The Man in Black: An Historical Novel of the Days of Queen Anne Read online

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  THE MAN IN BLACK.

  AN

  Historical Novel of the Days of Queen Anne.

  BY

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

  AUTHOR OF "LORD MONTAGU'S PAGE," "THE CAVALIER," "ARRAN NEIL," "EVAST. CLAIR," "MARY OF BURGUNDY," "PHILIP AUGUSTUS," ETC., ETC.----------------------------------------------------------------------

  -----------------------COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.-----------------------

  Philadelphia:T. B. PETERSON AND BROTHERS,306 CHESTNUT STREET.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

  T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

  In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, toand for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.----------------------------------------------------------------------

  THE MAN IN BLACK.

  CHAPTER I.

  Let me take you into an old-fashioned country house, built byarchitects of the early reign of James the First. It had all thepeculiarities--I might almost say the oddities--of that particularepoch in the building art. Chimneys innumerable had it. Heaven onlyknows what rooms they ventilated; but their name must have beenlegion. The windows were not fewer in number, and much more irregular:for the chimneys were gathered together in some sort of symmetricalarrangement, while the windows were scattered all over the variousfaces of the building, with no apparent arrangement at all. Heavenknows, also, what rooms they lighted, or were intended to light, forthey very little served the purpose, being narrow, and obstructed bythe stone mullions of the Elizabethan age. Each, too, had its label ofstone superincumbent, and projecting from the brick-work, which mightleave the period of construction somewhat doubtful--but the gablesdecided the fact.

  They, too, were manifold; for although the house had been built all atonce, it seemed, nevertheless, to have been erected in detachedmasses, and joined together as best the builder could; so that therewere no less than six gables, turning north, south, east, and west,with four right angles, and flat walls between them. These gables weresurmounted--topped, as it were, by a triangular wall, somewhat higherthan the acute roof, and this wall was constructed with a row ofsteps, coped with freestone, on either side of the ascent, as if thearchitect had fancied that some man or statue would, one day oranother, have to climb up to the top of the pyramid, and take hisplace upon the crowning stone.

  It was a gloomy old edifice: the bricks had become discolored; thelivery of age, yellow and gray lichen, was upon it; daws hovered roundthe chimney tops; rooks passed cawing over it, on the way to theirconventicle hard by; no swallow built under the eaves; and the trees,as if repelled by its stern, cold aspect, retreated from it on threesides, leaving it alone on its own flat ground, like a moody manamidst a gay society. On the fourth side, indeed, an avenue--that isto say, two rows of old elms--crept cautiously up to it in a windingand sinuous course, as if afraid of approaching too rapidly; and atthe distance of some five or six hundred yards, clumps of old trees,beeches, and ever-green oaks, and things of sombre foliage, dotted thepark, only enlivened by here and there a herd of deer.

  Now and then, a milk-maid, a country woman going to church or market,a peasant, or at game-keeper, might be seen traversing the dry brownexpanse of grass, and but rarely deviating from a beaten path, whichled from one stile over the path wall to another. It was all sombreand monotonous: the very spirit of dulness seemed to hang over it; andthe clouds themselves--the rapid sportive clouds, free denizens of thesky, and playmates of the wind and sunbeam--appeared to grow dull andtardy, as they passed across the wide space open to the view, and toproceed with awe and gravity, like timid youth in the presence ofstern old age.

  Enough of the outside of the house. Let me take you into the interior,reader, and into one particular room--not the largest and the finest;but one of the highest. It was a little oblong chamber, with onewindow, which was ornamented--the only ornament the chamber had--witha decent curtain of red and white checked linen. On the side next thedoor, and between it and the western wall, was a small bed. Awalnut-tree table and two or three chairs were near the window. In onecorner stood a washing-stand, not very tidily arranged, in anotherchest of drawers; and opposite the fire-place, hung from nails driveninto the wall, two or three shelves of the same material as the table,each supporting a row of books, which, by the dark black covers, brownedges, and thumbed corners, seemed to have a right to boast of someantiquity and much use.

