The first opportunity which she again afforded him of speaking to her, he resolved to use to bring on a complete eclaircissement, and as he should require perfect frankness, he resolved to set her a similar example. But to execute his design was now very difficult; for Isabel, with virgin modesty, blended with the restrictions imposed by filial duty, now avoided being alone with the object of her tenderest regard. Her uncle had deemed it right to inform her, that it was a lively sense of irreparable injuries, which pointed her father's incoherent ravings at Lord Bellingham. His wrongs, the Doctor observed, were of a nature which only Christian charity could forgive, or Christian fortitude endure; and he warned her against cherishing any sentiment more ardent than pity for Sedley's sufferings, and gratitude for his former services. She promised to endeavour to comply, in a manner which evinced that this advice came too late. She tried to recollect the pains he had formerly taken to avoid her, and the marked precaution of Barton in concealing his name. She wished to think him a scion of a cankered tree, which would transfuse infection wherever it was engrafted. The surgeon had just pronounced him at liberty to remove, and Isabel endeavoured to hope he would avail himself of that permission. "His declarations of love and gratitude may," thought she, "be bribes to induce us to be more careful of his preservation, or he may think himself bound in honour to offer me a partnership in his fortunes, as the preserver of his life. I will owe nothing to his pity or his gratitude. I will recollect, that I am the daughter of a noble Loyalist, irreparably injured by his rebel father, restrain the ebullitions of youthful sensibility and unweighed preference, and if he leaves us, part without a tear."
Nothing could be more foreign to the purposes of Lord Sedley than to quit his adored preserver. He made no use of his release from restraint, but to follow Isabel in her domestic occupations, nor of his returning strength, but to try to lighten her labours. "Am I troublesome to you," he would say, "that you look on me less kindly; if so, I shall regret the restoration of health and ease, and the power of again enjoying the refreshing air and blessed light of heaven. The tenderness which made the chamber of infirmity paradise, is withheld from me, now I have a prospect of living to reward it."
Isabel attempted to reply, but only stammered out, "Lord Sedley!"—"I will be known to you," said he, "by no other name than that by which I will plight my troth, Arthur de Vallance.—What has my Isabel to say to me in that character? I will not allow her to retract the sweet encouragement she gave me when I was the helpless object of her tender care. Her compassion and assiduity looked so much like love, as to cheat me into a belief, that she who said she would die with me would consent to make the life she preserved a blessing."
Surely, thought Isabel, this is not the language of hereditary baseness. She cast a look on her lover which confirmed that opinion. Yet, how could she tell him that his father's crimes formed an insuperable barrier to their union. After much hesitation, she resolved to be as explicit as her own respect for the feelings of filial piety would permit. "I will own," said she, "that what fell from me in a transport of joyful surprise, was not an unmeaning exclamation, but the confession of a strong preference. But now that I have had time for reflection, I must remember that you long struggled against your partiality for me, and even now you seem rather vanquished by a combination of circumstances and a sense of obligation, than led to make me your free unquestioned choice. This indicates that you know of some secret reason, some family animosity, perhaps, which ought to prevent my ever being your wife. I am the daughter of a Loyalist, unfortunate indeed, but brave and noble; I will not reproach you with your father's faults. His prosperity, the trust he exercises under the Usurper, are in my eyes reasons, if not of hating you, at least of resolving not to unite myself to principles so opposite to those I have ever cherished."
Sedley thanked her for allowing him an opportunity of explaining the past. It was most true, that at their first interview he felt the power of her fortitude and generous regard to others, nor did he overlook the complacency with which she received his services. Though at that time hearty in the Parliamentary cause, it was owing to the advice (or he should rather say, the commands) of Barton, under whose guidance he was placed by his father, that he deputed him to execute the plan he had formed for the safe conduct of the Beaumonts through the seat of war, instead of being himself their escort, as he at first intended. The same interference had again prevented him from renewing an acquaintance with them, on the rescue of Constantia. The principles he had imbibed from Barton forbade every deviation from the path of honour; and an alliance with a conspicuous royalist, would either have estranged him from his family or exposed them to ruin. Isabel inquired if the same impediments did not still exist. "A great change has taken place," replied Lord Sedley; "I am now like you, a child of misfortune; but were it not so, 'Love is become the lord of all,' and when he reigns, he reigns unrivalled."
