy good mother saved my life, I should not have been here to make it."
Nellie's heart was too full to speak, and she suffered him to lift her in silence to her saddle. He settled her in it as carefully and tenderly as if, instead of a simple soldier, he had been one of the old courtly race of cavaliers, from which she was herself descended, and then, with one last whispered word of gratitude for himself, and one last loving message for old Grannie, which he promised to deliver to her in person, Nellie rode forth from Netterville, and, without even giving it a farewell glance, turned her horse's head toward Dublin.
Chapter XIV.
The city of Dublin, as it stood within its walls in the days of the Protectorate, barely covered ground to the extent of an Irish mile, and was built entirely on the south side of the Liffey. That side, therefore, only of the river was embanked by quays, and not even that in its entirety; the space now occupied by the new custom-house and other buildings, to the extent of several thousand feet, being then mere ooze and swamp, kept thus by the continued overflowing of the tides.
To the north of the Liffey, however, there was a suburb, built, as time went on and the exigencies of an ever-increasing population required, outside the walls of the fortified city. It was called "Ostmantown," now "Oxmantown," and occupied a very insignificant space between Mary's Abbey and Church street; Stoney Batter, Grange Gorman, and Glassmanogue, being merely villages scattered here and there in the open country to a considerable distance northward. A bridge of very ancient date, the bridge of "Dubhgh-all," also at a later period styled the "Old Bridge," formed the sole means of communication (except by boat) between the city and its northern suburb. Built upon four arches, and closed in on the Dublin side by a strong gate-house with turrets and portcullis, the Old Bridge, like all others of similar antiquity, was broad enough and strong enough to form a sort of street within itself; shops being erected upon either side, and traffic as busy and as eager there, as in the more legitimate thoroughfares of the city.
From Old Bridge men passed at once into Bridge street, (Vicus Pontis formerly,) a long, narrow thoroughfare, hemmed in on one side by the city walls, and on the other by a tolerably handsome row of houses. These houses were almost all built in the cage-work fashion of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and roofed in with tiles and shingles. Many of them also possessed inscriptions which, cut deep into the wood above the doorway, stated the name and calling of the owner, with the addition frequently of some pious sentiment or appropriate phrase from Scripture. This custom seems to have been a favorite one in Dublin, and in the more antique portions of the city there existed houses, even to a very recent period of its history, upon which might still be read the names and occupations of the men who, more than two hundred years before, had resided within their walls.
On the day on which we are about to introduce Dublin to our readers, there had been a considerable amount of stir and bustle going on among its inhabitants, and more especially among those of Bridge street. Rumors had, in fact, been rife since early dawn of an expected rising of the rebels (as the king's partisans were then styled by their opponents) in the north; and men speculated in hope and fear, as their secret wishes moved them, on the probability of the report. It received something like confirmation in the afternoon, one or two regiments of recently arrived English soldiers, armed from head to heel, and evidently ready to go into action at a moment's notice, having been marched out of the city and sent northward. Later on in the day, moreover, it became known that the Lord-Deputy himself, Henry Cromwell, the best of Ireland's recent rulers, accompanied by a strong escort, was proceeding in the same direction, and might be looked for at any moment at the "Ormond Gate," which shut out Bridge street on the city side, just as the "Gate-house" closed it on that of the Old Bridge.
But if people stood at their doors and windows to do honor to the coming of their king-deputy, there yet seemed to be another and still stronger attraction for them at the end of the street opposite that by which he was expected to appear. Eyes were cast quite as often, though more furtively, in the direction of the Old Bridge as in that of the Ormond Gate; for, in the midst of other rumors, there had come a whisper, no one knew how or by whom it had been first set agoing, that a person suspected of belonging to the rebel party had just been arrested on the river, having attempted, by means of a boat, to elude the passage of the Old Bridge, and so penetrate unchallenged into the heart of the city.
There followed, as a matter of course, much secret and some anxious speculation as to the rank and real object of the arrested person, but no one ventured to make open inquiry into the matter. Cromwell's brief reign of blood had stricken men dumb with fear. To have shown the smallest interest in persons suspected of belonging to the rebel party, would have been but to have drawn down suspicion on themselves; and suspicion, in those hard times, was too nearly akin to condemnation to be heedlessly incurred. Instead, therefore, of going at once to the Gate-house and ascertaining the real facts of the case from its guardians, people were content, while awaiting the appearance of the military cavalcade from the castle, to question and conjecture among themselves as to the rank and real business of the arrested man. A flourish of trumpets before Ormond Gate put a stop at last to their gossipings. Heads and eyes, if not hearts and good wishes, were instantly turned in that direction; the gate was flung open, and Henry Cromwell, surrounded by a goodly company of officers and private gentlemen, rode at a brisk pace through it. A moment afterward, and he had swept past all the gazers, and pulled up opposite the Old Bridge. The guard at the Gate-house instantly turned out to receive him, the portcullis was drawn up, and he was actually spurring his horse forward to the bridge, when a girl, in the habit of a western peasant, darted through the soldiers and flung herself on her knees before him. The movement was so rapid and unexpected that, if the Lord-Deputy had not reined up his steed until he nearly threw it on its haunches, he must inevitably have ridden over her. A moment of silent astonishment ensued. The girl herself uttered no cry, and said not a syllable as to the nature of her petition; but as she lifted up her head toward the Lord Henry, her hood, falling back upon her shoulders, revealed a face of ashy whiteness, and there was a pleading, agonized expression in the dark eyes she raised to his, which told more than many words, of the inarticulate anguish of the soul within.
