 | CHAPTER VII. Lionel Lincoln, or, The leaguer of Boston |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
“Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close;
“And let us all to meditation.”
King Henry Vi.
The bridal party entered their little vehicle,
silent and thoughtful; the voice of Polwarth
being alone audible as he gave a few low and
hurried orders to the groom who was in waiting.
Dr. Liturgy approached for a moment, and made
his compliments, when the sleigh darted away
from before the building, as swiftly as if the horse
that drew it partook of the secret uneasiness of
those it held. The movements of the divine,
though less rapid, were equally diligent, and in
less than a minute the winds whistled, and clouds
of snow were driven through a street, which
every thing possessing life appeared once more
to have abandoned.
The instant Polwarth had discharged his load,
at the door of Mrs. Lechmere, he muttered
something of “happiness and to-morrow,” which
his friend did not understand, and dashed through
the gate of the court-yard, at the same mad rate
that he had driven from the church. On entering
the house, Agnes repaired to the room
of her aunt, to report that the marriage knot
the empty parlour.
Cecil stood, fixed and motionless as a statue,
while her husband removed her cloak and
mantle; her cheeks pale, her eyes riveted on the
floor, and her whole attitude and manner exhibiting
the intensity of thought which had been
created by the scene in which she had just been
an actor. When he had relieved her light form
from the load of garments in which it had been
enveloped by his care, he impelled her gently
to a seat by his side, on the settee, and for the
first time since she had uttered the final vow at
the altar, she spoke—
“Was it a fearful omen!” she whispered, as
he folded her to his heart, “or was it no more
than a horrid fancy!”
“'Twas nothing, love—'twas a shadow—that
of Job Pray, who was with me to light the fires.”
“No—no—no,” said Cecil, speaking with the
rapidity of high excitement, and in tones that
gathered strength as she proceeded—“Those
were never the unmeaning features of the miserable
simpleton! Know, you, Lincoln, that in the
haughty, the terrific outlines of those dreadful
lineaments on the wall, I fancied a resemblance
to the profile of our great uncle, your
father's predecessor in the title—Dark Sir Lionel,
as he was called!”
“It was easy to fancy any thing, at such a time,
and under such circumstances. Do not cloud
the happiness of our bridal by these gloomy
fancies?”
“Am I gloomy or superstitious by habit, Lionel?”
she asked, with a deprecating tenderness
in her voice, that touched his inmost heart—
“but it came at such a moment, and in such a
tremble at its terrible import!”
“What is it you dread, Cecil? Are we not
married; lawfully, solemnly united?” the bride
shuddered; but perceiving her unwilling, or unable
to answer, he continued—“beyond the power
of man to sever; and with the consent, nay, by
the earnest wish, the command of the only being
who can have a right to express a wish, or have
an opinion on the subject?”
“I believe—that is I think, it is all as you say,
Lionel,” returned Cecil, still looking about her
with a vacant and distressed air that curdled
his blood; “yes—yes, we are certainly married;
and Oh! how ardently do I implore Him who
sees and governs all things, that our union may
be blessed! but”—
“But what, Cecil? will you let a thing of
naught—a shadow affect you in this manner?”
“'Twas a shadow, as you say, Lincoln; but
where was the substance!”
“Cecil, my sensible, my good, my pious Cecil,
why do your faculties slumber in this unaccountable
apathy! Ask your own excellent reason:
can there be a shade where nothing obstructs
the light?”
“I know not. I cannot reason—I have not
reason. All things are possible to Him whose
will is law, and whose slightest wish shakes the
universe. There was a shadow, a dark, a speaking,
and a terrible shadow; but who can say
where was the reality?”
“I had almost answered, with the phantom,
only in your own sensitive imagination, love.
But arouse your slumbering powers, Cecil, and
reflect how possible it was for some curious
idler of the garrison to have watched my movements,
and to have secreted himself in the chapel;
motive of any kind.”
“He then chose an awful moment in which to
act his gambols!”
“It may have been one whose knowledge was
just equal to giving a theatrical effect to his silly
deception. But are we to be cheated of our
happiness by such weak devices; or to be miserable
because Boston contains a fool!”
“I may be weak, and silly, and even impious
in this terror, Lincoln,” she said, turning
her softened looks upon his anxious face, and
attempting to smile; “but it is assailing a woman
in a point where she is most sensitive.—
You know that I have no reserve with you,
now. Marriage with us is the tie that `binds all
charities in one,' and at the moment when the
heart is full of its own security, is it not dreadful
to have such mysterious presages, be they
true, or be they false, answering to the awful
appeal of the church!”
