Part 14

A memorandum of his territories in Spanish America was bound up with the others; and brief directions added on each head, how his son was to secure his rights in them all.

Louis ran over these lists and their explications, that he might not leave a single word unnoted; but when he had finished, he closed up all that related to pecuniary affairs, and laying them aside in the packet, again turned to the letter. It alone would be his study and business, till he should reach Gibraltar, and prove to his father, that by his side, in poverty or disgrace, it was his determination to live or die.

He was yet leaning over the letter, perusing it a second time, when he heard the door open behind him. He looked round, and saw the daughter of Santa Cruz re-enter, supporting on her arm an elderly lady of a noble air, who appeared an invalid. He guessed her to be the Marchioness; and rising instantly, approached her. "Marquis," said she, "I come, thus in my sick attire, to welcome the son of the Duke de Ripperda, to the house of my husband. I know his respect for your father; also his esteem of yourself; and whatever may have been the misrepresentations of evil tongues, my brother the Count Sinzendorff has not left the character of the Marquis de Montemar without an advocate."

The Marchioness observed a brilliant flush shoot over the face of her auditor, as he bowed his head to her last words. She added, in a still more respectful tone, softened even to tenderness by the sentiment of pity; "The machinations of these enemies have been too successful against the Duke. Indeed, I doubt not, that packet has spared me the pain of saying, you must seek your noble father in the Alcazar of Segovia."

Louis briefly related the events of the last six hours; and presented her the note to read, which his servant had found on the table in the prison, and which had referred him to the Marquis Santa Cruz. The Marchioness had seated herself, and placed her guest beside her. She read the note; and looked with maternal sympathy upon the distressful countenance of the duteous son to whom it addressed so cutting a reproach. Her commiserating questions, and the knowledge she shewed of all the virtues of his father; added to the information, that her husband was hastening from Italy, to interest himself in his cause; seemed to demand from Louis his fullest confidence. He revealed to her the substance of what his father had written in the packet; and declared his intention to follow him immediately to Gibraltar.

The Marchioness approved of his reunion with his father, but resisted his quitting her house, till he had taken the repose she saw he so much needed. Louis would have been unmoved in his resolve to commence his journey that very night, had she not suggested, that, severely as the Duke had been used before his flight, should he be retaken, his treatment would be yet more rigorous; and, therefore, his son must be careful not to be himself the guide to so fearful a catastrophe. She assured Louis, that now ministers knew of his arrival, all his movements would be watched; and that above all things, his pursuing the direct route of his father, must be avoided. She urged, that a rash step at this crisis, might be fatal; and, therefore, conjured him to remain that night at least, under her roof; where he might consider and reconder his future plans, and take the rest that was necessary to support him through the trials he might yet have to sustain.

There was so much good sense and precaution in this counsel, that Louis no longer found an argument to oppose it; and adopting her advice of turning in a direction from Gibraltar, rather than towards it, proposed going to Cadiz, and thence hiring a vessel to take him by sea to the British fortress. This being sanctioned by her approbation, he no longer hesitated to pass the remainder of the day, and the night, under her friendly shelter; and while she retired with her daughter, he followed a page to an apartment, where every comfort was provided, that could refresh the weary traveller.

After she had withdrawn, the Marchioness would not permit her daughter to quit the side of the couch on which she reclined; but continued discoursing of the interesting son of the fugitive Duke, and recapitulating all the kindnesses which his English relatives had shewn to her darling Ferdinand in Lindisfarne.

"Marcella," said she, "we must repay part of that vast debt, to this inestimable young man. Your brother has not exaggerated his merits. For, never did I see exquisite beauty so unconsciously possessed; nor heroic indifference to the world's idols, expressed with such noble simplicity."

When Louis rejoined the kind hostess, his misfortunes and his manners had so happily propitiated, she was seated with her meditative daughter in the evening saloon; which opened to a small lake, surrounded by aromatic groves. She rose to receive him.

Relieved from immediate alarm for his father's personal safety, by knowing that his projected asylum was the one least likely to occur to his pursuers, Louis's agitated mind had sunk into a kind of torpid repose. He took the seat offered to him, by the Marchioness; and listened to her conversation with soothed attention. There was something in her figure and air, which so reminded him of the cherishing mother of his youth, Mrs. Coningsby, that his harassed soul seemed to have regained its home, while he drank in her sweet maternal comfortings. She appeared to know by intuition the fittest medicine for his spirit; but she only spoke from her own noble nature, and it mingled direct with his. She expatiated on his father's character; on the envy of his rivals; and dated his fall to their ambition alone. She dwelt on the high reverence in which he was held by the King and Queen; and affirmed, that justice must be done him, both by Sovereign and people, when experience should have taught them how they had cast away their benefactor.--

"Meanwhile," said she, "how glorious he is in suffering magnanimously for his virtues!"

