Chapter XV

For several weeks Henry Langford had enjoyed a degree of happiness which he had never before known. From the night in which he was wounded in defence of Alice Herbert, till the evening preceding the day on which we last left him, had been a period full of sweet hopes and new sensations, ending with the crowning joy of all, the knowledge of loving and being beloved. That period of bright light, however, had now been suddenly contrasted with as deep a shadow as had ever fallen on any part of his existence, and yet in the course of that existence he had known some sorrows and some cares. None, however, had touched him so deeply as this; for now he was imprisoned, not in consequence of having fallen into the power of a foreign enemy, taken in battle, and esteemed even while restrained--but accused of a base and cowardly crime, separated from those he loved best, placed in a situation from which it might be difficult to extricate himself, and feeling more deeply and painfully for the unhappy youth of whose murder he was accused than any one knew.

Sitting in solitude and in silence, the remainder of Henry Langford's day, after the half-witted man had left him, passed over in gloom and anxious thought. It was not that he yielded to despondency; it was not that he suffered hope to extinguish her torch, or even to shade its light for a moment. Knowing himself innocent of the crime with which he was charged, knowing that he possessed the love of Alice Herbert, and feeling sure that that love would never after, there was always a balm for grief and anxiety. But still, even when he thought of Alice Herbert herself, when he remembered the situation of her father, and knew that any false steps might plunge the worthy knight into irretrievable ruin, he could not be without anxiety on that score either; and, whichever way he turned his eyes, there were clouds upon the horizon that threatened to gather into a storm.

The treatment which he received from the Earl of Danemore, indeed, was in all respects consolatory. That nobleman, it was clear, hardly entertained any suspicion of his having had a share in the murder of his son. Several times in the course of the evening, servants were sent to ascertain if he wanted anything. The ordinary meals of the day were regularly set before him; and when night fell, lights were brought, and various kinds of fine wine were left in the room, sufficient to satisfy him if by chance he had addicted himself to the evil habit of deep drinking, but too common in those days.

Some short time after the lights had been brought, he heard a step approaching his room by the smaller staircase, and the Earl again appeared. The expression of his countenance was agitated and anxious; but he apologised courteously for intruding, and then added, "I thought you might be pleased to learn that the whole of Upwater Mere has been dragged with the greatest care, without anything having been found to confirm my apprehensions in regard to its having been made the receptacle of my poor son's body. It is very foolish, under such circumstances, and with such proofs of his death as we have, to give way to hope; but yet I cannot help yielding a little to your reasoning of this morning."

"I hope and trust, my lord," replied Langford, "that reasoning may not prove fallacious. Far be it from me to wish to instil false hopes, but I would certainly, were I you, not give myself up to despair till the truth of the calamity is better ascertained."

"I know," replied the Earl, "that coincidences very often happen, giving much unnecessary alarm. Indeed, the story which you told this morning is an extraordinary proof of the fact. I remember having heard it before," he added, in a careless tone, "though I forget where it was. Pray, where did the incident happen?"

Langford mused for a single moment, and then looked up with something of a meaning smile. "It occurred, my lord," he replied, "in the Gulf of Florida, many years ago. I therefore do not know it from my own personal knowledge; but I have heard it from one who was present, and who told me the whole particulars of that and many another adventure in those seas."

It was now Lord Danemore's turn to muse, and he did so with a cloudy brow, gnawing his nether lip, as if struggling with some powerful emotions. "Pray, do you know the name of the captain of the ship?" he asked, at length, affecting the same careless tone with which he had before spoken.

"Yes, my lord," replied Langford; "I know his name and his whole history from that time to the present hour."

Lord Danemore turned very pale, and then mused for several minutes in silence. Nor was it unworthy of remark that he did not demand the name of the captain of the vessel, though the moment before he had seemed so much interested in the subject. He remained gloomy and silent, however, as we have said, knitting his brow thoughtfully, and his first words were--though in so low a tone that Langford did not hear them--"People may know too much."

Perceiving his lips move, and seeing that he was evidently much affected by what had passed, Langford, who had spoken with some degree of emphasis, added, with apparent indifference, "Yes, oh yes; I know his whole history well. He was an English gentleman of a brave, daring, and enterprising disposition, who, having been driven from his own country, and deprived for the time of his own possessions, pursued a wild and fitful course of life; now serving with gallant distinction in the armies of foreign countries, now becoming a rover on the high seas, and acquiring for himself a fearful and redoubtable fame, till the restoration of the king suddenly recalled him to fortunes and honours in his own land."

