Kitabı oku: «The Abbot», sayfa 6
Chapter the Seventh
When I hae a saxpence under my thumb,
Then I get credit in ilka town;
But when I am puir they bid me gae by —
Oh, poverty parts good company!
OLD SONG.
While the departure of the page afforded subject for the conversation which we have detailed in our last chapter, the late favourite was far advanced on his solitary journey, without well knowing what was its object, or what was likely to be its end. He had rowed the skiff in which he left the castle, to the side of the lake most distant from the village, with the desire of escaping from the notice of the inhabitants. His pride whispered, that he would be in his discarded state, only the subject of their wonder and compassion; and his generosity told him, that any mark of sympathy which his situation should excite, might be unfavourably reported at the castle. A trifling incident convinced him he had little to fear for his friends on the latter score. He was met by a young man some years older than himself, who had on former occasions been but too happy to be permitted to share in his sports in the subordinate character of his assistant. Ralph Fisher approached to greet him, with all the alacrity of an humble friend.
“What, Master Roland, abroad on this side, and without either hawk or hound?”
“Hawk or hound,” said Roland, “I will never perhaps hollo to again. I have been dismissed – that is, I have left the castle.”
Ralph was surprised. “What! you are to pass into the Knight’s service, and take the black jack and the lance?”
“Indeed,” replied Roland Graeme, “I am not – I am now leaving the service of Avenel for ever.”
“And whither are you going, then?” said the young peasant.
“Nay, that is a question which it craves time to answer – I have that matter to determine yet,” replied the disgraced favourite.
“Nay, nay,” said Ralph, “I warrant you it is the same to you which way you go – my Lady would not dismiss you till she had put some lining into the pouches of your doublet.”
“Sordid slave!” said Roland Graeme, “dost thou think I would have accepted a boon from one who was giving me over a prey to detraction and to ruin, at the instigation of a canting priest and a meddling serving-woman? The bread that I had bought with such an alms would have choked me at the first mouthful.”
Ralph looked at his quondam friend with an air of wonder not unmixed with contempt. “Well,” he said, at length, “no occasion for passion – each man knows his own stomach best – but, were I on a black moor at this time of day, not knowing whither I was going, I should be glad to have a broad piece or two in my pouch, come by them as I could. – But perhaps you will go with me to my father’s – that is, for a night, for to-morrow we expect my uncle Menelaus and all his folk; but, as I said, for one night – ”
The cold-blooded limitation of the offered shelter to one night only, and that tendered most unwillingly, offended the pride of the discarded favourite.
“I would rather sleep on the fresh heather, as I have done many a night on less occasion,” said Roland Graeme, “than in the smoky garret of your father, that smells of peat smoke and usquebaugh like a Highlander’s plaid.”
“You may choose, my master, if you are so nice,” replied Ralph Fisher; “you may be glad to smell a peat-fire, and usquebaugh too, if you journey long in the fashion you propose. You might have said God-a-mercy for your proffer, though – it is not every one that will put themselves in the way of ill-will by harbouring a discarded serving-man.”
“Ralph,” said Roland Graeme, “I would pray you to remember that I have switched you before now, and this is the same riding-wand which you have tasted.”
Ralph, who was a thickset clownish figure, arrived at his full strength, and conscious of the most complete personal superiority, laughed contemptuously at the threats of the slight-made stripling.
“It may be the same wand,” he said, “but not the same hand; and that is as good rhyme as if it were in a ballad. Look you, my Lady’s page that was, when your switch was up, it was no fear of you, but of your betters, that kept mine down – and I wot not what hinders me from clearing old scores with this hazel rung, and showing you it was your Lady’s livery-coat which I spared, and not your flesh and blood, Master Roland.”
In the midst of his rage, Roland Graeme was just wise enough to see, that by continuing this altercation, he would subject himself to very rude treatment from the boor, who was so much older and stronger than himself; and while his antagonist, with a sort of jeering laugh of defiance, seemed to provoke the contest, he felt the full bitterness of his own degraded condition, and burst into a passion of tears, which he in vain endeavoured to conceal with both his hands.
Even the rough churl was moved with the distress of his quondam companion.
