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The Abbot

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"Ay," answered the old woman, in the same style of bitter irony, "I
know the wages of that service;--a curse when the corslet is not
sufficiently brightened,--a blow when the girth is not tightly
drawn,--to be beaten because the hounds are at fault,--to be reviled
because the foray is unsuccessful,--to stain his hands for the
master's bidding in the blood alike of beast and of man,--to be a
butcher of harmless deer, a murderer and defacer of God's own image,
not at his own pleasure, but at that of his lord,--to live a brawling
ruffian, and a common stabber--exposed to heat, to cold, to want of
food, to all the privations of an anchoret, not for the love of God,
but for the service of Satan,--to die by the gibbet, or in some
obscure skirmish,--to sleep out his brief life in carnal security, and
to awake in the eternal fire, which is never quenched."

"Nay," said the Lady of Avenel, "but to such unhallowed course of life
your grandson will not be here exposed. My husband is just and kind to
those who live under his banner; and you yourself well know, that
youth have here a strict as well as a good preceptor in the person of
our chaplain."

The old woman appeared to pause.

"You have named," she said, "the only circumstance which can move me.
I must soon onward, the vision has said it--I must not tarry in the
same spot--I must on,--I must on, it is my weird.--Swear, then, that
you will protect the boy as if he were your own, until I return hither
and claim him, and I will consent for a space to part with him. But
especially swear, he shall not lack the instruction of the godly man
who hath placed the gospel-truth high above those idolatrous
shavelings, the monks and friars."

"Be satisfied, dame," said the Lady of Avenel; "the boy shall have as
much care as if he were born of my own blood. Will you see him now?"

"No," answered the old woman sternly; "to part is enough. I go forth
on my own mission. I will not soften my heart by useless tears and
wailings, as one that is not called to a duty."

"Will you not accept of something to aid you in your pilgrimage?" said
the Lady of Avenel, putting into her hands two crowns of the sun. The
old woman flung them down on the table.

"Am I of the race of Cain," she said, "proud Lady, that you offer me
gold in exchange for my own flesh and blood?"

"I had no such meaning," said the Lady, gently; "nor am I the proud
woman you term me. Alas! my own fortunes might have taught me
humility, even had it not been born with me."

The old woman seemed somewhat to relax her tone of severity.

"You are of gentle blood," she said, "else we had not parleyed thus
long together.--You are of gentle blood, and to such," she added,
drawing up her tall form as she spoke, "pride is as graceful as is the
plume upon the bonnet. But for these pieces of gold, lady, you must
needs resume them. I need not money. I am well provided; and I may not
care for myself, nor think how, or by whom, I shall be sustained.
Farewell, and keep your word. Cause your gates to be opened, and your
bridges to be lowered. I will set forward this very night. When I
come again, I will demand from you a strict account, for I have left
with you the jewel of my life! Sleep will visit me but in snatches,
food will not refresh me, rest will not restore my strength, until I
see Roland Graeme. Once more, farewell."

"Make your obeisance, dame," said Lilias to Magdalen Graeme, as she
retired, "make your obeisance to her ladyship, and thank her for her
goodness, as is but fitting and right."

The old woman turned short around on the officious waiting-maid. "Let
her make her obeisance to me then, and I will return it. Why should I
bend to her?--is it because her kirtle is of silk, and mine of blue
lockeram?--Go to, my lady's waiting-woman. Know that the rank of the
man rates that of the wife, and that she who marries a churl's son,
were she a king's daughter, is but a peasant's bride."

Lilias was about to reply in great indignation, but her mistress
imposed silence on her, and commanded that the old woman should be
safely conducted to the mainland.

"Conduct her safe!" exclaimed the incensed waiting-woman, while
Magdalen Graeme left the apartment; "I say, duck her in the loch, and
then we will see whether she is witch or not, as every body in the
village of Lochside will say and swear. I marvel your ladyship could
bear so long with her insolence." But the commands of the Lady were
obeyed, and the old dame, dismissed from the castle, was committed to
her fortune. She kept her word, and did not long abide in that place,
leaving the hamlet on the very night succeeding the interview, and
wandering no one asked whither. The Lady of Avenel inquired under what
circumstances she had appeared among them, but could only learn that
she was believed to be the widow of some man of consequence among the
Graemes who then inhabited the Debateable Land, a name given to a
certain portion of territory which was the frequent subject of dispute
betwixt Scotland and England--that she had suffered great wrong in
some of the frequent forays by which that unfortunate district was
wasted, and had been driven from her dwelling-place. She had arrived
in the hamlet no one knew for what purpose, and was held by some to be
a witch, by others a zealous Protestant, and by others again a
Catholic devotee. Her language was mysterious, and her manners
repulsive; and all that could be collected from her conversation
seemed to imply that she was under the influence either of a spell or
of a vow,--there was no saying which, since she talked as one who
acted under a powerful and external agency.

