Chapter the Twenty-Second.
Yes, life hath left him--every busy thought, Each fiery passion, every strong affection, All sense of outward ill and inward sorrow, Are fled at once from the pale trunk before me; And I have given that which spoke and moved, Thought, acted, suffer'd as a living man, To be a ghastly form of bloody clay, Soon the foul food for reptiles. OLD PLAY.
I believe few successful duellists (if the word successful can beapplied to a superiority so fatal) have beheld their dead antagoniststretched on the earth at their feet, without wishing they could redeemwith their own blood that which it has been their fate to spill. Leastof all could such indifference be the lot of so young a man as HalbertGlendinning, who, unused to the sight of human blood, was not onlystruck with sorrow, but with terror, when he beheld Sir Piercie Shaftonlie stretched on the green-sward before him, vomiting gore as ifimpelled by the strokes of a pump. He threw his bloody sword on theground, and hastened to kneel and support him, vainly striving, at thesame time, to stanch his wound, which seemed rather to bleed inwardlythan externally.
The unfortunate knight spoke at intervals, when the syncope would permithim, and his words, so far as intelligible, partook of his affected andconceited, yet not ungenerous character.
"Most rustical youth," he said, "thy fortune hath prevailed overknightly skill--and Audacity hath overcome Condescension, even as thekite hath sometimes hawked at and struck down the falcon-gentle.--Flyand save thyself!--Take my purse--it is in the nether pocket of mycarnation-coloured hose--and is worth a clown's acceptance. See thatmy mails, with my vestments, be sent to the Monastery of SaintMary's"--(here his voice grew weak, and his mind and recollectionseemed to waver)--"I bestow the cut velvet jerkin, with close breechesconforming--for--oh!--the good of my soul."
"Be of good comfort, sir," said Halbert, half distracted with his agonyof pity and remorse. "I trust you shall yet do well--Oh for a leech!"
"Were there twenty physicians, O most generous Audacity, and that werea grave spectacle--I might not survive, my life is ebbingfast.--Commend me to the rustical nymph whom I called my Discretion--OClaridiana!--true empress of this bleeding heart--which now bleedeth insad earnest!--Place me on the ground at my length, most rustical victor,born to quench the pride of the burning light of the most felicitouscourt of Feliciana--O saints and angels---knights and ladies--masquesand theatres--quaint devices--chain-work and broidery--love, honour, andbeauty!----"
While muttering these last words, which slid from him, as it wereunawares, while doubtless he was calling to mind the glories of theEnglish court, the gallant Sir Piercie Shafton stretched out hislimbs--groaned deeply, shut his eyes, and became motionless.
The victor tore his hair for very sorrow, as he looked on the palecountenance of his victim. Life, he thought, had not utterly fled, butwithout better aid than his own, he saw not how it could be preserved.
"Why," he exclaimed in vain penitence, "why did I provoke him to anissue so fatal! Would to God I had submitted to the worst insult mancould receive from man, rather than be the bloody instrument of thisbloody deed--and doubly cursed be this evil-boding spot, which, hauntedas I knew it to be by a witch or a devil, I yet chose for the place ofcombat! In any other place, save this, there had been help to be gottenby speed of foot, or by uplifting of voice--but here there is no one tobe found by search, no one to hear my shouts, save the evil spirit whohas counselled this mischief. It is not her hour--I will essay the spellhowsoever; and if she can give me aid, she _shall_ do it, or know ofwhat a madman is capable even against those of another world!"
He spurned his bloody shoe from his foot, and repeated the spell withwhich the reader is well acquainted; but there was neither voice,apparition, nor signal of answer. The youth, in the impatience of hisdespair, and with the rash hardihood which formed the basis of hischaracter, shouted aloud, "Witch--Sorceress--Fiend!--art thou deaf tomy cries of help, and so ready to appear and answer those of vengeance?Arise and speak to me, or I will choke up thy fountain, tear down thyhollybush, and leave thy haunt as waste and bare as thy fatal assistancehas made me waste of comfort and bare of counsel!"--This furiousand raving invocation was suddenly interrupted by a distant sound,resembling a hollo, from the gorge of the ravine. "Now may Saint Marybe praised," said the youth, hastily fastening his sandal, "I hearthe voice of some living man, who may give me counsel and help in thisfearful extremity."
Having donned his sandal, Halbert Glendinning, hallooing at intervals,in answer to the sound which he had heard, ran with the speed of ahunted buck down the rugged defile, as if paradise had been before him,hell and all her furies behind, and his eternal happiness or misery haddepended upon the speed which he exerted. In a space incredibly shortfor any one but a Scottish mountaineer having his nerves strung by thedeepest and most passionate interest, the youth reached the entranceof the ravine, through which the rill that flows down Corri-nan-shiandischarges itself, and unites with the brook that waters the littlevalley of Glendearg.
