Part 9 (1/2)
He was turning to depart, when the Abbot said,--”Let us not yet part, my brother--here comes some light refreshment. Leave not the house which I must now call mine, till force expel me from it, until you have at least broken bread with me.”
The poor lay brother, the same who acted as porter, now entered the apartment, bearing some simple refreshment, and a flask of wine. ”He had found it,” he said with officious humility, ”by rummaging through every nook of the cellar.”
The Knight filled a small silver cup, and, quaffing it off, asked his brother to pledge him, observing, the wine was Bacharac, of the first vintage, and great age.
”Ay,” said the poor lay brother, ”it came out of the nook which old brother Nicholas, (may his soul be happy!) was wont to call Abbot Ingelram's corner; and Abbot Ingelram was bred at the Convent of Wurtzburg, which I understand to be near where that choice wine grows.”
”True, my reverend sir,” said Sir Halbert; ”and therefore I entreat my brother and you to pledge me in a cup of this orthodox vintage.”
The thin old porter looked with a wishful glance towards the Abbot. ”Do veniam,” said his Superior; and the old man seized, with a trembling hand, a beverage to which he had been long unaccustomed; drained the cup with protracted delight, as if dwelling on the flavour and perfume, and set it down with a melancholy smile and shake of the head, as if bidding adieu in future to such delicious potations. The brothers smiled. But when Sir Halbert motioned to the Abbot to take up his cup and do him reason, the Abbot, in turn, shook his head, and replied--”This is no day for the Abbot of Saint Mary's to eat the fat and drink the sweat. In water from our Lady's well,” he added, filling a cup with the limpid element, ”I wish you, brother, all happiness, and above all, a true sight of your spiritual errors.”
”And to you, my beloved Edward,” replied Glendinning, ”I wish the free exercise of your own free reason, and the discharge of more important duties than are connected with the idle name which you have so rashly a.s.sumed.”
The brothers parted with deep regret; and yet, each confident in his opinion, felt somewhat relieved by the absence of one whom he respected so much, and with whom he could agree so little.
Soon afterwards the sound of the Knight of Avenel's trumpets was heard, and the Abbot went to the top of the tower, from whose dismantled battlements he could soon see the hors.e.m.e.n ascending the rising ground in the direction of the drawbridge. As he gazed, Magdalen Graeme came to his side.
”Thou art come,” he said, ”to catch the last glimpse of thy grandson, my sister. Yonder he wends, under the charge of the best knight in Scotland, his faith ever excepted.”
”Thou canst bear witness, my father, that it was no wish either of mine or of Roland's,” replied the matron, ”which induced the Knight of Avenel, as he is called, again to entertain my grandson in his household--Heaven, which confounds the wise with their own wisdom, and the wicked with their own policy, hath placed him where, for the services of the Church, I would most wish him to be.”
”I know not what you mean, my sister,” said the Abbot.
”Reverend father,” replied Magdalen, ”hast thou never heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay, dragged over the threshold?
[Footnote: There is a popular belief respecting evil spirits, that they cannot enter an inhabited house unless invited, nay, dragged over the threshold. There is an instance of the same superst.i.tion in the Tales of the Genii, where an enchanter is supposed to have intruded himself into the Divan of the Sultan.
”'Thus,' said the ill.u.s.trious Misnar, 'let the enemies of Mahomet be dismayed! but inform me, O ye sages! under the semblance of which of your brethren did that foul enchanter gain admittance here?'--'May the lord of my heart,' answered Balihu, the hermit of the faithful from Queda, 'triumph over all his foes! As I travelled on the mountains from Queda, and saw neither the footsteps of beasts, nor the flight of birds, behold, I chanced to pa.s.s through a cavern, in whose hollow sides I found this accursed sage, to whom I unfolded the invitation of the Sultan of India, and we, joining, journeyed towards the Divan; but ere we entered, he said unto me. 'Put thy hand forth, and pull me towards thee into the Divan, calling on the name of Mahomet, for the evil spirits are on me and vex me.'”
I have understood that many parts of these fine tales, and in particular that of the Sultan Misnar, were taken from genuine Oriental sources by the editor, Mr. James Ridley.
