Agnes Strickland
(1796-1874)
There are partings which are truly “such sweet sorrow,” that they only appear as the heralds of happier meetings; and there are partings when stern destiny imperatively divides those whom love has united so fondly, that absence but renders them the dearer to each other; and there are also partings where the inexorable hand of death severs the silver tie that has linked faithful hearts so firmly, that the extinction of life alone can loosen that tender bond of affection. Such separations are painful, but there is no bitterness in the tears which they cause—tears in which the cordial of hope, or the heavenly balm of resignation to the divine will, is gently infused, leading the mourner to look forward to a reunion with the beloved object in those happy realms where partings are unknown. But oh! how different are the feelings of those who separate in doubt, in anger, and disdain, when the wounded spirit of each is prompted, by offended pride, to veil its agonies under the semblance of coldness and indifference!
It was thus that Helen Milbourne had parted from the object of her tenderest affection, the cavalier Colonel Dagworth, in the moonlight recesses of her Uncle Ireton’s garden at Irmingland Hall, where they had met, at peril of life to him and maiden fame to her. They had met in trembling hope, and with hearts overflowing with a love that neither the difference of party, rank, station, the wrath of kindred, nor the obstacles of time, absence, danger, and uncertainty, could overcome; and yet they had separated in anger, in consequence of a trifling misunderstanding that had arisen between them,—a cause of offence so slight that it would have been difficult for either to have explained why it was given, or wherefore it was taken; yet it had served to rend asunder those ties of tender union which would have defied the efforts of a world combined to have unknit. They parted on either side with a pang more bitter than the separation of soul and body, each smarting under the sense of injurious treatment from the other, and strangely imagining that they had mutually become, in one short hour, the object of hatred—ay, even of scorn—to the being most fondly beloved on earth. And oh, if pride would have permitted either to allow their natural emotions of tenderness and grief to be perceptible to the other, how different would have been the result of their first—their last—their only quarrel! As it was, Colonel Dagworth, agitated and distressed by the painful conviction of the hopeless position of the royal cause, and the ruin that impended over himself in common with all who nobly adhered to the fallen fortunes of his unhappy sovereign, deigned not to offer the slightest attempt at apology or conciliation to the wealthy heiress of the Parliamentary Commissioner, Ralph Milbourne, and the niece of the victorious Roundhead chieftain, Ireton; but, loosening the bridle-rein of his gallant grey from the withered arm of one of the stunted sallows that overhung the moat, he made a stern and silent parting obeisance to her; and, vaulting into the saddle, unconsciously vented his own intense sensation of mental anguish, by striking the rowels of his spurs so sharply into the sides of the faithful animal who had patiently bided his pleasure, that the bloody streaks on its glossy sides were distinctly visible, and would have excited an abhorrent exclamation from Helen had she observed it. But no! she, too, in imitation of her angry lover’s assumed disdain, with a haughty acknowledgment of his repulsive farewell, turned proudly away; yet it was partly to conceal the gush of tears, that overflowed her eyes at the very moment she was acting a part so foreign to her nature; and when she was sure that her motion could not be detected, she hurried to the only spot that commanded a view of the road he had taken, and eagerly strained her tearful gaze to catch a last look of his stately form, as he gained a sudden angle in the road which would conceal his further progress; and here the anxious query proposed itself to her fluttering heart: “Will he not turn his head to look once more?”
He did not. The resentful flush of wounded pride overspread the cheek of Helen, which a moment before had been of the hue of marble, and indignantly dashing away the tears that hung on its polished surface, she murmured,—
“It is past!—You have spurned a true heart from you, Edward Dagworth, and I will think of you no more!”
“No more!” did Helen say? Ay, thus she said, and many a time did she repeat her words; too often, indeed to adhere to the resolution she formed in the bitterness of what she considered slighted love and wronged affection. That indignant sentence, “I will think of him no more,” was the spring of all her thoughts, forbidding her to meditate on aught beside the man she was perpetually vowing she would forget. Alas! he appeared the sole tenant of her memory, so intimately was his idea entwined with every feeling of her nature. It was not in the power of either time, absence, or a sense of his injurious unkindness, to banish his loved image from her mind, though every day she repeated her vain words, “I will think of him no more!” But how could she cease to think of him, in the perilous days when the impending cloud of ruin gathered more darkly every hour over his cause, and the events of the next might lead him to a prison or a scaffold, if, indeed, he escaped the contingencies of the battlefield, or survived the hardships and dangers of the siege of Colchester, where he was now shut up with Lord Capel and the rest of its brave defenders, by the beleaguering force of Sir Thomas Fairfax.
