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Books: The Monastery

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Monastery




"There are two hostelries in this Kirk-town," said Mysie, "but the
worst is best for our purpose; for it stands apart from the other
houses, and I ken the man weel, for he has dealt with my father for
malt."

This _causa scientiae_, to use a lawyer's phrase, was ill chosen
for Mysie's purpose; for Sir Piercie Shafton had, by dint of his own
loquacity, been talking himself all this while into a high esteem for
his fellow-traveller, and, pleased with the gracious reception which
she afforded to his powers of conversation, had well-nigh forgotten
that she was not herself one of those high-born beauties of whom he
was recounting so many stories, when this unlucky speech at once
placed the most disadvantageous circumstances attending her lineage
under his immediate recollection. He said nothing, however. What
indeed could he say? Nothing was so natural as that a miller's
daughter should be acquainted with publicans who dealt with her father
for malt, and all that was to be wondered at was the concurrence of
events which had rendered such a female the companion and guide of Sir
Piercie Shafton of Wilverton, kinsman of the great Earl of
Northumberland, whom princes and sovereigns themselves termed cousin,
because of the Piercie blood. [Footnote: Froissart tells us somewhere,
(the readers of romances are indifferent to accurate reference,) that
the King of France called one of the Piercies cousin, because of the
blood of Northumberland.] He felt the disgrace of strolling through
the country with a miller's maiden on the crupper behind him, and was
even ungrateful enough to feel some emotions of shame, when he halted
his horse at the door of the little inn.

But the alert intelligence of Mysie Happer spared him farther sense of
derogation, by instantly springing from his horse, and cramming the
ears of mine host, who came out with his mouth agape to receive a
guest of the knight's appearance, with an imagined tale, in which
circumstance on circumstance were huddled so fast, as to astonish Sir
Piercie Shafton, whose own invention was none of the most brilliant.
She explained to the publican that this was a great English knight
travelling from the Monastery to the court of Scotland, after having
paid his vows to Saint Mary, and that she had been directed to conduct
him so far on the road; and that Ball, her palfrey, had fallen by the
way, because he had been over-wrought with carrying home the last
melder of meal to the portioner of Langhope; and that she had turned
in Ball to graze in the Tasker's park, near Cripplecross, for he had
stood as still as Lot's wife with very weariness; and that the knight
had courteously insisted she should ride behind him, and that she had
brought him to her kend friend's hostelry rather than to proud Peter
Peddie's, who got his malt at the Mellerstane mills; and that he must
get the best that the house afforded, and that he must get it ready in
a moment of time, and that she was ready to help in the kitchen.

All this ran glibly off the tongue without pause on the part of Mysie
Happer, or doubt on that of the landlord. The guest's horse was
conducted to the stable, and he himself installed in the cleanest
corner and best seat which the place afforded. Mysie, ever active and
officious, was at once engaged in preparing food, in spreading the
table, and in making all the better arrangements which her experience
could suggest, for the honour and comfort of her companion. He would
fain have resisted this; for while it was impossible not to be
gratified with the eager and alert kindness which was so active in his
service, he felt an undefinable pain in seeing Mysinda engaged in
these menial services, and discharging them, moreover, as one to whom
they were but too familiar. Yet this jarring feeling was mixed with,
and perhaps balanced by, the extreme grace with which the neat-handed
maiden executed these tasks, however mean in themselves, and gave to
the wretched corner of a miserable inn of the period, the air of a
bower, in which an enamoured fairy, or at least a shepherdess of
Arcadia, was displaying, with unavailing solicitude, her designs on
the heart of some knight, destined by fortune to higher thoughts, and
a more splendid union.

The lightness and grace with which Mysie covered the little round
table with a snow-white cloth, and arranged upon it the
hastily-roasted capon, with its accompanying stoup of Bourdeaux, were
but plebeian graces in themselves; but yet there were very flattering
ideas excited by each glance. She was so very well made, agile at
once and graceful, with her hand and arm as white as snow, and her
face in which a smile contended with a blush, and her eyes which
looked ever at Shafton when he looked elsewhere, and were dropped at
once when they encountered his, that she was irresistible! In fine,
the affectionate delicacy of her whole demeanour, joined to the
promptitude and boldness she had so lately evinced, tended to ennoble
the services she had rendered, as if some

-----sweet engaging Grace
Put on some clothes to come abroad,
And took a waiter's place.

