GUENDOLEN.
"The sweetest lady of the time,--
Well worthy of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid."
ALFRED TENNYSON.
A sister of Guendolen's departed mother, Abbess of St. Hilda, a woman
of unusual intellect, and judgment, character and feelings, in no
degree inferior to her talents, had taken charge of her orphan niece
immediately after the mother's death, and had brought her up, a flower
literally untouched by the sun as by the storms of the world, in the
serene and tranquil life of the cloister, when the cloister was indeed
the seat of piety, and purity, and peace; in some cases the only
refuge from the violence and savage lusts of those rugged days; never
then the abode, at least in England, of morose bigotry or fierce
fanaticism, but the home of quiet contemplation, of meek virtue, and
peaceful cheerfulness.
The monasteries and priories of those days were not the sullen gaols
of the soul, the hives of drones, or the schools of ignorance and
bitter sectarian persecution which they have become in these latter
days, nor were their inmates then immured as the tenants of the
dungeon cell.
The abbey lands were ever the best tilled; the abbey tenants ever the
happiest, the best clad, the richest, and the freest of the peasantry
of England. The monks, those of Saxon race especially, were the
country curates of the twelfth century; it was they who fed the
hungry, who medicined the sick, who consoled the sad at heart, who
supported the widow and the fatherless, who supported the oppressed,
and smoothed the passage through the dark portals to the dying
Christian. There were no poor laws in those days, nor alms-houses; the
open gates and liberal doles of the old English abbeys bestowed
unstinted and ungrudging charity on all who claimed it. The abbot on
his soft-paced palfrey, or the prioress on her well-trained jennet, as
they made their progresses through the green fields and humble hamlets
of their dependents, were hailed ever with deferential joy and
affectionate reverence; and the serf, who would lout sullenly before
the haughty brow of his military chief, and scowl savagely with hand
on the dudgeon hilt after he had ridden past, would run a mile to
remove a fallen trunk from the path of the jolly prior, or three, to
guide the jennet of the mild-eyed lady abbess through the difficult
ford, or over the bad bit of the road, and think himself richly paid
by a benediction.
In such a tranquil tenor had been passed the early years of the
beautiful young Guendolen; and while she learned every accomplishment
of the day--for in those days the nunneries were the schools of all
that was delicate, and refined, and gentle, the schools of the softer
arts, especially of music and illumination, as were the monasteries
the shrines which alone kept alive the fire of science, and nursed the
lamp of letters, undying through those dark and dreary ages--she
learned also to be humble-minded, no less than holy-hearted, to be
compassionate, and kind, and sentient of others' sorrows; she learned,
above all things, that meekness and modesty, and a gentle bearing
toward the lowliest of her fellow-beings, were the choicest ornaments
to a maiden of the loftiest birth.
Herself a Norman of the purest Norman strain, descended from those of
whom, if not kings themselves, kings were descended, who claimed to be
the peers of the monarchs to whom their own good swords gave royalty,
she had never imbibed one idea of scorn for the conquered, the
debased, the downfallen Saxon.
The kindest, the gentlest, the sagest, and at the same time the most
refined and polished of all her preceptors, her spiritual pastor also,
and confessor, was an old Saxon monk, originally from the convent of
Burton on the Trent, who had migrated northward, and pitched the tent
of his declining years in a hermitage situate in the glade of a deep
Northumbrian wood, not far removed from the priory over which her aunt
presided with so much dignity and grace.
He had been a pilgrim, a prisoner in the Holy Land, had visited the
wild monasteries of Lebanon and Athos; he had seen the pyramids
"piercing the deep Egyptian sky," had mused under the broken arches of
the Coliseum, and listened, like the great historian of Rome, to the
bare-footed friars chanting their hymns among the ruins of Jupiter
Capitoline.
Like Ulysses, he had seen the lands, he had studied the manners, and
learned to speak the tongues, of many men and nations; nor, while he
had learned in the east strange mysteries of science, though he had
solved the secrets of chemistry, and learned, long before the birth of
"starry Galileo," to know the stars with their uprisings and their
settings; though he knew the nature, the properties, the secret
virtues, and the name of every floweret of the forest, of every ore of
the swart mine, he had not neglected the gentler culture, which
wreathes so graciously the wrinkled brow of wisdom. Not a poet
himself, so far as the weaving the mysterious chains of rhythm, he was
a genuine poet of the heart. Not a blush, not a smile, not a tear, not
a frown on the lovely face of nature, but awakened a response in his
large and sympathetic soul; not an emotion of the human heart, from
the best to the basest, but struck within him some chord of deep and
hidden feeling; to read an act of self-devoted courage, of charity, of
generosity, of self-denial, would make his flesh quiver, his hair
rise, his cheek burn. To hear of great deeds would stir him as with
the blast of a war trumpet. He was one, in fact, of those gifted
beings who could discern
"Music in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing;"
and as he felt himself, so had he taught her to feel; and of what he
knew himself, much he had taught her to know likewise.