Here he paused, and looked around him upwards and downwards through theglen, without perceiving a human form. His heart sank within him. Butthe windings of the glen intercepted his prospect, and the person, whosevoice he had heard, might therefore, be at no great distance, though notobvious to his sight. The branches of an oak-tree, which shot straightout from the face of a tall cliff, proffered to his bold spirit,steady head, and active limbs, the means of ascending it as a place ofout-look, although the enterprise was what most men would have shrunkfrom. But by one bound from the earth, the active youth caught hold ofthe lower branch, and swung himself up into the tree, and in a minutemore gained the top of the cliff, from which he could easily descry ahuman figure descending the valley. It was not that of a shepherd, orof a hunter, and scarcely any others used to traverse this desertedsolitude, especially coming from the north, since the reader mayremember that the brook took its rise from an extensive and dangerousmorass which lay in that direction.
But Halbert Glendinning did not pause to consider who the travellermight be, or what might be the purpose of his journey. To know that hesaw a human being, and might receive, in the extremity of his distress,the countenance and advice of a fellow-creature, was enough for him atthe moment. He threw himself from the pinnacle of the cliff once moreinto the arms of the projecting oak-tree, whose boughs waved in middleair, anchored by the roots in a huge rift or chasm of the rock. Catchingat the branch which was nearest to him, he dropped himself from thatheight upon the ground; and such was the athletic springiness of hisyouthful sinews, that he pitched there as lightly, and with as littleinjury, as the falcon stooping from her wheel.
To resume his race at full speed up the glen, was the work of aninstant; and as he turned angle after angle of the indented banks of thevalley, without meeting that which he sought, he became half afraid thatthe form which he had seen at such a distance had already melted intothin air, and was either a deception of his own imagination, or of theelementary spirits by which the valley was supposed to be haunted.
But to his inexpressible joy, as he turned round the base of a hugeand distinguished crag, he saw, straight before and very near to him,a person, whose dress, as he viewed it hastily, resembled that of apilgrim.
He was a man of advanced life, and wearing a long beard, having on hishead a large slouched hat, without either band or brooch. His dress wasa tunic of black serge, which, like those commonly called hussar-cloaks,had an upper part, which covered the arms and fell down on the lower;a small scrip and bottle, which hung at his back, with a stout staff inhis hand, completed his equipage. His step was feeble, like that of oneexhausted by a toilsome journey.
"Save ye, good father!" said the youth. "God and Our Lady have sent youto my assistance."
"And in what, my son, can so frail a creature as I am, be of service toyou?" said the old man, not a little surprised at being thus accostedby so handsome a youth, his features discomposed by anxiety, his faceflushed with exertio
n, his hands and much of his dress stained withblood. "A man bleeds to death in the valley here, hard by. Come withme--come with me! You are aged--you have experience--you have at leastyour senses--and mine have well nigh left me."
"A man--and bleeding to death--and here in this desolate spot!" said thestranger.
"Stay not to question it, father," said the youth, "but come instantlyto his rescue. Follow me,--follow me, without an instant's delay."
"Nay, but, my son," said the old man, "we do not lightly follow theguides who present themselves thus suddenly in the bosom of a howlingwilderness. Ere I follow thee, thou must expound to me thy name, thypurpose, and thy cause."
"There is no time to expound any thing," said Halbert; "I tell thee aman's life is at stake, and thou must come to aid him, or I will carrythee thither by force!"
"Nay, thou shalt not need," said the traveller; "if it indeed be as thousayest, I will follow thee of free-will--the rather that I am not whollyunskilled in leech-craft, and have in my scrip that which may do thyfriend a service--Yet walk more slowly, I pray thee, for I am alreadywell-nigh forespent with travel."
With the indignant impatience of the fiery steed when compelled byhis rider to keep pace with some slow drudge upon the highway, Halbertaccompanied the wayfarer, burning with anxiety which he endeavoured tosubdue, that he might not alarm his companion, who was obviously afraidto trust him. When they reached the place where they were to turn offthe wider glen into the Corri, the traveller made a doubtful pause, asif unwilling to leave the broader path--"Young man," he said, "if thoumeanest aught but good to these gray hairs, thou wilt gain little by thycruelty--I have no earthly treasure to tempt either robber or murderer."
"And I," said the youth, "am neither--and yet--God of Heaven!--I _may_be a murderer, unless your aid comes in time to this wounded wretch!"
"Is it even so," said the traveller; "and do human passions disturb thebreast of nature, even in her deepest solitude?--Yet why should I marvelthat where darkness abides the works of darkness should abound?--By itsfruits is the tree known--Lead on, unhappy youth--I follow thee!"
And with better will to the journey than he had evinced hitherto, thestranger exerted himself to the uttermost, and seemed to forget his ownfatigue in his efforts to keep pace with his impatient guide.
What was the surprise of Halbert Glendinning, when, upon arriving at thefatal spot, he saw no appearance of the body of Sir Piercie Shafton!The traces of the fray were otherwise sufficiently visible. The knight'scloak had indeed vanished as well as his body, but his doublet remainedwhere he had laid it down, and the turf on which he had been stretchedwas stained with blood in many a dark crimson spot.
