Moreton : or, The Doomed house. A romance

Chapter I

Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul strange and unnatural. Shakspere^ jjj It is now nearly four hundred years ago & |^ that the principal events recorded in the | if following strange and eventful narrative jj II occurred. The memory of the principal I I. actors in the fearful tragedy, which it is I |j our task to tell, has,' with their forms, •; melted from the face of the earth. They . / and their crimes, their hopes, their fears, £ I their mortal agony, have alike faded from " : the sight of man. Let us hope that they -- have found peace and mercy, where alone ; peace and mercy are everlasting. But one old man now remains who can ' relate the dreadful tale, and he is childless and alone, — the last of a fearful race, — cursed of Heaven, and carrying with them j upon earth a deadly blight, bus not against I him shall the dread fiat which has gone | | forth against his house be launched.

A | ' bright angel, fit alone for heaven, although | : for a short span akin to earth, had with her I j tears, pure as the dew of heaven and gush- 1 : ing from a keart which was the wall- I spring of all holy and blessed emotion*-*, j •washed away the foul stains of blood I which clung to the " Doomed House," and joy was in the old man's heart. He will a die in peace. But to our tale. 3 In a lonely and wretched district of s London, in the year 1452, there stood a '■ No. 1. miserable low hovel, wliich, at the time we mention, was the abode of as much misery and want as could very well find a lodgment in so confined a space. The house, if it could be called such, was situated very close to the bank of the Thames, and, by its appearance, tottering, as it was, over the edge of the black muddy tide which rolled lazily past it, it seemed teady, upon the slightest cause, to fall at once into the murky flood, with its squalid inhabitants.

To judge from the exterior, it might well be the abode of the most hopeless poverty, and such a judgment would not have been far from the truth ; for of the family which was assembled in the only room which promised the least shelter from the inclemency of the season, it woulil have been difficult to say in whose eyes or general appearance was depicted the most glaring, hopeless wretchedness. The room was small, and had a dark and earthy smell from the long absence of fire. The only articles of furniture consisted of a rickety deal table, two stools, and in one corner, a mass of unwholesome looking rags, which formed the family's nightly conch. There were three girls in tbe room of tender age, the eldest not exceeding twelve, although misery bad done its work, and stamped their young brows with an appearance of ages of suffering.

Not for them had the bright sun risen in all its glorious majesty for many previous months ; not for them had gay flowers, breathing delicious incense, sprang from the green earth to gladden ail hearts. The lark had poured forth its song " at Heaven's gate" on many a sunny morn, but they had heard it not — those old, care-worn children. Misery, want, reproach, hunger had been their portion for twelve dreary months, and half twelve, aye, a quarter of twelve more would have consigned them to the silent tomb. Besides these young mourners, there were two boys, one a young thing, who lay in his sister's arms in happy sleep ; the other, a youth, of some fifteen or sixteen years of age, and he with hands clasped round an iron bar, which stretched across the one window, gazed into the silent lane with an eye of vacant wretchedness.

Mother to the painful group there was none ; she had sunk beneath the struggle months since ; and the young nurslings who had once known her tender care, when all was prosperous and smiling, were glad that she was gone, and would sometimes, with a faint and ghastly smile, tell each other " 'twas a good thin-j." They had known what it was to be warm and well fed ; they recollected, with a dim wretchedness, sports, pastimes, and gay companions ; they had heard their mother say that their father, he who had placed all these things of life and joy within their grasp, who had smiled upon their sports, and encouraged every stray wish, that he had snatched all from them; and so he had. By a life of reckless extravagance, to which was superadded the demoniac vice of gaming, he had reduced his family and himself to the utmost verge of destitution, a destitution, in degree, which it had never entered into his imagination to conceive, but which now presented itself to him and his in all its glaring misery.

