The Abbot

  Chapter the Eight.

  The sacred tapers lights are gone. Gray moss has clad the altar stone, The holy image is o'erthrown, The bell has ceased to toll, The long ribb'd aisles are burst and shrunk, The holy shrines to ruin sunk, Departed is the pious monk, God's blessing on his soul! REDIVIVA.

  The cell of Saint Cuthbert, as it was called, marked, or was supposedto mark, one of those resting-places, which that venerable saint waspleased to assign to his monks, when his convent, being driven fromLindisfern by the Danes, became a peripatetic society of religionists,and bearing their patron's body on their shoulders, transported him fromplace to place through Scotland and the borders of England, until he waspleased at length to spare them the pain of carrying him farther, andto choose his ultimate place of rest in the lordly towers of Durham.The odour of his sanctity remained behind him at each place where he hadgranted the monks a transient respite from their labours; and proud werethose who could assign, as his temporary resting-place, any spot withintheir vicinity. There were few cells more celebrated and honouredthan that of Saint Cuthbert, to which Roland Graeme now bent hisway, situated considerably to the north-west of the great Abbey ofKennaquhair, on which it was dependent. In the neighbourhood were someof those recommendations which weighed with the experienced priesthoodof Rome, in choosing their sites for places of religion.

  There was a well, possessed of some medicinal qualities, which, ofcourse, claimed the saint for its guardian and patron, and occasionallyproduced some advantage to the recluse who inhabited his cell, sincenone could reasonably expect to benefit by the fountain who did notextend their bounty to the saint's chaplain. A few rods of fertile landafforded the monk his plot of garden ground; an eminence well clothedwith trees rose behind the cell, and sheltered it from, the north andthe east, while the front, opening to the south-west, looked up a wildbut pleasant valley, down which wandered a lively brook, which battledwith every stone that interrupted its passage.

  The cell itself was rather plainly than rudely constructed--a low Gothicbuilding with two small apartments, one of which served the priest forhis dwelling-place, the other for his chapel. As there were few ofthe secular clergy who durst venture to reside so near the Border, theassistance of this monk in spiritual affairs had not been useless to thecommunity, while the Catholic religion retained the ascendancy; as hecould marry, christen, and administer the other sacraments of the Romanchurch. Of late, however, as the Protestant doctrines gained ground, hehad found it convenient to live in close retirement, and to avoid, asmuch as possible, drawing upon himself observation or animadversion. Theappearance of his habitation, however, when Roland Graeme came beforeit in the close of the evening, plainly showed that his caution had beenfinally ineffectual.

  The page's first movement was to knock at the door, when he observed,to his surprise, that it was open, not from being left unlatched, butbecause, beat off its upper hinge, it was only fastened to the door-postby the lower, and could therefore no longer perform its functions.Somewhat alarmed at this, and receiving no answer when he knocked andcalled, Roland began to look more at leisure upon the exterior of thelittle dwelling before he ventured to enter it. The flowers, which hadbeen trained with care against the walls, seemed to have been recentlytorn down, and trailed their dishonoured garlands on the earth; thelatticed window was broken and dashed in. The garden, which the monk hadmaintained by his constant labour in the highest order and beauty, boremarks of having been lately trod down and destroyed by the hoofs ofanimals, and the feet of men.

  The sainted spring had not escaped. It was wont to rise beneath a canopyof ribbed arches, with which the devotion of elder times had securedand protected its healing waters. These arches were now almost entirelydemolished, and the stones of which they were built were tumbledinto the well, as if for the purpose of choking up and destroying thefountain, which, as it had shared in other days the honour of the saint,was, in the present, doomed to partake his unpopularity. Part of theroof had been pulled down from the house itself, and an attempt hadbeen made with crows and levers upon one of the angles, by which severallarge corner-stones had been forced out of their place; but the solidityof ancient mason-work had proved too great for the time or patience ofthe assailants, and they had relinquished their task of destruction.Such dilapidated buildings, after the lapse of years, during whichnature has gradually covered the effects of violence with creepingplants, and with weather-stains, exhibit, amid their decay, a melancholybeauty. But when the visible effects of violence appear raw and recent,there is no feeling to mitigate the sense of devastation with which theyimpress the spectators; and such was now the scene on which the youthfulpage gazed, with the painful feelings it was qualified to excite.

