CHAPTER IX.
HOW THE DESTRUCTIVE ORGAN OF PRINCE RICHARD PROMISES GOODLY
DEVELOPMENT.
The Duke of Gloucester approached Adam as he stood gazing on his
model. "Old man," said the prince, touching him with the point of his
sheathed dagger, "look up and answer. What converse hast thou held
with Henry of Windsor, and who commissioned thee to visit him in his
confinement? Speak, and the truth! for by holy Paul, I am one who can
detect a lie, and without that door stands--the Tormentor!"
Upon a pleasing and joyous dream broke these harsh words; for Adam
then was full of the contrivance by which to repair the defect of the
engine, and with this suggestion was blent confusedly the thought that
he was now protected by royalty, that he should have means and leisure
to accomplish his great design, that he should have friends whose
power could obtain its adoption by the king. He raised his eyes, and
that young dark face frowned upon him,--the child menacing the sage,
brute force in a pigmy shape, having authority of life and death over
the giant strength of genius. But these words, which recalled Warner
from his existence as philosopher, woke that of the gentle but brave
and honourable man which he was, when reduced to earth.
"Sir," he said gravely, "if I have consented to hold converse with the
unhappy, it was not as the tell-tale and the spier. I had formal
warrant for my visit, and I was solicited to render it by an early
friend and comrade, who sought to be my benefactor in aiding with gold
my poor studies for the king's people."
"Tut!" said Richard, impatiently, and playing with his dagger hilt;
"thy words, stealthy and evasive, prove thy guilt! Sure am I that
this iron traitor with its intricate hollows and recesses holds what,
unless confessed, will give thee to the hangman! Confess all, and
thou art spared."
"If," said Adam, mildly, "your Highness--for though I know not your
quality, I opine that no one less than royal could so menace--if your
Highness imagines that I have been intrusted by a fallen man, wrong me
not by supposing that I could fear death more than dishonour; for
certes!" continued Adam, with innocent pedantry, "to put the case
scholastically, and in the logic familiar, doubtless, to your
Highness, either I have something to confess or I have not; if I have--"
"Hound!" interrupted the prince, stamping his foot, "thinkest thou to
banter me,--see!" As his foot shook the floor, the door opened, and a
man with his arms bare, covered from head to foot in a black gown of
serge, with his features concealed by a hideous mask, stood ominously
at the aperture.
The prince motioned to the torturer (or tormentor, as he was
technically styled) to approach, which he did noiselessly, till he
stood, tall, grim, and lowering, beside Adam, like some silent and
devouring monster by its prey.
"Dost thou repent thy contumacy? A moment, and I render my
questioning to another!"
"Sir," said Adam, drawing himself up, and with so sudden a change of
mien, that his loftiness almost awed even the dauntless Richard,--
"sir, my fathers feared not death when they did battle for the throne
of England; and why?--because in their loyal valour they placed not
the interests of a mortal man, but the cause of imperishable honour!
And though their son be a poor scholar, and wears not the spurs of
gold; though his frame be weak and his hairs gray, he loveth honour
also well eno' to look without dread on death!"
Fierce and ruthless, when irritated and opposed, as the prince was, he
was still in his first youth,--ambition had here no motive to harden
him into stone. He was naturally so brave himself that bravery could
not fail to win from him something of respect and sympathy, and he was
taken wholly by surprise in hearing the language of a knight and hero
from one whom he had regarded but as the artful impostor or the
despicable intriguer.
He changed countenance as Warner spoke, and remained a moment silent.
Then as a thought occurred to him, at which his features relaxed into
a half-smile, he beckoned to the tormentor, said a word in his ear,
and the horrible intruder nodded and withdrew.
"Master Warner," then said the prince, in his customary sweet and
gliding tones, "it were a pity that so gallant a gentleman should be
exposed to peril for adhesion to a cause that can never prosper, and
that would be fatal, could it prosper, to our common country. For
look you, this Margaret, who is now, we believe, in London" (here he
examined Adam's countenance, which evinced surprise), "this Margaret,
who is seeking to rekindle the brand and brennen of civil war, has
already sold for base gold to the enemy of the realm, to Louis XI.,
that very Calais which your fathers, doubtless, lavished their blood
to annex to our possessions. Shame on the lewd harlot! What woman so
bloody and so dissolute? What man so feeble and craven as her lord?"
