 | CHAPTER XVII. Lionel Lincoln, or, The leaguer of Boston |  |
17. CHAPTER XVII.
“Sweet Prince.”
Shakspeare.
Lionel assisted Cecil to ascend the difficult
water-stairs, and still attended by their aged
companion, they soon stood on the drawbridge
that connected the piers which formed the mouth
of the narrow basin.
“Here we again part,” he said, addressing
himself to Ralph; “at another opportunity let
us resume your melancholy tale.”
“None so fitting as the present: the time, the
place, and the state of the town, are all favourable.”
Lionel cast his eyes around on the dull misery
which pervaded the neglected area. A few half-dressed
soldiers and alarmed townsmen, were
seen by the gray light of the morning, rushing
across the square towards the point, whence the
sounds of cannon proceeded. In the hurry of the
moment, their own arrival was not noted.
“The place—the time!” he slowly repeated.
“Ay, both. At what moment can the friend
of liberty pass more unheeded, amongst these
miscreant hirelings, than now, when fear has
broken their slumbers! You is the place,”
that I have uttered will find its confirmation.”
Major Lincoln communed momentarily with his
thoughts. It is probable that in the rapid glances
of his mind, he traced the mysterious connexion
between the abject tenant of the adjacent building,
and the deceased grandmother of his bride,
whose active agency in producing the calamities
of his family had now been openly acknowledged.
It was soon apparent that he wavered in his
purpose, nor was he slow to declare it.
“I will attend you,” he said; “for who can
say what the hardihood of the rebels may next
attempt, and future occasions may be wanting.
I will first see this gentle charge of mine”—
“Lincoln, I cannot—must not leave you,”
interrupted Cecil, with earnest fervour—“go,
listen, and learn all; surely there can be nothing
that a wife may not know!”
Without waiting for further objection, Ralph
made a hurried gesture of compliance, and turning,
he led the way, with his usual, swift footsteps,
into the low and dark tenement of Abigail
Pray. The commotion of the town had not yet
reached this despised and neglected building,
which was even more than ordinarily gloomy and
still. As they picked their way, however, among
the scattered hemp, across the scene of the preceding
night's riot, a few stifled groans proceeded
from one of the towers, and directed them where
to seek its abused and suffering inmates. On
opening the door of this little apartment, not
only Lionel and Cecil paused, but even the
immovable old man, appeared to hesitate, in
wonder.
The heart stricken mother of the simpleton
was seated on her humble stool, busied in repairing
some mean and worthless garments which
of her reckless child. But while her fingers
performed their functions with mechanical skill,
her contracted brow, working muscles, and hard,
dry eyes, betrayed the force of the mental suffering
that she struggled to conceal. Job still lay
stretched on his abject pallet, though his breathing
was louder and more laboured than when we last
left him, while his sunken features indicated the
slow, but encroaching advances of the disease.
Polwarth was seated at his side, holding a pulse,
with an air of medical deliberation; and attempting,
every few moments, to confirm his hopes or
fears, as each preponderated in turn, by examining
the glazed eyes of the subject of his care.
Upon a party thus occupied, and with feelings
so much engrossed, even the sudden entrance of
the intruders was not likely to make any very sensible
impression. The languid and unmeaning
look of Job wandered momentarily towards the
door, and then became again fixed on vacancy.
A gleam of joy shot into the honest visage of the
captain when he first beheld Lionel, accompanied
by Cecil, but it was instantly chased away
by the settled meaning of care which had gotten
the mastery of his usually coutented expression.
The greatest alteration was produced in the
aspect of the woman, who bowed her head to
her bosom, with a universal shudder of her frame,
as Ralph stood unexpectedly before her. But from
her also, the sudden emotion passed speedily
away, her hands resuming their humble occupation,
with the same mechanical and involuntary
movements, as before.
“Explain this scene of silent sorrow!” said
Eionel to his friend—“how came you in this
haunt of wretchedness, and who has harmed the
lad?”
“Your question conveys its own answer, Major
Lincoln,” returned Polwarth, with a manner so
deliberate, that he refused to raise his steady look
from the face of the sufferer—“I am here, because
they are wretched!”
“The motive is commendable! but what aileth
the youth?”
“The functions of nature seem suspended by
some remarkable calamity! I found him suffering
from inanition, and notwithstanding I applied as
hearty and nutritious a meal as the strongest man
in the garrison could require, the symptoms, as
you see, are strangely threatening!”
“He has taken the contagion of the town, and
you have fed him, when his fever was at the
highest!”
“Is small-pox to be considered more than a
symptom, when a man has the damnable disease of
starvation! go to—go to, Leo, you read the Latin
poets so much at the schools, that no leisure is
left to bestow on the philosophy of nature. There
is an inward monitor that teaches every child the
remedy for hunger.”
