As she flinched from him she saw Robert approaching, his head drooping,
and his hands clasped.
“Speak not--fall away from the cross thou hast shadowed. Fall away, I
say.”
By the power of the untruth she had spoken, she was for a while
conquered. Yet as Robert came near them, she felt her strength renewed.
She ran to him to warn him. But yet again she was weak. The white knight
raised high his glistening right hand, and she fled.
“What aileth her?”
“She is jealous of thee. Ah well--wilt thou not look upon thy best
friend?”
“Best friend--thou art my only friend on earth!”
“Earth--what is earth? But thy fortune--Robert--thy fortune! I tell thee
’twas wrested from thee by unholy arts. Regain it by them. Where others
have ventured fear not to venture thou!”
“What--can the demon have power on earth?”
“Power! Power! There is but one power equal, or superior to his own.
Power! Hast thou courage--is thy heart firm?”
“Lay thy hand upon it ... ah, thou seemst to burn me with thy
touch--take thy hand away.”
“Thy heart is firm;--e’en now firmer than before. Thou hast heard of the
ruined abbey, whose inhabitants with itself were delivered to the powers
of hell.”
“I have heard, but not believed.”
“Believe. In the midst stands the tomb of Bertha--why dost thou
tremble?”
“‘Twas my mother’s name--’twas my mother’s name.”
“Think of thy fortune, Robert! Those who go to this tomb--speak not to
the mysterious beings they see. But--over the marble effigy waves a
branch of cypress. Who holdeth it holdeth power--Power! wouldst thou be
powerful?”
“Feel my heart again--I fear not thy hand now!”
PART III.--THE FALL.
A wild spot: the accursed cloisters, where once lived sinning nuns. A
wild spot, lighted now and then by the moon, when its light could flit
down between the jagged, angry clouds which rushed floating by. The
light showed a sombre square of burial-ground, covered with marble
tombs, whereon lay effigies of the dead; solemn white figures, still,
still as death.
But something now moves in this accursed spot. Treading lightly through
the moonlight comes a solemn-looking man, with small, white, claw-like
hands. Arrived in the midst, he lifts these terrible hands above his
head, and then he speaks--“O, ye impious women who sleep beneath these
stones, shake from you your troubled slumber, and awake. ’Tis I
condemned as you, who speak. But for an hour take life; move, breathe,
and then sink to your weeping sleep again!”
See--the white, sleeping figures move. The ground breaks in long, ugly
cracks. Stones are up-heaved, and trembling green lights flicker where
once sacred altars stood. Slowly, forms, something like human, stand
here and there, uncertain of themselves and each other, as with ghastly
eyes they doubtingly peer into the darkness. Then, with noiseless steps,
they approach and touch each other, stepping from side to side, as again
and again a figure rises from the ground. At last, there are hundreds of
these grim phantoms. Gradually, life seems to grow brighter in their
faces. At last, they even smile; and then, behold, they are as
human-looking as the pale, unyielding moon will let them look.
“Ye hopeless--hear me! A warrior whom I love shall come to pluck the
weeping cypress; if he trembles, seduce his better soul from
him, and with all your earthly charms, strive to destroy him.
Rejoice--rejoice--for thou knowest whither I would lead him.”
Again with his light, solemn step he passed away--his hands now clasped
within each other.
Suddenly the weird figures seemed to shudder, as with evil eyes they
marked the warrior’s fearful coming. Hiding behind pillars and broken
stones they watched him. He hesitated--then came forward. Then again he
stopped. At last he stood near the cypress, which waved above the tomb
of the abbess. But as he stretched his hand to pluck the fatal branch,
he looked upon the statue of that abbess, and the face seemed as the
face of his mother, wrathful and angry. He fell back stunned and
speechless.
Then out trooped the living-dead--their features no longer ghastly, but
full of wicked, sensuous life. They surrounded him; they tempted him; in
a circling band they drew him to the fatal cypress. Yet he hesitated.
Then they held to him a golden cup, brimming with delicious wine.
Drinking it, again the evil look was in their faces. But when he
returned the cup, they smiled again.
At last he plucked the branch, and held it in his hand.
Then the faces turned again to hopeless death. The figures screamed in
their joy about him--loudly and more loud.
While he--his heart now failing him--shrank down upon the ground and
hid his eyes with his hands--one of which still clasped the terrible
cypress branch.
PART IV.--THE CYPRESS BRANCH.
While this horrible scene was being enacted--away in her father’s palace
was the lady whom Robert loved--the lady who also loved him--the
princess.
The Princess Isabelle of Sicily sat watching the magnificence about her.
It seemed to mock her sorrows. The King had decided upon marrying her to
the Duke of Grenada, a Spanish noble.
Her solitude was broken by the entrance of a few young maidens, who,
after the custom of the time, took advantage of the intended marriage to
present petitions to the bride.
Among the girls who thus entered was one superior to the rest. She had a
pure-looking, almost holy face--not more beautiful than any there,
perhaps, but glowing in its purity and high resolve.
This young creature presented a letter to the princess. Isabelle took
the paper languidly enough, but no sooner had she glanced at it than her
face sparkled with joy.
’Twas the letter Robert had given Alice before the sun went down. ’Twas
Alice who now gave the letter into the hands of the young princess.
Happily Isabelle read the letter; but her happiness was of short
duration, for barely had she finished it than her tirewomen came forward
to deck her for the bridal.
Then came grand lords and ladies of the court--a full procession--to
accompany the bride to the palace chapel.
They stood without the great room and upon the wide staircase leading to
the broad open doors. They were talking gaily and looking towards the
princess, when suddenly the breath of death seemed to pass over and
among them. Their words faltered on their lips--their hands fell
listlessly to their sides; and though they could see and hear, they had
no power to move. They saw no figure of a wild-looking, handsome man,
waving on high a black, sweeping cypress branch. They saw the doors
close of themselves, and remained motionless, like statues grouped about
the marble stairs.
Slowly he came on, his face now almost the counterpart of Bertram’s. On
and on, to the spot where the princess sat, immovable like the people on
the stairs. She saw no one before her eyes; she sat wondering what the
sudden silence meant, when suddenly before her stood Robert--surely, and
yet not with Robert’s face.
He waved the branch over her fair head, and broke the spell.
“Robert! Robert!”
He looked upon her with a love so terrible that she cried--
“Save me--save me from him!”
“Thou art beautiful, and I love thee! Thinkest thou I would tamely leave
thee to another? Look on me! Not the Robert thou didst once know. Look
on me! Mark on my face the hellish joy I feel in seeing thee!” And he
asked himself how he could look upon her fear and grief, and feel no
pain?
“Robert, thy eyes are fire, and thou lookest on me as thou of all men
least should look. What is thy power--and thy knightly oath--and thine
honor? Hast thou forgotten them?”
“Hate knows no honor, Isabelle, and love is often hate.”
“‘Tis not too late, Robert! But now I saw thy old self again upon your
face. Robert, be thyself. Fly, or they will kill thee!”
“I here am master; tremble--bow before me. None can see me--none can
move but at my will. Thou art lost--_lost_--_lost_!”
The Princess fell on her knees and clasped her hands.
For a moment he trembled, but then again his face was as Bertram’s face,
and he cried, “Thou art lost!”
Then, as she knelt to him--“Robert, Robert, thou whom I so love--to whom
I gave my troth, look on me; look on my terror! Mercy! For thyself,
mercy! For me, also, mercy! Think of thy faith--thine honor! As you love
me, mercy! See me, at thy feet. Robert, Robert, thou whom I so love,
mercy--mercy!”
He doubts, he trembles, then his face changes to its old expression, as
he stoops and lifts her from the ground. “Thou hast saved thyself.”
“And thee, too, Robert.”
“Nay, thou hast destroyed me.”
“I--destroyed _thee_!”
“I cannot live away from thee; let me then die.”
And, in a rage of agony and disappointment, he tore the branch to atoms.
As he did so the spell was broken. The lords and ladies on the stairs
moved and spoke; and one of them, pushing open the great doors, saw the
knight flinging from him the remains of the cypress, and saw, also, the
princess stand apart, one hand trembling before her white lips.
A moment, and there was a violent and terrible noise of swords torn
quickly from their scabbards.
The princess put out her hands beseechingly for him. But ’twas useless;
fifty sword points were directed at his heart. Towards them he ran
fearlessly, his warrior face--the old, good face--all-powerful now.
Suddenly, a knight was beside Robert, fighting for him. Steadily this
new combatant beat a way for the beleaguered knight, and at last
regained for him and for himself free air and liberty.
PART V.--THE REDEMPTION.
“Bertram, thou must come with me. See, here is the cathedral; wilt thou
not enter? The sanctuary is sacred, and none will dare try to move me
from it. Come.”
“So, thou brokest the mystic branch; thy heart failed thee.”
“Oh, it should not fail me again.”
“There is yet a means!”
“Yet a means? Name it; I care not what--I will obey.”
“Thou shalt sign a solemn pledge.”
“Surely, Bertram, surely.”
The white knight took a quivering paper, from his very bosom, as it
seemed; dipped a reed in an ink horn at his side, and offered both to
the young knight.
As he was about to take them his hand trembled--not from fear, but
because of a soft hymn which welled forth from the cathedral--a hymn of
praise, sung by reverend old monks and faithful nuns.
“What! dost thou again tremble?”
“‘Tis the hymn my mother often sang to me in the days of my innocent
childhood. Hark, again!”
Yet once more the sacred sounds swept through the air, “Holy, holy,
holy.”
The white knight turned away and frowned; but as the sound died out he
said, “Come, let us go. What, again thou tremblest?”
“How gentle does this music make me. As I hear it I have no fear--feel
no hate. Again, dear sounds, again.”
Yet once more the hymn arose, “Holy, holy, holy!”
“He would be free! What, shall all my hope be destroyed? Never!”
“I am happy, I am happy!”
“Wherefore? That thy rival is blest; that they offer up prayers for
him?”
“Again; again.”
“Go also; kneel humbly--_humbly_; and pray for his welfare too! Go,
coward.”
The knight looked quickly at Bertram; gazed earnestly into his face;
and, as the religious sounds again spread through the air, he cried
out:--
“BERTRAM, THOU ART MY GREAT ENEMY!”
(“Is there no mercy for me? I his enemy!) I thy enemy, Robert? Do I not
love thee? Who supported thee in battle, whose arm hath been thine, who
would lay all the riches of the world at thy feet? I, who am--”
“Thou who art-“
“Dost thou remember the whisperings in thy home? Thy living father, who
was changed, and thy mother’s woes? canst thou not guess my name?”
The youth looked on the white knight for a moment; then, with a flood of
tears, he was on his knees before this strange being; his arms around
the white knight’s waist, and Bertram’s small white hands resting on his
head.
“Fear not; I will never leave thee!”
Then Robert saw the face above him change. He turned quickly, and found
Alice standing there.
“Robert!”
The white knight stood before her toweringly; but, as she stepped
forward, he, with all his power, was forced to give way.
“Robert, I bring thee a happy message. The duke of Grenada cannot pass
the holy threshold of the cathedral.”
“Come, my son, leave this woman.”
“And the princess awaits thee.”
