‘I leant my back into an aik,
I thought it was a trusty tree;
But first it bowed and syne it brak,
Sae my true love did lightly me.
‘Oh, waly, waly--gin love be bonny
A little time while it is new;
But when it’s auld, it waxeth cauld,
And fades away like morning dew.’
It was the anniversary of Twelfth-night, and the feast of the Bean was
in act of celebration with great glee and splendour when the English
Minister and his companion entered the reception-rooms of the Palace.
This favourite pastime, borrowed from the Court of France, has come
down to us in modern days under the form of ‘drawing for king and
queen;’ the bean was concealed in the twelfth cake, and the dame to
whose share it fell was chosen with much mock solemnity as queen of the
night. On the present occasion the lot had fallen to Mary Beton, and
her indulgent mistress, with that playful good-humour which so endeared
her to her attendants, had insisted on decking the leader of the revels
with the most splendid attire her own royal wardrobe contained.
In case that any lady should condescend to look into the dry pages of a
historical novel, we will endeavour to the extent of our poor abilities
to present the details of a ‘_grande toilette_,’ of the fifteenth
century.
A sweeping robe of cloth of silver, heavy with embroidery and
ornamented with medallions of pearls down the front of the dress, which
was looped backwards at the knee and fastened with bunches of red and
white roses, disclosing a petticoat of white silk damask, long and
ample so as to cover the feet encased in their satin shoes; at the
waist a girdle of precious stones arched over the hips, and coming
downwards to a point in front, marked the outline of the figure; while
a collar of sapphires and rubies, close round the neck, lurked and
sparkled under the clouds of scalloped lace that composed the ruff;
the sleeves of the gown, open at the elbow, terminated in ruffles
of the lightest gauze, and thick gold bracelets on the wrists; the
hair, gathered into heavy masses at the back of the head, was dragged
somewhat off the temples, so as to show the delicate ears with their
glittering ear-rings; whilst over the whole figure, relieving its
dazzling whiteness, was thrown a satin mantle or scarf of _cramoisie_,
the well-known deep rich hue, something between crimson and
plum-colour, which was such a favourite with the elaborate _coquettes_
of that sumptuous period.
Thus attired, majestic Mary Beton looked every inch a queen, and had it
not been for the presence of her mistress, simply dressed in her usual
morning garb, yet ‘beautiful exceedingly’ where all were beautiful,
the maid-of-honour would have riveted every eye on her magnificent
exterior. Randolph felt a thrill of triumph and gratification when
she caught his attention, something akin, perhaps, to that which is
experienced by the wary deer-stalker while he contemplates the royal
stag with his branching antlers, the pride of the forest, within
point-blank range of his rifle. The Ambassador, however, had but little
time to admire, for the Queen called him to her with such marked favour
immediately on his entrance, that he felt convinced something of more
importance than usual was in the wind, and resolved, from whatever
quarter it blew, that at least it should not throw any dust in _his_
eyes.
After receiving very graciously the compliments which Mr Randolph
proffered on the splendour of the entertainment, Mary darted at him
a keen glance of mingled watchfulness and amusement, then observed
carelessly--
‘What think ye of this chamber for a real King and Queen to hold their
state in, Master Randolph? Since it hath been newly decorated, methinks
a King-Consort might be satisfied with his lodging. Ere another
Twelfth-night comes round, the lot may have fallen, who knows? and
these faithful damsels of mine may have been released from their vow.’
He stole a look at Mary Beton, surrounded by her mock courtiers, and
immersed in the game of forfeits which they were all playing with the
eagerness of children, and wondered whether he would like to marry her
or not; but he answered the Queen as if the subject she had broached,
so far from being unexpected, had occupied his attention for days.
‘Your Majesty anticipates the congratulations I am but waiting an
opportunity to offer. May I give my own mistress joy on your acceding
so cordially to her views for your welfare?’
‘You may do what you have authority for, and no more,’ replied the
Queen severely. ‘My cousin can scarce spare me that master of the horse
of hers, whom she so much regardeth herself, nor am I so scantily
supplied with suitors that I need trespass on her generosity for so
precious a bridegroom. Come, Mr Randolph,’ she added gaily, ‘this is
Twelfth-night, and we read riddles and play at forfeits. Can you not
read me mine?’
