CHAPTER XXVI
THE EARL OF SURREY
So love did vanish with my state,
Which now my soul repents too late;
Then, maids and wives, in time amend,
For love and beauty will have end.
BALLAD OF JANE SHORE.
Oh, it grieves my soul
That I must draw this metal from my side
To be a widow maker!
SHAKSPEARE.
Seated in the rude gipsy-cart, guided, protected, by the uncouth being into whose hands he had so strangely fallen, Richard, for the first time, felt the degradation and low fortune to which his aspirations, at variance with his means, made him liable. With a strong effort he dismissed these painful ideas, and fixed his contemplation on mightier objects, which gilded his mean estate, or were rather the "gold o'erdusted" by such extraneous poverty. To rise from this lowliness to a throne were an emprise worthy his ambition. Was he not a few hours ago a prisoner in the terror-striking tower? And now he was free—free in his England; which, when the battle-day was come and past, would claim him for her own. A few words from Monina interrupted the silence: she sat at his feet, and they conversed in whispers in Spanish. Night had gathered round them; Monina, in all the innocence of her pure heart was supremely happy: to be near her friend in his disasters, united to him in his peril, was a more rapturous destiny to her than the world's best pomp, and he absent. No busy conscience, no untoward thought disturbed in her soul the calm of perfect bliss. She grew weary at last; her head sank on Richard's knee, and, overworn with watching, she fell into a deep sleep. Richard heard her regular breathing; once or twice his fingers played among her dishevelled ringlets, while his heart whispered to him what a wondrous creation woman was—weak, frail, complaining when she suffers for herself; heroic fortitude and untired self-devotion are hers, when she sacrifices herself for him she loves.
The cart moved on, Richard saw not whither; they almost stuck in some flat, low fields, and at last arrived at a solitary, miserable hut. Monina awoke, when they stopped, and the gipsy told them that this wretched dwelling was to be their asylum: the apartment they entered was poor beyond meanness—a bed of straw piled in one corner, a rude bench, formed the furniture; the walls were ragged and weather-stained, and the outer crumbling rafters were visible through the broken ceiling: there appeared to be neither food nor fire. The inhabitant of the hovel alone was there,—a white-looking, emaciated female; yet with a look of such sweetness and patience, that she seemed the very enshrinement of Christian resignation, the type of sorrow and suffering, married to meek obedience to the supreme will. She had roused herself from slumber at the voice of the gipsy, and gathered her scant garments around her—scant and poor they were; her coarse woollen dress was tied by a girdle of rope round her slender waist; her head was wrapped in a kerchief; her feet were bare.
"Jane," said the old woman, "you will not refuse the shelter of your roof to these poor wanderers?"
Such an address seemed strange, for the rich attire of her guests ill-accorded with her poverty-stricken home; but she turned with a smile—she spoke—and then a throb of agony seemed to convulse her frame—her head swam; Richard rushed forward to prevent her falling, but she shrunk from him, and leaned on the old woman, who said with a look of triumph, "I knew how it would be; it is vain to hide a bright light behind a veil of gauze! Yes, Jane, this is his son; and you may save him from danger and death."