Such were the particulars which the Lady's inquiries were able to
collect concerning Magdalen Graeme, being far too meagre and
contradictory to authorize any satisfactory deduction. In truth, the
miseries of the time, and the various turns of fate incidental to a
frontier country, were perpetually chasing from their habitations
those who had not the means of defence or protection. These wanderers
in the land were too often seen, to excite much attention or sympathy.
They received the cold relief which was extorted by general feelings
of humanity; a little excited in some breasts, and perhaps rather
chilled in others, by the recollection that they who gave the charity
to-day might themselves want it to-morrow. Magdalen Graeme, therefore,
came and departed like a shadow from the neighbourhood of Avenel
Castle.

The boy whom Providence, as she thought, had thus strangely placed
under her care, was at once established a favourite with the Lady of
the castle. How could it be otherwise? He became the object of those
affectionate feelings, which, finding formerly no object on which to
expand themselves, had increased the gloom of the castle, and
imbittered the solitude of its mistress. To teach him reading and
writing as far as her skill went, to attend to his childish comforts,
to watch his boyish sports, became the Lady's favourite amusement. In
her circumstances, where the ear only heard the lowing of the cattle
from the distant hills, or the heavy step of the warder as he walked
upon his post, or the half-envied laugh of her maiden as she turned
her wheel, the appearance of the blooming and beautiful boy gave an
interest which can hardly be conceived by those who live amid gayer
and busier scenes. Young Roland was to the Lady of Avenel what the
flower, which occupies the window of some solitary captive, is to the
poor wight by whom it is nursed and cultivated,--something which at
once excited and repaid her care; and in giving the boy her affection,
she felt, as it were, grateful to him for releasing her from the state
of dull apathy in which she had usually found herself during the
absence of Sir Halbert Glendinning.

But even the charms of this blooming favourite were unable to chase
the recurring apprehensions which arose from her husband's
procrastinated return. Soon after Roland Graeme became a resident at
the castle, a groom, despatched by Sir Halbert, brought tidings that
business still delayed the Knight at the Court of Holyrood. The more
distant period which the messenger had assigned for his master's
arrival at length glided away, summer melted into autumn, and autumn
was about to give place to winter, and yet he came not.




Chapter the Third.


The waning harvest-moon shone broad and bright,
The warder's horn was heard at dead of night,
And while the portals-wide were flung,
With trampling hoofs the rocky pavement rung.
LEYDEN.

"And you, too, would be a soldier, Roland?" said the Lady of Avenel to
her young charge, while, seated on a stone chair at one end of the
battlements, she saw the boy attempt, with a long stick, to mimic the
motions of the warder, as he alternately shouldered, or ported, or
sloped pike.

"Yes, Lady," said the boy,--for he was now familiar, and replied to
her questions with readiness and alacrity,-"a soldier will I be; for
there ne'er was gentleman but who belted him with the brand."

"Thou a gentleman!" said Lilias, who, as usual, was in attendance;
"such a gentleman as I would make of a bean-cod with a rusty knife."

"Nay, chide him not, Lilias," said the Lady of Avenel, "for, beshrew
me, but I think he comes of gentle blood--see how it musters in his
face at your injurious reproof."

"Had I my will, madam," answered Lilias, "a good birchen wand should
make his colour muster to better purpose still."

"On my word, Lilias," said the Lady, "one would think you had received
harm from the poor boy--or is he so far on the frosty side of your
favour because he enjoys the sunny side of mine?"

"Over heavens forbode, my Lady!" answered Lilias; "I have lived too
long with gentles, I praise my stars for it, to fight with either
follies or fantasies, whether they relate to beast, bird, or boy."

