is the Queen of Scotland.”
The steward looked at him fixedly for a moment, with an air in which
suspicion and dislike were ill concealed by an affectation of contempt.
“The bragging cock-chicken,” he said, “will betray himself by his rash
crowing. I have marked thy altered manner in the chapel of late--ay, and
your changing of glances at meal-time with a certain idle damsel, who,
like thyself, laughs at all gravity and goodness. There is something
about you, my master, which should be looked to. But, if you would
know whether the Lady of Lochleven, or that other lady, hath a right
to command thy service, thou wilt find them together in the Lady Mary's
ante-room.”
Roland hastened thither, not unwilling to escape from the ill-natured
penetration of the old man, and marvelling at the same time what
peculiarity could have occasioned the Lady of Lochleven's being in the
Queen's apartment at this time of the afternoon, so much contrary to
her usual wont. His acuteness instantly penetrated the meaning. “She
wishes,” he concluded, “to see the meeting betwixt the Queen and me
on my return, that she may form a guess whether there is any private
intelligence or understanding betwixt us--I must be guarded.”
With this resolution he entered the parlour, where the Queen, seated
in her chair, with the Lady Fleming leaning upon the back of it, had
already kept the Lady of Lochleven standing in her presence for the
space of nearly an hour, to the manifest increase of her very visible
bad humour. Roland Graeme, on entering the apartment, made a deep
obeisance to the Queen, and another to the Lady, and then stood still as
if to await their farther question. Speaking almost together, the Lady
Lochleven said, “So, young man, you are returned at length?”
And then stopped indignantly short, while the Queen went on without
regarding her--“Roland, you are welcome home to us--you have proved the
true dove and not the raven--Yet I am sure I could have forgiven you,
if, once dismissed, from this water-circled ark of ours, you had never
again returned to us. I trust you have brought back an olive-branch, for
our kind and worthy hostess has chafed herself much on account of
your long absence, and we never needed more some symbol of peace and
reconciliation.”
“I grieve I should have been detained, madam,” answered the page; “but
from the delay of the person intrusted with the matters for which I was
sent, I did not receive them till late in the day.”
“See you there now,” said the Queen to the Lady Lochleven; “we could not
persuade you, our dearest hostess, that your household goods were in all
safe keeping and surety. True it is, that we can excuse your anxiety,
considering that these august apartments are so scantily furnished, that
we have not been able to offer you even the relief of a stool during the
long time you have afforded us the pleasure of your society.”
“The will, madam,” said the lady, “the will to offer such accommodation
was more wanting than the means.”
“What!” said the Queen, looking round, and affecting surprise, “there
are then stools in this apartment--one, two--no less than four,
including the broken one--a royal garniture!--We observed them not--will
it please your ladyship to sit?”
“No, madam, I will soon relieve you of my presence,” replied the Lady
Lochleven; “and while with you, my aged limbs can still better brook
fatigue, than my mind stoop to accept of constrained courtesy.”
“Nay, Lady of Lochleven, if you take it so deeply,” said the Queen,
rising and motioning to her own vacant chair, “I would rather you
assumed my seat--you are not the first of your family who has done so.”
The Lady of Lochleven curtsied a negative, but seemed with much
difficulty to suppress the angry answer which rose to her lips.
During this sharp conversation, the page's attention had been almost
entirely occupied by the entrance of Catherine Seyton, who came from
the inner apartment, in the usual dress in which she attended upon the
Queen, and with nothing in her manner which marked either the hurry or
confusion incident to a hasty change of disguise, or the conscious fear
of detection in a perilous enterprise. Roland Graeme ventured to make
her an obeisance as she entered, but she returned it with an air of the
utmost indifference, which, in his opinion, was extremely
inconsistent with the circumstances in which they stood towards each
other.--“Surely,” he thought, “she cannot in reason expect to bully me
out of the belief due to mine own eyes, as she tried to do concerning
the apparition in the hostelry of Saint Michael's--I will try if
I cannot make her feel that this will be but a vain task, and that
confidence in me is the wiser and safer course to pursue.”