As he gazed round him in terror and astonishment, Halbert's eyes fellupon the place of sepulture which had so lately appeared to gape for avictim. It was no longer open, and it seemed that earth had received theexpected tenant; for the usual narrow hillock was piled over what hadlately been an open grave, and the green sod was adjusted over all withthe accuracy of an experienced sexton. Halbert stood aghast. The idearushed on his mind irresistibly, that the earth-heap before him enclosedwhat had lately been a living, moving, and sentient fellow-creature,whom, on little provocation, his fell act had reduced to a clod of thevalley, as senseless and as cold as the turf under which he rested. Thehand that scooped the grave had completed its word; and whose hand couldit be save that of the mysterious being of doubtful quality, whom hisrashness had invoked, and whom he had suffered to intermingle in hisdestinies?
As he stood with clasped hands and uplifted eyes, bitterly ruing hisrashness, he was roused by the voice of the stranger, whose suspicionsof his guide had again been awakened by finding the scene so differentfrom what Halbert had led him to expect.--"Young man," he said, "hastthou baited thy tongue with falsehood to cut perhaps only a few daysfrom the life of one whom Nature will soon call home, without guilt onthy part to hasten his journey?"
"By the blessed Heaven!--by our dear Lady!" ejaculated Halbert--
"Swear not at all!" said the stranger, interrupting him, "neitherby Heaven, for it is God's throne, nor by earth, for it is hisfootstool--nor by the creatures whom he hath made, for they are butearth and clay as we are. Let thy yea be yea, and thy nay, nay. Tell mein a word, why and for what purpose thou hast feigned a tale, to lead abewildered traveller yet farther astray?"
"As I am a Christian man," said Glendinning, "I left him here bleedingto death--and now I nowhere spy him, and much I doubt that the tomb thatthou seest has closed on his mortal remains."
"And who is he for whose fate thou art so anxious?" said the stranger;"or how is it possible that this wounded man could have been eitherremoved from, or interred in, a place so solitary?"
"His name," said Halbert, after a moment's pause, "is PiercieShafton--there, on that very spot I left him bleeding; and what powerhas conveyed him hence, I know no more than thou dost."
"Piercie Shafton?" said the stranger; "Sir Piercie Shafton of Wilverton,a kinsman, as it is said, of the great Piercie of Northumberland? Ifthou hast slain him, to return to the territories of the proud Abbot isto give thy neck to the gallows. He is well known, that Piercie Shafton;the meddling tool of wiser plotters--a harebrained trafficker intreason--a champion of the Pope, employed as a forlorn hope by thosemore politic heads, who have more will to work mischief, than valour toencounter danger.--Come with me, youth, and save thyself from the evilconsequences of this deed--Guide me to the Castle of Avenel, and thyreward shall be protection and safety."
Again Halbert paused, and summoned his mind to a hasty council. Thevengeance with which the Abbot was likely to visit the slaughter ofShafton, his friend, and in some measure his guest, was likely tobe severe; yet, in the various contingencies which he had consideredprevious to their duel, he had unaccountably omitted to reflect what wasto be his line of conduct in case of Sir Piercie falling by his hand.If he returned to Glendearg, he was sure to draw on his whole family,including Mary Avenel, the resentment of the Abbot and community,whereas it was possible that flight might make him be regarded as thesole author of the deed, and might avert the indignation of themonks from the rest of the inhabitants of his paternal tower. Halbertrecollected also the favour expressed for the household, and especiallyfor Edward, by the Sub-Prior; and he conceived that he could, bycommunicating his own guilt to that worthy ecclesiastic, when at adistance from Glendearg, secure his powerful interposition in favourof his family. These thoughts rapidly passed through his mind, and hedetermined on flight. The stranger's company and his promised protectioncame in aid of that resolution; but he was unable to reconcile theinvitation which the old man gave him to accompany him for safety to theCastle of Avenel, with the connexions of Julian, the present usurper ofthat inheritance.
"Good father," he said, "I fear that you mistake the man with whom youwish me to harbour. Avenel guided Piercie Shafton into Scotland, and hishenchman, Christie of the Clinthill, brought the Southron hither."
"Of that," said the old man, "I am well aware. Yet if thou wilt trustto me, as I have shown no reluctance to confide in thee, thou shalt findwith Julian Avenel welcome, or at least safety."
"Father," replied Halbert, "though I can ill reconcile what thou sayestwith what Julian Avenel hath done, yet caring little about the safety ofa creature so lost as myself, and as thy words seem those of truth andhonesty, and finally, as thou didst render thyself frankly up to myconduct, I will return the confidence thou hast shown, and accompanythee to the Castle of Avenel by a road which thou thyself couldst neverhave discovered." He led the way, and the old man followed for some timein silence.
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