The Abbot

“I said from the beginning,” answered the Lady Fleming, “that your Grace ought not to rely on being favoured with the company of a youth who has so many Huguenot acquaintances, and has the means of amusing himself far more agreeably than with us.”

“I wish,” said Catherine, her animated features reddening with mortification, “that his friends would sail away with him for good, and bring us in return a page (if such a thing can be found) faithful to his Queen and to his religion.”

“One part of your wishes may be granted, madam,” said Roland Graeme, unable any longer to restrain his sense of the treatment which he received on all sides; and he was about to add, “I heartily wish you a companion in my room, if such can be found, who is capable of enduring women’s caprices without going distracted.” Luckily, he recollected the remorse which he had felt at having given way to the vivacity of his temper upon a similar occasion; and, closing his lips, imprisoned, until it died on his tongue, a reproach so misbecoming the presence of majesty.

“Why do you remain there,” said the Queen, “as if you were rooted to the parterre?”

“I but attend your Grace’s commands,” said the page.

“I have none to give you – Begone, sir.”

As he left the garden to go to the boat, he distinctly heard Mary upbraid one of her attendants in these words: – “You see to what you have exposed us!”

This brief scene at once determined Roland Graeme’s resolution to quit the castle, if it were possible, and to impart his resolution to George Douglas without loss of time. That gentleman, in his usual mood of silence, sate in the stern of the little skiff which they used on such occasions, trimming his fishing-tackle, and, from time to time, indicating by signs to Graeme, who pulled the oars, which way he should row. When they were a furlong or two from the castle, Roland rested on the oars, and addressed his companion somewhat abruptly, – “I have something of importance to say to you, under your pleasure, fair sir.”

The pensive melancholy of Douglas’s countenance at once gave way to the eager, keen, and startled look of one who expects to hear something of deep and alarming import.

“I am wearied to the very death of this Castle of Lochleven,” continued Roland.

“Is that all?” said Douglas; “I know none of its inhabitants who are much better pleased with it.”

“Ay, but I am neither a native of the house, nor a prisoner in it, and so I may reasonably desire to leave it.”

“You might desire to quit it with equal reason,” answered Douglas, “if you were both the one and the other.”

“But,” said Roland Graeme, “I am not only tired of living in Lochleven Castle, but I am determined to quit it.”

“That is a resolution more easily taken than executed,” replied Douglas.

“Not if yourself, sir, and your Lady Mother, choose to consent,” answered the page.

“You mistake the matter, Roland,” said Douglas; “you will find that the consent of two other persons is equally essential – that of the Lady Mary your mistress, and that of my uncle the Regent, who placed you about her person, and who will not think it proper that she should change her attendants so soon.”

“And must I then remain whether I will or no?” demanded the page, somewhat appalled at a view of the subject, which would have occurred sooner to a person of more experience.

“At least,” said George Douglas, “you must will to remain till my uncle consents to dismiss you.”

“Frankly,” said the page, “and speaking to you as a gentleman who is incapable of betraying me, I will confess, that if I thought myself a prisoner here, neither walls nor water should confine me long.”

“Frankly,” said Douglas, “I could not much blame you for the attempt; yet, for all that, my father, or uncle, or the earl, or any of my brothers, or in short any of the king’s lords into whose hands you fell, would in such a case hang you like a dog, or like a sentinel who deserts his post; and I promise you that you will hardly escape them. But row towards Saint Serf’s island – there is a breeze from the west, and we shall have sport, keeping to windward of the isle, where the ripple is strongest. We will speak more of what you have mentioned when we have had an hour’s sport.”

Their fishing was successful, though never did two anglers pursue even that silent and unsocial pleasure with less of verbal intercourse.

When their time was expired, Douglas took the oars in his turn, and by his order Roland Graeme steered the boat, directing her course upon the landing-place at the castle. But he also stopped in the midst of his course, and, looking around him, said to Graeme, “There is a thing which I could mention to thee; but it is so deep a secret, that even here, surrounded as we are by sea and sky, without the possibility of a listener, I cannot prevail on myself to speak it out.”

“Better leave it unspoken, sir,” answered Roland Graeme, “if you doubt the honour of him who alone can hear it.”

