The Abbot. Вальтер Скотт

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СКАЧАТЬ It was the fashion of the family, that upon every Sabbath, and on two evenings in the week besides, Henry Warden preached or lectured in the chapel at the castle. The extension of the Protestant faith was, upon principle, as well as in good policy, a primary object with the Knight of Avenel. The inhabitants of the village were therefore invited to attend upon the instructions of Henry Warden, and many of them were speedily won to the doctrine which their master and protector approved. These sermons, homilies, and lectures, had made a great impression on the mind of the Abbot Eustace, or Eustatius, and were a sufficient spur to the severity and sharpness of his controversy with his old fellow-collegiate; and, ere Queen Mary was dethroned, and while the Catholics still had considerable authority in the Border provinces, he more than once threatened to levy his vassals, and assail and level with the earth that stronghold of heresy the Castle of Avenel. But notwithstanding the Abbot’s impotent resentment, and notwithstanding also the disinclination of the country to favour the new religion, Henry Warden proceeded without remission in his labours, and made weekly converts from the faith of Rome to that of the reformed church. Amongst those who gave most earnest and constant attendance on his ministry, was the aged woman, whose form, tall, and otherwise too remarkable to be forgotten, the Lady had of late observed frequently as being conspicuous among the little audience. She had indeed more than once desired to know who that stately-looking woman was, whose appearance was so much above the poverty of her vestments. But the reply had always been, that she was an Englishwoman, who was tarrying for a season at the hamlet, and that no one knew more concerning her. She now asked her after her name and birth.

      “Magdalen Graeme is my name,” said the woman; “I come of the Graemes of Heathergill, in Nicol Forest, [Footnote: A district of Cumberland, lying close to the Scottish border.] a people of ancient blood.”

      “And what make you,” continued the Lady, “so far distant from your home?”

      “I have no home,” said Magdalen Graeme, “it was burnt by your Border-riders – my husband and my son were slain – there is not a drop’s blood left in the veins of any one which is of kin to mine.”

      “That is no uncommon fate in these wild times, and in this unsettled land,” said the Lady; “the English hands have been as deeply dyed in our blood as ever those of Scotsmen have been in yours.”

      “You have right to say it, Lady,” answered Magdalen Graeme; “for men tell of a time when this castle was not strong enough to save your father’s life, or to afford your mother and her infant a place of refuge. And why ask ye me, then, wherefore I dwell not in mine own home, and with mine own people?”

      “It was indeed an idle question,” answered the Lady, “where misery so often makes wanderers; but wherefore take refuge in a hostile country?”

      “My neighbours were Popish and mass-mongers,” said the old woman; “it has pleased Heaven to give me a clearer sight of the gospel, and I have tarried here to enjoy the ministry of that worthy man Henry Warden, who, to the praise and comfort of many, teacheth the Evangel in truth and in sincerity.”

      “Are you poor?” again demanded the Lady of Avenel.

      “You hear me ask alms of no one,” answered the Englishwoman.

      Here there was a pause. The manner of the woman was, if not disrespectful, at least much less than gracious; and she appeared to give no encouragement to farther communication. The Lady of Avenel renewed the conversation on a different topic.

      “You have heard of the danger in which your boy has been placed?”

      “I have, Lady, and how by an especial providence he was rescued from death. May Heaven make him thankful, and me!”

      “What relation do you bear to him?”

      “I am his grandmother, lady, if it so please you; the only relation he hath left upon earth to take charge of him.”

      “The burden of his maintenance must necessarily be grievous to you in your deserted situation?” pursued the Lady.

      “I have complained of it to no one,” said Magdalen Graeme, with the same unmoved, dry, and unconcerned tone of voice, in which she had answered all the former questions.

      “If,” said the Lady of Avenel, “your grandchild could be received into a noble family, would it not advantage both him and you?”

      “Received into a noble family!” said the old woman, drawing herself up, and bending her brows until her forehead was wrinkled into a frown of unusual severity; “and for what purpose, I pray you? – to be my lady’s page, or my lord’s jackman, to eat broken victuals, and contend with other menials for the remnants of the master’s meal? Would you have him to fan the flies from my lady’s face while she sleeps, to carry her train while she walks, to hand her trencher when she feeds, to ride before her on horseback, to walk after her on foot, to sing when she lists, and to be silent when she bids? – a very weathercock, which, though furnished in appearance with wings and plumage, cannot soar into the air – cannot fly from the spot where it is perched, but receives all its impulse, and performs all its revolutions, obedient to the changeful breath of a vain woman? When the eagle of Helvellyn perches on the tower of Lanercost, and turns and changes his place to show how the wind sits, Roland Graeme shall be what you would make him.”

      The woman spoke with a rapidity and vehemence which seemed to have in it a touch of insanity; and a sudden sense of the danger to which the child must necessarily be exposed in the charge of such a keeper, increased the Lady’s desire to keep him in the castle if possible.

      “You mistake me, dame,” she said, addressing the old woman in a soothing manner; “I do not wish your boy to be in attendance on myself, but upon the good knight my husband. Were he himself the son of a belted earl, he could not better be trained to arms, and all that befits a gentleman, than by the instructions and discipline of Sir Halbert Glendinning.”

      “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,” СКАЧАТЬ