The Buccaneer Part 56

It did not escape the observation of Lady Frances that Barbara wore the chain she had given her, and she most heartily wished her father at Whitehall, or elsewhere, that she might have an opportunity of asking all the questions at once suggested by her busy brain.

It is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the meeting between the Jew and his daughter. It was with feelings of terror, more than of affection, that Zillah prepared to encounter a justly offended parent.

She had heard and believed that crime such as hers--marrying or intriguing with Christians--was punished by a lingering and cruel death; and scarcely could the word of Cromwell, pledged twice for her safety, convince her that such would not be her fate. She instantly prostrated herself at the Rabbi's feet; and it would seem that, a.s.sured of his daughter's life--a.s.sured of her safety under laws--British laws--his eastern notions with regard to the submission due from woman to her master, man, returned to him in full force; for he suffered her to remain, her forehead resting on the ground, and her hands clasped around it, although he was so deeply agitated that he clung to a pedestal for support.

The Protector arose from his seat, and, advancing, kindly and tenderly raised the poor victim of confiding but too violent pa.s.sion, and placed her leaning on her father's shoulder.

"Mana.s.seh!" he said, "at times our speech is obscure, and men see through it darkly. We hope it will not be so now. Your daughter is no harlot, but a wedded woman who will soon become a mother, and, in virtue of her husband and her child, is a subject of our own. We regret the violence of which she has been guilty, but Satan is ever busy in his work of temptation. If you cast her from you, we take her to ourselves; as our blessed Lord would have received the prodigal--the sinful, but repentant son--even so will we receive her. Poor prodigal," he added, after waiting for a reply from the Rabbi, which came not, for the feelings of the tribe were struggling with those of the father--"Poor prodigal! we will not desert thee in thy hour of trial--but seek to preserve thee from worse crimes than even those of which thou hast been guilty."

Although Cromwell had placed Zillah resting on the shoulder of her father, he made no effort to support or keep her there, and the Protector was in the act of leading her towards his daughter, when Ben Israel raised a great cry, for the father had triumphed over the Jew, and s.n.a.t.c.hing her to his bosom, he burst into a fervent but almost inaudible prayer of thanksgiving and grat.i.tude, that entered the hearts of those who heard it, and witnessed the terrible strength of his emotions. The Lady Constance was suffering from various causes; the nature of which, from past events, may be more easily imagined than described. Nor were those sufferings either terminated or relieved, when, on Cromwell's striking the table again in the same manner as before, Sir Willmott Burrell stood in the apartment.

His entrance caused a sensation of astonishment and confusion through the whole group. Constantia Cecil unconsciously moved her seat nearer to that of the Protector. An expression of satisfaction crossed the anxious and feverish brow of Robin Hays. Dalton folded his arms across his bosom, and advanced his right foot, as if strengthening his position.

Preacher Fleetword, who had hitherto leaned against a high-backed chair, his eyes glaring from their sockets on the countenance of "the Lord's anointed," and drinking in, with open ear and mouth, every word he uttered--now shrank into the farthest portion of the room, skilfully keeping a chair in the direction of Burrell, as a sort of fortification against violence or evil, while he muttered sentences of no gentle or complimentary nature, which, but for the august presence in which he stood, would have burst forth in anathemas against the "wolf in sheep's clothing," by which t.i.tle he never failed in after years to designate the traitor. The Jew trembled, and partly rose from his seat; while Zillah, whose love had turned to hate--whose affection had become as wormwood--stood erect as he advanced, with a pale but firm look.

Prepared to a.s.sert her rights to the last, she was the very model of a determined woman, who, having been greatly wronged, resolves to be greatly avenged. If her lip quivered, it was evidently from eagerness, not from indecision; and her eye had the lightning of h.e.l.l, not of heaven, in its glance. Barbara crouched at the feet of her mistress; and Lady Frances, to whom something new was synonymous with something delightful, was tip-toe with expectation. She believed, from what her father had hinted, that Constantia was free, and might wed whom she pleased: this imparted an hilarity to her countenance and manner, totally different from the aspect of all others within that room.