Lord Danemore made no direct reply; but putting his hand to his head, he said, "It is very hot; I have seldom known a more oppressive night."

As he spoke, the storm, which had been long coming up, burst forth with a bright flash, which blazed with a blue and ghastly light round the dark wainscotted chamber in which they sat, lighting up every cornice and ornament in the carved oak, and seeming absolutely to play amidst the papers on the table. At that very instant both Lord Danemore and Langford raised their eyes each to the countenance of his companion, and gazed upon each other with a firm and questioning glance.

"That was a bright flash," said the Earl, with a lip that curled slightly as he spoke; "I do not know that I ever saw a brighter--except in the Gulf of Florida!"

He added nothing more, nor waited for any reply, but rose as he spoke, and abruptly quitted the room. He trod the stairs down to his own private apartments with a heavy but irregular step, and paused at the bottom for several moments ere he opened the door which gave entrance to his own dressing-room, thinking, with a gloomy brow and eyes bent steadfast, sightless, upon the ground. At length, he entered and cast himself into a chair, clasping his strong bony hands firmly over each other; and oh! what a wild chaos of mingled feelings, and strong passions, and memories, and regrets, and dreads, and expectations, did his bosom at that moment contain.

All those passions were now called up in his bosom: and the struggle between them was the more tremendous, inasmuch as they were, in many points, arrayed nearly equally against each other. Henry Langford had in a few words laid before him the picture of his life, and had shown a deep and intimate knowledge of that darker part of his history which he had believed to be buried in profound oblivion. For more than twenty years he had heard no allusion to those days of wild and roving adventure, when, driven forth, as he fancied, for ever from his native land, stripped of his rank and his possessions, he had given way to the impulses of a rash, daring, and fierce spirit, had piled upon his own head many a heavy remorse, and seared his own heart with many a deed of evil. He had believed that all the companions of those days were either gone or scattered far from the high and lordly path in which he now trod; he had imagined that he had removed every trace of that bond of fate which united the proud, cold, wealthy Earl of Danemore, the domineering spirit of the country round, to the wild rover of the western seas, whose deeds of daring and of blood were still remembered with awe and fear in a land fertile of strong passions and great crimes.

There were many who remembered him in exile, indeed, but in that part of his exile when his daring courage and great powers had been employed in noble warfare and in an honourable cause; but he thought that the very fact of being so remembered would be an additional safeguard against all suspicion in regard to another period. There was, indeed, a lapse of several years in which his history was unknown to all such companions of his brighter days; and he had more than once been asked where he was when some great event had happened on which the conversation at the moment turned. But Lord Danemore was not a man to be interrogated closely by any one; and, as we have said, he firmly believed that all those who could have answered such questions by pointing to the dark and evil events which had been crowded into a few short years of his life, were far removed, plunged beneath the rolling waves of the ocean, buried upon the sandy beach of distant lands, or with their bones whitening--a public spectacle--in the sun.

Now, however, suddenly, after a long and sunshiny lapse of peaceful years, the memories of former acts were recalled when he least expected them--recalled by one who seemed to have a perfect knowledge of every fact he could have desired to hide; and the dark train of images conjured up from the past: the regret, the remorse, the shame, which he had banished long and carefully, were now linked hand in hand with apprehensions for the future, with the fear of exposure, if not the dread of punishment. His mind, however, was in no unfit state for receiving gloomy impressions, his heart was already excited for the entertainment of fierce and angry passions. Through the whole of that day, from a very early hour in the morning, he had been torn with grief and anger, now mourning over the loss of his son with the deep anguish of wounded affection, now vowing vengeance against that son's murderer, while his heart felt scorched and seared by the burning thirst for revenge.

Disappointment, too, deep and bitter disappointment, had had its share--the disappointment of a proud and ambitious heart. On the son now lost he had fixed all his hopes and all his aspirations, in him had he trusted to see his life prolonged, through him had he expected that future generations would carry on his name with increasing wealth and greatness. Now all was over; the son on whom he had relied was gone; he was childless, lonely, cut off from hope and expectations, to live in darkness and solitude through the chill autumnal twilight of his age, and then to die, leaving all the vast possessions which he had obtained to a distant kinsman, whom he hated and despised.

