GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK
Philadelphia, January 1850

THE EARL'S DEATH-BED; OR, THE FORCE OF CONSCIENCE.

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, ESQ., AUTHOR OF "THE ROMAN TRAITOR," " CROMWELL," "THE BROTHERS,' "MARMADUKE WYVIL," ETC. ETC.

Fearfully groaned the huge, immemorial oaks which stood – unusually grand, and massy, and luxuriant, considering their vicinity to the storm-beaten Yorkshire coast of the German ocean – around the gorgeous pile of Huntcliff castle; the creaking and rolling of their monstrous arms, in the lulls of the tempest, conveying a more dismal and lugubrious impression to the listener's ear than all the rage and uproar of the blast.

But these were not the only sounds which were heard that night by the inmates of the ancient castle. Afar off; deep, ceaseless, and majestical, that grandest of all earthly sounds, the voice of the eternal sea, bursting in thunders louder than those of heaven upon the iron barriers of that awful coast, loaded thee gale with its solemn burden; while nearer yet to the rocking walls of the, huge edifice, the sharp and re-echoed roar of a swollen torrent chafing among the crags, rose on the ear distinct and unmingled with the mightier chorus of the ocean billows.

Added to these, the baying of the large, savage bear-dogs in the castle court, and the fierce screams of a half-tamed eagle – an heir-loom of the house, chained through three generations, as tradition said, on a projecting bartizan above the rocky chasm of the river, sufficed to render the night truly horrible and hideous.

And yet there was that passing within, that night, which needed no addition of the grand or terrible.

In any event, death is a strange and awful mystery. The change which we have alt beheld, must all undergo; but which no one of us, the wisest and most intellectual no more than the simplest and the weakest minded, can comprehend or fathom.

But there are circumstances under which death becomes not merely a phenomenon, mysterious, inconceivable, and awful or affecting; but a portent,. terrific, horrible, appalling, and taxing to the utmost the physical and moral courage of those who are compelled to witness it.

And such was the character of the scene which was that night passing in a large chamber of the loftiest tower of Huntcliff castle. So high, indeed, was the site of the old Norman keep itself, and so dizzy was the elevation of that topmost turret, that it was said and believed of all the neighborhood, that the old lord's lamp, which burned there nightly till the stars were waxing pale in the heavens, could be distinctly seen in the three northern counties, as well as over the three Yorkshire ridings; and whether this was sooth or no, certain it is that he on whose way, as he lagged homeward from fair or market, weary and belated, a ray fell from that haunted turret, crossed himself if he were of the olden faith, and breathed a prayer to the Virgin; or muttered to himself, if of the reformed religion, a prayer for protection against the powers of dark- ness.

The Earl of Huntcliff was a man advanced, as it was believed, in years beyond the utmost limits of natural human life.

It was known that, since his birth, seven kings, and one greater than a king, the wonderful Protector, had filled the throne of England; for Anne had, in this very year, succeeded the third William, and when the Earl first drew his maiden sword, she held the sceptre who told her people, in the hour of peril, that, " although her body was that of a weak woman, she had the heart of a king within her, and a hing, too, of England."

And those high words were heard of him on that day, when she reviewed her host, armed cap-a-pie, at Tilbury, who how lay struggling in the pangs of mortal agony.

Above a century and a quarter had passed over the head of the stern, dark old lord; and yet, until the day on which he was death-stricken, he might have passed for the junior of men who might have been his grandsons' grandsons.

Except that his hair was as white as the drifted snow, he gave, to the very last, no sign of advanced age. His eagle eye was as bright and piercing as in his prime of manhood. His stately figure, tall be- yond the ordinary height of men, was unbowed as the pine tree on the mountains. His iron strength of limb, his more than iron hardihood of constitu- tion, were unbroken. When William of Nassau ascended, or, as he termed it – for he was of- the old religion, and a follower of the luckless Stuarts – usurped the throne of England, already in his hundred and fifteenth year, he had beaten off, with his own single sword, three Dutch dragoons at the Boyne water, and slain the stoutest of the three. And there were many who believed – nor they of the lower classes only, for that was a superstitious age – that it was by art magic that his life and physical powers were protracted to a period' so unnatural.

