Wm. H. Maher - "A Man of Samples"

Virginia Carter Castleman - "Pocahontas."

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1577 78"

Jane Austen - "Persuasion"

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Books: The Monastery

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Monastery




"And that," said the Abbot, "must have been right wretched; for to
judge from the appetite which Julian showeth when abroad, he hath not, I
judge, over-abundant provision at home."

"You are right, sir--your reverence is in the right," continued Sir
Piercie; "we had but lenten fare, and, what was worse, a score to
clear at the departure; for though this Julian Avenel called us to no
reckoning, yet he did so extravagantly admire the fashion of my
poniard--the _poignet_ being of silver exquisitely hatched, and
indeed the weapon being altogether a piece of exceeding rare device
and beauty--that in faith I could not for very shame's sake but pray
his acceptance of it; words which he gave me not the trouble of
repeating twice, before he had stuck it into his greasy buff-belt,
where, credit me, reverend sir, it showed more like a butcher's knife
than a gentleman's dagger."

"So goodly a gift might at least have purchased you a few days'
hospitality," said Father Eustace.

"Reverend sir," said Sir Piercie, "had I abidden with him, I should
have been complimented out of every remnant of my wardrobe--actually
flayed, by the hospitable gods I swear it! Sir, he secured my spare
doublet, and had a pluck at my galligaskins--I was enforced to beat a
retreat before I was altogether unrigged. That Border knave, his
serving man, had a pluck at me too, and usurped a scarlet cassock and
steel cuirass belonging to the page of my body, whom I was fain to
leave behind me. In good time I received a letter from my Right
Honourable Cousin, showing me that he had written to you in my behalf,
and sent to your charge two mails filled with wearing apparel--namely,
my rich crimson silk doublet, slashed out and lined with cloth of
gold, which I wore at the last revels, with baldric and trimmings to
correspond--also two pair black silk slops, with hanging garters of
carnation silk--also the flesh-coloured silken doublet, with the
trimmings of fur, in which I danced the salvage man at the Gray's-Inn
mummery--also----"

"Sir Knight," said the Sub-Prior, "I pray you to spare the farther
inventory of your wardrobe. The monks of Saint Mary's are no
free-booting barons, and whatever part of your vestments arrived at
our house, have been this day faithfully brought hither, with the
mails which contained them. I may presume from what has been said, as
we have indeed been, given to understand by the Earl of
Northumberland, that your desire is to remain for the present as
unknown and as unnoticed, as may be consistent with your high worth
and distinction?"

"Alas, reverend father!" replied the courtier, "a blade when it is in
the scabbard cannot give lustre, a diamond when it is in the casket
cannot give light, and worth, when it is compelled by circumstances to
obscure itself, cannot draw observation--my retreat can only attract
the admiration of those few to whom circumstances permit its
displaying itself."

"I conceive now, my venerable father and lord," said the Sub-Prior,
"that your wisdom will assign such a course of conduct to this noble
knight, as may be alike consistent with his safety, and with the weal
of the community. For you wot well, that perilous strides have been
made in these audacious days, to the destruction of all ecclesiastical
foundations, and that our holy community has been repeatedly menaced.
Hitherto they have found no flaw in our raiment; but a party, friendly
as well to the Queen of England, as to the heretical doctrines of the
schismatical church, or even to worse and wilder forms of heresy,
prevails now at the court of our sovereign, who dare not yield to her
suffering clergy the protection she would gladly extend to them."

"My lord, and reverend sir," said the knight, "I will gladly relieve
you of my presence, while ye canvass this matter at your freedom; and
to speak truly, I am desirous to see in what case the chamberlain of
my noble kinsman hath found my wardrobe, and how he hath packed the
same, and whether it has suffered from the journey--there are four
suits of as pure and elegant device as ever the fancy of a fair lady
doated upon, every one having a treble, and appropriate change of
ribbons, trimmings, and fringes, which, in case of need, may as it
were renew each of them, and multiply the four into twelve.--There is
also my sad-coloured riding-suit, and three cut-work shirts with
falling bands--I pray you, pardon me--I must needs see how matters
stand with them without farther dallying."

Thus speaking, he left the room; and the Sub-Prior, looking after him
significantly, added, "Where the treasure is will the heart be also."

"Saint Mary preserve our wits!" said the Abbot, stunned with the
knight's abundance of words; "were man's brains ever so stuffed with
silk and broadcloth, cut-work, and I wot not what besides! And what
could move the Earl of Northumberland to assume for his bosom
counsellor, in. matters of death and danger, such a feather-brained
coxcomb as this?"

