Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“I was ever somewhat of a subscriber to the old man’s creed of fatalism,” said the stranger, smiling, “and I believe I am more confirmed in it by the singular events of this day. My father was a man of a certain rank in society, but of selfish and disorderly habits. A course of extravagance and idleness was succeeded by difficulties and distress. Harassed by creditors, he was pained by their demands, and his selfishness was unable to endure the sufferings of his wife and children. Instead of exertion, he had recourse to flight, and left us to face the difficulties from which he shrunk. He was absent for years, while his family toiled and struggled with success. Suddenly we heard that he was concealed in this part of the coast; the cause which made that concealment necessary I forbear to mention; but he as suddenly disappeared from the eyes of men, though we never could trace him beyond this part of the country. I have always believed that I should one day find my father, and have lately, though with difficulty, prevailed upon my mother to allow me to make my inquiries in this neighbourhood; but my search is at an end to-day,—I believe that I have found my father. Roaming along the beach, I penetrated into several of those dark caverns of the rocks, which might well, by their rugged aspects, deter the idle and the timid from entering. Through the fissures of one I discovered, in the interior, a light. Surprised, I penetrated to its concealment, and discovered a man sleeping on the ground. I advanced to awake him, and found but a fleshless skeleton, cased in tattered and decaying garments. He had probably met his death by accident, for exactly over the corpse I observed, at a terrific distance, the daylight, as if streaming down from an aperture above. Thus the wretched man must have fallen, but how long since, or who had discovered his body, and left the light which I beheld, I knew not, though I cannot help cherishing a strong conviction that it was the body of Rhys Meredith that I saw.”

“Who talks of Rhys Meredith,” said a stern voice near the coffin, “and of the cave where the outcast rots?” They turned quickly at the sound, and beheld Ruth Tudor standing up, as if she had been intently listening to the story. “It was I who spoke, dame,” said the stranger gently, “and my speech was of my father, of Rhys Meredith; I am Owen his son.”

“Son! Owen Rhys!” said the bewildered Ruth, passing her hand over her forehead, as if to enable her to recover the combinations of these names; “and who art thou, that thus givest human ties to him who is no more of humanity? why speakest thou of living things as pertaining to the dead? Father! he is father to nought save sin, and murder is his only begotten!”

She advanced to the traveller as she spoke, and again caught a view of his face; again he saw the wild look of recognition, and an unearthly shriek followed the convulsive horror of her face. “There! there!” she said, “I knew it must be thyself; once before to-night have I beheld thee, yet what can thy coming bode? Back with thee, ruffian! for is not thy dark work done?”

“Let us leave her,” said the good pastor, “to the care of her attendant; do not continue to meet her gaze your presence may increase, but cannot allay her malady: go up to your bed and rest.”

He retired as he spoke; and Owen, in compliance with his wish, ascended the ruinous stair which led to his chamber, after he had beheld Ruth Tudor quietly place herself in her seat at the open coffin’s head. The room to which he mounted was not of the most cheering aspect, yet he felt that he had often slept soundly in a worse. It was a gloomy unfinished chamber, and the wind was whistling coldly and drearily through the uncovered rafters above his head. Like many of the cottages in that part of the country, it appeared to have grown old and ruinous before it had been finished; for the flooring was so crazy as scarcely to support the huge wooden bedstead, and in many instances the boards were entirely separated from each other, and in the centre, time, or the rot, had so completely devoured the larger half of one, that through the gaping aperture Owen had an entire command of the room and the party below, looking down immediately above the coffin. Ruth was in the same attitude as when he left her, and the servant girl was dozing by her side. Every thing being perfectly tranquil, Owen threw himself upon his hard couch, and endeavoured to compose himself to rest for the night, but this had become a task, and one of no easy nature to surmount; his thoughts still wandered to the events of the day, and he felt there was some strange connexion between the scene he had just witnessed, and the darker one of the secret cave. He was an imaginative man, and of a quick and feverish temperament, and he thought of Ruth Tudor’s ravings, and the wretched skeleton of the rock, till he had worked out in his brain the chain of events that linked one consequence with the other: he grew restless and wretched, and amidst the tossings of impatient anxiety, fatigue overpowered him, and he sunk into a perturbed and heated sleep. His slumber was broken by dreams that might well be the shadows of his waking reveries. He was alone (as in reality) upon his humble bed, when imagination brought to his ear the sound of many voices again singing the slow and monotonous psalm; it was interrupted by the outcries of some unseen things who attempted to enter his chamber, and, amid yells of fear and execrations of anger, bade him “Arise, and come forth, and aid:” then the coffined form which slept so quietly below, stood by his side, and in beseeching accents, bade him “Arise and save her.” In his sleep he attempted to spring up, but a horrid fear restrained him, a fear that he should be too late; then he crouched like a coward beneath his coverings, to hide from the reproaches of the spectre, while shouts of laughter and shrieks of agony were poured like a tempest around him: he sprung from his bed and awoke.

