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THE
Weird of the Wentworths;
A TALE OF GEORGE IV.'S TIME.
BY JOHANNES SCOTUS.
All nations have their omens drear. Their legends wild of woe and fear. SIR WALTER SCOTT.
SANS CHANGER]
IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. I.
LONDON: SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 66 BROOK STREET, HANOVER SQUARE 1862.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
The objection may be raised that, as the major part of this Romancetakes place during the Regency, such a title as:--"The Weird of theWentworths; _a Tale of George IV.'s Time_,"--is inappropriate. When,however, it is considered that the Regent was king in all but name, andthe manners, customs, and habits differed little after his accession,the inadvertency will be explained.
In case of exception being taken to the language and sentiments of somecharacters introduced into the tale, the Author thinks it sufficient tosay _he utterly repudiates them_! Oaths and ribaldry are, unfortunately,the concomitants of a depraved mind; and, in delineating faithfully thedarker side of human nature, the Author felt himself compelled to sketchmuch that has passed under his own observation, and much that he hasgleaned from the treatment of such characters by many distinguishednovelists, not omitting our northern luminary, Sir Walter Scott.
The moral of the Romance being the triumph of virtue over vice, andtruth over falsehood, he trusts that those fair readers, who mayindulge his work with a perusal, will avoid the dark, and embrace thebright traits of the other sex; and, marking the gradual development ofrectitude in the character of his heroine, magnify their own by adheringfixedly to the path of duty and moral conduct, amid all temptations toswerve from it.
The Author trusts that those noble families, whose names he has chosenas his _beaux ideals_, will kindly dismiss all personal associationsfrom their minds, and simply give to the synonyms (which his notunpardonable preference led him to select) that weight which will everattach itself in the eyes of the world, to the great, when also good.
There is one more point which may give rise to discussion--the rapid andviolent deaths occurring in _one_ family. The WEIRD, which, though keptin the background, is the mainspring of the tale, might explain this;but that such catastrophes are not beyond the region of possibility, theAuthor begs to remind his readers that in more than one family of rank,whose names both his sympathy and delicacy forbid any allusion to, suchmisfortunes and fates have actually happened.
Some of the death-scenes, and very many of the traditions and incidentsembodied in the work, are taken from real life, which often farsurpasses fiction.
_Portobello, near_ EDINBURGH.
_June 19th, 1862._
THE WEIRD OF THE WENTWORTHS;
A TALE OF GEORGE IV.'s TIME.
CHAPTER I.
"And a magic voice and verse Hath baptized thee with a curse."--_Manfred._
The extent of parents' influence on their offspring has long been amatter of dispute; yet the fact remains incontestable that children _do_suffer for their parents' faults, that the sins of the father _are_visited not only to the third and fourth generation, but often to adistance that can scarcely be conceived. The leprosy of Naaman cleavedto Gehazi's seed _for ever_, and it is said many of these unhappysufferers still trace their misery to their ancestor's mendacity. Weread in Grecian history how Myrtilus, as he sank, cursed the faithlessPelops and his race for ever; and we see its dire effects in themisfortunes of Agamemnon and Iphigenia:--
"Atoning for her father's sin, A joyless sacrifice."
We might cite the Alcmaeonidae as another instance, and it is rather asingular thing that in nearly every case faithlessness, or sacrilege,has first armed the curse with its power. English annals present not afew examples, and perhaps no "weird" ever crushed a noble race of highname and lineage so cruelly, as that which is to be found among thetraditions of the Wentworths of Dun Edin Towers. Every scion of thathouse was born a slave and bondman to this curse; two hundred andseventy years have flown since it slew its earliest victim, and itspower is still as deadly, its shaft has lost none of its venom, and inall that long series of generations no son or daughter of the Wentworthshas ever attained maturity, far less old age. The crown of glory, if itbe found in the right way, was denied them; and in the bloom of theirbeauty, and pride of their strength, one by one, they sank beneath theriver of death, too often with all their sins full blown, and unrepentedof. Youth, strength, valour, talent, beauty, were sacrificed at theshrine of the remorseless deity, and still unrelenting and unappeasedshe watched over the race for evil.