  When his first momentary surprise was over, Roland Graeme was at no lossto conjecture the cause of these ravages. The destruction of thePopish edifices did not take place at once throughout Scotland, but atdifferent times, and according to the spirit which actuated thereformed clergy; some of whom instigated their hearers to these acts ofdemolition, and others, with better taste and feeling, endeavoured toprotect the ancient shrines, while they desired to see them purifiedfrom the objects which had attracted idolatrous devotion. From time totime, therefore, the populace of the Scottish towns and villages,when instigated either by their own feelings of abhorrence for Popishsuperstition, or by the doctrines of the more zealous preachers, resumedthe work of destruction, and exercised it upon some sequestered church,chapel, or cell, which had escaped the first burst of their indignationagainst the religion of Rome. In many places, the vices of the Catholicclergy, arising out of the wealth and the corruption of that tremendoushierarchy, furnished too good an apology for wreaking vengeance uponthe splendid edifices which they inhabited; and of this an old Scottishhistorian gives a remarkable instance.

  "Why mourn ye," said an aged matron, seeing the discontent of some ofthe citizens, while a stately convent was burnt by the multitude,--"whymourn ye for its destruction? If you knew half the flagitious wickednesswhich has been perpetrated within that house, you would rather blessthe divine judgment, which permits not even the senseless walls thatscreened such profligacy, any longer to cumber Christian ground."

  But although, in many instances, the destruction of the Roman Catholicbuildings might be, in the matron's way of judging, an act of justice,and in others an act of policy, there is no doubt that the humour ofdemolishing monuments of ancient piety and munificence, and that in apoor country like Scotland, where there was no chance of their beingreplaced, was both useless, mischievous, and barbarous.

  In the present instance, the unpretending and quiet seclusion of themonk of Saint Cuthbert's had hitherto saved him from the generalwreck; but it would seem ruin had now at length reached him. Anxious todiscover if he had at least escaped personal harm, Roland Graeme enteredthe half ruined cell.

  The interior of the building was in a state which fully justified theopinion he had formed from its external injuries. The few rude utensilsof the solitary's hut were broken down, and lay scattered on the floor,where it seemed as if a fire had been made with some of the fragmentsto destroy the rest of his property, and to consume, in particular, therude old image of Saint Cuthbert, in its episcopal habit, which lay onthe hearth like Dagon of yore, shattered with the axe and scorched withthe flames, but only partially destroyed. In the little apartment whichserved as a chapel, the altar was overthrown, and the four huge stonesof which it had been once composed lay scattered around the floor. Thelarge stone crucifix which occupied the niche behind the altar, andfronted the supplicant while he paid his devotion there, had been pulleddown and dashed by its own weight into three fragments. There were marksof sledge-hammers on each of these; yet the image had been saved fromutter demolition by the size and strength of the remaining fragments,which, though much injured, retained enough of the original sculpture toshow what it had been intended to represent.

  [Footnote: I may here observe, that this is entirel
y an ideal scene.Saint Cuthbert, a person of established sanctity, had, no doubt, severalplaces of worship on the Borders, where he flourished whilst living;but Tillmouth Chapel is the only one which bears some resemblance tothe hermitage described in the text. It has, indeed, a well, famousfor gratifying three wishes for every worshipper who shall quaff thefountain with sufficient belief in its efficacy. At this spot the Saintis said to have landed in his stone coffin, in which he sailed down theTweed from Melrose and here the stone coffin long lay, in evidence ofthe fact. The late Sir Francis Blake Delaval is said to have taken theexact measure of the coffin, and to have ascertained, by hydrostaticprinciples, that it might have actually swum. A profane farmer in theneighborhood announced his intention of converting this last bed ofthe Saint into a trough for his swine; but the profanation was renderedimpossible, either by the Saint, or by some pious votary in his behalf,for on the following morning the stone sarcophargus was found broken intwo fragments.

  Tillmouth Chapel, with these points of resemblance, lies, however, inexactly the opposite direction as regards Melrose, which the supposedcell of St. Cuthbert is said to have borne towards Kennaquhair.]

