The Monastery Part 17

"Should you indeed?" said Halbert; "then I will wait for you--and, what is more, I will try to get my lesson also."

With a smile and a sigh he took up the primer, and began heavily to con over the task which had been a.s.signed him. As if banished from the society of the two others, he sat sad and solitary in one of the deep window-recesses, and after in vain struggling with the difficulties of his task, and his disinclination to learn it, he found himself involuntarily engaged in watching the movements of the other two students, instead of toiling any longer.

The picture which Halbert looked upon was delightful in itself, but somehow or other it afforded very little pleasure to him. The beautiful girl, with looks of simple, yet earnest anxiety, was bent on disentangling those intricacies which obstructed her progress to knowledge, and looking ever and anon to Edward for a.s.sistance, while, seated close by her side, and watchful to remove every obstacle from her way, he seemed at once to be proud of the progress which his pupil made, and of the a.s.sistance which he was able to render her. There was a bond betwixt them, a strong and interesting tie, the desire of obtaining knowledge, the pride of surmounting difficulties.

Feeling most acutely, yet ignorant of the nature and source of his own emotions, Halbert could no longer endure to look upon this quiet scene, but, starting up, dashed his book from him, and exclaimed aloud, "To the fiend I bequeath all books, and the dreamers that make them!--I would a score of Southrons would come up the glen, and we should learn how little all this muttering and scribbling is worth."

Mary Avenol and his brother started, and looked at Halbert with surprise, while he went on with great animation, his features swelling, and the tears starting into his eyes as he spoke.--"Yes, Mary--I wish a score of Southrons came up the glen this very day; and you should see one good hand, and one good sword, do more to protect you, than all the books that were ever opened, and all the pens that ever grew on a goose's wing."

Mary looked a little surprised and a little frightened at his vehemence, but instantly replied affectionately, "You are vexed, Halbert, because you do not get your lesson so fast as Edward can; and so am I, for I am as stupid as you--But come, and Edward shall sit betwixt us and teach us."

"He shall not teach _me_," said Halbert, in the same angry mood; "I never can teach _him_ to do any thing that is honourable and manly, and he shall not teach _me_ any of his monkish tricks.--I hate the monks, with their drawling nasal tone like so many frogs, and their long black petticoats like so many women, and their reverences, and their lordships, and their lazy va.s.sals that do nothing but peddle in the mire with plough and harrow from Yule to Michaelmas. I will call none lord, but him who wears a sword to make his t.i.tle good; and I will call none man, but he that can bear himself manlike and masterful."

"For Heaven's sake, peace, brother!" said Edward; "if such words were taken up and reported out of the house, they would be our mother's ruin."

"Report them yourself, then, and they will be _your_ making, and n.o.body's marring save mine own. Say that Halbert Glendinning will never be va.s.sal to an old man with a cowl and shaven crown, while there are twenty barons who wear casque and plume that lack bold followers. Let them grant you these wretched acres, and much meal may they bear you to make your _brachan_." He left the room hastily, but instantly returned, and continued to speak with the same tone of quick and irritated feeling. "And you need not think so much, neither of you, and especially you, Edward, need not think so much of your parchment book there, and your cunning in reading it. By my faith, I will soon learn to read as well as you; and--for I know a better teacher than your grim old monk, and a better book than his printed breviary; and since you like scholarcraft so well, Mary Avenel, you shall see whether Edward or I have most of it." He left the apartment, and came not again.

"What can be the matter with him?" said Mary, following Halbert with her eyes from the window, as with hasty and unequal steps he ran up the wild glen--"Where can your brother be going, Edward?--what book?-- what teacher does he talk of?"

"It avails not guessing," said Edward. "Halbert is angry, he knows not why, and speaks of he knows not what; let us go again to our lessons, and he will come home when he has tired himself with scrambling among the crags as usual."

But Mary's anxiety on account of Halbert seemed more deeply rooted.

She declined prosecuting the task in which they had been so pleasingly engaged, under the excuse of a headache; nor could Edward prevail upon her to resume it again that morning.