‘Your Grace must condescend to instruct me,’ replied he, running over
his information and calculating probabilities with inconceivable
rapidity in his own mind; also studiously abstaining from the guess he
thought most likely to hit the mark. ‘Where the prize is of such value,
all are so unworthy that it reduces the competitors to a level. I can
aim no nearer the white than my first shaft, your Grace. A suitor for
such a hand as yours should have some weighty influence to back him, in
addition to unbounded merits of his own.’
‘You seem to have considered the subject deeply,’ said the Queen,
laughing. ‘Come, Mr Randolph, for very pastime let us hear the
qualifications you deem indispensable to an admirer of Mary Stuart.’
He paused for an instant, enumerating in his own mind the different
qualities of the nobleman whom he was instructed, at least ostensibly,
to put forward, and then proceeded with an air of the utmost deference
and humility--
‘He should be a gentleman of admirable presence; of skill in courtly
exercises; of varied accomplishments; familiar with the customs
of palaces; brave, noble, and learned; he should be of no foreign
extraction, neither Frenchman, Spaniard, nor Italian; suitable in point
of years, of language, and of country.’
She nodded archly every time he paused in his catalogue; then added
with an inquiring look--
‘And of royal lineage as well? Surely like pairs with like, and a
Stuart should only mate with a Stuart.’
It was a home thrust. It corroborated much that he had already
suspected, and explained a good deal that had sufficiently puzzled even
Randolph, but he never winced or started; to judge by his face it was
the communication, of all others, for which he was best prepared, and
whilst he ran over, as quick as thought, the different combinations
to which such a projected alliance might give rise, and already, in
his mind’s eye, saw the young Lord Darnley, the suitor to whom Mary
alluded, helpless in his toils, he bowed humbly to the Queen, and
begged her to accept his heartfelt congratulations that she had made
her choice at last.
Mary laughed more than ever.
‘Not so fast,’ said she, ‘not so fast. I am discussing possibilities,
Master Randolph, and you are accepting them for certainties; but enough
of this--amusement is our chief business to-night. See, the queen of
the revels is looking anxiously this way, and you have not been to pay
her your homage yet. Delay no longer, her displeasure to-night is far
weightier and more implacable than mine.’
As she spoke she dismissed him with a courteous gesture, and Randolph,
nothing loth, commenced paying his court most assiduously to Mary
Beton, with the double object of spending his time agreeably and
worming out of her, ere the night was past, some corroboration of the
Queen’s vague hints as to her approaching marriage.
It was with secret pride and exultation the Twelfth-night queen, in all
her assumed splendour, beheld the ambassador approach the circle that
formed her sham Court. It would be too much to say that Mary Beton was
deeply in love with Randolph, but she experienced from his attentions
certain agreeable feelings, that originated in gratified vanity and a
sense of her own superiority to her companions. It was indeed no petty
triumph to have secured the homage of the fastidious and cynical Thomas
Randolph: the man who was the type of refinement and the incarnation of
selfishness, avowedly a despiser of women and a free-thinker in love.
The pleasure, too, was doubtless in no small degree enhanced by the
care-worn face of Alexander Ogilvy, who continued to haunt the Court,
with a hopeless perseverance truly edifying, and made himself miserable
with the self-immolating regularity peculiar to a lover, and totally
inexplicable on any grounds of reason or expediency.
Mary Beton had no objection in the world; she liked to have two strings
to her bow. Two! Where is the woman who would refuse half-a-dozen? With
all their vanity and all their libertinism, thus much we may safely say
in favour of the ruder sex--a man is usually indisposed to have more
than one attachment on his hands at a time. He may behave ungratefully,
unfeelingly, brutally, to Dora, but it is for the sake of Flora. For
however short a period it may be, yet, _while_ he wears those colours,
Nora looking out for prey in every direction, shall strive to fascinate
him in vain. But how different is the conduct of the last-named
personage: brilliant and seductive, it is no reason, because she is
herself in love with Tom, that she should refrain from the massacre of
Jack, Dick, and Harry; nay, if Bill be fortunate enough to spend an
hour or two in her company, away with him to the shambles too! Shall
we pity Nora so very much when she wears the willow for the faithless
Tom, and finds out too late that she never really cared a pin for the
other victims who, more or less damaged, have made their escape from
the toils?
