Quentin Durward by Walter Scott (good romance books to read TXT) 📖

own inspection, carefully fed, so as to render them fit for a long day's journey, or, if that should be necessary, for a hasty flight.

Quentin then betook himself to his own chamber, armed himself with unusual care, and belted on his sword with the feeling at once of approaching danger, and of stern determination to dare it to the uttermost.

These generous feelings gave him a loftiness of step, and a dignity of manner, which the Ladies of Croye had not yet observed in him, though they had been highly pleased and interested by the grace, yet naivete, of his general behaviour and conversation, and the mixture of shrewd intelligence which naturally belonged to him, with the simplicity arising from his secluded education and distant country. He let them understand that it would be necessary that they should prepare for their journey this morning rather earlier than usual, and, accordingly, they left the convent immediately after a morning repast, for which, as well as the other hospitalities of the House, the ladies made acknowledgment by a donation to the altar, befitting rather their rank than their appearance. But this excited no suspicion, as they were supposed to be Englishwomen, and the attribute of superior wealth attached at that time to the insular character as strongly as in our own day.

The Prior blessed them as they mounted to depart, and congratulated Quentin on the absence of his heathen guide.

“For,” said the venerable man, “better stumble in the path than be upheld by the arm of a thief or robber.”

Quentin was not quite of his opinion, for, dangerous as he knew the Bohemian to be, he thought he could use his services, and, at the same time, baffle his treasonable purpose, now that he saw clearly to what it tended. But his anxiety upon this subject was soon at an end, for the little cavalcade was not an hundred yards from the monastery and the village before Maugrabin joined it, riding as usual on his little active and wild looking jennet. Their road led them along the side of the same brook where Quentin had overheard the mysterious conference the preceding evening, and Hayraddin had not long rejoined them, ere they passed under the very willow tree which had afforded Durward the means of concealment, when he became an unsuspected hearer of what then passed betwixt that false guide and the lanzknecht.

The recollections which the spot brought back stirred Quentin to enter abruptly into conversation with his guide, whom hitherto he had scarce spoken to.

“Where hast thou found night quarter, thou profane knave?” said the Scot.

“Your wisdom may guess, by looking on my gaberdine,” answered the Bohemian, pointing to his dress, which was covered with seeds of hay.

“A good haystack,” said Quentin, “is a convenient bed for an astrologer, and a much better than a heathen scoffer at our blessed religion and its ministers, ever deserves.”

“It suited my Klepper better than me, though,” said Hayraddin, patting his horse on the neck, “for he had food and shelter at the same time. The old bald fools turned him loose, as if a wise man's horse could have infected with wit or sagacity a whole convent of asses. Lucky that Klepper knows my whistle, and follows me as truly as a hound, or we had never met again, and you in your turn might have whistled for a guide.”

“I have told thee more than once,” said Durward, sternly, “to restrain thy ribaldry when thou chancest to be in worthy men's company, a thing, which, I believe, hath rarely happened to thee in thy life before now, and I promise thee, that did I hold thee as faithless a guide as I esteem thee a blasphemous and worthless caitiff, my Scottish dirk and thy heathenish heart had ere now been acquainted, although the doing such a deed were as ignoble as the sticking of swine.”

“A wild boar is near akin to a sow,” said the Bohemian, without flinching from the sharp look with which Quentin regarded him, or altering, in the slightest degree, the caustic indifference which he affected in his language, “and many men,” he subjoined, “find both pride, pleasure, and profit, in sticking them.”

Astonished at the man's ready confidence, and uncertain whether he did not know more of his own history and feelings than was pleasant for him to converse upon, Quentin broke off a conversation in which he had gained no advantage over Maugrabin, and fell back to his accustomed post beside the ladies.

We have already observed that a considerable degree of familiarity had begun to establish itself between them. The elder Countess treated him (being once well assured of the nobility of his birth) like a favoured equal, and though her niece showed her regard to their protector less freely, yet, under every disadvantage of bashfulness and timidity, Quentin thought he could plainly perceive that his company and conversation were not by any means indifferent to her.

Nothing gives such life and soul to youthful gaiety as the consciousness that it is successfully received, and Quentin had accordingly, during the former period of their journey, amused his fair charge with the liveliness of his conversation and the songs and tales of his country, the former of which he sang in his native language, while his efforts to render the latter into his foreign and imperfect French, gave rise to a hundred little mistakes and errors of speech, as diverting as the narratives themselves. But on this anxious morning, he rode beside the Ladies of Croye without any of his usual attempts to amuse them, and they could not help observing his silence as something remarkable.

“Our young companion has seen a wolf,” said the Lady Hameline, alluding to an ancient superstition, “and he has lost his tongue in consequence.”

[Vox quoque Moerim Jam fugit ipsa; lupi Moerim videre priores. Virgilii ix. Ecloga. The commentators add, in explanation of this passage, the opinion of Pliny: “The being beheld by a wolf in Italy is accounted noxious, and is supposed to take away the speech of a man, if these animals behold him ere he sees them.” S.]

“To say I had tracked a fox were nearer the mark,” thought Quentin, but gave the reply no utterance.

“Are you well, Seignior Quentin?” said the Countess Isabelle, in a tone of interest at which she herself blushed, while she felt that it was something more than the distance between them warranted.