“Nay, Master Roland,” he said, “I did but as ‘twere jest with thee – I would not harm thee, man, were it but for old acquaintance sake. But ever look to a man’s inches ere you talk of switching – why, thine arm, man, is but like a spindle compared to mine. – But hark, I hear old Adam Woodcock hollowing to his hawk – Come along, man, we will have a merry afternoon, and go jollily to my father’s in spite of the peat-smoke and usquebaugh to boot. Maybe we may put you into some honest way of winning your bread, though it’s hard to come by in these broken times.”
The unfortunate page made no answer, nor did he withdraw his hands from his face, and Fisher continued in what he imagined a suitable tone of comfort.
“Why, man, when you were my Lady’s minion, men held you proud, and some thought you a Papist, and I wot not what; and so, now that you have no one to bear you out, you must be companionable and hearty, and wait on the minister’s examinations, and put these things out of folk’s head; and if he says you are in fault, you must jouk your head to the stream; and if a gentleman, or a gentleman’s gentleman, give you a rough word, or a light blow, you must only say, thank you for dusting my doublet, or the like, as I have done by you. – But hark to Woodcock’s whistle again. Come, and I will teach you all the trick on’t as we go on.”
“I thank you,” said Roland Graeme, endeavouring to assume an air of indifference and of superiority; “but I have another path before me, and were it otherwise, I could not tread in yours.”
“Very true, Master Roland,” replied the clown; “and every man knows his own matters best, and so I will not keep you from the path, as you say. Give us a grip of your hand, man, for auld lang syne. – What! not clap palms ere we part? – well, so be it – a wilful man will have his way, and so farewell, and the blessing of the morning to you.”
“Good-morrow – good-morrow,” said Roland, hastily; and the clown walked lightly off, whistling as he went, and glad, apparently, to be rid of an acquaintance, whose claims might be troublesome, and who had no longer the means to be serviceable to him.
Roland Graeme compelled himself to walk on while they were within sight of each other that his former intimate might not augur any vacillation of purpose, or uncertainty of object, from his remaining on the same spot; but the effort was a painful one. He seemed stunned, as it were, and giddy; the earth on which he stood felt as if unsound, and quaking under his feet like the surface of a bog; and he had once or twice nearly fallen, though the path he trode was of firm greensward. He kept resolutely moving forward, in spite of the internal agitation to which these symptoms belonged, until the distant form of his acquaintance disappeared behind the slope of a hill, when his heart failed at once; and, sitting down on the turf, remote from human ken, he gave way to the natural expressions of wounded pride, grief, and fear, and wept with unrestrained profusion and unqualified bitterness.
When the first violent paroxysm of his feelings had subsided, the deserted and friendless youth felt that mental relief which usually follows such discharges of sorrow. The tears continued to chase each other down his cheeks, but they were no longer accompanied by the same sense of desolation; an afflicting yet milder sentiment was awakened in his mind, by the recollection of his benefactress, of the unwearied kindness which had attached her to him, in spite of many acts of provoking petulance, now recollected as offences of a deep dye, which had protected him against the machinations of others, as well as against the consequences of his own folly, and would have continued to do so, had not the excess of his presumption compelled her to withdraw her protection.
“Whatever indignity I have borne,” he said, “has been the just reward of my own ingratitude. And have I done well to accept the hospitality, the more than maternal kindness, of my protectress, yet to detain from her the knowledge of my religion? – but she shall know that a Catholic has as much gratitude as a Puritan – that I have been thoughtless, but not wicked – that in my wildest moments I have loved, respected, and honoured her – and that the orphan boy might indeed be heedless, but was never ungrateful!”
He turned, as these thoughts passed through his mind, and began hastily to retread his footsteps towards the castle. But he checked the first eagerness of his repentant haste, when he reflected on the scorn and contempt with which the family were likely to see the return of the fugitive, humbled, as they must necessarily suppose him, into a supplicant, who requested pardon for his fault, and permission to return to his service. He slackened his pace, but he stood not still.
“I care not,” he resolutely determined; “let them wink, point, nod, sneer, speak of the conceit which is humbled, of the pride which has had a fall – I care not; it is a penance due to my folly, and I will endure it with patience. But if she also, my benefactress, if she also should think me sordid and weak-spirited enough to beg, not for her pardon alone, but for a renewal of the advantages which I derived from her favour —her suspicion of my meanness I cannot – I will not brook.”