“Come, let us depart, Robert.”
“Thou darest not forget thy oath to her.”
“Hasten, Robert, the clock is near the hour, the last hour of my stay.
We may not part, my son--my only son--we may not part.”
“My heart turns to thee--yet my vow!”
“But thy duty--thy duty!”
“Our duty,” cried Alice. “Our duty is to him whom thou fearest.” And
without fear she stepped up to the white knight.
“My son--my only joy--thou wilt not hear her!”
“Let him hear me--I speak as I am bidden.”
“See, Robert; here is the parchment. Turn from her, fix thine eyes upon
me, and let us go, to be for ever near each other.”
“And thy mother’s will--O Robert.” Quickly he turned from the tempter to
the holy maiden, who held in her hand his mother’s will.
“My son, turn thy face from her, and look on me.”
“My mother’s writing--my own mother!”
As he perused the paper Bertram stretched forth his hands towards the
youth, placed them pleadingly together, and even wept.
The knight read the paper, and then, looking up from it, the white
knight knew that his power was gone, for Robert drew away from him, and
taking the hand of Alice, placed it on his own head.
As he did so, the clanging of the church-bell told them that midnight
was come.
Then despair, horrible despair, crept over the face of the white knight.
He came one step forward, placed his trembling claw-like hands above the
head of the saved knight and vanished. Vanished in the black night, as a
wailing cry filled all the air.
Saved! the good spirit had saved him--the good spirit working through a
poor country girl!
See him creeping to the church he spurned till now. Saved--saved!
“Holy, holy, holy!” Behold the sanctuary, and the sacred priests, ready
with open arms to receive the sinning, but now repentant Robert!
And so was the spell his father’s wicked vow entwined about his life,
for ever broken and destroyed. So was Robert the Devil transformed to
Robert the Man, loving and beloved.
IL TROVATORE. (VERDI.)
THE MINSTREL.
PART I.--THE DUEL.
In the fifteenth century, and away in Spain, lived the Count di Luna--he
was as handsome as he was implacable, and folks said he was as
implacable as death.
In the fifteenth century too, and in Spain, a great lord was a petty
king, and would as frequently make war against his neighbor on his own
account, as on account of their common country.
But proud and implacable as he was, he had bowed to the power of love,
and weak and pliant in the presence of the Lady Leonora.
His castle was always well defended--for attacks might be made on it
when least expected. Attached to his castle was a palace with superb
grounds. On the approach of danger both palace and grounds were
deserted, and all communication between them and the castle was cut off
by the up-heaving of heavy draw-bridges.
One night the guard-room of the palace was filled, as usual, with
soldiers off duty and various servants; but both soldiers and servants
were half asleep. This being observed by Ferrando, he woke them up by
saying it was near the count’s time for passing through the room.
Said a man, One had better sing or tell tales if he would have “us” keep
awake.
The proposal being generally approved of by the company, Ferrando
settled himself easily in his seat, and told them the old, old tale.
“Draw about me--all of ye. Thus it was. The old count had two dear
sons--the cares of his heart. Well--they were sleeping peacefully--their
good nurse near them, when she awoke and saw--now, my comrades--what
did she see?”
“Go to!”--and “go on!”
“A hag--of a verity, a hag! And, of a verity, she screamed aloud, which
brought about her a score or so of frightened men, who bestruck
themselves strong enough to drive forth the hag with many a blow. Well,
what then, my comrades?”
“Aye--what then?”
“The child dwindled till his flesh was as colorless as the white of
thine eye, Gomez. Nay, start not, man. And he hath screamed, as child
has never screamed before. Wherefore and thereupon, my comrades, they
did search out the hag--fall upon her bravely, and fitly burn her. But,
my faith, she had a daughter. By the rood, such a daughter! She hath
sworn, my comrades, as I, man-at-arms, would never so beswear myself,
she hath sworn to destroy the little one; and she hath done it;--for he
is lost--gone--and there’s an end, on’t.”
“And therefore hath the old count died?”
“He hath died o’ heart-crack, a sore complaint, my comrades.”
“And the living count----?”
“Interpose not thy remarks, youth. The living count hath sought for his
brother, and hath not found him. And I will wager my chain here, which I
won in honest fight,--that never shall human eyes see him again. But
mark you this:--I could tell the thief--I could tell her--yea--marry,
could I.”
The castle bell began to toll, whereat a marvellous trembling came upon
the men-at-arms. Then was heard the roll of a drum. The time to relieve
guard had arrived, so the story-telling crowd dispersed.
* * * * *
Go we now to the gardens of the palace, where the moon looked down upon
two female forms, the lady Leonora and Ines, her confidante. Leonora had
been telling Ines of her love for some unknown knight. She had seen him
at the last tournament--where he appeared in dark mysterious garments
and carried a shield without armorial bearings. He gained the laurel;
and she,--she placed that laurel crown upon his brow. But, alas!--almost
immediately after, came news of a civil war, the assembly within a day
dispersed, and with the rest went the unknown warrior. But--but a few
nights since she heard, near her casement, the plaintive notes of a
guitar and words of a plaintive song. Drawing near, she heard her own
name sighed,--again and yet again; till the very air seemed to breathe
forth the name of Leonora.
“‘Twas he--by the pale moonlight she saw ’twas he.”
“I would, lady, that you forgot him.”
“Counsel easily given, Ines, but not kindly taken. Come, let us return
to the palace.”
Scarcely had they departed when the Count di Luna came softly towards
the palace windows, that he might be near his beloved Leonora. The
garden was bathed in the light of the virgin moon.
As he approached a window, from which streamed the rays of a taper, he
started; for a voice he well knew began to carol forth a song--the voice
of the troubadour, who had dared approach the palace windows, night
after night, for many nights.
“O’er the lands of the earth
He hath wandered from birth;
He hath much--wants no more,
Does this same troubadour.
He hath treasure, I’m told,
Quite surpassing all gold,
’Tis a lady--no more.
He’s a rich troubadour.”
Hardly had the last words floated away on the air than the window,
behind which was the taper, opened on to the broad terrace. The next
moment the Lady Leonora was softly coming down the broad steps to the
green lawn.
As she reached the foot of the marble stairs, she saw a manly figure.
Guessing it to be that of the singer, she ran and put her arms about the
new comer’s neck.
“Thou art late. I have counted the moments for thy coming.”
But the voice of her lover sounded many steps away, crying, “Faithless
one!”
And then, by the light of the moon, which had seemed darkness to her,
coming from the illuminated chamber, she perceived how terrible had been
her mistake.
“Manrico, thy Leonora thought this man to be thyself; he hath not yet
spoken; by his voice I should have learnt my fault.”
The count, in a whirl of rage, cried, “He is but a coward or a sinner
who wears a mask--remove that mask.”
The troubadour took off his mask.
“Thou, Maurico,” said the count. “Thou!--proscribed--condemned to
death--a rebel.”
“Defeat thy rival, count, by calling here thy guards.”
“The only guard I call is this--an honorable one.”
And the noble drew his sword. “Thou shalt degrade its blade.”
The troubadour quickly drew his sword, and the count was rushing upon
him, when cried the former, “Softly, count. Brave men quarrel not in the
presence of trembling women.”
“Follow me!” cried the count; and, spite of all the entreaties of the
lady, the rivals strode on to some secluded spot that one might slay the
other.
PART II.--THE GIPSEY.
Among the gipsies!--the gipsies--then, as now, and as who knows through
how many hundreds of years?--daring, brave, handsome, light hearted
rovers!
In Spain the zingaras, or gipsies, have ever increased and multiplied.
The land seems to foster them kindly; and, at the period of our tale,
they were so numerous, that quarrelsome or rebellious nobles would
frequently enlist the sympathies and strong arms of the tribe. Often and
often the prowess of the zingaras provided the turning points of the
Spanish victories.
The band of gipsies to which the troubadour, Maurico, belonged had
taken part in the rebellion against the king. Hence the expressions used
by the count when he discovered Maurico in the palace gardens.
The gipsies were encamped within and about a dilapidated old building,
amid the mountains of Biscay, not far from the castle of the Count di
Luna. In their encampment they sang, and laughed, and danced as though
they were masters of the earth, instead of being surrounded by danger,
and, possibly, near to death!
The flickering flames of a wood fire, which shone on the faces of the
wild band, paled before the coming day. But there was yet sufficient
light to see Maurico, muffled in a cloak, lying at the feet of a
stern-looking gipsey woman, whom they called Azucena.
Suddenly this woman started from her sleep--stood up--came a step or so
forward--and cried, “Look--look ye! See how the flames dart at her, as
she is dragged along. Look ye, how they all crowd about, and are merry
over her trouble--a poor gipsey led to death! See how their faces are
bathed in blood! There! she screams in her agony; and higher, and yet
higher the mocking flames rise about her; and now I see her no longer.
Gone--gone--gone!”
Suddenly she came to herself, and half whispered, “Vengeance! I will
have vengeance.”
“Still that word, mother,” said the troubadour, Maurico, rising from his
hard bed.
As the sun lit up the shadows in their dark skins, the gipsies moved
away in various directions. Presently, the gipsey-mother and gipsey-son
were alone together.
Suddenly she began again to speak of her terror. “She was accused of
witchcraft--my mother; and they burnt her here--here, on this very spot.
I see her, thick chains hanging about her limbs, dragged to this very
spot. I stood near, holding thee in my trembling arms. In vain she
sought to bless me; they struck down her hands, and drove her forward.
Then it was she cried aloud, ‘_Avenge me!_’ And canst thou not read the
words here--here on my face?”
“And thou didst obey, my mother?”
“I stole the old count’s son. The child wept and clung to me. Why
should I pity him? They had shown her no mercy. Here with him I came--a
fire blazing as when my mother died. I closed my angry eyes, raised high
the child above my head, and dashed it screaming on the burning embers.
Then, looking forth again, I saw--I saw--the count’s own child still
living.”
“Then thou hadst destroyed--”
“My son--my own dear son.”
And she grovelled on the ground, hiding her face with her hands.
“Then am not _I_ thy son?”
Suddenly she looked up fearfully. “Yes--yes, boy, thou art my son--my
own dear son.”
“And yet thou didst say--”
“Ne’er heed what I say, son, for am I not sometimes daft? Thy
mother--have I not been a tender mother to thee all thy life?”
“There’s not a day that I recall when thou wast otherwise.”
“Did I not save thy life, my son--my own dear son? When they said you
lay dead on Pelilla’s field, did not I seek thee--find thee--cure thee?
Thinkest thou I would do all that for the stranger?”
“A noble wound! If, when Di Luna rushed upon me with his score of men, I
fell--I fell as falls a soldier, mother.”
“Di Luna! And so he rendered thee reward for the life thou gavest him,
when he stood before thee in a duel, and was conquered. Thou shouldst
love Di Luna, e’en as thy brother; Di Luna, whom thou, my son, hast
spared.” And she laughed scornfully.
“I may not know wherefore, but when my sword was pointed at him--when
the next moment I should have slain him--some power held back my sword,
and I heard whispered in mine ear the word, ‘Mercy!’”
“But if again thou meetest him, thou dost promise to slay him--without
mercy? Slay him,” she said again, as if to herself, and turned away
without waiting for his reply.
