The lovers did not long rest in that unavowed consciousness which left a shadow of doubt as to their reciprocal attachment. To Evellin's declaration of unalterable love, Isabella answered, that she knew too little of his situation to say whether she ought to be his, but her heart told her she never could be another's. The lover poured forth protestations of gratitude. "No," answered she, "I deserve no thanks; for, to tell you the truth, I have endeavoured to see you with indifference, but find it is impossible. You have lived in courts, Mr. Evellin, where women are hardly won and quickly lost; but do not therefore despise a Lancashire girl who dares not play with Cupid's arrows, but loves in sad sincerity, or rejects with steady courtesy; yet if you suspect that you cannot meet my devoted constancy with equal singleness of heart, leave me now, good Evellin, ere yet my life is so bound up in your sincerity, that I shall want strength of mind to dissolve the bond. At present I am so much more disposed to respect you than myself, that I may think what you have said was only meant for gallantry, which my ignorance of the world has misconstrued. If after this warning you still persist in your suit, you must either be, till death, my faithful lover, or virtually my murderer."
"My own betrothed Isabel," answered Evellin, "to love, pourtrayed with such chaste simplicity, I owe a confidence as unbounded as thy own. I will put my life in thy keeping, by disclosing the bosom-secret I have concealed even from thy saint-like brother. 'Tis the pledge of my constancy. Mark me, dearest maiden, though a proscribed wanderer wooes thy love, thy hand may be claimed by a peer of England, and those graces which adorn thy native village may ornament the palace of our King."
He paused to see if the glow of ambition supplanted the virgin blushes of acknowledged love; but Isabel's cheek displayed the same meek roseate hue. No hurried exclamation, no gaspings of concealed delight, no lively flashings of an exulting eye, proclaimed that he was dearer to her now than before he acknowledged his high descent. Her objections to a speedy marriage were even confirmed by this discovery. "I must know," said she, "that there is no one who possesses a natural or acquired right to control your choice. People in eminent stations owe many duties to the state, and must not soil their honours by unworthy alliances. Perhaps under your tuition I might so deport myself as not to shame your choice, but I must be well assured that I shall be no obstacle to your moving in your proper sphere, or I will die Isabel Beaumont, praying that you may be happier than my love could make you."
Evellin rewarded this generous attachment by telling her his assumed name was an anagram of his real one, Allan Neville, presumptive heir to the earldom of Bellingham, the honours of which were now possessed by an elder brother, whose declining state of health made it probable that Allan would soon be called from the obscurity in which he lived, and compelled to clear his slandered fame or sink under the malice of his foes. As a younger brother, he was expected to be the founder of his own fortune. His education, therefore, had been most carefully conducted; he had had the best tutors in every branch of learning; and he had travelled under the guidance of an enlightened friend. The pacific character of King James furnishing no employment in arms, he had sought the court as his sphere of action; but while he was displaying the accomplishments he possessed, and acquiring the knowledge of mankind which is necessary to a statesman, he at once attracted the notice of Princes and the envy of their favourites. That fearless candour, and that self-depending integrity which generally attends the finest qualities and noblest dispositions, rendered him careless of the frowns of those whom he discovered to be rather crafty rivals than generous competitors, and determined him rather to despise opposition than to conciliate esteem.
The haughty Duke of Buckingham was then in the zenith of his power. By bringing Prince Charles back from Spain he had relieved the national anxiety; and the short-sighted multitude, forgetting who had endangered the heir-apparent's safety, heaped on him undeserved popularity. Hence his extraordinary good fortune in pleasing all parties so elated him as to make him shew in his conduct that contempt for his benefactor, King James, which he had long secretly entertained. By the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex, a confidential adviser and personal favourite of the King's, from motives of private pique, and by hurrying the nation into a war with Spain, for which the Parliament had not provided resources, he laid the foundation of the pecuniary difficulties, and created those evil precedents which ultimately contributed to overthrow the regal authority. These fatal results of his pernicious measures formed an awful lesson to Kings on the mischiefs incident to favouritism, and on the folly of erecting a pile of ill-constructed greatness, which, in its fall, often endangers the stability of the throne.
To this vain, ambitious man, practised in all the smooth graces and insidious arts of a court, the aspiring, but frank and honourable Neville, more enlightened, equally engaging, and animated by purer motives, was an object both of envy and of fear. He scrupled not to lament the indignities which the declining King suffered from his former cup-bearer, who had danced himself into the highest honours England could bestow, and now basely turned from the setting orb from which he derived his borrowed splendour, to worship the rising sun; nay worse, who attempted to alienate the duty of an amiable Prince from his sick and aged father. Neville was earnest in his expressions of disgust at such baseness; and the minions of the Duke did not suffer these hasty ebullitions of virtue to die unreported. The sarcasms soon reached his ear with magnified severity; and the ruin, or at least the removal of his growing rival became necessary to his own security.
