HUSBAND AND WIFE.
First rose a star out owre the hill,
And next the lovelier moon;
While the bonnie bride o' Galloway
Looked for her blythe bridegroom;
Lythlie she sang as the new moon rose,
Blythe as a young bride may,
When the new moon lights her lamp o' love,
And blinks the bride away.--CROMEK.
Sir Patrick Gray sprang from a couch, where dreams, rather than sleep,
had pressed thick and fast upon him. He rose while yet the summer sun
was below the green Galloway hills, and while the dark waters of the
Dee were veiled by the white mists of the early morning.
His mind was full of Murielle, and he was not without hope, that while
all the numerous household and powerful feudal garrison were yet abed,
he might find some means to communicate with her--to see, to speak
to one so beloved--one from whom he had been so long, so wickedly
separated--his seven years' wedded wife!
It seemed to Gray, while thinking of this, that some one had been
softly and timidly tapping at his door.
Gently drawing back the numerous bars of wood and iron, with
which the doors of all bed-chambers in old Scottish mansions were
furnished in those days and for long after, he stepped into an arched
corridor; then, on looking along its dusky vista, he saw a female
figure approach, and what were his emotions on beholding the sudden
realization of his dearest wish--Murielle, who had left the room thus
early on the same errand and with the same desperate yet tenderly
loving hope, had been watching the door of _his_ chamber.
She seemed pale and wan, as one who had been sleepless; but though more
womanly and more full in figure, she was otherwise unchanged as when
he had seen her last, on that happy and yet unfortunate night, in the
church of St. Genevieve, in Flanders.
"At last, my Murielle!"
"At _last_ we meet--but oh! for a moment only."
They clasped each other in a tender embrace--heart to heart, and lip to
lip. His face was bent on hers, and her tears of joy and fear fell fast.
"You love me still, Murielle?"
"_Still!_" she reiterated reproachfully--"oh, with all my life and
strength."
"But to what a hopeless love and aimless life have my passion and its
selfish ties consigned you!" said he; "we are the slaves of others and
of destiny."
"Such have we ever been, since that fatal day on which my cousins,
William and David, were slain. That was in 1440, _ten_ long, long years
ago; but--"
"A crisis in our fate is coming now, dear Murielle."
"But say why--oh, why are you here--here in Thrave, here, where your
life is in peril so deadly?"
"I am come, in our good king's name, to demand MacLellan's release, and
to invite the earl, under cartel, to meet the council at Stirling, that
all these evils may be peacefully ended."
"I pray to the kind Father of all, and to his Blessed Mother, who is
in heaven, that it may be so," sighed poor Murielle. "But oh, I am so
weary, weary--so sad and weary here! They keep me quite a prisoner,
though not so cruelly as they keep Sir Thomas MacLellan; for I am told
by Marion Douglas that he is confined in the pit."
"Mahoun! say you so, dearest--in that horrid vault?"
"Yes; but hush--we may be overheard."
"Ah! my brave and noble kinsman--such a doom! Was it not in that
dungeon that Earl Archibald, the first duke of Touraine, kept
MacLellan, the laird of Borgue, chained, like a wild beast, till he
became a jabbering idiot, and when found by the prior of St. Mary's
Isle, he was laughing as he strove to catch the single sunbeam that
fell through the grated slit into his prison--yea, striving fatuously
to catch it with his thin, wan, fettered hand--the same hand that
carried the king's banner at the battle of Homildon!"
"Do not frown thus, my dearest heart," said Murielle, weeping; "I have
little need to add to the hatred that grows apace in every breast
against the name of Douglas."
"Do not say in _every_ breast, sweet Murielle--sweet wife," he added,
pressing her close and closer still in his embrace; "for my heart is
wrung with anguish and with love for you, and of this love God alone
knoweth the depth and the strength!"
Murielle continued to weep in silence.
"My love for you," resumed Gray, "and my duty to the king, whom my
father, old Sir Andrew Gray, taught me to love, respect, and almost
worship, are impulses that rend my heart between them. At the risk
of my life I have ridden here on the king's service, alone, with no
protection but my sword, my hand, and, it may be, this royal tabard--a
badge but little respected on this side of the Nith or Annan."