It was this father that the mournful shivering group were waiting for in gloomy silence. He had rushed forth with frenzied steps to look for food. The night had advanced, darkness had shrouded all things, but he came not. Moreton, for that was the name ofthe wretehed man, who, with totterhg and uncertain steps, had left his squalid home in search of but one meal's sustenance walked with a zig-zag and unsteady gait along the narrow streaming streets of the locality in which he sojourned. Fixed purpose he had none, save to procure food ; but the how, the where, all that was enshrouded in mist and obscurity. He threw himself upon accident for relief. Something must occur. Who, of the countless millions of souls congregated on the green earth perished of actual want ? What proportion of suffering humanity was consigned to the tomb by actual famine?

There was food in the desert, in the pathless wilds of nature, there was food in the surging ocean, everywhere ; and could it be possible that here here, surrounded by his fellows, thick as moles in the sun-beams — here, in the city of London, the deposkary of wealth untold— the mart of trade— the abode of luxury —he and his should perish?— No, no, it could not be ; it should not be. "Food food," gasped the wretched wanderer ; " bread !'' he shrieked ; "bread for my children ! bread ! They are young — beautiful ; — oh how beautiful I Mercy ! mercy I" and the once proud man sank to the cold earth. The narrow street in which he had paused to give frenzied utterance to his incoherent ravings was long and tortuous. It wound, snake-like, along the bank of the river, and finally reached its lerminus at a small wooden jetty, or landing place for wherries.

One solitary passenger had paused to listen to the supplications of the heart broken man, and he had but drawn his cloak closer around him and passed on. A window in one of the smallest of the houses was cautiously opened, and a woman looked forth: she gazed for a moment, and then with a " God help you," closed it, and retired. Moreton lay for some seconds stunned and motionless, an apparently lifeless mass, until he felt himself violently shaken by some one. " Hilloa, friend," shouted a voice in his ear ; " art dead, or paying off a tavern score? By the mass, man, thou has not chosen the likeliest spot in the broad city for a dry jerkin. Hilloa, man ! rouse thee ! rouse thee!" Moreton, by the exertions of the unknown, had risen to a sitting posture, and with a deep sigh, like one awakening from a long and troubled sleep, slowly unclosed his eye-lids.

He gazed, although with a vacant and unspeculating eye, upon the face of the stranger, who bent over him, and then, as consciousness slowly returned, and he became aware of his situation, he grasped his arm, and with a withering laugh, thatawakened fearful echoes in that silent street, he shouted, — " Food ! — food ! Fellow-man ! — fellow worra ! — bread. Ha ! ha ! ha I — Bread ! — bread ! — bread !" The stranger -recoiled from his grasp, but the unhappy man but clutched him with more nervous and fearful energy. " Four little ones," he said, and his tone was humble and subdued, while the hot tears coursed down his cheeks, and his voice was nearly choked by sobs ; " four little ones — fair and good. Oh, sir, you should see them smile ; 'tis music ; you would weep, sir — they are mine — all mine.

Their mother, sir, she loved them all; we were happy — rich. Ah, sir, you would love them. Four, sir, — so young — so beautiful. 1 speak not of my boy,* sir. I do not ask you to think of him. Ob, sir, had you heard them laugh — 'tis I that complain, not they ; but, now, sir, now. Oh, Heavens, they — they want, sir— they starve — starve. I see them beautiful in their decay — wasting — wasting — dyingj!" He clung to that strange man ; he gazed in his face as if existence hung upon a word. He clasped his knees and wept ,hke a child. Those tears were the first, and his overcharged heart seemed momentarily ready to burst with that sad and fearful agony. " Starving," repeated the stranger. "Starving!" shrieked Moreton. " No hope ? — no friends ?" "None — none — look at me." Moreton raised his eyes to the stranger's face, and gazed earnestly.

