“a whitening of the sepulchre; but he shall see Catharine, since you,
sister, judge it safe and meet.--Follow us, youth,” she added, and led
the way from the apartment--with her friend. These were the only words
which the matron had addressed to Roland Graeme, who obeyed them in
silence. As they paced through several winding passages and waste
apartments with a very slow step, the young page had leisure to make
some reflections on his situation,--reflections of a nature which his
ardent temper considered as specially disagreeable. It seemed he had now
got two mistresses, or tutoresses, instead of one, both elderly women,
and both, it would seem, in league to direct his motions according to
their own pleasure, and for the accomplishment of plans to which he was
no party. This, he thought, was too much; arguing reasonably enough,
that whatever right his grandmother and benefactress had to guide his
motions, she was neither entitled to transfer her authority or divide it
with another, who seemed to assume, without ceremony, the same tone of
absolute command over him.
“But it shall not long continue thus,” thought Roland; “I will not be
all my life the slave of a woman's whistle, to go when she bids, and
come when she calls. No, by Saint Andrew! the hand that can hold the
lance is above the control of the distaff. I will leave them the slipp'd
collar in their hands on the first opportunity, and let them execute
their own devices by their own proper force. It may save them both from
peril, for I guess what they meditate is not likely to prove either safe
or easy--the Earl of Murray and his heresy are too well rooted to be
grubbed up by two old women.”
As he thus resolved, they entered a low room, in which a third female
was seated. This apartment was the first he had observed in the mansion
which was furnished with moveable seats, and with a wooden table, over
which was laid a piece of tapestry. A carpet was spread on the floor,
there was a grate in the chimney, and, in brief, the apartment had the
air of being habitable and inhabited.
But Roland's eyes found better employment than to make observations on
the accommodations of the chamber; for this second female inhabitant of
the mansion seemed something very different from any thing he had yet
seen there. At his first entry, she had greeted with a silent and low
obeisance the two aged matrons, then glancing her eyes towards Roland,
she adjusted a veil which hung back over her shoulders, so as to bring
it over her face; an operation which she performed with much modesty,
but without either affected haste or embarrassed timidity.
During this manoeuvre Roland had time to observe, that the face was that
of a girl apparently not much past sixteen, and that the eyes were at
once soft and brilliant. To these very favourable observations was added
the certainty that the fair object to whom they referred possessed an
excellent shape, bordering perhaps on _enbonpoint_, and therefore rather
that of a Hebe than of a Sylph, but beautifully formed, and shown to
great advantage by the close jacket and petticoat which she wore after a
foreign fashion, the last not quite long enough to conceal a very pretty
foot, which rested on a bar of the table at which she sate; her round
arms and taper fingers very busily employed in repairing--the piece
of tapestry which was spread on it, which exhibited several deplorable
fissures, enough to demand the utmost skill of the most expert
seamstress.
It is to be remarked, that it was by stolen glances that Roland Graeme
contrived to ascertain these interesting particulars; and he thought he
could once or twice, notwithstanding the texture of the veil, detect the
damsel in the act of taking similar cognizance of his own person. The
matrons in the meanwhile continued their separate conversation, eyeing
from time to time the young people, in a manner which left Roland in
no doubt that they were the subject of their conversation. At length he
distinctly heard Magdalen Graeme say these words--“Nay, my sister, we
must give them opportunity to speak together, and to become acquainted;
they must be personally known to each other, or how shall they be able
to execute what they are intrusted with?”
It seemed as if the matron, not fully satisfied with her friend's
reasoning, continued to offer some objections; but they were borne down
by her more dictatorial friend.
“It must be so,” she said, “my dear sister; let us therefore go forth
on the balcony, to finish our conversation.--And do you,” she said,
addressing Roland and the girl, “become acquainted with each other.”
With this she stepped up to the young woman, and raising her veil,
discovered features which, whatever might be their ordinary complexion,
were now covered with a universal blush.
“_Licitum sit,_” said Magdalen, looking at the other matron.
“_Vix licitum,_” replied the other, with reluctant and hesitating
acquiescence; and again adjusting the veil of the blushing girl, she
dropped it so as to shade, though not to conceal her countenance, and
whispered to her, in a tone loud enough for the page to hear, “Remember,
Catharine, who thou art, and for what destined.”
