CHAPTER IV.
EXHIBITING THE BENEFITS WHICH ROYAL PATRONAGE CONFERS ON GENIUS,--ALSO
THE EARLY LOVES OF THE LORD HASTINGS; WITH OTHER MATTERS EDIFYING AND
DELECTABLE.
The furnace was still at work, the flame glowed, the bellows heaved;
but these were no longer ministering to the service of a mighty and
practical invention. The mathematician, the philosopher, had
descended to the alchemist. The nature of the TIME had conquered the
nature of a GENIUS meant to subdue time. Those studies that had gone
so far to forestall the master-triumph of far later ages were
exchanged for occupations that played with the toys of infant wisdom.
O true Tartarus of Genius, when its energies are misapplied, when the
labour but rolls the stone up the mountain, but pours water upon water
through the sieve!
There is a sanguineness in men of great intellect which often leads
them into follies avoided by the dull. When Adam Warner saw the ruin
of his contrivance; when be felt that time and toil and money were
necessary to its restoration; and when the gold he lacked was placed
before him as a reward for alchemical labours, he at first turned to
alchemy as he would have turned to the plough,--as he had turned to
conspiracy,--simply as a means to his darling end. But by rapid
degrees the fascination which all the elder sages experienced in the
grand secret exercised its witchery over his mind. If Roger Bacon,
though catching the notion of the steam-engine, devoted himself to the
philosopher's stone; if even in so much more enlightened an age Newton
had wasted some precious hours in the transmutation of metals, it was
natural that the solitary sage of the reign of Edward IV. should grow,
for a while at least, wedded to a pursuit which promised results so
august. And the worst of alchemy is, that it always allures on its
victims: one gets so near and so near the object,--it seems that so
small an addition will complete the sum! So there he was--this great
practical genius--hard at work on turning copper into gold!
"Well, Master Warner," said the young goldsmith, entering the
student's chamber, "methinks you scarcely remember your friend and
visitor, Nicholas Alwyn?"
"Remember, oh, certes! doubtless one of the gentlemen present when
they proposed to put me to the brake. [the old word for rack] Please
to stand a little on this side--what is your will?"
"I am not a gentleman, and I should have been loth to stand idly by
when the torture was talked of for a free-born Englishman, let alone a
scholar. And where is your fair daughter, Master Warner? I suppose
you see but little of her now she is the great dame's waiting-damsel?"
"And why so, Master Alwyn?" asked a charming voice; and Alwyn for the
first time perceived the young form of Sibyll, by the embrasure of a
window, from which might be seen in the court below a gay group of
lords and courtiers, with the plain, dark dress of Hastings,
contrasting their gaudy surcoats, glittering with cloth-of-gold.
Alwyn's tongue clove to his mouth; all he had to say was forgotten in
a certain bashful and indescribable emotion.
The alchemist had returned to his furnace, and the young man and the
girl were as much alone as if Adam Warner had been in heaven.
"And why should the daughter forsake the sire more in a court, where
love is rare, than in the humbler home, where they may need each other
less?"
"I thank thee for the rebuke, mistress," said Alwyn, delighted with
her speech; "for I should have been sorry to see thy heart spoiled by
the vanities that kill most natures." Scarcely had he uttered these
words, than they seemed to him overbold and presuming; for his eye now
took in the great change of which Marmaduke had spoken. Sibyll's
dress beseemed the new rank which she held: the corset, fringed with
gold, and made of the finest thread, showed the exquisite contour of
the throat and neck, whose ivory it concealed. The kirtle of rich
blue became the fair complexion and dark chestnut hair; and over all
she wore that most graceful robe, called the sasquenice, of which the
old French poet sang,--
"Car nulie robe n'est si belle
A dame ne a demoiselle."
This garment, worn over the rest of the dress, had perhaps a classical
origin, and with slight variations may be seen on the Etruscan vases;
it was long and loose, of the whitest and finest linen, with hanging
sleeves, and open at the sides. But it was not the mere dress that
had embellished the young maiden's form and aspect,--it was rather an
indefinable alteration in the expression and the bearing. She looked
as if born to the airs of courts; still modest indeed, and simple, but
with a consciousness of dignity, and almost of power; and in fact the
woman had been taught the power that womanhood possesses. She had
been admired, followed, flattered; she had learned the authority of
beauty. Her accomplishments, uncommon in that age among her sex, had
aided her charm of person; her natural pride, which, though hitherto
latent, was high and ardent, fed her heart with sweet hopes; a bright
career seemed to extend before her; and, at peace as to her father's
safety, relieved from the drudging cares of poverty, her fancy was
free to follow the phantasms of sanguine youth through the airy land
of dreams. And therefore it was that the maid was changed!
At the sight of the delicate beauty, the self-possessed expression,
the courtly dress, the noble air of Sibyll, Nicholas Alwyn recoiled
and turned pale; he no longer marvelled at her rejection of Marmaduke,
and he started at the remembrance of the bold thoughts which he had
dared himself to indulge.
The girl smiled at the young man's confusion.
"It is not prosperity that spoils the heart," she said touchingly,
"unless it be mean indeed. Thou rememberest, Master Alwyn, that when
God tried His saint, it was by adversity and affliction."