The wrongs of the sexes towards each other are of the crudest, and it
is generous and manly that our sympathy should be given to the weaker
portion, but the injuries are not all one way. Many a rugged face is
only so grave and stern because it _dare_ not, quivering there behind
its iron mask, lose for one instant its self-command; many a kindly
heart has turned to gall, many an honest nature been warped irrevocably
to evil, because the pride of manhood forbids it to ask for that relief
which never comes unsought; of course it serves them right: of course
we do not pity them; but are they the less lost on that account?
It would have moved even a courtier to witness the expression of sharp
pain that swept over Ogilvy’s face when Randolph led Mary Beton out to
dance, but it was gone in a moment, and nobody detected it save the
fair cause herself, who moved, we may be sure, all the more proudly
through the measure in consequence, and listened, well-pleased as ever,
to the mingled honey and vinegar of the ambassador’s flatteries and
sarcasms.
Meanwhile the Queen, followed by her other maidens, glided through the
throng, dispensing her notice graciously to all her guests, and more
especially those whom she had reason to consider somewhat wavering in
their loyalty--a distinction not lost upon Mary Seton, who whispered to
her companion--
‘This would be a fine time for poor Bothwell now to come back again;
see, my dear, even Lord Ruthven has had soft words and kind looks
to-night.’
To which the lady addressed, no other than Mary Carmichael, only
answered by a smothered sigh, for that nobleman was popularly believed
to tamper with the Black Art, and to be an especial adept in the
compounding of charms and potions both for friend and foe. She was
thinking how delightful it would be to have one of his specific
love-philters to do what she liked with, and to whom she would give it.
Certainly not to the stranger in the Abbey garden; he loved her quite
well enough already.
Somehow at this moment her eye sought out the figure of Walter Maxwell,
who was standing apart in the recess of one of the windows, and looking
at her with a kind of pitying sadness, as men do on an object once
dearly prized which they will never see again. It was so unusual now
for them to exchange glances, much less words, that the sight troubled
her; she turned red first and then very pale. He stirred and made a
step forward, as if to advance and speak to her, but seemed to think
better of it, crossed his arms upon his breast, and resumed his former
position. Following the Queen, she was obliged to pass very near him,
and lowering her eyes to avoid meeting his glance, she was distressed
and ashamed to find that they were full of tears.
There is a mysterious kind of sympathy often existing between those
who have some common cause of suffering. Two gouty old gentlemen are
never tired of detailing to each other their respective symptoms of
_podagra_; and weak-minded ladies subject to ‘nervous attacks’ have
been overheard to interchange the most surprising confidences regarding
that remarkable ailment; in the same manner a couple of lovers, not a
_pair_, are drawn towards each other by a community of sorrow.
Alexander Ogilvy took his place by Mary Carmichael’s side, and sought
in that lady’s blue eyes, at least commiseration for his sorrows.
Placing a chair for her a little out of the crowd, he conversed with
her on the heat of the room, the beauty of the dresses, her own
successful toilet, and such like topics, gradually lowering his voice
and bringing the conversation round to the subject nearest his heart.
‘A bird hath whispered in my ear,’ said he, ‘that we must look ere
long to have a king-consort at Holyrood. The Maries are more interested
in the matter than the whole of Scotland besides. You will be freed
from your vow: choose each of you a mate, and pair off, like the fowls
of the air, ere another St Valentine be past. What say you, Mistress
Carmichael? sings my little bird true or false? I am no courtier, you
know.’
‘And yet you are much at Court,’ she answered, absently, ‘particularly
of late, Master Ogilvy; it was but yesterday the Queen, pointing you
out to Mary Beton, commended the bravery of your attire.’
Ogilvy coloured, looking very much alarmed, yet not altogether
displeased.
‘And what said Mistress Beton?’ he asked anxiously.