Seeing, hearing, knowing him to be what he was, and, as is the wont
ever with young and ingenuous minds, imagining him to be something far
wiser, greater, and better than he really was, she was content at
first, while other men were yet unknown to her, to hold him something
almost supernaturally, ineffably beneficent and wise; and this
incomparable being she knew also to be a Saxon. She saw her aunt, who,
gentle as she was, and gracious, had yet a touch of the old Norse
pride of blood, untutored by the teachings of religion, and untamed by
the discipline of the church, bow submissively to his advice, defer
respectfully to his opinion, hang persuaded on his eloquence--and yet
he was a Saxon.
When she burst from girlhood into womanhood--when her father, returned
from the honors and the toils of foreign service, introduced her into
the grand scenes of gorgeous chivalry and royal courtesy, preparatory
to placing her at the head of his house--though she mingled with the
paladins and peers of Normandy and Norman England, she saw not one who
could compare in wisdom, in eloquence, in all that is highest and most
heaven-reaching in the human mind, with the old Saxon, Father Basil.
How then could she look upon the race from which he sprang as
inferior--as low and degraded by the hand of nature--when not the
sagest statesman, the most royal prince, the proudest chevalier, the
gentlest troubadour, could vie with him in one point of intellect or
of refinement--with him, the Saxon priest, son himself, as he himself
had told her, of a Saxon serf.
These were the antecedents, this the character of the beautiful girl,
who, on the morning following her adventure in the forest, lay,
supported by a pile of cushions, on one of the broad couches in the
Lady's Bower of Waltheofstow, inhaling the fresh perfumed breath of
the western air, as it swept in, over the shrubs and flowers in the
bartizan, through the window of the turret chamber. She was beautiful
as ever, but very pale, and still suffering, as it would seem, from
the effects of her fall and the injuries she had received in the
struggle with the terrible wild beast; for, whenever she attempted to
move or to turn her body, an expression of pain passed for a moment
across the pure, fair face, and once a slight murmur escaped from her
closed lips.
One or two waiting-maids, of Norman race, attended by the side of her
couch, one of them cooling her brow with a fan of peacock's feathers,
the other sprinkling perfumes through the chamber, and now and again
striving to amuse her by reading aloud from a ponderous illuminated
tome, larger than a modern cyclopedia, the interminable adventures and
sufferings of that true love, whose "course never did run smooth," and
feats of knightly prowess, recorded in one of the interminable
romances of the time. But to none of these did the Lady Guendolen
seriously incline her ear; and the faces of the attendant girls began
to wear an expression, not of weariness only, but of discontent, and,
perhaps, even of a deeper and bitterer feeling.
The Lady Guendolen was ill at ease; she was, most rare occurrence for
one of her soft though impulsive disposition, impatient, perhaps
querulous.
She could not be amused by any of their efforts. Her mind was far
away; she craved something which they could not give, and was restless
at their inability. Three times since her awakening, though the hour
was still early, she had inquired for Sir Yvo, and had sent to desire
his presence. The first time, her messengers brought her back word
that he had not yet arisen; the second, that he was breakfasting, but
now, in the knight's hall with Sir Philip, and the Sieurs of
Maltravers, De Vesey, and Mauleverer, who had ridden over to
Waltheofstow to fly their hawks, and that he would be with her ere
long; and the third, that the good knight must have forgotten, for
that he had taken horse and ridden away with the rest of the company
into the meadows by the banks of brimful Idle, to enjoy the "Mystery
of Rivers," as it was the fashion to term the sport of falconry, in
the high-flown language of the chase.
For a moment her pale face flushed, her eye flashed, and she bit her
lip, and drummed impatiently with her little fingers on the
velvet-pillows which supported her aching head; then, smiling at her
own momentary ill-humor, she bade her girl Marguerite go seek the
Saxon maiden, Edith, if she were in the castle, and if not, to see
that a message should be sent down for her to the serfs' quarter.
