But the influence he so much dreaded during his life, became singularly apparent after the death of his beloved John. The will of the latter had indeed left an independence to Eustace, but nothing to support the splendour of that princely house of which he was now sole representative. All was assigned to Agatha,—she was the sole heir of her husband,—the being for whose sake alone he appeared to glory in the possession of wealth. Eustace indeed might still enjoy it, but it was upon a condition which drew the blood from the young man’s cheek as he read, and palsied the warm throbbings of the heart in his bosom; it was, that if John de la Pole should die childless before he had attained the age of thirty, Eustace should espouse the widow. His brother even entreated this sacrifice of him: he said, he knew his heart had been sensible of other charms, but he implored him to yield up this transient gratification to his eternal happiness. He could not endure, he said, the thought of averting from Eustace the fortune of his house; yet still less could he endure to know that Agatha would fill a subordinate state in his family to that in which he had placed her. He shuddered at the thought of her being driven, by this circumstance, to become the wife of another—of one who would love her, and whom she could also love. He besought Eustace therefore, if he valued his repose, to wed her, as no attachment subsisted between them, and he was satisfied to believe that by him she would be treated with gentleness. Agatha he entreated to comply with his last wishes, and accept the hand of Eustace within two months after his death, or be content to resign, with her present rank, the estates to the next of kin. Such was the will of John de la Pole. Eustace, full of grief, instantly retired from the castle of his sister, whom he believed as little inclined to fulfil the conditions of the will as himself, and resigned his spirit for some days to despair; but his friends rallied round him, and represented how much depended upon his calm decision. The next of kin had appeared too, a greedy rapacious man, the son of his father’s sister, who seemed to be sure of his inheritance, and who John, (it was conjectured,) had purposely named, to stimulate his brother to fulfil his dying injunctions. Hugh de Broke was insolent and brutal, had never been on kindly terms with his cousins, and had once nearly been murdered by the peasantry for wounding John in a quarrel which occurred a few years before. The inhabitants saw him return with disgust; his early brutalities were remembered; and when he boasted, in his drink, that he knew his cousin before his death intended to make a will in his favour, all Hampshire was ready to accuse him of the murder, and many of its gentlemen would have given half their estates to have been able to substantiate the charge. From earnest desire to action there is but one step: the thought was scarcely uttered by one, ere many endeavoured to prove it a fact, and Hugh de Broke became, from an object of mere dislike, one of abhorrence and suspicion. He was not told of the murmurs afloat respecting him; and he was too much accustomed to signs of dislike, to observe any thing new in their conduct. The eyes that glared upon him had nothing in them peculiarly ferocious to him now; nor did the deep mutterings and suppressed curses as he passed, startle him at this period from his path; he remembered the hatred of other days, and if he did observe any increase of this ill feeling towards him, he attributed their malignity less towards himself in his own person, than against the authority he would be enabled to hold over their actions as the fortunate heir of John de la Pole. At all events, he fortified himself against their inflictions, by resorting in some cases to the exercise of his native brutality, in others to a loud and bitter scorn, which only served to increase their abhorrence and his own unsuspected danger.
The accusers were wary in their proceedings, and silently went on collecting proofs and accumulating evidence, until they believed they had truly in the ruffian kinsman, discovered the murderer of their popular favourite. It was remembered, that after three years’ absence, he had appeared in Hampshire about a month previous to the murder of John, and then had suddenly disappeared, to re-appear as suddenly in Winchester after the contents of the extraordinary will were made public. He had boasted a previous knowledge of this document, and he had taken into his service the man who attended John in his fatal journey, and who, by delaying to follow his master, had given courage to the assassin to make the attack. This man had been dismissed by Eustace with a bitter reproof, and had immediately repaired to De Broke. Fear, or too much security, (it was affirmed,) had dictated the measure of his adoption, after a dismissal which ought to have rendered his services every where suspicious. John, it was urged, had been absent nearly a month, on a visit to a distant friend; he had set out on foot on his return, unaccompanied; for this man, according to his own statement, was commanded by his master to follow him with the horses, one of which (De la Pole’s) had been injured by an accident a few days before; but he had loitered long after, in order to keep an appointment which he had made with a damsel in the establishment of his master’s friend. He was for this loudly accused of treachery; and De Broke ferociously became his champion, with a violence that only defeated the object he had in view. The lock of hair found in the gripe of the corpse was remembered and produced; it was a bunch of thick and clustering curls, and had been forcibly torn from the head of the assassin. The hair of the servant was pale, but it was remarked that Hugh’s was dark and curling, and they sought an opportunity to compare them together. De Broke drove the party from his presence with every mark of contempt, and hardly deigned to assent to the repeated asseverations of his servants, that his hair was much darker, and altogether of a different texture from that produced as taken from the corpse. His conduct was resented warmly. By degrees all the gentry assumed the opinions of the mob; and when, in a violent attack upon his person, it was discovered that his hair had lately been polled in order to facilitate the cure of a wound, and which had hitherto been concealed by the (then) extraordinary contrivance of a peruke, the magistrates made open cause with the people, and Hugh was conducted to prison. There his conduct was sullen and brutal; he would give no explanation, save that the wound in his head arose from a fall from his horse. He was unusually ferocious; and considerably aggravated his case, by his constant threats of deep and deadly vengeance against Eustace de la Pole, who, he insisted, had conspired to cheat him of his estate, in conjunction with his other enemies. Many new proofs appeared against him, and the whole county awaited, in trembling suspense, the event of his anticipated trial.