Let us trace it back to its source, and having made our readersacquainted with the origin of the "Weird of the Wentworths," we shallnext narrate the short lives and untimely deaths of one generation--thebrightest link in a long chain of misery; and if their lives were short,they were full of romance and vigour, like the torrent, abrupt andheadlong in its course, and still reaching the same bourne that the slowand tardy river only takes a longer period to arrive at.
Retrace, then, with us the scroll of English history till we come to thesad page of the Commonwealth. It is not our intention to discuss whetherthe Protector was right or wrong, but merely to narrate facts, as theywere.
Cromwell was about this time tolerably secure on his usurped throne--theheir to the British crown a wandering exile in his native land. Thosewere troublous times; days when a man's foes were often those of hishousehold; when the nearest and dearest ties were severed; and perhapsunder the same roof, dwelt the bigot republican, and the proud royalistburning to avenge his king's wrongs; each looked on his neighbour withuncertainty, each feared the other as a traitor in the camp. Cromwellhimself, raised to the utmost pitch of his ambition, was on anunenviable height--his tiara was a crown of thorns--over his head hungthe sword of Damocles; and, having himself been a rebel to his monarch,he now feared an assassin in every one who approached his presence, andit is said almost entirely shut himself out of society, wearing chainarmour beneath his raiment. Still he had faithful supporters, staunchfriends, and loyal soldiers; and of all his admirers no more burningrepublican existed than Sir Ralph de Vere, a general in the Protector'sarmy, one he had himself knighted on the field of Worcester. Sir Ralph,from being an intolerant Catholic, had now become an intolerantProtestant, and--
"with all the zeal That young and fiery converts feel,"
warred against those whose cause he had once warmly espoused, and soughtthe destruction of the creed of which he had once been the champion.Very different from Sir Ralph was his first cousin Augusta de Vere,then, in her own right, Countess of Wentworth, and Abbess of St.Clements, a monastic pile on the Wye.
Augusta was the last prop of her declining creed; with tears of sorrow,not unmixed with anger, she beheld stronghold after stronghold of Rome'sonce mighty power surrender into the hands of the Philistines. Moredeeply still she lamented the stain in her own family, and bewailed thefalling away of Ralph, the most valorous soldier of the cross in betterdays, now the servant of one she deemed an arch impostor and hypocrite;faithless to his name; doubly faithless to his king;
and, worse thanall, faithless to his religion! But Augusta's was one of those nobleminds, which, while it hates the error, pities the erring, and by allthe means in her power she strove to reclaim her apostate cousin. TheRoman Pontiff had not only excommunicated him in this world, butcondemned his forfeit soul to everlasting torments, whilst Augusta, likeher Master, rather sought the wandering sheep, and ceased not night orday with tears and vigil to remember him in her prayers. Augusta wasalso a faithful partisan of the crownless Charles;--during all hiswanderings, as far as was in her power, she provided him with food andraiment, and he had remained beneath her hospitable roof as long asprudence would permit him; and when he quitted his ungrateful countryfor more friendly shores till Fortune once more smiled on her favouriteson, the Abbess, at the risk of her life, had herself attended him tothe seaside, and blessed him ere he departed.
It was little wonder that when this became known in London, Augustabrought down all the slumbering ire of Cromwell on her devoted head, andthough nearly six years had passed away since she waved her hand to thefugitive king, he commissioned Sir Ralph de Vere to punish the haughtypeeress. Sir Ralph was just the man to execute his cruel designs. In hisbigoted hatred of Royalist and Catholic he even forgot how he wasindebted to Augusta for his very life in days when he had fought on theside he now warred against, and was glad to avail himself of thesanctuary St. Clements afforded him. It was nothing that she was hisnear relative and he had sought her hand ere she had become the Bride ofHeaven; she was a Catholic, "and he that loveth friend more than me,"said the stern presbyterian, "is not worthy of me;" it was nothing thatshe was young and beautiful, so was Herodias' daughter; nothing that shewas good and generous--she was a Royalist, and doomed! On the 26th ofAugust, 1658, Sir Ralph appeared at the head of an army of fiercePuritans on the banks of the beautiful Wye. Autumn had stained theleaves red and yellow, and the golden sheaf still dotted many a field:the air was calm, the scene one of peace and security, soon to be one ofbloodshed, rapine, and havoc!