But, on the other hand, came the damning reflection, that these duties
were not taught her by Love, to serve the beloved only, but arose from
the ordinary and natural habits of a miller's daughter, accustomed,
doubtless, to render the same service to every wealthier churl who
frequented her father's mill. This stopped the mouth of vanity, and of
the love which vanity had been hatching, as effectually as a peck of
literal flour would have done.

Amidst this variety of emotions, Sir Piercie Shafton forgot not to ask
the object of them to sit down and partake the good cheer which she
had been so anxious to provide and to place in order. He expected that
this invitation would have been bashfully, perhaps, but certainly most
thankfully, accepted; but he was partly flattered, and partly piqued,
by the mixture of deference and resolution with which Mysie declined
his invitation. Immediately after, she vanished from the apartment,
leaving the Euphuist to consider whether he was most gratified or
displeased by her disappearance.

In fact, this was a point on which he would have found it difficult to
make up his mind, had there been any necessity for it. As there was
none, he drank a few cups of claret, and sang (to himself) a strophe
or two of the canzonettes of the divine Astrophel. But in spite both
of wine and of Sir Philip Sidney, the connexion in which he now stood,
and that which he was in future to hold, with the lovely Molinara, or
Mysinda, as he had been pleased to denominate Mysie Happer, recurred
to his mind. The fashion of the times (as we have already noticed)
fortunately coincided with his own natural generosity of disposition,
which indeed amounted almost to extravagance, in prohibiting, as a
deadly sin, alike against gallantry, chivalry, and morality, his
rewarding the good offices he had received from this poor maiden, by
abusing any of the advantages which her confidence in his honour had
afforded. To do Sir Piercie justice, it was an idea which never
entered into his head; and he would probably have dealt the most
scientific _imbroccata, stoccata_, or _punto reverso_, which
the school of Vincent Saviola had taught him, to any man who had dared
to suggest to him such selfish and ungrateful meanness. On the other
hand, he was a man, and foresaw various circumstances which might
render their journey together in this intimate fashion a scandal and a
snare. Moreover, he was a coxcomb and a courtier, and felt there was
something ridiculous in travelling the land with a miller's daughter
behind his saddle, giving rise to suspicions not very creditable to
either, and to ludicrous constructions, so far as he himself was
concerned.

"I would," he said half aloud, "that if such might be done without
harm or discredit to the too-ambitious, yet too-well-distinguishing
Molinara, she and I were fairly severed, and bound on our different
courses; even as we see the goodly vessel bound for the distant seas
hoist sails and bear away into the deep, while the humble fly-boat
carries to shore those friends, who, with wounded hearts and watery
eyes, have committed to their higher destinies the more daring
adventurers by whom the fair frigate is manned."

He had scarce uttered the wish when it was gratified; for the host
entered to say that his worshipful knighthood's horse was ready to be
brought forth as he had desired; and on his inquiry for "the--the
damsel--that is--the young woman--"

"Mysie Happer," said the landlord, "has returned to her father's; but
she bade me say, you could not miss the road for Edinburgh, in respect
it was neither far way nor foul gate."

It is seldom we are exactly blessed with the precise fulfilment of our
wishes at the moment when we utter them; perhaps, because Heaven
wisely withholds what, if granted, would be often received with
ingratitude. So at least it chanced in the present instance; for when
mine host said that Mysie was returned homeward, the knight was
tempted to reply, with an ejaculation of surprise and vexation, and a
hasty demand, whither and when she had departed? The first emotions
his prudence suppressed, the second found utterance.

"Where is she gane?" said the host, gazing on him, and repeating his
question--"She is gane hame to her father's, it is like--and she gaed
just when she gave orders about your worship's horse, and saw it well
fed, (she might have trusted me, but millers and millers' kin think a'
body as thief-like as themselves,) an' she's three miles on the gate
by this time."