"And you came----"
"To see you, and to save MacLellan from the fate of Sir Herbert
Herries. God wot, though, I would give the last drop of my blood to
serve my kinsman. A king's herald might have borne the mandate as well
as I; but the hope of seeing you--of hearing your dear voice, of
concerting some plan for your escape and future freedom from a tyranny
that is maddening,--chiefly, if not alone, brought me into the wilds of
Galloway--the very land and stronghold of the enemies of the throne."
"Say not the enemies," said Murielle mournfully. "I hope that men
misjudge us sorely."
"I hope they do; yet there are strange whispers abroad of a rebel
league with the earls of Ross and Crawford, with Henry of England, and
the lord of the Isles--a league to dethrone the king and plunge the
land in ruin. But let us speak at present of escape--of flight----"
"My disappearance would be your destruction; all Galloway, with hound
and horn, would be upon your track."
"True--Douglas gave me his word for safety only while _within_ the
walls of Thrave," said Gray, bitterly.
"The most sunny summer-day may have its clouds, dear Patrick; but here,
in this dull residence, with me it is ever cloud, and never sunshine--I
mean the sunshine of the heart. My time is passed, as it were, in
perpetual winter. I have no solace--no friend--no amusement, but my
cithern and the songs you loved so well----"
"And love _still_, Murielle, for the sake of you!"
"So cheerlessly I live on without hope or aim, a wedded nun, amid
councils of fierce and stern men, whose meetings, debates, and thoughts
are all for opposition, and revenge for the terrible deed of 1440."
"In other words, Murielle, men who are ripe for treason and rebellion."
"Why _will_ you speak or think so harshly of us?" she asked so
imploringly that Gray kissed her tenderly as his only or best reply.
"And that spiteful beauty your sister--what says she of me
now?"----"That you are the king's liege man," was the cautious answer.
"She is right, my beloved one--I am his till death----"
"And our enemy!" said a sharp voice close by them, like the hiss of a
snake.
They turned and saw Margaret, the countess of Douglas, standing at the
entrance of her bower-chamber, the tapestry covering the door of which
she held back with one hand. She was clad entirely in black, with a
long veil of fine lace depending from the apex of her lofty head-dress,
enveloping her haughty head and handsome white shoulders. She was
somewhat changed since Gray had seen her last, for angry passions were
lining her young face prematurely; her marvellous beauty remained in
all its striking power; but it was the beauty of a devil--_diavolessa_,
an Italian would term it. Ten years of feud and anxious hostility to
the crown and its adherents had imparted a sternness to her fine brow,
a keen boldness to her black eyes, and a sneering scorn to her lovely
lip that made her seem a tragedy queen.
"And so another errand than the king's message, anent his minion's life
or death, has brought you hither, scurvy patch!" said she scornfully;
"but by St. Bryde I shall rid our house and my sister of such intrusive
visitors!"
"Madame," Gray began, with anger.
"Varlet--would you dare to threaten me?" she exclaimed, holding up a
clenched hand, which was white, small, and singularly beautiful; "but,
my gay moth, you will flutter about that poor candle until your wings
are burnt. I have but to say one word to Douglas of this clandestine
meeting and he will hang you in your boots and tabard above our gate,
where Herbert of Teregles and many a better man has hung."
"Oh, sister Margaret," urged Murielle, trembling like an aspen-leaf.
"Ha--to speak that word would remove the only barrier to your being
duchess of Albany--and why should I _not_ speak it?" she continued
fiercely and with flashing eyes; "Why should I not speak it?"
"Because, dear Maggie, you have still some gentle mercy left, and
Heaven forbids you," said Murielle, clinging to her pitiless sister.
"Begone, madam," said the latter imperiously; "your instant obedience
alone purchases my silence. But here comes Sir Alan Lauder."
So ended abruptly, as at the abbot's house in Edinburgh, this
unexpected meeting. Terror for her lover-husband's life made Murielle
withdraw instantly with her sister, just as Sir Alan Lauder of the
Bass, who was still captain and governor of Thrave, approached with
an undisguised sneer on his lips to say that the earl would receive
Sir Patrick Gray at brekfaast, in his own chamber, and there give his
answer to the king's message.