  Roland Graeme, secretly nursed in the tenets of Rome, saw with horrorthe profanation of the most sacred emblem, according to his creed, ofour holy religion.

  "It is the badge of our redemption," he said, "which the felons havedared to violate--would to God my weak strength were able to replaceit--my humble strength, to atone for the sacrilege!"

  He stooped to the task he first meditated, and with a sudden, and tohimself almost an incredible exertion of power, he lifted up the oneextremity of the lower shaft of the cross, and rested it upon the edgeof the large stone which served for its pedestal. Encouraged by thissuccess, he applied his force to the other extremity, and, to his ownastonishment, succeeded so far as to erect the lower end of the limbinto the socket, out of which it had been forced, and to place thisfragment of the image upright.

  While he was employed in this labour, or rather at the very moment whenhe had accomplished the elevation of the fragment, a voice, in thrillingand well-known accents, spoke behind him these words:--"Well done,thou good and faithful servant! Thus would I again meet the child of mylove--the hope of my aged eyes."

  Roland turned round in astonishment, and the tall commanding form ofMagdalen Graeme stood beside him. She was arrayed in a sort of loosehabit, in form like that worn by penitents in Catholic countries, butblack in colour, and approaching as near to a pilgrim's cloak as it wassafe to wear in a country where the suspicion of Catholic devotionin many places endangered the safety of those who were suspected ofattachment to the ancient faith. Roland Graeme threw himself at herfeet. She raised and embraced him, with affection indeed, but notunmixed with gravity which amounted almost to sternness.

  "Thou hast kept well," she said, "the bird in thy bosom. [Footnote: Anexpression used by Sir Ralph Percy, slain in the battle of Hedgly-moorin 1464, when dying, to express his having preserved unstained hisfidelity to the house of Lancaster.] As a boy, as a youth, thou hastheld fast thy faith amongst heretics--thou hast kept thy secret and mineown amongst thine enemies. I wept when I parted from you--I who seldomweep, then shed tears, less for thy death than for thy spiritualdanger--I dared not even see thee to bid thee a last farewell--my grief,my swelling grief, had betrayed me to these heretics. But thou hast beenfaithful--down, down on thy knees before the holy sign, which evil meninjure and blaspheme; down, and praise saints and angels for the gracethey have done thee, in preserving thee from the leprous plague whichcleaves to the house in which thou wert nurtured."

  "If, my mother--so I must ever call you" replied Graeme,--"if I amreturned such as thou wouldst wish me, thou must thank the care of thepious father Ambrose, whose instructions confirmed your early precepts,and taught me at once to be faithful and to be silent."

  "Be he blessed for it," said she; "blessed in the cell and in the field,in the pulpit and at the altar--the saints rain blessings on him!--theyare just, and employ his pious care to counteract the evils which hisdetested brother works against the realm and the church,--but he knewnot of thy lineage?"

  "I could not myself tell him that," answered Roland. "I knew but darklyfrom your words, that Sir Halbert Glendinning holds mine inheritance,and that I am of blood as noble as runs in the veins of any ScottishBaron--these are things not to be forgotten, but for the explanation Imust now look to you."

  "And when time suits, thou shalt not look for it in vain. But men say,my son, that thou art bold and sudden; and those who bear such tempersare not lightly to be trusted with what will strongly move them."

  "Say rather, my mother," returned Roland Graeme, "that I am laggard andcold-blooded--what patience or endurance can you require of which _he_is not capable, who for years has heard his religion ridiculed andinsulted, yet failed to plunge his dagger into the blasphemer's bosom!"

  "Be contented, my child," replied Magdalen Graeme; "the time, which thenand even now demands patience, will soon ripen to that of effort andaction--great events are on the wing, and thou,--thou shalt have thyshare in advancing them. Thou hast relinquished the service of the Ladyof Avenel?"

  "I have been dismissed from it, my mother--I have lived to be dismissed,as if I were the meanest of the train."

  "It is the better, my child," replied she; "thy mind will be the morehardened to undertake that which must be performed."