"Had he been other than what he is, venerable father," said the
Sub-Prior, "he had been less fitted for the part of scape-goat, to which
his Right Honourable Cousin had probably destined him from the
commencement, in case of their plot failing. I know something of this
Piercie Shafton. The legitimacy of his mother's descent from the
Piercie family, the point on which he is most jealous, hath been
called in question. If hairbrained courage, and an outrageous spirit
of gallantry, can make good his pretensions to the high lineage he
claims, these qualities have never been denied him. For the rest, he
is one of the ruffling gallants of the time, like Howland Yorke,
Stukely,

[Footnote: "Yorke," says Camden, "was a Londoner, a man of
loose and dissolute behaviour, and desperately audacious--famous in
his time amongst the common bullies and swaggerers, as being the first
that, to the great admiration of many at his boldness, brought into
England the bold and dangerous way of fencing with the rapier in
duelling. Whereas, till that time, the English used to fight with long
swords and bucklers, striking with the edge, and thought it no part of
man either to push or strike beneath the girdle.

Having a command in the Low Countries, Yorke revolted to the
Spaniards, and died miserably, poisoned, as was supposed, by his new
allies. Three years afterwards, his bones were dug up and gibbeted by
the command of the States of Holland.

Thomas Stukely, another distinguished gallant of the time, was bred a
merchant, being the son of a rich clothier in the west. He wedded the
daughter and heiress of a wealthy alderman of London, named Curtis,
after whose death he squandered the riches he thus acquired in all
manner of extravagance. His wife, whose fortune supplied his waste,
represented to him that he ought to make more of her. Stukely replied,
"I will make as much of thee, believe me, as it is possible for any to
do;" and he kept his word in one sense, having stripped her even of
her wearing apparel, before he finally ran away from her.

Having fled to Italy, he contrived to impose upon the Pope, with a
plan of invading Ireland, for which he levied soldiers, and made some
preparations, but ended by engaging himself and his troops in the
service of King Sebastian of Portugal. He sailed with that prince on
his fatal voyage to Barbary, and fell with him at the battle of
Alcazar.

Stukely, as one of the first gallants of the time, has had the honour
to be chronicled in song, in Evans' Old Ballads, vol. iii, edition
1810. His fate is also introduced in a tragedy, by George Peel, as has
been supposed, called the Battle of Alcazar, from which play Dryden is
alleged to have taken the idea of Don Sebastian; if so, it is
surprising he omitted a character so congenial to King Charles the
Second's time as the witty, brave, and profligate Thomas Stukely.]

and others, who wear out their fortunes, and endanger their lives, in
idle braveries, in order that they may be esteemed the only choice
gallants of the time; and afterwards endeavour to repair their
estate, by engaging in the desperate plots and conspiracies which
wiser heads have devised. To use one of his own conceited similitudes,
such courageous fools resemble hawks, which the wiser conspirator
keeps hooded and blinded on his wrist until the quarry is on the wing,
and who are then flown at them."

"Saint Mary," said the Abbot, "he were an evil guest to introduce into
our quiet household. Our young monks make bustle enough, and more than
is beseeming God's servants, about their outward attire already--this
knight were enough to turn their brains, from the _Vestiarius_
down to the very scullion boy."

"A worse evil might follow," said the Sub-Prior: "in these bad days,
the patrimony of the church is bought and sold, forfeited and
distrained, as if it were the unhallowed soil appertaining to a
secular baron. Think what penalty awaits us, were we convicted of
harbouring a rebel to her whom they call the Queen of England! There
would neither be wanting Scottish parasites to beg the lands of the
foundation, nor an army from England to burn and harry the Halidome.
The men of Scotland were once Scotsmen, firm and united in the love of
their country, and throwing every other consideration aside when the
frontier was menaced--now they are--what shall I call them--the one
part French, the other part English, considering their dear native
country merely as a prize-fighting stage, upon which foreigners are
welcome to decide their quarrels."

"Benedictine!" replied the Abbot, "they are indeed slippery and evil
times."

"And therefore," said Father Eustace, "we must walk warily--we must
not, for example, bring this man--this Sir Piercie Shafton, to our
house of Saint Mary's."

"But how then shall we dispose of him?" replied the Abbot; "bethink
thee that he is a sufferer for holy Church's sake--that his patron,
the Earl of Northumberland, hath been our friend, and that, lying so
near us, he may work us weal or wo according as we deal with his
kinsman."