He proceeded to inform her, that the violent feuds of the predominant factions had infected the privacies of domestic life. His mother was warmly attached to Cromwell's party, while his father adhered to that of the Presbyterian republicans; the differences between whom were now grown irreconcileable. He knew that the command intrusted to Lord Bellingham was given him as a snare, and that he was so surrounded by spies, as to be virtually in the power of any common serjeant, who, in the two-fold capacity of Agitator and Preacher, could denounce his general at the drum-head, and under the pretence of his having sacrificed the Lord's cause, and the rights of the army, to an ungodly Parliament, could send him prisoner to London. Lord Sedley confessed, with shame, that his mother, by giving information that his father was in secret not well disposed to Cromwell, had caused him to be placed in a situation where the greatest circumspection could not ensure his safety. The sentiments he had imbibed from Barton led him to prefer the more moderate counsels, and in the conduct of the contending factions he had seen so much to condemn, that he wished to abstain from all interference in public affairs. But his mother misinterpreting his seclusion into a preference of his father's party, invited Cromwell to Castle Bellingham, on his march against the Duke of Hamilton, and requested that he would take her son with him as one of his suite. More like a captive than a volunteer, Lord Sedley was compelled to acquiesce in her proposal; but the intimate view which his situation gave him of Cromwell's character, inspired him with the most revolting disgust. The domestic situation of his parents dispirited him on the one side, while something more than indifference to the cause for which he fought operated on the other, till, hopeless of better times, careless of safety, and desirous rather of losing life than of gaining glory, he rushed into the battle; yet, when the conflict began, he felt roused by a mechanical impulse, and, engaging in a hot pursuit of some of the northern horse, he received those wounds from one of the troopers, which nearly terminated his existence.
"Such, Isabel," continued he, "is the present condition of him, who must again owe his life to your pity. I have no home, but one occupied by a mother, engaged in plots for the destruction of her husband, and determined to render her son the creature of an ambitious hypocrite, rather than serve whom, he would die. I cannot join my father, for that would be to add a second victim to the one, whom Cromwell has resolved to expose to the sharpest ordeal. My hereditary claim to rank and title is now merely the vision of a shadow, for I know it is the secret intention of the fanatics to abolish the Peers as a political body, and estates are now held by permission rather than right, nor are the possessors secure of their inheritance for a single day. Greatness is thus reduced to the bare simplicity of individual desert. In you, Isabel, I see the genuine loveliness of unsophisticated virtue, the qualities of fortitude, discretion, and sincerity, which these arduous times peculiarly require. At present I have had little opportunity to shew you my character, but let me intreat permission to be sheltered under your uncle's roof, till I can arrange some plan for my future conduct, and shew you more of the heart which is irrevocably yours."
The plea of anxious distress revived all the tenderness of Isabel; and he whom, she believed, she could reject as the heir of a coronet, and the favourite of an Usurper, became the object of inviolable attachment when viewed as an outcast, seeking an asylum from the misfortunes brought on him by the crimes of his parents. Considering it to be her duty, she explained his situation to her uncle and aunt, and they agreed that it would be inhuman to deny him the refuge he craved. But still, as he was at present rather a probationary than an assured penitent, and in some points of view an object of suspicion, Dr. Beaumont felt it would be endangering his own security to converse with him freely on political topics. Still more hazardous would it be to admit him to a participation of their family-secrets, and at this time there was one which engrossed their minds, and threw an unusual air of mystery and anxious solicitude into Isabel's behaviour.
[ [1]] Especially Bishop Sanderson.