His discomposure was so obvious, that it was well for him he had not
to do with mischievous Mary Seton, or even with his present companion,
had she been in other than a subdued and melancholy frame of mind. In
most women the temptation to mockery would have been irresistible, but
Mistress Carmichael only replied carelessly--
‘That you were the properest man at Holyrood, and that she thought our
gallants of the Court wore the French air more naturally than did the
Southrons.’
‘Did she _really_ say so?’ he exclaimed eagerly; ‘and do you believe
she meant it? You know her well, Mistress Carmichael; is it not true
that she is herself too irresistibly attracted towards the Southron? Do
you not think that when hood and jesses are fairly doffed once for all,
she will fly her pitch toward the border, aye, and strike her quarry
far on the southern side?’
Mary Carmichael followed the direction of his glance to where Mistress
Beton stood radiant in her Twelfth-night bravery, and listening with a
heightened colour and a well-pleased air to Randolph’s flatteries; but
she pitied whilst she marked the suffering that was too apparent in her
questioner’s gaze, and replied gently to his thoughts rather than his
words--
‘Gratified vanity is one thing, and real preference another. A women
oft-times likes that suitor best whom most she seems to avoid. Perhaps
for that very reason, perhaps because she is weak at heart and cannot
help herself.’
She spoke the last sentence low, and more to herself than to him. She
was willing to console him, for the deeper a kind nature is wounded,
the more it feels for the sorrows of others. Also, it may be that she
found a certain relief in repeating the lesson it had cost her so much
pains to learn.
He drew closer to her.
‘Thank you,’ said he, with a beaming look of gratitude. ‘You are a true
friend! Believe me, Mistress Carmichael, I am not ungrateful. Can I
serve you in any way in return?’
‘It is no question of that,’ she replied. ‘Our positions are so
different. I only say to you, remember your own motto--“To the End.” If
I were a man I think I could trust and hope for ever. I think I could
be staunch and unselfish and true, in defiance of sorrow, suffering,
opposition, nay, even of ingratitude and neglect I would prove to the
woman whom I had chosen that at least she must be proud of my choice,
that a man’s honest affection was no vacillating fancy, but an eternal
truth; and even if she did not love me, I would force her to confess
that it was her own inferiority of nature that could not mate with
mine. But why should I talk thus to you?’ she added, breaking off with
rather a bitter laugh. ‘You are a _man_: you cannot understand me; you
will not believe in anything unless you can see it with your two eyes,
and grasp it in your two hands, and be told by all your friends besides
that it is there. If you had but one gold piece in the world, you must
beat it out thin, and lacker it over your spurs, and your housings, and
the hilt of your sword; you could not hide it away in your bosom, and
keep it unspent and unsuspected next your heart!’
‘I know not,’ he said with a brightening face; ‘your words give me
hope. I seem to see things differently since you have been speaking
to me. You are my good angel. Help me; advise me; tell me what I had
better do.’
‘In the first place, go and talk to somebody else,’ she replied,
laughing. ‘You will scarcely advance the cause you have at heart by
whispering with me in a corner. Looks of inquiry, if not displeasure,
have been already shot this way; and although, perhaps, we are the
only two people in this room who never could be more than friends,
courtiers’ eyes are so sharp and their inferences so good-natured, that
they have probably ere this made their usual grand discovery of that
which does not exist. And so, good Master Ogilvy, my last word is,
think of your motto and speed you well!’
Thus speaking, she made him a stately curtsey and withdrew towards the
Queen; but Mary Carmichael was right, and their interview, short as it
was, had been remarked by more than one interested observer.
Though it costs the animal many stripes and much vexation doubtless
to acquire the accomplishment, we have seen a dog so well broke as to
forego at his owner’s word a tempting morsel placed within his reach,
licking his lips indeed and looking longingly after it, yet exhibiting,
nevertheless, a noble mastery over his inclinations. But let another
dog come by and snatch the bone thus ceded to a sense of duty, and all
his self-restraint vanishes on the instant. Open-mouthed he rushes
to wrest it from the intruder, and that which but a moment ago was
an advantage he could philosophically resign, becomes immediately a
necessity that he will break through all bounds to attain. So is it
with mankind. We can give up, or rather we fancy we have given up, the
one bright hope that gilded our existence. We see the dear face that
used to make the very sunshine of our heart altered and estranged,
perhaps cold and distant, perhaps turned scornfully away. We think we
can bear our burden resignedly enough. There is a great blank in our
lives, felt less in the time of sorrow than at those seasons when, were
it not for our loss, we think we should be so contented, so happy.