"And, accordingly," said the Sub-Prior, "for these reasons, as well as
for discharge of the great duty of Christian charity, I would protect
and relieve this man. Let him not go back to Julian Avenel--that
unconscientious baron would not stick to plunder the exiled
stranger--Let him remain here--the spot is secluded, and if the
accommodation be beneath his quality, discovery will become the less
likely. We will make such means for his convenience as we can devise."

"Will he be persuaded, thinkest thou?" said the Abbot; "I will leave
my own travelling bed for his repose, and send up a suitable
easy-chair."

"With such easements," said the Sub-Prior, "he must not complain; and
then, if threatened by any sudden danger, he can soon come down to the
sanctuary, where we will harbour him in secret until means can be
devised of dismissing him in safety."

"Were we not better," said the Abbot, "send him on to the court, and
get rid of him at once?"

"Ay, but at the expense of our friends--this butterfly may fold his
wings, and lie under cover in the cold air of Glendearg; but were he
at Holyrood, he would, did his life depend on it, expand his spangled
drapery in the eyes of the queen and court--Rather than fail of
distinction, he would sue for love to our gracious sovereign--the eyes
of all men would be upon him in the course of three short days, and
the international peace of the two ends of the island endangered for a
creature, who, like a silly moth, cannot abstain from fluttering round
a light."

"Thou hast prevailed with me, Father Eustace," said the Abbot, "and it
will go hard but I improve on thy plan--I will send up in secret, not
only household stuff, but wine and wassell-bread. There is a young
swankie here who shoots venison well. I will give him directions to
see that the knight lacks none."

"Whatever accommodation he can have, which infers not a risk of
discovery," said the Sub-Prior, "it is our duty to afford him."

"Nay," said the Abbot, "we will do more, and will instantly despatch a
servant express to the keeper of our revestiary to send us such things
as he may want, even this night. See it done, good father."

"I will," answered Father Eustace; "but I hear the gull clamorous for
some one to truss his points.[Footnote: The points were the strings of
cord or ribbon, (so called, because _pointed_ with metal like the
laces of women's stays,) which attached the doublet to the hose. They
were very numerous, and required assistance to tie them properly,
which was called _trussing_.] He will be fortunate if he lights
on any one here who can do him the office of groom of the chamber."

"I would he would appear," said the Abbot, "for here comes the
Refectioner with the collation--By my faith, the ride hath given me a
sharp appetite!"

* * * * *



Chapter the Seventeenth.


I'll seek for other aid--Spirits, they say,
Flit round invisible, as thick as motes
Dance in the sunbeam. If that spell
Or necromancer's sigil can compel them,
They shall hold council with me.
JAMES DUFF.

The reader's attention must be recalled to Halbert Glendinning, who had
left the Tower of Glendearg immediately after his quarrel with its new
guest, Sir Piercie Shafton. As he walked with a rapid pace up the glen,
Old Martin followed him, beseeching him to be less hasty.

"Halbert," said the old man, "you will never live to have white hair, if
you take fire thus at every spark of provocation."

"And why should I wish it, old man," said Halbert, "if I am to be the
butt that every fool may aim a shaft of scorn against?--What avails
it, old man, that you yourself move, sleep, and wake, eat thy niggard
meal, and repose on thy hard pallet?--Why art thou so well pleased
that the morning should call thee up to daily toil, and the evening
again lay thee down a wearied-out wretch? Were it not better sleep and
wake no more, than to undergo this dull exchange of labour for
insensibility and of insensibility for labour?"

"God help me," answered Martin, "there may be truth in what thou
sayest--but walk slower, for my old limbs cannot keep pace with your
young legs--walk slower, and I will tell you why age, though unlovely,
is yet endurable."

"Speak on then," said Halbert, slackening his pace, "but remember we
must seek venison to refresh the fatigues of these holy men, who will
this morning have achieved a journey of ten miles; and if we reach not
the Brocksburn head we are scarce like to see an antler."

"Then know, my good Halbert," said Martin, "whom I love as my own son,
that I am satisfied to live till death calls me, because my Maker
wills it. Ay, and although I spend what men call a hard life, pinched
with cold in winter, and burnt with heat in summer, though I feed hard
and sleep hard, and am held mean and despised, yet I bethink me, that
were I of no use on the face of this fair creation, God would withdraw
me from it."