  At the table, as you perceive, there is seated a boy of some fifteenyears of age, with pen and ink and paper, and an open book. If youlook over his shoulder, you will perceive that the words are Latin.Yet he reads it with ease and facility, and seeks no aid from thedictionary. It is the "Cato Major" of Cicero. Heaven! what a book fora child like that to read! Boyhood studying old age!

  But let us turn from the book, and examine the lad himself moreclosely. See that pale face, with a manlike unnatural gravity upon it.Look at that high broad brow, towering as a monument above the eyes.Remark those eyes themselves, with their deep eager thought; and thenthe gleam in them--something more than earnestness, and less thanwildness--a thirsty sort of expression, as if they drank in that theyrested on, and yet were unsated.

  The brow rests upon the pale fair hand, as if requiring something tosupport the heavy weight of thoughts with which the brain is burdened.He marks nothing but the lines of that old book. His whole soul is inthe eloquent words. He hears not the door open; he sees not that tall,venerable, but somewhat stiff and gaunt figure, enter and approachhim. He reads on, till the old man's Geneva cloak brushes his arm, andhis hand is upon his shoulder. Then he starts up--looks around--butsays nothing. A faint smile, pleasant yet grave, crosses his finelycut lip; but that is the only welcome, as he raises his eyes to theface that bends over him. Can that boy in years be already aged inheart?

  It is clear that the old man--the old clergyman, for so he evidentlyis--has no very tender nature. Every line of his face forbids thesupposition. The expression itself is grave, not to say stern. Thereis powerful thought about it, but small gentleness. He seems one ofthose who have been tried and hardened in some one of the many fieryfurnaces which the world provides for the test of men of strong mindsand strong hearts. There has been much persecution in the land; therehave been changes, from the rigid and severe to the light andfrivolous--from the light and frivolous to the bitter and cruel. Therehave been tyrants of all shapes and all characters within the lastforty years, and fools, and knaves, and madmen, to cry them on inevery course of evil. In all these chances and changes, what fixed andrigid mind could escape the fangs of persecution and wrong? He hadknown both; but they had changed him little. His was originally anunbending spirit: it grew more tough and stubborn by the habit ofresistance; but its original bent was still the same.

  Fortune--heaven's will--or his own inclination, had denied him wife orchild; and near relation he had none. A friend he had: that boy'sfather, who had sheltered him in evil times, protected him as far aspossible against the rage of enemies, and bestowed upon him the smallliving which afforded him support. He did his duty thereinconscientiously, but with a firm unyielding spirit, adhering to theCalvinistic tenets which he had early received, in spite of theunive
rsal falling off of companions and neighbors. He would not haveyielded an iota to have saved his head.

  With all his hardness, he had one object of affection, to which allthat was gentle in his nature was bent. That object wits the boy bywhom he now stood, and for whom he had a great--an almost parentalregard. Perhaps it was that he thought the lad not very well treated;and, as such had been his own case, there was sympathy in the matter.But besides, he had been intrusted with his education from a veryearly period, had taken a pleasure in the task, had found his scholarapt, willing, and affectionate, with a sufficient touch of his owncharacter in the boy to make the sympathy strong, and yet sufficientdiversity to interest and to excite.

  The old man was tenderer toward him than toward any other being uponearth; and he sometimes feared that his early injunctions to study andperseverance were somewhat too strictly followed--even to thedetriment of health. He often looked with some anxiety at theincreasing paleness of the cheek, at the too vivid gleam of the eye,at the eager nervous quivering of the lip, and said within himself,"This is overdone."