Rut had it been possible for those who so believed, to look into the secrets of that old man's soul, to know his inmost thoughts, to see the phantoms with which his solitude was peopled, sitting beside him at the board, mounting the charger's back behind him; yea, watching by his pillow during the watches of the sleepless night, they had ceased to believe that the most life-loving of mankind would have sought any means to prolong such an existence.

For his whole life was agony – one act of unchanging agony. Alone, or in companionship; awake or sleeping; tranquil, or in the heat and fury of the fray, it was still one thing – one and the same forever – for himself he could not forget.

It was his pride only, his indomitable, immutable, impassive pride, which bore him, if not scatheless, yet unwrithing through the furnace of his recollections, his remorse.

What a life, what a career had been his! What promise had been wanting to his youth! what glory to his manhood! What field of fame, ay, and of infamy, had he not trodden with the bold foot of a resolute competitor, and left his footprints there, branded for ever ineffaceable.

Soldier, scholar, statesman, orator, poet, voluptuary, gambler, debauchee, traveler, pilgrim, pirate, such, in the heat and heyday of his blood, had been the characters in which, turn after turn, he figured in the world's changing phases; and to these, in his old age, add exile for conscience' sake, philosopher, self-torturer, half atheist, half bigot, an anchorite, and a devotee, yet unrepentant.

Such was the man who, amid that rage and uproar of the elements – meet symbol of his own tumultuous career – lay struggling between life and death; not willing to remain, yet loth to go; too weak to live, but still too strong to die.

And now, that his last hour was nigh at hand, he lay extended on the huge oaken bed, which stood in a recess of that high turret chamber, wherein he had passed all his nights, and many of his days, in utter solitudes, during the latter years of his long life.

There he lay, in full dress; looking rather, so far as concerned his attire, like a man about to get upon his horse prepared for a journey or a battle, than one who is on the eve of starting on the voyage over that shoreless sea whose waters are eternity.

Suddenly stricken down while walking on the castle terrace, by some strange and searching malady, which had smitten him suddenly, without note or warning, in the midst of his proud strength, he had commanded the men who took him up, to bear him to his chamber – that chamber, the scene of so much mysterious terror, which, save his own, and that of an old negro men who had followed him from climes beyond the western sea, and that of one other – more mysterious – being, no human foot had trod for above half a century.

And there he now lay, even as he had fallen; for, with a strange sort of proud obstinacy, very characteristic of the man, he had refused positively to allow himself to be undressed, or to assume in any way the semblance of one sick unto death, although, at that very time, be was racked by agonies, both physical and moral, which would have defied the pen of Shakspeare to depict.

His doublet, therefore, of black velvet, was buttoned closely up, over his still broad and bulky chest, to his collar-bone, where the broad, unadorned bunch of his linen shirt was turned down squarely over the cape of the outer garment; for, although this was the age of flowing horse-hair periwigs, long-waisted, huge-cuffed, and no-collared coats; voluminous Steinkirke cravats rustling with Flemish lace, and all the hideous fashions of the eighteenth century, the old earl adhered obstinately – as he did to his religion and his loyalty – to the dress which he had worn in the days of the maiden queen and her immediate successors.

His loose trunk hose, of the same material as his doublet, were met at the knee by a pair of heavy polished riding-boots, mounted with gilt spurs, an article long ago disused; and these latter implements, with the basket-hilt of the long, ponderous rapier which he persisted in retaining, suspended from a broad shoulder-belt of black loather, were the only ornaments or gauds of any kind whicb glittered in his valuable but plain and dark apparel.

His face was deadly pale; and this pallor was rendered yet more observable by the whiteness of his long, curled hair, which fell down naturally below the collar of his doublet; by the heavy masses of his snow-white eyebrows, and the immense drooping mustaches which he wore on his upper lip.

His eyes glared fearfully, and these alone gave notice that he was yet alive, as they rolled observantly to and fro, noticing everything that passed within the chamber, although he spoke not, nor gave the slightest token that he was in possession of his senses.