With many a toss of her pretty head, and many a wayward feminine
expression of annoyance, which from ruder lips would probably have
taken the shape of an imprecation, the injured damsel betook herself,
through winding passages and stairways in the thickness of the wall,
to the pages' waiting-chamber on the next floor below. Then tripping,
with a demure look, into the square vaulted room, in which were
lounging three gayly-dressed, long-haired boys, one twanging a guitar
in the embrasure of the window, and the other two playing at tables on
a board covered with a scarlet cloth--
"Here, Damian," she said, somewhat sharply, for the temper of the
mistress is sure to be reflected in that of the maid, losing nothing
by the transmission, "for what are you loitering there, with that old
tuneless gittern, when the Lady Guendolen has been calling for you
this hour past?"
"And how, in the name of St. Hubert," replied the boy, who had rather
been out with the falconers on the breezy leas, than mewed in the hall
to await a lady's pleasure--"how, in the name of St. Hubert! should I
know that the Lady Guendolen had called for me, when no one has been
near this old den since Sir Yvo rode forth on brown Roncesval, with
Diamond on his fist? And as for my gittern being tuneless, I've heard
you tell a different tale, pretty Mistress Marguerite. But let us have
your message, if you've got one; for I see you're as fidgety as a
thorough-bred sorrel filly, and as hot-tempered, too."
"Sorrel filly, indeed!" said the girl, half-laughing, half-indignant.
"I wish you could see my lady, Damian, if you call me fidgety and
hot-tempered. I wish you could see my lady, that's just all, this
morning."
"The message, the message, Marguerite, if there be one, or if you have
aught in your head but to make mischief."
"Why, I do believe my lady's bewitched since her fall; for nothing
will go down with her now-a-days but that pink-and-white,
flaxen-haired doll, Edith. I can't think what she sees in her, that
she must needs ever have the clumsy Saxon wench about her. I should
think gentle Norman blood might serve her turn."
"I don't know, Marguerite," answered the boy, wishing to tease her;
"Edith is a very pretty girl, indeed; I don't know but she's the very
prettiest I ever saw. Dark-haired and dark-eyed people always admire
their opposites, they say; and for my part, I think her blue eyes
glance as if they reflected heaven's own light in them; and her
flaxen-hair looks like a cloud high up in heaven, that has just caught
the first golden glitter of the morning sunbeams. And clumsy! how can
you call her clumsy, Marguerite? I am sure, when she came flitting
down the hill, with her long locks flowing in the breeze, and her thin
garments streaming back from her shapely figure, she looked liker to a
creature of the air, than to a mere mortal girl, running down a sandy
road. I should like to see you run like her, Mistress Marguerite."
"Me run!" exclaimed the Norman damsel, indignantly; "when ever did you
see a Norman lady _run_? But you're just like the rest of them;
caught ever by the first fresh face. Well, sir, since you're so
bewitched, like my pretty lady above stairs, with your Saxon angel,
the message I have brought you will just meet your humor. You will
see, sir, if this Saxon angel be in the castle, sir; and if she be
not, sir, your magnificence will proceed to the Saxon quarter, and
request her angelship to come forthwith to my lady's chamber, and to
come quickly, too. And you can escort her, Sir Page, and lend her your
hand up the hill; and steal a kiss, if you can, Sir Page, on the way!"
"Just so, Mistress Marguerite," returned the boy, "just so. Your
commands shall be obeyed to the letter. And as to the kiss, I'll try,
if I can get a chance; but I'm afraid she's too modest to kiss young
men."
And, taking up his dirk and bonnet from the board, he darted out of
the room, without awaiting her reply, having succeeded, to his heart's
content, in chafing her to somewhat higher than blood-heat; so that
she returned to her lady's bower even more discomposed than when she
left it; but Guendolen was too much occupied with other thoughts to
notice the girl's ill-temper, and within half an hour a light foot was
heard at the door, and the Saxon slave girl entered.
"How can I serve you, dear lady?" she said, coming up, and kneeling at
the couch side. "You are very pale. I trust you be not the worse this
morning."
"Very weak, Edith, and sore all over. I feel as if every limb were
broken; and I want you, with your gentle hand and gentle voice, to
soothe me."
"Ah! dearest lady, our Holy Mother send that your spirit never may be
so sore as to take no heed of the body's aching, nor your heart so
broken as to know not whether your limbs were torn asunder."