But these anticipations were not to be gratified: a few nights before the arrival of the judges, Hugh had contrived to escape from his prison, and elude the vigilance of his enemies, by the aid, it was supposed, of his servant, for he also fled the country; and neither master nor man again fell into the hands of justice.
In the mean time, the interval months, the short period of time allowed for most important considerations, were fast wearing away; the two persons most interested in their progress had come to no decision; and though Hugh de Broke had for the present withdrawn his claim, yet he had heirs, who neither more delicate nor more generous than himself, might endeavour to prove his incapacity, and substantiate their own in place of his. At all events, delays were dangerous, and the fortunes of De la Pole were too considerable to be put to hazard. Eustace loved another, and Agatha could not forget her husband; yet a compliance with the terms of the will became an absolute necessity. Though with averted hearts, they joined hands at the earnest entreaty of friends and relatives; nor would it have been possible to have refused, since even royal majesty evinced a solicitude, that the great fortunes and powerful political interest of the family should not pass into any other hands than those of that loyal and princely blood which had hitherto held them so nobly. Agatha and Eustace became man and wife, and vowed to cherish and love each other till death.
But it was soon evident to all, that this was not either in the power or inclination of the new wedded pair: a deeper sorrow had sunk into their minds, and their calm grief was supplanted by looks and feelings of horror and despair. They spent much of their time together; but their conferences seemed rather to heighten than to soothe their mutual suffering. It was at length remarked, that Eustace never passed his nights in the chamber of his wife, but sometimes in deep groans and anguish in the seclusion of his own apartment, or in wandering wildly through the gloomy mazes of the forest. At such times a stupor would overshadow the spirit of Agatha,—a silent and uncomplaining madness that seemed to render her insensible to suffering; and only upon his return did she vent her keen anguish in words, or dissipate her torture by shrieks as piercing as they were fearful.
Those about them saw no other cause for this mental hell, than the grief that had seized upon them, by constantly contemplating their eternal separation from the being they most loved. It was anticipated that time would effect, if not a cure, at least some amelioration of its bitterness; but time rolled on, and their agonies did not decrease. Nor did the prospect of an heir to their disastrous union afford any pleasure or consolation to their minds; they went through the usual routine of preparation, because, as it appeared, it was usual; there was no joyous anticipation on the part of Eustace,—no tender, trembling hope on the side of Agatha; there was no anxiety, no care; it was a thing unspoken of, unnoted; and when the bustle of the house, the importance of the attendants, and the entrance of the friend (who, unsummoned, save by the servants, yet judged it necessary to be near her,) told Eustace of the near approaching throes of Agatha, he threw himself upon the ground in the chamber adjoining her, and buried his face in his hands.
Eustace, young, beautiful, and of a gallant spirit, was adored by his household, all the members of which fondly contemplated the birth of an heir, as an event well calculated to calm their mutual suffering, and endear them to each other: and though the maternal anguish of Agatha took place before the usual and expected time, the hopes so affectionately cherished were not shaken by the event; but the conduct of their master gave a wound to their generous devotion. Sad and singular as it was, that of Agatha was scarcely less inexplicable: no groans, no tokens of pain accompanied her physical suffering; and it was apparent that some keener pang of the mind, some woe too deep for utterance, had deadened all sense to merely corporal pain. Her eyes were generally closed, except when some louder noise, or the nearer approach of an attendant towards the couch, forced her to open them, and gaze around her for an instant; but, when her senses were thus for a moment awakened, it was evident the object which had aroused them had no share in their attention. Heedless of all that was passing, she took a shuddering rapid glance around the chamber, as if in earnest search of one whom she yet feared to encounter, and then closed them in evident affright, and sunk anew into stupor and silence;—it was amidst this stupor and silence that her first-born son entered the world.
Eustace had not long remained absorbed in his own painful meditations, ere a mighty shriek from the chamber of Agatha broke upon his ear, and made him partly raise his head from the hard pillow to which he had consigned it. But his soul was dead within him;—he thought no further agony could reach him now—no keener pang could inflict a wound in his already crushed heart; and though the scream was one of horror and dismay, a sound of many voices in grief and consternation, it passed over his senses without further notice, and he again dropped his head to the ground, and, grovelling to earth, seemed as he would bury himself from his anguish in the kindly bosom of his only parent—his last—his truest friend.
But repose was not for him—no, not even the repose of despair—he was again to wake, to feel, to suffer; there was an undreamed-of agony near—a sting that was to penetrate his palsied bosom, and awake his crushed soul from the dead; to die would have been bliss, but that was a bliss denied him.
The unhappy young man arose;—a footstep was heard hastily rushing towards his chamber—the wife of Courtenay approached him with a look of commiserating regard, and took his arm to draw him to the apartment of Agatha. She did not speak, but Eustace read in the expression of her features that there was yet more to encounter and to endure. He entered the apartment of his wife—she was lying speechless and insensible upon her couch, utterly incapable of any observation of what was passing around her; and by her side lay a deformed and distorted infant, plunged in the still deeper silence of death.