"So to suffer, is the Cross that makes our virtues Christian!" observed Marcella in a low voice, hardly aware that she had uttered what was passing in her thoughts.

The remark was so like what he would have expected from the lips of his first christian teacher, that Louis turned towards the speaker. He turned to look on her; recollecting that she was not merely the daughter of the amiable woman who was so maternally solicitous about him; but the disinterested sister, whose self-sacrifice was to empower her brother to complete the happiness of Alice Coningsby. Though she had been the first to welcome him to this hospitable refuge, in most inhospitable Spain, he had noticed her so little, he could not have recognised her in any other garb. He now perused her pensive countenance. It was fair and meek, and touched with the tenderest sensibility. Her eyes were hidden with their downward lashes; and the shadow of her veil tempered the dazzling whiteness of her forehead, while the dark and glossy tresses that braided its arching brows, gave her the air of a youthful Madonna. Her soft white hand at that moment pressing the cross to her bosom, completed the picture. Unconscious of observation, she was then breathing an internal prayer for the Duke and his son; and continuing her meditations on their fate, did not raise her eyes from the floor.

Louis looked on her, but it was as he would have looked on a lovely image of the consecrated being she resembled; and again he turned to the voice of her mother.

The Marchioness finding him so composed, entered fully into all she knew of the rise and progress of the conspiracy which had ruined his father. She recounted the various perfidies of the inmates of the Palais d'Espagne; which had been confided to her, in the exultation of triumph, by Donna Laura. She narrated particulars in the correspondence between de Patinos and his father, the Marquis de Castellor; and gave instances of even deeper double-dealing in Baptista Orendayn, the nephew of the Count de Paz. Indeed, she hoped, the Marquis, her husband, would be able to prove, by what she could impart, that Orendayn was concerned with a subborned band of ruffians who attacked the Duke de Ripperda in the Appenines; and would certainly have destroyed him there, but for the fortunate intervention of a stranger.

This assassination was the device of his Spanish rivals. And it was as well known by the Marchioness's informants, that the attempt which was made on the Duke in the porch of the Jesuits' college, was the work of certain Austrians at the court of Vienna; and not at all arising from the partizans of the Electress. The Bavarians had never gone farther than to way-lay for the state papers; and under the leading of Count Stalhberg, they had taken the dispatches from Castanos; which, being examined by the party, were afterwards returned.

In recapitulating this host of jealous adversaries, she asserted that none were so actively hostile to Ripperda as the Austrian junto; at the head of which was Count Routemberg, whose darling policy was to place eternal barriers between any future junction of the empire and Spain. In his house the confederation was formed, that was to accomplish the destruction of Ripperda and his plans; and by a secret management it was supported and impelled by the Emperor himself.

While Louis listened to this information, which agreed so fatally with Wharton's last conference in the garden of the chateau, he became more and more bewildered on the motives of his false friend.

At last the Marchioness mentioned that name, which never could be heard by him with indifference; his confidence, or his detestation must rest upon it. He was thinking of the accumulated treachery of Wharton, when she pronounced his name. He started as if it took him by surprise. In her eagerness she did not observe his emotion, but dwelt on the English Duke's clandestine interviews with Grimaldo, de Paz, and the Queen; shewing their results in the King's inflexibility to Ripperda's demands to be heard; and his subsequent warrant, to silence the injured minister's appeal in the sealed dungeons of the Inquisition.

In the height of her representations, Louis, with a tremendous fire in his before faded eye, grasped the arm of the Marchioness, and desperately exclaimed,

"Cease that theme--or it will make me a murderer!"

His manner alarmed the Marchioness, and terrified Marcella. The former, however, restrained herself, and mildly pressing down the hand that clasped her's, detained him on his seat; while Marcella started from her chair, and gazed upon his flashing countenance with dismay. His terrific guilty words yet rung in her ears. For a moment his eye caught the expression of her's; and he answered the horror in her face by the exclamation,

"I loved, and trusted him--and he has betrayed my father!"

He turned away as he spoke, and walked to the other end of the room. The eyes of the Marchioness and her daughter met with an anguish of commiseration in each, neither of them could utter. Marcella looked again at his agitated movements, as his back was towards her. His words, "I loved, and trusted him--and he betrayed my father!" had smote upon her filial heart; and tears gushing into her eyes, she glided from his presence, to pray and weep in secret.

When Louis recovered himself, he scarcely remarked that Marcella had withdrawn.

In hopes to sooth him, the Marchioness asked two or three questions respecting Wharton. Twice he attempted to speak, before he could give any voice to what he wished to say; at last he hastily articulated.

"Spare me on this subject. I would forget him, if God will grant me that gracious oblivion; for that is the only way by which I can remain guiltless of his blood!"