He stood still, and his pride rallying with constitutional obstinacy against his more just feeling, urged that he would incur the scorn of the Lady of Avenel, rather than obtain her favour, by following the course which the first ardour of his repentant feelings had dictated to him.
“If I had but some plausible pretext,” he thought, “some ostensible reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go thither – but as I am, I cannot – my heart would leap from its place and burst.”
As these thoughts swept through his mind, something passed in the air so near him as to dazzle his eyes, and almost to brush the plume in his cap. He looked up – it was the favourite falcon of Sir Halbert, which, flying around his head, seemed to claim his attention, as that of a well-known friend. Roland extended his arm, and gave the accustomed whoop, and the falcon instantly settled on his wrist, and began to prune itself, glancing at the youth from time to time an acute and brilliant beam of its hazel eye, which seemed to ask why he caressed it not with his usual fondness.
“Ah, Diamond!” he said, as if the bird understood him, “thou and I must be strangers henceforward. Many a gallant stoop have I seen thee make, and many a brave heron strike down; but that is all gone and over, and there is no hawking more for me!”
“And why not, Master Roland,” said Adam Woodcock the falconer, who came at that instant from behind a few alder bushes which had concealed him from view, “why should there be no more hawking for you? Why, man, what were our life without our sports? – thou know’st the jolly old song —
“And rather would Allan in dungeon lie,
Than live at large where the falcon cannot fly;
And Allan would rather lie in Sexton’s pound,
Than live where he followed not the merry hawk and hound.”
The voice of the falconer was hearty and friendly, and the tone in which he half-sung half-recited his rude ballad, implied honest frankness and cordiality. But remembrance of their quarrel, and its consequences, embarrassed Roland, and prevented his reply. The falconer saw his hesitation, and guessed the cause.
“What now,” said he, “Master Roland? do you, who are half an Englishman, think that I, who am a whole one, would keep up anger against you, and you in distress? That were like some of the Scots, (my master’s reverence always excepted,) who can be fair and false, and wait their time, and keep their mind, as they say, to themselves, and touch pot and flagon with you, and hunt and hawk with you, and, after all, when time serves, pay off some old feud with the point of the dagger. Canny Yorkshire has no memory for such old sores. Why, man, an you had hit me a rough blow, maybe I would rather have taken it from you, than a rough word from another; for you have a good notion of falconry, though you stand up for washing the meat for the eyases. So give us your hand, man, and bear no malice.”
Roland, though he felt his proud blood rebel at the familiarity of honest Adam’s address, could not resist its downright frankness. Covering his face with the one hand, he held out the other to the falconer, and returned with readiness his friendly grasp.
“Why, this is hearty now,” said Woodcock; “I always said you had a kind heart, though you have a spice of the devil in your disposition, that is certain. I came this way with the falcon on purpose to find you, and yon half-bred lubbard told me which way you took flight. You ever thought too much of that kestril-kite, Master Roland, and he knows nought of sport after all, but what he caught from you. I saw how it had been betwixt you, and I sent him out of my company with a wanion – I would rather have a rifler on my perch than a false knave at my elbow – and now, Master Roland, tell me what way wing ye?”
“That is as God pleases,” replied the page, with a sigh which he could not suppress.
“Nay, man, never droop a feather for being cast off,” said the falconer; “who knows but you may soar the better and fairer flight for all this yet? – Look at Diamond there, ‘tis a noble bird, and shows gallantly with his hood, and bells, and jesses; but there is many a wild falcon in Norway that would not change properties with him – And that is what I would say of you. You are no longer my Lady’s page, and you will not clothe so fair, or feed so well, or sleep so soft, or show so gallant – What of all that? if you are not her page, you are your own man, and may go where you will, without minding whoop or whistle. The worst is the loss of the sport, but who knows what you may come to? They say that Sir Halbert himself, I speak with reverence, was once glad to be the Abbot’s forester, and now he has hounds and hawks of his own, and Adam Woodcock for a falconer to the boot.”
“You are right, and say well, Adam,” answered the youth, the blood mantling in his cheeks, “the falcon will soar higher without his bells than with them, though the bells be made of silver.”