Lilias was a favourite in her own class, a spoiled domestic, and often
accustomed to take more licence than her mistress was at all times
willing to encourage. But what did not please the Lady of Avenel, she
did not choose to hear, and thus it was on the present occasion. She
resolved to look more close and sharply after the boy, who had
hitherto been committed chiefly to the management of Lilias. He must,
she thought, be born of gentle blood; it were shame to think otherwise
of a form so noble, and features so fair;--the very wildness in which
he occasionally indulged, his contempt of danger, and impatience of
restraint, had in them something noble;--assuredly the child was born
of high rank. Such was her conclusion, and she acted upon it
accordingly. The domestics around her, less jealous, or less
scrupulous than Lilias, acted as servants usually do, following the
bias, and flattering, for their own purposes, the humour of the Lady;
and the boy soon took on him those airs of superiority, which the
sight of habitual deference seldom fails to inspire. It seemed, in
truth, as if to command were his natural sphere, so easily did he use
himself to exact and receive compliance with his humours. The
chaplain, indeed, might have interposed to check the air of assumption
which Roland Graeme so readily indulged, and most probably would have
willingly rendered him that favour; but the necessity of adjusting
with his brethren some disputed points of church discipline had
withdrawn him for some time from the castle, and detained him in a
distant part of the kingdom.

Matters stood thus in the castle of Avenel, when a winded bugle sent
its shrill and prolonged notes from the shore of the lake, and was
replied to cheerily by the signal of the warder. The Lady of Avenel
knew the sounds of her husband, and rushed to the window of the
apartment in which she was sitting. A band of about thirty spearmen,
with a pennon displayed before them, winded along the indented shores
of the lake, and approached the causeway. A single horseman rode at
the head of the party, his bright arms catching a glance of the
October sun as he moved steadily along. Even at that distance, the
Lady recognized the lofty plume, bearing the mingled colours of her
own liveries and those of Glendonwyne, blended with the holly-branch;
and the firm seat and dignified demeanour of the rider, joined to the
stately motion of the dark-brown steed, sufficiently announced Halbert
Glendinning.

The Lady's first thought was that of rapturous joy at her husband's
return--her second was connected with a fear which had sometimes
intruded itself, that he might not altogether approve the peculiar
distinction with which she had treated her orphan ward. In this fear
there was implied a consciousness, that the favour she had shown him
was excessive; for Halbert Glendinning was at least as gentle and
indulgent, as he was firm and rational in the intercourse of his
household; and to her in particular, his conduct had ever been most
affectionately tender.

Yet she did fear, that, on the present occasion, her conduct might
incur Sir Halbert's censure; and hastily resolving that she would not
mention, the anecdote of the boy until the next day, she ordered him
to be withdrawn from the apartment by Lilias.

"I will not go with Lilias, madam," answered the spoiled child, who
had more than once carried his point by perseverance, and who, like
his betters, delighted in the exercise of such authority,--"I will not
go to Lilias's gousty room--I will stay and see that brave warrior who
comes riding so gallantly along the drawbridge."

"You must not stay, Roland," said the Lady, more positively than she
usually spoke to her little favourite.

"I will," reiterated the boy, who had already felt his consequence,
and the probable chance of success.

"You _will_, Roland!" answered the Lady, "what manner of word is
that? I tell you, you must go."

"_Will_," answered the forward boy, "is a word for a man, and
_must_ is no word for a lady."

"You are saucy, sirrah," said the Lady--"Lilias, take him with you
instantly."

"I always thought," said Lilias, smiling, as she seized the reluctant
boy by the arm, "that my young master must give place to my old one."

"And you, too, are malapert, mistress!" said the Lady; "hath the moon
changed, that ye all of you thus forget yourselves?"

Lilias made no reply, but led off the boy, who, too proud to offer
unavailing resistance, darted at his benefactress a glance, which
intimated plainly, how willingly he would have defied her authority,
had he possessed the power to make good his point.