The parents of Colonel Dagworth and Helen Milbourne had been neighbours, but not friends; they belonged to separate and distinct classes of society. The proud old Norfolk knight, Sir Reginald Dagworth, whose only son Colonel Dagworth was, looked down with unfeigned contempt on the acquired wealth and ostentatious pretensions of Master Ralph Milbourne, who had purchased large estates in his immediate vicinity; and whose magnificent new-built mansion, large establishment, and showy equipages, were calculated to excite a painful comparison with the faded splendour of his ancient family,—a family that once held almost princely rank and possessions in his native country, but which, in consequence of a series of imprudences or vicissitudes, was rapidly sinking into decay.
The undesirable location of a wealthy parvenu neighbour was a subject of great annoyance both to Sir Reginald Dagworth and Lady Alice, his wife, who considered it incumbent on them, for the honour of their house, to make an effort to support the superiority of their claims to be the great people of the place; while Ralph Milbourne failed not on his part to testify all the offensive contempt for rank and ancestry which is one of the peculiar characteristics of vulgar pride, and on all occasions obtruded an offensive opposition to every measure Sir Reginald appeared desirous of carrying in county business. It was much to be lamented that these sylvan foes had nothing better to occupy their time and thoughts than a hostile espionage on each other’s actions, and an eager and unworthy attention to the exaggerated reports of servants and dependents of what each said of the other; for by this means a feud so deadly was fostered, that the breaking out of the civil war between the king and parliament was privately hailed by both with a degree of satisfaction, as affording an excuse for those open acts of violence and aggression which the laws had hitherto operated to prevent. They were arrayed, of course, on opposite sides, for Sir Reginald Dagworth was a part of the old régime—a concomitant ingredient of that system which it was the object of the republican party to destroy; and Ralph Milbourne’s hatred of that privileged class, which, he was sensible, looked down on him and his golden claims to consideration with contempt, was such, that he was willing to hazard even the loss of that wealth which he secretly worshipped, to assist in humbling its haughty and hated members. There were but two things he loved on earth—his money and his one fair daughter; whom he regarded as its heiress, and prized her perhaps more dearly on that account than for all the charms both of mind and person with which nature had so richly endowed her.
But though he professed such hostility of feeling against the whole order of aristocracy, which was then, as at the present moment, peculiarly denounced by a party as the authors of all the existing or fancied evils in the state, he was secretly desirous of his descendants in the third generation being members of this vituperated body, through the marriage of his daughter with no less a person than the heir of his sworn enemy; and deeply mortified at the apparent insensibility of young Dagworth to the attractions of his lovely daughter, and his blindness to the pecuniary advantages of such an alliance, he was perpetually venting his chagrin by contemptuous expressions respecting him; constantly warning Helen never to degrade herself by bestowing a thought upon him; protesting that, if she condescended to be made a convenience of, by wedding the heir of impoverished greatness, to patch up the fallen fortunes of his house with her wealth, he would utterly renounce her.
These cautions were, perhaps, in the first instance, the occasion of making Edward Dagworth an object of attention to his fair neighbour; for she concluded that he must have given her father some reason for an observation so otherwise unaccountable to her. She even ventured to imagine that overtures of a matrimonial nature must have been indirectly, if not directly, made; and she felt a sort of trembling anxiety to ascertain how far the heart of Edward Dagworth had been interested in the proposition.
It was then that she first became aware of the majestic beauty of his features, and the air of lofty rectitude and amiable frankness which they expressed; and then, he was so different from the stern sectarians, rude levellers, and wily politicians, whom she was accustomed to meet at the house of her Uncle Ireton! With neither of these classes had she a feeling or sympathy in common; their manners were offensive to her taste, and she regarded their projects for the subversion of the laws and religion of her forefathers with alarm and terror; while the dread that she might one day be made the bond and victim of a conventional plight between the men of her family and some influential party leader, perpetually haunted and disquieted her. In contradistinction to a destiny so revolting to her feelings, she was at times tempted to picture to her youthful fancy the possibility of becoming the wife of Edward Dagworth, till the idea became a fondly cherished hope; and she even felt pleasure in the thought of devoting her wealth to the very purpose so earnestly contemned by her father, that of building up the ruined fortunes of his ancient house; of which every member, even those haughty parents of his, who regarded her and hers as beings far beneath their high caste, became objects of powerful interest to her.