“That is cheerily spoken,” replied the falconer; “and whither now?”
“I thought of going to the Abbey of Kennaquhair,” answered Roland Graeme, “to ask the counsel of Father Ambrose.”
“And joy go with you,” said the falconer, “though it is likely you may find the old monks in some sorrow; they say the commons are threatening to turn them out of their cells, and make a devil’s mass of it in the old church, thinking they have forborne that sport too long; and troth I am clear of the same opinion.”
“Then will Father Ambrose be the better of having a friend beside him!” said the page, manfully.
“Ay, but, my young fearnought,” replied the falconer, “the friend will scarce be the better of being beside Father Ambrose – he may come by the redder’s lick, and that is ever the worst of the battle.”
“I care not for that,” said the page, “the dread of a lick should not hold me back; but I fear I may bring trouble between the brothers by visiting Father Ambrose. I will tarry to-night at Saint Cuthbert’s cell, where the old priest will give me a night’s shelter; and I will send to Father Ambrose to ask his advice before I go down to the convent.”
“By Our Lady,” said the falconer, “and that is a likely plan – and now,” he continued, exchanging his frankness of manner for a sort of awkward embarrassment, as if he had somewhat to say that he had no ready means to bring out – “and now, you wot well that I wear a pouch for my hawk’s meat, [Footnote: This same hag, like every thing belonging to falconry, was esteemed an honourable distinction, and worn often by the nobility and gentry. One of the Sommervilles of Camnethan was called Sir John with the red bag, because it was his wont to wear his hawking pouch covered with satin of that colour.] and so forth; but wot you what it is lined with, Master Roland?”
“With leather, to be sure,” replied Roland, somewhat surprised at the hesitation with which Adam Woodcock asked a question apparently so simple.
“With leather, lad?” said Woodcock; “ay, and with silver to the boot of that. See here,” he said, showing a secret slit in the lining of his bag of office – “here they are, thirty good Harry groats as ever were struck in bluff old Hal’s time, and ten of them are right heartily at your service; and now the murder is out.”
Roland’s first idea was to refuse his assistance; but he recollected the vows of humility which he had just taken upon him, and it occurred that this was the opportunity to put his new-formed resolution to the test. Assuming a strong command of himself, he answered Adam Woodcock with as much frankness as his nature permitted him to wear, in doing what was so contrary to his inclinations, that he accepted thankfully of his kind offer, while, to soothe his own reviving pride, he could not help adding, “he hoped soon to requite the obligation.”
“That as you list – that as you list, young man,” said the falconer, with glee, counting out and delivering to his young friend the supply he had so generously offered, and then adding, with great cheerfulness, – “Now you may go through the world; for he that can back a horse, wind a horn, hollow a greyhound, fly a hawk, and play at sword and buckler, with a whole pair of shoes, a green jacket, and ten lily-white groats in his pouch, may bid Father Care hang himself in his own jesses. Farewell, and God be with you!”
So saying, and as if desirous to avoid the thanks of his companion, he turned hastily round, and left Roland Graeme to pursue his journey alone.
Chapter the Eight
The sacred tapers lights are gone.
Gray moss has clad the altar stone,
The holy image is o’erthrown,
The bell has ceased to toll,
The long ribb’d aisles are burst and shrunk,
The holy shrines to ruin sunk,
Departed is the pious monk,
God’s blessing on his soul!
REDIVIVA.
The cell of Saint Cuthbert, as it was called, marked, or was supposed to mark, one of those resting-places, which that venerable saint was pleased to assign to his monks, when his convent, being driven from Lindisfern by the Danes, became a peripatetic society of religionists, and bearing their patron’s body on their shoulders, transported him from place to place through Scotland and the borders of England, until he was pleased at length to spare them the pain of carrying him farther, and to choose his ultimate place of rest in the lordly towers of Durham. The odour of his sanctity remained behind him at each place where he had granted the monks a transient respite from their labours; and proud were those who could assign, as his temporary resting-place, any spot within their vicinity. There were few cells more celebrated and honoured than that of Saint Cuthbert, to which Roland Graeme now bent his way, situated considerably to the north-west of the great Abbey of Kennaquhair, on which it was dependent. In the neighbourhood were some of those recommendations which weighed with the experienced priesthood of Rome, in choosing their sites for places of religion.