But the most picturesque use of this popular belief occurs in Coleridge's beautiful and tantalizing fragment of Christabel. Has not our own imaginative poet cause to fear that future ages will desire to summon him from his place of rest, as Milton longed ”To call him up, who left half told The story of Cambuscan bold?”
The verses I refer to are when Christabel conducts into her father's castle a mysterious and malevolent being, under the guise of a distressed female stranger.
'They cross'd the moat, and Christabel Took the key that fitted well; A little door she open'd straight, All in the middle of the gate; The gate that was iron'd within and without, Where an army in battle array had march'd out.
”The lady sank, belike through pain, And Christabel with might and main Lifted her up, a weary weight, Over the threshold of the gate: Then the lady rose again, And moved as she were not in pain.
”So free from danger, free from fear, They cross'd the court;--right glad they were, And Christabel devoutly cried To the lady by her side: 'Praise we the Virgin, all divine, Who hath rescued thee from this distress.' 'Alas, alas!' said Geraldine, 'I cannot speak from weariness.' So free from danger, free from fear, They cross'd the court: right glad they were ]
Twice hath Roland Graeme been thus drawn into the household of Avenel by those who now hold the t.i.tle. Let them look to the issue.”
So saying she left the turret; and the Abbot, after pausing a moment on her words, which he imputed to the unsettled state of her mind, followed down the winding stair to celebrate his admission to his high office by fast and prayer instead of revelling and thanksgiving.
Chapter the Sixteenth.
Youth! thou wear'st to manhood now, Darker lip and darker brow, Statelier step, more pensive mien, In thy face and gate are seen: Thou must now brook midnight watches, Take thy food and sport by s.n.a.t.c.hes; For the gambol and the jest, Thou wert wont to love the best, Graver follies must thou follow, But as senseless, false, and hollow. LIFE, A POEM.
Young Roland Graeme now trotted gaily forward in the train of Sir Halbert Glendinning. He was relieved from his most galling apprehension,--the encounter of the scorn and taunt which might possibly hail his immediate return to the Castle of Avenel. ”There will be a change ere they see me again,” he thought to himself; ”I shall wear the coat of plate, instead of the green jerkin, and the steel morion for the bonnet and feather. They will be bold that may venture to break a gibe on the man-at-arms for the follies of the page; and I trust, that ere we return I shall have done something more worthy of note than hallooing a hound after a deer, or scrambling a crag for a kite's nest.” He could not, indeed, help marvelling that his grandmother, with all her religious prejudices, leaning, it would seem, to the other side, had consented so readily to his re-entering the service of the House of Avenel; and yet more, at the mysterious joy with which she took leave of him at the Abbey.
”Heaven,” said the dame, as she kissed her young relation, and bade him farewell, ”works its own work, even by the hands of those of our enemies who think themselves the strongest and the wisest. Thou, my child, be ready to act upon the call of thy religion and country; and remember, each earthly bond which thou canst form is, compared to the ties which bind thee to them, like the loose flax to the twisted cable. Thou hast not forgot the face or form of the damsel Catherine Seyton?”
Roland would have replied in the negative, but the word seemed to stick in his throat and Magdalen continued her exhortations.
”Thou must not forget her, my son; and here I intrust thee with a token, which I trust thou wilt speedily find an opportunity of delivering with care and secrecy into her own hand.”
She put here into Roland's hand a very small packet, of which she again enjoined him to take the strictest care, and to suffer it to be seen by no one save Catherine Seyton, who, she again (very unnecessarily) reminded him, was the young lady he had met on the preceding day. She then bestowed on him her solemn benediction, and bade G.o.d speed him.