Ravaging the country as they went, and leaving a wilderness behind themwhere they found an Eden, at last the tall turrets of St. Clementsappeared over the embrowned woods. The scene that followed we shall notdescribe; suffice to say the monks were hewn down at the altar, thehelpless inhabitants that lived on the hospitality of the Abbessmurdered in cold blood, without distinction of age or sex, and the fairAbbess and her nuns turned into the damp woods, there miserably toperish of hunger and cold.
It was to no account that Augusta pleaded her youth, her relationship,their early love, his debt of life due to her; with a fierce frown hebade her "begone," and threatened that, unless she obeyed, worse thingsmight follow. With a weeping band she departed, and amid their tears sheheard the blessings of those whom she had fed and clothed heaped on heras she went out not knowing where to rest her head. Meanwhile Sir Ralph,who now assumed the title of Earl, the guerdon promised by Cromwell asthe price of his slaughter, took possession of his new inheritance. Thegloomy moroseness of the Puritans is well known, and never was anascetic more strict than the Earl in his ideas; he abstained from wine,and thought dancing a damnable practice, and his most common remarkswere interpolated with Holy Writ, according to the custom of the times.Naturally of a harsh temperament, he never paid the tribute of a thoughtto his hapless cousin, far less of a sigh! His ill-gotten towers andblood-purchased coronet were, however, fated to be a short-livedpossession. About a week after his entry, on the fatal 3rd[A] ofSeptember, the day that saw the conquest of Scotland at Dunbar, andEngland at Worcester, and which Cromwell thought a fortunate day, thereappeared in the heavens unmistakeable signs of a coming tempest. Duringthe afternoon, the gusts of wind, bearing with them showers of leaves,grew stronger and stronger. As night advanced, the scud blew wildlyacross the welkin, and some time after sunset floods of rain descended.Towards midnight the gale increased to a perfect hurricane--"the rainfell not from one lone cloud, but as if heaven had caved in," and theWye came down in high flood, carrying rocks and trunks of trees in itsturbid course, and overflowing all the lowlands far and near. Ever andanon a wild crash told the fall of some patriarch of the forest, andwith every blast the towers shook to their very foundations. During thiswar of the elements a great soul was passing away; it was a fit endingto a turbulent life. The wind sung his dirge as the ambitious Cromwellyielded up his ghost. Unknowing of his master's death, Earl Wentworthlay on his sleepless couch, and listened with terror to the violence ofthe storm; once or twice he thought the whole abbey would yield to itsrage, but the strong masonry manfully repelled the gust, and the thickfoundations rolled back the flood that beat against them. The roaring ofthe wind through the trees precluded the idea of sleep, and the thoughtsof that stern man as he lay awake were aught but enviable. Within hisbosom raged a storm, wild as that which howled without. The sins of hisyouth--the crimes of his manlier years--like fiends "no exorcism canbind," all flocked to his remembrance at that awful hour, and as hisroom shook, like Felix he, too, trembled, but like the Roman governorhe bade conscience go its way this time, and at a more convenient seasonhe would listen. Just then occurred one of those fitful pauses, as ifthe wind rested a moment to take breath, and regathered its strength fora still sterner effort. In that hush the moon broke forth from a gap inthe flying clouds; and, looking calmly on the scene of terror, her beamskissed the raging waves of the flood that hurried by, and lit up thesoldier's rough, weather-beaten features.
It was then that the Earl first became aware he was not alone. Besidehis couch stood a form in white--was it the vision of a troubled mind?was it some horrid dream? He rubbed his eyes--the figure still stoodthere, motionless as a statue! In an instant he recognized Augusta: hetried to speak--the words froze on his lips, and in speechless terror hegazed on the apparition. Hunger and distress had not robbed her eye ofits light, nor her face of its strange beauty; but there was somethingweird in her glance,--something ghostly in her pale brow,--somethingunearthly in her whole appearance. Her hair was dishevelled by the wind,and dripping with the rain; her mantle torn and soiled; her small whitefoot bleeding and cut by the rough paths she had trod. She raised herhand to heaven, and her look was one of intense earnestness andbeseeching woe, strangely blended with proud hauteur and offendedmajesty. She beheld him earnestly till another pause in the storm, and,in the hush that followed the blast, sung mournfully these lines:--
Unhappy! you deem you are safe; Secure in your ill-gotten towers, And the storms which around thee now chafe Shall sink with life's evening hours! You deem that in guerdon for this High mansions above shall be given, That yours is a lifetime of bliss, An endless rejoicing in heaven.