There was a well, possessed of some medicinal qualities, which, of course, claimed the saint for its guardian and patron, and occasionally produced some advantage to the recluse who inhabited his cell, since none could reasonably expect to benefit by the fountain who did not extend their bounty to the saint’s chaplain. A few rods of fertile land afforded the monk his plot of garden ground; an eminence well clothed with trees rose behind the cell, and sheltered it from, the north and the east, while the front, opening to the south-west, looked up a wild but pleasant valley, down which wandered a lively brook, which battled with every stone that interrupted its passage.
The cell itself was rather plainly than rudely constructed – a low Gothic building with two small apartments, one of which served the priest for his dwelling-place, the other for his chapel. As there were few of the secular clergy who durst venture to reside so near the Border, the assistance of this monk in spiritual affairs had not been useless to the community, while the Catholic religion retained the ascendancy; as he could marry, christen, and administer the other sacraments of the Roman church. Of late, however, as the Protestant doctrines gained ground, he had found it convenient to live in close retirement, and to avoid, as much as possible, drawing upon himself observation or animadversion. The appearance of his habitation, however, when Roland Graeme came before it in the close of the evening, plainly showed that his caution had been finally ineffectual.
The page’s first movement was to knock at the door, when he observed, to his surprise, that it was open, not from being left unlatched, but because, beat off its upper hinge, it was only fastened to the door-post by the lower, and could therefore no longer perform its functions. Somewhat alarmed at this, and receiving no answer when he knocked and called, Roland began to look more at leisure upon the exterior of the little dwelling before he ventured to enter it. The flowers, which had been trained with care against the walls, seemed to have been recently torn down, and trailed their dishonoured garlands on the earth; the latticed window was broken and dashed in. The garden, which the monk had maintained by his constant labour in the highest order and beauty, bore marks of having been lately trod down and destroyed by the hoofs of animals, and the feet of men.
The sainted spring had not escaped. It was wont to rise beneath a canopy of ribbed arches, with which the devotion of elder times had secured and protected its healing waters. These arches were now almost entirely demolished, and the stones of which they were built were tumbled into the well, as if for the purpose of choking up and destroying the fountain, which, as it had shared in other days the honour of the saint, was, in the present, doomed to partake his unpopularity. Part of the roof had been pulled down from the house itself, and an attempt had been made with crows and levers upon one of the angles, by which several large corner-stones had been forced out of their place; but the solidity of ancient mason-work had proved too great for the time or patience of the assailants, and they had relinquished their task of destruction. Such dilapidated buildings, after the lapse of years, during which nature has gradually covered the effects of violence with creeping plants, and with weather-stains, exhibit, amid their decay, a melancholy beauty. But when the visible effects of violence appear raw and recent, there is no feeling to mitigate the sense of devastation with which they impress the spectators; and such was now the scene on which the youthful page gazed, with the painful feelings it was qualified to excite.
When his first momentary surprise was over, Roland Graeme was at no loss to conjecture the cause of these ravages. The destruction of the Popish edifices did not take place at once throughout Scotland, but at different times, and according to the spirit which actuated the reformed clergy; some of whom instigated their hearers to these acts of demolition, and others, with better taste and feeling, endeavoured to protect the ancient shrines, while they desired to see them purified from the objects which had attracted idolatrous devotion. From time to time, therefore, the populace of the Scottish towns and villages, when instigated either by their own feelings of abhorrence for Popish superstition, or by the doctrines of the more zealous preachers, resumed the work of destruction, and exercised it upon some sequestered church, chapel, or cell, which had escaped the first burst of their indignation against the religion of Rome. In many places, the vices of the Catholic clergy, arising out of the wealth and the corruption of that tremendous hierarchy, furnished too good an apology for wreaking vengeance upon the splendid edifices which they inhabited; and of this an old Scottish historian gives a remarkable instance.
“Why mourn ye,” said an aged matron, seeing the discontent of some of the citizens, while a stately convent was burnt by the multitude, – “why mourn ye for its destruction? If you knew half the flagitious wickedness which has been perpetrated within that house, you would rather bless the divine judgment, which permits not even the senseless walls that screened such profligacy, any longer to cumber Christian ground.”
