Part 3 (1/2)
”And that,” added Lilias, ”would be best done by turning him out the same beggar's brat that your ladys.h.i.+p took him in.”
”Lilias speaks too rudely,” continued the Lady, ”but she has spoken the truth, young man; nor do I think I ought to spare that pride which hath so completely turned your head. You have been tricked up with fine garments, and treated like the son of a gentleman, until you have forgot the fountain of your churlish blood.”
”Craving your pardon, most honourable madam, Lilias hath not spoken truth, nor does your ladys.h.i.+p know aught of my descent, which should ent.i.tle you to treat it with such decided scorn. I am no beggar's brat--my grandmother begged from no one, here nor elsewhere--she would have perished sooner on the bare moor. We were harried out and driven from our home--a chance which has happed elsewhere, and to others. Avenel Castle, with its lake and its towers, was not at all times able to protect its inhabitants from want and desolation.”
”Hear but his a.s.surance!” said Lilias, ”he upbraids my Lady with the distresses of her family!”
”It had indeed been a theme more gratefully spared,” said the Lady, affected nevertheless with the allusion.
”It was necessary, madam, for my vindication,” said the page, ”or I had not even hinted at a word that might give you pain. But believe, honoured Lady, I am of no churl's blood. My proper descent I know not; but my only relation has said, and my heart has echoed it back and attested the truth, that I am sprung of gentle blood, and deserve gentle usage.”
”And upon an a.s.surance so vague as this,” said the Lady, ”do you propose to expect all the regard, all the privileges, befitting high rank and distinguished birth, and become a contender for concessions which are only due to the n.o.ble? Go to, sir, know yourself, or the master of the household shall make you know you are liable to the scourge as a malapert boy. You have tasted too little the discipline fit for your age and station.”
”The master of the household shall taste of my dagger, ere I taste of his discipline,” said the page, giving way to his restrained pa.s.sion. ”Lady, I have been too long the va.s.sal of a pantoufle, and the slave of a silver whistle. You must henceforth find some other to answer your call; and let him be of birth and spirit mean enough to brook the scorn of your menials, and to call a church va.s.sal his master.”
”I have deserved this insult,” said the Lady, colouring deeply, ”for so long enduring and fostering your petulance. Begone, sir. Leave this castle to-night--I will send you the means of subsistence till you find some honest mode of support, though I fear your imaginary grandeur will be above all others, save those of rapine and violence. Begone, sir, and see my face no more.”
The page threw himself at her feet in an agony of sorrow. ”My dear and honoured mistress,” he said, but was unable to bring out another syllable.
”Arise, sir,” said the Lady, ”and let go my mantle--hypocrisy is a poor cloak for ingrat.i.tude.”
”I am incapable of either, madam,” said the page, springing up with the hasty start of pa.s.sion which belonged to his rapid and impetuous temper. ”Think not I meant to implore permission to reside here; it has been long my determination to leave Avenel, and I will never forgive myself for having permitted you to say the word begone, ere I said, 'I leave you.' I did but kneel to ask your forgiveness for an ill-considered word used in the height of displeasure, but which ill became my mouth, as addressed to you. Other grace I asked not--you have done much for me--but I repeat, that you better know what you yourself have done, than what I have suffered.”
”Roland,” said the Lady, somewhat appeased, and relenting towards her favourite, ”you had me to appeal to when you were aggrieved. You were neither called upon to suffer wrong, nor ent.i.tled to resent it, when you were under my protection.”
”And what,” said the youth, ”if I sustained wrong from those you loved and favoured, was I to disturb your peace with idle tale-bearings and eternal complaints? No, madam; I have borne my own burden in silence, and without disturbing you with murmurs; and the respect with which you accuse me of wanting, furnishes the only reason why I have neither appealed to you, nor taken vengeance at my own hand in a manner far more effectual. It is well, however, that we part. I was not born to be a stipendiary, favoured by his mistress, until ruined by the calumnies of others. May Heaven multiply its choicest blessings on your honoured head; and, for your sake, upon all that are dear to you!”
