Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

by Various

Gerald sat with a troubled and moody air upon one of the stone benches of the low hall, which, formerly intended, perhaps, as a sort of waiting-room for the domestics of the establishment, was now used as the guard-room. Although his thoughts were not upon the objects around him, he seemed to be assiduously employed in cleaning and arranging his accoutrements—for in spite of his birth and the fortune bequeathed to him by his uncle, he was still left to fulfil the very humblest and most irksome duties of a military life.

It had been part of the severe Colonel Lyle's system of education to inure his adopted son to every toil and privation that might give health and hardihood to mind as well as body; and upon the same principle, when he had enrolled the boy as a volunteer in his own troop, he had compelled him to serve as a common soldier. The colonel's strict and somewhat overwrought sense of justice, as well as his peculiar political opinions, had led him, moreover, to declare, that whatever the artificial position of his adopted son in the supposed scale of society, it should be by merit only that the young volunteer should rise from the ranks through the various grades of military distinction; and upon his deathbed he had urged his friend Seaman to pursue the same system, as long as Gerald should feel disposed to follow under him the career of arms. Although received, therefore, with certain reservations, upon an equality of footing into the family of Colonel Seaman, and in some measure looked upon as the accepted lover and future husband of the colonel's fair daughter, young Gerald found himself condemned to go through all the inferior duties and occupations of a common soldier.

Long accustomed, however, by his uncle's strict and unbending system of training, to hardships little regarded by a roughly-nurtured youth of his years, he never thought of murmuring against this harsh probation; and if, now, he pursued his occupation with a troubled brow, it was far other thoughts that caused that look of doubt and uneasiness.

The vaguest suspicions of his mistress's fickleness were sufficient to excite the jealous temperament of a youth like Gerald, whose naturally ardent and passionate disposition, whose hot Clynton blood had been only subdued, not quenched, by the strict education of his severe, cold uncle Lyle. But there were thoughts and feelings of a far more momentous and harassing nature which now assailed him. The packet which he had discovered among the bushes growing close upon the parapet wall, and which had evidently been conveyed by stealth within the precincts of the fortress, had borne the following superscription:—"For the Lord Clynton—these."

It was Lord Clynton, then—it was his own father, who was a prisoner within those walls.

Under sad auspices were his filial affections now first awakened. He was aware of the danger that must attend his unhappy parent should he be discovered to be, as was probably the case, one of those obstinate malignants, as they were termed, who, after having made reluctant submission when the fate of arms proved fatal to Charles I., had again joined the royalist troops when the standard was raised for the young prince, and fought in his cause, until the final overthrow at Worcester forced them into flight from the country. It was in an attempt of this kind that the prisoner had been taken. Gerald knew how almost certain would be the old cavalier's condemnation under such circumstances. But there were evidently hopes of saving him. Communications, it was clear, had been established with the prisoner by persons outside the walls of the fortress. It was known probably, that, by permission of the commander, the prisoner was allowed to take the air for a certain time daily, in the small court beneath the walls of the tower in which he was confined; and this opportunity was watched, it would seem, for the conveyance of the communication into the hand of the prisoner.

The conflicting struggle which had arisen in Gerald's mind, now gave place to one overpowering feeling. He was determined at all risks, and at whatever sacrifice to himself, to save his father. The breach of trust—the dereliction from his honour—the probability of being obliged to renounce the hand of the girl he loved, if detected in assisting in a plot to favour the evasion of the old cavalier—all faded away before his sight, and appeared as naught when compared with the hope of rescuing his father from his cruel situation. What the nature of the scheme was which Lord Clynton's friends seemed to be devising, in order to effect his escape, or how far he could assist in such a project, he was unable to divine. But the one thought was there, and mastered all—the thought that, on opening the way of escape before his father, he should be able to say, "Father, bless thy long-estranged son; it is he who saves thee." The rest was doubt, confusion, and darkness.