It was some moments ere he could recover recollection, or shake off the horror which had seized upon his soul. He listened, and with infinite satisfaction observed an unbroken silence throughout the house. He smiled at his own terrors, attributed them to the events of the day, or the presence of a corse, and determined not to look down into the lower room till he should be summoned thither in the morning. He walked to the casement, and looked abroad to the night; the clouds were many, black, and lowering, and the face of the sky looked angrily at the wind, and glared portentously upon the earth; the _sleet_ was still falling; distant thunder announced the approach or departure of a storm, and Owen marked the clouds coming from afar towards him, laden with the rapid and destructive lightning: he shut the casement and returned towards his bed; but the light from below attracted his eye, and he could not pass the aperture without taking one glance at the party.

They were in the same attitude in which he had left them; the servant was sleeping, but Ruth was earnestly gazing on the lower end of the room upon something, without the sight of Owen; his attention was next fixed upon the corpse, and he thought he had never seen any living thing so lovely; and so calm was the aspect of her last repose, that Meredith thought it more resembled a temporary suspension of the faculties, than the eternal stupor of death: her features were pale, but not distorted, and there was none of the livid hue of death in her beautiful mouth and lips; but the flowers in her hand gave stronger demonstration of the presence of the power, before whose potency their little strength was fading; drooping with a mortal sickness, they bowed down their heads in submission, as one by one they dropped from her pale and perishing fingers. Owen gazed, till he thought he saw the grasp of her hand relax, and a convulsive smile pass over her cold and rigid features; he looked again; the eye-lids shook and vibrated like the string of some fine-strung instrument; the hair rose, and the head cloth moved: he started up ashamed: “Does the madness of this woman affect all who would sleep beneath her roof?” said he; “what is this that disturbs me—or am I yet in a dream? Hark! what is that?” It was the voice of Ruth; she had risen from her seat, and was standing near the coffin, apparently addressing some one who stood at the lower end of the room: “To what purpose is thy coming now?” said she, in a low and melancholy voice, “and at what dost thou laugh and gibe? lo! you; she is here, and the sin you know of, cannot be; how can I take the life which another hath already withdrawn? Go, go, hence to thy cave of night, for this is no place of safety for thee.” Her thoughts now took another turn; she seemed to hide one from the pursuit of others; “Lie still! lie still!” she whispered; “put out thy light! so, so, they pass by and mark thee not; thou art safe; good night, good night! now will I home to sleep;” and she seated herself in her chair, as if composing her senses to rest.

Owen was again bewildered in the chaos of thought, but for this time he determined to subdue his imagination, and, throwing himself upon his bed, again gave himself up to sleep; but the images of his former dreams still haunted him, and their hideous phantasms were more powerfully renewed; again he heard the solemn psalm of death, but unsung by mortals—it was pealed through earth up to the high heaven, by myriads of the viewless and the mighty: again he heard the execrations of millions for some unremembered sin, and the wrath and the hatred of a world was rushing upon him: “Come forth! come forth!” was the cry; and amid yells and howls they were darting upon him, when the pale form of the beautiful dead arose between them, and shielded him from their malice; but he heard her say aloud, “It is for this, that thou wilt not save me; arise, arise, and help!”