He was about to leave the apartment, when the Lady called upon him to return. He stood still, while she thus addressed him: ”It was not my intention, nor would it be just, even in the height of my displeasure, to dismiss you without the means of support; take this purse of gold.”
”Forgive me, Lady,” said the boy, ”and let me go hence with the consciousness that I have not been degraded to the point of accepting alms. If my poor services can be placed against the expense of my apparel and my maintenance, I only remain debtor to you for my life, and that alone is a debt which I can never repay; put up then that purse, and only say, instead, that you do not part from me in anger.”
”No, not in anger,” said the Lady, ”in sorrow rather for your wilfulness; but take the gold, you cannot but need it.”
”May G.o.d evermore bless you for the kind tone and the kind word! but the gold I cannot take. I am able of body, and do not lack friends so wholly as you may think; for the time may come that I may yet show myself more thankful than by mere words.” He threw himself on his knees, kissed the hand which she did not withdraw, and then, hastily left the apartment.
Lilias, for a moment or two, kept her eye fixed on her mistress, who looked so unusually pale, that she seemed about to faint; but the Lady instantly recovered herself, and declining the a.s.sistance which her attendant offered her, walked to her own apartment.
Chapter the Sixth.
Thou hast each secret of the household, Francis. I dare be sworn thou hast been in the b.u.t.tery, Steeping thy curious humour in fat ale, And in thy butler's tattle--ay, or chatting With the glib waiting-woman o'er her comfits-- These bear the key to each domestic mystery. OLD PLAY.
Upon the morrow succeeding the scene we have described, the disgraced favourite left the castle; and at breakfast-time the cautious old steward and Mrs. Lilias sat in the apartment of the latter personage, holding grave converse on the important event of the day, sweetened by a small treat of comfits, to which the providence of Mr. Wingate had added a little flask of racy canary.
”He is gone at last,” said the abigail, sipping her gla.s.s; ”and here is to his good journey.”
”Amen,” answered the steward, gravely; ”I wish the poor deserted lad no ill.”
”And he is gone like a wild-duck, as he came,” continued Mrs. Lilias; ”no lowering of drawbridges, or pacing along causeways, for him. My master has pushed off in the boat which they call the little Herod, (more shame to them for giving the name of a Christian to wood and iron,) and has rowed himself by himself to the farther side of the loch, and off and away with himself, and left all his finery strewed about his room. I wonder who is to clean his trumpery out after him--though the things are worth lifting, too.”
”Doubtless, Mistress Lilias,” answered the master of the household, ”in the which case, I am free to think, they will not long c.u.mber the floor.”
”And now tell me, Master Wingate,” continued the damsel, ”do not the very c.o.c.kles of your heart rejoice at the house being rid of this upstart whelp, that flung us all into shadow?”
”Why, Mistress Lilias,” replied Wingate, ”as to rejoicing--those who have lived as long in great families as has been my lot, will be in no hurry to rejoice at any thing. And for Roland Graeme, though he may be a good riddance in the main, yet what says the very sooth proverb, 'Seldom comes a better.'”
”Seldom comes a better, indeed!” echoed Mrs. Lilias. ”I say, never can come a worse, or one half so bad. He might have been the ruin of our poor dear mistress,” (here she used her kerchief,) ”body and soul, and estate too; for she spent more coin on his apparel than on any four servants about the house.”
”Mistress Lilias,” said the sage steward, ”I do opine that our mistress requireth not this pity at your hands, being in all respects competent to take care of her own body, soul, and estate into the bargain.”
”You would not mayhap have said so,” answered the waiting-woman, ”had you seen how like Lot's wife she looked when young master took his leave. My mistress is a good lady, and a virtuous, and a well-doing lady, and a well-spoken of--but I would not Sir Halbert had seen her last evening for two and a plack.”