"Rash de Montemar!" cried the Marchioness, pitying while she reproved; "were my holy daughter here, she would tell you, that if you have hope of heaven's pardon for your own errors, you must forgive your enemies!"

An agonized smile gleamed on his convulsed lip.

"My own enemies, I could forgive, and load with benefits. There are some, were they my enemies alone, I could love in spite of every injury; and pray for them, as for the peace of my own soul. But when they extend their malice to my father; when they betray his trusting faith, and give him to the murderous gripe of them who lurk for his honour and his life: they are his enemies, and I cannot forgive them."

"Yet, do not risk your life, which is now his sole comfort," cried she, "Appeal to Heaven, and it will avenge you."

Again Louis walked from her. He felt that, inexorably as he now believed he hated Wharton, and horrible as was the idea of meeting him arm to arm; yet, even that would be more tolerable to him than to invoke Almighty power for vengeance.

A sad confusion of right and wrong, struggled in his breast; but the better principle prevailed; and, even while the pressure of new convictions against Wharton, crowded upon him, he felt that the bitterest pang of all, would be an assurance that by such guilt on guilt, his false friend had forfeited the mercy of his God. In his fiercest throes of resentment, he could yet say with the Divine Spirit, "I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner; but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live!"

The Marchioness marked his unuttered emotion, and with self-blame at the amplitude of her communications, apologised for her indiscretion, and proposed his seeking composure in rest. He gladly acquiesced; while he begged her, not to distress herself by regretting what she had said; for it was necessary to his father's preservation and to his own, that he should know all his enemies, and the extent of their malice.

It was now within an hour of midnight. On Louis entering his chamber, he sent away Lorenzo; that he, at least, might enjoy the sleep that fled his master's eyes. In a few minutes he was alone, in a magnificent apartment, where every tranquillizing luxury invited to repose. But the downy couch would then have been a bed of thorns to him. He continued to walk the room from hour to hour, in perturbed meditation on all that he had seen and heard through the day.

His spirit was on the wing to rush through every obstacle to his father's feet; to labour day and night, to redeem the reputation sacrificed by his flight; and to avenge himself on the slanderous world, by some glorious assertion of the names of de Montemar and Ripperda.

At last, his exhausted taper went out suddenly; and, being without the means of replenishing its light, he threw himself on the bed to muse till morning.

CHAP. XIX.

About an hour before sun-rise, the inhabitants of the villa were aroused by the clattering of horses' hoofs upon the pavement around the house, which was speedily followed by a loud knocking at the gates.

The Marchioness and her daughter, in their dressing-gowns, met in the corridor between their rooms, with each a lamp in their hand. Alarm was in the countenance of both; which was increased to indescribable terror, when the chamberlain of the mansion appeared on the stairs, and informed them, he had looked from his window to demand the cause of such untimely disturbance; and the answer he received was from the leader of the party, who said he came to arrest the Marquis de Montemar, in the name of the King. Marcella's knees shook under her, and a mist passed over her eyes; but it was only transitory; she heard the steady orders of her mother, and rallied her own presence of mind in the same instant.

"Pedro," said the Marchioness, "doubly barricade the doors; and let no man enter, till I have spoken with the Marquis."

Pedro flew to obey his lady, and she proceeded along the gallery to the apartment of her guest. Marcella did not follow her in, but sunk into a seat, near the door of the chamber. The lock yielded to her mother's hand. She saw her enter, and could distinctly hear her footsteps as she cautiously approached the bed, and gently called on the name of de Montemar, to awaken him. At last, she heard him start from the leaden slumber, which had only recently fallen on his harassed faculties; and with an exclamation of surprise at seeing the Marchioness leaning over him at that hour, and in such evident agitation; he sprang from the bed.

The tumult at the outside of the house, strenuously demanding admittance, and the replies from within to withhold it for a time, explained the alarm to Louis, almost before his trembling hostess could speak the words of his arrest. Being fortunately dressed, he stepped forward with an immediate tranquillity succeeding his first appalled thought, that, by this new detention, his father would yet be left to his cruel suspicions. But he suddenly recollected, that Lorenzo might seek him, if he could not; and that when his father knew how he was detained, he could no longer doubt his filial duty. This passed through his mind in a moment; and taking the agitated hand of the Marchioness, he told her his wish respecting Lorenzo; and entreating her not to be distressed at what could not essentially injure him, begged her to order her servants to request the officers to be patient for a few minutes only, when he would instantly put himself into their hands.

"Never!" cried she, "you are my husband's guest, and you shall not be forced from his house during his absence. Ill should I repay the family who fostered my son, were I to surrender their darling into the hands of his enemies. I am aware they may break open my doors; but there is a place in this villa they cannot discover. Come with me, and you shall be safe, till the way is clear for your complete escape."

Surprised at this proposal, Louis did not interrupt her; but when she paused, and put her arm on his, to draw him towards the offered asylum, he earnestly thanked her, yet repeated that it was his fixed intention to obey the arrest of the king.

