"There, leave off snivelling, you great fool!" cried Bradford, wiping something like a tear from his own rough cheek, "and help me to carry the good gentleman to some cottage." Thus saying, with the assistance of Jekin he raised the old man, and, followed by Constance, bore him on in search of an asylum.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Thou seest me much distempered in my mind--Dryden.
Sir Payan Wileton had gone through life with fearless daring; calculating, but never hesitating; keen-sighted of danger, but never timid. From youth he had divested himself of the three great fears which generally affect mankind: the fear of the world's opinion, the fear of his own conscience, and the fear of death; and, thus endued with much bad courage, he had attempted and succeeded in many things which would have frightened a timid man, and failed with an irresolute one. And yet, as we have seen, by one of those strange contradictions of which human nature is full, Sir Payan, though an unbeliever in the bright truths of religion, was credulous to many of the darkest superstitions of the age in which he lived.
On such a mind, anything that smacked of supernatural presentiment was likely to take the firmest hold; and, on the morning after Lady Constance had, by his means and by his instigation, effected her flight from Richmond, he rose early from a troubled sleep, overshadowed by a deep despondency, which had never till then hung upon him. Before he was yet dressed, the news was brought him that one of his men had returned with the boat, and that the other had been arrested in the king's name. He felt his good fortune had passed away; an internal voice seemed to tell him that it was at an end; but yet he omitted no measures of security, quitting the capital without loss of time, and leaving such instructions with the porter as he deemed most likely to blind the eyes of Wolsey; hoping that the servant, whose life was in his power, would not betray him, yet prepared, if he did, boldly to repel the charge, and by producing evidence to invalidate the other's testimony, to cast the accusation back upon his head.
But still, from that moment Sir Payan was an altered being; and though many days passed by without anything occurring to disturb his repose; though the king's progress towards Dover, without any notice having been taken of his participation in Lady Constance's escape, led him to believe that fear had kept the servant faithful; yet still Sir Payan remained in a state of gloom and lassitude, that raised many a marvel amongst those around him.
Wandering through the woods that surrounded his mansion, he passed hours and hours in deep, inactive, bitter meditation; finding no consolation in his own heart, no hope in the future, and no repose in the past; and, why he knew not, despairing where he had never despaired, trembling where he had never known fear.
Often he questioned himself upon the strange depression of his mind; and the more he did so, the more he became convinced that it was a supernatural warning of approaching fate. Many were the resolutions that he made to shake it off, to struggle still, to seek the court, and urge his claim on the estates of Constance de Grey, as he would have done in former days; but in vain: a leaden power lay heavy upon his heart, and crushed all its usual energies; and the only effort he could make was to send out servants in every direction to seek Sir Cesar the astrologer, weakly hoping to brace up his relaxed confidence by some predictions of success. But the old man was not easily to be found. No one knew his abode, and, ever strange and erratic in his motions, he seemed now agitated by some extraordinary impulse, so that even when they had once found his track, the servants of Sir Payan had often to trace him to ten or twelve houses in the course of a day. Sometimes it was in the manor of the peer, sometimes in the cottage of the peasant, that they heard of him; but in none did he seem to sojourn for above an hour, hurrying on wildly to the dwelling of some other amongst the many that he knew in all classes.
At length they overtook him on the road near Sandgate, and delivered Sir Payan's message; whereupon, without any reply, he turned his horse and rode towards Chilham, where he arrived in the evening. Springing to the ground without any appearance of fatigue, the old man sought Sir Payan in the park, to which the servants said he had retired; and, winding through the various long alleys, found him at length walking backwards and forwards, with his arms crossed on his bosom and his eyes fixed upon the ground. The evening sunshine was streaming brightly upon the spot, pouring a mellow misty light through the western trees, on the tall dark figure of Sir Payan, who, bending down his head, paced along with gloomy slowness, like some bad spirit oppressed and tormented by the smile of heaven.
It was a strange sight to see his meeting with Sir Cesar; both were pale and haggard; for some cause, only known to himself, had worn the keen features of the astrologer till the bones and cartilages seemed starting through the skin; and Sir Payan's ashy cheek had lately acquired a still more deadly hue than it usually wore. Both, too, looked wild and fearful; the keen black eyes of the old man showing with a terrific brightness in his thin and livid face, and the stern features of Sir Payan appearing full of a sort of ferocious light, which his attendants had remarked, ever since he had been overthrown in the tilt by the lance of Sir Osborne. Meeting thus, in the full yellow sunshine, while Sir Cesar fixed his usual intense and scrutinising glance upon the countenance of the other, and Sir Payan strove to receive him with a smile that but mocked the lips it shone upon, they looked like two beings of another world, met for the first time in upper air, to commune of things long past.