Henry Cromwell was not of a nature to be harsh to any one, much less to a woman; but there had been information enough sent in to him that morning to make him suspect a snare, and he turned sternly for explanation to the chief officer of the guard.
"What means this unseemly interruption, corporal?" he asked, as the latter was vainly endeavoring to induce Nellie to rise from her knees. "Is this maiden a prisoner? or if not a prisoner, is she distraught, that she thus ventures, bare-headed and dressed in such ungodly play-acting fashion, to rush into our very presence?"
"A prisoner of only half-an-hour's standing is she, may it please your excellency," the soldier answered promptly, "she and her companion! They were seen attempting to cross the river in a boat borrowed from some of the natives on the other side, and as it seemed to me that their purpose must needs be seditious to demand such secrecy, I caused both to be apprehended, and have kept them here to wait your honor's further directions in the matter."
"Ormiston," said the Lord-Deputy, turning to one of the younger of the group of officers behind him, "remain you here, and examine, with Corporal Holdfast, into this business. If there be aught which seems important hid beneath this masquerading folly, follow me at once to Glassmanogue, where I shall have business to detain me for a couple of hours; but if it be only, as I do suspect, the silly freak of a love-sick maiden, in that case I shall not look for you before to-morrow morning, when you will bring me, as I have explained already, the last despatches which may have come from England."
Having thus somewhat summarily despatched poor Nellie's business, but little dreaming of the great service he had done her in appointing young Ormiston her guardian, Henry Cromwell dashed over the bridge, and, followed instantly by his escort, galloped northward. The moment Nellie saw that her efforts to hold speech with the Lord-Deputy himself would prove in vain, she had risen of her own accord, and, the hood once more drawn modestly over her head and face, had stood aside to let him pass, with a calm, sad dignity in her look and bearing which had its due effect upon the rough soldier who had made her captive. He did not again attempt to touch, or even to address her, but standing near her silently and respectfully, seemed to wait until of her own accord she should return with him to the Gate-house. Thus unmolested, Nellie forgot his existence altogether, and equally heedless of the crowd, which, having gathered in the wake of the Lord-Deputy, was now gazing curiously and compassionately upon her, she stood considering what her next move should be, when, in obedience to his orders, Harry Ormiston approached her.
As he took Corporal Holdfast's place beside her, Nellie lifted her eyes to his face, and recognized him instantly as the young officer who had been riding with Henrietta on the day of their first meeting in the wilderness. A soft cry of joy escaped her lips, and Harry Ormiston broke down in his half-uttered greeting. He also remembered her face—have we not already told our reader that it was by no means one easily to be forgotten?—but of the when or the where that he had seen it, he had no such distinct a recollection. Silently, and with a look of timid hope stealing over that fair face, Nellie drew Henrietta's missive from her bosom and placed it in his hands.
Ormiston glanced at the superscription, and with a flush of honest joy mantling on his features, eagerly tore it open. Scarcely, however, had he read three lines ere the scene among the mountains, which had ended in his quarrel with his betrothed, rose before him like a vision, and instantly remembering Nellie as the fair girl who had been in some measure, albeit unwittingly, its cause, he turned sharply upon Corporal Holdfast.
"How is this, corporal? I fear me you have made some grave mistake! This young maiden whom you hold a prisoner is the bearer to me of a token from one whose zeal and faithfulness in the good cause cannot be suspected—even from a member of the household of that brave and God-fearing Major Hewitson, who has set up his camp on the very edge of the wilderness, and thus made of his small garrison a very tower of strength against the incursions of the enemy."
"Nay, and if your honor says it, it must needs be true," the man—a bluff old soldier, with little pretensions to sanctity in his composition—answered with suppressed impatience; "and therefore I can only marvel that a maiden, known and esteemed by the family of worthy Major Hewitson, should not only have sought to cheat our vigilance by crossing the river privately in a boat, but should have done so in the company of a man whom I myself can testify to having been a chief of some repute in the army of the Irish enemy, having crossed swords with him at the battle of 'Knocknaclashy,' as I think they call it in their barbarous language, where he fought (I needs must own it) with a valor worthy of a better cause."
Major Ormiston turned, gravely but kindly, to Nellie.
"I fear me much," he said, "that you have been but ill-advised in all this business. Why not have presented yourself openly at the bridge if the matter which has brought you hither will bear investigation? and why, more than all the rest, have you come attended by a person whose very company must needs render you suspect yourself?"
"O sir!" said Nellie, weeping sadly, as she began to fear that even Henrietta's recommendation to mercy might perhaps avail her little; "we had not the password, without which we never should have been permitted to enter Dublin by the bridge; and our errand is, alas! of such a nature, that every moment lost is of deep and sad importance."
"Our errand," Ormiston thoughtfully repeated. "This errand, then, is not entirely your own, but is in some way or other interesting also to the man by whom Master Holdfast tells me you are accompanied."