Meanwhile Halbert, his head unbonneted, his features swelled with jealous anger, and the tear still in his eye, sped up the wild and upper extremity of the little valley of Glendearg with the speed of a roebuck, choosing, as if in desperate defiance of the difficulties of the way, the wildest and most dangerous paths, and voluntarily exposing himself a hundred times to dangers which he might have escaped by turning a little aside from them. It seemed as if he wished his course to be as straight as that of the arrow to its mark.

He arrived at length in a narrow and secluded _cleuch_, or deep ravine, which ran down into the valley, and contributed a scanty rivulet to the supply of the brook with which Glendearg is watered. Up this he sped with the same precipitate haste which had marked his departure from the tower, nor did he pause and look around until he had reached the fountain from which the rivulet had its rise.

Here Halbert stopt short, and cast a gloomy, and almost a frightened glance around him. A huge rock rose in front, from a cleft of which grew a wild holly-tree, whose dark green branches rustled over the spring which arose beneath. The banks on either hand rose so high, and approached each other so closely, that it was only when the sun was at its meridian height, and during the summer solstice, that its rays could reach the bottom of the chasm in which he stood. But it was now summer, and the hour was noon, so that the unwonted reflection of the sun was dancing in the pellucid fountain.

"It is the season and the hour," said Halbert to himself; "and now I--I might soon become wiser than Edward with all his pains! Mary should see whether he alone is fit to be consulted, and to sit by her side, and hang over her as she reads, and point out every word and every letter. And she loves me better than him--I am sure she does--for she comes of n.o.ble blood, and scorns sloth and cowardice.--And do I myself not stand here slothful and cowardly as any priest of them all?--Why should I fear to call upon this form--this shape?--Already have I endured the vision, and why not again? What can it do to me, who am a man of lith and limb, and have by my side my father's sword? Does my heart beat--do my hairs bristle, at the thought of calling up a painted shadow, and how should I face a band of Southrons in flesh and blood? By the soul of the first Glendinning, I will make proof of the charm!"

He cast the leathern brogue or buskin from his right foot, planted himself in a firm posture, unsheathed his sword, and first looking around to collect his resolution, he bowed three times deliberately towards the holly-tree, and as often to the little fountain, repeating at the same time, with a determined voice, the following rhyme:

"Thrice to the holly 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!"

These lines were hardly uttered, when there stood the figure of a female clothed in white, within three steps of Halbert Glendinning.

"I guess'twas frightful there to see A lady richly clad as she-- Beautiful exceedingly." [Footnote: Coleridge's Christabelle.]

Chapter the Twelfth.

There's something in that ancient superst.i.tion, Which, erring as it is, our fancy loves.

The spring that, with its thousand crystal bubbles, Bursts from the bosom of some desert rock In secret solitude, may well be deem'd The haunt of something purer, more refined, And mightier than ourselves.

OLD PLAY.

Young Halbert Glendinning had scarcely p.r.o.nounced the mystical rhymes, than, as we have mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter, an appearance, as of a beautiful female, dressed in white, stood within two yards of him. His terror for the moment overcame his natural courage, as well as the strong resolution which he had formed, that the figure which he had now twice seen should not a third time daunt him. But it would seem there is something thrilling and abhorrent to flesh and blood, in the consciousness that we stand in presence of a being in form like to ourselves, but so different in faculties and nature, that we can neither understand its purposes, nor calculate its means of pursuing them.

Halbert stood silent and gasped for breath, his hairs erecting themselves on his head---his mouth open--his eyes fixed, and, as the sole remaining sign of his late determined purpose, his sword pointed towards the apparition. At length with a voice of ineffable sweetness, the White Lady, for by that name we shall distinguish this being, sung, or rather chanted, the following lines:--

"Youth of the dark eye, wherefore didst thou call me?

Wherefore art thou here, if terrors can appal thee?

He that seeks to deal with us must know no fear nor failing!

To coward and churl our speech is dark, our gifts are unavailing.

The breeze that brought me hither now, must sweep Egyptian ground, The fleecy cloud on which I ride for Araby is bound; The fleecy cloud is drifting by, the breeze sighs for my stay, For I must sail a thousand miles before the close of day."

