Sybil, Or, The Two Nations, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

We must now for a while return to the strangers of the Abbey ruins. When the two men had joined the beautiful Religious, whose apparition had so startled Egremont, they all three quitted the Abbey by a way which led them by the back of the cloister garden, and so on by the bank of the river for about a hundred yards, when they turned up the winding glen of a dried-up tributary stream. At the head of the glen, at which they soon arrived, was a beer-shop, screened by some huge elms from the winds that blew over the vast moor, which, except in the direction of Mardale, now extended as far as the eye could reach. Here the companions stopped, the beautiful Religious seated herself on a stone bench beneath the trees, while the elder stranger calling out to the inmate of the house to apprise him of his return, himself proceeded to a neighbouring shed, whence he brought forth a very small rough pony with a rude saddle, but one evidently intended for a female rider.

“It is well,” said the taller of the men “that I am not a member of a temperance society like you, Stephen, or it would be difficult to reward this good man for his care of our steed. I will take a cup of the drink of Saxon kings.” Then leading up the pony to the Religious, he placed her on its back with gentleness and much natural grace, saying at the same time in a subdued tone, “And you—shall I bring you a glass of nature’s wine?”

“I have drank of the spring of the Holy Abbey,” said the Religious, “and none other must touch my lips this eve.”

“Come, our course must be brisk,” said the elder of the men as he gave up his glass to their host and led off the pony, Stephen walking on its other side.

Though the sun had fallen, the twilight was still glowing, and even on this wide expanse the air was still. The vast and undulating surface of the brown and purple moor, varied occasionally by some fantastic rocks, gleamed in the shifting light. Hesperus was the only star that yet was visible, and seemed to move before them and lead them on their journey.

“I hope,” said the Religious, turning to the elder stranger, “that if ever we regain our right, my father, and that we ever can save by the interposition of divine will seems to me clearly impossible, that you will never forget how bitter it is to be driven from the soil; and that you will bring back the people to the land.”

“I would pursue our right for no other cause,” said the father. “After centuries of sorrow and degradation, it should never be said, that we had no sympathy with the sad and the oppressed.”

“After centuries of sorrow and degradation,” said Stephen, “let it not be said that you acquired your right only to create a baron or a squire.”

“Nay, thou shalt have thy way, Stephen,” said his companion, smiling, “if ever the good hour come. As many acres as thou choosest for thy new Jerusalem.”

“Call it what you will, Walter,” replied Stephen; “but if I ever gain the opportunity of fully carrying the principle of association into practice, I will sing ‘Nunc me dimittas.’”

“‘Nunc me dimittas,’” burst forth the Religious in a voice of thrilling melody, and she pursued for some minutes the divine canticle. Her companions gazed on her with an air of affectionate reverence as she sang; each instant the stars becoming brighter, the wide moor assuming a darker hue.

“Now, tell me, Stephen,” said the Religious, turning her head and looking round with a smile, “think you not it would be a fairer lot to bide this night at some kind monastery, than to be hastening now to that least picturesque of all creations, a railway station.”

“The railways will do as much for mankind as the monasteries did,” said Stephen.

“Had it not been for the railway, we should never have made our visit to Marney Abbey,” said the elder of the travellers.

“Nor seen its last abbot’s tomb,” said the Religious. “When I marked your name upon the stone, my father;—woe is me, but I felt sad indeed, that it was reserved for our blood to surrender to ruthless men that holy trust.”

“He never surrendered,” said her father. “He was tortured and hanged.”

“He is with the communion of saints,” said the Religious.

“I would I could see a communion of Men,” said Stephen, “and then there would be no more violence, for there would be no more plunder.”

“You must regain our lands for us, Stephen,” said the Religious; “promise me my father that I shall raise a holy house for pious women, if that ever hap.”

“We will not forget our ancient faith,” said her father, “the only old thing that has not left us.”

“I cannot understand,” said Stephen, “why you should ever have lost sight of these papers, Walter.”

“You see, friend, they were never in my possession; they were never mine when I saw them. They were my father’s; and he was jealous of all interference. He was a small yeoman, who had risen in the war time, well to do in the world, but always hankering after the old tradition that the lands were ours. This Hatton got hold of him; he did his work well, I have heard;—certain it is my father spared nothing. It is twenty-five years come Martinmas since he brought his writ of right; and though baffled, he was not beaten. But then he died; his affairs were in great confusion; he had mortgaged his land for his writ, and the war prices were gone. There were debts that could not be paid. I had no capital for a farm. I would not sink to be a labourer on the soil that had once been our own. I had just married; it was needful to make a great exertion. I had heard much of the high wages of this new industry; I left the land.”

“And the papers?”

“I never thought of them, or thought of them with disgust, as the cause of my ruin. Then when you came the other day, and showed me in the book that the last abbot of Marney was a Walter Gerard, the old feeling stirred again; and I could not help telling you that my fathers fought at Azincourt, though I was only the overlooker at Mr Trafford’s mill.”