Lionel felt no disposition to contend with his
friend on a point where the other's opinions were
so dogmatical, but turning to the woman, he
said—
“The experience of a professional nurse should
have taught you, at least, more care.”
“Can experience steel a mother to the yearnings
of her offspring for food!” returned the forlorn
Abigail—“no, no—the ear cannot be deaf to
such a moaning, and wisdom is as folly when the
heart bleeds.”
“Lincoln, you chide unkindly,” said Cecil—
“let us rather attempt to avert the danger, than
quarrel with its cause.”
“It is too late—it is too late,” returned the
disconsolate mother; “his hours are already
numbered, and Death is on him. I can now
only pray that God will lighten his curse, and
suffer the parting spirit to know his Almighty
power.”
“Throw aside these worthless rags,” said Cecil,
gently attempting to take the clothes, “nor
fatigue yourself longer, at such a sacred moment,
with unnecessary labour.”
“Young lady, you little know a mother's longings;
may you never know her sorrows! I have
been doing for the child these seven-and-twenty
years; rob me not of the pleasure, now that so little
remains to be done.”
“Is he then so old!” exclaimed Lionel, in
surprise.
“Old as he is, 'tis young for a child to die!
He wants the look of reason; heaven in its mercy
grant that he may be found to have a face of innocence!”
Hitherto Ralph had remained where he first
stood, as if riveted to the floor, with his eyes fastened
on the countenance of the sufferer. He now
turned to Lionel, and in a voice rendered even
plaintive by his deep emotion, he asked the simple
question—
“Will he die?”
“I fear it—that look is not easily to be mistaken.”
With a step so light that it was inaudible, the
old man moved to the bed, and seated himself on
the side, opposite to Polwarth. Without regarding
the wondering look of the captain, he waved
his hand on high, as if to exhort to silence, and
then gazing on the features of the sick, with melancholy
interest, he said—
“Here, then, is death again! None are so
young as to be unheeded; 'tis only the old that
cannot die. Tell me, Job, what seest thou in the
visions of thy mind—the unknown places of the
damned, or the brightness of such as stand in
presence of their God?”
At the well-known sound of his voice, the
glazed eye of the simpleton lighted with a ray of
reason, and was turned towards the speaker, once
more, teeming with a look of meek assurance. The
rattling in his throat, for a moment, increased,
and then ceased entirely; when a voice so deep,
that it appeared to issue from the depths of his
chest, was heard, saying—
“The Lord wont harm him who never harm'd
the creaturs of the Lord?”
“Emperors and kings, yea, the great of the
earth, might envy thee thy lot, thou unknown
child of wretchedness!” returned Ralph—“not
yet thirty years of probation, and already thou
throwest aside the clay! Like thee did I grow to
manhood, and learn how hard it is to live; but
like thee I cannot die!—Tell me, boy, dost thou
enjoy the freedom of the spirit, or hast thou still
pain and pleasure in the flesh? Dost see beyond
the tomb, and trace thy route through the pathless
air, or is all yet hid in the darkness of the
grave?”
“Job is going where the Lord has hid his reason,”
answered the same hollow voice as before;
“his prayers wont be foolish any longer.”
“Pray, then, for one aged and forlorn; who
has borne the burden of life 'till Death has forgotten
him, and who wearies of the things of earth,
where all is treachery and sin. But stay, depart
not, 'till thy spirit can bear the signs of repentance
from yon sinful woman, into the regions of day.”
Abigail groaned aloud; her hands again refused
their occupation, and her head once more sunk
of self-abasement and grief, the woman raised
herself to her feet, and putting aside the careless
tresses of dark hair, which, though, here and
there, streaked with gray, retained much of their
youthful gloss, she looked about her with a face
so haggard, and eyes so full of meaning, that the
common attention was instantly attracted to her
movements.
“The time has come, and neither fear nor
shame shall longer tie my tongue,” she said.
“The hand of providence is too manifest in this
assemblage around the death-bed of that boy, to
be unheeded. Major Lincoln, in that stricken
and helpless child, you see one who shares your
blood, though he has ever been a stranger to your
happiness. Job is your brother!”
Grief has maddened her! exclaimed the anxious
Cecil—“she knows not what she utters.”
“'Tis true!” said the calm tones of Ralph.
“Listen,” continued Abigail; “a terrible witness,
sent hither by heaven, speaks to attest I tell
no lie. The secret of my transgression is known
to him, when I had thought it buried in the affection
of one only who owed me every thing.”
“Woman!” said Lionel, “in attempting to
deceive me, you deceive yourself. Though a voice
from heaven should declare the truth of thy damnable
tale, still would I deny that foul object being
the child of my beauteous mother.”