Edward Dagworth meantime was far from being unconscious of the charms of his lovely neighbour; and in such cases there is always a sort of undefined intelligence which silently informs a pair so situated as these were, that they are becoming dear to each other. It is certain that the eyes of both met oftener than they were accustomed to do; and on meeting were mutually withdrawn in confusion, till at length, without having exchanged a single sentence of love, they were reciprocally wooed and won, and mutely established on the footing of lovers.
Their parents, their friends, the world suspected it not; but they understood each other’s feelings, and that was enough for them. Opportunity alone was needed to cement those silent vows of love and lasting faith before the altar of God.
The erection of the royal standard at Nottingham, and the eventful scenes that followed, served to remove them from their dreaming bliss. The storm of civil war had burst upon the land, and was arraying brothers against brothers, fathers against sons; no wonder, then, if rivals and political foes were espousing adverse causes.
Edward Dagworth engaged in the service of his insulted sovereign with no common ardour; and his name was soon proudly distinguished among the gallant partisans of the royal cause. Even the hoary-headed knight, his father, forgot the infirmities of age to assume the cuirass and steel cap, and sentenced the last of his oak groves to the axe, to assist in raising a regiment for the service of the king.
Ralph Milbourne, though little qualified to play the soldier, found himself a person of consequence with the adherents of the parliament, to whom his wealth was, in the outset of their enterprise, before they had obtained the power of making the cavaliers pay the charges of the warfare against themselves, a matter of great importance; and for the use of this they were contented not only to allow him the exorbitant interest he demanded, but bestowed upon him, in addition, both civil and military rank in their embryo republic; paying him, at the same time, those flattering compliments and attentions that had always been the objects of his ambition, and the lack of which, the mainspring of his disaffection to the government and of his hatred to the higher classes. Neither his wealth, his magnificent establishment, nor his assumption of consequence, had been able to procure for him, in the neighbourhood of his Norfolk estates, the respect he coveted. Sir Reginald Dagworth was evidently regarded there as a sort of hereditary sovereign by the peasantry and yeomanry; and the profound homage with which every member of this ancient but impoverished family was treated, was the generous, unbought offering of the heart, which gold could never purchase.
Ralph Milbourne was evidently considered as an upstart stranger, and the more he added house to house, and field to field, the greater object of dislike did he become in that neighbourhood; where loyalty was esteemed as a virtue, and enmity to the church was regarded as a crime. For a time, Ralph Milbourne quitted Norfolk for a residence in the metropolis, which his pecuniary transactions with the leaders of his party rendered necessary. London was in the hands of the Round-heads. A splendid mansion in Aldermanbury, the sequestered property of a cavalier nobleman, was bestowed upon him by the parliament; and Helen Milbourne, far removed from any chance or hope of seeing the only man for whom she had ever entertained the slightest affection, was placed at the head of a magnificent establishment, and compelled to play the courteous hostess, as mistress of her father’s house, to men who were bent on the overthrow of everything which her natural sense of right, and above all, her love for Edward Dagworth, taught her to hold dear,—men, too, who mentioned the name of that distinguished partisan of loyalty, as he was now considered, with hostility, who panted for his blood, and had vowed his death either in the field or on the scaffold.
And from some of these she was compelled to listen to solicitations of marriage backed by paternal authority; and though she had hitherto been permitted to put a decided negative on all their pretensions, yet, with reason, she apprehended a time would come when she would be denied the privilege of refusing some abhorrent candidate for her hand. Her cheek lost its bloom, and her eye its brightness. Her father observed the change, and became anxious on account of her health.
“I want to breathe the fresh air and enjoy the quiet retirement of the country,” she replied to his inquiry.
Her father took her to a seat purchased for the occasion in one of the beautiful villages near London; where he visited her every day, bringing home with him such of his political friends as he was desirous of uniting in still stronger bonds of fellowship with himself and family. This species of society was as distasteful to Helen as the London residence; and though her father employed every art and luxury that taste and ingenuity could suggest or wealth procure to adorn her new abode, his daughter still appeared listless and dissatisfied with all his arrangements; and when he asked her if she did not like it, she replied,—
“It is not Norfolk, and it is thither I wish to go—to our own house, where I was so free and happy.”
“You are a foolish girl,” her father rejoined, and left her in displeasure.
The next time he came to see her he brought one of the most eminent physicians of the day to visit her; who, as soon as he had conversed with the invalid, prescribed the very thing she required—Norfolk air.