“Nor is the tie less binding, less important, or
less dear, my own Cecil, to us. Believe me,
whatever the pride of manhood may say, of
high destinies, and glorious deeds, the same
affections are deeply seated in our nature, and
must be soothed by those we love, and not by
those who contribute to our vanity. Why,
then, permit this chill to blight your best affections
in their budding?”
There was so much that was soothing to the
anxiety of a bride, in his sentiments, and so much
of tender interest in his manner, that he at length
succeeded, in a great degree, in luring Cecil
from her feverish apprehensions. As he spoke,
a mantling bloom diffused itself over her cold
and pallid cheeks, and when he had done, her
eyes lighted with the glow of a woman's confidence,
blushing pleasure. She repeated his word `chill,'
with an emphasis and a smile that could not be
misconstrued, and in a few minutes he entirely succeeded
in quelling the uneasy presentiments that
had gained a momentary ascendency over her
clear and excellent faculties.
But notwithstanding Major Lincoln reasoned
so well, and with so much success, against the
infirmity of his bride, he was by no means
equal to maintain as just an argument with
himself. The morbid sensibility of his mind
had been awakened in a most alarming manner
by the occurrences of the evening, though
his warm interest in the happiness of Cecil had
enabled him to smother them, so long as he
witnessed the extent and nature of her apprehensions.
But, exactly in the proportion as he
persuaded her into forgetfulness of the past, his
recollections became more vivid and keen;
and, notwithstanding his art, he might not have
been able to conceal the workings of his troubled
thoughts from his companion, had not Agnes
appeared, and announced the desire of Mrs.
Lechmere to receive the bride and bridegroom
in her sick chamber.
“Come, Lincoln,” said his lovely companion,
rising at the summons, “we have been selfish
in forgetting how strongly my grandmother sympathizes
in our good or evil fortunes. We should
have discharged this duty without waiting to be
reminded of it.”
Without making any other reply than a fond
pressure of the hand he held, Lionel drew her
arm through his own, and followed Agnes into
the little hall which conducted to the upper part
of the dwelling.
“You know the way, Major Lincoln,” said
Miss Danforth; “and should you not, my lady
bride can show you. I must go and cast
a worldly eye on the little banquet I have ordered,
but which I fear will be labour thrown
away, since captain Polwarth has disdained to
exhibit his prowess at the board. Truly, Major
Lincoln, I marvel that a man of so much substance
as your friend, should be frightened from
his stomach by a shadow!”
Cecil even laughed, and in those sweet feminine
tones that are infectious, at the humour
of her cousin; but the dark and anxious expression
that gathered round the brow of her husband
as suddenly checked her mirth.
“Let us ascend, Lincoln,” she said, instantly,
“and leave mad Agnes to her household cares,
and her folly.”
“Ay, go,” cried the other, turning away towards
the supper-room—“eating and drinking is
not etherial enough for your elevated happiness;
would I had a repast worthy of such sentimental
enjoyment! Let me see—dew drops and lovers
tears, in equal quantities, sweetened by Cupid's
smiles, with a dish of sighs, drawn by moon-light,
for piquancy, as Polwarth would say,
would flavour a bowl to their tastes. The dewdrops
might be difficult to procure, at this inclement
season, and in such a night; but if sighs
and tears would serve alone, poor Boston is just
now rich enough in materials!”
Lionel, and his half-blushing, half-smiling companion,
heard the dying sounds of her voice, as
she entered the distant apartment, expressing, by
its tones, the mingled pleasantry and spleen
of its mistress, and in the next instant they
forgot both Agnes and her humour, as they
The first glance of his eye at their expecting
relative, brought a painful throb to the
heart of Major Lincoln. Mrs. Lechmere had
caused herself to be raised in her bed, in which
she was seated nearly upright, supported by
pillows. Her wrinkled and emaciated cheeks
were flushed with an unnatural colour, that contrasted
too violently with the marks which age
and strong passions had impressed, with their
indelible fingers, on the surrounding wreck of
those haughty features, which had once been distinguished
for great, if not attractive beauty. Her
hard eyes had lost their ordinary expression of
worldly care, in a brightness which caused them
rather to glare than beam, with flashes of unbridled
satisfaction that could no longer be repressed.
In short, her whole appearance brought a startling
conviction to the mind of the young man,
that whatever might have been the ardour of his
own feelings in espousing her grand-child, he
had at length realized the fondest desires of a
being so worldly, so designing, and, as he was
now made keenly to remember, of one, also, who
he had much reason to apprehend, was so guilty.
