CHAPTER VI. JOY FOR ADAM, AND HOPE FOR SIBYLL--AND POPULAR FRIAR BUNGEY!
Leaping on his palfrey, Hastings rode back to the Tower, dismounted atthe gate, passed on to the little postern in the inner court, and pausednot till he was in Warner's room. "How now, friend Adam? Thou art idle."
"Lord Hastings, I am ill."
"And thy child not with thee?"
"She is gone to her grace the duchess, to pray her to grant me leave togo home, and waste no more life on making gold."
"Home! Go hence! We cannot hear it! The duchess must not grant it. Iwill not suffer the king to lose so learned a philosopher."
"Then pray the king to let the philosopher achieve that which is inthe power of labour." He pointed to the Eureka. "Let me be heard in theking's council, and prove to sufficing judges what this iron can do forEngland."
"Is that all? So be it. I will speak to his highness forthwith. Butpromise that thou wilt think no more of leaving the king's palace."
"Oh, no, no! If I may enter again into mine own palace, mine own royaltyof craft and hope, the court or the dungeon all one to me!"
"Father," said Sibyll, entering, "be comforted. The duchess forbidsthy departure, but we will yet flee--" She stopped short as she sawHastings. He approached her timidly, and with so repentant, so earnest arespect in his mien and gesture, that she had not the heart to draw backthe fair hand he lifted to his lips.
"No, flee not, sweet donzell; leave not the desert court, without theflower and the laurel, the beauty and the wisdom, that scent the hour,and foretype eternity. I have conferred with thy father,--I will obtainhis prayer from the king. His mind shall be free to follow its ownimpulse, and thou"--he whispered--"pardon--pardon an offence of too muchlove. Never shall it wound again."
Her eyes, swimming with delicious tears, were fixed upon the floor.Poor child! with so much love, how could she cherish anger? With somuch purity, how distrust herself? And while, at least, he spoke, thedangerous lover was sincere. So from that hour peace was renewed betweenSibyll and Lord Hastings.--Fatal peace! alas for the girl who loves--andhas no mother!
True to his word, the courtier braved the displeasure of the Duchess ofBedford, in inducing the king to consider the expediency of permittingAdam to relinquish alchemy, and repair his model. Edward summoned adeputation from the London merchants and traders, before whom Adamappeared and explained his device. But these practical men at firstridiculed the notion as a madman's fancy, and it required all the art ofHastings to overcome their contempt, and appeal to the native acutenessof the king. Edward, however, was only caught by Adam's incidentalallusions to the application of his principle to ships. Themerchant-king suddenly roused himself to attention, when it was promisedto him that his galleys should cross the seas without sail, and againstwind and tide.
"By Saint George!" said he, then, "let the honest man have his whim.Mend thy model, and every saint in the calendar speed thee! MasterHeyford, tell thy comely wife that I and Hastings will sup withher to-morrow, for her hippocras is a rare dainty. Good day toyou, worshipful my masters. Hastings, come hither; enough of thesetrifles,--I must confer with thee on matters really pressing,--thisdamnable marriage of gentle George's!"