Ralph Milbourne was out of humour. It was very inconvenient to him to leave London; but Helen was his only child, and had been, of course, a spoiled child hitherto, invariably accustomed to the full indulgence of her will: so he agreed that she should follow it once more; and, much against his own inclination, conducted her to his Norfolk residence.
The very sight of the place put him into a fit of the spleen. It had not been inhabited for four years, and the country people had testified their affection to Sir Reginald Dagworth, and their dislike to him, by demolishing his windows and delapidating his ornamental buildings in his absence. The garden had become a wilderness; his park had almost degenerated into commonage; his fences and enclosures were all broken down; and, in short, everything bore evidence of the evil odour in which his memory had been held.
Even Helen felt uncomfortable at the aspect of the place, though she endeavoured to conceal the impression it created.
At that unhappy period of disorganisation and anarchy, it was no easy matter to procure efficient workmen to repair the damage that had been committed. Ralph Milbourne was precise and particular in all his habits; and since his re-entrance into public life he had acquired a taste for luxury and ease quite at variance with the state of his Norfolk mansion. He reproached his daughter for having been the means of bringing him to such a scene of discomfort—reviled his steward for having permitted his property to suffer such injury—execrated the Dagworths as the cause of it—and scolded his servants for their awkward attempts at repairing the mischief. As for Helen, she was patient and resigned; for she could see the grey towers of Dagworth Castle from the broken casements of her bedchamber, and she anticipated the possibility of beholding their future lord at some moment which she trusted was not remote.
After a week of angry excitement on the part of Mr. Commissioner Milbourne, of outward submission but inward resentment secretly treasured up against a day of retribution, on that of his dependents, and of quiescent endurance on that of his daughter, Ingworth New Hall, as his residence was called, was put into a habitable state; and effectual measures taken for repairing the gratuitous injuries that had been perpetrated in the grounds, gardens, and enclosures. Helen was not long in ascertaining that Sir Reginald Dagworth and his son were both absent from the neighbourhood, and Lady Alice and her servants were the only residents at the Castle—intelligence as satisfactory to her father as it was the reverse to her; for persisting in attributing all the damage his property had sustained to the enmity of the old cavalier and his son, he said, “He could now safely return to London, since the Dagworths were absent, who were the only persons likely to molest his daughter in his absence.”
The country appeared tolerably quiet; proper precautions had been taken to increase the securities of the house, and four resolute, well-armed male servants were deemed by Ralph Milbourne sufficient guard for his daughter during his temporary absence from her.
For two days after his departure everything remained in a state of tranquillity; but on the third night Helen was roused from feverish slumbers by the savage yells of the clubmen, a rustic but fierce banditti, composed for the most part of the unemployed population of the agricultural counties throughout England, who, deprived of regular work and wages by the ruin of many of their former masters, and the distracted state of the times, had been at length driven to the desperate expedient of obtaining a predatory livelihood by collecting in formidable bands for the purpose of levying contributions on passengers, plundering the unguarded villages or solitary mansions, and, in short, of committing every sort of outrage which opportunity might offer. To these were joined men who were inimical to both the great contending parties; reckless profligates, whose crimes had rendered them the outcasts of society; and ruined spend-thrifts and unprincipled ruffians, whose tempers would not brook the restraints of anything in the shape of law or discipline.
The clubmen of that district, amounting to several hundred men, were headed by one of the latter class, who had conceived the daring project of besetting the house, and of carrying off the only daughter of the rich Parliamentary Commissioner Milbourne, for the sake of extorting a large sum of money for her ransom.
The plan was successful: the mansion was surprised and entered by the rude outlaws; and scarcely had the terrified Helen time to rise and wrap herself in a large cloak, which she hastily threw over her night-dress, when the sanctuary of her chamber was invaded by a heterogeneous band of desperadoes; the foremost of whom, with a coarse expression of admiration, seized her in his profane arms, and forcibly hurried her, in spite of her shrieks, entreaties, and resistance, into a covered carriage, which they had provided for the purpose of the abduction.
A single glance, even in the terror and confusion of that fearful moment, had been sufficient to convince Helen that they were not cavaliers into whose power she had fallen; and the Round-heads would not, of course, have attacked the house of one of their own party. She then recalled to her remembrance many passages in the diurnals, where mention had been made of the clubmen, and of the outrages perpetrated by them. With an impulse of horror which no language can describe, at the idea of the probable fate that awaited her, she called on Edward Dagworth to save her, forgetting how many miles in all probability divided them; yet, strange to say, her cry was heard and answered by him whose name she had almost deliriously invoked.