The invalid did not seem to think a concealment
of her exultation any longer necessary, for
stretching out her arms, she called to her child,
in a voice raised above its natural tones, and
which was dissonant and harsh from a sort of
unholy triumph—
“Come to my arms, my pride, my hope, my
dutiful, my deserving daughter! Come and receive
a parent's blessing; that blessing which
you so much deserve!”
Even Cecil, warm and consoling as was the
language of her grand-mother, hesitated an instant
was uttered, and advanced to meet her
embrace with a manner less warm than was
usual to her own ardent and unsuspecting nature.
This secret restraint existed, however, but for a
moment; for when she felt the encircling arms
of Mrs. Lechmere pressing her warmly to her
aged bosom, she looked up into the face of her
grandmother, as if to thank her for so much affection,
by her own guileless smiles and tears.
“Here, then, Major Lincoln, you possess
my greatest, I had almost said my only treasure!”
added Mrs. Lechmere—“she is a good,
a gentle, and dutiful child; and heaven will
bless her for it, as I do.” Leaning forward, she
continued, in a less excited voice—“Kiss me, my
Cecil, my bride, my Lady Lincoln! for by that
loved title I may now call you, as yours, in
the course of nature, it soon will be.”
Cecil, greatly shocked at the unguarded exultation
of her grandmother, gently withdrew
herself from her arms, and with eyes bent to
the floor in shame, and burning cheeks, she
willingly moved aside to allow Lionel to approach,
and receive his share of the congratulations.
He stooped to bestow the cold and reluctant
kiss, which the offered cheek of Mrs.
Lechmere invited, and muttered a few incoherent
words concerning his present happiness, and
the obligation she had conferred. Notwithstanding
the high and disgusting triumph which had
broken through the usually cold and cautious
manner of the invalid, a powerful and unbidden
touch of nature mingled in her address to the
bridegroom. The fiery and unnatural glow of
her eyes even softened with a tear, as she spoke—
“Lionel, my nephew, my son,” she said—
“I have endeavoured to receive you in a manner
name; but were you a sovereign prince,
I have now done my last and best in your favour!—Cherish
her—love her—be more than
husband—be all of kin to the precious child,
for she merits all! Now is my latest wish fulfilled!—Now
may I prepare myself for the last
great change, in the quiet of a long and tranquil
evening to the weary and troublesome day
of life!”
“Woman!” said a tremendous voice in the
back ground—“thou deceivest thyself!”
“Who,” exclaimed Mrs. Lechmere, raising
her body with a convulsive start, as if about to
leap from the bed—“who is it speaks!”
“'Tis I”—returned the well remembered tones
of Ralph, as he advanced from the door to the
foot of her couch—“'Tis I, Priscilla Lechmere;
one who knows thy merits and thy doom!”
The appalled woman fell back on her pillows,
gasping for breath, the flush of her cheeks
giving place to their former signs of age and
disease, and her eye losing its high exultation
in the glazed look of sudden terror. It would
seem, however, that a single moment of reflection
was sufficient to restore her spirit, and with it, all
her deep resentments. She motioned the intruder
away, by a violent gesture of the hand,
and after an effort to command her utterance,
she said, in a voice rendered doubly strong by
overwhelming passion—
“Why am I braved, at such a moment, in
the privacy of my sick chamber! Have that
madman, or impostor, whichever he may be, removed
from my presence!”
She uttered her request to deadened ears. Lionel
neither moved nor answered. His whole
attention was given to Ralph, across whose hollow
which denoted how little he regarded the
threatened violence. Even Cecil, who clung to
the arm of Lionel, with all a woman's dependance
on him she loved, was unnoticed by the
latter, in the absorbing interest he took in the sudden
reappearance of one whose singular and mysterious
character had, long since, raised such hopes
and fears in his own bosom.
“Your doors will shortly be open to all who
may choose to visit here,” the old man coldly answered;
“why should I be driven from a dwelling
where heartless crowds shall so soon enter and depart
at will! Am I not old enough; or do I not
bear enough of the aspect of the grave to become
your companion? Priscilla Lechmere, you have
lived till the bloom of your cheeks has given
place to the colour of the dead; your dimples
have become furrowed and wrinkled lines; and
the beams of your once bright eye, have altered
to the dull look of care—but you have not yet
lived for repentance!”
“What manner of language is this!” cried his
wondering listener, inwardly shrinking before his
steady, but glowing look. “Why am I singled
from the world for this persecution? are my sins
past bearing; or am I alone to be reminded that
sooner or later, age and death will come!—I
have long known the infirmities of life, and may
truly say that I am prepared for their final consequences.”