"He should have said 'a gentleman,'" Nellie answered, with a slight rebuking emphasis on the latter word—"a gentleman who, at his own great trouble, and, I fear me, risk, has enabled me to accomplish this journey; in which, however, he has no other interest than such as any kind and noble heart might feel in the sorrows and perils of an unprotected girl."
"Where is he—this other prisoner?" Ormiston asked, turning for information to the corporal.
"In the gate-house, sir, where we have him safe under lock and key; for he was no prisoner to be left at large like this silly maiden, who begged so hard to be allowed to see the Lord-Deputy go by, that I found it not in my heart to deny her so small a favor; for the doing of which, I trust I have not incurred the displeasure either of your honor or of his highness the Lord Henry."
"Certainly not, honest Holdfast; you have acted both well and mercifully in all this business. And now lead the way to the gate-house, and trouble not your wits about this young maiden. I myself will be her surety that she attempt not to escape."
He offered his hand very respectfully to Nellie as he finished speaking, 'and she suffered him to lead her in silence toward the bridge. As they entered the gate-house, however, she quietly withdrew her hand and glided from his side to that of Roger.
Ormiston instantly recognized the latter as the dispossessed owner of the "Rath," and an officer, beside, of some standing in the recently disbanded army of the Irish. Courteously saluting him, therefore, he informed him that he had been deputed by the Lord-Deputy to inquire into the nature of the business which had brought him to Dublin, adding an earnest hope on his own part that it might prove to be in no way connected with political affairs.
"That, most assuredly, it is not," said Roger, pleased and touched by the young officer's manner, and satisfied by Henrietta's letter, which Ormiston still held open in his hand, that he was addressing the person for whom it had been intended. "My business is one which solely concerns this young gentlewoman, and concerns her, in fact, so nearly, that if you cannot aid her, as Mistress Hewitson half hinted that you could, I trust, at all events, you will give me as much of my liberty for this one day as may enable me to do so myself. I too am a soldier and an officer. Major Ormiston, and you may trust me that I will not abuse your favor."
"Sir," said Nellie imploringly, "you have not read the letter—if you would but read the letter! Mistress Hewitson half promised that you would help me!"
Thus called upon, Ormiston ran his eyes over Henrietta's letter, which, concluding it to be on matters merely personal to himself, he had been reserving for more private, and therefore more satisfactory perusal.
Nellie watched him anxiously as he read on, and with a spasm of anguish at her heart she saw that, as he gradually took in the nature of its contents, his first look of eager joy disappeared, and was succeeded by one of deep and tender pity—pity which made itself felt in the very accents of his voice, as he exclaimed:
"Young Mistress Netterville! Good God! And I never even dreamed of the relationship! Alas! that you should have come so far, only to find sorrow and disappointment in the end."
"Oh! not dead! not dead!" cried Nellie, terrified by his words and looks. "Say, not dead—not dead—I do entreat you!"
"No, no!—not dead—yet," he answered nervously. He could not bring himself to say that she was to die upon the morrow.
"Nay, Major Ormiston," Roger here interposed, for Nellie was sobbing in speechless anguish, "if not dead all is well—or may at all events yet be well—for this most injured lady. I have hope still—hope in the honor and justice even of our enemy. See this paper! It was writ by the soldier who hath lately received as his share in the Irish spoil the house and lands of Netterville, and who is ready to aver on oath that he took it down word for word from the lips of the very woman who did that deed for which Mrs. Netterville stands condemned to die."
Ormiston glanced rapidly over the papers which Roger had drawn from his bosom and given to him.
"Yes, yes!" he cried joyfully, "I doubt it not in the least. Sergeant Jackson is well known as a man of truth beyond suspicion, and these lines, moreover, do but repeat the defence which the unhappy lady urged over and over again upon her trial, insisting that the accusation against her was an act of private vengeance. But all this can be discussed hereafter. Time presses; and whatever is to be done to save her, must be done at once."
"The Lords Chief-Justices," suggested Roger; but Ormiston shook his head with a little smile of scorn.
"Little likely they to reverse a sentence pronounced in their own courts!" he said. "No, no! it is to the Lord-Deputy we must appeal. I will ride after him at once, and in a couple of hours at the furthest you may look for me with the result. I trust in God that it may be a good one."
He left the room without waiting for an answer, and in another minute they heard him gallop across the bridge. The next two hours were passed by Nellie in an agony of expectation which was painful to behold. She could not stay still a moment. Sometimes she paced the narrow guard-room with rapid and impatient footsteps—sometimes, regardless of the presence of the English soldiery, she flung herself on her knees, weeping and praying almost aloud in her agony. Every stir upon the bridge—every sound from the street beyond, seemed to announce the return of her messenger, and at these moments she would stand up, shivering from head to foot in such a fever of hope and fear, that Roger at last became seriously alarmed, and remonstrated firmly and affectionately with her on her want of self-command. At last, to his inexpressible relief, a bustle at the doorway announced Ormiston's return, and a moment afterward the latter entered the guardroom. Nellie stood up, as white as ashes, and utterly incapable of either speaking or moving toward him. Shocked at the mute anguish of her face, Ormiston took her hand in his; but when she looked at him, expecting him to address her, he hesitated, like one doubtful of the effect of the tidings he was bringing.
