The Weird of the Wentworths, Vol. 1

"And a magic voice and verse

Hath baptized thee with a curse."-Manfred.

The extent of parents' influence on their offspring has long been a matter of dispute; yet the fact remains incontestable that children do suffer for their parents' faults, that the sins of the father are visited not only to the third and fourth generation, but often to a distance that can scarcely be conceived. The leprosy of Naaman cleaved to Gehazi's seed for ever, and it is said many of these unhappy sufferers still trace their misery to their ancestor's mendacity. We read in Grecian history how Myrtilus, as he sank, cursed the faithless Pelops and his race for ever; and we see its dire effects in the misfortunes of Agamemnon and Iphigenia:-

"Atoning for her father's sin,

A joyless sacrifice."

We might cite the Alcmaeonidae as another instance, and it is rather a singular thing that in nearly every case faithlessness, or sacrilege, has first armed the curse with its power. English annals present not a few examples, and perhaps no "weird" ever crushed a noble race of high name and lineage so cruelly, as that which is to be found among the traditions of the Wentworths of Dun Edin Towers. Every scion of that house was born a slave and bondman to this curse; two hundred and seventy years have flown since it slew its earliest victim, and its power is still as deadly, its shaft has lost none of its venom, and in all that long series of generations no son or daughter of the Wentworths has ever attained maturity, far less old age. The crown of glory, if it be found in the right way, was denied them; and in the bloom of their beauty, and pride of their strength, one by one, they sank beneath the river of death, too often with all their sins full blown, and unrepented of. Youth, strength, valour, talent, beauty, were sacrificed at the shrine of the remorseless deity, and still unrelenting and unappeased she watched over the race for evil.

Let us trace it back to its source, and having made our readers acquainted with the origin of the "Weird of the Wentworths," we shall next narrate the short lives and untimely deaths of one generation-the brightest link in a long chain of misery; and if their lives were short, they were full of romance and vigour, like the torrent, abrupt and headlong in its course, and still reaching the same bourne that the slow and tardy river only takes a longer period to arrive at.

Retrace, then, with us the scroll of English history till we come to the sad page of the Commonwealth. It is not our intention to discuss whether the Protector was right or wrong, but merely to narrate facts, as they were.

Cromwell was about this time tolerably secure on his usurped throne-the heir to the British crown a wandering exile in his native land. Those were troublous times; days when a man's foes were often those of his household; when the nearest and dearest ties were severed; and perhaps under the same roof, dwelt the bigot republican, and the proud royalist burning to avenge his king's wrongs; each looked on his neighbour with uncertainty, each feared the other as a traitor in the camp. Cromwell himself, raised to the utmost pitch of his ambition, was on an unenviable height-his tiara was a crown of thorns-over his head hung the sword of Damocles; and, having himself been a rebel to his monarch, he now feared an assassin in every one who approached his presence, and it is said almost entirely shut himself out of society, wearing chain armour beneath his raiment. Still he had faithful supporters, staunch friends, and loyal soldiers; and of all his admirers no more burning republican existed than Sir Ralph de Vere, a general in the Protector's army, one he had himself knighted on the field of Worcester. Sir Ralph, from being an intolerant Catholic, had now become an intolerant Protestant, and-

"with all the zeal

That young and fiery converts feel,"

warred against those whose cause he had once warmly espoused, and sought the destruction of the creed of which he had once been the champion. Very different from Sir Ralph was his first cousin Augusta de Vere, then, in her own right, Countess of Wentworth, and Abbess of St. Clements, a monastic pile on the Wye.

Augusta was the last prop of her declining creed; with tears of sorrow, not unmixed with anger, she beheld stronghold after stronghold of Rome's once mighty power surrender into the hands of the Philistines. More deeply still she lamented the stain in her own family, and bewailed the falling away of Ralph, the most valorous soldier of the cross in better days, now the servant of one she deemed an arch impostor and hypocrite; faithless to his name; doubly faithless to his king; and, worse than all, faithless to his religion! But Augusta's was one of those noble minds, which, while it hates the error, pities the erring, and by all the means in her power she strove to reclaim her apostate cousin. The Roman Pontiff had not only excommunicated him in this world, but condemned his forfeit soul to everlasting torments, whilst Augusta, like her Master, rather sought the wandering sheep, and ceased not night or day with tears and vigil to remember him in her prayers. Augusta was also a faithful partisan of the crownless Charles;-during all his wanderings, as far as was in her power, she provided him with food and raiment, and he had remained beneath her hospitable roof as long as prudence would permit him; and when he quitted his ungrateful country for more friendly shores till Fortune once more smiled on her favourite son, the Abbess, at the risk of her life, had herself attended him to the seaside, and blessed him ere he departed.