Burrell himself looked like a bull turned into the arena, from whence there is no escape. His deep-set eyes were grown red and dry: but they rested, for a moment, while he saluted Constance and Lady Frances; their next movement showed him Zillah and her father, and he shrank within himself, and quailed beneath the defying gaze of the woman he had so deeply injured. For an instant, and but for an instant, eye met eye, and glance encountered glance: the Master of Burrell was overthrown, and looked round for some relief; but like other sinners, when the hour of retribution comes, he found none; for those he next saw were Dalton, Fleetword, and Robin Hays.

"We have more than circ.u.mstantial evidence to show now, Sir Willmott Burrell," exclaimed the Protector, after surveying him with a look of terrible contempt: "what say you to this lady? Is she, too, a counterfeit?"

Burrell remained silent; and while Cromwell paused, as if expecting an answer, the Preacher could no longer hold silence, but vociferated from behind his intrenchment:--

"Under favour of the Greatness before whom I speak--under the shadow of his wing--I proclaim thee to be a sinner--even as those who stoned the holy Stephen, when he was about the Lord's bidding--even as those----"

"Peace!" exclaimed Cromwell, in a voice that sounded like thunder in the Preacher's ear. "Sir Willmott Burrell, there are now sufficient proofs--what have you to say why this lady be not declared your lawful and wedded wife?"

"I desire it not! I desire it not!" murmured the Rabbi: "my wealth he shall not have, nor my child."

"But I desire it--I demand it!" interrupted Zillah; "not for my own sake, most gracious judge," and she bent her knee to the Protector; "for never will I commune with my destroyer after this hour--but for the sake of an unborn babe, who shall not blush for its parent, when this poor head and this breaking heart have found the quiet of the grave!"

"May it please your Highness," replied Burrell, "the marriage in a foreign land is nought, particularly when solemnised between a Christian and a Jew, unless ratified here; and I will submit to that ratification, if the Lady Constantia Cecil, whom I was about to wed, and whom the person your Highness designs for my wife sought to a.s.sa.s.sinate, will agree to it,--taking on herself the penalty to which her breach of contract must of necessity lead."

All eyes were now turned to Constantia, who sat labouring for breath, and struggling with an agony to which it almost seemed her life would yield.

"We have ourselves provided for the Lady Constantia a fitting mate, good Master of Burrell," replied the Protector; "think ye that the fairest of our land are to be thrown to the dogs?" Again he struck his pistol upon the oak table, and after a breathless silence, during which Burrell never removed his eyes from Constantia--(Lady Frances afterwards said she noted they had all the evil expression of those of the hooded snake, when preparing to dart upon its prey)--the villain contrived to move more closely towards his victim, whose misery was but faintly painted on her blanched cheek.

"A little time," she murmured; "a little time to deliberate."

"Not a moment--not a moment," he replied; "and remember----"

The words had hardly pa.s.sed from between his closed lips, when Walter de Guerre was ushered in, and Burrell's brow flushed one deep hue of crimson. A murmur of congratulation escaped from several of the party; the Protector turned towards Constantia with the look and manner of one who has planned what he believes will be a joyful surprise--to be gratefully received and appreciated as such; instead of beholding her face beaming with love and hope, he saw that every fibre of her frame became rigid; and she endeavoured to bury her face in her hands.

"Mistress Cecil seems to approve our choice no better than her father's," he said, after a pause of intense anxiety to all present: "We would have taught this youth what is due to ourself and our Commonwealth, by the gentlest means within our power. Methinks, women are all alike."

"Father! she is dying!" exclaimed the easily-alarmed Lady Frances.

"One moment, and I shall be well," said Constantia: and then she added,

"Sir Willmott Burrell, you pant for vengeance, and now you may have it.

Believing that lady, in the sight of G.o.d, to be your wife, I cannot wrong her; though I would have sacrificed myself to--to--." She was prevented from finishing her sentence by the Protector's exclaiming with the energy and warmth of his natural character,

"We knew it; and now let me present your bridegroom. Frances, it was excess of joy that caused this agitation."

Constantia interrupted him.