These thoughts had passed rapidly through his mind, when the Queen,
having finished her altercation with the Lady of the castle, again
addressed him--“What of the revels at Kinross, Roland Graeme? Methought
they were gay, if I may judge from some faint sounds of mirth and
distant music, which found their way so far as these grated windows,
and died when they entered them, as all that is mirthful must--But
thou lookest as sad as if thou hadst come from a conventicle of the
Huguenots!”
“And so perchance he hath, madam,” replied the Lady of Lochleven, at
whom this side-shaft was lanched. “I trust, amid yonder idle fooleries,
there wanted not some pouring forth of doctrine to a better purpose than
that vain mirth, which, blazing and vanishing like the crackling of dry
thorns, leaves to the fools who love it nothing but dust and ashes.”
“Mary Fleming,” said the Queen, turning round and drawing her mantle
about her, “I would that we had the chimney-grate supplied with a fagot
or two of these same thorns which the Lady of Lochleven describes so
well. Methinks the damp air from the lake, which stagnates in these
vaulted rooms, renders them deadly cold.”
“Your Grace's pleasure shall be obeyed,” said the Lady of Lochleven;
“yet may I presume to remind you that we are now in summer?”
“I thank you for the information, my good lady,” said the Queen; “for
prisoners better learn their calender from the mouth of their jailor,
than from any change they themselves feel in the seasons.--Once more,
Roland Graeme, what of the revels?”
“They were gay, madam,” said the page, “but of the usual sort, and
little worth your Highness's ear.”
“Oh, you know not,” said the Queen, “how very indulgent my ear has
become to all that speaks of freedom and the pleasures of the free.
Methinks I would rather have seen the gay villagers dance their ring
round the Maypole, than have witnessed the most stately masques within
the precincts of a palace. The absence of stone-wall--the sense that the
green turf is under the foot which may tread it free and unrestrained,
is worth all that art or splendour can add to more courtly revels.”
“I trust,” said the Lady Lochleven, addressing the page in her turn,
“there were amongst these follies none of the riots or disturbances to
which they so naturally lead?”
Roland gave a slight glance to Catherine Seyton, as if to bespeak her
attention, as he replied,--“I witnessed no offence, madam, worthy of
marking--none indeed of any kind, save that a bold damsel made her
hand somewhat too familiar with the cheek of a player-man, and ran some
hazard of being ducked in the lake.”
As he uttered these words he cast a hasty glance at Catherine; but she
sustained, with the utmost serenity of manner and countenance, the hint
which he had deemed could not have been thrown out before her without
exciting some fear and confusion.
“I will cumber your Grace no longer with my presence,” said the Lady
Lochleven, “unless you have aught to command me.”
“Nought, our good hostess,” answered the Queen, “unless it be to pray
you, that on another occasion you deem it not needful to postpone your
better employment to wait so long upon us.”
“May it please you,” added the Lady Lochleven, “to command this your
gentleman to attend us, that I may receive some account of these matters
which have been sent hither for your Grace's use?”
“We may not refuse what you are pleased to require, madam,” answered the
Queen. “Go with the lady, Roland, if our commands be indeed necessary
to thy doing so. We will hear to-morrow the history of thy Kinross
pleasures. For this night we dismiss thy attendance.”
Roland Graeme went with the Lady of Lochleven, who failed not to ask
him many questions concerning what had passed at the sports, to which he
rendered such answers as were most likely to lull asleep any suspicions
which she might entertain of his disposition to favour Queen Mary,
taking especial care to avoid all allusion to the apparition of Magdalen
Graeme, and of the Abbot Ambrosius. At length, after undergoing a long
and somewhat close examination, he was dismissed with such expressions,
as, coming from the reserved and stern Lady of Lochleven, might seem to
express a degree of favour and countenance.
His first care was to obtain some refreshment, which was more cheerfully
afforded him by a good-natured pantler than by Dryfesdale, who was, on
this occasion, much disposed to abide by the fashion of Pudding-burn
House, where
They who came not the first call.
Gat no more meat till the next meal.
When Roland Graeme had finished his repast, having his dismissal from
the Queen for the evening, and being little inclined for such society
as the castle afforded, he stole into the garden, in which he had
permission to spend his leisure time, when it pleased him. In this
place, the ingenuity of the contriver and disposer of the walks had
exerted itself to make the most of little space, and by screens, both
of stone ornamented with rude sculpture, and hedges of living green, had
endeavoured to give as much intricacy and variety as the confined limits
of the garden would admit.