It was little wonder that when this became known in London, Augusta brought down all the slumbering ire of Cromwell on her devoted head, and though nearly six years had passed away since she waved her hand to the fugitive king, he commissioned Sir Ralph de Vere to punish the haughty peeress. Sir Ralph was just the man to execute his cruel designs. In his bigoted hatred of Royalist and Catholic he even forgot how he was indebted to Augusta for his very life in days when he had fought on the side he now warred against, and was glad to avail himself of the sanctuary St. Clements afforded him. It was nothing that she was his near relative and he had sought her hand ere she had become the Bride of Heaven; she was a Catholic, "and he that loveth friend more than me," said the stern presbyterian, "is not worthy of me;" it was nothing that she was young and beautiful, so was Herodias' daughter; nothing that she was good and generous-she was a Royalist, and doomed! On the 26th of August, 1658, Sir Ralph appeared at the head of an army of fierce Puritans on the banks of the beautiful Wye. Autumn had stained the leaves red and yellow, and the golden sheaf still dotted many a field: the air was calm, the scene one of peace and security, soon to be one of bloodshed, rapine, and havoc!

Ravaging the country as they went, and leaving a wilderness behind them where they found an Eden, at last the tall turrets of St. Clements appeared over the embrowned woods. The scene that followed we shall not describe; suffice to say the monks were hewn down at the altar, the helpless inhabitants that lived on the hospitality of the Abbess murdered in cold blood, without distinction of age or sex, and the fair Abbess and her nuns turned into the damp woods, there miserably to perish of hunger and cold.

It was to no account that Augusta pleaded her youth, her relationship, their early love, his debt of life due to her; with a fierce frown he bade her "begone," and threatened that, unless she obeyed, worse things might follow. With a weeping band she departed, and amid their tears she heard the blessings of those whom she had fed and clothed heaped on her as she went out not knowing where to rest her head. Meanwhile Sir Ralph, who now assumed the title of Earl, the guerdon promised by Cromwell as the price of his slaughter, took possession of his new inheritance. The gloomy moroseness of the Puritans is well known, and never was an ascetic more strict than the Earl in his ideas; he abstained from wine, and thought dancing a damnable practice, and his most common remarks were interpolated with Holy Writ, according to the custom of the times. Naturally of a harsh temperament, he never paid the tribute of a thought to his hapless cousin, far less of a sigh! His ill-gotten towers and blood-purchased coronet were, however, fated to be a short-lived possession. About a week after his entry, on the fatal 3rd[A] of September, the day that saw the conquest of Scotland at Dunbar, and England at Worcester, and which Cromwell thought a fortunate day, there appeared in the heavens unmistakeable signs of a coming tempest. During the afternoon, the gusts of wind, bearing with them showers of leaves, grew stronger and stronger. As night advanced, the scud blew wildly across the welkin, and some time after sunset floods of rain descended. Towards midnight the gale increased to a perfect hurricane-"the rain fell not from one lone cloud, but as if heaven had caved in," and the Wye came down in high flood, carrying rocks and trunks of trees in its turbid course, and overflowing all the lowlands far and near. Ever and anon a wild crash told the fall of some patriarch of the forest, and with every blast the towers shook to their very foundations. During this war of the elements a great soul was passing away; it was a fit ending to a turbulent life. The wind sung his dirge as the ambitious Cromwell yielded up his ghost. Unknowing of his master's death, Earl Wentworth lay on his sleepless couch, and listened with terror to the violence of the storm; once or twice he thought the whole abbey would yield to its rage, but the strong masonry manfully repelled the gust, and the thick foundations rolled back the flood that beat against them. The roaring of the wind through the trees precluded the idea of sleep, and the thoughts of that stern man as he lay awake were aught but enviable. Within his bosom raged a storm, wild as that which howled without. The sins of his youth-the crimes of his manlier years-like fiends "no exorcism can bind," all flocked to his remembrance at that awful hour, and as his room shook, like Felix he, too, trembled, but like the Roman governor he bade conscience go its way this time, and at a more convenient season he would listen. Just then occurred one of those fitful pauses, as if the wind rested a moment to take breath, and regathered its strength for a still sterner effort. In that hush the moon broke forth from a gap in the flying clouds; and, looking calmly on the scene of terror, her beams kissed the raging waves of the flood that hurried by, and lit up the soldier's rough, weather-beaten features.

It was then that the Earl first became aware he was not alone. Beside his couch stood a form in white-was it the vision of a troubled mind? was it some horrid dream? He rubbed his eyes-the figure still stood there, motionless as a statue! In an instant he recognized Augusta: he tried to speak-the words froze on his lips, and in speechless terror he gazed on the apparition. Hunger and distress had not robbed her eye of its light, nor her face of its strange beauty; but there was something weird in her glance,-something ghostly in her pale brow,-something unearthly in her whole appearance. Her hair was dishevelled by the wind, and dripping with the rain; her mantle torn and soiled; her small white foot bleeding and cut by the rough paths she had trod. She raised her hand to heaven, and her look was one of intense earnestness and beseeching woe, strangely blended with proud hauteur and offended majesty. She beheld him earnestly till another pause in the storm, and, in the hush that followed the blast, sung mournfully these lines:-

Unhappy! you deem you are safe;

Secure in your ill-gotten towers,

And the storms which around thee now chafe

Shall sink with life's evening hours!