He had not uttered a single groan since he had been laid on his bed, though it was evident that ho was suffering exceeding pain, from the terrible changes which flitted over his face, and from the convulsive spasms, during which his teeth had bitten his nether lip so fiercely that the blood trickled down his snow-white beard. '

It was on the morning previous to the day of the tempest, that he fell, as has been stated, in a sort of fit or convulsion, on the great terrace. When the servants, however, who had seen him fall, from a distance, came up to the spot, he had entirely recovered his senses and his self-possession – if; indeed, he had ever lost them – and although unable to rise, or even to lift s limb – for it appeared that all his person, save his right arm and his head, were paralyzed – he spoke in his usual slow, cold, sonorous tones, which never fell on any ear without leaving the impression that the speaker had survived every touch of human feeling, and that the affections no less than the passions of the oldman, were ashes, irrecoverably dead and dormant.

The orders which he gave were, as his orders were at all times, brief, stern, and to the point.

A courier was sent, with directions to spare neither cost nor labor, at the utmost speed of man and horse, to York; thence to summon a well-known and noted lawyer, telling him that more than life and death were on his speed. An aged man, who for years had been the earl's only visitor, and who was strenuously suspected, by the household of being a Jesuit in disguise, was sent for from Searborough, which was the nearest town, though in that day little superior to a fishing hamlet; and he – with a surgeon who had been called in without orders by the servants, and of whose presence the dying man had not taken the slightest notice – was alone, in the turret chamber, at the moment when this brief narrative of a strange scene commences,

Everything in the chamber, in the persons who occupied it, in the things which there fell out, were strange and unusual.

It was a lofty, square apartment, occupying the whole of the upper story of the tower in which it was placed; the winding staircase, which alone gave access to it, being carried up in a small external turret, and entering by s low, arched door in one angle. On three sides there were tall windows, overlooking the whole country, directed to three cardinal points of the compass; the northern wall being pierced by the arched recess in which stood the old earl's bed. In the angle facing the door by which you entered, a fire-place, evidently of structure comparatively recent, as viewed with reference to the structure of the castle, yawned under an elaborately wrought canopy of Italian marble, of the age probably of the elder James, in whose pacific and would-be learned reign, a taste for classical subjects and Italian decoration had become in some sort the rage.

Over this classic structure, which was singularly out of keeping with the other decorations of the Gothic room, with its clustered pillars, its ponderous mouldings, and intersecting groundwork of black oak; its hangings of embossed and gilded leather of Cordova, and its whole character and air, which were purely medieval, there hung' a picture, by the pencil of some great foreign master, of a woman of extraordinary beauty, though of a singularly striking and un-English style of loveliness.

It was a tall, fair girl, with eyes of the darkest hazel, and brows and eyelashes which might have put the hues of night itself to shame, soglossy and unmingled was their blackness while her hair, which flowed down over her bare shoulders, far below her waist, was of the brightest and most glossy gold.

Under the flame of this oval-shaped portrait, a long, sheathless rapier was suspended; the blade of which was perfectly bright and burnished, except for a space of about three inches long from the point upward, and another patch somewhat smaller in size midway between the point and hilt, which were encrusted with thick, black rust, that seemed to have been allowed intentionally to invade the polish of the weapon. Across this antique sword, there was festooned a tress of what would have been taken, at first sight, for floss silk; for no one could have imagined that human hair could have attained such a length – even if it could have been so soft, so silky, or of a hue so lustrous. Yet human hair it was, nearly five feet in length, and of the very shade which was represented in the portrait above.

Rut of this lovely, lustrous hair, above two-thirds had evidently been steeped in some dark viscous fluid; for it was clotted and almost black. Nor did it require a very practiced eye to discover that the fluid in which it had been steeped, was blood.

It was impossible to look upon that portrait, with the blood-rusted sword beneath, and the bloodstained hair so similar to that of the fair girl portrayed above, without being convinced that thereto was connected some strange tale of love, and crime, and vengeance. But, save the old earl's and his negro servant's, and one other's, of whom we shall hear anon, no eye had looked for years upon those dark mementos of the past, and no one who was now alive, or had been alive within the last half century, knew or ever suspected aught concerning the picture or its lovely original.