No feeling was there ; 'twas full of deep malignity and hidden passion. Moreton slightly shuddered, he knew not why. The stranger smiled; 'twas the smile of a fiend. " You don't like me, eh ?" Moreton answered not. " Wilt thou again be rich ? wilt save thy children, who smile in that exceedingly pleasant sort of way, my good friend ; or scratch a grave, nightly, with thy nails, to place the dear creatures in, eh ?" " Oh ! Heaven ! — save them !" "Say, man, — wilt thou assist me in a small matter?" "In what?" " Hast ever slain a man ?" " In open fight, an enemy." *' Nay, nay, that were wrong. .1 ask you not to slay an enemy. Let's forgive our enemies, and only slay those who are indifferent to us, so 'scape we the deadly tin of revenge, eh ?" MORETON ; OR, 4 '"Tis hollow reasoning." "Four sweet cherubs, and in want' absolute want, did you remark, my good friend, or figurative want?"

" Oh, man, man ! torture me not !— Starving— dying !" " Humph ! most uncomfortable !" " Dropping into the dark tomb before a father's eye." " Disagreeable, certainly." " Fair, blue-eyed creatures, formed but for love and joy ; and oh ! to lose them thus !" " Decidedly annoying." "Man or devil! wilt thou help me, or wilt thou not? Each moment, per chance, carries on its wing the last sigh of one of my helpless babes. If thou hast trifled with me, curse thee, thee and thine ! May — " - " Hush ! hush ! 1 really feel for you. By my "faith, I do. Wilt do my bidding, ay or no?" " Wilt save my babes V "I will." " Then I am thine." " Agreed." The stranger clasped Moreton's hand, and it struck an icy chill to his very heart.

Chapter II

Oh, she was most lovely ! Nature gloried in the perfection she had created." We must now turn to another scene in our chequered tale, and direct the reader's attention to personages of a higher order than the unhappy Moreton. Edward the Third was on the throne at the period of tbis narrative, and Wor cester, his minister, was a man of the most subtle and dangerous character. De ceitful to his friends, and unrelenting to his enemies, Woreester was a man truly to be feared, The scene to which we would introduce our readers is one which our modern refinement and luxury would pronounce seductive and entrancing. Imagine an apartment of spacious dimensions, and fitted with every appointment of expensive luxury which the age could afford. The apartment was one of a splendid suite in the villa ofa nobleman attached, although but by a minor office, to the court.

He was reported the wealthiest man in England of his period— Sir Walter Clifford, the owner of that superb and envied mansion. Ambition was his idol. To rise, to shine, to be flattered and courted, although by persons whose worthlessness he was quite ready to admit, was the summit of his hopes. For this kind of hollow popularity he panted, and hence his acquaintance, which soo-i ripened into the closest intimacy, with Worcester, the most moral minister of his age. The apartment was hung with gorgeous tapestry, and although the flooring boasted of no covering, yet the elaborate and exquisite taste with which various woods had been fantastically grouped, gave it an appearance little inferior to the most costly fabric ; embossed caVinets, and inlaid ,massive pieces of furniture from all climes, were congregated in that brilliant saloon.

A wood fire blazed and crackled on the ample hearth, diffusing an air of comfort and a pleasant glow over the rich contents ofthe chamber. It was the morning of the day in the eveniag of which Moreton had sallied forth on his desperate mission, that two persons stood in that apartment, regarding each other with the most different feelings. With a frown upon his brow, and his clenched hand resting upon the cornered tdge of an oaken table, Sir Walter Clifford stood trembling with anger, and his face pale with suppressed emotion. Opposite to him stood Blanche, his only daughter, with a sice depicting patient sufferiug and uncomplaining sorrow. Tears were slowly dropping from her downcast eyes, as she there stood like a beautiful statue of grief. Sixteen summers had scarcely passed over her young head, and although her form was fully and beautifully developed, there was an air of girlish simplicity about her every movement and action, that imparted an indescribable charm to an already nearly faultless being.

