The Last of the Barons — Complete
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CHAPTER II. THE SLEEPING INNOCENCE--THE WAKEFUL CRIME.
While these charming girls thus innocently conferred; while, Anne'ssweet voice running on in her artless fancies, they helped each other toundress; while hand in hand they knelt in prayer by the crucifix inthe dim recess; while timidly they extinguished the light, and stole torest; while, conversing in whispers, growing gradually more faint andlow, they sank into guileless sleep,--the unholy king paced his solitarychamber, parched with the fever of the sudden and frantic passion thatswept away from a heart in which every impulse was a giant all thememories of honour, gratitude, and law.
The mechanism of this strong man's nature was that almost unknown to themodern time; it belonged to those earlier days which furnish to Greecethe terrible legends Ovid has clothed in gloomy fire, which a similarcivilization produced no less in the Middle Ages, whether of Italy orthe North,--that period when crime took a grandeur from its excess; whenpower was so great and absolute that its girth burst the ligaments ofconscience; when a despot was but the incarnation of WILL; when honourwas indeed a religion, but its faith was valour, and it wrote itsdecalogue with the point of a fearless sword.
The youth of Edward IV. was as the youth of an ancient Titan, of anItalian Borgia; through its veins the hasty blood rolled as a devouringflame. This impetuous and fiery temperament was rendered yet morefearful by the indulgence of every intemperance; it fed on wine andlust; its very virtues strengthened its vices,--its courage stifledevery whisper of prudence; its intellect, uninured to all discipline,taught it to disdain every obstacle to its desires. Edward could,indeed, as we have seen, be false and crafty, a temporizer, adissimulator; but it was only as the tiger creeps,--the better tospring, undetected, on its prey. If detected, the cunning ceased, thedaring rose, and the mighty savage had fronted ten thousand foes, securein its fangs and talons, its bold heart and its deadly spring. Hence,with all Edward's abilities, the astonishing levities and indiscretionsof his younger years. It almost seemed, as we have seen him play fastand loose with the might of Warwick, and with that power, whether ofbarons or of people, which any other prince of half his talents wouldhave trembled to arouse against an unrooted throne,--it almost seemedas if he loved to provoke a danger for the pleasure it gave the brainto baffle or the hand to crush it. His whole nature coveting excitement,nothing was left to the beautiful, the luxurious Edward, already weariedwith pomp and pleasure, but what was unholy and forbidden. In his courtwere a hundred ladies, perhaps not less fair than Anne, at least of abeauty more commanding the common homage, but these he had only to smileon with ease to win. No awful danger, no inexpiable guilt, attendedthose vulgar frailties, and therefore they ceased to tempt. But herethe virgin guest, the daughter of his mightiest subject, the belovedtreasure of the man whose hand had built a throne, whose word haddispersed an army--here, the more the reason warned, the consciencestarted, the more the hell-born passion was aroused.