"Thou poor old man," said Halbert, "and can such a vain conceit as
this of thy fancied use, reconcile thee to a world where thou playest
so poor a part?"

"My part was nearly as poor," said Martin, "my person nearly as much
despised, the day that I saved my mistress and her child from
perishing in the wilderness."

"Right, Martin," answered Halbert; "there, indeed, thou didst what
might be a sufficient apology for a whole life of insignificance."

"And do you account it for nothing, Halbert, that I should have the
power of giving you a lesson of patience, and submission to the
destinies of Providence? Methinks there is use for the grey hairs on
the old scalp, were it but to instruct the green head by precept and
by example."

Halbert held down his face, and remained silent for a minute or two, and
then resumed his discourse: "Martin, seest thou aught changed in me of
late?"

"Surely," said Martin. "I have always known you hasty, wild, and
inconsiderate, rude, and prompt to speak at the volley and without
reflection; but now, methinks, your bearing, without losing its
natural fire, has something in it of force and dignity which it had
not before. It seems as if you had fallen asleep a carle, and awakened
a gentleman."

"Thou canst judge, then, of noble bearing?" said Halbert.

"Surely," answered Martin, "in some sort I can; for I have travelled
through court, and camp, and city, with my master, Walter Avenel,
although he could do nothing for me in the long run, but give me room
for two score of sheep on the hill--and surely even now, while I speak
with you, I feel sensible that my language is more refined than it is
my wont to use, and that--though I know not the reason--the rude
northern dialect, so familiar to my tongue, has given place to a more
town-bred speech."

"And this change in thyself and me, thou canst by no means account
for?" said young Glendinning.

"Change!" replied Martin, "by our Lady it is not so much a change
which I feel, as a recalling and renewing sentiments and expressions
which I had some thirty years since, ere Tibb and I set up our humble
household. It is singular, that your society should have this sort of
influence over me, Halbert, and that I should never have experienced
it ere now."

"Thinkest thou," said Halbert, "thou seest in me aught that can raise
me from this base, low, despised state, into one where I may rank with
those proud men, who now despise my clownish poverty?"

Martin paused an instant, and then answered, "Doubtless you may,
Halbert; as broken a ship has come to land. Heard ye never of Hughie
Dun, who left this Halidome some thirty-five years gone by? A
deliverly fellow was Hughie--could read and write like a priest, and
could wield brand and buckler with the best of the riders. I mind
him--the like of him was never seen in the Halidome of Saint Mary's,
and so was seen of the preferment that God sent him."

"And what was that?" said Halbert, his eyes sparkling with eagerness.

"Nothing less," answered Martin, "than body-servant to the Archbishop
of Saint Andrews!"

Halbert's countenance fell.--"A servant--and to a priest? Was this all
that knowledge and activity could raise him to?"

Martin, in his turn, looked with wistful surprise in the face of his
young friend. "And to what could fortune lead him farther?" answered
he. "The son of a kirk-feuar is not the stuff that lords and knights
are made of. Courage and school craft cannot change churl's blood into
gentle blood, I trow. I have heard, forby, that Hughie Dun left a good
five hundred punds of Scots money to his only daughter, and that she
married the Bailie of Pittenweem."

At this moment, and while Halbert was embarrassed with devising a
suitable answer, a deer bounded across their path. In an instant the
crossbow was at the youth's shoulder, the bolt whistled, and the deer,
after giving one bound upright, dropt dead on the green sward.

"There lies the venison our dame wanted," said Martin; "who would have
thought of an out-lying stag being so low down the glen at this
season?--And it is a hart of grease too, in full season, and three
inches of fat on the brisket. Now this is all your luck, Halbert, that
follows you, go where you like. Were you to put in for it, I would
warrant you were made one of the Abbot's yeoman-prickers, and ride
about in a purple doublet as bold as the best."

"Tush, man," answered Halbert, "I will serve the Queen or no one.
Take thou care to have down the venison to the Tower, since they
expect it. I will on to the moss. I have two or three bird-bolts at
my girdle, and it may be I shall find wild-fowl."