"Not so, your Highness. Alas! G.o.d knows, not so. But while I say that the evil contract shall never be fulfilled--though I will never become the wife of Sir Willmott Burrell, I also say that the wife of Walter de Guerre I can never be. Nay more, and I speak patiently, calmly--rather would I lay my breaking heart, ere it is all broken, beneath the waves that lash our sh.o.r.e, than let one solitary word escape me, which might lead you to imagine that even the commands of your Highness could mould my dreadful destiny to any other shape."

There was no mistaking the expression of the Protector's countenance; it was that of severe displeasure; for he could ill brook, at any period, to have his wishes opposed and his designs thwarted. While Constance was rising from her seat, Sir Willmott Burrell grasped her arm with fiendish violence, and extending his other hand towards the door leading to the closet, where she had left her sleeping father, he exclaimed:

"Then I accuse openly, in the face of the Protector and this company, Robert Cecil, who stands _there_, of the murder of his brother Herbert, and of the murder of Sir Herbert Cecil's son; and I a.s.sert that Hugh Dalton was accessory to the same!"

A shriek so wild and piercing issued from Constantia's lips that it rang over the house and terrified all its inmates, who crowded to the portal, the boundary of which they dared not pa.s.s.

It was little to be wondered that she did shriek. Turning toward the spot at which the villain pointed, the Protector saw the half-demented Baronet standing in the door-way. He had opened the closet, and come forth during the momentary absence of his attendant, and now stood moping and bowing to the a.s.sembly in a way that would have moved the pity of a heart of stone.

"Fiend!" shouted the Protector, grasping in his great anger the throat of Sir Willmott, and shaking him as he had been a reed--"'tis a false lie! He is no murderer; and if he had been, is it before his daughter that ye would speak it! Hah! I see it all now. Such is the threat--the lie--that gave you power over this excellence." He threw the ruffian from him with a perfect majesty of resentment. Gross as was the deed, the Protector condescending to throttle such as Burrell, the manner of the act was great: it was that of an avenging angel, not of an angry or impetuous man.

Sir Willmott regained his self-possession, although with feelings of wounded pride and indignation; fixing his eye upon Constantia with, if possible, increasing malignity, he spoke:--

"His Highness much honours his subject; but Mistress Cecil herself knows that what I have spoken is true--so does her father--and so does also this man! Is it not true, I ask?"

"No! I say it is false--false as h.e.l.l!" answered the Buccaneer; "and if his Highness permits, I will explain."

"You say--what?" inquired Constantia, her whole countenance and figure dilating with that hope which had so long been a stranger to her bosom.

"I say that Robert Cecil is no murderer! Stand forth, Walter Cecil, and state that within the two last years, you saw your father in a Spanish monastery; and that----"

"Who is Walter Cecil?" inquired Burrell, struggling as a drowning man, while losing his last hope of salvation.

"I am WALTER CECIL!" exclaimed our old acquaintance Walter; "my _nom de guerre_ is no longer necessary."

"It needed not that one should come from the dead to tell us that," said the Protector, impatiently; "but there are former pa.s.sages we would have explained. What means the villain by his charge? Speak, Dalton, and unravel us this mystery."

"It is well known to your Highness, that few loved the former powers more than Sir Herbert Cecil; and truth to say, he was wild, and daring, and bad----"

"Dalton!" exclaimed the young man, in an upbraiding tone.

"Well, young master, I will say no more about it. Gold is a great tempter, as your Highness knows; and it tempted yonder gentleman, with whom G.o.d has dealt. He is a different sight to look upon now, to what he was the morning he sought me to commit a crime, which, well for my own sake, and the sake of others, I did not commit. He came to me----"

"Mercy! mercy! I claim your Highness' mercy!" said Constantia, falling on her knees, and holding her hands, clasped and trembling, above her head. "It is not meet that the child hear thus publicly of her father's sin! The old man, your Highness, has not power to speak!"

