The Works of William Harrison Ainsworth

by William Harrison Ainsworth

  “Why, madam, a great many years ago, I forget how long, a lady was murdered in this hall; there’s a chamber, madam, they say that goes by her name, and none ever enters it, but Sir John himself, and the leech, master Scymel, and that frightful black.”

  “But why was she murdered, Cicely?”

  “Nobody can tell, madam — that is, none of the servants; but old master Misseltoe, the steward, they say knows; but he is as stiff as his wand, and as great as his gold chain, and no one cares to ask him of it.”

  “Unfortunate lady,” said Isabel, speaking rather to herself than to her attendant: “it was a female voice, I thought I heard — but it could not be — it was certainly but a dream. Cicely, who knocks?”

  The voice of her father prevented the waiting woman’s reply.

  “Why, how now, my lady lay a-bed, is sleeping the order of the day think you? Swords and bucklers! were! Sir John, I would send you back to whence you came, an you are so slow to become his bride, I trow I would.”

  “I will be with you forthwith, dear Sir. — Cicely, my kirtle now.”

  “Well, look that you speed, as you would be in credit to-day, lass,” shouted the old Knight, and they heard his footsteps retracing the gallery.

  “And so you think, madam, that this ghost—”

  “Nay, nay, Cicely, I know that this ghost were meat and drink to thee for a month, were I idle enough to feed thy humour with talking; but speed thee, there lacks time to raise this spirit further now. Give me that chain of pearl; now how does this head tire look?”

  “Nay, madam, I swear ’tis beautiful — as beautiful as the Lady Lomax’s that came to your father’s hall last Lammastide — the poor lady—”

  “Why poor lady, Cicely?”

  “Ah, madam, you have not forgot how the young nobleman that was to wed her was killed in some unlucky brawl, and she only lived a poor month after. I wonder if she ever saw him after his death; they say—”

  “Now avaunt thee, truly the girl is distraught. Why, thou silly one, thou wert sure born near a church-yard; thy converse betokens thee fit but for a sexton’s wife. Thou eternal death’s head — but we wear away the minutes — beshrew me — I have laughed and rattled with thee, and my heart feels as heavy the while; lend me thy arm, lass, we will to my father, I am ready now.” They joined the old Knight accordingly, who impatiently awaited in the next chamber his daughter’s appearance. Here they were joined by Isabel’s other attendant, and shortly afterwards a knock at the door of the apartment, announced that Chiverton attended to claim his bride.

  He was accompanied by several of the occupants of the house, all of whom, except the physician, tarried when he entered in the gallery. He advanced, and saluted his mistress.

  Sir Gamelyn rallied both on their dolorous looks. The maiden only blushed an answer, but Chiverton essayed an excuse. Great anxiety, he said, for the success of his suit he had ever felt, and never more than now, when he seemed almost in possession of the prize. For the lady, anxiety though of another — he would hope not painful nature, must attend the near prospect of entering into a new path of life. No daughter — and his Isabel was the most dutiful of daughters — could, without deep regret, contemplate the quitting the paternal care of such a father as Sir Gamelyn Vancouver.

  To this compliment the object of it made a suitable return; and it was fortunate for Chiverton that the hesitating tone — broken words, and absence of mind, which he in his short reply displayed, and which, but for the presence and glances of the physician, had been still more obvious, seemed to Sir Gamelyn only so many testimonies to the sincerity of the speaker.

  “Well then,” said he, “I must needs be the merrymaker for the whole party, for I guess, Master Doctor here, will not be prevailed on to unbend from his professional gravity. And yet, I too am fain to grieve, that these our nuptials may not be graced by the light of —— — —”

  “The day is indeed gloomy,” interrupted the physician, (who perceived whither Sir Gamelyn’s discourse tended, and justly feared its effect upon Chiverton,) “unfortunately perverse, but as the priest, doubtless, has ofttimes conned the same lesson, we may hope his memory may assist his dim eyes, and the dimmer light — if not, our wedding must be by candle light; will that serve, Sir Gamelyn?”

