Mortier

“ Mortier married, in 1799, the daughter of the landlord of the Belle Sauvage inn at Coblentz, who was pregnant by him, or by some other guest of her father. She is pretty, but not handsome, and she takes advantage of her husband's complaisance to console herself both for his absence and infidelities. ”

“ Nature having also endowed him with a kindly temperament, it was not to be wondered at that his men swore by him, and were ready to follow him anywhere. But in spite of many gallant actions and numerous mentions in despatches, promotion came but slowly; for Mortier spent the first six years of his service with the armies of the Sambre and Meuse and of the Rhine, and had to compete against such men as Soult, Ney, St. Cyr, Kléber, and Desaix, who were on a higher mental [279] plane. ”

“ From the Admiral to the last ne'er-do-weel of a noble house all sprang to their feet. "God!" said one, under his breath, and another's tankard fell clattering from his shaking hand. Nevil, the calm accustomed state, the iron quiet of his nature quite broken, advanced with agitation. "Mortimer, Mortimer!" he cried, and would have put his arms about his friend, but Ferne stayed him with a gesture and a look that none might understand. Behind him came Robin-a-dale, slipped beneath his outstretched arm, then with head thrown back and wild defiant eyes faced the little throng of adventurers. ”

“ We cannot blame Lord Mortimer for them. Situated as you were with him, your conduct has naturally excited the most injurious suspicions. Surely, my child, though not allowed to solve the mystery which has separated you from him, you may be allowed to vindicate your conduct. The sacrifice of fame and happiness is too much. Consider and weigh well what I say, and, if possible, authorize me to inform Lord Mortimer that I know of your retreat, and that you have retired neither to a lover nor a friend ”

“ He had the wiry frame and strong jaw without which no explorer is complete, and Mortimer, beside him, seemed but a poor, soft product of our hot-house civilization. Mortimer, I forgot to say, wore glasses; and, if there is one time more than another when a man should not wear glasses, it is while a strong-faced, keen-eyed wanderer in the wilds is telling a beautiful girl the story of his adventures. ”

“ Wherefore Mortimer was something in disgrace even before we got there, and when our story was told he was called up before the king and prince. And all our old forest rights have been restored to us--nay, have been widened and increased, and that at the expense of Mortimer. Ye should have seen his face when that mandate was brought forth and duly signed and sealed with the royal seal and delivered to our father! ”

“ Amid solemn pomp and glittering funeral gloom, the coffin of the heir of England was borne over St. George's Channel to his ancestral home at Wigmore. There they laid him with the elder Mortimers, and not, like his father, with his Montacute ancestors, at Bisham. There, by the side of the valiant and wise Edmund Mortimer and his royally descended Margaret, who may be termed the founders of the house, by the first Earl of darkened memory, by the young and royal mother whom he could barely remember, sleeps Roger Mortimer, heir presumptive of England, first and last Lollard of the House of March. ”

“ Thus did she deem a union requisite to rouse him to exertion; to restore his peace, and in all probability to save his life. She joined in her brother’s arguments and entreaties, with tears she joined in them, and besought Mortimer to accede to their wishes. She called him the last hope of their house. He had long, she said, been the pride, the delight of their days; their comfort, their existence were interwoven in his; if he sunk, they sunk with him.
The yielding soul of Mortimer could not resist such tenderness, and he gave a promise of acting as they wished. ”

“ I've had hard thoughts of you, Morty.' His faded eyes were suffused.
'Don't let's think of that, dad,' said Mortimer. 'What horses do you think I'd better take?'
'In the morning, in the morning,' said Stevenson. 'I only want to sit still to-night, and thank God I've got one son that's a man.'
Mortimer looked at the creased, illumined face, the wet eyes, the old, working mouth. His heart swelled towards him.
'Dad, old fellow,' he said, 'I'm hard hit. I love a girl, and she won't have me.'
His father gripped his hand. ”