Here the young man walked sadly, considering the events of the day,
and comparing what had dropped from the Abbot with what he had himself
noticed of the demeanour of George Douglas. “It must be so,” was the
painful but inevitable conclusion at which he arrived. “It must be by
his aid that she is thus enabled, like a phantom, to transport herself
from place to place, and to appear at pleasure on the mainland or on
the islet.--It must be so,” he repeated once more; “with him she holds a
close, secret, and intimate correspondence, altogether inconsistent with
the eye of favour which she has sometimes cast upon me, and destructive
to the hopes which she must have known these glances have necessarily
inspired.” And yet (for love will hope where reason despairs) the
thought rushed on his mind, that it was possible she only encouraged
Douglas's passion so far as might serve her mistress's interest, and
that she was of too frank, noble, and candid a nature, to hold out
to himself hopes which she meant not to fulfil. Lost in these various
conjectures, he seated himself upon a bank of turf which commanded a
view of the lake on the one side, and on the other of that front of the
castle along which the Queen's apartments were situated.
The sun had now for some time set, and the twilight of May was rapidly
fading into a serene night. On the lake, the expanded water rose and
fell, with the slightest and softest influence of a southern breeze,
which scarcely dimpled the surface over which it passed. In the distance
was still seen the dim outline of the island of Saint Serf, once visited
by many a sandalled pilgrim, as the blessed spot trodden by a man of
God--now neglected or violated, as the refuge of lazy priests, who had
with justice been compelled to give place to the sheep and the heifers
of a Protestant baron.
As Roland gazed on the dark speck, amid the lighter blue of the waters
which surrounded it, the mazes of polemical discussion again stretched
themselves before the eye of the mind. Had these men justly suffered
their exile as licentious drones, the robbers, at once, and disgrace, of
the busy hive? or had the hand of avarice and rapine expelled from
the temple, not the ribalds who polluted, but the faithful priests who
served the shrine in honour and fidelity? The arguments of Henderson,
in this contemplative hour, rose with double force before him; and could
scarcely be parried by the appeal which the Abbot Ambrosius had made
from his understanding to his feelings,--an appeal which he had felt
more forcibly amid the bustle of stirring life, than now when his
reflections were more undisturbed. It required an effort to divert his
mind from this embarrassing topic; and he found that he best succeeded
by turning his eyes to the front of the tower, watching where a
twinkling light still streamed from the casement of Catherine Seyton's
apartment, obscured by times for a moment as the shadow of the fair
inhabitant passed betwixt the taper and the window. At length the light
was removed or extinguished, and that object of speculation was also
withdrawn from the eyes of the meditative lover. Dare I confess the
fact, without injuring his character for ever as a hero of romance?
These eyes gradually became heavy; speculative doubts on the subject of
religious controversy, and anxious conjectures concerning the state of
his mistress's affections, became confusedly blended together in
his musings; the fatigues of a busy day prevailed over the harassing
subjects of contemplation which occupied his mind, and he fell fast
asleep.
Sound were his slumbers, until they were suddenly dispelled by the iron
tongue of the castle-bell, which sent its deep and sullen sounds wide
over the bosom of the lake, and awakened the echoes of Bennarty, the
hill which descends steeply on its southern bank. Roland started up, for
this bell was always tolled at ten o'clock, as the signal for locking
the castle gates, and placing the keys under the charge of the
seneschal. He therefore hastened to the wicket by which the garden
communicated with the building, and had the mortification, just as he
reached it, to hear the bolt leave its sheath with a discordant crash,
and enter the stone groove of the door-lintel. “Hold, hold,” cried the
page, “and let me in ere you lock the wicket.” The voice of Dryfesdale
replied from within, in his usual tone of embittered sullenness,
“The hour is passed, fair master--you like not the inside of these
walls--even make it a complete holiday, and spend the night as well as
the day out of bounds.”
“Open the door,” exclaimed the indignant page, “or by Saint Giles I will
make thy gold chain smoke for it!”
