The Last of the Barons — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (reading an ebook .TXT) 📖

“It was indeed,” said Adam, unsuspectingly, “a most shrewd suggestion of native wit and clerkly wisdom.”

“Glad am I thou approvest it, Master Warner,” said Richard. And as he spoke the tormentor reappeared with a smith, armed with the implements of his trade.

“Good smith, break into pieces this stubborn iron; bare all its receptacles; leave not one fragment standing on the other! ‘Delenda est tua Carthago,’ Master Warner. There is Latin in answer to thy logic.”

It is impossible to convey any notion of the terror, the rage, the despair, which seized upon the unhappy sage when these words smote his ear, and he saw the smith’s brawny arms swing on high the ponderous hammer. He flung himself between the murderous stroke and his beloved model. He embraced the grim iron tightly. “Kill me!” he exclaimed sublimely, “kill me!—not my THOUGHT!”

“Solomon was verily and indeed a wise king,” said the duke, with a low inward laugh. “And now, man, I have thee! To save thy infant, thine art’s hideous infant, confess the whole!”

It was then that a fierce struggle evidently took place in Adam’s bosom. It was, perhaps—O reader! thou whom pleasure, love, ambition, hatred, avarice, in thine and our ordinary existence, tempt—it was, perhaps, to him the one arch-temptation of a life. In the changing countenance, the heaving breast, the trembling lip, the eyes that closed and opened to close again, as if to shut out the unworthy weakness,—yea, in the whole physical man,—was seen the crisis of the moral struggle. And what, in truth, to him an Edward or a Henry, a Lancaster or a York? Nothing. But still that instinct, that principle, that conscience, ever strongest in those whose eyes are accustomed to the search of truth, prevailed. So he rose suddenly and quietly, drew himself apart, left his work to the Destroyer, and said,—

“Prince, thou art a boy! Let a boy’s voice annihilate that which should have served all time. Strike!”

Richard motioned; the hammer descended, the engine and its appurtenances reeled and crashed, the doors flew open, the wheels rattled, the sparks flew. And Adam Warner fell to the ground, as if the blow had broken his own heart. Little heeding the insensible victim of his hard and cunning policy, Richard advanced to the inspection of the interior recesses of the machinery. But that which promised Adam’s destruction saved him. The heavy stroke had battered in the receptacle of the documents, had buried them in the layers of iron. The faithful Eureka, even amidst its injuries and wrecks, preserved the secret of its master.

The prince, with impatient hands, explored all the apertures yet revealed, and after wasting many minutes in a fruitless search, was about to bid the smith complete the work of destruction, when the door suddenly opened and Lord Hastings entered. His quick eye took in the whole scene; he arrested the lifted arm of the smith, and passing deliberately to Gloucester, said, with a profound reverence, but a half-reproachful smile, “My lord! my lord! your Highness is indeed severe upon my poor scholar.”

“Canst thou answer for thy scholar’s loyalty?” said the duke, gloomily.

Hastings drew the prince aside, and said, in a low tone, “His loyalty! poor man, I know not; but his guilelessness, surely, yes. Look you, sweet prince, I know the interest thou hast in keeping well with the Earl of Warwick, whom I, in sooth, have slight cause to love. Thou hast trusted me with thy young hopes of the Lady Anne; this new Nevile placed about the king, and whose fortunes Warwick hath made his care, hath, I have reason to think, some love passages with the scholar’s daughter,—the daughter came to me for the passport. Shall this Marmaduke Nevile have it to say to his fair kinswoman, with the unforgiving malice of a lover’s memory, that the princely Gloucester stooped to be the torturer of yon poor old man? If there be treason in the scholar or in yon battered craft-work, leave the search to me!”

The duke raised his dark, penetrating eyes to those of Hastings, which did not quail; for here world-genius encountered world-genius, and art, art.

“Thine argument hath more subtlety and circumlocution than suit with simple truth,” said the prince, smiling. “But it is enough to Richard that Hastings wills protection even to a spy!”

Hastings kissed the duke’s hand in silence, and going to the door, he disappeared a moment and returned with Sibyll. As she entered, pale and trembling, Adam rose, and the girl with a wild cry flew to his bosom.

“It is a winsome face, Hastings,” said the duke, dryly. “I pity Master Nevile the lover, and envy my Lord Chamberlain the protector.”

Hastings laughed, for he was well pleased that Richard’s suspicion took that turn.

“And now,” he said, “I suppose Master Nevile and the Duchess of Bedford’s page may enter. Your guard stopped them hitherto. They come for this gentleman from her highness the queen’s mother.”

“Enter, Master Nevile, and you, Sir Page. What is your errand?”

“My lady, the duchess,” said the page, “has sent me to conduct Master Warner to the apartments prepared for him as her special multiplier and alchemist.”

“What!” said the prince, who, unlike the irritable Clarence, made it his policy to show all decorous homage to the queen’s kin, “hath that illustrious lady taken this gentleman into her service? Why announced you not, Master Warner, what at once had saved you from further questioning? Lord Hastings, I thank you now for your intercession.”

Hastings, in answer, pointed archly at Marmaduke, who was aiding Sibyll to support her father. “Do you suspect me still, prince?” he whispered.

The duke shrugged his shoulders, and Adam, breaking from Marmaduke and Sibyll, passed with tottering steps to the shattered labour of his solitary life. He looked at the ruin with mournful despondence, with quivering lips. “Have you done with me?” then he said, bowing his head lowlily, for his pride was gone; “may we—that is, I and this, my poor device—withdraw from your palace? I see we are not fit for kings!”

“Say not so,” said the young duke, gently: “we have now convinced ourselves of our error, and I crave thy pardon, Master Warner, for my harsh dealings. As for this, thy toy, the king’s workmen shall set it right for thee. Smith, call the fellows yonder, to help bear this to—” He paused, and glanced at Hastings.

“To my apartments,” said the chamberlain. “Your Highness may be sure that I will there inspect it. Fear not, Master Warner; no further harm shall chance to thy contrivance.”

“Come, sir, forgive me,” said the duke. With gracious affability the young prince held out his hand, the fingers of which sparkled with costly gems, to the old man. The old man bowed as if his beard would have swept the earth, but he did not touch the hand. He seemed still in a state between dream and reason, life and death: he moved not, spoke not, till the men came to bear the model; and he then followed it, his arms folded in his gown, till, on entering the court, it was borne in a contrary direction from his own, to the chamberlain’s apartment; then wistfully pursuing it with his eyes, he uttered such a sigh