"Alas! sir," said Adam, "I am unfitted for these high considerations
of state. I live but for my art, and in it. And now, behold how my
kingdom is shaken and rent!" he pointed with so touching a smile, and
so simple a sadness, to the broken engine, that Richard was moved.
"Thou lovest this, thy toy? I can comprehend that love for some dumb
thing that we have toiled for. Ay!" continued the prince,
thoughtfully,--"ay! I have noted myself in life that there are
objects, senseless as that mould of iron, which if we labour at them
wind round our hearts as if they were flesh and blood. So some men
love learning, others glory, others power. Well, man, thou lovest
that mechanical? How many years hast thou been about it?"
"From the first to the last, twenty-five years, and it is still
incomplete."
"Um!" said the prince, smiling, "Master Warner, thou hast read of the
judgment of Solomon,--how the wise king discovered the truth by
ordering the child's death?"
"It was indeed," said Adam, unsuspectingly, "a most shrewd suggestion
of native wit and clerkly wisdom."
"Glad am I thou approvest it, Master Warner," said Richard. And as he
spoke the tormentor reappeared with a smith, armed with the implements
of his trade.
"Good smith, break into pieces this stubborn iron; bare all its
receptacles; leave not one fragment standing on the other! 'Delenda
est tua Carthago,' Master Warner. There is Latin in answer to thy
logic."
It is impossible to convey any notion of the terror, the rage, the
despair, which seized upon the unhappy sage when these words smote his
ear, and he saw the smith's brawny arms swing on high the ponderous
hammer. He flung himself between the murderous stroke and his beloved
model. He embraced the grim iron tightly. "Kill me!" he exclaimed
sublimely, "kill me!--not my THOUGHT!"
"Solomon was verily and indeed a wise king," said the duke, with a low
inward laugh. "And now, man, I have thee! To save thy infant, thine
art's hideous infant, confess the whole!"
It was then that a fierce struggle evidently took place in Adam's
bosom. It was, perhaps--O reader! thou whom pleasure, love, ambition,
hatred, avarice, in thine and our ordinary existence, tempt--it was,
perhaps, to him the one arch-temptation of a life. In the changing
countenance, the heaving breast, the trembling lip, the eyes that
closed and opened to close again, as if to shut out the unworthy
weakness,--yea, in the whole physical man,--was seen the crisis of the
moral struggle. And what, in truth, to him an Edward or a Henry, a
Lancaster or a York? Nothing. But still that instinct, that
principle, that conscience, ever strongest in those whose eyes are
accustomed to the search of truth, prevailed. So he rose suddenly and
quietly, drew himself apart, left his work to the Destroyer, and
said,--
"Prince, thou art a boy! Let a boy's voice annihilate that which
should have served all time. Strike!"
Richard motioned; the hammer descended, the engine and its
appurtenances reeled and crashed, the doors flew open, the wheels
rattled, the sparks flew. And Adam Warner fell to the ground, as if
the blow had broken his own heart. Little heeding the insensible
victim of his hard and cunning policy, Richard advanced to the
inspection of the interior recesses of the machinery. But that which
promised Adam's destruction saved him. The heavy stroke had battered
in the receptacle of the documents, had buried them in the layers of
iron. The faithful Eureka, even amidst its injuries and wrecks,
preserved the secret of its master.
The prince, with impatient hands, explored all the apertures yet
revealed, and after wasting many minutes in a fruitless search, was
about to bid the smith complete the work of destruction, when the door
suddenly opened and Lord Hastings entered. His quick eye took in the
whole scene; he arrested the lifted arm of the smith, and passing
deliberately to Gloucester, said, with a profound reverence, but a
half-reproachful smile, "My lord! my lord! your Highness is indeed
severe upon my poor scholar."
"Canst thou answer for thy scholar's loyalty?" said the duke,
gloomily.
Hastings drew the prince aside, and said, in a low tone, "His loyalty!
poor man, I know not; but his guilelessness, surely, yes. Look you,
sweet prince, I know the interest thou hast in keeping well with the
Earl of Warwick, whom I, in sooth, have slight cause to love. Thou
hast trusted me with thy young hopes of the Lady Anne; this new Nevile
placed about the king, and whose fortunes Warwick hath made his care,
hath, I have reason to think, some love passages with the scholar's
daughter,--the daughter came to me for the passport. Shall this
Marmaduke Nevile have it to say to his fair kinswoman, with the
unforgiving malice of a lover's memory, that the princely Gloucester
stooped to be the torturer of yon poor old man? If there be treason
in the scholar or in yon battered craft-work, leave the search to me!"