“Foul and wretched as you see him, he is the
offspring of one not less fair, though far less fortunate,
than thy own boasted parent, proud child
of Prosperity! call on heaven as thou wilt, with
that blasphemous tongue, he is no less thy brother,
and the elder born.”
“'Tis true—'tis true—'tis most solemnly a
truth!” repeated the unmoved and aged stranger.
“It cannot be!” cried Cecil—“Lincoln, credit
them not, they contradict themselves.”
“Out of thy own mouth will I find reasons to
convince you,” said Abigail. “Hast thou not
owned the influence of the son at the altar? Why
should one, vain, ignorant and young as I was, be
insensible to the seductions of the father!”
“The child is then, thine!” exclaimed Lionel,
once more breathing with freedom—“ proceed
with thy tale; you confide it to friends!”
“Yes—yes,” cried Abigail, clasping her hands,
and speaking with bitter emphasis; “you have
all the consolation of proving the difference between
the guilt of woman and that of man? Major
Lincoln, accursed and polluted as you see me,
thy own mother was not more innocent nor fair,
when my youthful beauty caught thy father's
eye. He was great and powerful, and I unknown
and frail—yon miserable proof of our transgression
did not appear, until he had met your happier
mother!”
“Can this be so?”
“The holy gospels are not more true!” murmured
Ralph.
“And my father! did he—could he desert
thee in thy need?”
“Shame came when virtue and pride had been
long forgotten. I was a dependant of his own
proud race, and opportunities were not wanting
to mark his wandering looks and growing love
for the chaste Priscilla. He never knew my state.
While I was stricken to the earth by the fruits
of guilt he proved how easy it is for us to forget,
in the days of prosperity, the companions of our
shame. At length, you were born; and unknown
to him, I received his new-born heir from the
hands of his jealous aunt. What accursed thoughts
beset me at that bitter moment! But, praised
spared the sin of murder!”
“Murder!”
“Even of murder. You know not the desperate
thoughts the wretched harbour for relief! But
opportunity was not long wanting, and I enjoyed
the momentary, hellish pleasure of revenge. Your
father went in quest of his rights, and disease attacked
his beloved wife. Yes, foul and unseemly
as is my wretched child, the beauty of thy mother
was changed to a look still more hideous! Such
as Job now seems, was the injured woman on
her death-bed. I feel all thy justice, Lord of
power, and bow before thy will!”
“Injured woman!” repeated Lionel, “say
on, and I will bless thee!”
Abigail gave a groan, so deep and hollow, that,
for a moment, the listeners believed it was the
parting struggle of the spirit of her son, and she
sunk, helplessly, into her seat, again concealing
her features in her dress.
“Injured woman!” slowly repeated Ralph,
with the most taunting contempt in his accents—
“what punishment does not a wanton merit?”
“Ay, injured!” cried the awakened son—
“my life on it, thy tale, at least, is false.”
The old man was silent, but his lips moved rapidly,
as if he muttered an incredulous reply to
himself, while a scornful smile cast its bright
and peculiar meaning across the wasted lineaments
of his face.
“I know not what you may have heard from
others,” continued Abigail, speaking so low that
her words were nearly lost in the difficult and
measured breathing of Job—“but I call heaven
to witness that you, now, shall hear no lie. The
laws of the province commanded that the victims
your mother was placed at the mercy of myself,
and one other, who loved her still less than I.”
“Just providence! you did no violence?”
“The disease spared us such a crime. She
died in her new deformity, while I remained a
looker-on, if not in the beauty of my innocence,
still free from the withering touch of scorn and
want. Yes, I found a sinful, but flattering consolation
in that thought! Vain, weak, and foolish
as I had been, never did I regard my own
fresh beauty, with half the inward pleasure that
I looked upon the foulness of my rival. Your
aunt, too—she was not without the instigations
of the worker of mischief.”
“Speak only of my mother,” interrupted the
impatient Lionel—“of my aunt, I already know
the whole.”
“Unmoved and calculating as she was, how little
did she understand good from evil! She even
thought to crack the heart-strings, and render
whole, by her weak inventions, that which the
power of God could only create. The gentle
spirit of thy mother had hardly departed, before
a vile plot was hatched to destroy the purity
of her fame. Blinded fools that we were! She
thought to lead by her soothing arts, aided by his
wounded affections, the husband to the feet of
her own daughter, the innocent mother of her
who stands beside thee; and I was so vain as to
hope, that, in time, justice and my boy, might
plead with the father and seducer, and raise me to
the envied station of her whom I hated.”
“And this foul calumny you repeated, with all
its basest colouring, to my abused father?”
“We did—we did; yes, God, he knows we
did! and when he hesitated to believe, I took
the holy evangelists as witnesses of my truth!”