As she turned, a trumpet sounded near at hand.
A herald appeared, and brought Maurico a scroll from the rebel chief,
in whose ranks he and his people now fought. The stronghold, Castellor,
had been wrested from the royalists, and Maurico was ordered to take its
command. The scroll also incidentally mentioned that the Lady Leonora,
believing in Maurico’s death in the late fight, was about to take the
veil in a neighboring convent.
The gipsey-mother saw him turn, and quickly fling his cloak about him,
and place his helmet on his head.
“Whither goest thou?”
“To duty.”
“I command thee, stay.”
“But my _general_ commands me.”
“And thy wound! thou must not leave me. It may open again; and if I am
not near thee, son, thou mayst die; therefore thou shalt not go.”
For answer, he wrapt his cloak more closely about him.
She threatened him, but it was useless. Soon she was gazing after him as
he wended his way down a mountain pass.
* * * * *
Go we now to the cloisters of the convent, where the luckless Lady
Leonora was about to take the vows that were to separate her for ever
from the world.
Love had humiliated and degraded the count, as it hath humiliated and
degraded many a better man. As he could not honestly possess himself of
the Lady Leonora, he had now come to steal her--tear her away from the
altar. He had not come alone, for love had also made him a coward. He
had brought with him a score or so of his followers to snatch her from
amongst a host of women.
See them hiding behind pillars, and in shadows, creeping softly and
meanly, as robbers and cowards do.
Then came the widowed Lady Leonora, surrounded by old friends, who would
fain accompany her to the door of her life-long prison.
She sighed as she heard the low religious chant from within the walls of
the convent--henceforth to shut in all her hopes. But she was
determined. He was dead--her love. Killed on the battle-field, and she
would mourn for him in the silence of a convent cell.
“With good, hearty old friends,” said she to the attendants about her,
“see me to the altar, and then--a long farewell.”
But as she turned towards the sacred door the count came quickly from
behind a broken pillar, and tremblingly said, “Nought can save
thee--thou art mine.”
“Mercy!”
“There is no Maurico now to save thee. He is dead--he is dead.”
He ran towards her, but suddenly he stopped, and trembled like a coward,
as he was. For there, standing between him and his expected prize, was
the minstrel, Maurico himself! Standing there was the very man he had
seen fall on the field; or--or, was it his shade?
And Leonora? After an instant of doubt and hesitation--for she, too,
believed her lover was not of this world--she ran to him, and, with a
great cry, threw herself upon his breast.
The consternation of the dastardly count hardly gave him much time for
deliberation; but, on a signal, his followers swarmed out from their
hiding places, and surrounded the lovers. But they reckoned without
their host. The next instant Maurico and the Lady Leonora were protected
by trusty arms.
In vain the count drew his sword and rushed upon the troubadour. Twenty
swords were pointed at him--twenty swords that in an instant would have
touched his heart. But their leader, Maurico, who still suffered from
his wound, bade them spare him.
So the count yet stood alive in the midst of his followers. Stood
unsubdued by the mercy which had now been shown him; stood, and vowed
vengeance against his gentle foe; stood and cursed him as he led the
lady away. Away from him, the rival; away from the convent, away to
Castellor, which had fallen into the rebels’ hands, and whose governor
was Maurico, the Warrior Minstrel.
PART III.--THE GIPSEY’S SON.
Surely, mercy may sometimes be a fault, if extended to a heartless man.
The Count di Luna held his life by the great mercy of the gipsey
stranger, but he determined to reduce the castle, whose master was that
gipsey, hoping that he might yet destroy a hated rival. No breath of
gratitude was in his heart. He thought only of revenge, and turned away
his face from the light.
The count’s camp was pitched within a mile of the doomed castle. The
count’s soldiers were lying about--playing, singing, gambling, and
polishing up their arms--when the soldier, Ferrando, was seen to run
quickly towards the count, who was walking moodily amidst the troopers.
“One hath seized a gipsey woman, general. She is a spy, perhaps.”
“Let her be brought hither,” said the count, and looking up as the sound
of a tramping, mixed with smothering cries, reached his ears, he saw a
middle-aged, stern-looking gipsey-woman being dragged towards him by
half-a-dozen thick-bearded men. She showed no fear.
“Wherefore do ye thus treat me? What evil have I done ye?”
“Come hither, woman. Answer me truly.”
“That shall be as thy questions are.”
“Whither goest thou?”
“Whither the gipsies ever go. To the north or to the south, sometimes
westward, yet ever gladly to the east.”
“What wouldst thou?”
“My son--I only crave my dear, dear son. He hath left me, and I seek
him. Thou tremblest--perchance thou hast lost a mother.”
“I seem to know thy features. When my younger brother was stolen, the
woman who did carry him was like thee.”
The noble seemed to be thinking aloud, rather than addressing the
gipsey. “Fifteen years--fifteen long years since I lost my younger
brother.”
“Thou art, then, the Count di Luna?”
She saw she had spoken hastily, as soon as she had uttered the words, so
she prepared to fence with them.
“How knowest thou that?”
“They say the gipsies know all things, master. But let me go; I may
trace him for thee.”
Suddenly the old soldier, Ferrando, cried out, as he peered towards the
gipsey, “By our Lady, ’tis she herself!”
“She! who?” cried the count.
“May I never be absolved, general, if ’tis not the gipsey who stole your
brother! Did I not see her carrying the child away, hid in her rags?
Aye, marry, did I. Did I not tremble when I saw her but just now, as
though I knew her? Aye, marry, twice did I.”
“She trembles; her lips betray her,” said the count. “Bind her--till the
cords cut deep into her flesh. Ah! scream--scream; there is no help.”
“Help, Maurico!” cried the gipsey, in her agony. “Help, my son! help, my
Maurico!”
“His mother--HIS mother!” said the count. And running to her, he raised
his hand, as though he would strike her. But he had not yet fallen so
low as that.
She looked at him fearlessly. “I defy thee! Thou--the base son of a base
father. Frown--hope!--hate, thou monster. Vengeance shall be mine. List
to that, I say--‘VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE!’”
He turned from her contemptuously. She to talk of vengeance! She a
miserable, bound gipsey.
He to his splendid tent--she to imprisonment; and yet she had cried,
“VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE.”
* * * * *
Turn we to Castellor, where are Maurico and Leonora.
As they stood near the balcony, all in all to each other, she heard the
distant clash of arms. “Prythee, wherefore that sound?”
“Thou art so brave that I fear not to tell thee all. The Count di Luna
is encamped but a short mile away. Before the night is gone he will have
besieged this castle. Nay, trouble not--your courage and our swords will
be victorious. It is, I know, a weary prelude to our marriage, dearest.
Of victory I am sure--yet should I fall--my last thought will be of
thee--only of thee--Hark!--they await us in the chapel.”
As he spoke, the chanting in the neighboring chapel reached their ears,
and each knew that the priest was waiting to join their hands.
They were moving towards the holy place when a soldier ran quickly in,
saying he had woeful news.
The gipsey Azucena--was taken.
“Azucena!”
“They say--she will be burnt!”
“Ah! the air grows hot and dark about me.”
The lady Leonora put her hand to the troubadour’s brow, but he put it
aside and cried--“My mother--they would slay my mother.”
“Thy mother!”
Then she bade him take arms. No fear had she now. Victory must be with
him who fought to save a mother! “Onward!” she cried. She buckled on his
sword, and was the first to cry, “farewell.” Her last words were “love”
and “victory!”
PART IV.--VENGEANCE.
Might is not always for the just. Were it so always, where would be the
honor of virtue?
Maurico was conquered, and the castle fell into the hands of his enemy
the Count Di Luna. The minstrel languished in prison, with but one
consolation in this life--the presence of his mother. They were
imprisoned together, that to their miseries might be added the pain of a
last separation.
Upon the fall of the castle, the Lady Leonora took flight, hoping
against hope. But when she heard he was condemned to death, she came
weeping to the foot of the castle, and leant her face against its wall.
With her came the faithful soldier, who had ever been at Maurico’s right
hand--who had told him of his mother’s capture, and who had escaped from
the battle at the last moment, when he saw his master taken prisoner,
and all hope had fled.
She bade her faithful escort leave her, and then hope whispered that
perchance she could save him. And when she trembled she looked at a ring
she wore, and found new courage.
Swelling on the night air came the dirge of the monks within the
castle--
“Miserere for him whose death is nigh;
Who from life and its joys must be quickly hurled;
Miserere for one who, a moment more,
Must bid farewell to this dreary world.”
The solemn words made her tremble and look for a moment with fear upon
the ring she wore; but the next instant she started forward with horror,
for she heard his voice--
“Ah--death itself is slow
When death itself is wooed--
When death itself is peace.
Leonora--fare-thee-well!”
“Great Heaven!--can I believe my senses?”
Again the solemn voices of the monks arose--
“Miserere for him whose death is nigh;
Who from life and its joys must be quickly hurled;
Miserere for one who, a moment more,
Must bid farewell to this dreary world.”
Again his voice arose; his last words for her--
“Leonora--Leonora, a last farewell.”
And again she looked on the ring as she thought, “her love was as great
as his.”
Then suddenly she heard footsteps, and she shrank into the shadow of the
frowning tower.
The count passed over the very spot from which she had just fled. Then
he turned and said to some person unseen by Leonora--
“Thou markest my will; when the day breaks--the scaffold for the
son--the pile for the mother.”
Cruel, implacable as he was, he even blushed in the dark night as
conscience whispered to him that this scaffold and this pile were but a
poor return for his life, twice given him. But he had gone too far to
recede; and, with a curse, he cried, “‘Twas fatality, and Leonora.” Then
he asked himself where she was--where she had hidden herself, and, in an
agony of hot, unrestrained passion, he cried out, “Leonora, Leonora,
where art thou?”
“She is here!”
As he started at her voice she came forward, pale and trembling, from
the shadow.
Asking himself how she could have reached the terrace, after an effort
he said, “What wouldst thou?”
“Canst thou ask me? His life.”
“_His_ life! Ask me for mine own as well.”
“See, I kneel to thee.”
“Thou art mad.”
“Nay, see how humble I am; look on me--at thy very feet.”
“Look in my face; dost thou see pity there?”
“I cannot look upon thy face. Pity--I can say no more;--pity! Hath he
not twice saved thy life? Wilt thou not render back half thy debt? Kill
me if thou wilt, for I heard thee say ’twas by me thou art what thou
art. Kill me, yet spare him.”
“As thou speakest, thou dost but ensure his fate. I would I could make
him suffer a hundred deaths. As ardently thou lovest so fiercely do I
hate. Let go your hold. Nothing can purchase his life.”
“No price?”
“No price.”
“Yes, there is one, and I do offer it to thee--myself.”
“What hast thou said?”
“What I do mean--myself.”
“I dream.”
“Nay, open his prison-door, and I am thine.”
“Wilt thou swear it?”
“By my dead mother’s name!”
“Enough--he is free.”
He strode quickly to the door of the tower, and spoke rapidly to the
gaoler within it; but she had had time to offer herself a sacrifice to
her honest love. She took the ring from off her finger, opened a little
receptacle in it, removed from it a small grey pellet, and swallowed
it. “Thou shalt have a dead bride,” she whispered. When he again turned
towards her, her hands were pressed to her sides.