You deem that in guerdon for this

High mansions above shall be given,

That yours is a lifetime of bliss,

An endless rejoicing in heaven.

You err, oh! how deeply you err!

This night hath your dark doom been spoken;

And vainly you strive to deter

Heaven's vengeance, whose laws you have broken.

And the portals of heaven are closed,

And vain are the hopes that you cherish,

Hopes in which you too long have reposed-

Your soul shall eternally perish!

And not only this, but your sons

Shall suffer in you, and your daughters,

Their lives shall be desolate ones,

Acquainted with suffering and slaughters;

Cut off in the bloom of their youth,

In the beautiful hour of life's morning,

Oh! hearken-these tidings are truth,

Oh! listen-and heed my dread warning.

But Heaven is merciful yet,

Her blasting may turn to a blessing:

Thine errors she longs to forget,

Thy bloodshed her spirit distressing!

Repent of each murderous deed,

My tongue is still filled with glad tidings!

Return to your desolate creed,

And weep o'er your fatal backslidings.

Then your flocks and your barns shall increase,

Your name shall be famous in story,

The terrors of war sink to peace,

Your sons change from glory to glory!

And Heaven's glad song thou shalt learn

In mansions more splendid and spacious.

Return, oh! my brother, return!

Heaven is waiting-still waits-to be gracious!

The sound ceased, and again the voice of the storm rose high; clouds shrouded the lady of the night, and darkness sank in treble deepness. Still something undefined, but dimly bright, shone near the renegade's bedside, and made him aware that the Abbess awaited his reply: but, like another renegade, a modern poet has so finely drawn,-

"His heart was swollen, and turned aside

By deep, interminable pride.

* * * he be dismayed

By wild words of a timid maid?"

"No. Be thou living form, or fleshless spirit," he answered, "I have but one reply: I will not return like the sow to her wallowing in the mire. Having once shaken off the trammels of Rome, I will not lightly bear again her yoke, which is neither easy nor light; nay, fair cousin, methinks I have been but too merciful: to-morrow, God help me, will I raze the altar of Baal with the ground, unless this storm saves me the labour." He looked to see the effect of his reply-the dim light was gone; he only heard the wild wind.

Early next morning he rose to fulfil his threat. It was one of those beautiful mornings after a night of rain and tempest, and the sun shone brightly on the wreck left by the gale. Not a breath was stirring, and it was a strange sight to see the uprooted trees, the ruins of part of the chapel thrown down in the night, and the debris left by the Wye, which had nearly sunk to its wonted bed, lying in disjointed heaps on the sward. The silence was only broken by the robin's note, or the rush of the subsiding river, when the Earl proceeded to demolish the high altar. Rough as his soldiery were, they were not entirely freed from old superstitions, and there was not one hardy enough to obey his behest; so, after censuring them for lukewarmness in a blessed cause, he himself seized a sledgehammer from a bystander, and prepared to perform the sacrilegious act. He was a tall, stout man, of about thirty-five years, in the full strength of manhood, and he whirled the heavy instrument round his head as if it had been a withe; it descended on the altar with tremendous force, and in a moment brought down in dire destruction the marble shrine and image of the Virgin. Again he swung the hammer high-his face was red with passion, and his eye unnaturally bright. Suddenly a mortal paleness suffused his features, his powerful arm dropped down as if broken, and he fell heavily to the earth. Extreme passion had so excited him that a large blood-vessel burst, and as he lay on the earth, the red blood bubbled from his mouth. There were those who saw in his fate the retributive punishment of God for his cousin's death! He never spoke again, and after lingering some hours in great suffering, his spirit passed away, a few hours after his great chieftain's demise.

From that hour, the curse of Augusta has reigned malignantly over all his race;-the brave, the beautiful, have alike paid the debt, and one by one, but surely as the leaf falls before October's blast, have the members of that noble house succumbed to their fate. Some on the battle-field, some on the fevered couch, some in the blue lone sea, some by accidental death, some in mortal fray; but of all the many hearts that have braved life's storms, none have lived to be old in this world of sin and sorrow. They learned to love despair, ay, even to be proud of their doom!

We trust we have not wearied our reader by this introductory chapter, without which the strange fates and vicissitudes of the family whose history we are about to narrate might perhaps seem overdrawn, but whose early fall will no longer seem strange to one who knows the origin of the Weird of the Wentworths.[B]

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