She was all feeling, all affection ; she loved all things, from her imperious father down to the meanest of her dumb pets. She could weep over harshness and injury, but she could not resent. She reasoned not, she only felt. Alas ! these are the natures that become the ready tools ofthe bold and the bad. Her father knew his power over the tender, affectionate, and delicate Blanche ; and he determined that she — she, his own fair, faultless child — should, at any sacrifice, assist him in carrying out his ambitious notions. It was, therefore, with a view of fixing himself more firmly in the favour of Worcester, that he courted an alliance between his daughter and the debauched and penniless son of the, for the time being, favoured minister. The proposal was eagerly caught at by Worcester, who was a man of ruined fortunes, and Blanche's young heart had been tortured between these two worldly men, without a sigh for their victim's sufferings.

Sir Walter Clifford had shrunk in conscious guilt from the unholy compact, until the day which we have introduced to our readers, on which he had harshly summoned his daughter to his presence, and with ill-concealed emotion issued his imperious mandate that she should fix a day for her marriage with Sir Nicholas Trevor, the rogue, the gambler, the suspected assassin, but the son of the minister ! Sir Walter started from his angry position, and paced the room with agitated steps ; he paused opposite the trembling Blanche. " You refuse Sir Nicholas. Wretched girl, know you what ye do ?" " Nay, father, not refuse. I said not so." "What then?— Speak!" *' Oh, father, give me not to that man. I shall die, and you will weep for poor Blanche. Dear father " " Tush, tush ! no silly murmuring. You must and shall be his.

A worthy gen tleman, high in estate, birth, wit, accomplishments, and — and — and power." " Ah ! father he has power, but has he a heart to feel for misery ? Is he gene rous, brave, tender, humane? No, no, he is only powerful." Sir Walter's brow flushed with sudden anger, and he bit his lips with deep vexa tion at this unexpected, but in his inmost heart acknowledged, true description of Sir Nicholas Trevor. " Tell me. Blanche," said he, with assumed calmness — " tell me, girl, who told thee this of Trevor?'' Blanche blushed, and hung down her head. " My sweet Blanche, who told thee ?" " Reginald, father." " Ha! he — Reginald Moreton. Now may the foul fiend " "Father! father!" •' Curses " " He saved your life, father ! Curse him not — curse him not. God may hear you." Sir Walter sank into a chair, and gazed upon the glowing countenance of the gentle Blanche, who stood now before him no longer the fond and yielding girl, but the proud and high-souled woman, conscious of right, and defying, in the strength and majesty of virtue, 1 things base and unworthy.

At this moment, while father and daughter were regarding each other with such widely different emotions, a domestic cautiously opened the door, and noiselessly entered the apartment. His looks were pale and haggard — his knees trembled — he drew his breath short and thick, and his frequent backward glance betrayed his terror of some object which he feared was too close upon his; ack. Blanche looked inquiringly upon this pale, shivering man, as with lips slightly apart, as if gasping to impart some fearful piece of news, he slowly walked up the the long apartment, to where Sir Walter sat. " Sir Walter— e — e— a — Sir— Sir Walter, the saints have mercy on us !" Sir Walter rose with a deep sigh from his chair. His face was of an ashy pale ness, but he manifested no surprise. '• Husb !" he said—" hush ! 'tis he."

"The Lo — o — o — rd have mercy, my honoured master, 'tis indeed." Deep sighs burst from Sir Walter, as he paced the room once_. "Horrible, hoirible!" he repeated in a choking, husky whisper. "Where — where does the — the — wait, Lennard ?" he at length said, in a low tone, to tha appalled domestic. " In the cedar parlour. Sir Walter." " Lennard, you are sure 'tis he ?" *' Sure, Sir Walter ! my blood creeps." Sir Walter clenched his hands, and paced slowly to the door. He seemed in mortal terror, for the cold drops of perspiration stood upon his brow, and he trembled violently. He turned at the door, and in a low voice of inquiry he said to Lennard, — "Green?" " Green, Green, Sir Walter. The saints preserve us !" Sir Walter rushed through the door with an audible moan. Blanche remained an entranced spectator of the singular scene which had just occurred.