“He hath sat up carousing with the jolly friars,” said the Lady Hameline, “the Scots are like the Germans, who spend all their mirth over the Rheinwein, and bring only their staggering steps to the dance in the evening, and their aching heads to the ladies' bower in the morning.”

“Nay, gentle ladies,” said Quentin, “I deserve not your reproach. The good friars were at their devotions almost all night, and for myself, my drink was barely a cup of their thinnest and most ordinary wine.”

“It is the badness of his fare that has put him out of humour,” said the Countess Isabelle. “Cheer up, Seignior Quentin, and should we ever visit my ancient Castle of Bracquemont together, if I myself should stand your cup bearer, and hand it to you, you shall have a generous cup of wine, that the like never grew upon the vines of Hochheim or Johannisberg.”

“A glass of water, noble lady, from your hand,”—Thus far did Quentin begin, but his voice trembled, and Isabelle continued, as if she had been insensible of the tenderness of the accentuation upon the personal pronoun.

“The wine was stocked in the deep vaults of Bracquemont, by my great grandfather the Rhinegrave Godfrey,” said the Countess Isabelle.

“Who won the hand of her great grandmother,” interjected the Lady Hameline, interrupting her niece, “by proving himself the best son of chivalry, at the great tournament of Strasbourg—ten knights were slain in the lists. But those days are now over, and no one now thinks of encountering peril for the sake of honour, or to relieve distressed beauty.”

To this speech, which was made in the tone in which a modern beauty, whose charms are rather on the wane, may be heard to condemn the rudeness of the present age, Quentin took upon him to reply that there was no lack of that chivalry which the Lady Hameline seemed to consider as extinct, and that, were it eclipsed everywhere else, it would still glow in the bosoms of the Scottish gentlemen.

“Hear him!” said the Lady Hameline, “he would have us believe that in his cold and bleak country still lives the noble fire which has decayed in France and Germany! The poor youth is like a Swiss mountaineer, mad with partiality to his native land—he will next tell us of the vines and olives of Scotland.”

“No, madam,” said Durward, “of the wine and the oil of our mountains I can say little more than that our swords can compel these rich productions as tribute from our wealthier neighbours. But for the unblemished faith and unfaded honour of Scotland, I must now put to the proof how far you can repose trust in them, however mean the individual who can offer nothing more as a pledge of your safety.”

“You speak mysteriously—you know of some pressing and present danger,” said the Lady Hameline.

“I have read it in his eye for this hour past!” exclaimed the Lady Isabelle, clasping her hands. “Sacred Virgin, what will become of us?”

“Nothing, I hope, but what you would desire,” answered Durward. “And now I am compelled to ask—gentle ladies, can you trust me?”

“Trust you?” answered the Countess Hameline. “Certainly. But why the question? Or how far do you ask our confidence?”

“I, on my part,” said the Countess Isabelle, “trust you implicitly, and without condition. If you can deceive us, Quentin, I will no more look for truth, save in Heaven!”

“Gentle lady,” replied Durward, highly gratified, “you do me but justice. My object is to alter our route, by proceeding directly by the left bank of the Maes to Liege, instead of crossing at Namur. This differs from the order assigned by King Louis and the instructions given to the guide. But I heard news in the monastery of marauders on the right bank of the Maes, and of the march of Burgundian soldiers to suppress them. Both circumstances alarm me for your safety. Have I your permission so far to deviate from the route of your journey?”

“My ample and full permission,” answered the younger lady.

“Cousin,” said the Lady Hameline, “I believe with you that the youth means us well—but bethink you—we transgress the instructions of King Louis, so positively iterated.”

“And why should we regard his instructions?” said the Lady Isabelle. “I am, I thank Heaven for it, no subject of his, and, as a suppliant, he has abused the confidence he induced me to repose in him. I would not dishonour this young gentleman by weighing his word for an instant against the injunctions of yonder crafty and selfish despot.”

“Now, may God bless you for that very word, lady,” said Quentin, joyously, “and if I deserve not the trust it expresses, tearing with wild horses in this life and eternal tortures in the next were e'en too good for my deserts.”

So saying, he spurred his horse, and rejoined the Bohemian. This worthy seemed of a remarkably passive, if not a forgiving temper. Injury or threat never dwelt, or at least seemed not to dwell in his recollection, and he entered into the conversation which Durward presently commenced, just as if there had been no unkindly word betwixt them in the course of the morning.

The dog, thought the Scot, snarls not now, because he intends to clear scores with me at once and for ever, when he can snatch me by the very throat, but we will try for once whether we cannot foil a traitor at his own weapons.

“Honest Hayraddin,” he said, “thou hast travelled with us for ten days, yet hast never shown us a specimen of your skill in fortune telling, which you are, nevertheless, so fond of practising that you must needs display your gifts in every convent at which we stop, at the risk of being repaid by a night's lodging under a haystack.”

“You have never asked me for a specimen of my skill,” said the gipsy. “You are, like the rest of the world, contented to ridicule those mysteries which they do not understand.”

“Give me then a present proof of your skill,” said Quentin and, ungloving his hand, he held it out to the gipsy.

Hayraddin carefully regarded all the lines which crossed each other on the Scotchman's palm, and noted, with equally Scrupulous attention, the little risings or swellings at the roots of the fingers, which were then believed as intimately connected with the