“Saved, saved,” she cried to herself, as the count--smiling now for the
first time for a weary while--took her right hand and courteously led
her to the grand hall of the castle.
* * * * *
Enter the hopeless prison, in which the gipsey and the troubadour were
trying to console each other as each weary moment rolled away.
She was lying on the bare ground; he sitting at her feet, his hands
crossed, and smiling as he looked upon her.
“Dost thou sleep, dear mother?”
“There is no time for sleep, my son.”
“Thou tremblest with cold.”
“This is a tomb. I would we could escape.”
“Escape!”
“Yet, fear not, son; they cannot torture me.”
“No; for art thou not a woman?”
“Oh, they would not fear to torture a woman. But look on my face, canst
thou not read death there? Nay, cry not, ‘mother,’ as thou weepest. They
shall come to bite their lips with anger; for they will find me dead.”
Then, as he buried his face in his hands, she was seized with
unconquerable fear. “They come--they come. Save me--save thy mother. I
am indeed, indeed thy mother.”
“No one cometh; all is quiet.”
“Fire! death by fire! I am afraid--I am afraid. I see her now--my
mother. They dragged her and bound her to the stake. There! there! See,
the flames have caught her hair; how it shrivels up! And her eyes--ah!
she can see me no longer. Help! help! save me!”
And she fell back senseless upon the hard earth.
“Mother, if thou dost love me still--if thou wilt hear thy son’s
prayers, be brave and calm.”
As he spoke, she came again to a knowledge of her fate.
“I am worn and weak; or thou shouldst not bid me be calm and brave. I
am--very--worn-and--weak.”
And she fell peacefully to sleep, as in her native mountains; free as
the wind, and surrounded by her tribe.
Then he knelt by her side, hardly daring to breathe, for fear of waking
her.
No fear of awaking her; for she is aweary, and _will_ sleep. They shall
come and bear him away from thee, and still thou shalt sleep on and
peacefully; he shall bid thee his last farewell, and still thou shalt
sleep unheedingly.
Suddenly he started, as a light fell upon the prison walls. He looked
upon his sleeping mother, and thought it was her funeral pyre. But as he
turned, he saw the light came from the door, upon the threshold of which
stood the queen of mercy--his dear Leonora.
She ran to him, and nestled on his breast. Then she cried, “Thou shalt
not die, for I have saved thee.”
“Thou hast saved me! how?”
“Nay,” and she hid her face, and pointed to the door.
“And thou--thou comest also.”
“My life--my hope--I must stay here.”
“Stay here!”
“I pray thee go, go.”
“Where thou goest I will also go; and where thou stayest, I will stay.”
“But if thou stayest thou diest.”
“Without thee what is life? Why do thy eyes turn from me; what is the
price thou hast paid for my liberty?”
“No price is high for a dear human life. There is yet time. For my sake,
go!”
“But he for whom that life is bought may cast the gift from him as I do,
and as I also cast thee away.”
“Ah, Maurico--’tis not the hour to hate. Peace and good-will, peace and
good-will.” She turned deadly pale, and rocked to and fro in agony.
His arms were about her in a moment. “My transient hate--my fears, were
but excess of love.”
“Speak on, speak on, death vainly strives against the warmth of love. I
feel for thee. Speak on, oh, my Maurico. But a little, and envious
death shall have his will.”
“Leonora--Leonora, thou art dying!”
“Ah--yes, she goes to be thy herald. Unrelenting is the poison. If
’twill let me stay near thee but for a little, little while. Ah, place
my cold hand against thy trembling lips, thou knowest now my wealth of
love for thee. I did mean to save thee at my life’s expense; this was
the price. No more, no less.”
“And _I_ fell back from thee--turned from thee. Mine eyes have fallen
from my face. Leonora--look up, look up.”
“I am too weak. Keep your hands about me. So let me die! Ah, ’tis well
as it is.”
At this moment the count came to the door to claim his bride.
“Good-bye--oh, good-bye!” and she sank exhausted in his arms.
Even this scene did not soften Di Luna. No reverence had he for the poor
dead lady--no reverence had he for the maddened lover, straining his
eyes upon the dear one’s face. The guards, who waited without, came in,
and tore them asunder.
“Mother,” he cried, “mother.”
But she slept on unheedingly. Slept on while they bore her son away to
death.
Again, as he was wrenched across the threshold, he cried, “Mother.” And
now, she trembled in her sleep.
Again, and again, she trembled. Then with a shudder she awoke. She
looked round quickly, and clasped her hands about her breast, as she no
longer saw her son. Then her eyes rested on the count. With a bound she
was by his side. “Thou hast stolen him--thou hast stolen while I slept.”
He stood immovable, and uttered not a word.
“Mercy--stay the axe--I will save him--I will save him.” And she clung,
shrieking, about his feet.
“Save him--nought can save him--see there.”
He dragged her to the window, and she looked wildly forth.
“Dead--dead--dead!”
Then she turned from the window a changed woman. No tears. No horror.
Smiling even a grim smile.
The noble stepped back in wonder. Then he thought that she was mad. But
no.
Proud--erect--she stood before him.
“Have I not said--‘Vengeance shall be mine’--in thy tent, where thou
didst cut my flesh with cords. _Vengeance_ IS _mine_. Thou look’st
towards the window. Gazing through it--I say--_Vengeance is mine_. He is
dead--thou sayest he is dead. Hear!--thou knowest me to be the gipsey
who robbed thy father of thy younger brother. Ah well, I am indeed
she--and that brother,--rejoice in the act,--and that brother--look
again through the window--mark that body. THOU HAST SLAIN THY BROTHER.
Shrink--shrink!--VENGEANCE IS MINE. Hadst thou but have let him wake me
that he might say farewell, I should have pitied thee and saved him--but
thou didst steal him from me while I slept. Dead!--he will carry thy
murderous name with him. Have I not said, ‘VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE?’”
And then her troubles were over, and the last she saw on earth was the
bleeding body of him she called, and whom she loved, as a son.
While he, the triumphant count, stood there alone.
Alone. With remembrance. With remorse.
ERNANI. (VERDI.)
PART I.--THE BANDIT.
Who are these houseless men, lying about amongst jagged rocks, laughing
gaily, card-playing and drinking--the setting sun lighting up the place
with a red glare, and bathing their brown faces crimson?
The sun writes the truth upon their faces; they are men of
blood--lawless, houseless plunderers; singing, laughing,
card-playing--waiting for the night, and for their captain, that they
may begin their work.
They keep a sharp look-out about them though, and at last, start to
their feet with a great noise, as a young handsome man comes suddenly
in.
He seems to have nothing in common with these men, for he is elegantly
dressed, and looks every inch a cavalier. His face is not ferocious; and
yet--yes, they have saluted him as captain, and he waves his hat in
courteous reply.
Not a thief by birth! O no! this man really is John of Arragon, the son
and heir of the Duke of Segovia and Cordova, killed to please the will
of King Carlos of Castille. The son narrowly escaped the same fate, but
fortune favored him. He reached the Sierras, which, like all mountains,
offered the fugitive safe shelter. Hundreds upon hundreds flocked to his
standard, and John of Arragon changed his name to “Ernani.” But he dwelt
not so far away from his old life, as not to be able to see the Moorish
castle of Don Ruy Gomez di Silva. Nor was it for the sake of Don Ruy he
kept the castle ever in view. The don had a ward, Elvira, who had held
out a hand to save Ernani when the blood-king was tracking him; and for
this generous act she had gained his love, giving, however, her own in
exchange.
The face of the chief is sad. Would that his men could bear his grief
for him, and they would willingly stand between him and death.
“Thank you, brothers--thank you,” replied the chief, as he leapt down
amongst them; “but my woe is so deep that even your cheering voices
cannot drive it away.”
“The chief, then, is in love--”
“And likely to lose his love, brothers, if you will not help him.”
“Help! Yes--yes--yes.”
“See you that castle there, below us, with the red sun full on it. She
lives there--she lives there! If you love your chief, you will help him
to bring her here--here to the mountains.”
“Yes--yes--yes!” replied a hundred voices.
“She would follow me anywhere; she will love the mountains for my sake.
You _will_ help me!”
“Yes--yes--yes.”
“Then let the night be our friend; when darkness has come we will storm
the castle, and then she is amongst us.”
“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”
And while the noble chief was waiting for nightfall, the lady whom he
loved was looking from a window of the old castle towards the mountains,
amongst which she knew Ernani dwelt.
A real Spanish lady was Elvira, as could be seen, had anybody been able
to spy her at the window. But, alas! no one could, for Don Ruy, her
guardian, hid her as a jewel which he feared might be stolen. He was
seventy, she was seventeen; his hair was grey, hers was black, and yet
he had determined that she should marry him.
As she sat at the window, watching the sun go down, she was at least at
peace, for the grandee was away from the castle. And so she sat pensive,
and dreaming of Ernani, perhaps, hoping he would come and carry her off.
At last it was night time, and still the don had not returned.
Suddenly the door of the quiet room opened, and a procession entered;
gay in itself, but of ominous import to the lady at the window--a string
of young maidens bearing rich gifts, marriage gifts; for, truth to tell,
the old don had resolved that his marriage with Elvira should take place
on the following day. Listen what they say to her.
“How many Spanish maidens envy thee, fair lady. Thou wilt be the highest
lady in all the land. These gifts alone are a mine of wealth. To-morrow
thou wilt be a bride.”
“I thank you; but the dazzle of diamonds will not lighten hate into
love.” And she again thought, “I would Ernani were here, and that he
would fly with me.”
Hardly had they, the present bearers, left the room, than she turned
quickly at the sound of a cautious footstep--she thought it was that of
Ernani. But no; another had learnt, the secret entrance her bandit lover
used. Another, who had watched and seen Ernani enter. Not a mean man
this. A king--a KING! Don Carlos, King of Castille. She saw her error,
shrunk back, and cried out:--
“Sire, you here, at this hour!”
“I love thee, lady, at all hours.”
“Ah, no--sire.”
“Nay, lady, a king is never told he lies.”
“I pray you, leave me.”
“I will leave with _thee_, lady.”
“With _me_!”
“Ah, if I were Ernani thou wouldst not start thus. Come, thou canst not
know the wealth of love I have for thee.”
“And my honor, sire?”
“Thou shalt be honored by all the court.”
“And by myself, think you!”
“Thou wouldst sooner be honored by Ernani’s out-laws--thou lovest the
robber.”
“Sire, each heart has its own secret.”
“And I, have not I mine? Ah, Elvira, from the moment I first saw thee I
have loved thee. I love thee for thyself, as I would have thee, lady,
e’en love me. But--but if a crown will earn me smiles from thee, I offer
you the half of that I wear.”
“_With_ thy crown thy love is too high for me, _without_ it, ’tis too
low.”
“Thou shalt fall.”
“A king--never forget you are a king!”
“I forget I am a king when I am at your feet.”
He ran towards her, as her eyes flashed defiance upon him; but the next
moment he drew back, for she had snatched a jewelled dagger from his
girdle.
“Stand back!”