“I doubt not your honour,” replied George Douglas; “but you are young, imprudent, and changeful.”

“Young,” said Roland, “I am, and it may be imprudent – but who hath informed you that I am changeful?”

“One that knows you, perhaps, better than you know yourself,” replied Douglas.

“I suppose you mean Catherine Seyton,” said the page, his heart rising as he spoke; “but she is herself fifty times more variable in her humour than the very water which we are floating upon.”

“My young acquaintance,” said Douglas, “I pray you to remember that Catherine Seyton is a lady of blood and birth, and must not be lightly spoken of.”

“Master George of Douglas,” said Graeme, “as that speech seemed to be made under the warrant of something like a threat, I pray you to observe, that I value not the threat at the estimation of a fin of one of these dead trouts; and, moreover, I would have you to know that the champion who undertakes the defence of every lady of blood and birth, whom men accuse of change of faith and of fashion, is like to have enough of work on his hands.”

“Go to,” said the Seneschal, but in a tone of good-humour, “thou art a foolish boy, unfit to deal with any matter more serious than the casting of a net, or the flying of a hawk.”

“If your secret concern Catherine Seyton,” said the page, “I care not for it, and so you may tell her if you will. I wot she can shape you opportunity to speak with her, as she has ere now.”

The flush which passed over Douglas’s face, made the page aware that he had alighted on a truth, when he was, in fact, speaking at random; and the feeling that he had done so, was like striking a dagger into his own heart. His companion, without farther answer, resumed the oars, and pulled lustily till they arrived at the island and the castle. The servants received the produce of their spoil, and the two fishers, turning from each other in silence, went each to his several apartment.

Roland Graeme had spent about an hour in grumbling against Catherine Seyton, the Queen, the Regent, and the whole house of Lochleven, with George Douglas at the head of it, when the time approached that his duty called him to attend the meal of Queen Mary. As he arranged his dress for this purpose, he grudged the trouble, which, on similar occasions, he used, with boyish foppery, to consider as one of the most important duties of his day; and when he went to take his place behind the chair of the Queen, it was with an air of offended dignity, which could not escape her observation, and probably appeared to her ridiculous enough, for she whispered something in French to her ladies, at which the lady Fleming laughed, and Catherine appeared half diverted and half disconcerted. This pleasantry, of which the subject was concealed from him, the unfortunate page received, of course, as a new offence, and called an additional degree of sullen dignity into his mien, which might have exposed him to farther raillery, but that Mary appeared disposed to make allowance for and compassionate his feelings.

With the peculiar tact and delicacy which no woman possessed in greater perfection, she began to soothe by degrees the vexed spirit of her magnanimous attendant. The excellence of the fish which he had taken in his expedition, the high flavour and beautiful red colour of the trouts, which have long given distinction to the lake, led her first to express her thanks to her attendant for so agreeable an addition to her table, especially upon a jour de jeune; and then brought on inquiries into the place where the fish had been taken, their size, their peculiarities, the times when they were in season, and a comparison between the Lochleven trouts and those which are found in the lakes and rivers of the south of Scotland. The ill humour of Roland Graeme was never of an obstinate character. It rolled away like mist before the sun, and he was easily engaged in a keen and animated dissertation about Lochleven trout, and sea trout, and river trout, and bull trout, and char, which never rise to a fly, and par, which some suppose infant salmon, and herlings, which frequent the Nith, and vendisses, which are only found in the Castle-Loch of Lochmaben; and he was hurrying on with the eager impetuosity and enthusiasm of a young sportsman, when he observed that the smile with which the Queen at first listened to him died languidly away, and that, in spite of her efforts to suppress them, tears rose to her eyes. He stopped suddenly short, and, distressed in his turn, asked, “If he had the misfortune unwittingly to give displeasure to her Grace?”

“No, my poor boy,” replied the Queen; “but as you numbered up the lakes and rivers of my kingdom, imagination cheated me, as it will do, and snatched me from these dreary walls away to the romantic streams of Nithsdale, and the royal towers of Lochmaben. – O land, which my fathers have so long ruled! of the pleasures which you extend so freely, your Queen is now deprived, and the poorest beggar, who may wander free from one landward town to another, would scorn to change fates with Mary of Scotland!”