  He did not like to check, after he had encouraged--to draw the reinwhere he had been using the spur. There is something of vanity in usall, and the sternest is not without that share which makes man shrinkfrom the imputation of error, even when made by his own heart. He didnot choose to think that the lad had needed no urging forward and yethe would fain have had him relax a little more, and strove at times tomake him do so. But the impulse had been given: it had carried theyouth over the difficulties and obstacles in the way to knowledge, andnow he went on to acquire it, with an eagerness, a thirst, that hadsomething fearful in it. A bent, too, had been given to his mind--nay,to his character, partly by the stern uncompromising character of himto whom his education had been solely intrusted, partly by his ownpeculiar situation, and partly by the subjects on which his readinghad chiefly turned.

  The stern old Roman of the early republic; the deeds of heroicvirtue--as virtue was understood by the Romans; the sacrifice of alltender affections, all the sensibilities of our nature to the rigidthought of what is right; the remorseless disregard of feelingsimplanted by God, when opposed to the notion of duties of man'screation, excited his wonder and his admiration, and would havehardened and perverted his heart, had not that heart been naturallyfull of kindlier affections. As it was, there often existed astruggle--a sort of hypothetical struggle--in his bosom, between themind and the heart. He asked himself sometimes, if he could sacrificeany of those he knew and loved--his father, his mother, his brother,to the good of his country, to some grave duty; and he felt pained androused to resistance of his own affections when he perceived what apang it would cost him.

  Yet his home was not a very happy one; the kindlier things of domesticlife had not gathered green around him. His father was varying anduneven in temper, especially toward his second son; sometimes sternand gloomy, sometimes irascible almost to a degree of insanity.Generous, brave, and upright, he was; but every one said, that a woundhe had received on the head in the wars, had marvelously increased theinfirmities of his temper.

  The mother, indeed, was full of tenderness and gentleness; anddoubtless it was through her veins that the milk of human kindness hadfound its way into that strange boy's heart. But yet she loved hereldest son best, and unfortunately showed it.

  The brother was a wild, rash, reckless young man, some three yearsolder; fond of the other, yet often pleased to irritate--or at leastto try, for he seldom succeeded. He was the favorite, however,somewhat spoiled, much indulged; and whatever was done, was done forhim. He was the person most considered in the house; his were theparties of pleasure: his the advantages. Even now the family wasabsent, in order to let him see the capital of his native land, toopen his mind to the general world, to show him life on a moreextended scale than could be done in the country; and his youngerbrother was left at home, to pursue his studies in dull solitude.

  Yet he did not complain; there was not even a murmur at his heart. Hethought it all quite right. His destiny was before him. He was toform his fortune for himself, by his own abilities, his own learning,his own exertions. It was needful he should study, and his greatestambition for the time was to enter with distinction at the University;his brightest thoughts of pleasure, the comparative freedom andindependence of a collegiate life.

  Not that he did not find it dull; that gloomy old house, inhabited bynone but himself and few servants. Sometimes it seemed to oppress himwith a sense of terrible loneliness; sometimes it drove him to thinkof the strange difference of human destinies, and why it should bethat--because it had pleased Heaven one man should be born a littlesooner or a little later than another, or in some other place--such awide interval should be placed between the different degrees ofhappiness and fortune.

  He felt, however, that such speculations were not good; they led himbeyond his depth; he involved himself in subtilties more common inthose days than in ours; he lost his way; and with passionateeagerness flew to his books, to drive the mists and shadows from hismind. Such had been the case even now: and there he sat, unconsciousthat a complete and total change was coming over his destiny.

  Oh, the dark workshop of Fate! what strange things go on therein,affecting human misery and joy, repairing or breaking shackles for themind, the means of carrying us forward in a glorious cause, therelentless weights which hurry us down to destruction! While you sitthere and read--while I sit here and write, who can say what strangealterations, what combinations in the must discrepant things may begoing on around--without our will, without our knowledge--to alter thewhole course of our future existence? Doubtless, could man make hisown fate, he would mar it; and the impossibility of doing so is good.The freedom of his own actions is sufficient, nay, somewhat too much;and it is well for the world, aye, and for himself--that there is anoverruling Providence which so shapes circumstances around him, thathe cannot go beyond his limit, flutter as he will.

