I must now turn to different scenes, and to people whom I have long left, in order not to break the chain of events immediately affecting the young Earl of Eskdale.
In one of the narrow streets leading away from Tower Hill, there is a house rather better than the others, but still small and inconvenient. Centuries ago, that street was the resort of many a gay and gallant attender upon the court; and, even at the time I speak of, was inhabited by a respectable though poor class of the population. It was the place where captains of ships trading between London and foreign ports usually found lodging during their stay on shore. The house I have mentioned was the best of those lodging-houses, and, through the kindness of the governor of the Tower--who was an easy kind-hearted man, as all his conduct to his prisoners showed--it had been hired for the family of Sir John Newark, immediately upon his arrival in custody of the messengers from Exeter. Let it be remarked, the whole house had been kind; and the good woman to whom it belonged, who had had the good luck before to let the whole of her apartments at once, went joyfully into a garret at a neighbour's, to make way for Emmeline and the servants.
How the fair young Countess of Eskdale had passed her time in that small dingy house; how sad had been her thoughts as, day by day, she received news from the north, and heard of her husband's part in the insurrection; how, at the end of about six weeks, she was joined by old Mistress Culpepper, and how, with marvellous fortitude and strength of mind, the good old servant supported the young lady in the sore trial which she underwent, I must not stop here to detail.
Emmeline sat alone in a little room on the ground floor, with small and narrow windows, parted by mullions and transoms, and affording but little light. She had paid her daily visit to Sir John Newark in the Tower, and had returned from a very unsatisfactory interview. The political prisoners, made at various times during the insurrections of 1715 and 1716, were treated, as all the world knows, with a degree of lenity--not to say laxity--during the time of their imprisonment, which contrasted strangely with the unrelenting severity shown to many of them in the end; and men, waiting for trial and destined to a bloody death, were suffered to enjoy the society of their friends almost without restriction; nay, more, were suffered to revel, to gamble, to drink within the dark walls which were only to be succeeded by the walls of the tomb, and to employ any means they might think fit, innocent or vicious, to wile away the time and banish the grim thoughts of approaching doom.
All these facilities were given to Sir John Newark; and, indeed, nothing was wanting to his comfort except liberty; but yet the imprisonment weighed upon him, and rendered him irritable and suspicious. To be deprived of all power of scheming--to be obliged to sit idle when he fancied that great opportunities for playing the game in which he was well practised were constantly occurring--to find the government maintain a cold and ominous silence in return for all the advances which he made, and to know that they had proofs against him of very dangerous intrigues, though not, perhaps, of high treason itself--all tended to depress and to annoy him more than the mere loss of his personal freedom.
During the last week he had, for the first time of his life, shown himself irascible and harsh towards Emmeline. He insisted that whenever she stirred out of the house, even to the gates of the Tower, she should be attended by two of his men servants, and she discovered that one or the other of these men was sent for daily, and examined strictly by his master as to where she had been, whom she had spoken with, and what she had done; in fact, that she was watched in London as she had been at Ale Manor. It is not, perhaps, wonderful that she felt more annoyed now than she had ever before felt at this espionage; for, until the arrival of the old housekeeper, it was carried on so strictly that she could hardly obtain any information regarding those events in the north, on the turn of which depended her whole happiness for life.
The good woman's appearance at the house, which was sudden and unexpected, was a great comfort to the poor girl. She no longer sat and wept by herself, or, with her eyes fixed upon the embers of the fire, gave herself up to thoughts which passed in rapid succession, like dark and terrible shadows of approaching misfortunes. Good Mrs. Culpepper sat with her now the greater part of each day, obtained information for her, talked of him she loved; and there was consolation in the very companionship, though the housekeeper was in no way cheerful; for her own anticipations regarding Smeaton were gloomy and sinister. She did not suffer them to find voice, indeed; yet her whole manner and words were tinged with sadness. Even that which afforded poor Emmeline the greatest delight gave her no comfort.
About three weeks before the period of which I speak, a letter had reached the lady, delivered by an unknown hand, but bearing the signature of her husband. It was the letter which Smeaton had written to her at Rothbury, and committed to the charge of Richard Newark. As her cousin's name was not mentioned, however, and he had never himself appeared, Emmeline knew not who had brought it; and she pored over it day after day as the only comfort of her solitary life; but the confirmation which that letter gave of the rumour that Smeaton was actually engaged with the insurgents in the north only excited darker apprehensions for his fate in the mind of his old nurse. It was in vain that tidings arrived, which produced some consternation in the minds of the good Londoners, by showing that the rebels were making a bold and, apparently, successful irruption into England; it was in vain that she heard of their advance towards Carlisle, or of the dispersion of the great body of militia in Penrith Moor, of the insurgents having seized upon Lancaster, and of the arming of Manchester in their favour; Mrs. Culpepper shook her head with a sigh. She had seen insurrection and civil war before, and her expectations were all sad.
On the morning of which I speak, a rumour reached her of the fatal events of Preston; and, after Emmeline's visit to Sir John Newark, on which occasion Mrs. Culpepper accompanied her, the old lady went out into the town to see if she could obtain farther intelligence. Emmeline sat alone then in that small gloomy room, and her thoughts were very dark and sorrowful. She reasoned with herself, as was her wont, upon human life, and the strange turns of fate. She asked herself what was the ruler of this world, and what was his decree? Were the good, and the wise, and the kind-hearted, fated to sorrow and misfortune; the cunning, the remorseless, the unfeeling, to prosperity and triumph and success? Was hope only given for disappointment? Was imagination but the heightening curse to make all the bitterness of earth more bitter? Were the susceptibilities of everything that is beautiful and excellent in life only given to sharpen the sting of adversity, and make the edge of sorrow cut more deeply? She could hardly believe it; and yet, when she turned her eye to history, or even pondered what her own small experience taught her, she could hardly doubt that such was the case; and the only moral she could derive from the consideration was, that--"The reward of the good is not here."
Yet that is an oppressive and chilling conviction to the ardent heart of youth. It is a hard discouragement at the commencement of life's weary way. It requires an amount of faith and hope as its antidote which few of the young possess. It is one of the bars of the sieve though which the wheat is sifted from the chaff. Emmeline might and did turn her thoughts to God and to another world. She might and did feel that there was the rewarder and the reward; but yet her heart felt very sad to see the blight upon all the flowers of earth, and to fear that none would ever be matured into fruit.