"Lady," continued Dalton, "he could not deny--But my tale will soon be finished, and it will take a load off your heart, and off the hearts of others. Sir Herbert did not die. I conveyed him to another land; but the papers--the instructions I had received, remained in my possession. Sir Herbert's wild character--his fondness for sea-excursions--his careless life, led to the belief that he had perished in some freak, in which he too often indulged. His brother apparently mourned and sorrowed; but, in time, the dynasty of England changed, exactly as he would have wished it--the Commonwealth soon gave the missing brother's lands to the man who was its friend, who had fought and laboured in its cause, and seemed to forget that any one else had any right to the possessions:--but the son of the injured remained as a plague-spot to his sight. I had but too good reason to know how this son of this elder brother was regarded, and I had learned to love the lad: he was ever about the beach, and fond of me, poor fellow! because I used to bring him little gifts from foreign parts--by way, I suppose, of a private atonement for grievous wrong. I took upon myself the removing of that boy to save him from a worse fate, for I loved him as my own child; and there he stands, and can say whether my plain speech be true or false. I was myself a father but a little while before I spirited him away from a dangerous home to a safe ship. Sir Robert believed they were both dead, and sorrowed not; although he compa.s.sed only the removal of the brother, yet the going away of his nephew made his possessions the more secure; for, as he said, times might change, and the boy be restored if he had lived. His disappearance made a great stir at the time; yet there were many went from the land then and were seen no more. I thought to rear him in my own line, but he never took kindly to it, so I just let him have his fling amongst people of his own thinking--gentry, and the like--who knew how to train him better than I did. I kept Sir Herbert safe enough until the act came out which gave Sir Robert right and dominion over his brother's land, declaring the other to have been a malignant, and so forth;--but the spirit was subdued within the banished man; he was bowed and broken, and cared nothing for liberty, but took entirely to religion, and became a monk; and his son, there, has seen him many a time; and it comforted me to find that he died in the belief that G.o.d would turn all things right again, and that his child would yet be master of Cecil Place. He died like a good Christian, forgiving his enemies, and saying that adversity had brought his soul to G.o.d--more fond of blaming himself than others. As to Walter, he had a desire to visit this country, and, to own the truth, I knew that if Sir Robert failed to procure the pardon I wanted, the resurrection of this youth would be an argument he could not withstand.

"Perhaps I was wrong in the means I adopted; but I longed for an honest name, and it occurred to me that Sir Robert Cecil could be frightened, if not persuaded, into procuring my pardon. G.o.d is my judge that I was weary of my reckless habits, and panted for active but legal employment. A blasted oak will tumble to the earth, if struck by a thunderbolt,--like a withy. Then my child! I knew that Lady Cecil cared for her, though, good lady, she little thought, when she first saw the poor baby, that it was the child of a Buccaneer. She believed it the offspring of a pains-taking trader, who had served her husband. She guessed the truth in part afterwards, but had both piety and pity in her bosom, and did not make the daughter suffer for the father's sin. I loved the girl!--But your Highness is yourself a father, and would not like to feel ashamed to look your own child in the face. I threatened Sir Robert to make known all--and expose these doc.u.ments----"

The Skipper drew from his vest the same bundle of papers which he had used in that room, almost on that very spot, to terrify the stricken Baronet, a few months before. Sir Robert Cecil had remained totally unconscious of the explanations that had been made, and seemed neither to know of, nor to heed, the presence of Dalton, nor the important communication he had given--his eyes wandering from countenance to countenance of the a.s.sembled group,--a weak, foolish smile resting perpetually on his lip; yet the instant he caught a glimpse of the packet the Buccaneer held in his hand, his memory returned: he staggered from his daughter--who, after her appeal to Cromwell, clung to her father's side, as if heroically resolved to share his disgrace to the last--and grasped at the papers.

"What need of keeping them?" said the Protector, much affected at the scene: "give them to him, give them to him."

Dalton obeyed, and Sir Robert clutched them with the avidity of a maniac: he stared at them, enwreathed as they were by his thin, emaciated fingers, and then, bursting into a mad fit of exulting laughter, fell prostrate on the floor, before any one had sufficiently recovered from the astonishment his renewed strength had occasioned, to afford him any a.s.sistance. He was immediately raised by Constantia and his attendants, and conveyed to his own apartment, still holding fast the papers, though he gave little other sign of life. There was another, besides his daughter, who followed the stricken man--his nephew Walter.

"It is ill talking of marriage," said Cromwell, as the young man paused, and requested permission to leave the room,--"It is ill talking of marriage when Death stands at the threshold; but I have little doubt _you_ will be able to obtain the hand which _I_ could not dispose of.