The other decorations of the room, like these, were strange and old, and many of them foreign; and almost all had reference to some scene far distant, some period but by that old man long forgotten. There were arms, armor,.and weapons, of strange forms and devices; and even instruments of torture, spotted and stained with rust; and feathers of rare birds, and hides of savage beasts, and the scaly spoils of serpents. Human bones, too, were among the grisly ornaments of the walls; and a complete human skeleton standing erect in a niche, with more than a dozen skulls around it, as a phrenologist would quickly have discovered, of as many different tribes of Indians.

On the table, among books and parchments, and strange instruments, astronomical or astrological, and some believed at that time to pertain to art magic, stood a small portable furnace, with cruci-bles, retort, and glass matrasses; and half a dozen knives and daggers, of diverse national fabric, from the exquisitely finished Venetian stiletto, to the rude Kris of the barbarous Malay.

Above all, towered a superb crucifix of gold, more than four feet in height, with a polished human skull lying at its foot.

The surgeon, whose aid had been rejected by a significant and contemptuous gesture of the right hand – and who, indeed, had not been slow to discover that his,aid was, useless – was cowering in a large elbow chair over the embers of the fitfully blazing wood fire, which was half expiring on the hearth. He would have given five years of his life to escape from the place, had not shame forbidden him to quit it, while life remained in the palsied frame of the old nobleman.

The other old man – who had been just introduced by the negro, to whom the earl had addressed some words, in an unknown and strangely sounding tongue, on receiving which he quitted the chamber hastily – was leaning over the bed, conversing earn- estly with the sufferer in the Latin language.

The surgeon, as he sat by the fire, pricked his ears, and listened with all his soul; for, without under- standing scholarly or fluently the tongue of the world conquerors, he had a smattering of medical dog-Latin, by aid of which he had contrived already to pick up a few disjointed hints of the dark conver- sation which was passing between those two old men – the youngest of whom, though he might have been the grandson of the other, had already far exceeded the ordinary age of meri in these degene- rate days.

And of so dark and awful a nature were those few hints, that the listener actually shuddered as he caught them. No form of crime or horror that can be imagined but was touched upon, though by whom, where, or when committed, he was not Latinist enough to discover. Murder, adultery, rape, tortur- ing, nay, parricide, and incest were named familiarly and without comment, although it was evident to the listener that remorse was busy with the dying peer, though it was combatted by his indomitable pride, in spite the remonstrances of the priest – for such, indeed, he was – and his urgent exhortations to him, if he would yet save his soul alive, to make atonement.

At length, so terrified was the man at what he heard, and so little was his frame under the control o! his own will, that he uttered a sort of smothered groan, and his teeth chattered in his head audibly.

The dying earl caught the sounds, and bade the priest raise his head from the pillow. That done, his glaring eyes fixed the listening caitiff; as ho afterward described it, like the tawny gleam of an eagle's eye riveted on its destined prey.

"Ha! slave!" he almost shouted, "dost thou understand, a beastly, cringing slave like thee, the language of the Caesars?" The man feebly muttered an explanation, rather lessening than increasing the degree of his appre- hension.

"Come hither. What i' the fiend's name shakes thee? Hither – nearer! I say nearer! Dost think I would harm such a coward thing as thou art'? Now, feel my pulse. How long have I to live?"

The surgeon, terrified almost out of his propriety, could hardly be forced into giving a direct answer to this strange query; but at length admitted that there were not many hours of life left to the aged sufferer.

"Hast any drugs that can keep me alive until daybreak?"

" Most noble, there be none that can do so," replied the surgeon.

" I cannot live, thou wouldst say, so long?" "I fear it is impossible, most noble lord." "Thou art a fool. I will live until then, I teil thee; and thou shalt tarry here to see it. Now, hark thee, in thine ear – dost speak or understand Greek ?"

"Not one letter of it, noble sir."