“ The girl was chatting merrily to the young man, and he listened to her and laughed every now and then, but his bright eyes were not fixed to her, but were here, there, and everywhere, where metal attractive to such eyes might be found. The discursive mood of the eyes somehow pleased Mrs. Mortimer. Just as the young man came opposite her, he glanced in her direction. Mrs. Mortimer wore the curious, half-indifferent, half-expectant air of one ready for recognition but not claiming it as a right. At the first glance, a puzzled look came into the young man’s eyes. ”

“ I shall be sorry if aught comes to grieve or vex your father; but so long as we are careful to give no just cause for offence, we need not trouble our heads overmuch as to the jealous anger of the Lord of Mortimer. I misdoubt me if he can really hurt us, be he never so vindictive. The king is just, and he values the services of your father. He will not permit him to be molested without cause. And methinks my Lord of Mortimer knows as much, else he would have wrought us more ill all these past years. ”

“ The lady Maud Mortimer has the swiftest courser in all England, a coal-black Arabian, brought by Richard of Cornwall as a gift to her ladyship, on his return from the Holy Land. My Lord Mortimer is a partisan of Leicester, but is somewhat cooled in his devotion to the proud earl, from an affront received since the battle of Lewes. The lady, therefore, to be revenged, has volunteered her steed for the escape of Edward. There riseth, however, another difficulty. The prince is constantly surrounded with guards, so that no stranger may accost him. ”

“ My God! the full horror of Mortimer's hopeless position flashed upon him like the lurid light of a destroying forest fire. He could read in every line of the boy's face an accusation of himself. He had trembled when it was a question of Alan's dishonor; now that the ignominy was being thrust upon him, the bravery that he possessed in great part made him a hero. If through his endeavor to save the boy he was to shoulder the guilt, not of his own volition, but without hope of escape, he would stand to it like a man. ”

“ Was it merely to be assured of my wretchedness? to hear me say that I stand alone in the world, without one being interested about my welfare; that my present asylum is bestowed by charity; and that, if my life be prolonged, it must be spent in struggling against constitution, sorrow, and ill-fame, to procure a subsistence?” “No, no,” exclaimed Lord Mortimer, flinging himself at her feet; “never shall you suffer such misery. Were you even the being I was tempted to think you some time ago, never would Mortimer suffer the woman his heart doated on to feel such calamity. ”

“ But, Mortimer, while I lie here, and when I lie here no longer, I trust to you that the perpetrator is never brought to justice.'
'Eugene?'
'Her innocent reputation would be ruined, my friend. She would be punished, not he. I have wronged her enough in fact; I have wronged her still more in intention. You recollect what pavement is said to be made of good intentions. It is made of bad intentions too. Mortimer, I am lying on it, and I know!'
'Be comforted, my dear Eugene.'
'I will, when you have promised me. Dear Mortimer, the man must never be pursued. ”

“ I had to tell him then of my last interview with Roland, and of the impossible demand he had made upon me, by which, though he tried to laugh, he was much discomposed, as I could see. "We must just perjure ourselves all round," he said, "and swear you exorcised it"; but the man was too kind-hearted to be satisfied with that. "It's frightfully serious for you, Mortimer. I can't laugh as I should like to. I wish I saw a way out of it, for your sake. By the way," he added shortly, "didn't you notice that juniper-bush on the left-hand side?" ”

“ There was one of them—Maudie—with whom he had flirted in his holidays; he wondered at that, especially when a relentless memory told him that Mrs. Mortimer must have been at the parties where the thing went on. He felt very much older, so much older that Mrs. Mortimer became at once a contemporary; why then should she begin, as she now did, to talk to him, in quasi-maternal fashion, about his prospects? Men don’t have prospects, or, anyhow, are spared questionings thereon. ”

“ Bright, tranquil, and unruffled was the world around him—but the world within was dark and turbulent—tossed, agitated, and overwhelmed by the deep untold anguish of the spirit.
The tyrant sway of the passions, like some desolating invader, can make a paradise into a desert, and the fruitful places into a wilderness. How different to Mortimer would have been the scene viewed through another medium! His soul was ardent, devoted, full of high and glorious imaginings; but a blight was on them all, and they became chill and decayed—an uninformed mass, without aim or vitality. ”