"For God's sake, speak at once!" cried Roger. "Anything is better for her than this suspense! Say, is it life or death?"
"Not death, certainly—at least I hope not," said Ormiston, vainly seeking in his own mind for some fitter words by which to convey his meaning.
The blood rushed to Nellie's temples, and the pupils of her eyes dilated, but still she could not answer.
"You hope?" Roger repeated sadly. He saw, though Nellie did not, that there still existed some uncertainty in the matter.
"There is a reprieve at all events," he said, in the same joyless tones in which he had before replied.
The color faded from Nellie's cheek, and the gladness from her eye. "Only a reprieve—only that," she muttered, in tones so hoarse and changed that the young men could hardly believe it to be hers—"only that!"
"But the rest will follow," said Ormiston, trying to reassure her. "The Lord-Deputy will himself inquire into the business, and—"
"Nay, then, she is safe indeed!" Nellie interrupted him to say. "With that confession, furnished by her chief accuser, her innocence must be clear as daylight. O sir! she is safe—surely she is safe!" she added, trying to reassure herself by the repetition of the word, and yet sorely puzzled by a something in Ormiston's eyes which looked more like pity than sympathy in her joy.
"Safe? I trust so—with all my heart and soul I trust so," he answered gravely. "Nevertheless, my dear young lady, I would counsel you, as a friend, not to suffer your hopes to soar too high, lest any after disappointment should be too terrible for endurance."
"If she is reprieved, she will be pardoned; and if she is pardoned, she will live," Nellie repeated slowly, like one trying yet dreading to discover the hidden meaning of his words.
"She will live," he amended gently; "yes, certainly, if God hath decreed it as well as man."
"Nay, if she is in God's hands only, I am content," said Nellie, with a sudden return to confidence, which somewhat astonished Ormiston. "I also have been in God's hands," she added, with an appealing look toward Roger, "and can tell how much more merciful they are than man's. Sir, I conclude from what you say that she is ailing; may I not go to her at once?"
"If you are strong enough," he was beginning, but she interrupted him with a burst of grief and indignation.
"How? not strong enough? and I have come all this way to see her! O mother, mother!" she sobbed convulsively, "little you dream your child is near, bringing peace and pardon to your prison!"
Roger saw that Ormiston knew more than he liked to tell, and asked in a low voice:
"The poor lady, then, is very ill?"
"Dying!" the other answered curtly.
"Will her daughter be in time to see her, think you?"
"In time; but that is all. She has burst a blood-vessel, as I have just now learned, and this reprieve seems little better than a mockery; for no one dreams that she could have survived for the tragedy of to-morrow."
"Then let Nellie go at once," said Roger promptly. "She has ridden night and day to see her mother, and sad as the meeting may be, it would be sadder still if they met no more. Let her go at once."
And so it was decided.
Newman's Poems.
BY H. W. Wilberforce
.
The little volume of poems published anonymously under this humble title, [Footnote 179] produced an impression immediately on its publication, not only among Catholics but among English readers in general, which could hardly have been caused by a volume of poems from any other writer of the day, with the exception, perhaps, of the Laureate. The explanation is to be found in the initials J. H. N. at the end of the preface—a signature long ago of world-wide celebrity.
[Footnote 179: Verses on Various Occasions. London: Burns, Gates & Co. 1868. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.]
There may be those who feel surprised to find that a man chiefly known as having been, under God's providence and grace, the main author of the Oxford movement of 1833, should be found to have possessed and exercised extraordinary poetical gifts. It may perhaps be partly a lurking feeling of envy, partly a just perception how rarely any one man combines numerous unconnected powers, which makes the world at large reluctant to admit that any man has greatly distinguished himself in a line far removed from that specially his own. But that feeling, be its origin what it may, does not in reason apply to the case before us, because it would seem that the gifts which specially qualify a man to produce a deep effect upon the hearts and consciences of his fellows, to be the founder and leader of any great school of thought, social, moral, political, or religious, are very much the same as those required for the making of a great poet.
This is at first sight so obvious, that we incline to think the only real argument against it would be, an appeal to experience. It will be said, there is a small class of men who have won among their fellows (as if it were a title of honor formally secured to them) the name of "the poet," and no one of them has been, except in his own special art of poetical composition, among the great leaders of human thought. But this is easily accounted for. A man immersed for years in public affairs of any kind, however richly his mind may have been stored with poetical images, and however natural it may have been to him to have sought for them a poetical expression, can rarely have had leisure to cultivate the merely artistic part of poetical composition to the degree necessary for success as a poet. It is hardly likely that in his case there should combine the many accidental circumstances necessary (over and above the possession of great poetical endowments) for the composition, publication, and general diffusion of any considerable poetical work. And even if all these should happen to meet, the mere fact of being very greatly distinguished in any other line is of itself, we strongly suspect, enough to prevent any man from being chiefly remembered as a great poet. The name of "the poet Cowper" is a household word in every English family. But if "William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple" (as his name stands on the title-page) had risen to the woolsack, we believe that, even though he might have written the same poems, he would never have gained the title. If indeed mediocrity in everything else had sufficed to gain a high and permanent reputation for a man of equal mediocrity in poetical talents, we should now have talked of Cowper's friend as "the poet Hayley." But that the highest poetical genius does not obtain the title for a man otherwise conspicuous, is proved by the example of Shakespeare. Merely because he has left behind him dramatic works to which the world affords no rival, not even the preeminent poetical genius shown in his poems has caused the world at large to speak and think of him as "the poet Shakespeare." Nor would Dryden, despite of his matchless lyric poems, have attained the title, if among his numerous plays he had written Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.
