unmoved, dry, and unconcerned tone of voice, in which she had answered
all the former questions.
“If,” said the Lady of Avenel, “your grandchild could be received into a
noble family, would it not advantage both him and you?”
“Received into a noble family!” said the old woman, drawing herself up,
and bending her brows until her forehead was wrinkled into a frown of
unusual severity; “and for what purpose, I pray you?--to be my lady's
page, or my lord's jackman, to eat broken victuals, and contend with
other menials for the remnants of the master's meal? Would you have
him to fan the flies from my lady's face while she sleeps, to carry
her train while she walks, to hand her trencher when she feeds, to ride
before her on horseback, to walk after her on foot, to sing when she
lists, and to be silent when she bids?--a very weathercock, which,
though furnished in appearance with wings and plumage, cannot soar into
the air--cannot fly from the spot where it is perched, but receives all
its impulse, and performs all its revolutions, obedient to the changeful
breath of a vain woman? When the eagle of Helvellyn perches on the tower
of Lanercost, and turns and changes his place to show how the wind sits,
Roland Graeme shall be what you would make him.”
The woman spoke with a rapidity and vehemence which seemed to have in it
a touch of insanity; and a sudden sense of the danger to which the child
must necessarily be exposed in the charge of such a keeper, increased
the Lady's desire to keep him in the castle if possible.
“You mistake me, dame,” she said, addressing the old woman in a soothing
manner; “I do not wish your boy to be in attendance on myself, but upon
the good knight my husband. Were he himself the son of a belted earl,
he could not better be trained to arms, and all that befits a gentleman,
than by the instructions and discipline of Sir Halbert Glendinning.”
“Ay,” answered the old woman, in the same style of bitter irony, “I know
the wages of that service;--a curse when the corslet is not sufficiently
brightened,--a blow when the girth is not tightly drawn,--to be beaten
because the hounds are at fault,--to be reviled because the foray is
unsuccessful,--to stain his hands for the master's bidding in the blood
alike of beast and of man,--to be a butcher of harmless deer, a murderer
and defacer of God's own image, not at his own pleasure, but at that of
his lord,--to live a brawling ruffian, and a common stabber--exposed to
heat, to cold, to want of food, to all the privations of an anchoret,
not for the love of God, but for the service of Satan,--to die by the
gibbet, or in some obscure skirmish,--to sleep out his brief life
in carnal security, and to awake in the eternal fire, which is never
quenched.”
“Nay,” said the Lady of Avenel, “but to such unhallowed course of life
your grandson will not be here exposed. My husband is just and kind to
those who live under his banner; and you yourself well know, that youth
have here a strict as well as a good preceptor in the person of our
chaplain.”
The old woman appeared to pause.
“You have named,” she said, “the only circumstance which can move me. I
must soon onward, the vision has said it--I must not tarry in the same
spot--I must on,--I must on, it is my weird.--Swear, then, that you will
protect the boy as if he were your own, until I return hither and claim
him, and I will consent for a space to part with him. But especially
swear, he shall not lack the instruction of the godly man who hath
placed the gospel-truth high above those idolatrous shavelings, the
monks and friars.”
“Be satisfied, dame,” said the Lady of Avenel; “the boy shall have as
much care as if he were born of my own blood. Will you see him now?”
“No,” answered the old woman sternly; “to part is enough. I go forth
on my own mission. I will not soften my heart by useless tears and
wailings, as one that is not called to a duty.”
“Will you not accept of something to aid you in your pilgrimage?” said
the Lady of Avenel, putting into her hands two crowns of the sun. The
old woman flung them down on the table.
“Am I of the race of Cain,” she said, “proud Lady, that you offer me
gold in exchange for my own flesh and blood?”
“I had no such meaning,” said the Lady, gently; “nor am I the proud
woman you term me. Alas! my own fortunes might have taught me humility,
even had it not been born with me.”
The old woman seemed somewhat to relax her tone of severity.