"What?" cried she, "this is despair, beyond their hopes! They will confine, perhaps torture you! They could not have obtained this warrant from the King, had they not made him believe that you are accessary to the crimes with which they charge your father. They will try to compel you to confession; and, though you are blameless, you will suffer the cruelest ordeal of transgression. They fear your talents; and, if the laws refuse to be their emissary; when you are in the solitude of a prison, how many means will present themselves, of ridding them of what they fear!"

In great emotion, she followed up these representations with renewed beseeching that he would accompany her to a temporary concealment.

"It is for my father's enemies to fly;" returned he, in a firm though gentle tone; "they are guilty of treachery to the confidence of their Sovereign, and flight may do them service. But I am innocent of offence against this country; my father has been its benefactor. I will therefore stay, to meet any trial they may devise, to impugn him in my person. And, if my defence of his integrity fail with his unjust judges; and, should I even fall in the attempt, honest men will form a truer judgement; and, such hearts as yours, and those I left in England, will still respect Ripperda and his son."

In despair at his resolution, the Marchioness reminded him, that the father whom he so justly revered, acted on a different principle. He was innocent, and menaced; and he fled.

"And there," returned Louis, "he gave the advantage to his enemies, that sanctions the arrest of his son. He should have demanded open trial. All Europe would have supported the demand; and in the face of Europe he would have been acquitted. To this I would yet urge him. His proud rivals will not dare suffer his return; and their cowardice will, of itself, pronounce his triumph."

The Marchioness clung to him, as the uproar below increased, and she thought by the extraordinary noise, that her gates were burst open.

"Alas!" cried she, "you know not the summary justice of this country! The bow-string is yet amongst us,--and you will perish in prison, unheard, unremembered!--Oh, de Montemar, in the name of all you love, hasten with me!"

"In the name of all I love and honour, dearest Madam!" returned he, straining her respected and clinging form to his grateful heart, "I must remain, and abide the ways of Providence."

"Marcella!" cried the Marchioness, looking round, and seeing her daughter, who had unconsciously started into the room on hearing the augmented tumult below; "Marcella, come hither, and by your holy eloquence conjure him to fly, and save these men the sin of murder!"

Marcella stood still, looking on the ground. Her mother continued her entreaties to him, and then again implored her daughter.

"Speak to him, my heaven-devoted child! For that father's sake, conjure him to abandon the ruinous project of abiding by the justice of his enemies!"

Marcella's complexion was the hue of death, while she gaspingly answered:

"I cannot urge the Marquis to depart from sentiments I so much honour."

Louis looked from the weeping Marchioness, who hung on him with maternal tenderness, to the daughter, pale, and trembling, but firm in the faith that nerved his soul.

"Madam," said he, "I thank you for this support," then turning to her mother, "Revered lady," cried he, "remember me in your prayers, and I shall not fear the malice of my enemies!" The words of her daughter had put the Marchioness to silence, and she leaned upon the shoulder of Louis, drowned in tears. At this moment the clamour of many feet were heard upon the stairs, and a man bursting into the room, told his mistress that Don Diego Cuellar, one of the Alcaids, had ordered the gates to be forced; and, was not only in the house, but then approaching the corridor. The Marchioness sobbed aloud, and exclaimed in wild grief, "my son, my son!" As if it were Don Ferdinald she held in her arms.

Louis supported her on his bosom, but did not hesitate to say to the servant; "tell the officer, I am at his orders. I will descend to him immediately."

But before the man could obey, Don Diego and his train were in the corridor, and in the room. A threatening denunciation was in his visage, as he advanced with his staff of office towards his prisoner. Louis perceived the storm; and to spare the sensibility of his hostess any shew of violence, he intercepted the thunder of the Alcaid, by repeating the message he had sent by the servant.

"'Tis well, Sir," replied the officer, "but the resistance which has been made, must be answered for before the council."

"I will answer for it, and all else that may be brought against me, when I am before the council;" replied Louis, "but meanwhile, I request of your courtesy as a Gentleman, to dismiss your guards till I can sooth this lady."

The manner of his prisoner, sufficiently mollified the officer; and he made a sign to his attendants to withdraw. The Marchioness then turned to the Alcaid; and, to her fearful interrogatories, he informed her how Louis had been traced to her house.

On his departure from the Alcazar, the warden thought it prudent to send a person to observe his movements. This spy followed him to the Val del Uzeda; and then, proceeding to St. Ildefonso, (where the royal family were), apprised the ministers of the escape of Ripperda, and where they might find his son. A council was convened; and it determined that Louis should be arrested, and held in strict ward, till information could be gained of the flight and views of his father.

"When that is ascertained," continued the Alcaid, "the enlargement of the Marquis de Montemar will be brought into immediate consideration."