The Lady of Avenel was vexed to find how much this trifling
circumstance had discomposed her, at the moment when she ought
naturally to have been entirely engrossed by her husband's return. But
we do not recover composure by the mere feeling that agitation is
mistimed. The glow of displeasure had not left the Lady's cheek, her
ruffled deportment was not yet entirely composed, when her husband,
unhelmeted, but still wearing the rest of his arms, entered the
apartment. His appearance banished the thoughts of every thing else;
she rushed to him, clasped his iron-sheathed frame in her arms, and
kissed his martial and manly face with an affection which was at once
evident and sincere. The warrior returned her embrace and her caress
with the same fondness; for the time which had passed since their
union had diminished its romantic ardour, perhaps, but it had rather
increased its rational tenderness, and Sir Halbert Glendinning's long
and frequent absences from his castle had prevented affection from
degenerating by habit into indifference.

When the first eager greetings were paid and received, the Lady gazed
fondly on her husband's face as she remarked, "You are altered,
Halbert--you have ridden hard and far to-day, or you have been ill?"

"I have been well, Mary," answered the Knight, "passing well have I
been; and a long ride is to me, thou well knowest, but a thing of
constant custom. Those who are born noble may slumber out their lives
within the walls of their castles and manor-houses; but he who hath
achieved nobility by his own deeds must ever be in the saddle, to show
that he merits his advancement."

While he spoke thus, the Lady gazed fondly on him, as if endeavouring
to read his inmost soul; for the tone in which he spoke was that of
melancholy depression.

Sir Halbert Glendinning was the same, yet a different person from what
he had appeared in his early years. The fiery freedom of the aspiring
youth had given place to the steady and stern composure of the
approved soldier and skilful politician. There were deep traces of
care on those noble features, over which each emotion used formerly to
pass, like light clouds across a summer sky. That sky was now, not
perhaps clouded, but still and grave, like that of the sober autumn
evening. The forehead was higher and more bare than in early youth,
and the locks which still clustered thick and dark on the warrior's
head, were worn away at the temples, not by age, but by the constant
pressure of the steel cap, or helmet. His beard, according to the
fashion of the time, grew short and thick, and was turned into
mustaches on the upper lip, and peaked at the extremity. The cheek,
weather-beaten and embrowned, had lost the glow of youth, but showed
the vigorous complexion of active and confirmed manhood. Halbert
Glendinning was, in a word, a knight to ride at a king's right hand,
to bear his banner in war, and to be his counsellor in time of peace;
for his looks expressed the considerate firmness which can resolve
wisely and dare boldly. Still, over these noble features, there now
spread an air of dejection, of which, perhaps, the owner was not
conscious, but which did not escape the observation of his anxious and
affectionate partner.

"Something has happened, or is about to happen," said the Lady of
Avenel; "this sadness sits not on your brow without cause--misfortune,
national or particular, must needs be at hand."

"There is nothing new that I wot of," said Halbert Glendinning; "but
there is little of evil which can befall a kingdom, that may not be
apprehended in this unhappy and divided realm."

"Nay, then," said the Lady, "I see there hath really been some fatal
work on foot. My Lord of Murray has not so long detained you at
Holyrood, save that he wanted your help in some weighty purpose."

"I have not been at Holyrood, Mary," answered the Knight; "I have been
several weeks abroad."

"Abroad! and sent me no word?" replied the Lady.

"What would the knowledge have availed, but to have rendered you
unhappy, my love?" replied the Knight; "your thoughts would have
converted the slightest breeze that curled your own lake, into a
tempest raging in the German ocean."

"And have you then really crossed the sea?" said the Lady, to whom the
very idea of an element which she had never seen conveyed notions of
terror and of wonder,--"really left your own native land, and trodden
distant shores, where the Scottish tongue is unheard and unknown?"

"Really, and really," said the Knight, taking her hand in affectionate
playfulness, "I have done this marvellous deed--have rolled on the
ocean for three days and three nights, with the deep green waves
dashing by the side of my pillow, and but a thin plank to divide me
from it."

"Indeed, my Halbert," said the Lady, "that was a tempting of Divine
Providence. I never bade you unbuckle the sword from your side, or lay
the lance from your hand--I never bade you sit still when your honour
called you to rise and ride; but are not blade and spear dangers
enough for one man's life, and why would you trust rough waves and
raging seas?"

"We have in Germany, and in the Low Countries, as they are called,"
answered Glendinning, "men who are united with us in faith, and with
whom it is fitting we should unite in alliance. To some of these I was
despatched on business as important as it was secret. I went in
safety, and I returned in security; there is more danger to a man's
life betwixt this and Holyrood, than are in all the seas that wash the
lowlands of Holland."