He sprung up as he was commanded; sleeping or waking he never knew; but he started from his bed to look down into the chamber, as he heard the voice of Ruth loud in terrific denunciation: he looked; she was standing, uttering yells of madness and rage, and close to her was a well-known form of appalling recollection—his father, as he had seen him last; he arose and darted to the door: “I am mad,” said he; “I am surely mad, or this is still a continuation of my dream:” he looked again; Ruth was still there, but alone.

But, though no visible form stood by the maniac, some fiend had entered her soul, and mastered her mighty spirit; she had armed herself with an axe, and shouting, “Liar, liar, hence!” was pursuing some imaginary foe to the darker side of the cottage: Owen strove hard to trace her motions, but as she had retreated under the space occupied by his bed, he could no longer see her, and his eyes involuntarily fastened themselves upon the coffin; there a new horror met them; the dead corpse had risen, and with wild and glaring eyes was watching the scene before her. Owen distrusted his senses till he heard the terrific voice of Ruth, as she marked the miracle he had witnessed; “The fiend, the robber!” she yelled, “it is he who hath entered the pure body of my child. Back to thy cave of blood, thou lost one! back to thine own dark hell!” Owen flew to the door; it was too late; he heard the shriek—the blow: he _fell_ into the room, but only in time to hear the second blow, and see the cleft hand of the hapless Rachel fall back upon its bloody pillow; his terrible cries brought in the sleepers from the barn, headed by the wretched Evan, and, for a time, the thunders of heaven were drowned in the clamorous grief of man. No one dared to approach the miserable Ruth, who now, in utter frenzy, strode around the room, brandishing, with diabolical grandeur, the bloody axe, and singing a wild song of triumph and joy. All fell back as she approached, and shrunk from the infernal majesty of her terrific form; and the thunders of heaven rolling above their heads, and the flashings of the fires of eternity in their eyes, were less terrible than the savage glare and desperate wrath of the maniac:—suddenly, the house rocked to its foundation; its inmates were blinded for a moment, and sunk, felled by a stunning blow, to the earth;—slowly each man recovered and arose, wondering he was yet alive;—all were unhurt, save one. Ruth Tudor was on the earth, her blackened limbs prostrate beneath the coffin of her child, and her dead cheek resting on the rent and bloody axe;—it had been the destroyer of both.

THE YELLOW DWARF. A TALE OF THE ORANGE TREE.

Oranges and Lemons.

EVERY body knows, or at least ought to know, with what an uproar of delight the birth of an heir to any noble family was celebrated in the old baronial times of fisty-cuff memory; exactly such a festival would we, the humble historian of the illustrious house of Tecklenburgh, describe, if we knew how to render justice to the outrageous mirth which shook the old castle to its very foundation, on the day of the eventful morn on which the lady of the eldest son of the family had presented her lord, and his no less expecting father the count, with a new prop to the seat of their ancient dignities. It was amid the mingled uproar of trumpets, bells, soldiers, women, horses, and dogs, that the respectable purple-nosed dominican, who was confessor to the family, gave a blessing and a name to its future representative; and immediately after the ceremony, the knights and nobles, wearied by the blows given and received in the jousts, retired to the dining hall with the threefold intention of filling their empty stomachs with something better than the east wind, solacing their spirits with the biting jests of the count’s fool, and curing their wounds and bruises of the morning by bathing them in flagons of rhenish, till the moon should look down upon the evening.