Chance favoured the Duke's designs. A gentleman in his suite was assassinated in the streets of London when returning from a masquerade, and the murderer was seen in the act of escaping, not so near the body as that his person could be identified, but plain enough for the beholders to ascertain that he wore the very dress in which Neville appeared that evening. The implacable enemy he had indiscreetly provoked possessed the royal ear; and though a jury could not have found in such a coincidence sufficient grounds to indict Neville, the Duke easily procured a royal warrant for his immediate arrest. "My own heart," here observed Allan, "and my confidence in the justice and good sense of my country, prompted me to brave my accusers; but I had now a convincing proof that with all my acquirements I still wanted knowledge of the world. I, however, possessed the invaluable blessing of a sincere, wise, and prudent friend, one who reads man in his true characters, and deals with him cautiously, instead of believing him to be the ingenuous offspring of simplicity. In early youth this friend saved me from a watery grave, and he is now the guardian of my fame and fortune. In conformity to the advice of the kind Walter de Vallance (for that is his name), I yielded to the storm; instead of resisting its fury, I chose this retreat; and since my innocence as well as my guilt admitted not of proof, I offered to submit the dubious question to the arbitration of the sword, and called on Buckingham to meet me in single combat, or, if he declined a personal engagement, to select any one of noble birth and breeding for his proxy, who should accuse me as the author of Saville's death. Walter de Vallance carried my proposal to the young King, who at first yielded to my suit, but, on consulting his chaplains, judged this to be an unlawful manner of deciding disputes in a Christian country. I am now informed that by my flight I have erased those impressions which my former behaviour had made in my favour. Many think I was the murderer; and the vast power my adversary possesses at court is rendered still more dangerous to my life and fame, by the pains that have been taken to prepossess those who would have to decide upon my fate. But should the death of my declining brother call me to act in the same sphere with my proud oppressor, and put my life into safer guardianship, I will burst from the retreat which I sometimes fear was unadvisedly chosen, and either fall by an unjust sentence, or vindicate my innocence. I will no longer, like the mountain-boar, owe a precarious existence to the untrodden wilds in which I hide from my pursuers."
Even now, when the universal passion for luxury and self-enjoyment renders prosperity so alluring, subdues our native energies, and makes us the puppets and slaves of fortune, there are some lovely young martyrs who immolate prudence on the shrine of love. It may easily be imagined, therefore, that this heroine of a simpler age, instead of being discouraged by the difficulties her Allan had to encounter, loved him with more intense affection. He an assassin!—the eye that flamed defiance on an ungrateful vicegerent of the King, when every knee but his bent in homage, could never pursue a court-butterfly, or guide a murderous dagger to a page's breast, while indignant virtue pointed the sword of justice to a public delinquent. Isabel agreed that it was wrong in Evellin to fly; but when, on her lonely pillow, she cast her thoughts on the alternative, and contemplated her beloved, in the hands of him before whom a potent peer had recently fallen; in the power of a man armed with the confidence of two successive monarchs, and now the idol of the people; when she saw Evellin arraigned before a packed jury, no evidence to prove him innocent, and scarce an advocate sufficiently courageous to defend him; female softness shrunk at the image of such perils. She blessed the prudent De Vallance who had snatched him from sure destruction, and rejoiced at an event which afforded her the means of seeing human nature in its most captivating form.
When Evellin found that her constancy was proof to this trial, he unfolded the brighter prospects which the letters he received from De Vallance occasionally afforded. This invaluable friend had, to the great joy of Evellin, allied himself to their house by marrying the Lady Eleanor Neville, his only sister. Though Buckingham never stood firmer in the King's favour, he had already experienced that popular esteem is a quicksand, fair to the eye, but fallacious and destructive to all who build their greatness on it. Two parliaments that were called, in succession, to grant the supplies which the favourite's profusion, and the war in which he had unwisely engaged, rendered necessary, had been angrily dissolved for presenting petitions for redress of grievances instead of passing money-bills. The King was still deservedly popular. The odium of these acts, therefore, rested on the minister. He had, besides, a potent enemy in the palace, no less a person than the beautiful queen, who complained that the Duke, not content with directing state affairs, intruded into the domestic privacies of royalty, and left her without the power, which as a wife and Princess she ought to exercise, that of choosing her servants and rewarding her friends. Nor did this presumptuous servant rest here. The spotless purity of the King shrunk from conjugal infidelity; but Buckingham found means, during the hours of easy confidence, to insinuate such reflections against the religion, the foreign manners, and the native country of Henrietta Maria, that the affection which once bade fair to cement the union of a virtuous and amiable Prince with the lady of his choice, was weakened by reserve, doubt, distaste, and all the sentiments hostile to conjugal peace.
The Lady Eleanor De Vallance held a situation in the household of the Queen, and possessed a secure place in her affection. She knew the secret discontent of her royal mistress, and the pique she felt against Buckingham, who, she also knew, sought the ruin of the house of Neville. Evellin did not enlarge on the amiable features of his sister's character. He spoke of her as one who panted for aggrandisement, and possessed the means of attaining her object; adding also, that she was pledged to the ruin of the favourite by those strong inducements, interest and revenge. He dwelt with pleasure on the valuable and useful qualities of her husband, who, he said, united to the talents which generally achieve success, the circumspection and foresight that secure it. While such able assistants advocated his cause, despair would have been weakness.