“You are of gentle blood,” she said, “else we had not parleyed thus long
together.--You are of gentle blood, and to such,” she added, drawing up
her tall form as she spoke, “pride is as graceful as is the plume upon
the bonnet. But for these pieces of gold, lady, you must needs resume
them. I need not money. I am well provided; and I may not care for
myself, nor think how, or by whom, I shall be sustained. Farewell, and
keep your word. Cause your gates to be opened, and your bridges to be
lowered. I will set forward this very night. When I come again, I will
demand from you a strict account, for I have left with you the jewel of
my life! Sleep will visit me but in snatches, food will not refresh me,
rest will not restore my strength, until I see Roland Graeme. Once more,
farewell.”
“Make your obeisance, dame,” said Lilias to Magdalen Graeme, as she
retired, “make your obeisance to her ladyship, and thank her for her
goodness, as is but fitting and right.”
The old woman turned short around on the officious waiting-maid. “Let
her make her obeisance to me then, and I will return it. Why should
I bend to her?--is it because her kirtle is of silk, and mine of blue
lockeram?--Go to, my lady's waiting-woman. Know that the rank of the man
rates that of the wife, and that she who marries a churl's son, were she
a king's daughter, is but a peasant's bride.”
Lilias was about to reply in great indignation, but her mistress imposed
silence on her, and commanded that the old woman should be safely
conducted to the mainland.
“Conduct her safe!” exclaimed the incensed waiting-woman, while Magdalen
Graeme left the apartment; “I say, duck her in the loch, and then we
will see whether she is witch or not, as every body in the village of
Lochside will say and swear. I marvel your ladyship could bear so long
with her insolence.” But the commands of the Lady were obeyed, and the
old dame, dismissed from the castle, was committed to her fortune. She
kept her word, and did not long abide in that place, leaving the hamlet
on the very night succeeding the interview, and wandering no one asked
whither. The Lady of Avenel inquired under what circumstances she had
appeared among them, but could only learn that she was believed to
be the widow of some man of consequence among the Graemes who then
inhabited the Debateable Land, a name given to a certain portion of
territory which was the frequent subject of dispute betwixt Scotland
and England--that she had suffered great wrong in some of the frequent
forays by which that unfortunate district was wasted, and had been
driven from her dwelling-place. She had arrived in the hamlet no one
knew for what purpose, and was held by some to be a witch, by others a
zealous Protestant, and by others again a Catholic devotee. Her language
was mysterious, and her manners repulsive; and all that could be
collected from her conversation seemed to imply that she was under the
influence either of a spell or of a vow,--there was no saying which,
since she talked as one who acted under a powerful and external agency.
Such were the particulars which the Lady's inquiries were able
to collect concerning Magdalen Graeme, being far too meagre and
contradictory to authorize any satisfactory deduction. In truth, the
miseries of the time, and the various turns of fate incidental to a
frontier country, were perpetually chasing from their habitations those
who had not the means of defence or protection. These wanderers in the
land were too often seen, to excite much attention or sympathy. They
received the cold relief which was extorted by general feelings of
humanity; a little excited in some breasts, and perhaps rather chilled
in others, by the recollection that they who gave the charity to-day
might themselves want it to-morrow. Magdalen Graeme, therefore, came and
departed like a shadow from the neighbourhood of Avenel Castle.
The boy whom Providence, as she thought, had thus strangely placed
under her care, was at once established a favourite with the Lady of
the castle. How could it be otherwise? He became the object of those
affectionate feelings, which, finding formerly no object on which to
expand themselves, had increased the gloom of the castle, and imbittered
the solitude of its mistress. To teach him reading and writing as far as
her skill went, to attend to his childish comforts, to watch his boyish
sports, became the Lady's favourite amusement. In her circumstances,
where the ear only heard the lowing of the cattle from the distant
hills, or the heavy step of the warder as he walked upon his post,
or the half-envied laugh of her maiden as she turned her wheel, the
appearance of the blooming and beautiful boy gave an interest which
can hardly be conceived by those who live amid gayer and busier scenes.
Young Roland was to the Lady of Avenel what the flower, which occupies
the window of some solitary captive, is to the poor wight by whom it is
nursed and cultivated,--something which at once excited and repaid
her care; and in giving the boy her affection, she felt, as it were,
grateful to him for releasing her from the state of dull apathy in
which she had usually found herself during the absence of Sir Halbert
Glendinning.