But although, in many instances, the destruction of the Roman Catholic buildings might be, in the matron’s way of judging, an act of justice, and in others an act of policy, there is no doubt that the humour of demolishing monuments of ancient piety and munificence, and that in a poor country like Scotland, where there was no chance of their being replaced, was both useless, mischievous, and barbarous.
In the present instance, the unpretending and quiet seclusion of the monk of Saint Cuthbert’s had hitherto saved him from the general wreck; but it would seem ruin had now at length reached him. Anxious to discover if he had at least escaped personal harm, Roland Graeme entered the half ruined cell.
The interior of the building was in a state which fully justified the opinion he had formed from its external injuries. The few rude utensils of the solitary’s hut were broken down, and lay scattered on the floor, where it seemed as if a fire had been made with some of the fragments to destroy the rest of his property, and to consume, in particular, the rude old image of Saint Cuthbert, in its episcopal habit, which lay on the hearth like Dagon of yore, shattered with the axe and scorched with the flames, but only partially destroyed. In the little apartment which served as a chapel, the altar was overthrown, and the four huge stones of which it had been once composed lay scattered around the floor. The large stone crucifix which occupied the niche behind the altar, and fronted the supplicant while he paid his devotion there, had been pulled down and dashed by its own weight into three fragments. There were marks of sledge-hammers on each of these; yet the image had been saved from utter demolition by the size and strength of the remaining fragments, which, though much injured, retained enough of the original sculpture to show what it had been intended to represent.
[Footnote: I may here observe, that this is entirely an ideal scene. Saint Cuthbert, a person of established sanctity, had, no doubt, several places of worship on the Borders, where he flourished whilst living; but Tillmouth Chapel is the only one which bears some resemblance to the hermitage described in the text. It has, indeed, a well, famous for gratifying three wishes for every worshipper who shall quaff the fountain with sufficient belief in its efficacy. At this spot the Saint is said to have landed in his stone coffin, in which he sailed down the Tweed from Melrose and here the stone coffin long lay, in evidence of the fact. The late Sir Francis Blake Delaval is said to have taken the exact measure of the coffin, and to have ascertained, by hydrostatic principles, that it might have actually swum. A profane farmer in the neighborhood announced his intention of converting this last bed of the Saint into a trough for his swine; but the profanation was rendered impossible, either by the Saint, or by some pious votary in his behalf, for on the following morning the stone sarcophargus was found broken in two fragments.
Tillmouth Chapel, with these points of resemblance, lies, however, in exactly the opposite direction as regards Melrose, which the supposed cell of St. Cuthbert is said to have borne towards Kennaquhair.]
Roland Graeme, secretly nursed in the tenets of Rome, saw with horror the profanation of the most sacred emblem, according to his creed, of our holy religion.
“It is the badge of our redemption,” he said, “which the felons have dared to violate – would to God my weak strength were able to replace it – my humble strength, to atone for the sacrilege!”
He stooped to the task he first meditated, and with a sudden, and to himself almost an incredible exertion of power, he lifted up the one extremity of the lower shaft of the cross, and rested it upon the edge of the large stone which served for its pedestal. Encouraged by this success, he applied his force to the other extremity, and, to his own astonishment, succeeded so far as to erect the lower end of the limb into the socket, out of which it had been forced, and to place this fragment of the image upright.
While he was employed in this labour, or rather at the very moment when he had accomplished the elevation of the fragment, a voice, in thrilling and well-known accents, spoke behind him these words: – “Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Thus would I again meet the child of my love – the hope of my aged eyes.”
Roland turned round in astonishment, and the tall commanding form of Magdalen Graeme stood beside him. She was arrayed in a sort of loose habit, in form like that worn by penitents in Catholic countries, but black in colour, and approaching as near to a pilgrim’s cloak as it was safe to wear in a country where the suspicion of Catholic devotion in many places endangered the safety of those who were suspected of attachment to the ancient faith. Roland Graeme threw himself at her feet. She raised and embraced him, with affection indeed, but not unmixed with gravity which amounted almost to sternness.