It seems to us that these considerations are enough to answer the objection from experience, which might perhaps be urged against our opinion, that the qualities which qualify a man to exercise a deep influence on his fellows and make him a leader of the souls of men, are in fact the same as those which qualify him for success as a poet.
We think this volume will convince most of those who read it that we are right. The weighty and touching thoughts of these poems bear the stamp of the same mint from which issued those volumes of sermons, which, far more than any other work, have impressed a permanent stamp upon the generation of English readers which is now tending, as Dr. Newman says of himself, "toward the decline of life." It is impossible to read them without feeling that, if his life had been one of mere literary leisure, his chosen employment would probably have been poetry. As it is, he has evidently resorted to it, not when he was thinking of others, but when he sought to relieve the fulness of his own soul. In this world he has written in prose; his poetry has been the record of his inner struggles and emotions, and has been written for himself and his God.
As long as any memory of the English nation and the English language remains among men. Dr. Newman, we doubt not, will be remembered and reverenced; not indeed as one of the few whom poetry has made great, but as one of the great men who have written poetry. And so far from deeming it strange that such should be the case with the great author of the movement of 1833, we, for our part, should have thought it strange if, in a man of the highest literary culture, the intense feelings in which that movement originated had not relieved themselves by poetical expression. We believe, indeed, that few if any great moral movements have taken place in which something more or less of the same kind has not been found. Perhaps the most remarkable exception was the change of religion in England in the sixteenth century; the leaders in which not only produced no great poetical work, but did not leave behind them so much as a hymn. This was a striking contrast, not only to the contemporary movement in Germany, and to that of the Methodists in the eighteenth century, but also to that of the earlier Lollards. The explanation, however, is not far to seek. Lord Macaulay says, "Ridley was perhaps the only person who had any important share in the English Reformation, who did not consider it as a mere political job." Now, attractive as jobbing is to many very clever men, it is hardly qualified to inspire any poetical afflatus. Cranmer was too busy getting what he could for himself, to be musing over poetical images. Besides, the Reformation in England appealed not so much to men's deeper feelings, as to their natural and reasonable dislike to have their property confiscated and themselves imprisoned, hanged, and cut up alive; and this last kind of appeal neither needed nor encouraged poetical powers.
To return to the volume before us, the poems were so evidently written only for the author himself that it is our signal good fortune that they have ever been published. The greater part of them first appeared in a series called the Lyra Apostolica, in many successive numbers of the British Magazine, edited by the late Hugh James Rose, in which several of Dr. Newman's earliest prose writings were originally published. It was afterward issued in the form of a small volume, the first edition of which appeared in 1836. By far the greater part of it was supplied by Dr. Newman; the other poems, by five of his intimate friends. [Footnote 180]
[Footnote 180: These were John Bowden, "with whom" (Dr. Newman writes in the Apologia) "I spent almost exclusively my undergraduate years." He died just before Dr. Newman became a Catholic. His two sons are now fathers in the London Oratory.—Hurrell, Froude, whose noble character and high gifts Dr. Newman has sketched with admirable force, truth, and beauty, in three pages of the Apologia, which he sums up by saying: "It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. He made me look with admiration toward the Church of Rome, and in the same degree dislike the Reformation. He fixed on me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence." He died February 29th, 1836, "prematurely," says Dr. Newman, "and in the conflict and transition-state of opinion. His religious views never reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude and their depth."—John Keble, the author of The Christian Year, of whom Dr. Newman writes (Apologia, edition i. p. 75) words expressing deep feelings shared by many who are now, by God's grace, members of the Catholic Church. He died in 1865, and at this moment, on his birthday, April 27th, the first stone of a new college at Oxford, erected as a testimonial to him, and bearing his name, is being laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury.—Robert Isaac Wilberforce, second son of William Wilberforce. From his earliest years his character seemed made up of truth, purity, unselfishness, tenderness of affection, and indefatigable diligence. As his great powers developed, they showed themselves perhaps the more remarkable from their combination with a degree of humility so extraordinary as to be his chief characteristic. After a university career of unusual distinction, he was elected fellow of Oriel College, on the same day with Hurrell Froude, with whom he is classed by Dr. Newman, in the Apologia, as one with whom he was, "in particular, intimate and affectionate." He became a country clergyman, and afterward archdeacon; and in 1838 published (in combination with the present Bishop of Oxford) the Life of William Wilberforce. His theological works were all of later date. It is characteristic that he always declared he would never have undertaken any of them if Mr. Newman had not left the field unoccupied. In the opinion of most persons, except himself, his equal in learning and ability was not then left in the Church of England. In 1854, he became a member of the Catholic Church, and died in 1857, while studying at Rome for the priesthood.—Isaac Williams was fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He remained much longer in Oxford, sharing Mr. Newman's intercourse and counsels. In 1840, Mr. Newman dedicated the beautiful volume on The Church of the Fathers "to my dear and much admired Isaac Williams, the sight of whom carries back his friends to ancient, holy, and happy times." He is, perhaps, best known by his published poems; but he has also published a series of devotional commentaries on the gospels, of great beauty and to which many are deeply indebted. He died in 1865. Dr. Newman went to visit him in his country retirement only a few days before. Our readers, we think, will feel an interest in this brief memorial of a group of men so closely connected with the collection in which many of these poems originally appeared.]