He had been ordered by his commander on a secret service in that very neighbourhood, which, having successfully performed, he was on his way to join the army again, when he received intelligence of the intention of the clubmen to surprise the house of Ralph Milbourne, and carry off his daughter. He had therefore ambushed himself and his brave followers in a copse on the confines of the park, and Helen’s agonising cry for help was his signal for attacking the ruffians.
The night was profoundly dark; but the red blaze from the New Hall, which the lawless miscreants, after plundering it, had fired, was sufficient to enable the cavaliers to discharge their petronels with deadly effect among the foremost of the clubmen, who were greatly superior in numbers to themselves; then rushing from their concealment with drawn swords, they assailed them so fiercely that the rabble-rout were panic-stricken, and after a disorderly attempt at maintaining their ground, fled precipitately in all directions.
Helen, on whose startled ear the discharge of firearms, the clash of swords, and the mingled yells of rage and vengeance had fallen in dread confusion, added a faint cry of female terror to the tumultuous din around her, and sank back in a state of utter insensibility. How long her swoon continued Helen knew not; but her first sensation of consciousness was a feeling that her peril was over, for she was supported in the arms and on the bosom of some person whose form was indistinct in the surrounding darkness, but whose voice of deep and tender melody, as he gently soothed her with assurances that she was safe, and all danger past, though it had never before met her ear, went to her heart like the remembered tones of some dear familiar friend.
“And where am I?” she asked.
“With friends, madam,” was the reply of her unknown protector.
“What friends?” she eagerly demanded, as a sudden volume of flame from the burning mansion threw a fitful radiance over the waving plumes and lovelocks of the cavaliers.
“With Colonel Dagworth and a part of his regiment,” replied he on whose bosom she had hitherto so confidingly leaned.
“Colonel Dagworth!” she exclaimed. “Edward Dagworth, the son of Sir Reginald Dagworth, my father’s enemy,” continued she, gently struggling to disengage herself from his supporting arms; “is it indeed, to your generous valour that I am indebted for deliverance from a fate too terrible to think upon?”
She shuddered, and gave way to a convulsive burst of hysterical weeping; then raising her streaming eyes to his face, she murmured, “How shall we ever repay you?”
“I am repaid,” he soothingly replied; “richly, nobly repaid, by the happiness I feel in having had it in my power to perform a service for Mistress Helen Milbourne.”
What sweet words were these from the lips of the hero of her mental romance! Insensibly her eyes closed once more; and she was again supported on the manly bosom of her brave deliverer.
Meantime, Ingworth New Hall was blazing bright and far; a brisk wind was abroad, and, truth to tell, no efforts had been made for its preservation from the devouring element; so that, before Helen was sufficiently composed to give directions whither she should be removed, Colonel Dagworth had taken the resolution of conveying her to his own home, and placing her under his mother’s protection.
Lady Alice received her fair charge with evident reluctance, but with all the outward courtesy and attention to her comforts that the circumstances of the case and the obligatory duties of hospitality required; but there was a haughtiness in her condescension that sufficiently indicated how much it cost her to exercise it towards the individual thus thrown upon her charity. Colonel Dagworth saw and felt it all more deeply than even the apprehensive and sensitive Helen; and being well aware, from his knowledge of his mother’s peculiar disposition, that remonstrances from him would be perfectly useless, he endeavoured to compensate to Helen, whom he regarded as his own guest, by every graceful and delicate attention, for the coldness of her reluctant hostess. Insensibly his anxious solicitude for her comforts assumed a more tender and decided character; the incipient spark of youthful passion that had long lain dormant in his bosom was once more kindled, and finally fanned into active existence by the more intimate knowledge, which personal intercourse afforded him, of the amiable qualities and intellectual endowments of her whose external charms had first captivated his youthful fancy. As for Helen, she was in a state of dreaming bliss, from which she dreaded every moment to be rudely awakened by a summons from her father. The coldness and hauteur of Lady Alice she regarded not; or if she did, she felt that its endurance was but a trifling counterbalance for the delight of being near him she loved, and of finding herself the object of his attentions, the cynosure of his ardent gaze.
Lady Alice was his mother, and she felt that from his mother she could have endured anything, and for her, she could have stooped to perform the most menial offices, without an idea of thereby incurring degradation. She studied her looks, she watched to anticipate her slightest wishes, and paid her the respectful homage of a dutiful and affectionate child.
