“Leave me, leave me,” said Harold, hastily.
“Yet, hold. Thou didst seem to understand
me when I hinted of—in a word, what is the
object William would gain from me?”
Haco looked around; again went to the door—again
opened and closed it—approached, and whispered,
“The crown of England!”
The Earl bounded as if shot to the heart; then, again
he cried: “Leave me. I must be alone—alone
now. Go! go!”
Only in solitude could that strong man give way to
his emotions; and at first they rushed forth so confused
and stormy, so hurtling one the other, that hours
elapsed before he could serenely face the terrible
crisis of his position.
The great historian of Italy has said, that whenever
the simple and truthful German came amongst the plotting
and artful Italians and experienced their duplicity
and craft, he straightway became more false and subtle
than the Italians themselves: to his own countrymen,
indeed, he continued to retain his characteristic sincerity
and good faith; but, once duped and tricked by the
southern schemers, as if with a fierce scorn, he rejected
troth with the truthless; he exulted in mastering
them in their own wily statesmanship; and if reproached
for insincerity, retorted with naive wonder, “Ye
Italians, and complain of insincerity! How otherwise
can one deal with you—how be safe amongst
you?”
Somewhat of this revolution of all the natural elements
of his character took place in Harold’s mind
that stormy and solitary night. In the transport
of his indignation, he resolved not doltishly to be
thus outwitted to his ruin. The perfidious host
had deprived himself of that privilege of Truth,—the
large and heavenly security of man;— it
was but a struggle of wit against wit, snare against
snare. The state and law of warfare had started
up in the lap of fraudful peace; and ambush must be
met by ambush, plot by plot.
Such was the nature of the self-excuses by which the
Saxon defended his resolves, and they appeared to
him more sanctioned by the stake which depended on
success—a stake which his undying patriotism
allowed to be far more vast than his individual ambition.
Nothing was more clear than that if he were detained
in a Norman prison, at the time of King Edward’s
death, the sole obstacle to William’s design
on the English throne would be removed. In the
interim, the Duke’s intrigues would again surround
the infirm King with Norman influences; and in the
absence both of any legitimate heir to the throne capable
of commanding the trust of the people, and of his own
preponderating ascendancy both in the Witan and the
armed militia of the nation, what could arrest the
designs of the grasping Duke? Thus his own liberty
was indissolubly connected with that of his country;
and for that great end, the safety of England, all
means grew holy.
When the next morning he joined the cavalcade, it
was only by his extreme paleness that the struggle
and agony of the past night could be traced, and he
answered with correspondent cheerfulness William’s
cordial greetings.