To these are added, in the present volume, a few of earlier and a good many of later date. All of them seem equally to have been composed without any view to publication, and considering that their illustrious author has always been remarkable for a dislike to put himself forward, and for an almost extreme susceptibility of feeling, some persons may wonder that he has ever been able to persuade himself to give them to the world. We do not share their wonder; for we long ago came to the conclusion that it is by men of the greatest natural reserve that the fullest confidences of their inner feelings are not unfrequently made. In the common intercourse of society such men display least of their real feeling. But being distinguished from others by the depth and strength of their thoughts and affections, more lasting convictions and emotions, and greater self-knowledge, they can, upon any call of duty, speak out most unreservedly and sincerely; and the pain it gives them to make any revelation of their inner selves is such that, to do it completely, costs them little, if anything, more than to speak of themselves at all. This, all the world sees, has been exemplified in the Apologia, and in its measure it has been the same with the Lyra Apostolica, and with the present volume. The poems in the Lyra were, nearly all of them, the expression of the thoughts which crowded into the mind of Dr. Newman during a tour in the Mediterranean, between December, 1832, and July, 1833. The present volume adds very greatly to their interest by giving the place and day of their composition. Thus, the poem headed "Angelic Guidance" was written on the day on which he left Oxford. In our days, in which a very few hours upon the Great Western takes Oxford men to Falmouth without trouble or fatigue, the date, "Whitchurch, December 3d, 1832," is interesting. Whitchurch is a somewhat dreary and secluded village, at which the direct road from Oxford to Southampton intersected the mail road from London to Exeter and Falmouth. There was in those days a coach to Southampton, to the top of which Mr. Newman mounted, (the present writer and other Oriel friends standing in the street, in front of the Angel Inn, to see the last of him.) Before midday he reached Whitchurch, and there had to wait till night for the Falmouth mail. We should be curious to know what has become of the large inn at Whitchurch which was maintained by this sort of traffic. It must long ago have been shut up. Mr. Newman's life had hitherto been almost entirely confined to one or two places, and now he was starting alone for distant lands, and began by waiting many hours at a lonely and (crede experto) sufficiently dreary inn. His thoughts turned to the guardian angel who, as he already believed, bore him company. The Apologia tells us how early in life his thoughts had run upon angels and their ministrations. He says of these lines: "They speak of 'the vision' that haunted me. That vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of these compositions." We need hardly say how much these circumstances add to the interest of the poem, which appeared in the Lyra without any explanation of the circumstances under which it was composed.
It is impossible to read these poems without feeling how much a man takes with him from home of the thoughts which are called out even by the most striking and memorable scene. The events going on in England—the evident decay of what he still believed to be the "reformed church"—formed the coloring medium through which he looked at all he saw. Thus, at sea, the day he left Gibraltar, he wrote the lines headed "England:"
"Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith's pure fame!
O trust not crafty fort, nor rock renown'd
Earn'd upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.
"Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime.
High towers have been man's crime.
Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,
Strongholds have been man's snare.
Thy nest is in the crags; ah! refuge frail!
Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.
"He who scann'd Sodom for his righteous men
Still spares thee for thy ten;
But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,
He will not pass thee by;
For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest,
So gives he them by turn, to suffer or be blest."
The Apologia tells us that the golden lines, "Lead, kindly light," were composed when the "orange-boat" in which the author sailed from Palermo to Marseilles was becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio. It is not mentioned, we think, that it was in the darkness of the night. They are here headed, "The Pillar of the Cloud:'
"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene,—one step enough for me.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Should'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
"Off Algiers," in sight of the grave of that great African church which produced St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and Tertullian, is the date of "The Patient Church," in which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the writer, relying on the promise of Christ, looked forward to the ultimate victory of the church, and which begins:
"Bide thou thy time!
Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime;
Sit in the gate and be the heathen's jest.
Smiling and self-possest,
O thou, to whom is pledged a victor's sway,
Bide thou the victor's day!"
On December 28th, 1832, Mr. Newman caught his first sight of a Greek shore. It is highly characteristic that the first thought which it inspired to the most finished classical scholar of his day in Oxford, was not of Thucydides, not even of Homer, but of "the Greek fathers:"
"Let heathens sing thy heathen praise,
Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days
In my sad heart abides;
For sons of thine in truth's first hour.
Were tongues and weapons of his power.
Born of the Spirit's fiery shower.
Our fathers and our guides.