  “In troth, it will not,” replied Sir Gamelyn, “your candlelight may well suit the artificial faces of your court ladies, who, I am told, use to smear their cheeks with villainous compounds; but my girl is a country lass, and can shew a colour of her own — or could yesterday, for swords and bucklers! there’s not as much left now as would serve for a blush to give grace to a lady ant, or the bride of a cockchaffer.”

  “You are too severe, Sir Gamelyn,” said Scymel; “but shall we proceed? I doubt not we are waited for.”

  “With all my heart,” answered Vancouver, “yet I could wish we had been accompanied by—”

  “I am sorry to mention,” again interrupted the physician, “that our friend Wayword, to whom you allude, will not be present to perform the ceremony and another—”

  “How!” exclaimed Vancouver, “shall we not have our good priest — what, in our Lady’s name, hath carried him away?”

  “Some weighty and pressing business, concerning his own kindred, called him from the hall yesternoon.”

  “Beshrew the business then — I would it had found another season. But who is placed in his stead?”

  “The clergyman of the next parish — a man of piety and learning.”

  “I doubt it not — I doubt it not, Master Scymel, but I would — but it matters not. Have you visited your patient this morning?”

  Chiverton, who during the dialogue between the physician and Sir Gamelyn, had so far become master of himself as to address a few sentences to the bride, turned at this question, and looked for a moment as if he hoped from the Words of the physician something that should turn the horrid reality, which possessed his soul and memory, into a dream or chimera, which, when explained, should relieve him from the load that pressed upon him. But the hasty negative of the physician, recalled the fearful certainty.

  “I know nothing more,” said Vancouver, “than her presence, that were wanting to complete the gladness of this occasion. You, Sir John, must wish it as a brother, and we—”

  “I do — I do,” burst from Chiverton’s lips, while the writhings of his countenance spoke his intense inward agony. “I do wish her here, as I hope for—” and breaking from them, he hastily retreated to the recess of the casement; “hope — Oh wretch — wretch — what hast thou to do with hope?”

  His last words were ejaculated in such a deep but low and broken tone of despair, that they were unheard by his companions, while the physician strove to draw away the attention of Vancouver and his daughter from the disorder of Chiverton.

  “I pray you, Sir Gamelyn,” said he, “to make no more mention to Sir John of his sister’s unhappy state. You see how it dispossesses him. It ever did so, and we have been cautious of awakening this violence of feeling. And the priest awaits us. I will remind Sir John.” And approaching the Knight, he recalled his attention to the business of the day.

  “Begone then — take them with thee. I will meet you in the chapel presently.”

  “Nay, Sir John — it may not be — you must needs accompany your bride.”

  “Well — well, I will — but tarry a moment.

  Walter — thou hast damned — destroyed me; yet, why do I accuse any but myself, for—”

  “Let me entreat, Sir, that you will not now give yourself up to these groundless troubles; the past may not be recalled, and I doubt not to satisfy you ere long, that no course could have been better or otherwise, than that you so much lament.”

  “Thou canst not, Scymel — thou canst not. Raise her from you waters, give her life, and place her as she was three short days since, and I will bless thee, though thou should’st plunge me where she lies: would that I lay there now, and that she might live whom — whom I have murdered.
”

  “The bride of Prestwyche, and—”

  “Away, tempter!” exclaimed Chiverton, but still in an under tone, and turning from the physician, he compelled himself to a more restrained demeanour, and advancing to Isabel took her hand in his.

  “My mistress will forgive me, for taking what is not yet mine. I am impatient to have my title to it made perfect.”

  “Come along then — come along — Master Parson will needs be out of all patience,” exclaimed Vancouver, as he took his daughter’s other hand, and they moved to the door of the apartment.

  The crowd of gallants who had attended Chiverton, and who occupied the gallery, assiduously made way for the lady as she came, accompanied as we have mentioned from the chamber. Among these, Mahmood Bali had placed himself, and it so happened that he was the first object upon which Isabel looked upon entering the gallery. With the instinctive aversion, with which she had ever regarded the Moor, she shrunk back for a moment. Chiverton perceived it, and pushing Mahmood roughly aside, passed on with his mistress. The followers of Chiverton eagerly crowded after, and none save the physician, who was the last to leave the chamber, noted the smile which far more fearfully than any literal expression of rage, contorted the features of his associate. On seeing him the Moor hastily retreated.