“And he,” said Lionel, nearly choked by his
emotions—“he believed it!”
“When he heard the solemn oath of one, whose
whole guilt he thought lay in her weakness to himself,
he did. As we listened to his terrible denunciations,
and saw the frown which darkened his manly
beauty, we both thought we had succeeded. But
how little did we know the difference between rooted
passion and passing inclination! The heart
we thought to alienate from its dead partner, we
destroyed; and the reason we conspired to deceive,
was maddened!”
When her voice ceased, so profound a silence
reigned in the place, that the roar of the distant
cannonade sounded close at hand, and even the
low murmurs of the excited town swept by, like
the whisperings of the wind. Job suddenly ceased
to breathe, as though his spirit had only lingered
to hear the confession of his mother, and Polwarth
dropped the arm of the dead simpleton,
unconscious of the interest he had so lately taken
in his fate. In the midst of this death like stillness,
the old man stole from the side of the body,
and stood before the self-condemned Abigail,
whose form was writhing under her mental anguish.
Crouching more like a tiger than a man, he sprang
upon her, with a cry so sudden, so wild, and so
horrid, that it caused all within its hearing to
shudder with instant dread.
“Beldame!” he shouted, “I have thee now!
Bring hither the book! the blessed, holy word of
God! Let her swear, let her swear! Let her damn
her perjured soul, in impious oaths!”—
“Monster! release the woman!” cried Lionel,
advancing to the assistance of the struggling penitent;
“thou, too, hoary-headed wretch, hast deceived
me!”
“Lincoln! Lincoln!” shrieked Cecil, “stay
that unnatural hand! you raise it on thy father!”
Lionel staggered back to the wall, where he
stood motionless, and gasping for breath. Left,
to work his own frantic will, the maniac would
speedily have terminated the sorrows of the
wretched woman, had not the door been burst
open with a crash, and the stranger who was left
by the cunning of the madman, in the custody of
the Americans, rushed to the rescue.
“I know your yell, my gentle baronet!” cried
the aroused keeper, for such in truth he was, “and
I have a mark for your malice, which would have
gladly had me hung! But I have not followed you
from kingdom to kingdom, from Europe to America,
to be cheated by a lunatic!”
It was apparent, by the lowering look of the
fellow, how deeply he resented the danger he
had just escaped, as he sprang forward to seize
his prisoner. Ralph abandoned his hold the instant
this hated object appeared, and he darted
upon the breast of the other with the undaunted
fury that a lion, at bay, would turn upon its foe.
The struggle was fierce and obstinate. Hoarse
oaths, and the most savage execrations burst from
the incensed keeper, and were blended with the
wildest ravings of madness from Ralph. The excited
powers of the maniac at length prevailed, and
his antagonist fell under their irresistible impulse.
Quicker than thought, Ralph was seen
hovering on the chest of his victim, while he
grasped his throat with fingers of iron.
“Vengeance is holy!” cried the maniac, bursting
into a shout of horrid laughter, at his triumph,
and shaking his gray locks till they flowed in wild
confusion around his glowing eye-balls;“Urim
and Thummim are the words of glory! Liberty
fiends in darkness, and leave freedom to the air!”
By a mighty effort the gasping man released
his throat a little from the gripe that nearly
throttled him, and cried, with difficulty—
“For the love of heavenly justice, come to my
aid! will you see a man thus murdered?”
But he addressed himself to the sympathies
of the listeners in vain. The females had hid
their faces, in natural horror; the maimed Polwarth
was yet without his artificial limb; and
Lionel still looked upon the savage fray with a
vacant eye. At this moment of despair, the hand
of the keeper was seen plunging, with violence,
into the side of Ralph, who sprang upon his feet at
the third blow, laughing immoderately, but with
sounds so wild and deep, that they seemed to shake
his inmost soul. His antagonist profited by the
occasion, and darted from the room with the
headlong precipitation of guilt.
The countenance of the maniac, as he now
stood, struggling between life and death, changed
with each fleeting impulse. The blood flowed
freely from the wounds in his side, and as the fatal
tide ebbed away, a ray of passing reason
lighted his pallid and ghastly features. His inward
laugh entirely ceased. The glaring eye-balls
became stationary, and his look, gradually
softening, settled on the appalled pair, who took
the deepest interest in his welfare. A calm and
decent expression possessed those lineaments
which had just exhibited the deepest marks of the
wrath of God. His lips moved in a vain effort
to speak; and stretching forth his arms, in the
attitude of benediction, like the mysterious shadow
of the chapel, he fell backward on the body of
the lifeless and long-neglected Job, himself perfectly
dead.
| CHAPTER XVII. Lionel Lincoln, or, The leaguer of Boston | |