The Abbot, Walter Scott [best novels to read for beginners txt] 📗

kept the Lady of Lochleven standing in her presence for the space of nearly an hour, to the manifest increase of her very visible bad humour. Roland Graeme, on entering the apartment, made a deep obeisance to the Queen, and another to the Lady, and then stood still as if to await their farther question. Speaking almost together, the Lady Lochleven said, “So, young man, you are returned at length?”

And then stopped indignantly short, while the Queen went on without regarding her—“Roland, you are welcome home to us—you have proved the true dove and not the raven—Yet I am sure I could have forgiven you, if, once dismissed, from this water-circled ark of ours, you had never again returned to us. I trust you have brought back an olive-branch, for our kind and worthy hostess has chafed herself much on account of your long absence, and we never needed more some symbol of peace and reconciliation.”

“I grieve I should have been detained, madam,” answered the page; “but from the delay of the person intrusted with the matters for which I was sent, I did not receive them till late in the day.”

“See you there now,” said the Queen to the Lady Lochleven; “we could not persuade you, our dearest hostess, that your household goods were in all safe keeping and surety. True it is, that we can excuse your anxiety, considering that these august apartments are so scantily furnished, that we have not been able to offer you even the relief of a stool during the long time you have afforded us the pleasure of your society.”

“The will, madam,” said the lady, “the will to offer such accommodation was more wanting than the means.”

“What!” said the Queen, looking round, and affecting surprise, “there are then stools in this apartment—one, two—no less than four, including the broken one—a royal garniture!—We observed them not—will it please your ladyship to sit?”

“No, madam, I will soon relieve you of my presence,” replied the Lady Lochleven; “and while with you, my aged limbs can still better brook fatigue, than my mind stoop to accept of constrained courtesy.”

“Nay, Lady of Lochleven, if you take it so deeply,” said the Queen, rising and motioning to her own vacant chair, “I would rather you assumed my seat—you are not the first of your family who has done so.”

The Lady of Lochleven curtsied a negative, but seemed with much difficulty to suppress the angry answer which rose to her lips.

During this sharp conversation, the page's attention had been almost entirely occupied by the entrance of Catherine Seyton, who came from the inner apartment, in the usual dress in which she attended upon the Queen, and with nothing in her manner which marked either the hurry or confusion incident to a hasty change of disguise, or the conscious fear of detection in a perilous enterprise. Roland Graeme ventured to make her an obeisance as she entered, but she returned it with an air of the utmost indifference, which, in his opinion, was extremely inconsistent with the circumstances in which they stood towards each other.—“Surely,” he thought, “she cannot in reason expect to bully me out of the belief due to mine own eyes, as she tried to do concerning the apparition in the hostelry of Saint Michael's—I will try if I cannot make her feel that this will be but a vain task, and that confidence in me is the wiser and safer course to pursue.”

These thoughts had passed rapidly through his mind, when the Queen, having finished her altercation with the Lady of the castle, again addressed him—“What of the revels at Kinross, Roland Graeme? Methought they were gay, if I may judge from some faint sounds of mirth and distant music, which found their way so far as these grated windows, and died when they entered them, as all that is mirthful must—But thou lookest as sad as if thou hadst come from a conventicle of the Huguenots!”

“And so perchance he hath, madam,” replied the Lady of Lochleven, at whom this side-shaft was lanched. “I trust, amid yonder idle fooleries, there wanted not some pouring forth of doctrine to a better purpose than that vain mirth, which, blazing and vanishing like the crackling of dry thorns, leaves to the fools who love it nothing but dust and ashes.”

“Mary Fleming,” said the Queen, turning round and drawing her mantle about her, “I would that we had the chimney-grate supplied with a fagot or two of these same thorns which the Lady of Lochleven describes so well. Methinks the damp air from the lake, which stagnates in these vaulted rooms, renders them deadly cold.”

“Your Grace's pleasure shall be obeyed,” said the Lady of Lochleven; “yet may I presume to remind you that we are now in summer?”

“I thank you for the information, my good lady,” said the Queen; “for prisoners better learn their calender from the mouth of their jailor, than from any change they themselves feel in the seasons.—Once more, Roland Graeme, what of the revels?”

“They were gay, madam,” said the page, “but of the usual sort, and little worth your Highness's ear.”

“Oh, you know not,” said the Queen, “how very indulgent my ear has become to all that speaks of freedom and the pleasures of the free. Methinks I would rather have seen the gay villagers dance their ring round the Maypole, than have witnessed the most stately masques within the precincts of a palace. The absence of stone-wall—the sense that the green turf is under the foot which may tread it free and unrestrained, is worth all that art or splendour can add to more courtly revels.”

“I trust,” said the Lady Lochleven, addressing the page in her turn, “there were amongst these follies none of the riots or disturbances to which they so naturally lead?”

Roland gave a slight glance to Catherine Seyton, as if to bespeak her attention, as he replied,—“I witnessed no offence, madam, worthy of marking—none indeed of any kind, save that a bold damsel made her hand somewhat too familiar with the cheek of a player-man, and ran some hazard of being ducked in the lake.”

As he uttered these words he cast a hasty glance at Catherine; but she sustained, with the utmost serenity of manner and countenance, the hint which he had deemed could not have been thrown out before her without exciting some fear and confusion.

“I will cumber your Grace no longer with my presence,” said the Lady Lochleven, “unless you have aught to command me.”

“Nought, our good hostess,” answered the Queen, “unless it be to pray you, that on another occasion you deem it not needful to postpone your better employment to wait so long upon us.”

“May it please you,” added the Lady Lochleven, “to command this your gentleman to attend us, that I may receive some account of these matters which have been sent hither for your Grace's use?”

“We may not refuse what you are pleased to require, madam,” answered the Queen. “Go with the lady, Roland, if our commands be indeed necessary to thy doing so. We will hear to-morrow the history of thy Kinross pleasures. For this night we dismiss thy attendance.”

Roland Graeme went with the Lady of Lochleven, who failed not to ask him many questions concerning what had passed at the sports, to which he