Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Last of the Barons — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (reading an ebook .TXT) 📖
Book online «The Last of the Barons — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (reading an ebook .TXT) 📖». Author Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
“My own lord!” said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes; but, after a pause, she added timidly, “Does the king still bear so stern a memory against so humble a subject?”
“The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick’s restless machinations in France have soured his temper. He cannot hear thy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent of Lancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,—as, in truth, thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the influence of Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our good swords, she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the dispersion of our foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet feeds Edward’s suspicions of thy harmless father. The king chides himself for having suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even recalls the disastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that from the first thy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret. Nay, sure I am, that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he would condemn thee as a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate of my old foes the Woodvilles. But fie! be not so appalled, my Sibyll; Edward’s passions, though fierce, are changeful, and patience will reward us both.”
“Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!” said Sibyll, with great emotion. “Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence! I see thee surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to myself, ‘Is it possible that he can remember me?’ But thou lovest me still—still—still, and ever! Dost thou not?”
And Hastings said and swore.
“And the Lady Bonville?” asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but with the faltering tone of jealous fear.
“I have not seen her for months,” replied the noble, with a slight change of countenance. “She is at one of their western manors. They say her lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout hypocrite, and plays the tender wife. But enough of such ancient and worn-out memories. Thy father—sorrows he still for his Eureka? I can learn no trace of it.”
“See,” said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to Warner as they now drew near the house, “see, he shapes another Eureka from his thoughts!”
“How fares it, dear Warner?” asked the noble, taking the scholar’s hand.
“Ah,” cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerful protector, “bringest thou tidings of IT? Thy cheerful eye tells me that—no—no—thy face changes! They have destroyed it! Oh, that I could be young once more!”
“What!” said the world-wise man, astonished. “If thou hadst another youth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through a life of hardship, persecution, and wrong?”
“My noble son,” said the philosopher, “for hours when I have felt the wrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the nights when I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy! God is kinder to us all than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow on the surface, and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the unwitnessed soul.”
Sibyll had left Hastings by her father’s side, and tripped lightly to the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners who supplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,—the happy banquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst such sparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.
And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under the honeysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over his sated mind. The pure soul of the student, released a while from the tyranny of an earthly pursuit,—the drudgery of a toil, that however grand, still but ministered to human and material science,—had found for its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and eternal mysteries. Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden cage, into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and spiritual eloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made familiar to his thoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he indulged in his large ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that now came forth in heaven; of the laws that gave harmony to the universe; of the evidence of a God in the mechanism of creation; of the spark from central divinity, that, kindling in a man’s soul, we call “genius;” of the eternal resurrection of the dead, which makes the very principle of being, and types, in the leaf and in the atom, the immortality of the great human race. He was sublimer, that gray old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his words, than ever is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and deeds but blunderingly and lamely seek it.
And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from its little ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked, “What can courts and a king’s smile give me in exchange for serene tranquillity and devoted love?”
CHAPTER II. THE MAN AWAKES IN THE SAGE, AND THE SHE-WOLF AGAIN HATH TRACKED THE LAMB.
From the night in which Hastings had saved from the knives of the tymbesteres Sibyll and her father, his honour and chivalry had made him their protector. The people of the farm (a widow and her children, with the peasants in their employ) were kindly and simple folks. What safer home for the wanderers than that to which Hastings had removed them? The influence of Sibyll over his variable heart or fancy was renewed. Again vows were interchanged and faith plighted. Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who, however gallant an enemy, was still more than ever, since Warwick’s exile, a formidable one, and who shared his sister’s dislike to Hastings, was naturally at that time in the fullest favour of King Edward, anxious to atone for the brief disgrace his brother-in-law had suffered during the later days of Warwick’s administration. And Hastings, offended by the manners of the rival favourite, took one of the disgusts so frequent in the life of a courtier, and, despite his office of chamberlain, absented himself much from his sovereign’s company. Thus, in the reaction of his mind, the influence of Sibyll was greater than it otherwise might have been. His visits to the farm were regular and frequent. The widow believed him nearly related to Sibyll, and suspected Warner to be some attainted Lancastrian, compelled to hide in secret till his pardon was obtained; and no scandal was attached to the noble’s visits, nor any surprise evinced at his attentive care for all that could lend a grace to a temporary refuge unfitting the quality of his supposed kindred.
And, in her entire confidence and reverential affection, Sibyll’s very pride was rather soothed than wounded by obligations which were but proofs of love, and to which plighted troth gave her a sweet right. As for Warner, he had hitherto seemed to regard the great lord’s attentions only as a tribute to his own science, and a testimony of the interest which a statesman might naturally feel in the invention of a thing that might benefit the realm. And Hastings had been delicate in the pretexts of his visits. One time he called to relate the death of poor Madge, though he kindly concealed the manner of it, which he had discovered, but
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