The Last Man
she consented to remain, shorn of regality, a member of the English
republic. When she became a widow, she turned all her thoughts to the
educating her son Adrian, second Earl of Windsor, so as to accomplish
her ambitious ends; and with his mother’s milk he imbibed, and was
intended to grow up in the steady purpose of re-acquiring his lost
crown. Adrian was now fifteen years of age. He was addicted to study,
and imbued beyond his years with learning and talent: report said that
he had already begun to thwart his mother’s views, and to entertain
republican principles. However this might be, the haughty Countess
entrusted none with the secrets of her family-tuition. Adrian was bred
up in solitude, and kept apart from the natural companions of his age
and rank. Some unknown circumstance now induced his mother to send him
from under her immediate tutelage; and we heard that he was about to
visit Cumberland. A thousand tales were rife, explanatory of the
Countess of Windsor’s conduct; none true probably; but each day it
became more certain that we should have the noble scion of the late
regal house of England among us.
There was a large estate with a mansion attached to it, belonging to
this family, at Ulswater. A large park was one of its appendages, laid
out with great taste, and plentifully stocked with game. I had often
made depredations on these preserves; and the neglected state of the
property facilitated my incursions. When it was decided that the young
Earl of Windsor should visit Cumberland, workmen arrived to put the
house and grounds in order for his reception. The apartments were
restored to their pristine splendour, and the park, all disrepairs
restored, was guarded with unusual care.
I was beyond measure disturbed by this intelligence. It roused all my
dormant recollections, my suspended sentiments of injury, and gave rise
to the new one of revenge. I could no longer attend to my occupations;
all my plans and devices were forgotten; I seemed about to begin life
anew, and that under no good auspices. The tug of war, I thought, was
now to begin. He would come triumphantly to the district to which my
parent had fled broken-hearted; he would find the ill-fated offspring,
bequeathed with such vain confidence to his royal father, miserable
paupers. That he should know of our existence, and treat us, near at
hand, with the same contumely which his father had practised in
distance and absence, appeared to me the certain consequence of all
that had gone before. Thus then I should meet this titled stripling—the
son of my father’s friend. He would be hedged in by servants; nobles,
and the sons of nobles, were his companions; all England rang with his
name; and his coming, like a thunderstorm, was heard from far: while I,
unlettered and unfashioned, should, if I came in contact with him, in
the judgment of his courtly followers, bear evidence in my very person
to the propriety of that ingratitude which had made me the degraded
being I appeared.
With my mind fully occupied by these ideas, I might be said as if
fascinated, to haunt the destined abode of the young Earl. I watched
the progress of the improvements, and stood by the unlading waggons, as
various articles of luxury, brought from London, were taken forth and
conveyed into the mansion. It was part of the Ex-Queen’s plan, to
surround her son with princely magnificence. I beheld rich carpets and
silken hangings, ornaments of gold, richly embossed metals, emblazoned
furniture, and all the appendages of high rank arranged, so that
nothing but what was regal in splendour should reach the eye of one of
royal descent. I looked on these; I turned my gaze to my own mean
dress.—Whence sprung this difference? Whence but from ingratitude, from
falsehood, from a dereliction on the part of the prince’s father, of
all noble sympathy and generous feeling. Doubtless, he also, whose
blood received a mingling tide from his proud mother—he, the
acknowledged focus of the kingdom’s wealth and nobility, had been
taught to repeat my father’s name with disdain, and to scoff at my just
claims to protection. I strove to think that all this grandeur was but
more glaring infamy, and that, by planting his gold-enwoven flag beside
my tarnished and tattered banner, he proclaimed not his superiority,
but his debasement. Yet I envied him. His stud of beautiful horses, his
arms of costly workmanship, the praise that attended him, the
adoration, ready servitor, high place and high esteem,—I considered
them as forcibly wrenched from me, and envied them all with novel and
tormenting bitterness.
To crown my vexation of spirit, Perdita, the visionary Perdita, seemed
to awake to real life with transport, when she told me that the Earl of
Windsor was about to arrive.
“And this pleases you?” I observed, moodily.
“Indeed it does, Lionel,” she replied; “I quite long to see him; he is
the descendant of our kings, the first noble of the land: every one
admires and loves him, and they say that his rank is his least merit;
he is generous, brave, and affable.”
“You have learnt a pretty lesson, Perdita,” said I, “and repeat it so
literally, that you forget the while the proofs we have of the Earl’s
virtues; his generosity to us is manifest in our plenty, his bravery in
the protection he affords us, his affability in the notice he takes of
us. His rank his least merit, do you say? Why, all his virtues are
derived from his station only; because he is rich, he is called
generous; because he is powerful, brave; because he is well served, he
is affable. Let them call him so, let all England believe him to be
thus—we know him—he is our enemy—our penurious, dastardly, arrogant
enemy; if he were gifted with one particle of the virtues you call his,
he would do justly by us, if it were only to shew, that if he must
strike, it should not be a fallen foe. His father injured my father—his
father, unassailable on his throne, dared despise him who only stooped
beneath himself, when he deigned to associate with the royal ingrate.
