KATHERINE.
For several days Hastings avoided Sibyll; in truth, he felt remorse
for his design, and in his various, active, and brilliant life he had
not the leisure for obstinate and systematic siege to a single virtue,
nor was he, perhaps, any longer capable of deep and enduring passion;
his heart, like that of many a chevalier in the earlier day, had
lavished itself upon one object, and sullenly, upon regrets and
dreams, and vain anger and idle scorn, it had exhausted those
sentiments which make the sum of true love. And so, like Petrarch,
whom his taste and fancy worshipped, and many another votary of the
gentil Dieu, while his imagination devoted itself to the chaste and
distant ideal--the spiritual Laura--his senses, ever vagrant and
disengaged, settled without scruple upon the thousand Cynthias of the
minute. But then those Cynthias were, for the most part, and
especially of late years, easy and light-won nymphs; their coyest were
of another clay from the tender but lofty Sibyll. And Hastings shrunk
from the cold-blooded and deliberate seduction of one so pure, while
he could not reconcile his mind to contemplate marriage with a girl
who could give nothing to his ambition; and yet it was not in this
last reluctance only his ambition that startled and recoiled. In that
strange tyranny over his whole soul which Katherine Bonville secretly
exercised, he did not dare to place a new barrier evermore between her
and himself. The Lord Bonville was of infirm health; he had been more
than once near to death's door; and Hastings, in every succeeding
fancy that beguiled his path, recalled the thrill of his heart when it
had whispered "Katherine, the loved of thy youth, may yet be thine!"
And then that Katherine rose before him, not as she now swept the
earth, with haughty step and frigid eye and disdainful lip, but as--in
all her bloom of maiden beauty, before the temper was soured or the
pride aroused--she had met him in the summer twilight, by the
trysting-tree, broken with him the golden ring of faith, and wept upon
his bosom.
And yet, during his brief and self-inflicted absence from Sibyll, this
wayward and singular personage, who was never weak but to women, and
ever weak to them, felt that she had made herself far dearer to him
than he had at first supposed it possible. He missed that face, ever,
till the last interview, so confiding in the unconsciously betrayed
affection. He felt how superior in sweetness and yet in intellect
Sibyll was to Katherine; there was more in common between her mind and
his in all things, save one. But oh, that one exception!--what a
world lies within it,--the memory of the spring of life! In fact,
though Hastings knew it not, he was in love with two objects at once;
the one, a chimera, a fancy, an ideal, an Eidolon, under the name of
Katherine; the other, youth and freshness and mind and heart and a
living shape of beauty, under the name of Sibyll. Often does this
double love happen to men; but when it does, alas for the human
object! for the shadowy and the spiritual one is immortal,--until,
indeed, it be possessed!
It might be, perhaps, with a resolute desire to conquer the new love
and confirm the old that Hastings, one morning, repaired to the house
of the Lady Bonville, for her visit to the court had expired. It was
a large mansion, without the Lud Gate.
He found the dame in a comely chamber, seated in the sole chair the
room contained, to which was attached a foot-board that served as a
dais, while around her, on low stools, sat some spinning, others
broidering--some ten or twelve young maidens of good family, sent to
receive their nurturing under the high-born Katherine, [And strange as
it may seem to modern notions, the highest lady who received such
pensioners accepted a befitting salary for their board and education.]
while two other and somewhat elder virgins sat a little apart, but
close under the eye of the lady, practising the courtly game of
"prime:" for the diversion of cards was in its zenith of fashion under
Edward IV., and even half a century later was considered one of the
essential accomplishments of a well-educated young lady. [So the
Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VIL, at the age of fourteen,
exhibits her skill, in prime or trump, to her betrothed husband, James
IV. of Scotland; so, among the womanly arts of the unhappy Katherine
of Arragon, it is mentioned that she could play at "cards and dyce."
(See Strutt: Games and Pastimes, Hones' edition, p. 327.) The
legislature was very anxious to keep these games sacred to the
aristocracy, and very wroth with 'prentices and the vulgar for
imitating the ruinous amusements of their betters.] The exceeding
stiffness, the solemn silence of this female circle, but little
accorded with the mood of the graceful visitor. The demoiselles
stirred not at his entrance, and Katherine quietly motioned him to a
seat at some distance.
"By your leave, fair lady," said Hastings, "I rebel against so distant
an exile from such sweet company;" and he moved the tabouret close to
the formidable chair of the presiding chieftainess.
Katherine smiled faintly, but not in displeasure.
"So gay a presence," she said, "must, I fear me, a little disturb
these learners."
Hastings glanced at the prim demureness written on each blooming
visage, and replied,--
"You wrong their ardour in such noble studies. I would wager that
nothing less than my entering your bower on horseback, with helm on
head and lance in rest, could provoke even a smile from one pair of
the twenty rosy lips round which, methinks, I behold Cupido hovering
in vain!"
The baroness bent her stately brows, and the twenty rosy lips were all
tightly pursed up, to prevent the indecorous exhibition which the
wicked courtier had provoked. But it would not do: one and all the
twenty lips broke into a smile,--but a smile so tortured, constrained,
and nipped in the bud, that it only gave an expression of pain to the
features it was forbidden to enliven.
"And what brings the Lord Hastings hither?" asked the baroness, in a
formal tone.
"Can you never allow for motive the desire of pleasure, fair dame?"
That peculiar and exquisite blush, which at moments changed the whole
physiognomy of Katherine, flitted across her smooth cheek, and
vanished. She said gravely,--
"So much do I allow it in you, my lord, that hence my question."
"Katherine!" exclaimed Hastings, in a voice of tender reproach, and
attempting to seize her hand, forgetful of all other presence save
that to which the blush, that spoke of old, gave back the ancient
charm.
Katherine cast a hurried and startled glance over the maiden group,
and her eye detected on the automaton faces one common expression of
surprise. Humbled and deeply displeased, she rose from the awful
chair, and then, as suddenly reseating herself, she said, with a voice
and lip of the most cutting irony, "My lord chamberlain is, it seems,
so habituated to lackey his king amidst the goldsmiths and grocers,
that he forgets the form of language and respect of bearing which a
noblewoman of repute is accustomed to consider seemly."
Hastings bit his lip, and his falcon eye shot indignant fire.
"Pardon, my Lady of Bonville and Harrington, I did indeed forget what
reasons the dame of so wise and so renowned a lord hath to feel pride
in the titles she hath won. But I see that my visit hath chanced out
of season. My business, in truth, was rather with my lord, whose
counsel in peace is as famous as his truncheon in war!"
"It is enough," replied Katherine, with a dignity that rebuked the
taunt, "that Lord Bonville has the name of an honest man,--who never
rose at court."
"Woman, without one soft woman-feeling!" muttered Hastings, between
his ground teeth, as he approached the lady and made his profound
obeisance. The words were intended only for Katherine's ear, and they
reached it. Her bosom swelled beneath the brocaded gorget, and when
the door closed on Hastings, she pressed her hands convulsively
together, and her dark eyes were raised upward.
"My child, thou art entangling thy skein," said the lady of Bonville,
as she passed one of the maidens, towards the casement, which she
opened,--"the air to-day weighs heavily!"