"All thine is Clement's varied page;
And Dionysius, ruler sage,
In days of doubt and pain;
And Origen with eagle eye;
And saintly Basil's purpose high
To smite imperial heresy,
And cleanse the altar's stain.
"From thee the glorious Preacher came,
With soul of zeal and lips of flame,
A court's stern martyr-guest;
And thine, O inexhaustive race!
Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace;
And royal-hearted Athanase,
With Paul's own mantle blest."
At Corfu, the narrative of Thucydides brought to his mind the thought which he worked out in the sermon on "The Individuality of the Soul," published six years later; and in which he says: "All who have ever gained a name in the world, all the mighty men of war that ever were, all the great statesmen, all the crafty counsellors, all the scheming aspirants, all the reckless adventurers, all the covetous traders, all the proud voluptuaries, are still in being, though helpless and unprofitable. Balaam, Saul, Joab, Ahitophel, good and bad, wise and ignorant, rich and poor, each has his separate place, each dwells by himself in that sphere of light or darkness which he has provided for himself here. What a view this sheds upon history! We are accustomed to read it as a tale or a fiction, and we forget that it concerns immortal beings who cannot be swept away, who are what they were, however this earth may change." The germ of that sermon is contained in the lines headed "Corcyra," January 7th, 1833.
The Lyra contains some beautiful and well-known lines:
"Did we but see,
When life first open'd, how our journey lay
Between its earliest and its closing day.
Or view ourselves as we one day shall be,
Who strive for the high prize, such sight would break
The youthful spirit, though bold for Jesus' sake.
"But thou, dear Lord!
While I traced out bright scenes which were to come,
Isaac's pure blessings, and a verdant home,
Didst spare me, and withhold thy fearful word;
Willing me year by year, till I am found
A pilgrim pale, with Paul's sad girdle bound."
They are headed, "Our Future. What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." It gives them a new interest to find that they were composed at Tre Fontane, the spot of the martyrdom of St. Paul.
The verses called "Day Laborers," composed while waiting at Palermo for a passage home, (as is described in the Apologia,) show the author's deep sense of having a work to do. They are headed, "And He said. It is finished:"
"One only, of God's messengers to man,
Finished the work of grace which he began;
......
List, Christian warrior! thou whose soul is fain
To rid thy mother of her present chain;—
Christ will avenge his bride; yea, even now
Begins the work, and thou
Shalt spend in it thy strength; but, ere he save,
Thy lot shall be the grave."
We have insisted on the peculiar value of the poems written during this short tour, (the only one of the kind in which the illustrious author has ever indulged himself,) because it adds a new and special interest to compositions which, even when published without any such interest, attained a wide and deserved celebrity. He seems at the time to have felt that that tour was to be the only distraction of the kind in a life of toil; and that he was enriching himself with images of beauty (worthy, as he says, in itself rather of angelic than mortal eyes) which were to last him for many a long year:
"Store them in heart! Thou shalt not faint
'Mid coming pains and fears.
As the third heaven once nerved a saint
For fourteen trial years."
That the remembrance has been fresh and keen, we see in the lines on "Heathen Greece" written in 1856, and first published in that exquisite volume Calista:
"Where are the islands of the blest?
They stud the AEgean sea;
And where the deep Elysian rest?
It haunts the vale where Peneus strong
Pours his incessant stream along,
While craggy ridge and mountain bare
Cut keenly through the liquid air.
And, in their own pure tints arrayed.
Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade.
And stand in beauty undecay'd.
Guards of the bold and free."
It is worth notice that the pregnant lines on "The Sign of the Cross" were written before the author left Oxford, and while he was as yet, as he expressly tells us, so ignorant of Catholic doctrine that even when waiting at Palermo, just before he returned home, he says: "I began to visit the churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the presence of the blessed sacrament there."
We might linger equally upon many poems which equally deserve it, but pass on to those written since the author was a Catholic. Among these are not to be reckoned the translations from the Latin Hymns of the Breviary, which were made "in 1836-8." There are a few which bear the date "Littlemore," a date full of touching recollections to the friends of the author. It is a hamlet locally separated from the parish of St. Mary's, of which he was vicar, but belonging to it. He had built a church there for the use of his parishioners, and retired there from time to time for his own as well as their benefit. When he gave up his connection with the Oxford movement, (as the Apologia shows,) he retired there altogether, and staid there till he became a Catholic in 1845. Of those written since the author became a Catholic the best known, probably, are "The Pilgrim Queen," and "The Queen of the Seasons." It is indeed cheering to find a great genius, who had so long been more or less crippled by the chill, stiff system of Anglicanism, opening out, like a flower beneath the spring sun—beneath the genial teaching of the Catholic Church:
"But I know one work of his infinite hand.
Which special and singular ever must stand;
So perfect, so pure, and of gifts such a store,
That even Omnipotence ne'er shall do more.
"The freshness of May, and the sweetness of June,
And the fire of July in its passionate noon.
Munificent August, September serene,
Are together no match for my glorious Queen.
"O Mary! all months and all days are thine own.
In thee lasts their joyousness, when they are gone;
And we give to thee May, not because it is best.
But because it comes first, and is pledge of the rest."