The astonishment of Halbert began once more to give way to his resolution, and he gained voice enough to say, though with a faltering accent, "In the name of G.o.d, what art thou?" The answer was in melody of a different tone and measure:--

"What I am I must not show-- What I am thou couldst not know-- Something betwixt heaven and h.e.l.l-- Something that neither stood nor fell-- Something that through thy wit or will May work thee good--may work thee ill.

Neither substance quite nor shadow, Haunting lonely moor and meadow, Dancing; by the haunted spring, Riding on the whirlwind's wing; Aping in fantastic fashion Every change of human pa.s.sion,

While o'er our frozen minds they pa.s.s, Like shadows from the mirror'd gla.s.s.

Wayward, fickle is our mood, Hovering betwixt bad and good, Happier than brief-dated man, Living twenty times his span; Far less happy, for we have Help nor hope beyond the grave!

Man awakes to joy or sorrow; Ours the sleep that knows no morrow.

This is all that I can show-- This is all that thou mayest know."

The White Lady paused, and appeared to await an answer; but, as Halbert hesitated how to frame his speech, the vision seemed gradually to fade, and became more and more incorporeal. Justly guessing this to be a symptom of her disappearance, Halbert compelled himself to say,--"Lady, when I saw you in the glen, and when you brought back the black book of Mary Avenel, thou didst say I should one day learn to read it."

The White Lady replied,

"Ay! and I taught thee the word and the spell, To waken me here by the Fairies' Well, But thou hast loved the heron and hawk, More than to seek my haunted walk; And thou hast loved the lance and the sword, More than good text and holy word; And thou hast loved the deer to track, More than the lines and the letters black; And thou art a ranger of moss and of wood, And scornest the nurture of gentle blood."

"I will do so no longer, fair maiden," said Halbert; "I desire to learn; and thou didst promise me, that when I did so desire, thou wouldst be my helper; I am no longer afraid of thy presence, and I am no longer regardless of instruction." As he uttered these words, the figure of the White Maiden grew gradually as distinct as it had been at first; and what had well-nigh faded into an ill-defined and colourless shadow, again a.s.sumed an appearance at least of corporeal consistency, although the hues were less vivid, and the outline of the figure less distinct and defined--so at least it seemed to Halbert--than those of an ordinary inhabitant of earth. "Wilt thou grant my request," he said, "fair Lady, and give to my keeping the holy book which Mary of Avenel has so often wept for?"

The White Lady replied:

"Thy craven fear my truth accused, Thine idlehood my trust abused; He that draws to harbour late, Must sleep without, or burst the gate.

There is a star for thee which burn'd.

Its influence wanes, its course is turn'd; Valour and constancy alone Can bring thee back the chance that's flown."

"If I have been a loiterer, Lady," answered young Glendinning, "thou shalt now find me willing to press forward with double speed. Other thoughts have filled my mind, other thoughts have engaged my heart, within a brief period--and by Heaven, other occupations shall henceforward fill up my time. I have lived in this day the s.p.a.ce of years--I came hither a boy--I will return a man--a man, such as may converse not only with his own kind, but with whatever G.o.d permits to be visible to him. I will learn the contents of that mysterious volume--I will learn why the Lady of Avenel loved it--why the priests feared, and would have stolen it--why thou didst twice recover it from their hands.--What mystery is wrapt in it?--Speak, I conjure thee!" The lady a.s.sumed an air peculiarly sad and solemn, as drooping her head, and folding her arms on her bosom, she replied:

"Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!

Happiest they of human race, To whom G.o.d has granted grace

To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch, and force the way; And better had they ne'er been born, Who read, to doubt, or read to scorn."

"Give me the volume, Lady," said young Glendinning. "They call me idle--they call me dull--in this pursuit my industry shall not fail, nor, with G.o.d's blessing, shall my understanding. Give me the volume."

The apparition again replied:

"Many a fathom dark and deep I have laid the book to sleep; Ethereal fires around it glowing-- Ethereal music ever flowing-- The sacred pledge of Heav'n All things revere.