"Is she gone then?" muttered Sir Piercie, making two or three hasty
strides through the narrow apartment--"Is she gone?--Well, then, let
her go. She could have had but disgrace by abiding by me, and I little
credit by her society. That I should have thought there was such
difficulty in shaking her off! I warrant she is by this time laughing
with some clown she has encountered; and my rich chain will prove a
good dowry.--And ought it not to prove so? and has she not deserved
it, were it ten times more valuable?--Piercie Shafton! Piercie
Shafton! dost thou grudge thy deliverer the guerdon she hath so dearly
won? The selfish air of this northern land hath infected thee, Piercie
Shafton! and blighted the blossoms of thy generosity, even as it is
said to shrivel the flowers of the mulberry.--Yet I thought," he
added, after a moment's pause, "that she would not so easily and
voluntarily have parted from me. But it skills not thinking of
it.--Cast my reckoning, mine host, and let your groom lead forth my
nag."

The good host seemed also to have some mental point to discuss, for he
answered not instantly, debating perhaps whether his conscience would
bear a double charge for the same guests. Apparently his conscience
replied in the negative, though not without hesitation, for he at
length replied--"It's daffing to lee; it winna deny that the lawing is
clean paid. Ne'ertheless, if your worshipful knighthood pleases to
give aught for increase of trouble--"

"How!" said the knight; "the reckoning paid? and by whom, I pray
you?"

"E'en by Mysie Happer, if truth maun be spoken, as I said before,"
answered the honest landlord, with as many compunctious visitings for
telling the verity as another might have felt for making a lie in the
circumstances--"And out of the moneys supplied for your honour's
journey by the Abbot, as she tauld to me. And laith were I to
surcharge any gentleman that darkens my doors." He added in the
confidence of honesty which his frank avowal entitled him to
entertain, "Nevertheless, as I said before, if it pleases your
knighthood of free good-will to consider extraordinary trouble--"

The knight cut short his argument, by throwing the landlord a
rose-noble, which probably doubled the value of a Scottish reckoning,
though it would have defrayed but a half one at the Three Cranes or
the Vintry. The bounty so much delighted mine host, that he ran to
fill the stirrup-cup (for which no charge was ever made) from a butt
yet charier than that which he had pierced for the former stoup. The
knight paced slowly to horse, partook of his courtesy, and thanked him
with the stiff condescension of the court of Elizabeth; then mounted
and followed the northern path, which was pointed out as the nearest
to Edinburgh, and which, though very unlike a modern highway, bore yet
so distinct a resemblance to a public and frequented road as not to be
easily mistaken.

"I shall not need her guidance it seems," said he to himself, as he
rode slowly onward; "and I suppose that was one reason of her abrupt
departure, so different from what one might have expected.--Well, I
am well rid of her. Do we not pray to be liberated from temptation?
Yet that she should have erred so much in estimation of her own
situation and mine, as to think of defraying the reckoning! I would I
saw her once more, but to explain to her the solecism of which her
inexperience hath rendered her guilty. And I fear," he added, as he
emerged from some straggling trees, and looked out upon a wild moorish
country, composed of a succession of swelling lumpish hills, "I fear I
shall soon want the aid of this Ariadne, who might afford me a clew
through the recesses of yonder mountainous labyrinth."

As the Knight thus communed with himself, his attention was caught by
the sound of a horse's footsteps; and a lad, mounted on a little gray
Scottish nag, about fourteen hands high, coming along a path which led
from behind the trees, joined him on the high-road, if it could be
termed such. The dress of the lad was completely in village fashion,
yet neat and handsome in appearance. He had a jerkin of gray cloth
slashed and trimmed, with black hose of the same, with deer-skin
rullions or sandals, and handsome silver spurs. A cloak of a dark
mulberry colour was closely drawn round the upper part of his person,
and the cape in part muffled his face, which was also obscured by his
bonnet of black velvet cloth, and its little plume of feathers.

Sir Piercie Shafton, fond of society, desirous also to have a guide,
and, moreover, prepossessed in favour of so handsome a youth, failed
not to ask him whence he came, and whither he was going. The youth
looked another way, as he answered, that he was going to Edinburgh,
"to seek service in some nobleman's family."

"I fear me you have run away from your last master," said Sir Piercie,
"since you dare not look me in the face while you answer my question."

"Indeed, sir, I have not," answered the lad, bashfully, while, as if
with reluctance, he turned round his face, and instantly withdrew it.
It was a glance, but the discovery was complete. There was no
mistaking the dark full eye, the cheek in which much embarrassment
could not altogether disguise an expression of comic humour, and the
whole figure at once betrayed, under her metamorphosis, the Maid of
the Mill. The recognition was joyful, and Sir Piercie Shafton was too
much pleased to have regained his companion to remember the very
good reasons which had consoled him for losing her.