So sudden and so singular had been the interruption of her conference with her father, that she had not the power to speak a word either of expostu lation or inquiry. She was, however, roused to a consciousness of the necessity of action, by observing Lennard slowly making his way towards the door, as if with a view of avoiding the inquiries which he knew would naturally be made by Blanche. " Stay, Lennard," she said, " explain to me the meaning of this fearful and inex plicable scene ?" He still made towards the door. " Lennard." " Y— e— s." " Close that door, and answer my question." " Eh— ah— O Lord! O Lord!" " Who is this mysterious person whom my father fears to name, and yet attends?" Lennard placed his finger in a mysterious and knowing manner by the side ofhis nose, which he deliberately tapped nine times without vouchsafing a reply ; he then shook his head slowly and mournfully for about an equal number of oscilla tions ; after which sagacious preliminaries, he looked earnestly outside the door, cautiously under the various articles of furniture, and then, as if somewhat reco vered by his scrutiny, he ventured to clear his throat with a very short and delicate, but significant " Hem."

" Tell me, Lennard, and for your soul's sake speak the simple truth, who is my father now closeted with f again repeated the terrified Blanche. "Oh, Miss Blanche! Miss Blanche! some servants would say one foolish thing, and others, another foolish thing ; but as for me, as mv Lord Cardinal once remarked, ' Leonard,' said my lord Cardinal — ' Lennard " Cease ! — cease this folly." "Folly, Miss Blanche !— Very good, very good. Well, then, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I really don't know who it is. But " "Is it amanl" " A resemblance, Miss Blanche. But-oh dear me ! " And Lennard made many expressive gestures— all meant to signify how very faint and indistinct such resemblance was, andhow much he doubted the humanity of the mysterious visitor " Did this man— if he be such— ever visit here before ?"

"Once, lady, once, and I— I, Lennard— let him, that is lo say, it in My master was shut up with it for two hours, and when he came out of the room— the same they are in now — he was pale as a sheet, and trembled dreadfully. ' Len nard,' said he — ' Lennard, should that stranger come again,' and his teeth chat tered as he spoke, ' let me be where I may — even in the confessional, summon me instantly ; but prate of this thing, and you die— die fearfully.' And with that master walked off ; but I never saw the thing go, and how it left the house I don't really know." " This is most strange!' ' "Very. My very words. ' This is most strange,' said I — that is, I thought, for I said nothing. Your prudent, discreet man, thinks a good deal, but he don't say much. Now, when anything happens, people say, 'Where's Lennard? — What does he think ?' but they never know — no, no. As my Lord Cardinal said, 'Lennard,' said he, ' In the cedar parlour ' " Ay, Miss Blanche."

"Queen?" " O Lord, O Lord ! don't say that again. The saints be good to us ! Dear me, dear me ! Oh, oh, oh !" and Lennard rushed from the apartment, with the greatest consternation in his looks. Blanche stood for a moment irresolute. Her mind was in a complete chaos. She strove to think calmly over the events of the last hour. Within that time had her father proposed to her a hatefnl and abhorred alliance — an alliance which, were it consummated, left her but a life of hopeless misery. Within that hour, for the first lime in her life, she had resisted that father's stern commands, and stepped with one gigantic stride from the position of a meek, confiding, and sup plicating girl, to that of a resolved and firm-minded woman. She had broken the spell which hitherto had bound her faculties, and, for the first time, she thought, questioned, and resisted.

A new existence had begun for her. She had passed through one epoch of her life calm and um-uffled. Was the next on the threshold of which she now stood, to glide on as calmly? She felt it was not; its advent had been ushered in by a mystery, which she shuddered to reflect upon, and the pure-minded Blanche 6ank upon a couch, and, with her hand clasped upon her face, wept bitterly. She had before wept ; wept freely. With a heart full of susceptible feelings, Blanche's tears would easily flow. A table of suffering — the death of a dumb favourite — nay, almost the premature decay of a flower, would call forth the sympathetic tear of that fair girl ; but, oh! how different were such tears from those that now burst from her overcharged heart. The former were like the light summer shower, that comes but to lend a greater charm to sunshine ; but the latter, like the winter's storm, stern and severe, could not sweep across the heart, without leaving the marks of its fearful ravages.

