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

the South, because, forsooth, he wears tinkling spurs on a tawney boot. This thing—this phantom, be it what it will, I will see it once more. Since I spoke with her, and touched her hand, thoughts and feelings have dawned on me, of which my former life had not even dreamed; but shall I, who feel my father's glen too narrow for my expanding spirit, brook to be bearded in it by this vain gewgaw of a courtier, and in the sight too of Mary Avenel? I will not stoop to it, by Heaven!”

As he spoke thus, he arrived in the sequestered glen of Corri-nan-shian, as it verged upon the hour of noon. A few moments he remained looking upon the fountain, and doubting in his own mind with what countenance the White Lady might receive him. She had not indeed expressly forbidden his again evoking her; but yet there was something like such a prohibition implied in the farewell, which recommended him to wait for another guide.

Halbert Glendinning did not long, however, allow himself to pause. Hardihood was the natural characteristic of his mind; and under the expansion and modification which his feelings had lately undergone, it had been augmented rather than diminished. He drew his sword, undid the buskin from his foot, bowed three times with deliberation towards the fountain, and as often towards the tree, and repeated the same rhyme as formerly,—

“Thrice to the holy brake— Thrice to the well:— I bid thee awake, White Maid of Avenel! Noon gleams on the lake— Noon glows on the fell— Wake thee, O wake, White Maid of Avenel!”

His eye was on the holly bush as he spoke the last line; and it was not without an involuntary shuddering that he saw the air betwixt his eye and that object become more dim, and condense, as it were, into the faint appearance of a form, through which, however, so thin and transparent was the first appearance of the phantom, he could discern the outline of the bush, as through a veil of fine crape. But, gradually, it darkened into a more substantial appearance, and the White Lady stood before him with displeasure on her brow. She spoke, and her speech was still song, or rather measured chant; but, as if now more familiar, it flowed occasionally in modulated blank-verse, and at other times in the lyrical measure which she had used at their former meeting.

“This is the day when the fairy kind Sits weeping alone for their hopeless lot, And the wood-maiden sighs to the sighing wind, And the mer-maiden weeps in her crystal grot: For this is the day that a deed was wrought, In which we have neither part nor share. For the children of clay was salvation bought, But not for the forms of sea or air! And ever the mortal is most forlorn. Who meeteth our race on the Friday morn.”

“Spirit,” said Halbert Glendinning, boldly, “it is bootless to threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against me. My heart is hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I am, as thy words infer, of a race more peculiarly the care of Heaven than thine, it is mine to call, it must be thine to answer. I am the nobler being.”

As he spoke, the figure looked upon him with a fierce and ireful countenance, which, without losing the similitude of that which it usually exhibited, had a wilder and more exaggerated cast of features. The eyes seemed to contract and become more fiery, and slight convulsions passed over the face, as if it was about to be transformed into something hideous. The whole appearance resembled those faces which the imagination summons up when it is disturbed by laudanum, but which do not remain under the visionary's command, and, beautiful in their first appearance, become wild and grotesque ere we can arrest them.

But when Halbert had concluded his bold speech, the White Lady stood before him with the same pale, fixed, and melancholy aspect, which she usually bore. He had expected the agitation which she exhibited would conclude in some frightful metamorphosis. Folding her arms on her bosom, the phantom replied,—

“Daring youth! for thee it is well, Here calling me in haunted dell, That thy heart has not quail'd, Nor thy courage fail'd, And that thou couldst brook The angry look Of Her of Avenel. Did one limb shiver, Or an eyelid quiver, Thou wert lost for ever. Though I am form'd from the ether blue, And my blood is of the unfallen dew. And thou art framed of mud and dust, 'Tis thine to speak, reply I must.”

“I demand of thee, then,” said the youth, “by what charm it is that I am thus altered in mind and in wishes—that I think no longer of deer or dog, of bow or bolt—that my soul spurns the bounds of this obscure glen—that my blood boils at an insult from one by whose stirrup I would some days since have run for a whole summer's morn, contented and honoured by the notice of a single word? Why do I now seek to mate me with princes, and knights, and nobles?—Am I the same, who but yesterday, as it were, slumbered in contented obscurity, but who am to-day awakened to glory and ambition?—Speak—tell me, if thou canst, the meaning of this change?—Am I spell-bound?—or have I till now been under the influence of a spell, that I feel as another being, yet am conscious of remaining the same? Speak and tell me, is it to thy influence that the change is owing?”

The White Lady replied,—

“A mightier wizard far than I Wields o'er the universe his power; Him owns the eagle in the sky, The turtle in the bower. Chanceful in shape, yet mightiest still, He wields the heart of man at will, From ill to good, from good, to ill, In cot and castle-tower.”

“Speak not thus darkly,” said the youth, colouring so deeply, that face, neck, and hands were in a sanguine glow; “make me sensible of thy purpose.”

The spirit answered,—

“Ask thy heart,—whose secret cell Is fill'd with Marv Avenel! Ask thy pride,—why scornful look In Mary's view it will not brook? Ask it, why thou seek'st to rise Among the mighty and the wise?— Why thou spurn'st thy lowly lot?— Why thy pastimes are forgot? Why thou wouldst in bloody strife Mend thy luck or lose thy life? Ask thy heart, and it shall tell, Sighing from its secret cell, 'Tis for Mary Avenel.”

“Tell me, then,” said Halbert, his cheek still deeply crimsoned, “thou who hast said to me that which I dared not say to myself, by what means shall I urge my passion—by what means make it known?”

The White Lady replied,—

“Do not ask me; On doubts like these thou canst not task me. We only see the passing show Of human passions' ebb and flow; And view the pageant's idle glance As mortals eye the northern dance, When thousand streamers, flashing bright, Career it o'er the brow of night. And gazers mark their changeful gleams, But feel no influence from their beams.”

“Yet thine own fate,” replied Halbert, “unless men greatly err, is linked with that of mortals?”

The phantom answered,

“By ties mysterious link'd, our fated race Holds strange connexion with the sons of men. The star that rose upon the House of Avenel, When Norman Ulric first assumed the name, That star, when culminating in its orbit, Shot from its sphere a drop of diamond dew, And this bright font received it—and a Spirit Rose from the fountain, and her date of life Hath co-existence with the House of Avenel, And with the star that rules it.”

“Speak yet more plainly,” answered young Glendinning; “of this I can understand nothing. Say, what hath forged thy