“Your highness,” said the Lady Fleming, “will do well to withdraw.”

“Come with me, then, Fleming,” said the Queen, “I would not burden hearts so young as these are, with the sight of my sorrows.”

She accompanied these words with a look of melancholy compassion towards Roland and Catherine, who were now left alone together in the apartment.

The page found his situation not a little embarrassing; for, as every reader has experienced who may have chanced to be in such a situation, it is extremely difficult to maintain the full dignity of an offended person in the presence of a beautiful girl, whatever reason we may have for being angry with her. Catherine Seyton, on her part, sate still like a lingering ghost, which, conscious of the awe which its presence imposes, is charitably disposed to give the poor confused mortal whom it visits, time to recover his senses, and comply with the grand rule of demonology by speaking first. But as Roland seemed in no hurry to avail himself of her condescension, she carried it a step farther, and herself opened the conversation.

“I pray you, fair sir, if it may be permitted me to disturb your august reverie by a question so simple, – what may have become of your rosary?”

“It is lost, madam – lost some time since,” said Roland, partly embarrassed and partly indignant.

“And may I ask farther, sir,” said Catherine, “why you have not replaced it with another? – I have half a mind,” she said, taking from her pocket a string of ebony beads adorned with gold, “to bestow one upon you, to keep for my sake, just to remind you of former acquaintance.”

There was a little tremulous accent in the tone with which these words were delivered, which at once put to flight Roland Graeme’s resentment, and brought him to Catherine’s side; but she instantly resumed the bold and firm accent which was more familiar to her. “I did not bid you,” she said, “come and sit so close by me; for the acquaintance that I spoke of, has been stiff and cold, dead and buried, for this many a day.”

“Now Heaven forbid!” said the page, “it has only slept, and now that you desire it should awake, fair Catherine, believe me that a pledge of your returning favour – ”

“Nay, nay,” said Catherine, withholding the rosary, towards which, as he spoke, he extended his hand, “I have changed my mind on better reflection. What should a heretic do with these holy beads, that have been blessed by the father of the church himself?”

Roland winced grievously, for he saw plainly which way the discourse was now likely to tend, and felt that it must at all events be embarrassing. “Nay, but,” he said, “it was as a token of your own regard that you offered them.”

“Ay, fair sir, but that regard attended the faithful subject, the loyal and pious Catholic, the individual who was so solemnly devoted at the same time with myself to the same grand duty; which, you must now understand, was to serve the church and Queen. To such a person, if you ever heard of him, was my regard due, and not to him who associates with heretics, and is about to become a renegado.”

“I should scarce believe, fair mistress,” said Roland, indignantly, “that the vane of your favour turned only to a Catholic wind, considering that it points so plainly to George Douglas, who, I think, is both kingsman and Protestant.”

“Think better of George Douglas,” said Catherine, “than to believe – ” and then checking herself, as if she had spoken too much, she went on, “I assure you, fair Master Roland, that all who wish you well are sorry for you.”

“Their number is very few, I believe,” answered Roland, “and their sorrow, if they feel any, not deeper than ten minutes’ time will cure.”

“They are more numerous, and think more deeply concerning you, than you seem to be aware,” answered Catherine. “But perhaps they think wrong – You are the best judge in your own affairs; and if you prefer gold and church-lands to honour and loyalty, and the faith of your fathers, why should you be hampered in conscience more than others?”

“May Heaven bear witness for me,” said Roland, “that if I entertain any difference of opinion – that is, if I nourish any doubts in point of religion, they have been adopted on the conviction of my own mind, and the suggestion of my own conscience!”

“Ay, ay, your conscience – your conscience!” repeated she with satiric emphasis; “your conscience is the scape-goat; I warrant it an able one – it will bear the burden of one of the best manors of the Abbey of Saint Mary of Kennaquhair, lately forfeited to our noble Lord the King, by the Abbot and community thereof, for the high crime of fidelity to their religious vows, and now to be granted by the High and Mighty Traitor, and so forth, James Earl of Murray, to the good squire of dames Roland Graeme, for his loyal and faithful service as under-espial, and deputy-turnkey, for securing the person of his lawful sovereign, Queen Mary.”