”Oh, foy! foy! foy!” reiterated the steward; ”servants should hear and see, and say nothing. Besides that, my lady is utterly devoted to Sir Halbert, as well she may, being, as he is, the most renowned knight in these parts.”
”Well, well,” said the abigail, ”I mean no more harm; but they that seek least renown abroad, are most apt to find quiet at home, that's all; and my Lady's lonesome situation is to be considered, that made her fain to take up with the first beggar's brat that a dog brought her out of the loch.”
”And, therefore,” said the steward, ”I say, rejoice not too much, or too hastily, Mistress Lilias; for if your Lady wished a favourite to pa.s.s away the time, depend upon it, the time will not pa.s.s lighter now that he is gone. So she will have another favourite to choose for herself; and be a.s.sured, if she wishes such a toy, she will not lack one.”
”And where should she choose one, but among her own tried and faithful servants,” said Mrs. Lilias, ”who have broken her bread, and drunk her drink, for so many years? I have known many a lady as high as she is, that never thought either of a friend or favourite beyond their own waiting-woman--always having a proper respect, at the same time, for their old and faithful master of the household, Master Wingate.”
”Truly, Mistress Lilias,” replied the steward, ”I do partly see the mark at which you shoot, but I doubt your bolt will fall short. Matters being with our Lady as it likes you to suppose, it will neither be your crimped pinners, Mrs. Lilias, (speaking of them with due respect,) nor my silver hair, or golden chain, that will fill up the void which Roland Graeme must needs leave in our Lady's leisure. There will be a learned young divine with some new doctrine--a learned leech with some new drug--a bold cavalier, who will not be refused the favour of wearing her colours at a running at the ring--a cunning harper that could harp the heart out of woman's breast, as they say Signer David Rizzio did to our poor Queen;--these are the sort of folk who supply the loss of a well-favoured favourite, and not an old steward, or a middle-aged waiting-woman.”
”Well,” replied Lilias, ”you have experience, Master Wingate, and truly I would my master would leave off his picking hither and thither, and look better after the affairs of his household. There will be a papestrie among us next, for what should I see among master's clothes but a string of gold beads! I promise you, aves and credos both!--I seized on them like a falcon.”
”I doubt it not, I doubt it not,” said the steward, sagaciously nodding his head; ”I have often noticed that the boy had strange observances which savoured of popery, and that he was very jealous to conceal them. But you will find the Catholic under the Presbyterian cloak as often as the knave under the Friar's hood--what then? we are all mortal--Right proper beads they are,” he added, looking attentively at them, ”and may weigh four ounces of fine gold.”
”And I will have them melted down presently,” she said, ”before they be the misguiding of some poor blinded soul.”
”Very cautious, indeed, Mistress Lilias,” said the steward, nodding his head in a.s.sent.
”I will have them made,” said Mrs. Lilias, ”into a pair of shoe-buckles; I would not wear the Pope's trinkets, or whatever has once borne the shape of them, one inch above my instep, were they diamonds instead of gold.--But this is what has come of Father Ambrose coming about the castle, as demure as a cat that is about to steal cream.”
”Father Ambrose is our master's brother,” said the steward gravely.
”Very true, Master Wingate,” answered the Dame; ”but is that a good reason why he should pervert the king's liege subjects to papistrie?”
”Heaven forbid, Mistress Lilias,” answered the sententious major-domo; ”but yet there are worse folk than the Papists.”
”I wonder where they are to be found,” said the waiting-woman, with some asperity; ”but I believe, Master Wingate, if one were to speak to you about the devil himself, you would say there were worse people than Satan.”
”a.s.suredly I might say so,” replied the steward, ”supposing that I saw Satan standing at my elbow.”
The waiting-woman started, and having exclaimed, ”G.o.d bless us I” added, ”I wonder, Master Wingate, you can take pleasure in frightening one thus.”