Such had been, in some degree, the state of his feelings, so shaken, so agitated, when he suddenly found that shame was likely to be added to the other burdens cast upon him, and that the vice and crimes of other years were rising up in judgment against him even at the latest hour. The drop thus cast in was sufficient to make the cup overflow. Never through life had he been accustomed to put any restraint upon the fierce passions of his heart, and now what was there that could act as any check upon them? what was there to prevent him from seeking their gratification? what was there to oppose the desire which instantly sprang up within his heart, of silencing for ever the voice which might tell the dark secrets of other years?

Nevertheless, there was a check, there was something that opposed him in the fiery course he might otherwise have pursued: ay, and opposed him strongly, though it was but a feeling connected with other years, though it was but one of those strange associations between the present and the past which often have a firmer hold upon us than more immediate interests or affections. There was something in Langford's face, there was something in his manner and whole appearance, there was something in the very tone of his voice, rich, and musical, and harmonious, which called up as forcibly to his mind a period of sweet, and early, and happy days, as the tale he had told brought over the glass of memory the dark and awful features of another epoch.

At the sound of that voice, at the glance of that eye, the forms of many bright, and dear, and beloved, many who had been known and esteemed in times of innocence and of happiness, rose up as clearly before him, as if some magic wand had waved over the dark past, and brought out of the dim masses of things irrecoverably gone the images of the dead clothed in all the semblance of life and reality. The associations thus raised were all sweet; and in regard to him who called them up, there was a strange feeling of tenderness, of affection, and of interest, which at the very first sight had made him feel confident that he could never have been the murderer of his son, that he who seemed connected with the brightest portion of his early life could never be one to render the latter part of his existence all dark and desolate.

Then again, when he remembered that the same man held in his possession the great, the terrible secret of his former deeds, all his feelings and his thoughts were changed, and sensations almost approaching to despair came over him--a stern, dark, eager resolution, akin to those fierce determinations and sensations which had filled up that portion of his being to which his thoughts were so suddenly directed.

He sat, then, and gazed upon the ground, with his hands clasped over each other; and twice he murmured to himself, "People may know too much." He pondered upon every word that had been spoken, and for nearly half an hour his thoughts wandered, with a vague uncertain rambling, over the various epochs of the past, connecting them with the present, and then turning again and again towards the past, while anguish and pleasure were still strangely mingled in the retrospect. Still, however, when he remembered the words of Langford, and felt himself to a certain degree in his power, the same dark but ill-defined purpose returned of removing for ever from his path one who held so dangerous a tie upon him. He felt, indeed, a reluctance, a hesitation, a doubt, which he somewhat scorned himself for feeling; and he nerved his mind more and more every moment to execute his determination calmly and deliberately. "I will never live in the fear of any mortal man," he thought. "Were he ten times as like, he should not bear my fate about with him! How! shall he be my only consideration? Surely I am not become either a child or a woman, to waver in such a case as this!"

As he thus thought, he rose from his seat, and strode up and down the room with his arms folded on his chest. Over the large and massy mantelpiece of many-coloured marbles, hung a number of weapons of different kinds; pistols, and swords, and firelocks, and daggers, some of foreign, and some of British, manufacture. There appeared the long Toledo blade, the broad Turkish dagger, the Italian stiletto, the no longer used matchlock, and many another weapon, arranged in fanciful devices; and each time, as the Earl turned up and down the room, he paused and gazed upon them, then bit his lips, and recommenced his course across the chamber. When this had proceeded for about a quarter of an hour, some one knocked at the door, and he started sharply, as if caught in some evil act. The next moment, however, he called to the person without to come in, speaking in an angry tone; and a servant, who, from his dress and appearance, seemed to be his own particular valet, appeared, announcing that Mr. Kinsight, the lawyer, had just arrived on important business.

"I am glad of it," said the Earl; "take him to the library: I will come directly." And as soon as the servant was gone, he added, "This man may be of some use."

He then carefully locked the door which led from his dressing-room to the room which had been assigned to Langford, and descended to the library, to confer with an agent worthy of his purposes.