“You misconstrue me cruelly,” said the page; “yes, Catherine, most cruelly – God knows I would protect this poor lady at the risk of my life, or with my life; but what can I do – what can any one do for her?”

“Much may be done – enough may be done – all may be done – if men will be but true and honourable, as Scottish men were in the days of Bruce and Wallace. Oh, Roland, from what an enterprise you are now withdrawing your heart and hand, through mere fickleness and coldness of spirit!”

“How can I withdraw,” said Roland, “from an enterprise which has never been communicated to me? – Has the Queen, or have you, or has any one, communicated with me upon any thing for her service which I have refused? Or have you not, all of you, held me at such distance from your counsels, as if I were the most faithless spy since the days of Ganelon?” [Footnote: Gan, Gano, or Ganelon of Mayence, is in the Romances on the subject of Charlemagne and his Paladins, always represented as the traitor by whom the Christian champions are betrayed.]

“And who,” said Catherine Seyton, “would trust the sworn friend, and pupil, and companion, of the heretic preacher Henderson? ay – a proper tutor you have chosen, instead of the excellent Ambrosius, who is now turned out of house and homestead, if indeed he is not languishing in a dungeon, for withstanding the tyranny of Morton, to whose brother the temporalities of that noble house of God have been gifted away by the Regent.”

“Is it possible?” said the page; “and is the excellent Father Ambrose in such distress?”

“He would account the news of your falling away from the faith of your fathers,” answered Catherine, “a worse mishap than aught that tyranny can inflict on himself.”

“But why,” said Roland, very much moved, “why should you suppose that – that – that it is with me as you say?”

“Do you yourself deny it?” replied Catherine; “do you not admit that you have drunk the poison which you should have dashed from your lips? – Do you deny that it now ferments in your veins, if it has not altogether corrupted the springs of life? – Do you deny that you have your doubts, as you proudly term them, respecting what popes and councils have declared it unlawful to doubt of? – Is not your faith wavering, if not overthrown? – Does not the heretic preacher boast his conquest? – Does not the heretic woman of this prison-house hold up thy example to others? – Do not the Queen and the Lady Fleming believe in thy falling away? – And is there any except one – yes, I will speak it out, and think as lightly as you please of my good-will – is there one except myself that holds even a lingering hope that you may yet prove what we once all believed of you?”

“I know not,” said our poor page, much embarrassed by the view which was thus presented to him of the conduct he was expected to pursue, and by a person in whom he was not the less interested that, though long a resident in Lochleven Castle, with no object so likely to attract his undivided attention, no lengthened interview had taken place since they had first met, – “I know not what you expect of me, or fear from me. I was sent hither to attend Queen Mary, and to her I acknowledge the duty of a servant through life and death. If any one had expected service of another kind, I was not the party to render it. I neither avow nor disclaim the doctrines of the reformed church. – Will you have the truth? – It seems to me that the profligacy of the Catholic clergy has brought this judgment on their own heads, and, for aught I know, it may be for their reformation. But, for betraying this unhappy Queen, God knows I am guiltless of the thought. Did I even believe worse of her, than as her servant I wish – as her subject I dare to do – I would not betray her – far from it – I would aid her in aught which could tend to a fair trial of her cause.”

“Enough! enough!” answered Catherine, clasping her hands together; “then thou wilt not desert us if any means are presented, by which, placing our Royal Mistress at freedom, this case may be honestly tried betwixt her and her rebellious subjects?”

“Nay – but, fair Catherine,” replied the page, “hear but what the Lord of Murray said when he sent me hither.” —

“Hear but what the devil said,” replied the maiden, “rather than what a false subject, a false brother, a false counsellor, a false friend, said! A man raised from a petty pensioner on the crown’s bounty, to be the counsellor of majesty, and the prime distributor of the bounties of the state; – one with whom rank, fortune, title, consequence, and power, all grew up like a mushroom, by the mere warm good-will of the sister, whom, in requital, he hath mewed up in this place of melancholy seclusion – whom, in farther requital, he has deposed, and whom, if he dared, he would murder!”