  There is something in that old man's face more than is common withhim--a deeper gravity even than ordinary, yet mingled with atenderness that is rare. There is something like hesitation,too--ay, hesitation even in him who during a stormy life has seldomknown what it is to doubt or to deliberate: a man of strict and readypreparation, whose fixed, clear, definite mind was always prompt andcompetent to act.

  "Come, Philip, my son," he said, laying his hand, as I have stated, onthe lad's shoulder, "enough of study for to-day. You read too hard.You run before my precepts. The body must have thought as well as themind; and if you let the whole summer day pass without exercise, youwill soon find that under the weight of corporeal sickness theintellect will flag and the spirit droop. I am going for a walk. Comewith me; and we will converse of high things by the way."

  "Study is my task and my duty, sir." replied the boy; "my father tellsme so, you have told me so often, and as for health I fear not. I seemrefreshed when I get up from reading, especially such books as this.It is only when I have been out long, riding or walking, that I feeltired."

  "A proof that you should ride and walk the more," replied the old man."Come, put on your hat and cloak. You shall read no more to-day. Thereare other thoughts before you; you know, Philip," he continued, "thatby reading we get but materials, which we must use to build up anedifice in our own minds. If all our thoughts are derived from othersgone before us, we are but robbers of the dead, and live upon laborsnot our own."

  "Elder sons," replied the boy, with a laugh, "who take an inheritancefor which they toiled not."

  "Something worse than that," replied the clergyman, "for we gatherwhat we do not employ rightly--what we have every right to possess,but upon the sole condition of using well. Each man possessed ofintellect is bound to make his own mind, not to have it made for him;to adapt it to the times and circumstances in which he lives, squaringit by just rules, and employing the best materials he can find."

  "Well, sir, I am ready," replied the youth, after a moment of deepthought; and he and his old preceptor issued for
th together down thelong staircase, with the slant sunshine pouring through the windowsupon the unequal steps, and illuminating the motes in the thickatmosphere we breathe, like fancy brightening the idle floating thingswhich surround us in this world of vanity.

  They walked across the park toward the stile. The youth was silent,for the old man's last words seemed to have awakened a train ofthought altogether new.

  His companion was silent also; for there was something working withinhim which embarrassed and distressed him. He had something to tellthat young man, and he knew not how to tell it. For the first time inhis life he perceived, from the difficulty he experienced in decidingupon his course, how little he really knew of his pupil's character.He had dealt much with his mind, and that he comprehended well--itsdepth, its clearness, its powers; but his heart and disposition he hadnot scanned so accurately. He had a surmise, indeed, that there werefeelings strong and intense within; but he thought that the mind ruledthem with habitual sway that nothing could shake. Yet he paused andpondered; and once he stopped, as if about to speak, but went on againand said nothing.

  At length, as they approached the park wall, he laid his finger on histemple, muttering to himself, "Yes, the quicker the better. 'Tis wellto mingle two passions. Surprise will share with grief--if much griefthere be." Then turning to the young man, he said, "Philip, I thinkyou loved your brother Arthur?"

  He spoke loudly, and in plain distinct tones; but the lad did not seemto remark the past tense he used. "Certainly, sir," he said, "I lovehim dearly. What of that?"

  "Then you will be very happy to hear," replied the old man, "that hehad been singularly fortunate--I mean that he has been removed fromearth and all its allurements--the vanities, the sins, the follies ofthe world in which he seemed destined to move, before he could becorrupted by its evils, or his spirit receive a taint from its vices."

  The young man turned and gazed on him with inquiring eyes, as if stillhe did not comprehend what he meant.

  "He was drowned," said the clergyman, "on Saturday last, while sailingwith a party of pleasure on the Thames;" and Philip fell at his feetas senseless as if he had shot him.