The matron then retreated with Magdalen Graeme through one of the
casements of the apartment, that opened on a large broad balcony, which,
with its ponderous balustrade, had once run along the whole south
front of the building which faced the brook, and formed a pleasant and
commodious walk in the open air. It was now in some places deprived of
the balustrade, in others broken and narrowed; but, ruinous as it was,
could still be used as a pleasant promenade. Here then walked the two
ancient dames, busied in their private conversation; yet not so much so,
but that Roland could observe the matrons, as their thin forms darkened
the casement in passing or repassing before it, dart a glance into the
apartment, to see how matters were going on there.
Chapter the Eleventh.
Life hath its May, and is mirthful then:
The woods are vocal, and the flowers all odour;
Its very blast has mirth in't,--and the maidens,
The while they don their cloaks to screen their kirtles,
Laugh at the rain that wets them.
OLD PLAY.
Catherine was at the happy age of innocence and buoyancy of spirit,
when, after the first moment of embarrassment was over, a situation
of awkwardness, like that in which she was suddenly left to make
acquaintance with a handsome youth, not even known to her by name,
struck her, in spite of herself, in a ludicrous point of view. She bent
her beautiful eyes upon the work with which she was busied, and with
infinite gravity sate out the two first turns of the matrons upon the
balcony; but then, glancing her deep blue eye a little towards Roland,
and observing the embarrassment under which he laboured, now shifting on
his chair, and now dangling his cap, the whole man evincing that he was
perfectly at a loss how to open the conversation, she could keep her
composure no longer, but after a vain struggle broke out into a sincere,
though a very involuntary fit of laughing, so richly accompanied by the
laughter of her merry eyes, which actually glanced through the tears
which the effort filled them with, and by the waving of her rich
tresses, that the goddess of smiles herself never looked more lovely
than Catherine at that moment. A court page would not have left her long
alone in her mirth; but Roland was country-bred, and, besides, having
some jealousy as well as bashfulness, he took it into his head that he
was himself the object of her inextinguishable laughter. His endeavours
to sympathize with Catherine, therefore, could carry him no farther than
a forced giggle, which had more of displeasure than of mirth in it, and
which so much enhanced that of the girl, that it seemed to render it
impossible for her ever to bring her laughter to an end, with whatever
anxious pains she laboured to do so. For every one has felt, that when a
paroxysm of laughter has seized him at a misbecoming time and place,
the efforts which he made to suppress it, nay, the very sense of the
impropriety of giving way to it, tend only to augment and prolong the
irresistible impulse.
It was undoubtedly lucky for Catherine, as well as for Roland, that the
latter did not share in the excessive mirth of the former. For, seated
as she was, with her back to the casement, Catherine could easily escape
the observation of the two matrons during the course of their promenade;
whereas Graeme was so placed, with his side to the window, that his
mirth, had he shared that of his companion, would have been instantly
visible, and could not have failed to give offence to the personages in
question. He sate, however, with some impatience, until Catherine had
exhausted either her power or her desire of laughing, and was returning
with good grace to the exercise of her needle, and then he observed with
some dryness, that “there seemed no great occasion to recommend to them
to improve their acquaintance, as it seemed, that they were already
tolerably familiar.”
Catherine had an extreme desire to set off upon a fresh score, but
she repressed it strongly, and fixing her eyes on her work, replied by
asking his pardon, and promising to avoid future offence.
Roland had sense enough to feel, that an air of offended dignity was
very much misplaced, and that it was with a very different bearing he
ought to meet the deep blue eyes which had borne such a hearty burden in
the laughing scene. He tried, therefore, to extricate himself as well as
he could from his blunder, by assuming a tone of correspondent gaiety,
and requesting to know of the nymph, “how it was her pleasure that they
should proceed in improving the acquaintance which had commenced so
merrily.”
“That,” she said, “you must yourself discover; perhaps I have gone a
step too far in opening our interview.”
“Suppose,” said Roland Graeme, “we should begin as in a tale-book, by
asking each other's names and histories?”
“It is right well imagined,” said Catherine, “and shows an argute
judgment. Do you begin, and I will listen, and only put in a question
or two at the dark parts of the story. Come, unfold then your name and
history, my new acquaintance.”
“I am called Roland Graeme, and that tall woman is my grandmother.”
“And your tutoress?--good. Who are your parents?”
“They are both dead,” replied Roland.