“I think not so ill of the Earl of Murray,” said Roland Graeme; “and sooth to speak,” he added, with a smile, “it would require some bribe to make me embrace, with firm and desperate resolution, either one side or the other.”

“Nay, if that is all,” replied Catherine Seyton, in a tone of enthusiasm, “you shall be guerdoned with prayers from oppressed subjects – from dispossessed clergy – from insulted nobles – with immortal praise by future ages – with eager gratitude by the present – with fame on earth, and with felicity in heaven! Your country will thank you – your Queen will be debtor to you – you will achieve at once the highest from the lowest degree in chivalry – all men will honour, all women will love you – and I, sworn with you so early to the accomplishment of Queen Mary’s freedom, will – yes, I will – love you better than – ever sister loved brother!” “Say on – say on!” whispered Roland, kneeling on one knee, and taking her hand, which, in the warmth of exhortation, Catherine held towards him.

“Nay,” said she, pausing, “I have already said too much – far too much, if I prevail not with you – far too little if I do. But I prevail,” she continued, seeing that the countenance of the youth she addressed returned the enthusiasm of her own – “I prevail; or rather the good cause prevails through its own strength – thus I devote thee to it.” And as she spoke she approached her finger to the brow of the astonished youth, and, without touching it, signed the cross over his forehead – stooped her face towards him, and seemed to kiss the empty space in which she had traced the symbol; then starting up, and extricating herself from his grasp, darted into the Queen’s apartment.

Roland Graeme remained as the enthusiastic maiden had left him, kneeling on one knee, with breath withheld, and with eyes fixed upon the space which the fairy form of Catherine Seyton had so lately occupied. If his thoughts were not of unmixed delight, they at least partook of that thrilling and intoxicating, though mingled sense of pain and pleasure, the most over-powering which life offers in its blended cup. He rose and retired slowly; and although the chaplain Mr. Henderson preached on that evening his best sermon against the errors of Popery, I would not engage that he was followed accurately through the train of his reasoning by the young proselyte, with a view to whose especial benefit he had handled the subject.

Chapter the Twenty-Fifth

  And when love’s torch hath set the heart in flame,  Comes Seignor Reason, with his saws and cautions,  Giving such aid as the old gray-beard Sexton,  Who from the church-vault drags the crazy engine,  To ply its dribbling ineffectual streamlet  Against a conflagration.OLD PLAY.

In a musing mood, Roland Graeme upon the ensuing morning betook himself to the battlements of the Castle, as a spot where he might indulge the course of his thick-coming fancies with least chance of interruption. But his place of retirement was in the present case ill chosen, for he was presently joined by Mr. Elias Henderson.

“I sought you, young man,” said the preacher, “having to speak of something which concerns you nearly.”

The page had no pretence for avoiding the conference which the chaplain thus offered, though he felt that it might prove an embarrassing one.

“In teaching thee, as far as my feeble knowledge hath permitted, thy duty towards God,” said the chaplain, “there are particulars of your duty towards man, upon which I was unwilling long or much to insist. You are here in the service of a lady, honourable as touching her birth, deserving of all compassion as respects her misfortunes, and garnished with even but too many of those outward qualities which win men’s regard and affection. Have you ever considered your regard to this Lady Mary of Scotland, in its true light and bearing?”

“I trust, reverend sir,” replied Roland Graeme, “that I am well aware of the duties a servant in my condition owes to his royal mistress, especially in her lowly and distressed condition.”

“True,” answered the preacher; “but it is even that honest feeling which may, in the Lady Mary’s case, carry thee into great crime and treachery.”

“How so, reverend sir?” replied the page; “I profess I understand you not.”

“I speak to you not of the crimes of this ill-advised lady,” said the preacher; “they are not subjects for the ears of her sworn servant. But it is enough to say, that this unhappy person hath rejected more offers of grace, and more hopes of glory, than ever were held out to earthly princes; and that she is now, her day of favour being passed, sequestered in this lonely castle, for the common weal of the people of Scotland, and it may be for the benefit of her own soul.”