“You see I do stand back, fair lady. But there are more hands here than
mine to pluck the dagger from your grasp.”
Suddenly he perceived a great joy flush her fair cheeks. At the same
instant he heard a footstep behind him, and turning round, he saw a man,
a handsome, daring-looking man, whom he was sure, seeing the lady’s joy,
was none other than Ernani, looking on him defiantly, with hate and
anger! Ernani, who had entered the castle by a secret door--who was
there to bear away the lady--who had come to save her from yet further
misery.
“Thou art Ernani--I know it by the hate I feel sparkling in my eyes.
Hate! Does the eagle hate the worm? No, he despises it. Rejoice--scourge
of a peaceful country! Let thy meanness comfort thee. Wert thou greater,
I would raise my hand to thy destruction. I have but to call, and thou
art lost.”
“Thou knowest me and fearest me. I am so mean that thou hast robbed me
of my fame;--so mean, that thou hast taken from me my wealth;--so
contemptible, that thou hast slain my father! And now thou would’st rob
me of my bride. What difference is there between us? Thou, noblest, with
a crown on thy head and without risk of life--_I_ risk my life to rob
where I have been robbed. What difference is there between us?
Cowardice! Now--let us be equal. Defend thyself.”
“Hark! some one is approaching,” cried Elvira, in an agony of
fear--“forget your quarrel, at least for a little while,--if you are
found here I am lost. So, please you, forget your hates, and leave me.”
Still, the two men moved not--still the footsteps nearer drew.
“If you love me, both of you--either of you--leave me--leave this place!
Too late--too late!”
For at this moment the door was thrown open, and on the threshold stood
the master of the castle--the Don Ruy--his attendants behind
him--witnesses to his dishonor.
“Do I breathe?--here, in the sanctity of my house--to find two men
quarreling--as though disputing for some poor booty!”
He was a grand old gentleman, with hair as white as honor. But his age
had not brought him humility. He was as proud as he was grand, and as
merciless as he was proud. Turning to his court--for this grandee
retained a court--he continued: “You, Senors, witness this fall of mine!
This woman whom I loved, but till now I thought as pure as the moonlight
streaming on her through the window. As for these men--my hands are
weak, but one can bear a sword--the other a shield. Yet not here within
my house shall blood be spilt. Go, pass before me.”
The last few words were addressed to the king and Ernani, and then for
the first time he looked upon them--but the light was too feeble for him
to recognize even one of them.
“Gently--gently,” said one of these two. But the don cried out
haughtily. “None but myself had right to speak.”
Suddenly, high and loud in the air, sounded a herald’s trumpet.
And, within a moment or so, it was whispered among the crowd, still
without the door, that it was a king’s messenger.
A lane was made for him by Don Ruy--who turned to the herald, imagining
that he came to him. Following the herald came torch-bearers.
On came the herald. He did not salute the master of the castle--he did
not even look at him. On past him, past one of the men found in the
lady’s room--past the lady even--up to the second intruder, before whom
he knelt.
“THE KING,” cried many, as the herald knelt, and above him stood, now
in the full light of the torches, the brave man who bore a dagger
sheath, but not a dagger.
Then said the king, “Don Ruy, I came to consult thy friendship for me.”
See! The proud Don Ruy has stooped his head; then he steps forward, and
humbly welcomes to his house “the king.”
As they crowd about the king--as the latter receives their homage--the
robber Ernani and the lady were forgotten, and they stood apart,
whispering--
“Until the sun sinketh again in the deep
Resist the proud tyrant, nor yield to dismay;
For Ernani unbroken thy precious faith keep,
And to-morrow from peril I’ll bear thee away.”
* * * * *
“Thou knowest I’m thine--know also this steel
Can save me from tyrants--nor do I repine;
In wretchedness even ’tis solace to feel
That my heart--that my faith, will for ever be thine.”
See, now, the proud noble stoops to kneel before the outraged king, and
entreats his pardon. And, graciously, the king accords it.
Hark! the king demands a safe pass for Ernani. He still thinks the eagle
should not injure the worm. See, the bandit passes away, out to freedom.
The king is gracious, the don trembles, and the Lady Elvira is presented
to the king in due form and courtesy.
PART II.--THE GUEST.
With the next day’s sun came Elvira’s marriage day. No hope of
flight--fate was against her, and so her envious women dress her for the
sacrifice.
The great hall of the castle is filling with lords and ladies, retainers
and vassals. There is a sudden stir--’tis the entrance of the duke,
dressed grandly, and wearing all his orders. He walks gravely to his
grandee’s chair, and sits down as the crowd do homage.
In those days--four hundred years ago--it was the custom to give shelter
to any pilgrim who should demand it. Hence scarcely a day passed without
“the castle” containing many guests of this sort.
The don had hardly sat down when a servant approached and said that a
pilgrim was at the gate, craving hospitality.
Gravely and readily was given the order to let the pilgrim enter. The
next moment a tall, upright man, dressed in the pilgrim’s loose sombre
dress, came forward and up to the don as he sat in state.
“I greet thee, noble knight.”
“Good pilgrim, be at ease. Nor whence thou comest, nor who thou art, we
do not ask. Be welcome for this day and night. My hospitality I promise
thee.”
“The deepest thanks I have are thine!”
“We do not ask for thanks--the guest is as the lord. But stand aside,
good pilgrim.” And the don rose and walked quickly to the door to meet a
lady dressed in bridal garments.
“My bride,” he murmured.
“His bride,” said the pilgrim, throwing his cowl from his head a little,
so that those who had chosen to look might have seen a handsome, brave
face within it. “His bride.”
“Senor--as well as others, a poor pilgrim should offer thee a marriage
gift--I offer one of price--my head. Let no one fear--I will no
resistance offer--I am Ernani!”
“He lives--he lives,” said the bride to herself.
The don’s face contracted angrily as he saw the pilgrim standing--his
gown flung off--fearless among them.
“Deliver me to the king--a price is on my head. Hark! they have tracked
me even here. I hear the horsemen near the castle gate. Deliver me, and
thou shalt gain a high sum for my head!”
In those old times a brutal ferocity was atoned for by a kind of honor
of which, in these degenerate days, we have but slight idea. Above all,
the promise of hospitality was sacred, and to keep it inviolate the
accorder would run all risk and dangers. When life was so
unhesitatingly taken, perhaps this sacredness of hospitality was the
only means whereby men lived in society. But for it each man would have
kept to his own home as a wild beast does to its lair, and no more have
trusted himself in his neighbor’s stronghold than that same beast would
besiege another’s den.
Hence the don, having promised to give hospitality to the pilgrim
without conditions--awarding it to him no matter whence he came, or who
he was, he was bound to save this guest from his pursuers, even though
they were the royal troops themselves.
So far this man whom he abhorred--whom he recognized as the intruder of
the night before--for this man the very marriage was stayed, and he, the
grandee, left his hall for his ramparts. And soon there was heard the
clicking of the lowering portcullis, and the raising of the drawbridge.
As he left the great hall the gentlemen followed him; and the only man
left in the room was the false pilgrim, standing in the midst of the
frightened women.
Their chief, the Donna Elvira, motioned them away, and soon she stood
alone with the robber.
“Ernani--Ernani--they told me thou wert dead!”
“And thou didst believe them.”
“Yet I hoped--I would have hoped even to the altar.”
“And then--then thou wouldst have sworn to love Don Ruy.”
For all answer she showed him the dagger she had wrested from the king.
So, she would have hoped till living death were forced upon her, and
then she would have welcomed death itself.
“The king--the king!”
Again the cry was heard, “The king was at the gate.” The king demanded
that it should bow to him, and again the clicking sound was heard as the
bridge was lowered before the king.
But ere the king reached the great hall, the lady and the robber had
left it. The don returning, discovered them together.
Again, despairingly, the robber offered his life, but the don was
inflexible; hospitality he had promised, and hospitality he would grant.
True, the very necessity of this hospitality would nerve his hand to
greater vengeance when the time came. But now his guest’s life was as
his own; so the trembling Elvira saw the don open a secret sliding door,
and her lover was safe.
“Begone to thy rooms, Elvira--the king--the king.”
No second bidding needed she. And when Carlos came proudly into the
great hall he found there only the grandee, humbly bowing.
“Fair cousin, why in arms, we are not at war? You bow--enough. Let it be
known there is but one king of Castille. When his sword is in its sheath
all swords must sleep.”
“Your Majesty can never think a Silva dreams rebellion.”
“Prove yourself loyal. The chief of the rebels has sought refuge here in
your castle. His men destroyed, he seeks to save himself by your
protection. Deliver him!”
“If the king will hear his subject. A pilgrim came and entreated
hospitality, which I promised. The loyalty I bear the king will not
allow me to betray his subject.”
“Thou wouldst lose thy head, fair cousin.”
“Rather than mine honor.”
The king turned and gave some orders to the gentlemen about him. Then
again his eyes were upon the door. “Thy head or his, my lord?”
“Mine own.”
Yet a little, and the gentlemen of the king’s suite returned, saying the
royal troops had searched the castle through and could not find the
rebel.
“Thy head, I say.”
But as he spoke, the king’s eyes turned from the grandee, and rested
upon the Donna Elvira, coming towards him with hands clasped, and white
open lips.
“Mercy--mercy--king!”
“Mercy, fair lady! Thou art mercy’s self, and even kings must here obey.
But thou shalt be the don’s best hostage for his loyalty.”
“Nay! my king. Is there no other hostage for a loyalty yet unshaken? She
is my only hope, my only joy. I have loved her from her very birth. My
king, thou wilt--thou wilt not take her from me?”
“Then Ernani. One or the other.”
“Nay, I am steadfast in my loyalty. Therefore--please you, my king--take
her--my hope, my life.”
“Come, lady,” said the king, seizing the hand of the luckless lady.
“Come, I’ll strew thy path with flowers. Time shall bring thee no heavy
hours. Rather let smiles be where now are tears and whitened cheeks.
Come, come.”
So with his prey the Christian king departed, leaving the old lord bent
and wretched with grief.
But not for long--not for long. Now, his eyes sparkled, for hate was
there. His head was erect again, and his breath came and went in short
angry catches. He ran to the secret door, and as though calling to a
dog, he bade the robber chief come forth.
As Ernani stepped into the room, the grandee ran to the wall, and took
down a couple of swords.
“Now, robber, doubly robber, vengeance is mine.”
“What! will a grandee fight with a poor bandit?”
“At least, thou wast born noble, even if now thou art vile. Follow me!”
“No, no.”
“What--has all nobility left thee?”
“I am still too noble to fight with age, Senor.”
“See--is my hand firm?”
“Again, thou hast saved my life!”
“That I might take it from thee.”
“Ah, well! Kill me, thou hast the right, perhaps.”
“Kill thee.” And the old lord raised his sword as though a rat were
before him.
“Kill, kill. Yet hear a prayer of mine.”
“Prayers are for heaven, not man.”
“‘Tis a prayer to man--to thee.”
“Speak on.”
“But once again, but once again, let me see Elvira.”
“If thou wouldst see her, thou must travel. The king has torn her from
me.”
“The king, the KING! Old man, the king loves Elvira.”