“'Tis well,” returned the unmoved and apparently
immoevable intruder—“take, then, and
read the solemn decree of thy God; and may
He grant thee firmness to justify so much confidence.”
As he spoke, he extended, in his withered
hand, an open letter towards Mrs. Lechmere,
his own name in the superscription. Notwithstanding
the gross invasion of his rights, the young
man was passive under the detection of this second
and gross interference of the other in his
most secret matters, watching with eager interest
the effect the strange communication would produce
on his aunt.
Mrs. Lechmere took the letter from the stranger
with a sort of charmed submission, which denoted
how completely his solemn manner had
bent her to his will. The instant her look
fell on the contents, it became fixed and wild.
The note was, however, short, and the scrutiny
was soon ended. Still she grasped it with
an extended arm, though the vacant expression
of her countenance betrayed that it was held before
an insensible eye. A moment of silent and
breathless wonder followed. It was succeeded by
a shudder which passed through the whole frame
of the invalid, her limbs shaking violently, until
the rattling of the folds of the paper was
audible in the most distant corner of the apartment.
“This bears my name,” cried Lionel, shocked
at her emotions, and taking the paper from
her unresisting hand, “and should first have met
my eye.”
“Aloud—aloud, dear Lionel,” said a faint but
earnest whisper at his elbow; “aloud, I implore
you, aloud!”
It was not, perhaps, so much in compliance with
this affecting appeal, in which the whole soul of
Cecil seemed wrapped, as by yielding to the
overwhelming flow of that excitement to which
he had been aroused, that Major Lincoln was
led to conform to her request. In a voice rendered
the fatal contents of the note, in tones so
distinct, that they sounded to his wife, in the stillness
of the place, like the prophetic warnings of
one from the dead:
“The state of the town has prevented that
close attention to the case of Mrs. Lechmere,
which her injuries rendered necessary. An inward
mortification has taken place, and her
present ease is only the forerunner of her death.
I feel it my duty to say, that though she may
live many hours, it is not improbable that she will
die to-night.”
To this short, but terrible annunciation, was
placed the well-known signature of the attending
physician. Here was a sudden change, indeed!
All had thought that the disease had given way,
when it seemed it had been preying insidiously
on the vitals of the sick. Dropping the note,
Lionel exclaimed aloud, in the suddenness of his
surprise—
“Die to night! This is an unexpected summons,
indeed!”
The miserable woman, after the first nerveless
moment of her dismay, turned her looks anxiously
from face to face, and listened intently to
the words of the note, as they fell from the lips
of Lionel, like one eager to detect the glimmerings
of hope in the alarmed expression of their
countenances. But the language of her physician
was too plain, direct, and positive to
be misunderstood or perverted. Its very coldness
gave it a terrific character of truth.
“Do you then credit it?” she asked in a voice
whose husky tones betrayed but too plainly her
abject unwillingness to be assured. “You! Lionel
Lincoln, whom I had thought my friend!”
Lionel turned away silently from the sad
spectacle of her misery; but Cecil dropped on
her knees at the bed-side, and clasping her
hands, she elevated them, looking like a beautiful
picture of pious hope, as she murmured—
“He is no friend, dearest grandmother, who
would lay flattery to a parting soul! But there
is a better and a safer dependence than all this
world can offer!”
“And you, too!” cried the devoted woman,
rousing herself with a strength and energy that
would seem to put the professional knowledge
of her medical attendant at defiance—“do you
also abandon me! You whom I have watched
in infancy, nursed in suffering, fondled in happiness,
ay! and reared in virtue—yes, that I can say
boldly in the face of the universe! You, whom
I have brought to this honourable marriage;
would you repay me for all, by black ingratitude!”
“My grandmother! my grandmother! talk
not thus cruelly to your child! But lean on
the rock of ages for support, even as I have
leaned on thee!”
“Away—away—weak, foolish child! Excess
of happiness has maddened thee! Come
hither, my son; let us speak of Ravenscliffe,
the proud seat of our ancestors; and of those
days we are yet to pass under its hospitable roofs.
The silly girl thou hast wived would wish to
frighten me!”
Lionel shuddered with inward horror while he
listened to the forced and broken intonations of
her voice, as she thus uttered the lingering wishes
of her nature. He turned again from the view,
and, for a moment, buried his face in his hands,
as if to exclude the world and its wickedness,
together, from his sight.