But even the charms of this blooming favourite were unable to chase the
recurring apprehensions which arose from her husband's procrastinated
return. Soon after Roland Graeme became a resident at the castle, a
groom, despatched by Sir Halbert, brought tidings that business still
delayed the Knight at the Court of Holyrood. The more distant period
which the messenger had assigned for his master's arrival at length
glided away, summer melted into autumn, and autumn was about to give
place to winter, and yet he came not.
Chapter the Third.
The waning harvest-moon shone broad and bright,
The warder's horn was heard at dead of night,
And while the portals-wide were flung,
With trampling hoofs the rocky pavement rung.
LEYDEN.
“And you, too, would be a soldier, Roland?” said the Lady of Avenel
to her young charge, while, seated on a stone chair at one end of the
battlements, she saw the boy attempt, with a long stick, to mimic the
motions of the warder, as he alternately shouldered, or ported, or
sloped pike.
“Yes, Lady,” said the boy,--for he was now familiar, and replied to her
questions with readiness and alacrity,-“a soldier will I be; for there
ne'er was gentleman but who belted him with the brand.”
“Thou a gentleman!” said Lilias, who, as usual, was in attendance; “such
a gentleman as I would make of a bean-cod with a rusty knife.”
“Nay, chide him not, Lilias,” said the Lady of Avenel, “for, beshrew me,
but I think he comes of gentle blood--see how it musters in his face at
your injurious reproof.”
“Had I my will, madam,” answered Lilias, “a good birchen wand should
make his colour muster to better purpose still.”
“On my word, Lilias,” said the Lady, “one would think you had received
harm from the poor boy--or is he so far on the frosty side of your
favour because he enjoys the sunny side of mine?”
“Over heavens forbode, my Lady!” answered Lilias; “I have lived too long
with gentles, I praise my stars for it, to fight with either follies or
fantasies, whether they relate to beast, bird, or boy.”
Lilias was a favourite in her own class, a spoiled domestic, and often
accustomed to take more licence than her mistress was at all times
willing to encourage. But what did not please the Lady of Avenel, she
did not choose to hear, and thus it was on the present occasion. She
resolved to look more close and sharply after the boy, who had hitherto
been committed chiefly to the management of Lilias. He must, she
thought, be born of gentle blood; it were shame to think otherwise of
a form so noble, and features so fair;--the very wildness in which
he occasionally indulged, his contempt of danger, and impatience of
restraint, had in them something noble;--assuredly the child was born of
high rank. Such was her conclusion, and she acted upon it accordingly.
The domestics around her, less jealous, or less scrupulous than Lilias,
acted as servants usually do, following the bias, and flattering, for
their own purposes, the humour of the Lady; and the boy soon took on him
those airs of superiority, which the sight of habitual deference seldom
fails to inspire. It seemed, in truth, as if to command were his natural
sphere, so easily did he use himself to exact and receive compliance
with his humours. The chaplain, indeed, might have interposed to check
the air of assumption which Roland Graeme so readily indulged, and
most probably would have willingly rendered him that favour; but the
necessity of adjusting with his brethren some disputed points of church
discipline had withdrawn him for some time from the castle, and detained
him in a distant part of the kingdom.
Matters stood thus in the castle of Avenel, when a winded bugle sent its
shrill and prolonged notes from the shore of the lake, and was replied
to cheerily by the signal of the warder. The Lady of Avenel knew the
sounds of her husband, and rushed to the window of the apartment in
which she was sitting. A band of about thirty spearmen, with a pennon
displayed before them, winded along the indented shores of the lake,
and approached the causeway. A single horseman rode at the head of the
party, his bright arms catching a glance of the October sun as he moved
steadily along. Even at that distance, the Lady recognized the lofty
plume, bearing the mingled colours of her own liveries and those of
Glendonwyne, blended with the holly-branch; and the firm seat and
dignified demeanour of the rider, joined to the stately motion of the
dark-brown steed, sufficiently announced Halbert Glendinning.