But happiness will not endure for ever; like riches, she maketh herself wings and fleeth away: the company, after picking the flesh of the huge wild boar to the bone, began to stare at each other with bleared eyes, ask querulous questions with stuttering tongues, and reply with solemn and important visages; and the count of Tecklenburgh, fearing that his youngest son, the handsome Sir Ludolph, would soon grow as wise as the rest of the party, and of course utterly unfit for business, withdrew him quietly from the table and conducted him to his private apartment; there, seating himself in his state chair and enrobing his person, with an air of paternal dignity he solemnly demanded of his son, if he had, according to his particular order, considered the subject of their last conference. The young knight answered, without any hesitation, that he had not, for that the subject was so disagreeable to him that he had never suffered it to enter his mind since; that he was determined not to become a monk, that he thought the tonsure excessively unbecoming, and that he had no inclination to pray every time St. Benedict’s bells should ring; and he added moreover, that he was resolved to carve himself out a fortune with his sword, and for that purpose intended to set off immediately for the court of the injured princes of Thuringia, whose cause was a just and honourable one, and make them an offer of his services: all this was said with an air of so much determination and composure, as partly to disturb, and partly to amuse the gravity of the count of Tecklenburgh; but considering within himself for a few moments, he thought this last project of his son was not quite so foolish as he had at first been willing to imagine it. In addition to high courage and many knightly acquirements, Ludolph possessed a very handsome person, and this idea connecting itself with the beautiful sister of the princes of Thuringia, he began to think that it would be a pity to hide that fine form under a greasy cassock; he reflected that should the three sons of Albert the Depraved get their brains knocked out in the skirmish, (a consummation devoutly to be wished, and, from their warlike character and powerful enemies, very likely to happen,) their possessions would descend to their sister, who might possibly fall in love with his handsome son, and then possibly the margraviate of Thuringia might finally centre in his family. These, and many other possibilities working in the brain of father Tecklenburgh, worked a change in his countenance also; and Ludolph seeing a smile, or something like one, hovering over his iron features, judged it a favourable opportunity for re-enforcing his petition, which he did with all the zeal and eloquence he could muster—eloquence which touched the heart of his tender father, for he assured him that if he would permit him to depart, he would not draw the smallest piece of copper from his treasury to fit him out for the expedition, but would make his aunt’s legacy of relics answer every purpose. This last remonstrance settled the business; count Tecklenburgh, finding it was to cost him nothing, gave his consent to the measure, and made his son happy in his own way, though, if that happiness had cost him a single cruitzner, he would have held fast to the tonsure in spite of all the repugnance of poor Ludolph; as it was, he gave him his blessing, and dismissed him with much good advice, but not a single coin, and the knight was too happy in the granted permission to grieve at his father’s lack of liberality. With a lightened heart he went for his holy legacy, which he found much heavier than he had expected; every bone and rag was carefully marked with the name of its original owner, and, after getting the monk to read him their titles, and affix a value to each article, he hastened to dispose of his sanctified treasure. He imagined the most likely persons to bid handsomely for his commodities would be the monks, who paid such respectful and humble reverence to cargoes of that description; but, after visiting a convent of Dominicans situated near the castle, in this instance he found himself most grievously mistaken; these holy pedlars were much too wise to buy what they had long found their account in selling: they had already a good stock on hand, and, when this should be exhausted, they could manufacture others at a much cheaper rate than they could purchase them of count Ludolph: so he carried his legacy to the nuns, who rejected it instantaneously, doubting whether the articles were genuine. From the nuns he went to all the orders of mendicants, who treated him and his relics with great contempt, cried down his cargo, and impudently asserted that the leg of St. Bridget, which he had considered the most valuable article in the pious collection, was the leg of a woman who was hung some years before for sorcery in Nuremburg, as they themselves had the real original limb of the saint in their possession. Thus disappointed among the shorn lambs of the fold, Ludolph determined to seek for purchasers among the laity, and accordingly found them in the persons of priest-ridden princes, crusading nobles, pilgrim knights, and convent-founding ladies: the great variety of his good aunt’s collection enabled him to gratify the tastes of all, for his box contained one member or other of every saint mentioned in the monk of Treves’s martyrology. St. Bridget’s leg he sold at a high price to a miserable old noble who had grown rich by rapine, and who trusted by this measure to scare away the goblins and spectres who nightly kept their revels round his bed. The thumb of St. Austin was purchased by a beautiful princess, as the guard of her chastity amid the allurements of a court, and was suspended like a camphor bag around her delicate neck; while the illustrious mother of a reprobate young knight earnestly hoped, by tacking a piece of the hair shirt of St. Jerome to the shirt of her son, to effect a reformation in his morals, and an amendment in his manners. There were always abundance of fools in the world, and in those unlettered times it did not require the light of a lantern to look for them. Ludolph thought so, as, with a lightened box but a heavy purse, he returned to Tecklenburgh to fit out for his expedition. Hosen, boots, vests, tunics, hoods, harness, and arms, were all ready in a short time; for when a man has money, every thing else under the sun is very much at his service. His appointments were all of the handsomest kind; his device was a boar, and his colours were blue and scarlet. And thus, having equipped the knight and sent him forward, let us look back for a little, to ascertain whither he is going, and for what purpose when he shall arrive there.