  "Let it be nothing, then, against the Lady of Avenel," said the page,"as thy look and words seem to imply. I have eaten her bread--I haveexperienced her favour--I will neither injure nor betray her."

  "Of that hereafter, my son," said she; "but learn this, that it is notfor thee to capitulate in thy duty, and to say this will I do, and thatwill I leave undone--No, Roland! God and man will no longer abide thewickedness of this generation. Seest thou these fragments--knowestthou what they represent?--and canst thou think it is for thee to makedistinctions amongst a race so accursed by Heaven, that they renounce,violate, blaspheme, and destroy, whatsoever we are commanded to believein, whatsoever we are commanded to reverence?"

  As she spoke, she bent her head towards the broken image, with acountenance in which strong resentment and zeal were mingled with anexpression of ecstatic devotion; she raised her left hand aloft asin the act of making a vow, and thus proceeded; "Bear witness for me,blessed symbol of our salvation, bear witness, holy saint, within whoseviolated temple we stand, that as it is not for vengeance of my ownthat my hate pursues these people, so neither, for any favour or earthlyaffection towards any amongst them, will I withdraw my hand from theplough, when it shall pass through the devoted furrow! Bear witness,holy saint, once thyself a wanderer and fugitive as we are now--bearwitness, Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven--bear witness, saints andangels!"

  In this high train of enthusiasm, she stood, raising her eyes throughthe fractured roof of the vault, to the stars which now began to twinklethrough the pale twilight, while the long gray tresses which hungdown over her shoulders waved in the night-breeze, which the chasm andfractured windows admitted freely.

  Roland Graeme was too much awed by early habits, as well as by themysterious import of her words, to ask for farther explanation of thepurpose she obscurely hinted at. Nor did she farther press him on thesubject; for, having concluded her prayer or obtestation, by claspingher hands together with solemnity, and then signing herself with thecross, she again addressed her grandson, in a tone more adapted to theordinary business of life.

  "Thou must hence," she said, "Roland, thou must hence, but not tillmorning--And now, how wilt thou shift for thy night's quarters?--thouhast been more softly bred than when we were companions in the mistyhills of Cumberland and Liddesdale."

  "I have at least preserved, my good mother, the habits which I thenlearned--can lie hard, feed sparingly, and think it no hardship. Since Iwas a wanderer with thee on the hills, I have been a hunter, and fisher,and fowler, and each of these is accustomed to sleep freely in a worseshelter than sacri
lege has left us here."

  "Than sacrilege has left us here!" said the matron, repeating his words,and pausing on them. "Most true, my son; and God's faithful children arenow worst sheltered, when they lodge in God's own house and the demesneof his blessed saints. We shall sleep cold here, under the nightwind,which whistles through the breaches which heresy has made. They shalllie warmer who made them--ay, and through a long hereafter."

  Notwithstanding the wild and singular expression of this female, sheappeared to retain towards Roland Graeme, in a strong degree, thataffectionate and sedulous love which women bear to their nurslings,and the children dependent on their care. It seemed as if she would notpermit him to do aught for himself which in former days her attentionhad been used to do for him, and that she considered the tall striplingbefore her as being equally dependent on her careful attention aswhen he was the orphan child, who had owed all to her affectionatesolicitude.

  "What hast thou to eat now?" she said, as, leaving the chapel, they wentinto the deserted habitation of the priest; "or what means of kindlinga fire, to defend thee from this raw and inclement air? Poor child! thouhast made slight provision for a long journey; nor hast thou skill tohelp thyself by wit, when means are scanty. But Our Lady has placed bythy side one to whom want, in all its forms, is as familiar as plentyand splendour have formerly been. And with want, Roland, come the artsof which she is the inventor."

  With an active and officious diligence, which strangely contrasted withher late abstracted and high tone of Catholic devotion, she set abouther domestic arrangements for the evening. A pouch, which was hiddenunder her garment, produced a flint and steel, and from the scatteredfragments around (those pertaining to the image of Saint Cuthbertscrupulously excepted) she obtained splinters sufficient to raise asparkling and cheerful fire on the hearth of the deserted cell.

  "And now," she said, "for needful food."