Edward Dagworth possessed a mind to appreciate and understand the motives of Helen Milbourne for conduct so gratifying to himself; and too manly, too devoted in his love to trifle with the feelings of a heart like hers, he took an early opportunity of declaring himself to her; and Helen, the happy Helen, shamed not to acknowledge in return that he was, and ever had been, the object of her tenderest affections. The only obstacle to this unusual smooth course of true love was the apprehension that its consummation in the holy bands of wedlock would be opposed by their respective parents; and Helen assured him that the consent of his would and must be an indispensable preliminary to their union.
Edward Dagworth was an only and fondly-beloved child, and flattered himself with the hope that his hitherto unbounded influence with his mother might overcome her reluctance to his connecting himself with the daughter of one so distasteful to their principles as the Parliamentary Commissioner Milbourne. He erred in this supposition: Lady Alice’s suppressed indignation at his undisguised attentions to her fair guest found bitter vent when he ventured to hint at the nature of his feelings towards her; and, after a torrent of angry and scornful invectives, she told him that when he had procured the consent of the old Roundhead usurer Milbourne, and the blessing of his own loyal and nobly-descended father, to such a union, then she would permit him to name the subject again to her.
“Agreed, madam,” replied her son; and in the self-same hour, after exchanging a tender farewell with Helen, he commenced his journey to the headquarters of the royal army at Reading, where his father was; having previously despatched a letter by a trusty messenger to Ralph Milbourne, informing him of the safety of his daughter, and the state of their mutual sentiments.
The anxiety of Ralph Milbourne had reached its climax respecting the fate of his only, his beloved child, before this communication reached him; and had he learned that Helen was the wedded wife of the most impoverished gentleman in the royal army, his paternal feelings would have taught him to consider it a blessed alternative to the horrible fate of having become the victim of ruffians so abhorrent to both parties as the leaders of the clubmen.
All angry and bitter enmities towards the Dagworths appeared converted into sentiments of grateful acknowledgment and respect, when, two days after the receipt of Colonel Dagworth’s letter, he presented himself at their Castle gate, to tender in person his consent to the marriage of his heiress with her preserver; which, advantageous as it now was in every worldly sense, he concluded was no less desired by the parents of the lover than by himself. As for the state of his daughter’s feelings on the subject, a look, a single glance at her animated countenance and rapture-beaming eyes as she sprang to his arms, when he entered the drawing-room of Lady Alice Dagworth, was sufficient to convince him that his consent alone was required to make her the happiest of women. Her late peril had roused all the love of a fond parent in his heart, and, folding her lovely glowing form to his bosom, he whispered, “Fear nothing; you shall be the wife of your brave preserver, Helen.”
Helen could not speak, but she wept her thanks on her father’s neck; then, suddenly recollecting where she was, she wiped away the mingled tears that hung upon her fair cheek, and timidly presented the Parliamentary Commissioner to Lady Alice, as her father.
Lady Alice coldly and distantly acknowledged the profound obeisance of the disconcerted Milbourne; who was advancing with eager alacrity to salute her ladyship, when a single glance from her large majestic eyes had the effect of paralysing his motions, and silencing the compliments he was preparing to utter.
At that moment—that critical moment, and before the ungracious words which hung on the haughty lips of Lady Alice could be pronounced, the rapid sound of a horseman, riding as if on life and death, was heard crossing the drawbridge of the Castle; and the next moment, Colonel Dagworth, with the red stains of recent battle on his array, and mired from spur to plume, rushed into the apartment.
“Mother!—sweet Helen!” he exclaimed, “I have been successful—joy with me—I am the happiest of men!”
“What now?” replied Lady Alice, haughtily rising from her seat; “what mean these stains upon your dress, Colonel Dagworth—are you wounded?”
“Nothing but a scratch not worth the caring for,” he replied, “the loss of the precious minutes was all my uneasiness; and for the first time in my life I would rather not have done battle with the Roundheads, had I not been intercepted by an ambuscade of them about five miles off. I should have been with you three hours earlier, but they compelled me to tarry by the way till I had beaten them soundly, mother mine; and now, I am come to tell you the good news of that, and the still better intelligence, that I have obtained my father’s full and free consent to take this lady to wife.”
“Your father’s consent!” echoed Lady Alice; “impossible! he would never so far forget himself.”
“It is here under his own hand and seal, nevertheless,” replied Colonel Dagworth, presenting his mother with a paper.