The cause of the princes of Thuringia was, as count Ludolph had truly stated, a just and honourable one: their father, Albert the Depraved, had disinherited them, and banished their mother, in favour of a worthless mistress and his illegitimate son, for whom he anxiously endeavoured to procure the investiture of his dominions after his decease. Not succeeding in this notable project, and bent upon the ruin of his own children, he sold his landgraviate of Misnia to the emperor Adolphus, who dying before he could be benefited by his purchase, bequeathed this right, to which he had no right at all, to his brother Philip of Nassau, who, poor in character, and still poorer in purse, was now levying an army, aided by the emperor Albert, to deprive the legitimate heir, Frederic with the Bite, and his brother Dictman, of their rights and possessions. To this project they were by no means disposed to consent, more especially as their mother, Margaret, daughter of Frederic the Redbeard, continually kept alive their resentment against their worthless father and his abandoned associates. This princess, on being years before separated from her children by her husband, had requested permission to take leave of them ere their departure, which being granted, she, in the frenzy of rage and grief, left a singular memorial of her wrongs with her eldest son; she bit a piece out of his cheek, and the impression remaining upon his face for ever, inflamed his indignation against the original author of this disfigurement; so that, when capable of bearing arms, he deposed his father and assumed his place, to thrust him from which Philip of Nassau was now threatening, and to oppose whom half Germany was rising in arms to assist the cheek-bitten Frederic, and among many others the handsome knight of Tecklenburgh.