The duke raised his dark, penetrating eyes to those of Hastings, which
did not quail; for here world-genius encountered world-genius, and
art, art.
"Thine argument hath more subtlety and circumlocution than suit with
simple truth," said the prince, smiling. "But it is enough to Richard
that Hastings wills protection even to a spy!"
Hastings kissed the duke's hand in silence, and going to the door, he
disappeared a moment and returned with Sibyll. As she entered, pale
and trembling, Adam rose, and the girl with a wild cry flew to his
bosom.
"It is a winsome face, Hastings," said the duke, dryly. "I pity
Master Nevile the lover, and envy my Lord Chamberlain the protector."
Hastings laughed, for he was well pleased that Richard's suspicion
took that turn.
"And now," he said, "I suppose Master Nevile and the Duchess of
Bedford's page may enter. Your guard stopped them hitherto. They
come for this gentleman from her highness the queen's mother."
"Enter, Master Nevile, and you, Sir Page. What is your errand?"
"My lady, the duchess," said the page, "has sent me to conduct Master
Warner to the apartments prepared for him as her special multiplier
and alchemist."
"What!" said the prince, who, unlike the irritable Clarence, made it
his policy to show all decorous homage to the queen's kin, "hath that
illustrious lady taken this gentleman into her service? Why announced
you not, Master Warner, what at once had saved you from further
questioning? Lord Hastings, I thank you now for your intercession."
Hastings, in answer, pointed archly at Marmaduke, who was aiding
Sibyll to support her father. "Do you suspect me still, prince?" he
whispered.
The duke shrugged his shoulders, and Adam, breaking from Marmaduke and
Sibyll, passed with tottering steps to the shattered labour of his
solitary life. He looked at the ruin with mournful despondence, with
quivering lips. "Have you done with me?" then he said, bowing his
head lowlily, for his pride was gone; "may we--that is, I and this, my
poor device--withdraw from your palace? I see we are not fit for
kings!"
"Say not so," said the young duke, gently: "we have now convinced
ourselves of our error, and I crave thy pardon, Master Warner, for my
harsh dealings. As for this, thy toy, the king's workmen shall set it
right for thee. Smith, call the fellows yonder, to help bear this
to--" He paused, and glanced at Hastings.
"To my apartments," said the chamberlain. "Your Highness may be sure
that I will there inspect it. Fear not, Master Warner; no further
harm shall chance to thy contrivance."
"Come, sir, forgive me," said the duke. With gracious affability the
young prince held out his hand, the fingers of which sparkled with
costly gems, to the old man. The old man bowed as if his beard would
have swept the earth, but he did not touch the hand. He seemed still
in a state between dream and reason, life and death: he moved not,
spoke not, till the men came to bear the model; and he then followed
it, his arms folded in his gown, till, on entering the court, it was
borne in a contrary direction from his own, to the chamberlain's
apartment; then wistfully pursuing it with his eyes, he uttered such a
sigh as might have come from a resigned father losing the last glimpse
of a beloved son.
Richard hesitated a moment, loth to relinquish his research, and
doubtful whether to follow the Eureka for renewed investigation; but
partly unwilling to compromise his dignity in the eyes of Hastings,
should his suspicions prove unfounded, and partly indisposed to risk
the displeasure of the vindictive Duchess of Bedford by further
molestation of one now under her protection, he reluctantly trusted
all further inquiry to the well-known loyalty of Hastings. "If
Margaret be in London," he muttered to himself as he turned slowly
away, "now is the time to seize and chain the lioness! Ho, Catesby,--
hither (a valuable man that Catesby--a lawyer's nurturing with a
bloodhound's nature!)--Catesby, while King Edward rides for pleasure,
let thou and I track the scent of his foes. If the she-wolf of Anjou
hath ventured hither, she hides in some convent or monastery, be sure.
See to our palfreys, Catesby! Strange," added the prince, muttering
to himself, "that I am more restless to guard the crown than he who
wears it! Nay, a crown is a goodly heirloom in a man's family, and a
fair sight to see near--and near--and near--"
The prince abruptly paused, opened and shut his right hand
convulsively, and drew a long sigh.