“Make no alarm here,” retorted the impenetrable Dryfesdale, “but keep
thy sinful oaths and silly threats for those that regard them--I do mine
office, and carry the keys to the seneschal.--Adieu, my young master!
the cool night air will advantage your hot blood.”
The steward was right in what he said; for the cooling breeze was very
necessary to appease the feverish fit of anger which Roland experienced,
nor did the remedy succeed for some time. At length, after some hasty
turns made through the garden, exhausting his passion in vain vows of
vengeance, Roland Graeme began to be sensible that his situation ought
rather to be held as matter of laughter than of serious resentment. To
one bred a sportsman, a night spent in the open air had in it little of
hardship, and the poor malice of the steward seemed more worthy of his
contempt than his anger. “I would to God,” he said, “that the grim old
man may always have contented himself with such sportive revenge. He
often looks as he were capable of doing us a darker turn.” Returning,
therefore, to the turf-seat which he had formerly occupied, and which
was partially sheltered by a trim fence of green holly, he drew his
mantle around him, stretched himself at length on the verdant settle,
and endeavoured to resume that sleep which the castle bell had
interrupted to so little purpose.
Sleep, like other earthly blessings, is niggard of its favours when most
courted. The more Roland invoked her aid, the farther she fled from his
eyelids. He had been completely awakened, first, by the sounds of the
bell, and then by his own aroused vivacity of temper, and he found
it difficult again to compose himself to slumber. At length, when his
mind--was wearied out with a maze of unpleasing meditation, he succeeded
in coaxing himself into a broken slumber. This was again dispelled by
the voices of two persons who were walking in the garden, the sound of
whose conversation, after mingling for some time in the page's dreams,
at length succeeded in awaking him thoroughly. He raised himself from
his reclining posture in the utmost astonishment, which the circumstance
of hearing two persons at that late hour conversing on the outside of
the watchfully guarded Castle of Lochloven, was so well calculated to
excite. His first thought was of supernatural beings; his next, upon
some attempt on the part of Queen Mary's friends and followers; his last
was, that George of Douglas, possessed of the keys, and having the means
of ingress and egress at pleasure, was availing himself of his office
to hold a rendezvous with Catherine Seyton in the castle garden. He was
confirmed in this opinion by the tone of the voice, which asked in a low
whisper, “whether all was ready?”
Chapter the Thirtieth.
In some breasts passion lies conceal'd and silent,
Like war's swart powder in a castle vault,
Until occasion, like the linstock, lights it:
Then comes at once the lightning--and the thunder,
And distant echoes tell that all is rent asunder.
OLD PLAY.
Roland Graeme, availing himself of a breach in the holly screen, and
of the assistance of the full moon, which was now arisen, had a perfect
opportunity, himself unobserved, to reconnoitre the persons and the
motions of those by whom his rest had been thus unexpectedly disturbed;
and his observations confirmed his jealous apprehensions. They stood
together in close and earnest conversation within four yards of the
place of his retreat, and he could easily recognize the tall form and
deep voice of Douglas, and the no less remarkable dress and tone of the
page at the hostelry of Saint Michael's.
“I have been at the door of the page's apartment,” said Douglas, “but he
is not there, or he will not answer. It is fast bolted on the inside, as
is the custom, and we cannot pass through it--and what his silence may
bode I know not.”
“You have trusted him too far,” said the other; “a feather-headed
cox-comb, upon whose changeable mind and hot brain there is no making an
abiding impression.”
“It was not I who was willing to trust him,” said Douglas, “but I was
assured he would prove friendly when called upon--for----” Here he
spoke so low that Roland lost the tenor of his words, which was the
more provoking, as he was fully aware that he was himself the subject of
their conversation.
“Nay,” replied the stranger, more aloud, “I have on my side put him off
with fair words, which make fools vain--but now, if you distrust him at
the push, deal with him with your dagger, and so make open passage.”
“That were too rash,” said Douglas; “and besides, as I told you, the
door of his apartment is shut and bolted. I will essay again to waken
him.”