"Look that thou lie not; for, by the Lord that liveth, better it were for thee to be thrust into those slow embers and broiled piecemeal, than to lie to me now. Wilt swear thou dost not understand it?"

" By all that is most holy."

"Swear, then; and thou, Ignatius, receive his oath. Swear by this formula that I will repeat to thee, never to divulge that which thou hast heard, or that which thou shalt hear, that which thou hast seen, or that which thou shalt see in this chamber, on pain of" – and he ran through a form of oath so awful, so inexpressibly appalling, blasphemous, and horrible, that the surgeon's lips grew ashy pale as he repeated the words after him; and when it was concluded, sank back in his chair half fainting.

It was a formula in use among the barbarous buc- caneers of the Caribbean seas, from whom, it is probable, that, in some of his strange, wild wander- ings, the English earl had learned it. Of that oath it is told, that so frightful, even to the least credulous and most daring soul, are its obligations, that it has never yet been broken.

This done, scarcely condescending to look at the trembling wretch again who had taken it, the peer resumed his conversation in the tongue of Pericles and Plato, which they both spoke as fluently as though they had been born under the shadow of the Acropolis.

While they were yet conversing, the door of the chamber was again opened, and the old negro re- turned, ushering in a girl of about eighteen years of age, of the most: extraordinary symmetry of frame and loveliness of feature; the only fault that could have been found,with either, were that they were even too voluptuous in the character of their otherwise perfect feminine beauty.

This girl had been, it was known, for the last two years, an inmate of the earl's household, having been brought to the castle, by the black servant, after an absence of above a fortnight, whence no mortal knew; and from that time, she had been the companion of his leisure hours, and had been treated, in all respects, by his-express command, as the mistress of the castle. The vast age of the earl set all suspicion of impropriety at defiance,; yet none could conjecture who or what she was – save that she was a lady, as was evident from her every tone and gesture; and a lady of rare talent and accomplish- ment.

Owing to the vast length to which the earl's years had been protracted, and his having survived by above the ordinary period of a generation, all his cotemporaries, nothing was known of Lord Hunt- cliff's early history. It was not certain whether he had ever married, either at home or abroad; and this alone was undoubted, that he had never been known to acknowledge any one as his child, his descendant, or his relative.

It was generally believed that, at his death, the title would become extinct. What would become of the vast estates, none ventured so much as to conjecture.

The lovely girl entered; and – although she had been in some degree prepared, by the old servitor, for the scene she was about to witness – was totally overcome by what she saw; for it was evident to her, at once, that the death of her benefactor was close at hand, and that, within an hour, the ties, whatever they had been between them, would be broken.

She threw herself upon the bed, and burst into a paroxysm of tears and sobbing; and when, at length, she mastered her composure sufficiently to converse with the old earl, they talked earnestly and long in that same unknown, semi-barbarous sounding tongue, which none present – not even the Jesuit, a man of rare intellect and cultivation – had ever heard before; the same in which he was worst to confer with the black servant, who probably knew more of his secrets than any other living creature.

At this moment, simultaneously, the same idea Bashed on the minds of the surgeon and the priest. The priest had, indeed, seen the lady many times before, but before he had never seen the portrait. The surgeon never had seen either; and now, although the date on the picture indicated that it had been painted Anno Domini 1620, and it was 1702, it was evident to the eyes of both, that the portrait and the person was identical. The same strange contrast of bright golden hair, with dark brown eyes and jet black brows and lashes; the same almost unnatural redundance of the luxuriant hair; the same too voluptuous character of beauty. Clearly, they were the same; and yet the picture must have been painted at least sixty years before the birth of the exquisite girl before them; and the sword, which would seem to have avenged the subject of the painting, bore the data 1000 inwrought in the traceries of the guard.

While these things were yet passing in their minds, a bustle was heard without; and immediately after, the arrival of the lawyer was announced, who had been fetched from York.

By this time, strange to say, the prediction of the surgeon, the man of science, had been frustrated; that of the earl, the man of iron will, accomplished. The day had broken, and the old man, though sinking fast, was yet alive, and in full possession of his faculties.