The Lady's first thought was that of rapturous joy at her husband's
return--her second was connected with a fear which had sometimes
intruded itself, that he might not altogether approve the peculiar
distinction with which she had treated her orphan ward. In this fear
there was implied a consciousness, that the favour she had shown him was
excessive; for Halbert Glendinning was at least as gentle and indulgent,
as he was firm and rational in the intercourse of his household; and to
her in particular, his conduct had ever been most affectionately tender.
Yet she did fear, that, on the present occasion, her conduct might incur
Sir Halbert's censure; and hastily resolving that she would not mention,
the anecdote of the boy until the next day, she ordered him to be
withdrawn from the apartment by Lilias.
“I will not go with Lilias, madam,” answered the spoiled child, who
had more than once carried his point by perseverance, and who, like his
betters, delighted in the exercise of such authority,--“I will not go to
Lilias's gousty room--I will stay and see that brave warrior who comes
riding so gallantly along the drawbridge.”
“You must not stay, Roland,” said the Lady, more positively than she
usually spoke to her little favourite.
“I will,” reiterated the boy, who had already felt his consequence, and
the probable chance of success.
“You _will_, Roland!” answered the Lady, “what manner of word is that? I
tell you, you must go.”
“_Will_,” answered the forward boy, “is a word for a man, and _must_ is
no word for a lady.”
“You are saucy, sirrah,” said the Lady--“Lilias, take him with you
instantly.”
“I always thought,” said Lilias, smiling, as she seized the reluctant
boy by the arm, “that my young master must give place to my old one.”
“And you, too, are malapert, mistress!” said the Lady; “hath the moon
changed, that ye all of you thus forget yourselves?”
Lilias made no reply, but led off the boy, who, too proud to offer
unavailing resistance, darted at his benefactress a glance, which
intimated plainly, how willingly he would have defied her authority, had
he possessed the power to make good his point.
The Lady of Avenel was vexed to find how much this trifling circumstance
had discomposed her, at the moment when she ought naturally to have
been entirely engrossed by her husband's return. But we do not recover
composure by the mere feeling that agitation is mistimed. The glow of
displeasure had not left the Lady's cheek, her ruffled deportment was
not yet entirely composed, when her husband, unhelmeted, but still
wearing the rest of his arms, entered the apartment. His appearance
banished the thoughts of every thing else; she rushed to him, clasped
his iron-sheathed frame in her arms, and kissed his martial and manly
face with an affection which was at once evident and sincere. The
warrior returned her embrace and her caress with the same fondness; for
the time which had passed since their union had diminished its romantic
ardour, perhaps, but it had rather increased its rational tenderness,
and Sir Halbert Glendinning's long and frequent absences from his castle
had prevented affection from degenerating by habit into indifference.
When the first eager greetings were paid and received, the Lady
gazed fondly on her husband's face as she remarked, “You are altered,
Halbert--you have ridden hard and far to-day, or you have been ill?”
“I have been well, Mary,” answered the Knight, “passing well have
I been; and a long ride is to me, thou well knowest, but a thing of
constant custom. Those who are born noble may slumber out their lives
within the walls of their castles and manor-houses; but he who hath
achieved nobility by his own deeds must ever be in the saddle, to show
that he merits his advancement.”
While he spoke thus, the Lady gazed fondly on him, as if endeavouring
to read his inmost soul; for the tone in which he spoke was that of
melancholy depression.
Sir Halbert Glendinning was the same, yet a different person from what
he had appeared in his early years. The fiery freedom of the aspiring
youth had given place to the steady and stern composure of the approved
soldier and skilful politician. There were deep traces of care on those
noble features, over which each emotion used formerly to pass, like
light clouds across a summer sky. That sky was now, not perhaps clouded,
but still and grave, like that of the sober autumn evening. The forehead
was higher and more bare than in early youth, and the locks which still
clustered thick and dark on the warrior's head, were worn away at the
temples, not by age, but by the constant pressure of the steel cap, or
helmet. His beard, according to the fashion of the time, grew short and
thick, and was turned into mustaches on the upper lip, and peaked at the
extremity. The cheek, weather-beaten and embrowned, had lost the glow
of youth, but showed the vigorous complexion of active and confirmed
manhood. Halbert Glendinning was, in a word, a knight to ride at a
king's right hand, to bear his banner in war, and to be his counsellor
in time of peace; for his looks expressed the considerate firmness which
can resolve wisely and dare boldly. Still, over these noble features,
there now spread an air of dejection, of which, perhaps, the owner was
not conscious, but which did not escape the observation of his anxious
and affectionate partner.