“Ay, but who were they? you _had_ parents, I presume?”
“I suppose so,” said Roland, “but I have never been able to learn much
of their history. My father was a Scottish knight, who died gallantly
in his stirrups--my mother was a Graeme of Hathergill, in the Debateable
Land--most of her family were killed when the Debateable country was
burned by Lord Maxwell and Herries of Caerlaverock.”
“Is it long ago?” said the damsel.
“Before I was born,” answered the page.
“That must be a great while since,” said she, shaking her head gravely;
“look you, I cannot weep for them.”
“It needs not,” said the youth, “they fell with honour.”
“So much for your lineage, fair sir,” replied his companion, “of whom I
like the living specimen (a glance at the casement) far less than those
that are dead. Your much honoured grandmother looks as if she could make
one weep in sad earnest. And now, fair sir, for your own person--if you
tell not the tale faster, it will be cut short in the middle; Mother
Bridget pauses longer and longer every time she passes the window, and
with her there is as little mirth as in the grave of your ancestors.”
“My tale is soon told--I was introduced into the castle of Avenel to be
page to the lady of the mansion.”
“She is a strict Huguenot, is she not?” said the maiden.
“As strict as Calvin himself. But my grandmother can play the puritan
when it suits her purpose, and she had some plan of her own, for
quartering me in the Castle--it would have failed, however, after we had
remained several weeks at the hamlet, but for an unexpected master of
ceremonies--”
“And who was that?” said the girl.
“A large black dog, Wolf by name, who brought me into the castle one day
in his mouth, like a hurt wild-duck, and presented me to the lady.”
“A most respectable introduction, truly,” said Catherine; “and what
might you learn at this same castle? I love dearly to know what my
acquaintances can do at need.”
“To fly a hawk, hollow to a hound, back a horse, and wield lance, bow,
and brand.”
“And to boast of all this when you have learned it,” said Catherine,
“which, in France at least, is the surest accomplishment of a page. But
proceed, fair sir; how came your Huguenot lord and your no less Huguenot
lady to receive and keep in the family so perilous a person as a
Catholic page?”
“Because they knew not that part of my history, which from infancy I
have been taught to keep secret--and because my grand-dame's former
zealous attendance on their heretic chaplain, had laid all this
suspicion to sleep, most fair Callipolis,” said the page; and in so
saying, he edged his chair towards the seat of the fair querist.
“Nay, but keep your distance, most gallant sir,” answered the blue-eyed
maiden, “for, unless I greatly mistake, these reverend ladies will soon
interrupt our amicable conference, if the acquaintance they recommend
shall seem to proceed beyond a certain point--so, fair sir, be
pleased to abide by your station, and reply to my questions.--By what
achievements did you prove the qualities of a page, which you had thus
happily acquired?”
Roland, who began to enter into the tone and spirit of the damsel's
conversation, replied to her with becoming spirit.
“In no feat, fair gentlewoman, was I found inexpert, wherein there was
mischief implied. I shot swans, hunted cats, frightened serving-women,
chased the deer, and robbed the orchard. I say nothing of tormenting the
chaplain in various ways, for that was my duty as a good Catholic.”
“Now, as I am a gentlewoman,” said Catherine, “I think these heretics
have done Catholic penance in entertaining so all-accomplished a
serving-man! And what, fair sir, might have been the unhappy event which
deprived them of an inmate altogether so estimable?”
“Truly, fair gentlewoman,” answered the youth, “your real proverb says
that the longest lane will have a turning, and mine was more--it was, in
fine, a turning off.”
“Good!” said the merry young maiden, “it is an apt play on the word--and
what occasion was taken for so important a catastrophe?--Nay, start not
for my learning, I do know the schools--in plain phrase, why were you
sent from service?”
The page shrugged his shoulders while he replied,--“A short tale is soon
told--and a short horse soon curried. I made the falconer's boy taste of
my switch--the falconer threatened to make me brook his cudgel--he is a
kindly clown as well as a stout, and I would rather have been cudgelled
by him than any man in Christendom to choose--but I knew not his
qualities at that time--so I threatened to make him brook the stab, and
my Lady made me brook the 'Begone;' so adieu to the page's office and
the fair Castle of Avenel--I had not travelled far before I met my
venerable parent--And so tell your tale, fair gentlewoman, for mine is
done.”