“Loves--loves Elvira! The king loves Elvira! Vassals, vassals,” he
weakly called as he staggered to a seat.
“Nay, call me vassal, and the strength of this strong heart and arm is
thine.”
“Stand from me. Aid from thee--from thee! Thou who art doomed to die.”
“My life is thine. I know my life is thine. At any time my life is
thine. But let me live to hate where now thou hatest so strongly.”
“Thy life at _any_ time is mine. True. Well, wilt thou promise me thy
life at any time I ask it?”
The other hesitated for a moment. Then took from his side his
hunting-horn, and placed it in the unwilling hands of the old lord.
“Take thou this horn, when from it sounds a blast,
’Twill tell Ernani that his days are past.”
“Upon what dost swear that oath?”
“The memory of my murdered father.”
“So be it. Let heaven’s darkness fall on thee if thou dost break thy
word.”
PART III.--THE PARDON.
Charles the Fifth was not unforgiving, not even inclined to be harsh;
and no one ever disputed his bravery. When he was intriguing for his
election as emperor--the election which made him the great emperor,
Charles the Fifth--Castille was full of plots to oppose his plans, nay,
to take his life; and at the head of these conspiracies was Ernani and
Don Ruy.
On the very night when the electors were to assemble to decide on the
choice of an emperor, the king heard that this most formidable band of
conspirators, formidable because its members were moved by personal
hate, were to meet in the subterraneous catacombs of Aquisgrana, the
royal open burying-place.
The king fearlessly determined to be present at this traitorous
assembly, and to crush it at its work. Soldiers were posted about the
cavern; the king himself remained concealed in the tomb of one of his
ancestors, and the hour of the meeting was close at hand. The king had
given orders that if he were elected emperor, cannon should roar from
the castle-walls, and that thereupon the lords of the court should
present themselves at the cavern, that they might see how a great king
treated rebels and traitors. Charles also commanded that the Donna
Elvira should be conducted to the gloomy spot.
As the conspirators slowly gathered in the wide central space of the
catacombs, no sounds were heard but those they themselves made.
Creeping--creeping guiltily, they came, and stood in a whispering
throng. Then came the casting for a regicide: he on whom the lot fell
was to slay the king.
There was a little rustling of papers, and then one slip was taken from
the heap, brought quickly to the light of a lantern, and the name upon
it read.
“ERNANI!”
“My father--my father! I will avenge thee!”
“Ernani, thou knowest my voice?”
“Surely, thou art Don Ruy.”
“I am Don Ruy. I am the master of thy life; yield me the privilege you
hold.”
“No, no.”
“Think! thou mayst fail, and thou wouldst then surely die; yield me the
task?”
“No, no. And mightest not thou also fail?”
“See, here is thy horn! I will give it thee back, if thou wilt let _me_
strike this guilty man.”
“No.”
“What! can I not kill thee by a note on this same horn?”
“I care not; chance hath given me the order, I will not barter it.”
“Then fear me, Ernani.”
Suddenly boomed over their heads the loud sound of triumphant artillery.
Victory! victory! Charles of Castille was the Emperor Charles the Fifth.
As the sound roared forth, the emperor strode from his concealment, and
the soldiery coming quickly forward, behold the conspirators were
prisoners.
Again the cannon burst forth, and the next moment the courtiers were
coming down among the tombs by torchlight, to congratulate the new
emperor.
The electors headed the procession, and, kneeling, greeted the emperor
by his new title.
“The will of heaven be mine. See these traitors; they have formed
against me a plot. Tremble, ye traitors, as ye learn an emperor’s
vengeance! Let the plebeians be cast into prison; let the nobles bow to
the block.”
“Accord the block to me, O emperor! for I, Ernani, lord of Arragon,
Cordova, and Segovia.”
Why does he start and tremble? Is it that he sees his dear mistress
again flinging herself at the emperor’s feet? Again she pleads for
mercy; again she asks for happiness and justice.
“Thou askest, lady, what is already granted; what the king could not
forgive, the emperor will not look on as offence.... You are all
pardoned!... And as for thee, my lord Ernani, let the memory of the
father’s death be forgotten in the justice done his son. Thou art again
lord of Arragon, Cordova, and Segovia; and thy lady--behold her!”
The new emperor placed the hand of Elvira in that of Ernani. And then
again the emperor spoke, “YE ARE ALL PARDONED!”
But how black was the menacing cloud near at hand. The old grandee,
sternly frowning, and pressing his hand about a certain hunting horn,
whose blast was death.
PART IV.--THE MASQUERADE.
In Sarragossa, in the palace of the reinstated lord, his marriage was
being celebrated. Happy at last--the couple bound together for life.
The palace of Ernani, or rather Don Giovanni of Arragon, was all ablaze
with light; and the pale moonbeams, shooting into the palace-grounds,
showed numberless mysterious masquers flitting to and fro. It was a
grand masquerade the bridegroom was giving.
But among the masquers was one who spoke to nobody; who took note of
nobody; who moved along stealthily from group to group with a firm
merciless tread. They who looked very closely at the mysterious masquer,
noted that his hair was white, and that his eyes glittered fearfully
below his mask.
“Who is he?”
“See how angrily he looketh about him.”
“He seemeth a wizard!”
Still he took no notice, but went from group to group.
* * * * *
“Gentle love--thou hast not seen thy lover’s face so oft to-night that
thou shouldst wear thy eyelids down; look up, and light my very soul!”
“In truth, dear husband, I have some mysterious fear, I know not why,
and yet I tremble. A coming ill seemeth near.”
“Those who have felt the storm do tremble when the lightning flashes.
But now our sky is all unclouded, love; our life as happy as our hearts
are light. See how tranquil all about us seems; see, too, the guests are
going, the twinkling lights die out each after each, and tell us that
the morn is breaking. Dost thou still fear?”
“Who that has had nought but fears for what he hath--I fear, my love, I
fear. For thee--for thee alone.”
A low winding blast upon a horn swept past their ears.
“Why dost thou tremble, love, my Ernani? Is the air cold? or have I
frightened thee, perchance?”
Again the low destroying blast swept past them.
“See, see, Elvira! dost thou not see his eyes sparkling in the darkness?
I see his white teeth as he smiles mockingly!”
“Ernani! Ernani! I am terror-stricken!”
He looked quickly at her, as though he would confide in her some great
terror. Then a world of pity flooded his face, and he said quickly--
’Twas an old wound, Elvira, which leapt in pain. “Leave me a little,
love; I’ll come to thee soon.”
“A loving wife doth lovingly obey. I go.”
He followed her with his eyes till he could see her no longer, in the
moon-light, and then he knew he was alone with death. Yet for a moment
hope sprang up; the sound was surely fancy; the dread of what might be.
He was so little used to joy that now it was come he could not believe
in it. So he let go the dagger he had touched; and rising, prepared to
follow his bride.
Then again came the wailing sound, and following it were whispered the
mocking words--
“Take thou this horn--when from it sounds a blast
’Twill tell Ernani that his days are past.”
“MERCY!”
Creeping through the moonlight came the mysterious masquer--his face
seen now to be the unforgiving, revengeful face of Don Ruy, come to seek
atonement for the loss of a bride, and to demand the fulfilment of a
rash oath.
“So soon!”
“Aye--so soon! I come to turn thy myrtles to cypresses.”
“Think--oh think! I have drunk from the cup of bitterness all my
life--have tasted no happiness till now. Tarry a little--be
merciful--tarry a little.”
“‘Take thou this horn--when from it sounds a blast
’Twill tell Ernani that his days are past’”
“Again--mercy!”
“I am a Spaniard.”
Then came flitting through the shade the white figure of the doubting
bride. As she came near the spot where she had left Ernani she saw the
grandee, and needed no words to be assured that her foreboding was no
weak fear.
“See, she comes--thy bride--to see thee fall. Forward, fair
lady--forward, fair widow!”
“Don Ruy--art implacable?”
“As death--’Twill tell Ernani that his days are past.’”
“Don Ruy--I love him--I love him! Mercy, dear guardian, mercy!”
“That thou lov’st him is thy fault. Hasten, Ernani, if thou art of
Spanish blood.”
“Elvira--do not plead--it weakens my weak arm’”
But she was too loving to obey--too terror-stricken to look upon her
husband. She still remained upon the ground pleading hopelessly to the
don for mercy. Mercy, she could not tell for what; yet mercy she saw he
had the power to give.
“I knew it. Fate hath but spread this feast before mine eyes to make yet
blacker the bare truth. Don Ruy--if--if--”
“‘Take thou this horn--when from it--’”
“Ah--”
There was a dull thud, a swingeing sound, and the bridegroom was on the
ground, pressing his hand upon his side.
Spanish honor was appeased--he had paid the debt of the life he had
placed in the grandee’s hands, and which he had refused to purchase in
the catacombs.
“Farewell--dear love--farewell. Nor seek to follow me. Thou dead, who is
there left in all the world to love or think of me? As thou dost love
me, live for me--weep for me--guard my grave! Our happiness was but a
phantom. I knew ’twould vanish. Farewell--farewell!”
And still with his hand upon his side, his head fell upon her breast,
and he spoke no more.
There, on that spot, there were but two living human beings. The young
bride mutely clasping her dead husband in her arms; and the remorseless
noble standing over her unpityingly--unforgivingly--and glorying in his
terrible revenge!
MARTHA. (FLOTOW.)
CHAPTER I.
The Lady Henrietta--no, I will not divulge her surname--the Lady
Henrietta was ennuyed and bored--though she lived in the sixteenth
century. Furthermore, the honest fact is, that being bored, Henrietta
was far from agreeable, as two persons knew, to wit, Nancy, her
ladyship’s sharp waiting maid, and Lord Tristram, who was old and a
fool.
A fool decidedly--for courting a young and handsome woman. Hence, by
inference, you see that the Lady Henrietta was young and handsome. Yes,
young, handsome, rich, noble, healthy, and miserable!
She could not tell anybody why she was miserable, but on one particular
day, when her ladyship was rather more miserable than usual, within her
castle at Richmond; at Richmond statute fair some hundred yards off, not
a single lassie offering herself out for hire, on the dismal conditions
of that day, but was happier than my Lady Henrietta.
On that particular morning she was sitting snappishly at her
toilette--though, indeed, she was naturally good-tempered; but
aristocracy _has_ its miseries, or where _would_ the balance of things
be?--when Lord Tristam arrived. One might have solemnly declared,
without seeing my lord’s face, that my lord had been tripped up by youth
and had never overtaken that early visitor. The way in which the fair
Henrietta treated him was a satire upon man’s supremacy--indeed, this
lord of Cosmos was a supreme fool.
The old youngster coming in, she told him to kneel. He did. She told him
to get up. He did. She bade him shut the window. Click went the latch.
Immediately he heard the command to open it again. Then and there he did
it, and was rewarded by the sight of a pair of scornful shoulders.
