Devereux — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best free novels txt) 📖

I HASTENED home after my eventful interview with Isora, and gave myself up to tumultuous and wild conjecture. Aubrey sought me the next morning: I narrated to him all that had occurred: he said little, but that little enraged me, for it was contrary to the dictates of my own wishes. The character of Morose in the “Silent Woman” is by no means an uncommon one. Many men—certainly many lovers—would say with equal truth, always provided they had equal candour, “All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome.” Certainly I felt that amiable sentiment most sincerely with regard to Aubrey. I left him abruptly: a resolution possessed me. “I will see,” said I, “this Barnard; I will lie in wait for him; I will demand and obtain, though it be by force, the secret which evidently subsists between him and this exiled family.”

Full of this idea, I drew my cloak round me, and repaired on foot to the neighbourhood of the Spaniard’s cottage. There was no place near it very commodious for accommodation both of vigil and concealment. However, I made a little hill, in a field opposite the house, my warder’s station, and, lying at full length on the ground, wrapt in my cloak, I trusted to escape notice. The day passed: no visitor appeared. The next morning I went from my own rooms, through the subterranean passage into the castle cave, as the excavation I have before described was generally termed. On the shore I saw Gerald by one of the small fishing-boats usually kept there. I passed him with a sneer at his amusements, which were always those of conflicts against fish or fowl. He answered me in the same strain, as he threw his nets into the boat, and pushed out to sea. “How is it that you go alone?” said I; “is there so much glory in the capture of mackerel and dogfish that you will allow no one to share it?”

“There are other sports besides those for men,” answered Gerald, colouring indignantly: “my taste is confined to amusements in which he is but a fool who seeks companionship; and if you could read character better, my wise brother, you would know that the bold rover is ever less idle and more fortunate than the speculative dreamer.”

As Gerald said this, which he did with a significant emphasis, he rowed vigorously across the water, and the little boat was soon half way to the opposite islet. My eyes followed it musingly as it glided over the waves, and my thoughts painfully revolved the words which Gerald had uttered. “What can he mean?” said I, half aloud; “yet what matters it? Perhaps some low amour, some village conquest, inspires him with that becoming fulness of pride and vain-glory; joy be with so bold a rover!” and I strode away along the beach towards my place of watch; once only I turned to look at Gerald; he had then just touched the islet, which was celebrated as much for the fishing it afforded as the smuggling it protected.

I arrived at last at the hillock, and resumed my station. Time passed on, till, at the dusk of evening, the Spaniard came out. He walked slowly towards the town; I followed him at a distance. Just before he reached the town, he turned off by a path which led to the beach. As the evening was unusually fresh and chill, I felt convinced that some cause, not wholly trivial, drew the Spaniard forth to brave it. My pride a little revolted at the idea of following him; but I persuaded myself that Isora’s happiness, and perhaps her father’s safety, depended on my obtaining some knowledge of the character and designs of this Barnard, who appeared to possess so dangerous an influence over both daughter and sire; nor did I doubt but that the old man was now gone forth to meet him. The times were those of mystery and of intrigue: the emissaries of the House of Stuart were restlessly at work among all classes; many of them, obscure and mean individuals, made their way the more dangerously from their apparent insignificance. My uncle, a moderate Tory, was opposed, though quietly and without vehemence, to the claims of the banished House. Like Sedley, who became so stanch a revolutionist, he had seen the Court of Charles II. and the character of that King’s brother too closely to feel much respect for either; but he thought it indecorous to express opposition loudly against a party among whom were many of his early friends; and the good old knight was too much attached to private ties to be very much alive to public feeling. However, at his well-filled board, conversation, generally, though displeasingly to himself, turned upon politics, and I had there often listened, of late, to dark hints of the danger to which we were exposed, and of the restless machinations of the Jacobites. I did not, therefore, scruple to suspect this Barnard of some plot against the existing state, and I did it the more from observing that the Spaniard often spoke bitterly of the English Court, which had rejected some claims he had imagined himself entitled to make upon it; and that he was naturally of a temper vehemently opposed to quiet and alive to enterprise. With this impression, I deemed it fair to seize any opportunity of seeing, at least, even if I could not question, the man whom the Spaniard himself confessed to have state reasons for concealment; and my anxiety to behold one whose very name could agitate Isora, and whose presence could occasion the state in which I had found her, sharpened this desire into the keenness of a passion.

While Alvarez descended to the beach, I kept the upper path, which wound along the cliff. There was a spot where the rocks were rude and broken into crags, and afforded me a place where, unseen, I could behold what passed below. The first thing I beheld was a boat approaching rapidly towards the