We, descendants from the one and the other, must be enemies also. He
shall find that I can feel my injuries; he shall learn to dread my
revenge!”
A few days after he arrived. Every inhabitant of the most miserable
cottage, went to swell the stream of population that poured forth to
meet him: even Perdita, in spite of my late philippic, crept near the
highway, to behold this idol of all hearts. I, driven half mad, as I
met party after party of the country people, in their holiday best,
descending the hills, escaped to their cloud-veiled summits, and
looking on the sterile rocks about me, exclaimed—“_They_ do not cry,
long live the Earl!” Nor, when night came, accompanied by drizzling
rain and cold, would I return home; for I knew that each cottage rang
with the praises of Adrian; as I felt my limbs grow numb and chill, my
pain served as food for my insane aversion; nay, I almost triumphed in
it, since it seemed to afford me reason and excuse for my hatred of my
unheeding adversary. All was attributed to him, for I confounded so
entirely the idea of father and son, that I forgot that the latter
might be wholly unconscious of his parent’s neglect of us; and as I
struck my aching head with my hand, I cried: “He shall hear of this! I
will be revenged! I will not suffer like a spaniel! He shall know,
beggar and friendless as I am, that I will not tamely submit to
injury!” Each day, each hour added to these exaggerated wrongs. His
praises were so many adder’s stings infixed in my vulnerable breast. If
I saw him at a distance, riding a beautiful horse, my blood boiled with
rage; the air seemed poisoned by his presence, and my very native
English was changed to a vile jargon, since every phrase I heard was
coupled with his name and honour. I panted to relieve this painful
heart-burning by some misdeed that should rouse him to a sense of my
antipathy. It was the height of his offending, that he should occasion
in me such intolerable sensations, and not deign himself to afford any
demonstration that he was aware that I even lived to feel them.
It soon became known that Adrian took great delight in his park and
preserves. He never sported, but spent hours in watching the tribes of
lovely and almost tame animals with which it was stocked, and ordered
that greater care should be taken of them than ever. Here was an
opening for my plans of offence, and I made use of it with all the
brute impetuosity I derived from my active mode of life. I proposed the
enterprize of poaching on his demesne to my few remaining comrades, who
were the most determined and lawless of the crew; but they all shrunk
from the peril; so I was left to achieve my revenge myself. At first my
exploits were unperceived; I increased in daring; footsteps on the dewy
grass, torn boughs, and marks of slaughter, at length betrayed me to
the game-keepers. They kept better watch; I was taken, and sent to
prison. I entered its gloomy walls in a fit of triumphant extasy: “He
feels me now,” I cried, “and shall, again and again!”—I passed but one
day in confinement; in the evening I was liberated, as I was told, by
the order of the Earl himself. This news precipitated me from my
self-raised pinnacle of honour. He despises me, I thought; but he shall
learn that I despise him, and hold in equal contempt his punishments
and his clemency. On the second night after my release, I was again
taken by the gamekeepers—again imprisoned, and again released; and
again, such was my pertinacity, did the fourth night find me in the
forbidden park. The gamekeepers were more enraged than their lord by my
obstinacy. They had received orders that if I were again taken, I
should be brought to the Earl; and his lenity made them expect a
conclusion which they considered ill befitting my crime. One of them,
who had been from the first the leader among those who had seized me,
resolved to satisfy his own resentment, before he made me over to the
higher powers.
The late setting of the moon, and the extreme caution I was obliged to
use in this my third expedition, consumed so much time, that something
like a qualm of fear came over me when I perceived dark night yield to
twilight. I crept along by the fern, on my hands and knees, seeking the
shadowy coverts of the underwood, while the birds awoke with unwelcome
song above, and the fresh morning wind, playing among the boughs, made
me suspect a footfall at each turn. My heart beat quick as I approached
the palings; my hand was on one of them, a leap would take me to the
other side, when two keepers sprang from an ambush upon me: one knocked
me down, and proceeded to inflict a severe horse-whipping. I started
up—a knife was in my grasp; I made a plunge at his raised right arm,
and inflicted a deep, wide wound in his hand. The rage and yells of the
wounded man, the howling execrations of his comrade, which I answered
with equal bitterness and fury, echoed through the dell; morning broke
more and more, ill accordant in its celestial beauty with our brute and
noisy contest. I and my enemy were still struggling, when the wounded
man exclaimed, “The Earl!” I sprang out of the herculean hold of the
keeper, panting from my exertions; I cast furious glances on my
persecutors, and placing myself with my back to a tree, resolved to
defend myself to the last. My garments were torn, and they, as well as
my hands, were stained with the blood of the man I had wounded; one
hand grasped the dead birds—my hard-earned prey, the other held the
knife; my hair was matted; my face besmeared with the same guilty signs
that bore witness against me on the dripping instrument I clenched; my
whole appearance was haggard and squalid. Tall and muscular as I was in