“Something has happened, or is about to happen,” said the Lady of
Avenel; “this sadness sits not on your brow without cause--misfortune,
national or particular, must needs be at hand.”
“There is nothing new that I wot of,” said Halbert Glendinning; “but
there is little of evil which can befall a kingdom, that may not be
apprehended in this unhappy and divided realm.”
“Nay, then,” said the Lady, “I see there hath really been some fatal
work on foot. My Lord of Murray has not so long detained you at
Holyrood, save that he wanted your help in some weighty purpose.”
“I have not been at Holyrood, Mary,” answered the Knight; “I have been
several weeks abroad.”
“Abroad! and sent me no word?” replied the Lady.
“What would the knowledge have availed, but to have rendered you
unhappy, my love?” replied the Knight; “your thoughts would have
converted the slightest breeze that curled your own lake, into a tempest
raging in the German ocean.”
“And have you then really crossed the sea?” said the Lady, to whom the
very idea of an element which she had never seen conveyed notions of
terror and of wonder,--“really left your own native land, and trodden
distant shores, where the Scottish tongue is unheard and unknown?”
“Really, and really,” said the Knight, taking her hand in affectionate
playfulness, “I have done this marvellous deed--have rolled on the ocean
for three days and three nights, with the deep green waves dashing by
the side of my pillow, and but a thin plank to divide me from it.”
“Indeed, my Halbert,” said the Lady, “that was a tempting of Divine
Providence. I never bade you unbuckle the sword from your side, or lay
the lance from your hand--I never bade you sit still when your honour
called you to rise and ride; but are not blade and spear dangers enough
for one man's life, and why would you trust rough waves and raging
seas?”
“We have in Germany, and in the Low Countries, as they are called,”
answered Glendinning, “men who are united with us in faith, and with
whom it is fitting we should unite in alliance. To some of these I was
despatched on business as important as it was secret. I went in safety,
and I returned in security; there is more danger to a man's life betwixt
this and Holyrood, than are in all the seas that wash the lowlands of
Holland.”
“And the country, my Halbert, and the people,” said the Lady, “are they
like our kindly Scots? or what bearing have they to strangers?”
“They are a people, Mary, strong in their wealth, which renders all
other nations weak, and weak in those arts of war by which other nations
are strong.”
“I do not understand you,” said the Lady.
“The Hollander and the Fleming, Mary, pour forth their spirit in
trade, and not in war; their wealth purchases them the arms of foreign
soldiers, by whose aid they defend it. They erect dikes on the sea-shore
to protect the land which they have won, and they levy regiments of the
stubborn Switzers and hardy Germans to protect the treasures which they
have amassed. And thus they are strong in their weakness; for the very
wealth which tempts their masters to despoil them, arms strangers in
their behalf.”
“The slothful hinds!” exclaimed Mary, thinking and feeling like a
Scotswoman of the period; “have they hands, and fight not for the land
which bore them? They should be notched off at the elbow!”
“Nay, that were but hard justice,” answered her husband; “for their
hands serve their country, though not in battle, like ours. Look at
these barren hills, Mary, and at that deep winding vale by which the
cattle are even now returning from their scanty browse. The hand of the
industrious Fleming would cover these mountains with wood, and raise
corn where we now see a starved and scanty sward of heath and ling. It
grieves me, Mary, when I look on that land, and think what benefit it
might receive from such men as I have lately seen--men who seek not
the idle fame derived from dead ancestors, or the bloody renown won in
modern broils, but tread along the land, as preservers and improvers,
not as tyrants and destroyers.”
“These amendments would here be but a vain fancy, my Halbert,” answered
the Lady of Avenel; “the trees would be burned by the English foemen,
ere they ceased to be shrubs, and the grain that you raised would be
gathered in by the first neighbour that possessed more riders than
follow your train. Why should you repine at this? The fate that made
you Scotsman by birth, gave you head, and heart, and hand, to uphold the
name as it must needs be upheld.”