CHAPTER XXI.
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“My life, my honour, and my cause
I tender free to Scotland's laws.
Are these so weak, as must require
The aid of your misguided ire?
Or, if I suffer causeless wrong,
Is then my selfish rage so strong,
My sense of public weal so low,
That, for mean vengeance on a foe,
Those cords of love I should unbind,
Which knit my country and my kind?”
Lady of the Lake.
Scarcely had I passed into the outer tent—
even then unsuspicious of aught beyond some trivial
disturbance of the men, elevated, perhaps, by
their late victory, beyond the sobriety of discipline—
ere I was overpowered by a sudden rush
of many soldiers; and, although not disarmed or
mastered, was borne violently backward into the
apartment I had just quitted.
On finding myself standing in the centre of the
tent, opposed to at least a score of men, whom I
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recognised at once as the sergeants of the provost-marshal,
my first sensation was of sheer astonishment—
the second prompted me to snatch my pistols
from the table, on which they lay in readiness
to my hand, and to raise my bugle to my lips.
In that moment of confusion and surprise, my
eye turned instinctively to Isabel. She stood, as
I had left her, with hands clasped and pallid features;
but her eye was bright and calm, nor was
there aught of weak or womanish terror in the
expression of her noble countenance.
“No nearer—on your lives, no nearer, villains!”
I whispered, sternly and audibly through my set
teeth. “What means this insolent intrusion?”
I covered the leader of the band with my levelled
pistol, as I spoke, apprehending any thing
of lawless mutiny rather than my deliberate and
legal arrest.
“We regret, fair sir—believe me, we regret,
while we must execute, our duty,” replied the young
officer who led the party. “I have a warrant
here from the commander, to secure the person of
Major-general Harry Mornington, on charges of
neglect of duty, of murder, and of the abduction
of a royal ward! You must give up your sword
and follow us—peaceably, if you will; but follow
us you must! We would be courteous in
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pursuance of our duty, as far as is consistent with our
own security and your safe-keeping.”
“And at whose say—what villain's say—am I,
a general of division, thus felon-like arrested? or
at whose lawless warrant?” I exclaimed, fiercely,
and without withdrawing my aim from the person
of the speaker. “Go, learn your duty better, sir
provost, or sir hangman! For me, you take me
not alive, save by the sign-manual of my true
superior. An I but blow one call upon this bugle,
ye are all dead men—one call to the Swiss
troops of D'Erlach! Look to it, sir; withdraw
your scoundrel sergeants, and that, too, on the instant,
or, by the ashes of my fathers, you shall die
the death!”
“That you may have the power,” replied the
other, calmly, “to resist us, to your own safety
and to our destruction, I will not gainsay. How
far such a proceeding will be to the honour of your
name, it is for you to balance. We have already
weighed the chances; and it likes us better to fall
in the performance of our duty than to die like
dogs for breach of it. I do beseech you, sir, put
us not to the need of offering violence to an officer
of your distinction, and in the presence of so fair
a lady! If there be aught of pleasure our courtesy
may yield you, command us.”
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Almost for the first time in my life I was undecided.
The man who stood before me was, indeed,
innocent of aught, save the performance of
his duties—his distasteful duties—to his superiors;
and would it, as he said, be a deed fitting the
name of Mornington, to slay an honest servitor for
the fault of the bad master? Would it be wise or
seemly to provoke a deadly brawl, in which mortal
weapons would be wielded by resolved and
skilful hands, and that, too, in the very presence of
my recovered bride? And yet, how might I quit
her with the certainty of meeting her again? While
I was yet revolving these wild questions in my
brain, she threw herself between me and the provost
of the guard, flung her white arms around me,
and, turning the fatal weapon from its level,—
“For my sake, Harry, for my sake,” she cried,
“do no such madness. Is it that you fear—is it
that you are conscious of your guilt, that you
would shun the proof? For shame! for shame!
Go forth, my noble husband, trusting in the strength
of your own pure nobility, of your own spotless
innocence! Strike but one blow against the officers
of justice—strike but one blow—and you are
lost for ever—condemned beyond redemption!
Guiltless though you be—spotless of sin or shame—
yet, if you do resist the mandate of the law, you
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shall be judged as guilty. Go forth, and challenge
the bold man who has spoken treason on your
name—challenge him, not to the arbitry of blood,
but to the proof of judgment—go forth, and tremble
not! Go forth, and let the guilty shudder!”
“It is for you,” I cried, moved almost to tears
by her enthusiastic speech—“it is for you alone
that I would strive—”
“For me!” she interrupted me—“for me! and
wherefore? Think you that I would not deem it
better to follow you, a man proved innocent, but
guiltlessly condemned—to follow you to the dungeon,
to the scaffold, to the grave!—than to sit
beside you on earth's proudest throne, if shielded
from the power of law by lawless violence?”
“Isabel,” I answered—“Isabel, you have prevailed!”
and turning to the officer, who had
waited with patient sympathy, and with somewhat
of disgust against his employers working in his
features, I addressed him:—“On one condition,
sir, and on one only, will I follow you. This lady
is my wife, my lawful wife. She—by the villany
of one who was my prisoner some hours since, and
who is now, an I misjudge it not, my foul accuser—
she has been torn from me, and immured, these
months past, in a convent-jail! Her will I not
leave unprotected, and liable to his new outrages,
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though you, and I, and France herself should
perish! Let one of your men summon hither
D'Erlach, that to his trust I may commit her, and,
be it to my death, I follow you without inquiry or
resistance. I pledge to you a word unbroken—a
name immaculate!”
“It is enough, sir. You, Croquart, summon
hither instantly the leader of the Switzers; and
the rest of you withdraw, but wait without. Your
honour, sir, that, rescue or no rescue, you escape
not?”
Herbert, Henry William, 1807-1858 [1835], The brothers: a tale of the Fronde volume 2 (Harper & Brothers, New York) [word count] [eaf136v2].