To his questions respecting her dress, she answered that she had
obtained it in the Kirktown from a friend; it was the holiday suit of
a son of hers, who had taken the field with his liege-lord, the baron
of the land. She had borrowed the suit under pretence she meant to
play in some mumming or rural masquerade. She had left, she said, her
own apparel in exchange, which was better worth ten crowns than this
was worth four.

"And the nag, my ingenious Molinara," said Sir Piercie, "whence comes
the nag?"

"I borrowed him from our host at the Gled's-Nest," she replied; and
added, half stifling a laugh, "he has sent to get, instead of it, our
Ball, which I left in the Tasker's Park at Cripplecross. He will be
lucky if he find it there."

"But then the poor man will lose his horse, most argute Mysinda," said
Sir Piercie Shafton, whose English notions of property were a little
startled at a mode of acquisition more congenial to the ideas of a
miller's daughter (and he a Border miller to boot) than with those of
an English person of quality.

"And if he does lose his horse," said Mysie, laughing, "surely he is
not the first man on the marches who has had such a mischance. But he
will be no loser, for I warrant he will stop the value out of moneys
which he has owed my father this many a day."

"But then your father will be the loser," objected yet again the
pertinacious uprightness of Sir Piercie Shafton.

"What signifies it now to talk of my father?" said the damsel,
pettishly; then instantly changing to a tone of deep feeling, she
added, "my father has this day lost that which will make him hold
light the loss of all the gear he has left."

Struck with the accents of remorseful sorrow in which his companion
uttered these few words, the English knight felt himself bound both in
honour and conscience to expostulate with her as strongly as he could,
on the risk of the step which she had now taken, and on the propriety
of her returning to her father's house. The matter of his discourse,
though adorned with many unnecessary flourishes, was honourable both
to his head and heart.

The Maid of the Mill listened to his flowing periods with her head
sunk on her bosom as she rode, like one in deep thought or deeper
sorrow. When he had finished, she raised up her countenance, looked
full on the knight, and replied with great firmness--"If you are weary
of my company, Sir Piercie Shafton, you have but to say so, and the
Miller's daughter will be no farther cumber to you. And do not think I
will be a burden to you, if we travel together to Edinburgh; I have
wit enough and pride enough to be a willing burden to no man. But if
you reject not my company at present, and fear not it will be
burdensome to you hereafter, speak no more to me of returning back.
All that you can say to me I have said to myself; and that I am now
here, is a sign that I have said it to no purpose. Let this subject,
therefore, be forever ended betwixt us. I have already, in some small
fashion, been useful to you, and the time may come I may be more so;
for this is not your land of England, where men say justice is done
with little fear or favour to great and to small; but it is a land
where men do by the strong hand, and defend by the ready wit, and I
know better than you the perils you are exposed to."

Sir Piercie Shafton was somewhat mortified to find that the damsel
conceived her presence useful to him as a protectress as well as
guide, and said something of seeking protection of nought save his own
arm and his good sword. Mysie answered very quietly, that she nothing
doubted his bravery; but it was that very quality of bravery which was
most likely to involve him in danger. Sir Piercie Shafton, whose head
never kept very long in any continued train of thinking, acquiesced
without much reply, resolving in his own mind that the maiden only
used this apology to disguise her real motive, of affection to his
person. The romance of the situation flattered his vanity and elevated
his imagination, as placing him in the situation of one of those
romantic heroes of whom he had read the histories, where similar
transformations made a distinguished figure.

He took many a sidelong glance at his page, whose habits of country
sport and country exercise had rendered her quite adequate to sustain
the character she had assumed. She managed the little nag with
dexterity, and even with grace; nor did any thing appear that could
have betrayed her disguise, except when a bashful consciousness of her
companion's eye being fixed on her, gave her an appearance of
temporary embarrassment, which greatly added to her beauty.

The couple rode forward as in the morning, pleased with themselves and
with each other, until they arrived at the village where they were to
repose for the night, and where all the inhabitants of the little inn,
both male and female, joined in extolling the good grace and handsome
countenance of the English knight, and the uncommon beauty of his
youthful attendant.