"May thy trial in these last be over," answered Alwyn; "but the humble
must console their state by thinking that the great have their trials
too; and, as our homely adage hath it, 'That is not always good in the
maw which is sweet in the mouth.' Thou seest much of my gentle foster-
brother, Mistress Sibyll?"
"But in the court dances, Master Alwyn; for most of the hours in which
my lady duchess needs me not are spent here. Oh, my father hopes
great things! and now at last fame dawns upon him."
"I rejoice to hear it, mistress; and so, having paid ye both my
homage, I take my leave, praying that I may visit you from time to
time, if it be only to consult this worshipful master touching certain
improvements in the horologe, in which his mathematics can doubtless
instruct me. Farewell. I have some jewels to show to the Lady of
Bonville."
"The Lady of Bonville!" repeated Sibyll, changing colour; "she is a
dame of notable loveliness."
"So men say,--and mated to a foolish lord; but scandal, which spares
few, breathes not on her,--rare praise for a court dame. Few Houses
can have the boast of Lord Warwick's,--'that all the men are without
fear, and all the women without stain.'"
"It is said," observed Sibyll, looking down, "that my Lord Hastings
once much affectioned the Lady Bonville. Hast thou heard such
gossip?"
"Surely, yes; in the city we hear all the tales of the court; for many
a courtier, following King Edward's exemplar, dines with the citizen
to-day, that he may borrow gold from the citizen to-morrow. Surely,
yes; and hence, they say, the small love the wise Hastings bears to
the stout earl."
"How runs the tale? Be seated, Master Alwyn."
"Marry, thus: when William Hastings was but a squire, and much
favoured by Richard, Duke of York, he lifted his eyes to the Lady
Katherine Nevile, sister to the Earl of Warwick, and in beauty and in
dower, as in birth, a mate for a king's son."
"And, doubtless, the Lady Katherine returned his love?"
"So it is said, maiden; and the Earl of Salisbury her father and Lord
Warwick her brother discovered the secret, and swore that no new man
(the stout earl's favourite word of contempt), though he were made a
duke, should give to an upstart posterity the quarterings of Montagu
and Nevile. Marry, Mistress Sibyll, there is a north country and
pithy proverb, 'Happy is the man whose father went to the devil.' Had
some old Hastings been a robber and extortioner, and left to brave
William the heirship of his wickedness in lordships and lands, Lord
Warwick had not called him 'a new man.' Master Hastings was dragged,
like a serf's son, before the earl on his dais; and be sure he was
rated soundly, for his bold blood was up, and he defied the earl, as a
gentleman born, to single battle. Then the earl's followers would
have fallen on him; and in those days, under King Henry, he who
bearded a baron in his hall must have a troop at his back, or was like
to have a rope round his neck; but the earl (for the lion is not as
fierce as they paint him) came down from his dais, and said, 'Man, I
like thy spirit, and I myself will dub thee knight that I may pick up
thy glove and give thee battle.'"
"And they fought? Brave Hastings!"
"No. For whether the Duke of York forbade it, or whether the Lady
Katherine would not hear of such strife between fere and frere, I know
not; but Duke Richard sent Hastings to Ireland, and, a month after,
the Lady Katherine married Lord Bonville's son and heir,--so, at
least, tell the gossips and sing the ballad-mongers. Men add that
Lord Hastings still loves the dame, though, certes, he knows how to
console himself."
"Loves her! Nay, nay,--I trove not," answered Sibyll, in a low voice,
and with a curl of her dewy lip.
At this moment the door opened gently and Lord Hastings himself
entered. He came in with the familiarity of one accustomed to the
place.
"And how fares the grand secret, Master Warner? Sweet mistress! thou
seemest lovelier to me in this dark chamber than outshining all in the
galliard. Ha! Master Alwyn, I owe thee many thanks for making me
know first the rare arts of this fair emblazoner. Move me yon stool,
good Alwyn."
As the goldsmith obeyed, he glanced from Hastings to the blushing face
and heaving bosom of Sibyll, and a deep and exquisite pang shot
through his heart. It was not jealousy alone; it was anxiety,
compassion, terror. The powerful Hastings, the ambitious lord, the
accomplished libertine--what a fate for poor Sibyll, if for such a man
the cheek blushed and the bosom heaved!
"Well, Master Warner," resumed Hastings, "thou art still silent as to
thy progress."
The philosopher uttered an impatient groan. "Ah, I comprehend. The
goldmaker must not speak of his craft before the goldsmith. Good
Alwyn, thou mayest retire. All arts have their mysteries."
Alwyn, with a sombre brow, moved to the door.
"In sooth," he said, "I have overtarried, good my lord. The Lady
Bonville will chide me; for she is of no patient temper."
"Bridle thy tongue, artisan, and begone!" said Hastings, with unusual
haughtiness and petulance.
"I stung him there," muttered Alwyn, as he withdrew. "Oh, fool that I
was to--nay, I thought it never, I did but dream it. What wonder we
traders hate these silken lords! They reap, we sow; they trifle, we
toil; they steal with soft words into the hearts which--Oh, Marmaduke,
thou art right-right!--Stout men sit not down to weep beneath the
willow. But she--the poor maiden--she looked so haughty and so happy.
This is early May; will she wear that look when the autumn leaves are
strewn?"