And it was just when her ladyship was stamping her foot pettishly, and
the lord looking on in a doleful state, that, i’faith, such happy sounds
of singing stole through the window! Why, the voices must have belonged
to creatures as happy as lords. No, no, no; a mistake, kind reader, a
mistake. As happy as--as poor servants not knowing where their morrow’s
bread lay. Blessed--blessed--blessed hope, which paints that same
to-morrow so gaudily that we have not much grief for our rags and crusts
of to-day. And the morrow is to-day, and the morrow yet again, and still
we hope on, hope ever. Faith, I would sooner be Tom Tumbler at the next
show, with the “hope” of getting on Drury Lane boards, than the richest
and handsomest peer in England, if he has no aspirations whatever.
These poor servants were going to the statute fair, to get hired, if
they could; to hope for hiring if they could not; and, as they went on,
they sang merry songs.
Oh! the sudden thought struck her. There was not a poor servant wench
but wished to be a lady; why should not a lady wish to be a servant
wench? ’Tis but the law of reciprocity.
The very thought made her more joyful, or rather, less dismal than she
had been for some time. A moment more, as her natural good-temper came
back, and she had decided. Yes, she would dress in that peasant
masquerade dress of hers; and she would be--Martha; and Nancy should
be--Nancy. And--and would not his lordship join them? Of course his
lordship would. His lordship should be--John!
His lordship used plainer language than he had ever before used; his
lordship, in a word, declined flatly; but ah! love will lead
self-satisfied old-young men the queerest of dances; so, it is but just
old parties should go through their little hops and jigs, and puff and
blow all the way through the pretty little pas.
So let us just imagine Martha, Nancy, and John, making for the fair;
Martha laughing as she has not laughed for years, Nancy playing a
polite, impertinent second, and John doing his very best to be gay and
happy. Poor fellow!
CHAPTER II.
Even in this enlightened hour, at statute fairs English girls stand in
rows and exhibit their points--mental, menial, and physical, to as many
farmer’s wives as have tongues and eyes. ’Tis not a happy mode of hiring
servants, choosing them as you would sheep; but let us hope that a
better time is coming.
And, of course, in the dark middle age, statute fairs were held in
England; hence, we naturally get to that fair for which those blythe
singers were bound, and whom Lady Henrietta and her court of two
followed.
’Twas the usual scene: stout farmers’ wives marching about in the
superior manner, the girls looking about in rows of rosy cheeks and
giggles, and scandal everywhere; for at statute fairs the way in which
the maids run down their old mistresses, and the way in which the
mistresses run down their old maids, can easily be imagined.
In one quiet part of the market stood Lionel and Plunket, brothers and
farmers.
These two personages had come to hire two servants; but whether the
servants were of a very bad kind, or the farmers very difficult to
please, certain it is that these latter were servantless, though the
fair was half over.
They had not long lost their mother, a good mother, so they were not to
be satisfied with any kind of servants.
I love to make all plain, and therefore I may as well say at once that
these brothers were not brothers. If affection and sacrifice, and all
that kind of thing, made men real brothers, they would have been
brothers; but the same woman did not bear them. Plunket was the real son
of the mother whose death we have just mentioned, and Lionel was the
foundling, though as the mother had been a good woman, she had always
had enough love for both her own son and the foundling, and some,
indeed, left for the world in general. This old mother, in a year long
gone to sleep, had opened her door late one night, for being good she
had a stout heart, and there found a man and child upon the threshold.
The man died, the child lived to be her foundling, and her second son.
Who the man was they never learned. He died, and made no sign. Ah,
yes--that little diamond ring given to the good woman in keeping for his
son. If ever he was in trouble, this son of his, the ring was to be
carried to the queen. But Lionel had never been in any trouble up to the
time of the good woman’s death; soon after which the two farmers wanted
two servants, and came to the fair to seek them.
And thus naturally are we brought back to the fair.
Neither Lionel nor Plunket could find a single servant to their mind,
much less two, and so they went wandering about, and submitted to the
hard sarcasm of the would-be hired.
Meanwhile, in another part of the fair the sheriff was doing his duty
_like_ a sheriff. Said duty being to announce, as usual, that all
agreements between servants and masters were binding for twelve
months--said binding to be a legal fact from the very moment the said
servants took earnest money from the said masters. Also the sheriff was
a blessed go-between, announcing to the servants the wants of the
masters, and to the masters the wants of the servants. ’Twas surprising
how clever all the servants were according to their own showing, and how
doubtful the masters were in believing those same statements; and
indeed, ’tis true these statements might have led an observer to surmise
that all the good servants in the county had been discharged at one and
the same moment.
And it was just at the precise moment when the sheriff was going to
retreat, overwhelmed by numbers, that the Lady Henrietta--or Martha,
rather--Nancy, and the troubled John--Lord Tristam--came upon the noisy
scene.
Now, neither Martha nor Nancy were within a hundred yards of the
sheriff, when Lionel and Plunket marked them both, and bore down upon
them.
As the lord saw this, he was very urgent indeed that all this
disreputable masquerading should come to an end.
Whereupon Martha called out to my lord, “Sir, I’ll not have thee for my
master.” And Nancy added her objection too.
“So please thee, good man, thou canst not force the girls to serve,”
said Plunket, at whom the old lord stared. However, he could not stare
long, for all the servant girls about, hearing Martha refuse the old
gentleman’s service, pressed about him, each playing her own little
trumpet at the top of her voice. And, to be short, the old young lord
thought himself perfectly justified in running away. Lady Henrietta was
Lady Henrietta, but that was no reason why his lordship should be
worried dead, so he thought he had better go; and did.
“Nancy, Nancy, they are looking at us.” True, indeed, spoke Martha;
Lionel and Plunket _were_ looking at “us,” and in the act of questioning
each other touching “us.”
And it was at this precise moment that Nancy told Lady Henrietta she was
trembling, and Lady Henrietta told Nancy that she suffered also from the
same cause.
The chronicles do not state which of the quartette spoke first, while on
the other hand the author was not present at the interview. But let it
be admitted that Plunket spoke first, and said--“Hem--do ye seek a
service, maidens--will ye bargain with us?”
“A capital bargain,” said the other farmer.
“Well,” said Lady Henrietta.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” said Nancy, who, being a lady’s-maid, was infinitely
scornful at the idea of being a farmer’s servant.
“Oh,” said stout Plunket to the latter, “I love laughter--work is better
done by far when servants all gay-hearted are.”
The “maidens” were still doubtful, so the farmer Plunket set to work to
show the “place” was not an every-day place--and--and the upshot of it
all was that Lady Henrietta, and, oh, more terrible by far, Lady
Henrietta’s maid, engaged themselves as farm servants to the two stout
young farmers--and then took their earnest money (Lady Henrietta didn’t
know what to do with her Queen Elizabeth’s shilling, and so she dropped
it)--their earnest money, which bound these two to their masters for
twelve whole weary months.
As her ladyship gave up the first money she had ever earned in her life,
Lord Tristam came to view again--still harassed by not a few stout
handmaidens, who, it seemed, had determined he should choose one of
them. However, he flung a good amount of silver about; then, feeling at
liberty once more, he came with an air towards the two girls; whereupon
he was warned off by their new masters, who seemed rather proud of their
proprietorship.
Then it was that the Lady Henrietta proposed to return home. Alas, that
despised shilling! Within five minutes more she learned she was actually
a servant--bound as surely as any apprentice; and, indeed, the sheriff
arrived precisely at that moment, to settle the matter beyond all
dispute. Meanwhile, my lord stood in the background, a picture of
bewildered despair, and Lady Henrietta stood in the foreground almost in
tears. Why, if the court heard of all this she should never be able to
show herself in that court’s presence! At all events, the truth could
not be spoken then and there. Let her be silent before the horrid mob.
Hence it was that Lady Henrietta went off quite meekly as a farm
servant, while Nancy took the same road, jerking her head and flouncing
her garments as only lady’s maids of all climes and times could and can
manage it.
As for Lord Tristam, he looked as nearly ridiculous as an English lord
ever could look!
CHAPTER III.
Imagine that the two farmers and their new servants have arrived at the
farm-house--a large, roomy, old building, with deep bay windows of wavy
green glass, in the very heart of the forest.
“Home at last,” said Plunket, who had pioneered the flouncing Nancy, as
he thrust the key into the lock. As they all entered, Lady Henrietta
could not help comparing the place to a prison. However, she did not
make the odious comparison in a loud voice.
“There,” said Plunket, who was spokesman for the two, and addressing the
girls, “there, that’s your room.”
“Oh--tha-a-a-ank you,” said the Lady Henrietta.
“_In_-deed,” said the sharp Nancy.
“Good night,” said her ladyship, and turned sleepily towards the door;
for, truth to tell, her ladyship had never even dreamed of such
journeying as she had performed that luckless day. “Good night,” and she
had her hand upon the latch.
The stout Plunket stared. “Good night--why there’s work to do!”
“Wo-o-o-ork,” said Henrietta. And Nancy too, shrieked out the little
word.
“Of course--take my hat,” said Plunket.
Nancy took the hat immediately, but she privately shot it into a corner.
Lionel also held out his hat to Henrietta, but he seemed to do so rather
because it brought him near her, than as the act of her legal master for
twelve months, less one day. Henrietta took it, and knowing no more what
to do with it than she had known what to do with the fast binding
shilling, dropped it. But Lionel did not mark that fall--his eyes were
on the new servant’s handsome face. Indeed, he was in love with her, I
think.
“Work--work--work,” said Plunket.
“But I’m shivering with cold!”
“And so am I,” said Nancy.
“Brother,” said Lionel, “brother, she’s shivering with cold, you know.”
Then Nancy committed herself to this sharp remark,
“I’m sure this house is damp!”
If anybody had told the Lady Henrietta on the previous day that she
could fall asleep before two strange men of the farmer kind, she would
have been justified in denying the proposition, but ’tis a fact that now
she sat down, laid her head upon her hands, and was off into a nap.
Whereon, it need not be said, Nancy fell asleep too, for Nancy knew her
duty. Indeed, it may be said that Nancy was very considerably enjoying
this comedy--in her way. However, she did not enjoy the horrid shake
with which rough farmer Plunket woke her. Plunket, somehow, did not use
quite so much violence in waking up Henrietta. Perhaps this was because
Lionel quietly touched him on the arm. And--and perhaps the Lady
Henrietta was more handsome than ever, with her eyes closed.
“Hullo--what are your names?” said rough farmer Plunket.
“Name--name,” said Henrietta, as though puzzled at that plain question.
“Name, sir. Oh, I’m--I’m MARTHA, so please you.” And she made a bob
curtsey.
“And _I’m_ Betsy,” said Nancy, and she made a broken-backed curtsey.
“And not a bad name for a good girl is Betsy,” said farmer Plunket.
“Betsy, put my cloak away.”
Which the indignant handmaiden did in the manner of the hat.
And then it was that Plunket proposed spinning. Why, neither of the
girls knew a distaff from any other staff in the world. And then,
surely, it would have been delightful to hear the great men direct the
little women how to spin, still more delightful to see their great hands
pressing the thin thread. But ah! nor one nor the other could have given
the delight which the young farmer of the name of Lionel felt, when he
found himself bending over the beautiful, delicate-handed servant, and
actually touching those same delicate hands.
Br-r-r-r-r, br-r-r-r-r, br-r-r-r-r, went the wheels, the industrious
wheels, and soon Martha was producing a highly creditable thread.