It was here that Mysie Happer first made Sir Piercie Shafton sensible
of the reserved manner in which she proposed to live with him. She
announced him as her master, and, waiting upon him with the reverent
demeanour of an actual domestic, permitted not the least approach to
familiarity, not even such as the knight might with the utmost
innocence have ventured upon. For example, Sir Piercie, who, as we
know, was a great connoisseur in dress, was detailing to her the
advantageous change which he proposed to make in her attire as soon as
they should reach Edinburgh, by arraying her in his own colours of
pink and carnation. Mysie Happer listened with great complacency to
the unction with which he dilated upon welts, laces, slashes, and
trimmings, until, carried away by the enthusiasm with which he was
asserting the superiority of the falling band over the Spanish ruff,
he approached his hand, in the way of illustration, towards the collar
of his page's doublet. She instantly stepped back and gravely reminded
him that she was alone and under his protection.

"You cannot but remember the cause which has brought me here," she
continued; "make the least approach to any familiarity which you would
not offer to a princess surrounded by her court, and you have seen the
last of the Miller's daughter--She will vanish as the chaff disappears
from the shieling-hill [Footnote: The place where corn was winnowed,
while that operation was performed by the hand, was called in Scotland
the Shieling-hill.] when the west wind blows."

"I do protest, fair Molinara," said Sir Piercie Shafton--but the fair
Molinara had disappeared before his protest could be uttered. "A most
singular wench," said he to himself; "and by this hand, as discreet as
she is fair-featured--Certes, shame it were to offer her scathe or
dishonour! She makes similes too, though somewhat savouring of her
condition. Had she but read Euphues, and forgotten that accursed mill
and shieling-hill, it is my thought that her converse would be
broidered with as many and as choice pearls of compliment, as that of
the most rhetorical lady in the court of Feliciana. I trust she means
to return to bear me company."

But that was no part of Mysie's prudential scheme. It was then drawing
to dusk, and he saw her not again until the next morning, when the
horses were brought to the door that they might prosecute their
journey.

But our story here necessarily leaves the English knight and his page,
to return to the Tower of Glendearg.




Chapter the Thirtieth.


You call it an ill angel it may be so,
But sure I am, among the ranks which fell,
'Tis the first fiend e'er counsell'd man to rise,
And win the bliss the sprite himself had forfeited.
OLD PLAY.

We must resume our narrative at the period when Mary Avenel was
conveyed to the apartment which had been formerly occupied by the two
Glendinnings, and when her faithful attendant, Tibbie, had exhausted
herself in useless attempts to compose and to comfort her. Father
Eustace also dealt forth with well-meant kindness those apophthegms
and dogmata of consolation, which friendship almost always offers to
grief, though they are uniformly offered in vain. She was at length
left to indulge in the desolation of her own sorrowful feelings. She
felt as those who, loving for the first time, have lost what they
loved, before time and repeated calamity have taught them that every
loss is to a certain extent reparable or endurable.

Such grief may be conceived better than it can be described, as is
well known to those who have experienced it. But Mary Avenel had been
taught by the peculiarity of her situation, to regard herself as the
Child of Destiny; and the melancholy and reflecting turn of her
disposition gave to her sorrows a depth and breadth peculiar to her
character. The grave--and it was a bloody grave--had closed, as she
believed, over the youth to whom she was secretly, but most warmly
attached; the force and ardour of Halbert's character bearing a
singular correspondence to the energy of which her own was capable.
Her sorrow did not exhaust itself in sighs and tears, but when the
first shock had passed away, concentrated itself with deep and steady
meditation, to collect and calculate, like a bankrupt debtor, the full
amount of her loss. It seemed as if all that connected her with earth,
had vanished with this broken tie. She had never dared to anticipate
the probability of an ultimate union with Halbert, yet now his
supposed fall seemed that of the only tree which was to shelter her
from the storm. She respected the more gentle character, and more
peaceful attainments, of the younger Glendinning; but it had not
escaped her (what never indeed escaped woman in such circumstances)
that he was disposed to place himself in competition with what she,
the daughter of a proud and warlike race, deemed the more manly
qualities of his elder brother; and there is no time when a woman does
so little justice to the character of a surviving lover, as when
comparing him with the preferred rival of whom she has been recently
deprived.