She received it with a compressed brow, read it with evident displeasure, and when she had concluded it, rent it into a thousand pieces, and scornfully setting her foot on the fragments, passionately exclaimed:
“Thus do I trample on the record of Sir Reginald Dagworth’s weakness, and the base preliminary for an alliance with the blood of traitors—”
“And on the happiness of your only son, madam,” retorted Colonel Dagworth bitterly, concluding the sentence; “of him whom you say you love, but the deadliest offices of hatred are kindness in comparison to the deliberate cruelty of conduct like yours.”
“Helen,” said the mortified parent to his daughter, who stood like one stunned and paralysed by this unexpected ebullition of Lady Alice’s hostile feelings, “it is enough; I thought the sacrifice had been on our part, when I consented to bestow you and the uncounted thousands to which you are the sole heiress, on the penniless son of an impoverished family, and an adherent to a ruined cause withal; but you have been rejected, my girl, with contumely, which ought to teach you the folly of desiring such unequal yoking; and now, Helen, return your thanks to this proud lady for the ungracious benefits she has conferred upon you, and let us begone from these walls for ever.”
“Stay, Master Milbourne, for pity’s sake.—Helen, will you thus abandon me?” exclaimed Colonel Dagworth. “My mother,” added he, “must and shall apologise for her conduct; it is the warmth of party feeling, nothing else, believe me, and you must forgive her.”
“Lady Alice is your mother, Edward Dagworth,” said Helen, “and from her I can forgive anything—even her assurance that I am unworthy of the honour of becoming your wife.”
She curtsied with respectful dignity to both mother and son as she concluded, and, turning on the beloved of her heart the glance of tender farewell she could not trust her quivering lips to speak, passively yielded to the impulse of the paternal arm that led her from their mansion.
The recent conflagration at New Hall having left Ralph Milbourne without a Norfolk residence, and Helen still expressing a wish to remain in that county, he placed her with her Uncle Ireton’s family, then occupying a spacious but dismal mansion in that neighbourhood, called Irmingland Hall. And there, in spite of danger and the precautions of her family to prevent these meetings, did the adventurous lover seek, and ofttimes succeed in obtaining, stolen interviews with his beloved; and in the last of these, that rupture took place between them which I have recorded in the commencement of my tale, and which left them both angry, but broken-hearted.
The fierce excitement of the perilous and active scenes in which he was engaged, and the increasing darkness that now overshadowed his cause, seemed at times to divert the thoughts of Colonel Dagworth from the regrets and sorrows of a love that nothing could obliterate; but Helen, in the deep retirement and unbroken gloom of Irmingland Hall, had no other employment for her thoughts than heart-corroding recollections of past happiness and wronged affection. From the haughty daughter of Cromwell, who had recently become the wife of her Uncle Ireton, she neither expected nor obtained sympathy for that oppressive anguish which preyed upon the springs of life. To this time brought no balm, but rather added a twofold cause of distress,—in the danger that threatened the still dear but estranged and distant object of her faithful affection; and in the uneasiness she endured in consequence of the solicitations of marriage which she now received from Sir Richard Warden, one of the Parliamentary leaders, and the chosen friend of her Uncle Ireton, by whom his cause was warmly espoused. It was also earnestly backed by her father; and could she have forgotten Colonel Dagworth, it is possible she might have yielded to the pressing instances of those near relatives in favour of one to whom she could not deny her esteem, and who possessed everything to recommend him to the regard of any one who had affections to bestow.
The fall of Colchester at length took place, and the besiegers, enraged at the obstinacy of its brave defenders, had long vowed a signal vengeance against the most distinguished of these, among whom Colonel Dagworth might be justly reckoned. His father had fallen in one of the desperate sorties that had been attempted by the cavaliers; and to all the other causes of animosity existing against this brave loyalist, was the circumstance of his being the beloved of the wealthy heiress of Ralph Milbourne, the suspected obstacle that prevented her marriage with a powerful Roundhead partisan. His death was therefore resolved upon, both as a matter of public and private expediency, by the council assembled at Colchester, soon after the surrender of that last stronghold of loyalty.
Helen Milbourne had scarcely recovered from the horror with which the ungenerous massacre of Sir John Lisle and Sir Charles Lucas had inspired her, when Lady Alice Dagworth, attired in her weeds of recent widowhood, rushed into the apartment where, with pale cheeks and tearful eyes, she had just perused the diurnal which detailed the last scene of those ill-fated heroes, and flinging her arms wildly about her, exclaimed, with a frantic shriek, “Save my son!”