Again and again did he turn over in his mind a thousand projects by which to aid in the evasion of the prisoner. Again and again did he endeavour to conjecture what might have been already purposed. All appeared to him to be impracticable on the one hand, and a mystery on the other. Already the consciousness of his secret induced him to look upon every one with suspicious eyes, as an enemy or a spy upon his conduct. But most of all, with that prejudice which pointed him out his supposed rival as the object of peculiar hatred, did he look upon Mark Maywood as his enemy in this matter—that Mark Maywood, whose violent party feelings, and fierce Republican abhorrence of royalty and the adherents of the fallen royalty of England, had already manifested themselves in such frequent outbreaks since his arrival as a fresh recruit in the troop—that Mark Maywood, who, in case of the evasion of one of the detested cavaliers, would be foremost to hunt him to the death—that Mark Maywood, who, even now, kept watch over his father's prison, and might, if he discovered the packet which was intended for the old man's hand, thwart for ever the only means of the unfortunate prisoner's escape. And as this thought came across him, Gerald counted, in an agony of mind, all the possibilities by which the packet might meet the sentinel's eye. With beating heart he reviewed, in imagination, every leaf which hid it, every overhanging branch which might add to its concealment. Bitterly did he reproach himself in his heart, that he had thrown it back to its hiding-place so hastily and carelessly upon hearing the approach of the guard. It seemed to him that if the packet were discovered, it would have been he who had delivered up his father, who had betrayed the secret on which depended his father's safety. The thought, however, that the evening was closing in, somewhat consoled him. Eternally long seemed the time spent in this mute agony of doubt. At length the hour sounded for the relief of the guard, and Gerald's heart beat painfully. Now he might learn whether Maywood had made the dreaded discovery. He placed himself as if by chance in the passage through which the guard had to pass with the report to the governor, and gazed with scrutinizing look into the face of the young soldier as he went by, as if he could read an answer to his dreaded doubts in those dark eyes. Mark Maywood's face, to which, in spite of its beauty, the closely clipped dark hair in Roundhead fashion, contrasting with the thick mustache, gave a harsh and hard look, was stern, frowning, and expressive of that sullen severity which was usually put on by the enthusiasts of the day. In such a face Gerald could read nothing to dissipate his doubts, but every thing to strengthen them. Anxiously did he await the return of the relieved sentinel to the guard-room. But when Mark Maywood came at last, he interchanged but a few sentences with the older and sterner of his comrades, said not a word to Gerald, and, taking a well worn Bible in his hand, flung himself on a bench, and soon seemed lost in serious devotion. Once, in truth, Gerald fancied that he raised his eye to scan him, as if with scorn, and then indeed he first remarked that Maywood twisted between his fingers a rose. For a moment his aversion to the young soldier as an enemy to be dreaded for his father's sake, was absorbed in his hatred to him as a suspected rival. That rose? how had he obtained it? Could Mildred be so base as to encourage the handsome young enthusiast, who, in spite of his gloomy character, had evidently, to Gerald's jealous eye, shown himself feelingly alive to the attraction of pretty Mistress Mildred's charms? For a moment the feelings of jealousy so completely overpowered all others, that he started forward to challenge the young man to account for the possession of that rose. But again the thoughts of his father came across him. Such a challenge must necessarily involve him in a quarrel—a quarrel would be followed by an arrest for breach of discipline—a confinement of some hours, during which, he, who might have aided his father's escape, might perhaps have left him to perish; and swallowing with an effort all the bitter feelings that almost choked him—he again turned away and sought his hard couch.

Sleep he could not; or if he dozed, the conflicting feelings of doubt, apprehension for his father, and burning jealousy, still flitted through his mind like a troubled and tormenting nightmare; and the next day Gerald arose with the earliest dawn, in a state of mind the uneasiness of which seemed intolerable.

The morning broke—the day advanced—and as no new measures seemed to be taken with respect to the prisoner, Gerald's mind began by degrees to be relieved from its trembling apprehensions as to the discovery of the packet; eagerly did he await the hour of his own guard, which, in the course of the morning, was announced to him to be at noon, and as usual in the small inner court. His heart beat with impatience to see whether the secret communication still remained in its hiding-place, and to facilitate, if possible, the means of its falling into his father's hands.