Meanwhile, Nancy was making Plunket half wild, for her wheel kept flying
first one way and then the other, and the flax got all manner of ways,
the whole machinery looking as though in a fatal fit. Meanwhile, Martha
was industriously spinning, and her young master as industriously
praising her. At last Plunket got into a rage as Miss Betsy finally
upset the wheel with a crash, and he was preparing to pounce upon her in
the real old English middle age manner, when the spinster showed
herself deft at running at least, and fled from the room, followed by
Plunket, with threats of divers kinds.
As she was scudding round the door post, and looking over her shoulder,
Martha looked up from her demure employment (neither she nor Lionel had
heard the crash) and no longer seeing Nancy, or Betsy, behold the
birr-birring of her wheel ceased, and she started up from the
work-a-day, wooden seat.
“Nay, thou art not afraid.”
“Afraid--I? Of you--oh no.”
And she thought, for a farmer, he seemed very gentle; he also thought
she was very superior, for a servant; and, as he was his own master, he
had a right to think as he liked. Truth to tell, I think she was
beginning to feel kindly towards the gentle farmer.
“So thou art not afraid of me, Martha?”
“Oh no,” she said again; still, nevertheless wishing Nancy to return.
“I promise thee, Martha, I will be a kind master--a better master thou
shalt not wish for.”
“And I promise thee, master, I shall be a bad servant--a worse servant
thou wilt never wish to be rid of. The honest truth and the plain truth
is, I’m only fit for laughing.”
“Well, if thou canst only laugh--i’faith, laugh. Thou doest that
bravely. I’ll not part with thee, Martha. I’d rather die than part with
thee, Martha!”
“Sir,” said the new servant, in faint surprise. ’Twas a
love-at-first-sight declaration, she knew.
“And can you sing, Martha, as well as laugh? Sing now, sing about this
rose,” here he took the little blossom from her bosom.
“Give me the rose.”
“Nay, thou wilt let me keep it.”
“Give me the rose, I say.”
“But--but.”
“Nay, master, if you _will_ keep it, keep it.”
And--she sang. The Lady Henrietta was beginning to enjoy the comedy.
There was a deal of unlooked-for happiness about it, somehow.
It was at the end of this song, the honest chronicler states, that
Lionel went down on his knees before the _new_ servant, and in plain
straightforward terms told her he loved her. This may appear a highly
rapid mode of courtship, but reference to middle age authorities--and
the authorities of Elizabeth may surely be called middle aged--will
thoroughly set at rest this question in the mind of any sceptical
reader, if I have to deplore such a one. I do not know the authorities
by name, but that has nothing whatever to do with it.
The lady smiling a little as the impromptu lover tore away all question
of inferiority of rank on her part; this latter, as see the authorities
again, was for suicide and sudden death, but the perky Nancy coming into
the room, followed by Plunket, the young farmer Lionel only got up off
his knees.
The new servant, Nancy, it seemed, had drawn a mug of beer, but
forgotten to turn the tap off, hence flight on her part and pursuit on
the part of farmer Plunket, who, chasing his prey up into a sharp
corner, caught a crashing box on her saucy ears.
Then it was that the village clock struck such a late hour as farmers
should never hear, except on the nights of fairs.
So the candles were lit, and the new servants respectfully lighted their
young masters to the door.
Then left alone, the two girls looked at each other in the blankest
manner possible. Beyond a doubt the whole castle was in an uproar;
everybody hunting for her, (Nancy said, “hunting for us,”) and how
should she explain her absence to the scandal-mongers?
“Well,” said Nancy, “they seem brave lads and honest.”
“And respectful.”
“Hum--good rough kind of souls, my lady.”
“Yes, I wish heartily we were at home.”
“We might as well wish for the queen’s diamonds.”
And here it was both the girls started, for a very distinct tapping came
at the window. They were still trembling when the tapping was renewed,
and a weak old voice cried, “Cousin--cousin.”
Perhaps Lady Henrietta never heard the old lord’s voice with less
dislike than now. She opened the casement herself, and Tristam jumped in
as lightly as possible.
Joy! their imprisonment was at an end. But--but the lady Henrietta
seemed a little sorry to go. Indeed, when she had stepped lightly
through the window-case, she half hesitated, as though she would turn
back; but the impetuous Nancy in a measure drove her forward, and the
next moment she was galloping away from the farm on her horse’s back,
kindly brought by his lordship; but--but her thoughts were at the farm.
My Lord Tristam in making his hurried exit from the people’s place,
overturned a table; and barely had he reached the ground through the
window, when Lionel was up and preparing to enter the room where the
spinning machines stood.
He tapped at her door--no answer. Again he tapped--no answer. Then he
called Plunket, who came stormily into the room, but when he heard that
the servants made no answer, he was alarmed, for he felt friendly
towards the troublesome Betsy, and he flung the room door open. Empty!
Then--the window was open! He went to it; listened! and sure enough in
the distance he, and Lionel too, heard the sound of horses’ feet, and at
one and the same moment each felt a blank at his heart. Lionel fell upon
a chair overwhelmed, like a youth deeply in love as he was, but stout
farmer Plunket, boiling with rage, called out in a voice of thunder to
his farm servants; and when these people came hurrying in, he promised a
golden guinea to the two men who should catch the runaways, and he then
set to work, to earn his own guinea by a search after Nancy; but he and
the men did not dream of that fugitive being within the walls of “the
castle,” and they passed the mighty building, and went on hunting, long
after Martha, Betsy, and John were safely housed.
CHAPTER IV.
Plunket had a heart, and had perhaps been inclined to bestow it upon
Nancy, for this kind of thing is catching; but the jade had flown,
Plunket was not the man to go about filling the air with big sighs--he
set to work, drinking beer, and plenty of it, and singing jolly songs.
After all, farmer Plunket was wise. Now, on the other hand, Lionel
actually went melancholy mad.
Not three days after the catastrophe, Plunket was out in the woods
humming away, when he came up against--Betsy; and in quite a grand
hunting costume. She was as full of presence of mind as of sauciness.
She stared at the man with lazy curiosity.
In a dozen strong words he told her she was his servant, and the sheriff
should decide it.
“‘Tis a wild beast!” And giving the view halloo of that day, a number of
huntresses were soon about him, and kept him at bay. And indeed, they
quite protected Nancy, and Plunket had the worst of it.
Meanwhile, poor Lionel was wandering in this very wood, at this very
time, and disconsolate as Ariadne, but not one millionth part as
faithless.
It was a grand court hunting day in fact; Elizabeth Tudor had got up
that morning at six to chase the deer, and one of many huntresses
present was Lady Henrietta. Coming again to Lady Henrietta, I may
mention that the company she had most loved since her forced visit to
the farm house was her own; indeed, she too had grown melancholy, but
hers was very far from such a dismal strait as Lionel’s.
Well--in one part of the forest sat on the turf Lord Tristam and Martha
(let us call her Martha now and then). The thing which my lord could not
comprehend was why her ladyship had left the queen’s party--the
_queen’s_ party. He could see no significance in the answer--because she
wished to be alone. At last she plainly asked him to leave her, and,
hardly believing the testimony of his ears, he ambled away.
And then it was that her tears went tumbling down upon the dewy grass.
Oh! if no bitterer tears had ever been shed than Lady Henrietta’s what a
blissful world it would have been down to that precious May morning!
And thus Lionel, ever wandering in the wood, found her.
The next scene is really so painful that I would rather shut my eyes to
it; but alas, did I do so there would be such an hiatus in this true
history that you might fancy the printing gentlemen engaged upon it were
of the eccentric kind. So in a few short and unwilling words let me tell
the cruel truth. He recognized her and she screamed. Thereupon, Lord
Tristam, who, of course, was not far off, made his appearance, and with
him a perfect posse. Then and there Lionel declared the lady his
servant--the Lady Henrietta! So they declared he was mad, and were going
to fall upon him, when she interceded for him and prayed that they would
let him go. Then it was that Plunket came on the scene and recognized
Martha; but little said he, smart farmer.
Suddenly, the sound of loud trumpets declared Elizabeth, Queen of
England, was near at hand, and, as they finally drove Lionel back, he,
poor fellow and foundling, thought of the small diamond ring which was
to be so talismanic. He took it from his finger, pressed it within
Plunket’s right hand, and bade him give it to the queen.
“Aye-aye, lad,” said Plunket; and meant it.
CHAPTER V.
That pleasant old farm house, once so happy, was as dull as the forest
at midnight. Lionel grew more and more melancholy; and, indeed, farmer
Plunket was not very cheerful, though he would not give in.
Plunket was sitting by himself one day, and waiting for somebody--whom?
The Lady Henrietta herself. Her conscience was at work. So she
determined to save him.
A little and farmer Plunket gave a start of relief--’twas the arrival of
the lady and her maid Nancy, now no longer the saucy, for she had a kind
heart, as she felt somewhat the gloomy end of the masquerade at the
fair.
Well, the farmer and Nancy left the lady by herself. And then, then she
sang the little song she sang when he asked her to sing on that night
when Lionel brought her home as his servant.
She looked tremblingly about her as she sang on and on to the end of the
verse, and then Lionel came slowly into the room.
Ah--I have forgotten to say this farmer Lionel was an earl. The dead
owner of the diamond ring had been unjustly banished; years and years
before his sentence was declared unjust; years and years had people
wondered where the earl tarried, and now, the diamond ring placed in the
queen’s hands, was the clue to the whole mystery.
I know that the coming of Lady Henrietta to the farmhouse must look
interested. ’Tis a pity almost that Lionel does not remain a poor
farmer; but there, the queen has the ring--his birth is recognized; and
so, Martha must remain under the imputation of telling him she loved
him, not for himself, but for his title. For truth to tell, she went up
to him, and whispered that she loved him. But alas! he was too sunk in
melancholy to feel his heart beat high at hearing those words. He turned
away from her with angry pride.
But as the Lady Henrietta did not feel outraged, as she still strove to
find a way of leading Lionel back to his old self, perhaps these little
circumstances will be set down in favor of disinterested love on her
part; and if the gentlemanly reader will remember, I have said _she was
very dreamy in the woods_.
Well, this was the lady’s next plan: It was as old as romance. It seems
if one bereft of sense is brought into a scene similar to one which gave
him great happiness, the effect may be so great as to restore him to
consciousness. And as the Lady Henrietta knew ’twas a happy hour for
Lionel when he engaged her as a servant, she determined to have a mock
statute fair, sheriff and all, in her park.
I am always so eager to tell good news that I cannot stand dallying with
the trumpet in my hand; and having told it, I frequently find I am at a
loss what to say, in continuation, which is a disconcerting drawback.
Yet nevertheless, though I could make a fine scene here by borrowing
from the chronicle, I prefer at once to say that there never was such a
success as this imitation statute fair--for Lionel came to his loving
senses and took Martha to his very heart.
And--now, I do not know what to say next! I have told all my news--I am
at a standstill!
What _can_ come next?
Oh! of course. They were married, and lived happy ever afterwards. ’Tis
just like the end of a comic opera.
And stout farmer Plunket was married to Nancy. She made the best of
wives, says the old chronicle with a concluding flourish.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Tales from the Operas, by George Frederick Pardon