He hastened his pace, and was soon out of sight. Martin paused for a
moment, and looked after him. "There goes the making of a right
gallant stripling, an ambition have not the spoiling of him--Serve the
Queen! said he. By my faith, and she hath worse servants, from all
that I e'er heard of him. And wherefore should he not keep a high
head? They that ettle to the top of the ladder will at least get up
some rounds. They that mint [Footnote: _Mint_--aim at.] at a gown
of gold, will always get a sleeve of it. But come, sir, (addressing
the stag,) you shall go to Glendearg on my two legs somewhat more
slowly than you were frisking it even now on your own four nimble
shanks. Nay, by my faith, if you be so heavy, I will content me with
the best of you, and that's the haunch and the nombles, and e'en heave
up the rest on the old oak-tree yonder, and come back for it with one
of the yauds." [Footnote: _Yauds_--horses; more particularly
horses of labour.]

While Martin returned to Glendearg with the venison, Halbert
prosecuted his walk, breathing more easily since he was free of his
companion. "The domestic of a proud and lazy priest--body-squire to
the Archbishop of Saint Andrews," he repeated to himself; "and this,
with the privilege of allying his blood with the Bailie of Pittenween,
is thought a preferment worth a brave man's struggling for;--nay more,
a preferment which, if allowed, should crown the hopes, past, present,
and to come, of the son of a Kirk-vassal! By Heaven, but that I find
in me a reluctance to practise their acts of nocturnal rapine, I would
rather take the jack and lance, and join with the Border-riders.
--Something I will do. Here, degraded and dishonoured, I will not live
the scorn of each whiffling stranger from the South, because,
forsooth, he wears tinkling spurs on a tawney boot. This thing--this
phantom, be it what it will, I will see it once more. Since I spoke
with her, and touched her hand, thoughts and feelings have dawned on
me, of which my former life had not even dreamed; but shall I, who
feel my father's glen too narrow for my expanding spirit, brook to be
bearded in it by this vain gewgaw of a courtier, and in the sight too
of Mary Avenel? I will not stoop to it, by Heaven!"

As he spoke thus, he arrived in the sequestered glen of
Corri-nan-shian, as it verged upon the hour of noon. A few moments he
remained looking upon the fountain, and doubting in his own mind with
what countenance the White Lady might receive him. She had not indeed
expressly forbidden his again evoking her; but yet there was something
like such a prohibition implied in the farewell, which recommended him
to wait for another guide.

Halbert Glendinning did not long, however, allow himself to pause.
Hardihood was the natural characteristic of his mind; and under the
expansion and modification which his feelings had lately undergone, it
had been augmented rather than diminished. He drew his sword, undid
the buskin from his foot, bowed three times with deliberation towards
the fountain, and as often towards the tree, and repeated the same
rhyme as formerly,--

"Thrice to the holy brake--
Thrice to the well:--
I bid thee awake,
White Maid of Avenel!

Noon gleams on the lake--
Noon glows on the fell--
Wake thee, O wake,
White Maid of Avenel!"

His eye was on the holly bush as he spoke the last line; and it was
not without an involuntary shuddering that he saw the air betwixt his
eye and that object become more dim, and condense, as it were, into
the faint appearance of a form, through which, however, so thin and
transparent was the first appearance of the phantom, he could discern
the outline of the bush, as through a veil of fine crape. But,
gradually, it darkened into a more substantial appearance, and the
White Lady stood before him with displeasure on her brow. She spoke,
and her speech was still song, or rather measured chant; but, as if
now more familiar, it flowed occasionally in modulated blank-verse,
and at other times in the lyrical measure which she had used at their
former meeting.

"This is the day when the fairy kind
Sits weeping alone for their hopeless lot,
And the wood-maiden sighs to the sighing wind,
And the mer-maiden weeps in her crystal grot:
For this is the day that a deed was wrought,
In which we have neither part nor share.
For the children of clay was salvation bought,
But not for the forms of sea or air!
And ever the mortal is most forlorn.
Who meeteth our race on the Friday morn."

"Spirit," said Halbert Glendinning, boldly, "it is bootless to
threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but
slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so
far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against
me. My heart is hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I
am, as thy words infer, of a race more peculiarly the care of Heaven
than thine, it is mine to call, it must be thine to answer. I am the
nobler being."

As he spoke, the figure looked upon him with a fierce and ireful
countenance, which, without losing the similitude of that which it
usually exhibited, had a wilder and more exaggerated cast of features.
The eyes seemed to contract and become more fiery, and slight
convulsions passed over the face, as if it was about to be transformed
into something hideous. The whole appearance resembled those faces
which the imagination summons up when it is disturbed by laudanum, but
which do not remain under the visionary's command, and, beautiful in
their first appearance, become wild and grotesque ere we can arrest
them.