  "Think not of it, mother," said Roland, "unless you yourself feelhunger. It is a little thing for me to endure a night's abstinence, anda small atonement for the necessary transgression of the rules of theChurch upon which I was compelled during my stay in the castle."

  "Hunger for myself!" answered the matron--"Know, youth, that a motherknows not hunger till that of her child is satisfied." And withaffectionate inconsistency, totally different from her usual manner, sheadded, "Roland, you must not fast; you have dispensation; you are young,and to youth food and sleep are necessaries not to be dispensed with.Husband your strength, my child,--your sovereign, your religion, yourcountry, require it. Let age macerate by fast and vigil a body which canonly suffer; let youth, in these active times, nourish the limbs and thestrength which action requires."

  While she thus spoke, the scrip, which had produced the means ofstriking fire, furnished provision for a meal; of which she herselfscarce partook, but anxiously watched her charge, taking a pleasure,resembling that of an epicure, in each morsel which he swallowed with ayouthful appetite which abstinence had rendered unusually sharp. Rolandreadily obeyed her recommendations, and ate the food which she soaffectionately and earnestly placed before him. But she shook her headwhen invited by him in return to partake of the refreshment her owncares had furnished; and when his solicitude became more pressing, sherefused him in a loftier tone of rejection.

  "Young man," she said, "you know not to whom or of what you speak. Theyto whom Heaven declares its purpose must merit its communication bymortifying the senses; they have that within which requires not thesuperfluity of earthly nutriment, which is necessary to those who arewithout the sphere of the Vision. To them the watch spent in prayer isa refreshing slumber, and the sense of doing the will of Heaven is aricher banquet than the tables of monarchs can spread before them!--Butdo thou sleep soft, my son," she said, relapsing from the tone offanaticism into that of maternal affection and tenderness; "do thousleep sound while life is but young with thee, and the cares of the daycan be drowned in the slumbers of the evening. Different is thy duty andmine, and as different the means by which we must qualify and strengthenourselves to perform it. From thee is demanded strength of body--fromme, strength of soul."

  When she thus spoke, she prepared with ready address a pallet-couch,composed partly of the dried leaves which had once furnished a bed tothe solitary, and the guests who occasionally received his hospitality,and which, neglected by the destroyers of his humble cell, had remainedlittle disturbed in the corner allotted for them. To these her careadded some of the vestures which lay torn and scattered on the floor.With a zealous hand she selected all such as appeared to have madeany part of the sacerdotal vestments, laying them aside as sacredfrom ordinary purposes, and with the rest she made, with dexterouspromptness, such a bed as a weary man might willingly stretch himselfon; and during the time she was preparing it, rejected, even withacrimony, any attempt which the youth made to assist her, or anyentreaty which he urged, that she would accept of the place of rest forher own use. "Sleep thou," said she, "Roland Graeme, sleep thou--thepersecuted, the disinherited orphan--the son of an ill-fatedmother--sleep thou! I go to pray in the chapel beside thee."

  The manner was too enthusiastically earnest, too obstinately firm, topermit Roland Graeme to dispute her will any farther. Yet he felt someshame in giving way to it. It seemed as if she had forgotten the yearsthat had passed away since their parting; and expected to meet, in thetall, indulged, and wilful youth, whom she had recovered, the passiveobedience of the child whom she had left in the Castle of Avenel. Thisdid not fail to hurt her grandson's characteristic and constitutionalpride. He obeyed, indeed, awed into submission by the sudden recurrenceof former subordination, and by feelings of affection and gratitude.Still, however, he felt the yoke.

  "Have I relinquished the hawk and the hound," he said, "to become thepupil of her pleasure, as if I were still a child?--I, whom even myenvious mates allowed to be superior in those exercises which they tookmost pains to acquire, and which came to me naturally, as if a knowledgeof them had been my birthright? This may not, and must not be. I will beno reclaimed sparrow-hawk, who is carried hooded on a woman's wrist,and has his quarry only shown to him when his eyes are uncovered for hisflight. I will know her purpose ere it is proposed to me to aid it."

  These, and other thoughts, streamed through the mind of Roland Graeme;and although wearied with the fatigues of the day, it was long ere hecould compose himself to rest.