There is a sense of desolation, a consciousness of old age coming on
and being welcome--a morbid inclination to receive adversity with open
arms; but yet we man ourselves against the calamity, strong to oppose
and constant to endure. We have not felt the sting yet. Whilst we are
in the cold shade let the dear face beam upon another; let the tones,
so cruel now and hard to _us_, fall with the well-remembered cadence
on _his_ ear; let him be the recipient of the thousand tender cares
and winning ways that used to bring tears of affection into our eyes;
then, and not till then, have we sustained the sharpest pain that life
has to inflict; then, and not till then, do we feel that there is no
sorrow like to our sorrow, and that it is well for us it is transient
from its very nature, or heart and brain would give way under the
stroke.
Mary Beton was well satisfied to receive the homage of her English
admirer, and, in order to ensure it, was perfectly willing to discard
her sincerer suitor. Poor Ogilvy might pine and sigh as he pleased,
without gaining so much as a kind word or an approving glance; but
this rigorous treatment was only to endure so long as she felt he was
her property; the dog’s wages were to be given to the dog’s honest
obedience and fidelity. It was quite a different matter when he
appeared to have transferred his allegiance to another. Though she did
not like him well enough to give up Randolph for his sake, she had no
idea of losing him altogether. Even if she had no use for him, he had
no right to belong to any one else, and it was with far more of anxiety
and concern than usually overspread those calm features that Mistress
Beton glanced continually towards the corner where he was whispering
with Mary Carmichael, while she listened to the smooth phrase of the
English ambassador with an absent air and a forced smile.
Nor was the stately maid-of-honour the only person in that noble
assemblage who felt acutely the difference between the active and
passive moods of the verb ‘to give up.’ Walter Maxwell, hurt, jealous,
and indignant, had for long accustomed himself to look upon Mary
Carmichael as one who was dead to him for evermore; had trained himself
to meet her coldly and calmly when their respective duties brought
them unavoidably together, and to shun her on all other occasions
with scrupulous self-denial; nay, was beginning to find a certain
gloomy satisfaction in the violence he was capable of doing to his
own feelings, and a certain savage triumph in the reflection that he,
too, could be as unkind and heartless and indifferent as a woman! But
when he saw her thus engrossed with Ogilvy’s conversation, evidently
of a mysterious and interesting nature; when he marked, as he did at a
glance, the softened expression of her face and the wistful tenderness
in her blue eyes, he experienced a sensation of pain once more, to
which he had thought he was henceforth to be a stranger, and felt
again for an instant as he had felt that well-remembered night when he
came upon her so unexpectedly at her tryst in the Abbey garden.
The same cause produces strangely different effects upon different
individuals. Whilst Mary Beton, under the influence of jealousy, was
becoming restless, captious, and even irritable (much, it must be
confessed, to the secret amusement of Mr Thomas Randolph), Walter
Maxwell felt a fresh impulse given to that generosity, which prompted
him to put an end to-night to his anxieties and misgivings once for all.
The Queen, in the meantime, seeking, in her innocence and gaiety of
heart, to keep up the characteristic merriment of the feast, was
unconsciously exciting the displeasure of her nobility, and unwittingly
preparing the downfall of her versatile little favourite--the Italian
Riccio.
Disregarding the coarser witticisms and grotesque antics of James
Geddes, who indeed had become a duller fool day by day, since the
shock his feeble intellect sustained on the morning of Chastelâr’s
death, Mary had summoned her private secretary into the centre of
the illustrious circle which surrounded her, and, with a familiarity
exceedingly displeasing to the haughty Scottish barons, bade him
_improvise_, after the manner of his country, for their amusement.
Nothing daunted by bent brows and scornful looks, the glib foreigner,
placing himself on a cushion at the Queen’s feet, commenced a lively
tale, of which the incidents and the language, for it was related in
French, were most displeasing to his audience. It turned upon one of
those fables so popular at the time in Italy, and was, indeed, both in
its details and its catastrophe, especially unsuitable to the practical
nature and affected asceticism of the Scottish character at that period.