"And the country, my Halbert, and the people," said the Lady, "are
they like our kindly Scots? or what bearing have they to strangers?"

"They are a people, Mary, strong in their wealth, which renders all
other nations weak, and weak in those arts of war by which other
nations are strong."

"I do not understand you," said the Lady.

"The Hollander and the Fleming, Mary, pour forth their spirit in
trade, and not in war; their wealth purchases them the arms of foreign
soldiers, by whose aid they defend it. They erect dikes on the
sea-shore to protect the land which they have won, and they levy
regiments of the stubborn Switzers and hardy Germans to protect the
treasures which they have amassed. And thus they are strong in their
weakness; for the very wealth which tempts their masters to despoil
them, arms strangers in their behalf."

"The slothful hinds!" exclaimed Mary, thinking and feeling like a
Scotswoman of the period; "have they hands, and fight not for the land
which bore them? They should be notched off at the elbow!"

"Nay, that were but hard justice," answered her husband; "for their
hands serve their country, though not in battle, like ours. Look at
these barren hills, Mary, and at that deep winding vale by which the
cattle are even now returning from their scanty browse. The hand of
the industrious Fleming would cover these mountains with wood, and
raise corn where we now see a starved and scanty sward of heath and
ling. It grieves me, Mary, when I look on that land, and think what
benefit it might receive from such men as I have lately seen--men who
seek not the idle fame derived from dead ancestors, or the bloody
renown won in modern broils, but tread along the land, as preservers
and improvers, not as tyrants and destroyers."

"These amendments would here be but a vain fancy, my Halbert,"
answered the Lady of Avenel; "the trees would be burned by the English
foemen, ere they ceased to be shrubs, and the grain that you raised
would be gathered in by the first neighbour that possessed more riders
than follow your train. Why should you repine at this? The fate that
made you Scotsman by birth, gave you head, and heart, and hand, to
uphold the name as it must needs be upheld."

"It gave _me_ no name to uphold," said Halbert, pacing the floor
slowly; "my arm has been foremost in every strife--my voice has been
heard in every council, nor have the wisest rebuked me. The crafty
Lethington, the deep and dark Morton, have held secret council with
me, and Grange and Lindsay have owned, that in the field I did the
devoir of a gallant knight--but let the emergence be passed when they
need my head and hand, and they only know me as son of the obscure
portioner of Glendearg."

This was a theme which the Lady always dreaded; for the rank conferred
on her husband, the favour in which he was held by the powerful Earl
of Murray, and the high talents by which he vindicated his right to
that rank and that favour, were qualities which rather increased than
diminished the envy which was harboured against Sir Halbert
Glendinning among a proud aristocracy, as a person originally of
inferior and obscure birth, who had risen to his present eminence
solely by his personal merit. The natural firmness of his mind did not
enable him to despise the ideal advantages of a higher pedigree, which
were held in such universal esteem by all with whom he conversed; and
so open are the noblest minds to jealous inconsistencies, that there
were moments in which he felt mortified that his lady should possess
those advantages of birth and high descent which he himself did not
enjoy, and regretted that his importance as the proprietor of Avenel
was qualified by his possessing it only as the husband of the heiress.
He was not so unjust as to permit any unworthy feelings to retain
permanent possession of his mind, but yet they recurred from time to
time, and did not escape his lady's anxious observation.

"Had we been blessed with children," she was wont on such occasions to
say to herself, "had our blood been united in a son who might have
joined my advantages of descent with my husband's personal worth,
these painful and irksome reflections had not disturbed our union even
for a moment. But the existence of such an heir, in whom our
affections, as well as our pretensions, might have centred, has been
denied to us."

With such mutual feelings, it cannot be wondered that it gave the Lady
pain to hear her husband verging towards this topic of mutual
discontent. On the present, as on other similar occasions, she
endeavoured to divert the knight's thoughts from this painful channel.

"How can you," she said, "suffer yourself to dwell upon things which
profit nothing? Have you indeed no name to uphold? You, the good and
the brave, the wise in council, and the strong in battle, have you not
to support the reputation your own deeds have won, a reputation more
honourable than mere ancestry can supply? Good men love and honour
you, the wicked fear, and the turbulent obey you; and is it not
necessary you should exert yourself to ensure the endurance of that
love, that honour, and wholesome fear, and that necessary obedience?"

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