The lawyer entered.

"You received," said the earl, addressing him as soon as he was well within the room, "a letter two years since, directing you to find out and keep in view a certain individual. You have done so?"

" I have, my lord."

" Where is he now?"

" At St., Andemer, in France."

"His character and occupations?"

" Unchanged since the last report."

"Be has still no suspicion of his rank or prospects?"

"None, my lord,"

"Nor can account for the late changes in his favor?"

" Of late, he has made violent but vain efforts to discover that."

"Sit down. Open that casket; examine the documents – quickly, for I shall be dead within ten minutes,"

In less than half that time, the lawyer had perused the papers, and looked up with an intelligent glance.

"Are they sufficient?"

"Perfectly satisfactory and sufficient."

"To establish legitimacy, and insure succession to both rank, title, and estates?"

"To establish all, my lord; but –." He paused.

"But what? Speak out – there is no time to lose."

"A declaration from your lips thus, in articulo mortis, would be a weighty confirmation."

"Hear, all men," cried the dying earl, in a clear, strong voice, " Ernest Fitzhardinge Huntcliff; known as Ernest Fitzhardinge, late of the French Irish Legion, now at St. Andemer, is the only and legitimate son of Ernest Alfred, second and sole surviving son of Ernest Fitzhardinge Alfred, only son of Fitzhordinge Huntcliff, my only and legitimate son by my wife Emma Adeline Fitzhardinge, married by me, at Paris, in 1608; and the said Ernest Fitzhardinge Huntcliff is my sole heir to all my properties, real and personal. Amen! This is my dying declaration." He ceased; and the girl stooped down and kissed his brow, and whispered something in his ear.

He hesitated for a moment, drew her to his breast with his right arm, and kissed her fervently, but then replied, "No, no, Theresa; it is impossible."

Then she addressed him once more, very earnestly, in that unknown tongue; and he replied, as it seemed, affectionately, but firmly.

Then she knelt down by his side, and exclaimed aloud, in English, "In the name of the most Blessed Virgin and her ever-living Son, I adjure you, not for my sake, but for hers! I adjure you, father! father!"

Rut he repulsed her, angrily, and cried, "No, no, base girl! I tell you no! How dare you call me father? Silence – for shame! Let me die in peace!"

And he sunk back on his pillow; and lay there writhing, evidently in the death-struggle, with the girl sobbing by his pillow, and all the bystanders looking on in mute consternation.

Suddenly, when he appeared speechless and all but dead, a wilder gust of wind roared round the turret, and a huge volume of black smoke rushed down the chimney and filled all that end of the room with a dense, murky cloud,

At that instant, with horror depicted in every struggling lineament, the dying man wrestled himself up, and sat erect, with his arms outstretched towards the picture.

" My God!" he cried; "my God! she is alive! she is coming down! Inez! Inez! Help! help! hold her; she will strike me!"

At that strange cry, every eye was turned toward the picture; but the thick volume still pouring out from the chimney, covered it with a veil perfectly impervious!

"Hold, Inez! hold, Inez!" shrieked the hoary sinner. "I will confess, only do not, do not thou strike me. Ignatius, mark me: Inez Castrejon was my wife also, wedded at Madrid. This, this, Theresa Huntcliff; is her grandchild. In the casket marked to be burnt unopened, all the documents are preserved. Inez, your will is done. Have I atoned? Have I – no! no! she frowns; she lifts the sword; she – she – oh!" – he uttered a wild shriek- –"in the heart! in the heart! – alas! – Inez –"

.He fell back on the pillow – he was dead.

The smoke cleared away, and there stood the picture, calm, firm, and motionless as ever. Rut, strange to say, though none observed it at the time, when search was made thereafter, the blood-rusted sword and the blood-stained tress of hair had vanished.

Conscience had done its work, even in the parting hour; and pride, by its terrible enforcement, had let go its hold on its last fatal secret.

Strange things were disclosed on the openings of those caskets, which we may, perchance, relate hereafter; but the recognition of his lovely granddaughter, was the last involuntary act of the earl's death-bed.,

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