“Your son!” echoed Helen, looking fearfully upon Lady Alice, and scarcely appearing to comprehend the nature of the very peril which she had so much dreaded.
“Yes, yes, my son, my only one, Edward Dagworth! The barbarous traitors who have slain Lucas and Lisle have vowed his death—the death of my beautiful, my valiant son! You loved him once, Helen Milbourne, and you can save him, if you will.”
Helen Milbourne, forgetful of past injury, insult, and scorn, clung to the bosom of Lady Alice with the fervent embrace of a child; and, mingling her tears with those with which the agonised mother was bedewing her features, sobbed out:
“Alas! Lady Alice, how can I save Colonel Dagworth—I who am so powerless?”
“You are not powerless—you are the daughter of Ralph Milbourne, the niece of Ireton. Through these men you can do everything. Oh, Helen, Helen! do not waste the precious moments in vain words, but remember the fate from which he saved you, and plead for him with those who will else be his murderers!”
Helen scarcely breathed till she found herself in the presence of her uncle, who was in deep consultation with her father and Sir Richard Warden, and, flinging herself at the feet of Ireton, she preferred her suit with hysterical sobs.—He listened to her in stern silence.—She turned to her father with clasped hands and streaming eyes, and exclaimed:
“Will you not speak, my father, one word, one little word, to preserve his life who rescued your child from a fate more dreadful than death?”
“It would be useless, Helen,” he replied; “he is not my prisoner—it rests with your uncle Ireton.”
“He is the captive of my bow and spear!” exclaimed Ireton. “I hold his death-warrant in my hand, which is directed to me for execution, but—you can ransom him, if you will.” He glanced significantly at Sir Richard Warden, who stood, with folded arms, gazing intently upon the weeping supplicant. Helen shuddered, and looked imploringly at her father.
“There is no other alternative,” observed Ralph Milbourne.
“None?” said Helen, turning to Ireton.
“None,” he replied, “but your consenting to become the wife of the brave Sir Richard Warden; on which condition I will allow your hand to cancel the death-warrant of the malignant Edward Dagworth.”
He held it towards her as he spoke. One glance upon that fatal instrument was sufficient to decide the wavering purpose of Helen Milbourne.
“He shall live!” she said, tearing the warrant as she spoke; “he will not be more lost to me than he is now, when I am the wife of another; and I—I—I shall have saved him. But,” added she, turning once more to her uncle, “you must engage for his liberty as well.”
“I will be your uncle’s surety for that, madam,” said Sir Richard Warden.
“And I must see him once more.”
“To what purpose?” said her father.
She covered her face, and burst into a flood of tears.
Her affianced bridegroom took her cold hand, and led her to an apartment barred and guarded, at the door of which, on the bare floor, with dishevelled hair, was seated Lady Alice Dagworth in her sable garments. She started from her recumbent posture, and, grasping Helen’s arm with a convulsive pressure, gasped out, “My son! my son!”
“I have saved him,” said Helen, in a broken voice.
“May the God of mercy bless and reward you, then,” murmured Lady Alice, snatching her to her bosom with a wild burst of weeping.
At a sign from Sir Richard Warden, the bolts were withdrawn, and Helen Milbourne and her lost lover looked upon each other once more. His noble form was war-worn and attenuated by famine. Her cheek was faded by the canker-worm of sorrow, the lustre of her eyes had been dimmed by tears, and were still red and swollen from excessive weeping; in the impress of that unutterable woe which appeared imprinted on her agonised brow, Edward Dagworth read, as he supposed, his death doom. Coldness, anger, and pride were alike forgotten in each; and, fondly extending his fettered arms towards her, he exclaimed:
“And have you then come, my beloved, like an angel visitant, to my dreary prison-house, to bless me with one last look?’
“To look my last upon you, I am indeed come,” she replied, “my Edward! Mine! do I say? Ay, mine; for I have purchased you with a price. You were, an hour ago, reckoned with the dead, but now are you living and free. Your life and liberty are my gift—go, and be happy; and when the green grass waves over the early grave of Dame Helen Warden (as I must soon be called), remember she died to save you from the fate of your brave companions in arms, Lisle and Lucas.”
“And will you, dare you, wed this lady on such terms?” demanded Colonel Dagworth, turning sternly to Sir Richard Warden.
“No,” he replied, “I’ll none of her; take her—she is yours. I will bestow her upon you with my own hand at the marriage altar; and all I ask in return is, for you to bear me witness among your brother cavaliers, that you found one generous foe among the conquerors of Colchester.”