There was something in her manner and her conduct which implied mystery; but Roland Graeme was not of an age or temper to waste much time in endeavoring to decipher her meaning. All that was obvious to his perception in the present journey, promised pleasure and novelty. He rejoiced that he was travelling towards Edinburgh, in order to a.s.sume the character of a man, and lay aside that of a boy. He was delighted to think that he would have an opportunity of rejoining Catherine Seyton, whose bright eyes and lively manners had made so favourable an impression on his imagination; and, as an experienced, yet high-spirited youth, entering for the first time upon active life, his heart bounded at the thought, that he was about to see all those scenes of courtly splendour and warlike adventures, of which the followers of Sir Halbert used to boast on their occasional visits to Avenel, to the wonderment and envy of those who, like Roland, knew courts and camps only by hearsay, and were condemned to the solitary sports and almost monastic seclusion of Avenel, surrounded by its lonely lake, and embossed among its pathless mountains. ”They shall mention my name,” he said to himself, ”if the risk of my life can purchase me opportunities of distinction, and Catherine Seyton's saucy eye shall rest with more respect on the distinguished soldier, than that with which she laughed to scorn the raw and inexperienced page.”--There was wanting but one accessary to complete the sense of rapturous excitation, and he possessed it by being once more mounted on the back of a fiery and active horse, instead of plodding along on foot, as had been the case during the preceding days.
Impelled by the liveliness of his own spirits, which so many circ.u.mstances tended naturally to exalt, Roland Graeme's voice and his laughter were soon distinguished amid the trampling of the horses of the retinue, and more than once attracted the attention of the leader, who remarked with satisfaction, that the youth replied with good-humoured raillery to such of the train as jested with him on his dismissal and return to the service of the House of Avenel.
”I thought the holly-branch in your bonnet had been blighted, Master Roland?” said one of the men-at-arms.
”Only pinched with half an hour's frost; you see it flourishes as green as ever.”
”It is too grave a plant to flourish on so hot a soil as that headpiece of thine, Master Roland Graeme,” retorted the other, who was an old equerry of Sir Halbert Glendinning.
”If it will not flourish alone,” said Roland, ”I will mix it with the laurel and the myrtle--and I will carry them so near the sky, that it shall make amends for their stinted growth.”
Thus speaking, he dashed his spurs into his horse's sides, and, checking him at the same time, compelled him to execute a lofty caracole. Sir Halbert Glendinning looked at the demeanour of his new attendant with that sort of melancholy pleasure with which those who have long followed the pursuits of life, and are sensible of their vanity, regard the gay, young, and buoyant spirits to whom existence, as yet, is only hope and promise.
In the meanwhile, Adam Woodc.o.c.k, the falconer, stripped of his masquing habit, and attired, according to his rank and calling, in a green jerkin, with a hawking-bag on the one side, and a short hanger on the other, a glove on his left hand which reached half way up his arm, and a bonnet and feather upon his head, came after the party as fast as his active little galloway-nag could trot, and immediately entered into parley with Roland Graeme.
”So, my youngster, you are once more under shadow of the holly-branch?”
”And in case to repay you, my good friend,” answered Roland, ”your ten groats of silver.”
”Which, but an hour since,” said the falconer, ”you had nearly paid me with ten inches of steel. On my faith, it is written in the book of our destiny, that I must brook your dagger after all.”
”Nay, speak not of that, my good friend,” said the youth, ”I would rather have broached my own bosom than yours; but who could have known you in the mumming dress you wore?”
”Yes,” the falconer resumed,--for both as a poet and actor he had his own professional share of self-conceit,--”I think I was as good a Howleglas as ever played part at a Shrovetide revelry, and not a much worse Abbot of Unreason. I defy the Old Enemy to unmask me when I choose to keep my vizard on. What the devil brought the Knight on us before we had the game out? You would have heard me hollo my own new ballad with a voice should have reached to Berwick. But I pray you, Master Roland, be less free of cold steel on slight occasions; since, but for the stuffing of my reverend doublet, I had only left the kirk to take my place in the kirkyard.”
”Nay, spare me that feud,” said Roland Graeme, ”we shall have no time to fight it out; for, by our lord's command, I am bound for Edinburgh.”
”I know it,” said Adam Woodc.o.c.k, ”and even therefore we shall have time to solder up this rent by the way, for Sir Halbert has appointed me your companion and guide.”
”Ay? and with what purpose?” said the page.
”That,” said the falconer, ”is a question I cannot answer; but I know, that be the food of the eyases washed or unwashed, and, indeed, whatever becomes of perch and mew, I am to go with you to Edinburgh, and see you safely delivered to the Regent at Holyrood.”