Such tears as Blanche now shed were not shed in vain. Each burst of true, heartfelt misery, such as now burst from her heaving breast, will leave its trace behind it — a trace observable in the serenest face after such visitations, and Blanche was not exempt from the fell influence; for, as she arose, and strove to conceal the traces of her deep emotion, one who had seen her but one short hour since might well have imagined that by some supernatural influence in that brief space, the alteration of some years had been effected upon the fair and delicate, but no longer girlish, Blanche. She felt herself the change, and she thought, " I shall not weep so often ; but when I do, my tears will be more bitter." She passed her hand across her brow as if to clear her mind for energetic action, and remained for a few moments in intense thought.

A slight smile — a smile of singular beauty — played for a brief moment around her rosy lip, and a name escaped her lips. "Reginald, Reginald," she said, or rather sighed, and the name seemed to dwell upon her lips, " would you were here ! This fearful mystery, which seems to in volve my father's very heart's-blood in its fearful meshes — what can I think ? what can I do ? Perhaps I, even I, may be the instrument appointed by Heaven to save him. Grant me strength, just God. The cedar parlour, said they not ? Ay, the cedar parlour." She pressed her hands to her heart, to still its wild tremulous beating, and walked firmly to the door. She shuddered as she turned the loch, and walked into the narrow passage, at the furthest extremity of wliich was the room to which Sir Walter Cecil had been so awfully summoned.

" The cedar parlour," she again repeated, as if unconsciously. " Oh, just Heaven support me ! for his sake.'" She walked with slow steps towards the door of the room which she believed contained the cause, and she hoped the solution of the mystery. More than once she paused ere she reached its threshold ; but a sense of duty — of right, urged her forward, and she leaned against its heavy panels. A voice from within ('twas that of her father), in an agony of supplication, met her ears. " No I no ! no !" it said, " oh, not that, — not that. Spare me that." She heard not the reply, but after a pause, again Sir Walter's voice was heard by the agonised Blanche. "And when again, dread being?" "This dav month," said a hollow voice in reply. "When?" "At noon." A deep silence now ensued for a few moments, and Blanche, overcome by eon tending emotions, sank on the floor.

She heard deep sobs proceeding from the chamber, and her father's voice said in pitying accents, — " Spare him ! spare him !" A discordant laugh was the only answer ; she heard a dull heavy sound as of some one falling heavily, aud in an instant the door burst open. Blanche gazed but for an instant, and with one terrific shriek, fell insensible on the threshold of the cedar parlour.

Chapter III

The next morning of the day following that on which Moreton had been promised assistance by the unknown but suspieious-looking stranger, dawned with more hope and comfort on the wretched family than they had been accustomed to feel for many weary weeks. Smiles played upon the faces of the young ones, and even elders looked some what cheerful at the well-laden table. Abundance was once more apparently within their reach, and, at least the demon of gaunt hunger was for a time banished. They looked at each other, and then at their father, who sat regarding them with a settled gloom upon his brow. Of the ample provisions he had eaten but sparingly; he seemed weighed down by hidden sorrow, which apparently fed upon his very life, for he looked ten times more worn and wretched than he had, in the extremity of his misery, looked the day before.

When the twilight had deepened into night ; he was to pay the price of the viands that cheered the hearts of his children ; but what a price ! his blood ran chill, and the cold drops stood upon his brow as he contemplated the tearful abyss into which he was hastening. The day wore on. Tbe bright sun dipped into the radiant west. His now happy children (how transient are the griefs of such young hearts) sported in frolicsome glee about the gloomy abode, and the very walls seemed to their blithe spirits to have lost some of their character of squalid misery. Moreton still sat, apparently in deep thought ; he might have been supposed asleep, but for the deep and heavy groans which now and then burst from his labouring breast. And now the last gleam of sunshine slowly withdrew itself from the wall upon which he gazed.