Apart from the freedom of thought which the author has gained from the Church, ("Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,") there seems to us an ease and flow about the very language and metre of these Catholic hymns which we do not find equalled in the author's earlier poems, sublime as are their conceptions. But it is remarkable that the poem which unites both these qualities in the highest measure, is that which was composed last, "The Dream of Gerontius." Like the others it seems to have been written for the author alone, and to have been published merely as an act of friendship to the editor of The Month. Is it too much to hope that the high sense of its exceeding depth and beauty which has been shown by the whole English world may not only encourage the author, as he tells us it did, to publish his collected poems in the volume before us, but to compose more? For it is plain that as yet at least his arms are not dimmed or his force abated.
"The Dream of Gerontius" begins with the thoughts of one who feels himself at the gate of death and the prayers of the assistants by his bedside. Then Gerontius says:
"Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.
The pain has wearied me. ... Into thy hands,
Lord, into thy hands. ..."
And the priest says the commendation. Then follows:
Soul Of Gerontius.
"I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed—
A strange refreshment: for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself.
And ne'er had been before. How still it is!
I hear no more the busy beat of time,
No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;
Nor does one moment differ from the next.
I had a dream; yes, some one softly said,
'He's gone;' and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Say, 'Subvenite;' and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low."
......
He does not yet know whether he is living or dead. Then he finds himself held,
"Not by a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being.
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus, a uniform
And gentle pressure tells me I am not
Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.
And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth
I cannot of that music rightly say.
Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.
Oh! what a heart-subduing melody."
Then follow the songs of the guardian angel over the soul which he was set to tend. After a long while Gerontius takes courage and says:
Soul.
"I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord,
My guardian spirit, all hail!
Angel.
"All hail, my child!
My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?
......
Soul.
"I ever had believed
That on the moment when the struggling soul
Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell
Under the awful presence of its God,
There to be judged and sent to its own place.
What lets me now from going to my Lord?
Angel.
"Thou art not let; but with extremest speed
Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge;
For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.
Divide a moment, as men measure time.
Into its million-million-millionth part.
Yet even less than that the interval
Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest
Cried 'Subvenite,' and they fell to prayer;
Nor scarcely yet have they begun to pray."
We must not linger on the converse between the soul and its guardian angel, nor at the marvellous description of the demons in "the middle region," their impotent rage—impotent against one who has now no traitor within. Then he comes within the reach of the heavenly choirs. We have the hymns of the successive choirs. At length, as they approach "the veiled presence" of God, the soul hears again the voices it left on earth, for in that presence the voices of prayer are heard:
Soul.
"I go before my Judge. Ah! ....
Angel.
.... "Praise to his name!
The eager spirit has darted from my hold.
And, with the intemperate energy of love,
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;
But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
And circles round the Crucified, has seized.
And scorch'd, and shrivell'd it; and now it lies
Passive and still before the awful throne.
O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God.
Soul.
"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be.
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,
There will I sing my sad, perpetual strain.
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its sole peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and love;—
Take me away.
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see him in the truth of everlasting day."
Then follow the words of the angel, and those of the souls in purgatory. At length the angel concludes:
"Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.
"Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear.
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."
Any one who has read this wonderful poem will complain that we have omitted this, and this, and this, which especially deserved to be quoted. It is most true. It would be impossible to give any idea of its matchless weight and beauty, except by transcribing the whole of it; and we have wished only to give a sample which may direct to it the attention of any reader to whom it may yet be unknown.
The preface contains a dedication of the volume of Mr. Badeley, one of Dr. Newman's Oxford friends and followers, who before this time knows far more of that world of spirits than even the gifted eye of the most illustrious seer has ever pierced; for he had hardly received this dedication when he received his summons to it. He was the son of a Protestant physician at Colchester, who, many years ago, was the medical adviser of a convent in that neighborhood, and created a good deal of suspicion among his fellow religionists, by bearing testimony to the supernatural nature of a cure of one of the nuns who was his patient. Mr. Badeley himself graduated with high honors at Oxford in 1823, and afterward studied the law, in which he attained a high reputation and great success. He directed his special attention to ecclesiastical questions, and hardly any case connected with them came before the courts in which he was not retained. In this preface Dr. Newman bears testimony to the fidelity with which he followed the religious movement in which the volume originated from first to last. He was counsel to the Bishop of Exeter in the celebrated Gorham case, and his argument upon it was published in a pamphlet which attracted much notice. He also published a book against the alteration of the law of marriage. At last a new light shone upon his path; he followed it faithfully, and it led him into the Catholic Church. He was, perhaps, the only lawyer from whom was actually accepted, on his conversion to the church, a sacrifice of his worldly interests, nearly equal to that made by many Protestant clergymen. The loss of practice has no doubt been risked by all who have become Catholics; by him, owing to the nature of his principal business, it was in a great measure incurred, nor did he ever recover what he had lost. But the time is short. It is but a few weeks since he was cheered by Dr. Newman's words, "We are now both of us in the decline of life; may that warm attachment which has lasted between us inviolate for so many years, be continued, by the mercy of God, to the end of our earthly course, and beyond it;"—and his earthly course is already over; the sacrifice is gone by. He is now able to estimate its real value.