“A happy grandmother,” said the maiden, “who had the luck to find the
stray page just when his mistress had slipped his leash, and a most
lucky page that has jumped at once from a page to an old lady's
gentleman-usher!”
“All this is nothing of your history,” answered Roland Graeme, began
to be much interested in the congenial vivacity of this facetious young
gentlewoman,--“tale for tale is fellow-traveller's justice.”
“Wait till we are fellow-travellers, then,” replied Catherine.
“Nay, you escape me not so,” said the page; “if you deal not justly by
me, I will call out to Dame Bridget, or whatever your dame be called,
and proclaim you for a cheat.”
“You shall not need,” answered the maiden--“my history is the
counterpart of your own; the same words might almost serve, change but
dress and name. I am called Catherine Seyton, and I also am an orphan.”
“Have your parents been long dead?”
“This is the only question,” said she, throwing down her fine eyes with
a sudden expression of sorrow, “that is the only question I cannot laugh
at.”
“And Dame Bridget is your grandmother?”
The sudden cloud passed away like that which crosses for an instant the
summer sun, and she answered with her usual lively expression, “Worse by
twenty degrees--Dame Bridget is my maiden aunt.”
“Over gods forbode!” said Roland--“Alas! that you have such a tale to
tell! and what horror comes next?”
“Your own history, exactly. I was taken upon trial for service--”
“And turned off for pinching the duenna, or affronting my lady's
waiting-woman?”
“Nay, our history varies there,” said the damsel--“Our mistress broke
up house, or had her house broke up, which is the same thing, and I am a
free woman of the forest.”
“And I am as glad of it as if any one had lined my doublet with cloth of
gold,” said the youth.
“I thank you for your mirth,” said she, “but the matter is not likely to
concern you.”
“Nay, but go on,” said the page, “for you will be presently interrupted;
the two good dames have been soaring yonder on the balcony, like two old
hooded crows, and their croak grows hoarser as night comes on; they will
wing to roost presently.--This mistress of yours, fair gentlewoman, who
was she, in God's name?”
“Oh, she has a fair name in the world,” replied Catherine Seyton. “Few
ladies kept a fairer house, or held more gentlewomen in her household;
my aunt Bridget was one of her housekeepers. We never saw our mistress's
blessed face, to be sure, but we heard enough of her; were up early and
down late, and were kept to long prayers and light food.”
“Out upon the penurious old beldam!” said the page.
“For Heaven's sake, blaspheme not!” said the girl, with an expression
of fear.--“God pardon us both! I meant no harm. I speak of our blessed
Saint Catherine of Sienna!--may God forgive me that I spoke so lightly,
and made you do a great sin and a great blasphemy. This was her nunnery,
in which there were twelve nuns and an abbess. My aunt was the abbess,
till the heretics turned all adrift.”
“And where are your companions?” asked the youth.
“With the last year's snow,” answered the maiden; “east, north, south,
and west--some to France, some to Flanders, some, I fear, into the
world and its pleasures. We have got permission to remain, or rather our
remaining has been connived at, for my aunt has great relations among
the Kerrs, and they have threatened a death-feud if any one touches us;
and bow and spear are the best warrant in these times.”
“Nay, then, you sit under a sure shadow,” said the youth; “and I suppose
you wept yourself blind when Saint Catherine broke up housekeeping
before you had taken arles [Footnote: _Anglice_--Earnest-money] in her
service?”
“Hush! for Heaven's sake,” said the damsel, crossing herself; “no more
of that! but I have not quite cried my eyes out,” said she, turning them
upon him, and instantly again bending them upon her work. It was one of
those glances which would require the threefold plate of brass around
the heart, more than it is needed by the mariners, to whom Horace
recommends it. Our youthful page had no defence whatever to offer.
“What say you, Catherine,” he said, “if we two, thus strangely turned
out of service at the same time, should give our two most venerable
duennas the torch to hold, while we walk a merry measure with each other
over the floor of this weary world?”
“A goodly proposal, truly,” said Catherine, “and worthy the mad-cap
brain of a discarded page!--And what shifts does your worship propose
we should live by?--by singing ballads, cutting purses, or swaggering
on the highway? for there, I think, you would find your most productive
exchequer.”