‘There was a beautiful flower,’ said he, his little black eyes
twinkling at the Queen while he spoke, ‘growing in a fair garden,
through which ran a mountain stream, and the birds of the air and the
insects of the noontide came to pay their court to this flower and to
win a breath of her fragrance, for she was the pride of all earthly
plants and the queen of the garden. So the humming-bird flitted by in
his bravery, and she marked not his liveries of blue and gold, nor bent
her head towards him, but let him pass on to court the flowers of his
own tropical land, gorgeous without perfume, dazzling but loveless,
like a fair woman without a heart. And the nightingale sang his life
away to please her, and, wooing her with his last notes, died hungering
when the evening star shone out above the trees. Then the butterfly
brought his painted coat and his gay manners and fluttered about her,
making sure that a courtier like himself must prevail; but she bent not
her head nor moved one of her leaves towards him, though the breeze was
sighing softly around her and shaking the dewdrops from her stem.
‘None of the gay and gaudy seemed to win the favour of that queenly
flower. At length a bee came buzzing home from his labours, laden with
the honey-dew that he had been gathering far and wide. He thought to
rest on her petals and distil fresh treasures from her chalice, but
she shook her beautiful blossoms merrily in the breeze and waved him
scornfully away.
‘All the birds of the air and the noontide insects marvelled that she
would have none of them, for they deemed her haughty and unsociable,
whispering to one another of the pride that goeth before a fall.
‘Now, even as she shook her petals in disdain, she opened her heart to
the daylight, and at its very core lay concealed a lazy useless drone.
Then the humming-bird and the butterfly and the bee laughed together,
for they said--
‘“Of what avail are beauty and bravery and worth, against possession?
And if she have taken the dullest of all insects to her heart, we have
but lost our time in suing her, and the nightingale, on the cold earth
yonder, hath given his life in vain.”
‘There is a moral in my fable, ladies!’ added Riccio, with a smile and
a shrug of his crooked shoulders--‘a moral that you will all of you
acknowledge if you tell truth.--Who shall dictate to a woman’s fancy,
or reduce to rule the wandering inclinations of a woman’s heart?’
The ladies laughed and whispered, some protesting against the
conclusion, others pitying the poor nightingale, but all uniting in
condemnation of the useless drone.
Lord Ruthven, who had been eyeing the narrator with looks of fierce
scorn, strode up to where he was sitting at the Queen’s feet, and asked
him, in a loud, contemptuous voice,--
‘Were there no WASPS in yonder garden of which you spake, Master
Tale-teller,--wasps that might give the drone a lesson, and teach him
his place was somewhat lower than the bosom of its choicest flower?’
The Italian looked up somewhat scared in his grim questioner’s face.
‘Nay, signior,’ he replied humbly, ‘in courtly gardens the wasps must
leave their stings behind.’
‘Aye! sticking in the carcase of the drone!’ returned Ruthven, with
a brutal laugh, which was echoed by Morton, and one or two other
savage-looking noblemen who stood near.
The Queen seemed highly displeased, but, true to her conciliatory
principle, hastened to change the subject ere these turbulent spirits
should further forget their own dignity and the respect due to her
presence. Calling her maidens around her, she bade them bring her harp,
a beautiful instrument, highly ornamented, and proposed it should be
the prize of any lady in the company who could sing to it an impromptu
measure on a subject she would herself propose.
‘I shall play on it no more,’ said Mary, with a half-melancholy smile.
‘It is only maiden-queens who have time for such follies. A busier
day, for aught I know, may be about to dawn, ere long, on Mary Stuart’
(here she cast a sly glance at Randolph, who, without seeming to heed
her, was listening, all attention), ‘and I cannot leave my favourite
instrument in better hands than hers who wins it fairly by her skill.
Behold! which of you, ladies, will undertake to strike these strings
and improvise a song, as deftly as our little secretary here has told
us a story?’
It was an attempt requiring considerable confidence in such a presence.