Graeme instantly comprehended, that the ladies, having been somehow made
aware of his being in the garden, had secured the door of the outer room
in which he usually slept, as a sort of sentinel upon that only access
to the Queen's apartments. But then, how came Catherine Seyton to
be abroad, if the Queen and the other lady were still within their
chambers, and the access to them locked and bolted?--“I will be
instantly at the bottom of these mysteries,” he said, “and then thank
Mistress Catherine, if this be really she, for the kind use which she
exhorted Douglas to make of his dagger--they seek me, as I comprehend,
and they shall not seek me in vain.”
Douglas had by this time re-entered the castle by the wicket, which was
now open. The stranger stood alone in the garden walk, his arms folded
on his breast, and his eyes cast impatiently up to the moon, as if
accusing her of betraying him by the magnificence of her lustre. In
a moment Roland Graeme stood before him--“A goodly night,” he said,
“Mistress Catherine, for a young lady to stray forth in disguise, and to
meet with men in an orchard!”
“Hush!” said the stranger page, “hush, thou foolish patch, and tell us
in a word if thou art friend or foe.”
“How should I be friend to one who deceives me by fair words, and who
would have Douglas deal with me with his poniard?” replied Roland.
“The fiend receive George of Douglas and thee too, thou born madcap and
sworn marplot!” said the other; “we shall be discovered, and then death
is the word.”
“Catherine,” said the page, “you have dealt falsely and cruelly with
me, and the moment of explanation is now come--neither it nor you shall
escape me.”
“Madman!” said the stranger, “I am neither Kate nor Catherine--the moon
shines bright enough surely to know the hart from the hind.”
“That shift shall not serve you, fair mistress,” said the page, laying
hold on the lap of the stranger's cloak; “this time, at least, I will
know with whom I deal.”
“Unhand me,” said she, endeavouring to extricate herself from his grasp;
and in a tone where anger seemed to contend with a desire to laugh, “use
you so little discretion towards a daughter of Seyton?”
But as Roland, encouraged perhaps by her risibility to suppose his
violence was not unpardonably offensive, kept hold on her mantle,
she said, in a sterner tone of unmixed resentment,--“Madman! let me
go!--there is life and death in this moment--I would not willingly hurt
thee, and yet beware!”
As she spoke she made a sudden effort to escape, and, in doing so, a
pistol, which she carried in her hand or about her person, went off.
This warlike sound instantly awakened the well-warded castle. The warder
blew his horn, and began to toll the castle bell, crying out at the same
time, “Fie, treason! treason! cry all! cry all!”
The apparition of Catherine Seyton, which the page had let loose in the
first moment of astonishment, vanished in darkness; but the plash of
oars was heard, and, in a second or two, five or six harquebuses and a
falconet were fired from the battlements of the castle successively,
as if levelled at some object on the water. Confounded with these
incidents, no way for Catherine's protection (supposing her to be in the
boat which he had heard put from the shore) occurred to Roland, save to
have recourse to George of Douglas. He hastened for this purpose
towards the apartment of the Queen, whence he heard loud voices and much
trampling of feet. When he entered, he found himself added to a confused
and astonished group, which, assembled in that apartment, stood gazing
upon each other. At the upper end of the room stood the Queen, equipped
as for a journey, and--attended not only by the Lady Fleming, but by the
omnipresent Catherine Seyton, dressed in the habit of her own sex, and
bearing in her hand the casket in which Mary kept such jewels as she had
been permitted to retain. At the other end of the hall was the Lady of
Lochleven, hastily dressed, as one startled from slumber by the sudden
alarm, and surrounded by domestics, some bearing torches, others holding
naked swords, partisans, pistols, or such other weapons as they had
caught up in the hurry of a night alarm. Betwixt these two parties stood
George of Douglas, his arms folded on his breast, his eyes bent on
the ground, like a criminal who knows not how to deny, yet continues
unwilling to avow, the guilt in which he has been detected.
“Speak, George of Douglas,” said the Lady of Lochleven; “speak, and
clear the horrid suspicion which rests on thy name. Say, 'A Douglas was
never faithless to his trust, and I am a Douglas.' Say this, my dearest
son, and it is all I ask thee to say to clear thy name, even under, such
a foul charge. Say it was but the wile of these unhappy women, and this
false boy, which plotted an escape so fatal to Scotland--so destructive
to thy father's house.”