You err, oh! how deeply you err! This night hath your dark doom been spoken; And vainly you strive to deter Heaven's vengeance, whose laws you have broken. And the portals of heaven are closed, And vain are the hopes that you cherish, Hopes in which you too long have reposed-- Your soul shall eternally perish!
And not only this, but your sons Shall suffer in you, and your daughters, Their lives shall be desolate ones, Acquainted with suffering and slaughters; Cut off in the bloom of their youth, In the beautiful hour of life's morning, Oh! hearken--these tidings are truth, Oh! listen--and heed my dread warning.
But Heaven is merciful yet, Her blasting may turn to a blessing: Thine errors she longs to forget, Thy bloodshed her spirit distressing! Repent of each murderous deed, My tongue is still filled with glad tidings! Return to your desolate creed, And weep o'er your fatal backslidings.
Then your flocks and your barns shall increase, Your name shall be famous in story, The terrors of war sink to peace, Your sons change from glory to glory! And Heaven's glad song thou shalt learn In mansions more splendid and spacious. Return, oh! my brother, return! Heaven is waiting--still waits--to be gracious!
The sound ceased, and again the voice of the storm rose
high; cloudsshrouded the lady of the night, and darkness sank in treble deepness.Still something undefined, but dimly bright, shone near the renegade'sbedside, and made him aware that the Abbess awaited his reply: but, likeanother renegade, a modern poet has so finely drawn,--
"His heart was swollen, and turned aside By deep, interminable pride. * * * he be dismayed By wild words of a timid maid?"
"No. Be thou living form, or fleshless spirit," he answered, "I have butone reply: I will not return like the sow to her wallowing in the mire.Having once shaken off the trammels of Rome, I will not lightly bearagain her yoke, which is neither easy nor light; nay, fair cousin,methinks I have been but too merciful: to-morrow, God help me, will Iraze the altar of Baal with the ground, unless this storm saves me thelabour." He looked to see the effect of his reply--the dim light wasgone; he only heard the wild wind.
Early next morning he rose to fulfil his threat. It was one of thosebeautiful mornings after a night of rain and tempest, and the sun shonebrightly on the wreck left by the gale. Not a breath was stirring, andit was a strange sight to see the uprooted trees, the ruins of part ofthe chapel thrown down in the night, and the debris left by the Wye,which had nearly sunk to its wonted bed, lying in disjointed heaps onthe sward. The silence was only broken by the robin's note, or the rushof the subsiding river, when the Earl proceeded to demolish the highaltar. Rough as his soldiery were, they were not entirely freed from oldsuperstitions, and there was not one hardy enough to obey his behest;so, after censuring them for lukewarmness in a blessed cause, he himselfseized a sledgehammer from a bystander, and prepared to perform thesacrilegious act. He was a tall, stout man, of about thirty-five years,in the full strength of manhood, and he whirled the heavy instrumentround his head as if it had been a withe; it descended on the altar withtremendous force, and in a moment brought down in dire destruction themarble shrine and image of the Virgin. Again he swung the hammerhigh--his face was red with passion, and his eye unnaturally bright.Suddenly a mortal paleness suffused his features, his powerful armdropped down as if broken, and he fell heavily to the earth. Extremepassion had so excited him that a large blood-vessel burst, and as helay on the earth, the red blood bubbled from his mouth. There were thosewho saw in his fate the retributive punishment of God for his cousin'sdeath! He never spoke again, and after lingering some hours in greatsuffering, his spirit passed away, a few hours after his greatchieftain's demise.
From that hour, the curse of Augusta has reigned malignantly over allhis race;--the brave, the beautiful, have alike paid the debt, and oneby one, but surely as the leaf falls before October's blast, have themembers of that noble house succumbed to their fate. Some on thebattle-field, some on the fevered couch, some in the blue lone sea, someby accidental death, some in mortal fray; but of all the many heartsthat have braved life's storms, none have lived to be old in this worldof sin and sorrow. They learned to love despair, ay, even to be proud oftheir doom!
We trust we have not wearied our reader by this introductory chapter,without which the strange fates and vicissitudes of the family whosehistory we are about to narrate might perhaps seem overdrawn, but whoseearly fall will no longer seem strange to one who knows the origin ofthe WEIRD OF THE WENTWORTHS.[B]