Like men of his peculiar constitution, Edward was wholly incapable ofpure and steady love. His affection for his queen the most resembledthat diviner affection; but when analyzed, it was composed of feelingswidely distinct. From a sudden passion, not otherwise to be gratified,he had made the rashest sacrifices for an unequal marriage. His vanity,and something of original magnanimity, despite his vices, urged him toprotect what he himself had raised,--to secure the honour of the subjectwho was honoured by the king. In common with most rude and powerfulnatures, he was strongly alive to the affections of a father, and thefaces of his children helped to maintain the influence of the mother.But in all this, we need scarcely say that that true love, which is atonce a passion and a devotion, existed not. Love with him cared not forthe person loved, but solely for its own gratification; it was desirefor possession,--nothing more. But that desire was the will of a kingwho never knew fear or scruple; and, pampered by eternal indulgence,it was to the feeble lusts of common men what the storm is to the westwind. Yet still, as in the solitude of night he paced his chamber, theshadow of the great crime advancing upon his soul appalled even thatdauntless conscience. He gasped for breath; his cheeks flushed crimson,and the next moment grew deadly pale. He heard the loud beating of hisheart. He stopped still. He flung himself on a seat, and hid his facewith his hands; then starting up, he exclaimed, "No, no! I cannot shutout that sweet face, those blue eyes from my gaze. They haunt me to mydestruction and her own. Yet why say destruction? If she love me, whoshall know the deed? If she love me not, will she dare to reveal hershame? Shame!--nay, a king's embrace never dishonours. A king's bastardis a House's pride. All is still,--the very moon vanishes from heaven.The noiseless rushes in the gallery give no echo to the footstep. Fie onme! Can a Plantagenet know fear?" He allowed himself no further time topause; he opened the door gently and stole along the gallery. He knewwell the chamber, for it was appointed by his command, and, besides theusual door from the corridor, a small closet conducted to a secret panelbehind the arras. It was the apartment occupied, in her visits to thecourt, by the queen's rival, the Lady Elizabeth Lucy. He passed into thecloset; he lifted the arras; he stood in that chamber, which gratitudeand chivalry and hospitable faith should have made sacred as a shrine.And suddenly, as he entered, the moon, before hid beneath a melancholycloud, broke forth in awful splendour, and her light rushed throughthe casement opposite his eye, and bathed the room with the beams of aghostlier day.
The abruptness of the solemn and mournful glory scared him as therebuking face of a living thing; a presence as if not of earth seemed tointerpose between the victim and the guilt. It was, however, but for amoment that his step halted. He advanced: he drew aside the folds ofthe curtain heavy with tissue of gold, and the sleeping face of Annelay hushed before him. It looked pale in the moonlight, but ineffablyserene, and the smile on its lips seemed still sweeter than that whichit wore awake. So fixed was his gaze, so ardently did his whole heartand being feed through his eyes upon that exquisite picture of innocenceand youth, that he did not see for some moments that the sleeper was notalone. Suddenly an exclamation rose to his lips. He clenched his handin jealous agony; he approached; he bent over; he heard the regularbreathing which the dreams of guilt never know; and then, when he sawthat pure and interlaced embrace,--the serene yet somewhat melancholyface of Sibyll, which seemed hueless as marble in the moonlight, bendingpartially over that of Anne, as if even in sleep watchful; both charmingforms so linked and woven that the two seemed as one life, the verybreath in each rising and ebbing with the other; the dark ringlets ofSibyll mingling with the auburn gold of Anne's luxuriant hair, and thedarkness and the gold, tress within tress, falling impartially overeither neck, that gleamed like ivory beneath that common veil,--whenhe saw this twofold loveliness, the sentiment, the conviction of thatmysterious defence which exists in purity, thrilled like ice through hisburning veins. In all his might of monarch and of man, he felt the aweof that unlooked-for protection,--maidenhood sheltering maidenhood,innocence guarding innocence. The double virtue appalled and baffledhim; and that slight arm which encircled the neck he would have perilledhis realm to clasp, shielded his victim more effectually than thebucklers of all the warriors that ever gathered round the banner of thelofty Warwick. Night and the occasion befriended him; but in vain. WhileSibyll was there, Anne was saved. He ground his teeth, and muttered tohimself. At that moment Anne turned restlessly. This movement disturbedthe light sleep of her companion. She spoke half inaudibly, but thesound was as the hoot of shame in the ear of the guilty king. He letfall the curtain, and was gone. And if one who lived afterwards to hearand to credit the murderous doom which, unless history lies, closed themale line of Edward, had beheld the king stealing, felon-like, fromthe chamber,--his step reeling to and fro the gallery floors, his facedistorted by stormy passion, his lips white and murmuring, his beautyand his glory dimmed and humbled,--the spectator might have halfbelieved that while Edward gazed upon those harmless sleepers, A VISIONOF THE TRAGEDY TO COME had stricken down his thought of guilt, andfilled up its place with ho
rror,--a vision of a sleep as pure, of twoforms wrapped in an embrace as fond, of intruders meditating a crimescarce fouler than his own; and the sins of the father starting intogrim corporeal shapes, to become the deathsmen of the sons!