“Choose, you proud peat!” said the page, drawing off in huge disdain
at the calm and unembarrassed ridicule with which his wild proposal was
received. And as he spoke the words, the casement was again darkened by
the forms of the matrons--it opened, and admitted Magdalen Graeme and
the Mother Abbess, so we must now style her, into the apartment.
Chapter the Twelfth.
Nay, hear me, brother--I am elder, wiser,
And holier than thou--And age, and wisdom,
And holiness, have peremptory claims,
And will be listen'd to.
OLD PLAY.
When the matrons re-entered, and put an end to the conversation--which
we have detailed in the last chapter, Dame Magdalen Graeme thus
addressed her grandson and his pretty companion: “Have you spoke
together, my children?--Have you become known to each other as
fellow-travellers on the same dark and dubious road, whom chance hath
brought together, and who study to learn the tempers and dispositions of
those by whom their perils are to be shared?”
It was seldom the light-hearted Catharine could suppress a jest, so that
she often spoke when she would have acted more wisely in holding her
peace.
“Your grandson admires the journey which you propose so very greatly,
that he was even now preparing for setting out upon it instantly.”
“This is to be too forward, Roland,” said the dame, addressing him, “as
yesterday you were over slack--the just mean lies in obedience, which
both waits for the signal to start, and obeys it when given.--But once
again, my children, have you so perused each other's countenances, that
when you meet, in whatever disguise the times may impose upon you, you
may recognize each in the other the secret agent of the mighty work in
which you are to be leagued?--Look at each other, know each line and
lineament of each other's countenance. Learn to distinguish by the step,
by the sound of the voice, by the motion of the hand, by the glance
of the eye, the partner whom Heaven hath sent to aid in working its
will.--Wilt thou know that maiden, whensoever, or wheresoever you shall
again meet her, my Roland Graeme?”
As readily as truly did Roland answer in the affirmative. “And thou, my
daughter, wilt thou again remember the features of this youth?”
“Truly, mother,” replied Catherine Seyton, “I have not seen so many men
of late, that I should immediately forget your grandson, though I mark
not much about him that is deserving of especial remembrance.”
“Join hands, then, my children,” said Magdalen Graeme; but, in saying
so, was interrupted by her companion, whose conventual prejudices had
been gradually giving her more and more uneasiness, and who could remain
acquiescent no longer.
“Nay, my good sister, you forget,” said she to Magdalen, “Catharine is
the betrothed bride of Heaven--these intimacies cannot be.”
“It is in the cause of Heaven that I command them to embrace,” said
Magdalen, with the full force of her powerful voice; “the end, sister,
sanctifies the means we must use.”
“They call me Lady Abbess, or Mother at the least, who address me,”
said Dame Bridget, drawing herself up, as if offended at her friend's
authoritative manner--“the Lady of Heathergill forgets that she speaks
to the Abbess of Saint Catherine.”
“When I was what you call me,” said Magdalen, “you indeed were the
Abbess of Saint Catherine, but both names are now gone, with all the
rank that the world and that the church gave to them; and we are now, to
the eye of human judgment, two poor, despised, oppressed women, dragging
our dishonoured old age to a humble grave. But what are we in the eye of
Heaven?--Ministers, sent forth to work his will,--in whose weakness the
strength of the church shall be manifested-before whom shall be humbled
the wisdom of Murray, and the dark strength of Morton,--And to such
wouldst thou apply the narrow rules of thy cloistered seclusion?--or,
hast thou forgotten the order which I showed thee from thy Superior,
subjecting thee to me in these matters?”
“On thy head, then, be the scandal and the sin,” said the Abbess,
sullenly.
“On mine be they both,” said Magdalen. “I say, embrace each other, my
children.”
But Catherine, aware, perhaps, how the dispute was likely to terminate,
had escaped from the apartment, and so disappointed the grandson, at
least as much as the old matron.
“She is gone,” said the Abbess, “to provide some little refreshment. But
it will have little savour to those who dwell in the world; for I, at
least, cannot dispense with the rules to which I am vowed, because it is
the will of wicked men to break down the sanctuary in which they wont to
be observed.”
“It is well, my sister,” replied Magdalen, “to pay each even the
smallest tithes of mint and cummin which the church demands, and I blame
not thy scrupulous observance of the rules of thine order. But they were
established by the church, and for the church's benefit; and reason it
is that they should give way when the salvation of the church herself is
at stake.”
The Abbess made no reply.