The Monastery by Walter Scott (free novels to read .txt) 📖

even when I was more approved, Halbert was more beloved. With me she would sit for hours at our common task with the cold simplicity and indifference of a sister, but with Halbert she trusted not herself. She changed colour, she was fluttered when he approached her; and when he left her, she was sad, pensive, and solitary. I bore all this—I saw my rival's advancing progress in her affections—I bore it, father, and yet I hated him not—I could not hate him!”

“And well for thee that thou didst not,” said the father; “wild and headstrong as thou art, wouldst thou hate thy brother for partaking in thine own folly?”

“Father,” replied Edward, “the world esteems thee wise, and holds thy knowledge of mankind high; but thy question shows that thou hast never loved. It was by an effort that I saved myself from hating my kind and affectionate brother, who, all unsuspicious of my rivalry, was perpetually loading me with kindness. Nay, there were moods of my mind, in which I could return that kindness for a time with energetic enthusiasm. Never did I feel this so strongly as on the night which parted us. But I could not help rejoicing when he was swept from my path—could not help sorrowing when he was again restored to be a stumbling-block in my paths.”

“May God be gracious to thee, my son!” said the monk; “this is an awful state of mind. Even in such evil mood did the first murderer rise up against his brother, because Abel's was the more acceptable sacrifice.”

“I will wrestle with the demon which has haunted me, father,” replied the youth, firmly—“I will wrestle with him, and I will subdue him. But first I must remove from the scenes which are to follow here. I cannot endure that I should see Mary Avenel's eyes again flash with joy at the restoration of her lover. It were a sight to make indeed a second Cain of me! My fierce, turbid, and transitory joy discharged itself in a thirst to commit homicide, and how can I estimate the frenzy of my despair?”

“Madman!” said the Sub-Prior, “at what dreadful crime does thy fury drive?”

“My lot is determined, father,” said Edward, in a resolute tone; “I will embrace the spiritual state which you have so oft recommended. It is my purpose to return with you to Saint Mary's, and, with the permission of the Holy Virgin and of Saint Benedict, to offer my profession to the Abbot.”

“Not now, my son,” said the Sub-Prior, “not in this distemperature of mind. The wise and good accept not gifts which are made in heat of blood, and which may be after repented of; and shall we make our offerings to wisdom and to goodness itself with less of solemn resolution and deep devotion of mind, than is necessary to make them acceptable to our own frail companions in this valley of darkness? This I say to thee, my son, not as meaning to deter thee from the good path thou art now inclined to prefer, but that thou mayst make thy vocation and thine election sure.”

“There are actions, father,” returned Edward, “which brook no delay, and this is one. It must be done this very now; or it may never be done. Let me go with you; let me not behold the return of Halbert into this house. Shame, and the sense of the injustice I have already done him, will join with these dreadful passions which urge me to do him yet farther wrong. Let me then go with you.”

“With me, my son,” said the Sub-Prior, “thou shalt surely go; but our rule, as well as reason and good order, require that you should dwell a space with us as a probationer, or novice, before taking upon thee those final vows, which, sequestering thee for ever from the world, dedicate thee to the service of Heaven.”

“And when shall we set forth, father?” said the youth, as eagerly as if the journey which he was now undertaking led to the pleasures of a summer holiday.

“Even now, if thou wilt,” said the Sub-Prior, yielding to his impetuosity—“go, then, and command them to prepare for our departure.—Yet stay,” he said, as Edward, with all the awakened enthusiasm of his character, hastened from his presence, “come hither, my son, and kneel down.”

Edward obeyed, and kneeled down before him. Notwithstanding his slight figure and thin features, the Sub-Prior could, from the energy of his tone, and the earnestness of his devotional manner, impress his pupils and his penitents with no ordinary feelings of personal reverence. His heart always was, as well as seemed to be, in the duty which he was immediately performing; and the spiritual guide who thus shows a deep conviction of the importance of his office, seldom fails to impress a similar feeling upon his hearers. Upon such occasions as the present, his puny body seemed to assume more majestic stature—his spare and emaciated countenance bore a bolder, loftier, and more commanding port—his voice, always beautiful, trembled as labouring under the immediate impulse of the Divinity—and his whole demeanour seemed to bespeak, not the mere ordinary man, but the organ of the Church in which she had vested her high power for delivering sinners from their load of iniquity.

“Hast thou, my fair son,” said he, “faithfully recounted the circumstances which have thus suddenly determined thee to a religious life?”

“The sins I have confessed, my father,” answered Edward, “but I have not yet told of a strange appearance, which, acting in my mind, hath, I think, aided to determine my resolution.”

“Tell it, then, now,” returned the Sub-Prior; “it is thy duty to leave me uninstructed in nought, so that thereby I may understand the temptation that besets thee.”

“I tell it with unwillingness,” said Edward; “for although, God wot, I speak but the mere truth, yet even while my tongue speaks it as truth, my own ears receive it as fable.”

“Yet say the whole,” said Father Eustace; “neither fear rebuke from me, seeing I may know reasons for receiving as true that which others might regard as fabulous.”

“Know, then, father,” replied Edward, “that betwixt hope and despair—and, heavens! what a hope!—the hope to find the corpse mangled and crushed hastily in amongst the bloody clay which the foot of the scornful victor had trod down upon my good, my gentle, my courageous brother,—I sped to the glen called Corri-nan-shian; but, as your reverence has been already informed, neither the grave, which my unhallowed wishes had in spite of my better self longed to see, nor any appearance of the earth having been opened, was visible in the solitary spot where Martin had, at morning yesterday, seen the fatal hillock. You know your dalesmen, father. The place hath an evil name, and this deception of the sight inclined them to leave it. My companions became affrighted, and hastened down the glen as men caught in trespass. My hopes were too much blighted, my mind too much agitated, to fear either the living or the dead. I descended the glen more slowly than they, often looking back, and not ill pleased with the poltroonery of my companions, which left me to my own perplexed and moody humour, and induced them to hasten into the broader dale. They were already out of sight, and lost amongst the windings of the glen, when, looking back, I saw a female form standing beside the fountain——”

“How, my fair son?” said the Sub-Prior, “beware you jest not with your present situation!”