style="font-size:15px;"> “Listen to me,” said Luke; “the robbers are in Lady Rookwood’s chamber — they will plunder the place of everything — perhaps murder her. Fly to her assistance, I will accompany you — assist you — it is your only chance.”
“My only chance —your only chance. Do you take me for a greenhorn? This is a poor subterfuge; could you not have vamped up something better? Get back to your own room, or I shall make no more of shooting you than I would of snuffing that candle.”
“Be advised, sir,” continued Luke. “There are three of them — give me a pistol, and fear nothing.”
“Give you a pistol! Ha, ha! — to be its mark myself. You are an amusing rascal, I will say.”
“Sir, I tell you not a moment is to be lost. Is life nothing? Lady Rookwood may be murdered.”
“I tell you, once for all, it won’t do. Go back to your room, or take the consequences.”
“By the powers! but it shall do, anyhow,” exclaimed Titus, flinging himself upon the attorney, and holding both his arms; “you’ve bullied me long enough. I’m sure the lad’s in the right.”
Luke snatched the pistols from the hands of Coates.
“Very well, Mr. Tyrconnel; very well, sir,” cried the attorney, boiling with wrath, and spluttering out his words. “Extremely well, sir. You are not perhaps aware, sir, what you have done; but you will repent this, sir — repent, I say — repent was my word, Mr. Tyrconnel.”
“Poh! — poh!” replied Titus. “I shall never repent a good-natured action.”
“Follow me,” cried Luke; “settle your disputes hereafter. Quick, or we shall be too late.”
Coates bustled after him, and Titus, putting the neck of the forbidden whisky bottle to his lips, and gulping down a hasty mouthful, snatched up a rusty poker, and followed the party with more alacrity than might have been expected from so portly a personage.
CHAPTER 6
THE APPARITION
Gibbet. Well, gentlemen, ’tis a fine night for our enterprise.
Hounslow. Dark as hell.
Bagshot. And blows like the devil.
Boniface. You’ll have no creature to deal with but the ladies.
Gibbet. And I can assure you, friend, there’s a great deal of address, and good manners, in robbing a lady. I am the most of a gentleman, that way, that ever travelled the road.
Beaux Stratagem.
Accompanied by her son, Lady Rookwood, on quitting the chamber of the dead, returned to her own room. She then renewed all her arguments; had recourse to passionate supplications — to violent threats, but without effect. Ranulph maintained profound silence. Passion, as it ever doth, defeated its own ends; and Lady Rookwood, seeing the ill effect her anger would probably produce, gradually softened the asperity of her manner, and suffered him to depart.
Left to herself, and to the communings of her own troubled spirit, her fortitude, in a measure, forsook her, under the pressure of the difficulties by which she was environed. There was no plan she could devise — no scheme adopt, unattended with peril. She must act alone — with promptitude and secrecy. To win her son over was her chief desire, and that, at all hazards, she was resolved to do. But how? She knew of only one point on which he was vulnerable — his love for Eleanor Mowbray. By raising doubts in his mind, and placing fresh difficulties in his path, she might compel him to acquiesce in her machinations, as a necessary means of accomplishing his own object. This she hoped to effect. Still there was a depth of resolution in the placid stream of Ranulph’s character which she had often noticed with apprehension. Aware of his firmness, she dreaded lest his sense of justice should be stronger than his passion.
As she wove these webs of darkness, fear, hitherto unknown, took possession of her soul. She listened to the howling of the wind — to the vibration of the rafters — to the thunder’s roar, and to the hissing rain — till she, who never trembled at the thought of danger, became filled with vague uneasiness. Lights were ordered; and when her old attendant returned. Lady Rookwood fixed a look so wistful upon her, that Agnes ventured to address her.
“Bless you, my lady,” said the ancient handmaiden, trembling, “you look very pale, and no wonder. I feel sick at heart, too. Oh! I shall be glad when they return from the church, and happier still when the morning dawns. I can’t sleep a wink — can’t close my eyes, but I think of him.”
“Of him?”
“Of Sir Piers, my lady; for though he’s dead, I don’t think he’s gone.”
“How?”
“Why, my lady, the corruptible part of him’s gone, sure enough. But the incorruptible, as Dr. Small calls it — the sperrit, my lady. It might be my fancy, your ladyship; but as I’m standing here, when I went back into the room just now for the lights, as I hope to live, I thought I saw Sir Piers in the room.”
“You are crazed, Agnes.”
“No, my lady, I’m not crazed; it was mere fancy, no doubt. Oh, it’s a blessed thing to live with an easy conscience — a thrice blessed thing to die with an easy one, and that’s what I never shall, I’m afeard. Poor Sir Piers! I’d mumble a prayer for him, if I durst.”
“Leave me,” said Lady Rookwood, impatiently.
And Agnes quitted the room.
“What if the dead can return?” thought Lady Rookwood. “All men doubt it, yet all men believe it. I would not believe it, were there not a creeping horror that overmasters me, when I think of the state beyond the grave — that intermediate state, for such it must be, when the body lieth mouldering in the ground, and the soul survives, to wander, unconfined, until the hour of doom. And doth the soul survive when disenthralled? Is it dependent on the body? Does it perish with the body? These are doubts I cannot resolve. But if I deemed there was no future state, this hand should at once liberate me from my own weaknesses — my fears — my life. There is but one path to acquire that knowledge, which, once taken, can never be retraced. I am content to live — while living, to be feared — it may be, hated; when dead, to be contemned — yet still remembered. Ha! what sound was that? A stifled scream! Agnes! — without there! She is full of fears. I am not free from them myself, but I will shake them off. This will divert their channel,” continued she, drawing from her bosom the marriage certificate. “This will arouse the torpid current of my blood —’Piers Rookwood to Susan Bradley.’ And by whom was it solemnized? The name is Checkley — Richard Checkley. Ha! I bethink me — a Papist priest — a recusant — who was for some time an inmate of the hall. I have heard of this man — he was afterwards imprisoned, but escaped — he is either dead or in a foreign land. No witnesses —’tis well! Methinks Sir Piers Rookwood did well to preserve this. It shall light his funeral pyre. Would he could now behold me, as I consume it!”
She held the paper in the direction of the candle; but,