“My grandmother, look not so wildly at us!”
continued the gasping Cecil—“yon may have
yet hours, nay, days before you.” She paused
an instant to follow the unsettled and hopeless
gaze of an eye that gleamed despairingly
on the objects of the room, and then, with a
meek dependence on her own purity, dropping
her face between her hands, she cried aloud in
her agony—
“My mother's mother! Would that I could
die for thee!”
“Die!” echoed the same dissonant voice as
before, from a throat that already began to rattle
with the hastened approaches of death—
“who would die amid the festivities of a bridal!—Away—leave
me.—To thy closet, and thy
knees, if thou wilt—but leave me.”
She watched, with bitter resentment, the retiring
form of Cecil, who obeyed with the charitable
and pious intention of complying literally with
her grandmother's order, before she added—
“The girl is not equal to the task I had set
her! All of my race have been weak, but I—
my daughter—my husband's niece”—
“What of that niece!” said the startling voice
of Ralph, interrupting the diseased wanderings
of her mind—“that wife of thy nephew—the
mother of this youth? Speak, woman, while
time and reason are granted thee.”
Lionel now advanced to her bed-side, under
an impulse that he could no longer subdue, and
addressed her solemnly—
“If thou knowest aught of the dreadful calamity
that has befallen my family,” he said,
“or in any manner hast been accessary to its
cause, disburthen thy soul, and die in peace.
Sister of my grandfather! nay, more, mother of
injured mother?”
“Sister of thy grandfather—mother of thy
wife,” repeated Mrs. Lechmere, slowly, and in
a manner that sufficiently indicated the unsettled
state of her thoughts—“Yes, both are true!”
“Speak to me, then, of my mother, if you
acknowledge the ties of blood—tell me of her
dark fate?”
“She is in her grave—dead—rotten—yes—
yes—her boasted beauty has been fed upon
by beastly worms! What more would ye have,
mad boy? Would'st wish to see her bones in
their winding-sheet?”
“The truth!” cried Ralph; “declare the truth,
and thy own wicked agency in the deed.”
“Who speaks?” repeated Mrs. Lechmere,
dropping her voice from its notes of high excitement
again, to the tremulous cadency of debility
and age, and looking about her at the same time,
as if a sudden remembrance had crossed her
brain; “surely I heard sounds I should know!”
“Here; look on me—fix thy wandering
eye, if it yet has power to see, on me,”
cried Ralph, aloud, as though he would command
her attention at every hazard—“'tis I
that speaks to thee, Priscilla Lechmere.”
“What wouldst thou have? My daughter?
she is in her grave! Her child? She is wedded
to another—Thou art too late! Thou
art too late! Would to God thou hadst asked
her of me in season”—
“The truth—the truth—the truth!” continued
the old man, in a voice that rung through the
apartment in wild and startling echoes—“the
holy and undefiled truth! Give us that, and
naught else.”
This singular and solemn appeal awakened
the latest energies of the despairing woman,
whose inmost soul appeared to recoil before
his cries. She made an effort to raise herself
once more, and exclaimed—
“Who says that I am dying? I am but
seventy! and 'tis only yesterday I was a child—
a pure, an uncontaminated child! He lies—he
lies! I have no mortification—I am strong, and
have years to live and repent in.”
In the pauses of her utterance, the voice of
the old man was still heard shouting—
“The truth—the truth—the holy, undefiled
truth!”
“Let me rise and look upon the sun,” continued
the dying woman. “Where are ye all? Cecil,
Lionel—my children, do ye desert me now?
Why do ye darken the room? Give me light—
more light!—more light! for the sake of all in
heaven and earth, abandon me not to this black
and terrific darkness!”
Her aspect had become so hideously despairing,
that the voice of even Ralph was stilled, and she
continued uninterruptedly to shriek out the ravings
of her soul.
“Why talk to such as I of death!—My time
has been too short!—Give me days—give me
hours—give me moments! Cecil, Agnes—Abigail;
where are ye—help me, or I fall!”
She raised herself, by a desperate effort, from
the pillows, and clutched wildly at the empty
air. Meeting the extended hand of Lionel, she
caught it with a dying grasp, gave a ghastly
smile, under the false security it imparted, and
falling backward again, her mortal part settled,
with an universal shudder, into a state of eternal
rest.
As the horrid exclamations of the deceased
ended, so deep a stillness succeeded in the apartment,
that the passing gusts of the gale were heard
sighing among the roofs of the town, and might
easily be mistaken, at such a moment, for the
moanings of unembodied spirits over so accursed
an end.
| CHAPTER VII. Lionel Lincoln, or, The leaguer of Boston | |