The ladies gazed on one another in obvious hesitation. Presently a
handsome, intellectual-looking woman stepped forward, and curtseying to
Her Majesty, bent gracefully, without speaking, over the instrument.
‘Beatrix Gardyn!’ exclaimed the Queen, with a bright smile, ‘the
Sappho of the North! I know of none better qualified to do justice to
my poor harp; will you begin, Beatrix, at once? Are you waiting for
inspiration?’
‘The theme, an’t please your Majesty?’ said Beatrix, bowing her classic
head with the utmost composure, and sweeping a masterly prelude over
the strings.
The Queen gave another meaning glance at Randolph, and laughed again.
‘What say you to my marriage, my _possible_ marriage, and the
consequent release of my four bonny maidens from their celibacy? The
subject, methinks, is a noble one; and see, the Maries are listening
all attention for your strains.’
Beatrix Gardyn struck a few wandering chords, then with bent brows and
kindling eyes fixed on vacancy, broke into a melody to which, with but
little hesitation, and now and then a meaning smile, she adapted the
following words:--
THE MAIDENS’ VOW.
‘A woman may better her word, I trow,
Now lithe and listen, my lords, to me;
And I’ll tell ye the tale of the “Maidens’ Vow,”
And the roses that bloom’d on the bonnie rose-tree.
‘The Queen of the cluster, beyond compare,
Aloft in the pride of her majesty hung,
Bright and beautiful, fresh and fair;
The bevy of blossoms around her clung.
‘So the winds came wooing from east and west,
Wooing and whispering frank and free;
But she folded her petals; quoth she, “I am best
On a stalk of my own at the top of the tree.”
‘And they folded their petals, the rose-buds too,
And closer they clung as the wind swept by,
For they’d vow’d a vow, that sisterhood true,
Together to fade, and together to die.
‘“Never a wind shall a rose-bud wrest,
Never a gallant shall wile us away,
To wear in his bonnet, to wear on his breast,
Rose and rose-buds answering, Nay.”
‘So staunch were the five to their word of mouth,
That they baffled all suitors who throng’d to the bower,
Till a breeze that came murmuring out of the south
Stole home to the heart of the queenliest flower.
‘She droop’d in her beauty to hear him sigh,
And ever the brighter and fairer she grew;
What wonder, then, that each rose-bud nigh
Should open its leaves to the breezes too?
‘Oh! gather the dew while the freshness is on;
Roses and maidens they fade in a day;
Ere you’ve tasted its sweetness the morning is gone;
Love at your leisure, but wed while you may.
‘Winter is coming, and time shall not spare ye,
Beautiful blossoms so fragrant and sheen;
Joy to the gallants that win ye and wear ye,
Joy to the roses, and joy to their queen.’
Rounds of applause followed the conclusion of the song. The approval
with which Mary received it was tantamount to an acknowledgment of its
truth; and the courtiers scarce refrained from cheers and such noisy
demonstrations of their acquiescence in its purport.
Congratulations were freely tendered to the Maries on their coming
release from the vows by which it had been long understood they were
bound; and many facetious remarks were directed at those young ladies
on a topic, which although next to death the most serious and important
in the human destiny, has been considered, from time immemorial, as a
fitting subject for stale witticisms and far-fetched jokes.
In the midst of all this clamour and merriment, Walter Maxwell slipped
quietly out of the presence; and when Mary Carmichael, wondering how he
would be affected by the news that thus seemed to stir the whole Court,
stole a wistful look towards the corner he had lately occupied, behold,
he was gone!
After this the buzz of conversation, the rustle of ladies’ dresses,
the strains of the Queen’s musicians, seemed to strike wearily on
her ear; how pointless seemed the jests that yet provoked bursts of
laughter from the bystanders; how uninteresting the vapid compliments
that were yet paid with such an air, and received so graciously; how
dull and uninteresting the whole routine of a courtier’s life, and the
individual items that composed a courtly assemblage! As we must all do
sooner or later, for the moment the girl saw life without the varnish,
and wondered it had ever looked so bright; she longed for the hour of
dismissal, when she, too, had a tryst to keep, a duty to perform. In
the meantime we must follow Maxwell into the Abbey garden.