Margaret of Suabia, the mother of the princes, during the early part of her life, had been confined by her husband in the castle of Wartzburg, in order that she might be removed the more readily into a still smaller abode, whenever the proper opportunity should occur, and which he piously determined not to neglect. She was at this period in a situation which might have interested any man but such a husband, for she promised to increase his illustrious family by an additional son or daughter; but as he cared for no children but the son of his mistress Cunegunda, this circumstance rather operated against the poor princess, who was left to amuse herself as well as she could in superintending the infancy of her sons, and hunting in the haunted forest of Eisenac. One day, while thus diverting her attention from the many anxieties which oppressed her, she found herself suddenly separated from her attendants; but hearing a horn sound to the right, she spurred on her palfrey in that direction, till, after an hour’s hard riding, she began to fear she was removing still further from her people, for no sound could she hear but that of the eternal bugle, no hoof-tramp but that of her own steed. Still the horn sounded, and still the princess galloped, till at length, wearied by her exercise, and finding herself in a large open plain, she dismounted to reconnoitre; at the same moment she remarked the silence of the horn, and the appearance of a gigantic orange tree, loaded with fine fruit, in the centre of the tranquil plain. Astonishment she certainly felt on beholding so extraordinary and beautiful an object; but hunger and fatigue had entirely banished all notions of fear; besides, dame Margaret, having no small share of the curiosity of her grandmother Eve, could no more resist the temptation of tasting these oranges, than the first woman did the apple; so climbing up into the tree, she regaled herself to her heart’s content with this fine fruit of the forest. By the time she had fairly dined, and was as weary of eating as she had previously been of riding, she bethought her of the boys at home, and with what glee they would have marched to the sack of the orange tree; but as that was not possible, she determined they should not be without share of the spoil, and therefore began to fill her huge pockets with the ripest and largest of the fruit. But this action displeased the hospitable master of the table at which she had been so plentifully regaled; “Eat, but take nothing away,” had been one of his maxims, and he was mortally offended to see this honest rule set at nought in the person of a princess, a lady who, he thought, ought to have understood better manners. Before, therefore, she had laid up provisions for the march, a little shrill voice from the tree commanded her highness “not to steal his fruit,” and, at the same instant, there issued from the trunk, which opened to give him a passage, a figure which effectually satisfied the curiosity of the princess of Suabia. The animal which now quickly ascended the tree, and placed himself _vis à vis_ with her highness, was a little deformed man, about three feet and a half high, with a face as yellow as the oranges upon which he lived, hair of the same hue hanging down to his heels, and a monstrous beard, of the same bilious complexion, gracefully descending to his feet; if you add to this, the gaiety of his yellow doublet, short cloak, and hose, you will not wonder that Margaret did not altogether relish the _tête à tête_ in which she found herself so suddenly and singularly placed, independent of the awkwardness of paying a first visit in the boughs of a tree. “Princess,” said the little yellow devil, after staring at her some time with his two huge goggling yellow eyes, “what business have you here?” “I have lost my way,” she replied, “and being fatigued, was going to gather an orange to appease my hunger:” but he, without the least respect for his guest, or the rank of an emperor’s daughter, rudely answered, “Woman, you lie! you were stealing my property to carry away.” At this insolent reproach, Margaret, whose patience was never proverbial, felt a strong inclination to treat the demon as she afterwards did her son; but fearing that the little gentleman might not endure it quite so temperately, prudently restrained this effort of her indignation, and only said, “I did not know the tree had any other owner than myself, or I would not have gathered any; what I have eaten I cannot restore, but here is the last I have taken;” and she threw it rather roughly at the Dwarf, who, irritated excessively at this behaviour, told her, grinning hideously, and exhibiting for her admiration his monstrous overgrown yellow claws, that he had a strong temptation to tear her to pieces, which nothing but his wish to be allied to the blood of the emperors should have prevented. “My oranges,” said he, “which you have stolen, I estimate above all price, except that which I am going to demand: I am a powerful demon, and rule with unbounded sway many thousand spirits; but I am unhappy in not having a wife with whom to share my power; as Adam was not delighted in Paradise, neither am I in my Orange Tree, without a companion. You are about to present an infant to your lord, who is utterly indifferent about the matter; it will be a girl, and I demand her in marriage on the day she will be twenty years old: consent to be my mother, and I will avenge your injuries upon your husband, and load you with honours and riches; refuse, and I will tear you in pieces this moment, and furnish my supper table with your carcase.” Margaret, who had never been so terrified in all her life, and would not only have given her daughter, but her sons and husband into the bargain, to have got away, readily promised to agree with the Dwarf’s wishes, who now became exceedingly polite, embraced his dear mother, and assured her of his devotion. He then informed her he would give her notice some months before he should claim his wife, placed her carefully and tenderly upon her palfrey, and mounting behind, spurred on the animal, who flew like the wind to the entrance of the forest; where again embracing his good mother, he dismounted and disappeared. Margaret, freed from the odious company of the Yellow Dwarf, began to reflect with no very pleasant feelings upon her present adventure and future prospects. She was, indeed, safe out of the orange-coloured clutches of her dutiful and well-beloved son; and, vexed as she was by the horrible promise she had been obliged to make, she could not help congratulating herself with great sincerity upon this circumstance, and began, like all who have just escaped a present danger, to make light of the evils in the distance. The farther she cantered from the Orange Tree, the easier her mind became; and taking a few hints from “Time, the comforter,” she reflected that many things might occur before the expiration of twenty years: it was a long period to look forward; the little yellow devil might die, (and, indeed, she could not but allow that he looked most miserably ill,) or he might forget his bargain, or he might be conquered and killed by some black, pea-green, or true blue devil, who might be stronger or more powerful than himself; or, in case of the worst, she could secure her daughter in some strong castle or convent, or marry her, before the expiration of the term, to some prince capable of protecting her; at all events, thought Margaret, “sufficient to the day is the evil thereof;” and, delighted by these soothing reflections, and charmed to find herself in a whole skin, she trotted along with great complacency, and arrived quite comforted before the gates of Wartzburg.