“ Lord Morton is an upright man and a just; but for years he hath tried in vain to curb the wildness of young Sir Boris. Drink and dice have been the young lord’s ruin as of many a better man before. Only a fortnight since, Lord Morton forbade him, on pain of his worst displeasure, to bring any dice, those tools of the Devil, into Morton Hall. More than that, he drove from the very door two of the young bloods from Shrewsbury who had been the young lord’s boon companions in drinking and gaming. ”

“ The king was unpopular with half his subjects, and all of them raged with wounded pride and grief at the loss of France. The name of Mortimer was a power in the land, and the head of that ancient family was the Duke of York, who had probably the greatest following of feudatory tenants in England. To take advantage both of the prevailing discontent and of the Mortimer prestige came Jack Cade, an Irish adventurer, at the head of twenty thousand followers, and encamped on Blackheath. ”

“ We shall see no more of Edmund Mortimer. He ended life as he began it—as much like a vegetable as a human being could well make himself. Few Mortimers attained old age, nor did he. He died in his thirty-fourth year, issueless and unwept; and Richard Duke of York, the son of Anne Mortimer and Richard of Conisborough, succeeded to the White Rose’s “heritage of woe.” ”

“ Yet think not in resigning Lord Mortimer, if, indeed, such a resignation should take place, you sacrifice your own interest. No; it shall be my grateful care to secure to you independence; and I am confident, among the many men you must meet, sensible of your worth, and enraptured with your charms, you may yet select one as calculated to render you happy as Mortimer; while he, disappointed of the object of his affections, will, I have no doubt, without longer hesitation, accept the one I shall again propose to him. ”

“ Mor. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,
Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.
Even like a man new haled from the rack,
So fare my limbs with long imprisonment; ⁠4
And these gray locks, the pursuivants of death,
Nestor-like aged, in an age of care,
Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. ”

“ But Mortimer has told me of other panics and bad times. They always pass, and better times come again. And if he has been able to hold on, that at least shows ability, for others have gone under. Of course we shall live here and run the house—as mother did. I couldn't bear to live anywhere else, and Morty adores it too. ”

“ Yes, I am glad you came in time. Do you know, Eros, I did not think Mortimer would come at all? That passage in the letter that I did not read you spoke of a strange pestilence, and immediately it came into my mind that Mortimer was dead. And even now,” she continued, turning to the guest, and half-timidly meeting his strong, unfathomable eyes with her own, “even now, though I see you here between us, I cannot feel as if our Mortimer were in this world. Are you really he? or a messenger come to tell us that he is gone?”
“I am alive—am I not?” ”

“ To wound Lord Mortimer through the bosom of his father, to overwhelm him with confusion, by publicly displaying the error of that father, were ideas of the most exquisite delight—ideas which the wealth of worlds would scarcely have tempted him to forego,—so sweet is any triumph, however accidental or imaginary, over a noble object, to an envious mind, which ever hates that excellence it cannot reach. ”

“ Steps were heard, firm, heavy steps, coming back along the corridor. It seemed to Mortimer that he had listened to this sound of steps all night, and would listen to them till he died. He crossed to the lamp and lit a cigarette, carefully this time, turning the wick down afterwards. Mrs. Burley also rose, moving over towards the door, away from him. They listened a moment to these firm and heavy steps, the tread of a man, John Burley. A man ... and a philanderer, flashed across Mortimer’s brain like fire, contrasting the two with fierce contempt for himself. ”

“ The earl went up to see for himself, but he knew that he was ruined: the only road of escape for his army must by this time have been almost barred by Mortimer, and his men were not even formed for march. Individuals might yet escape by swimming the Avon, or dashing across the bridge before Mortimer arrived, but for the main body the only way lay [37] through the hostile army, outnumbering his by three or four to one. "God have mercy on our souls," he exclaimed, "for our bodies are the enemy's." ”