And now Adam Warner was restored to his native element of thought; nowthe crucible was at rest, and the Eureka began to rise from its ruins.He knew not the hate that he had acquired in the permission he hadgained; for the London deputies, on their return home, talked of nothingelse for a whole week but the favour the king had shown to a strangeman, half-maniac, half-conjuror, who had undertaken to devise asomething which would throw all the artisans and journeymen out of work!From merchant to mechanic travelled the news, and many an honest mancursed the great scholar, as he looked at his young children, and wishedto have one good blow at the head that was hatching such devilish maliceagainst the poor! The name of Adam Warner became a byword of scorn andhorror. Nothing less than the deep ditch and strong walls of the Towercould have saved him from the popular indignation; and these prejudiceswere skilfully fed by the jealous enmity of his fellow-student, theterrible Friar Bungey. This man, though in all matters of true learningand science worthy the utmost contempt Adam could heap upon him, was byno means of despicable abilities in the arts of imposing upon men. Inhis youth he had been an itinerant mountebank, or, as it was called,tregetour. He knew well all the curious tricks of juggling that thenamazed the vulgar, and, we fear, are lost to the craft of our modernnecromancers. He could clothe a wall with seeming vines, that vanishedas you approached; he could conjure up in his quiet cell the likenessof a castle manned with soldiers, or a forest tenanted by deer. [SeeChaucer, House of Time, Book III.; also the account given by BaptistaPorta, of his own Magical Delusions, of which an extract may be seen inthe "Curiosities of Literature" Art., Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.]Besides these illusions, probably produced by more powerful magiclanterns than are now used, the friar had stumbled upon the wondrouseffects of animal magnetism, which was then unconsciously practised bythe alchemists and cultivators of white or sacred magic. He was an adeptin the craft of fortune-telling; and his intimate acquaintance with allnoted characters in the metropolis, their previous history and presentcircumstances, enabled his natural shrewdness to hit the mark, at leastnow and then, in his oracular predictions. He had taken, for safety andfor bread, the friar's robes, and had long enjoyed the confidence ofthe Duchess of Bedford, the traditional descendant of the serpent-witch,Melusina. Moreover, and in this the friar especially valued himself,Bungey had, in the course of his hardy, vagrant early life, studied,as shepherds and mariners do now, the signs of the weather; and asweather-glasses were then unknown, nothing could be more convenientto the royal planners of a summer chase or a hawking company than theneighbourhood of a skilful predictor of storm and sunshine. In fact,there was no part in the lore of magic which the popular seers found souseful and studied so much as that which enabled them to prognosticatethe humours of the sky, at a period when the lives of all men wereprincipally spent in the open air.
The fame of Friar Bungey had travelled much farther than the repute ofAdam Warner: it was known in the distant provinces: and many a northernpeasant grew pale as he related to his gaping listeners the tales he hadheard of the Duchess Jacquetta's dread magician.
And yet, though the friar was an atrocious knave and a ludicrousimpostor, on the whole he was by no means unpopular, especially inthe metropolis, for he was naturally a jolly, social fellow; he oftenventured boldly forth into the different hostelries and reunions of thepopulace, and enjoyed the admiration he there excited, and pocketed thegroats he there collected. He had no pride,--none in the least, thisFriar Bungey!--and was as affable as a magician could be to themeanest mechanic who crossed his broad horn palm. A vulgar man is neverunpopular with the vulgar. Moreover, the friar, who was a very cunningperson, wished to keep well with the mob: he was fond of his ownimpudent, cheating, burly carcass, and had the prudence to foresee thata time might come when his royal patrons might forsake him, and a mobmight be a terrible monster to meet in his path; therefore he alwaysaffected to love the poor, often told their fortunes gratis, now andthen gave them something to drink, and was esteemed a man exceedinglygood-natured, because he did not always have the devil at his back.
Now Friar Bungey had naturally enough evinced from the first a greatdistaste and jealousy of Adam Warner; but occasionally profiting by thescience of the latter, he suffered his resentment to sleep latent tillit was roused into fury by learning the express favour shown to Adam bythe king, and the marvellous results expected from his contrivance. Hisenvy, then, forbade all tolerance and mercy; the world was not largeenough to contain two such giants,--Bungey and Warner, the genius andthe quack. To the best of our experience, the quacks have the same creedto our own day. He vowed deep vengeance upon his associate, and sparedno arts to foment the popular hatred against him. Friar Bungey wouldhave been a great critic in our day!
But besides his jealousy, the fat friar had another motive for
desiringpoor Adam's destruction; he coveted his model! True, he despised themodel, he jeered the model, he abhorred the model; but, nevertheless,for the model every string in his bowels fondly yearned. He believedthat if that model were once repaired, and in his possession, he coulddo--what he knew not, but certainly all that was wanting to complete hisglory, and to bubble the public.
Unconscious of all that was at work against him, Adam threw his wholeheart and soul into his labour; and happy in his happiness, Sibyll oncemore smiled gratefully upon Hastings, from whom the rapture came.