  “I would not,” said the physician, in the musing self-addressing mood, in which more than in converse with others, he was wont to indulge, “I would not, were! Chiverton, have been the object of the kind glance that Mahmood bestowed upon him, for the lands of a county. A harsh word or more, in private, he might not regard, or at least might treasure up with other slight offences till some distant period; but an open affront will work upon him, if I read him right, as a coal to the powder, and ‘twill be well if the explosion be not sudden. But Mahmood must not thus interfere with my views — the issue of this experiment upon the weak material of humanity must be guided by me alone. This ceremony will be about to commence, I suppose, by this.”

  He left the gallery, and sought the chapel of the hall.

  It was a spot of some interest, and well suited to give zest to the imaginative ritual of the Romish church, under the supremacy of which it had been built and consecrated, and had formerly been the usual place of religious attendance, as well for the occupants and retainers of the house, as for the dwellers in the neighbourhood for some extent. It was owing to these circumstances that, in size and style of decoration, it was greatly superior to the mere private chapels occasionally appended to considerable dwellings.

  Arriving at the bottom of the great staircase, Scymel turned to the right, and tracing a narrow passage between the dining hall and the Maiden’s chamber, entered by a low arch into the chapel. Here he hung back for a moment.

  Although the further extremity of the chapel, which was bowed in a semi-circular form, and was the only part visible from the exterior of the building, was crowded in its whole extent with windows, the light communicated through them was but little. The rich stained glass, with which they were filled, obscured by dirt, admitted in the brightest days but a dim and scanty portion of the sunbeams. The gloom which had brooded over the morning, was not yet dispelled, and the chapel looked dark and sad. Ancient flags and pennons, borne in former times by distinguished progenitors of the family, hung in mournful drapery over the monuments, which respect or ostentation had reared over the ashes of the dead. There, too, were suspended the arms of the departed warriors, and the wind which found entrance to the chapel, as it swept around the stained, and in some places decayed walls, shook these trophies of departed valour, while the flapping of the pennons, and the creaking of the armour at intervals, broke the silence of the place. The priest had not yet commenced the exercise of his function, and the conversation of the assembled inmates of the hall was carried on in a low, and, in the physician’s situation, inaudible tone.

  The company were divided into two groups. That including the immediate actors in the approaching ceremony, consisting of Chiverton and his mistress, her father and her maidens, stood with the priest near the altar, an elaborate piece of workmanship, brought as was believed by an ancestor of the family from foreign parts, and to which in more religious, or more credulous times, sundry virtues had been ascribed. At a short distance, stood Faynton, Vivian, and the other gallants of the place, among whom the venerable Master Misseltoe had placed himself. One or two of the female domestics were seated on the benches, which supplied the place of the modern convenience of pews.

  The bride was attired in white, after the custom of brides, and stood by the altar as pale almost as her own vestments. The fashion of her apparel was simple, but not without either elegance, or richness. Chains of pearl suspended from her neck, supported a small golden cross, and bracelets of the same material confined her small and delicate wrists. A band of silver net-work surrounded and displayed her waist. There was a solemnity — a melancholy in her gently cast down eyes, which was not sadness. Feeling was all awake — in a young and purely virtuous woman, can it at such a time be otherwise?

  ’Tis a strange — an almost fearful transmigration to the heart, to the heart of woman at least, this abandonment of the lares of the affections. Even bondage is said by custom to lose its horrors — the willing bondage of the soul, to those among whom it has grown and flourished, cannot be easily relinquished. Even inanimate objects, things that at first borrowed their share in the affections from their association with the friends and companions of our lives, exert in the moment of separation, a winning reaction, and draw largely upon our remembrances and our regrets. The home of her childhood and of her youth, with all its accompaniments — her own latticed arbour — her shady walks — her quiet occupations — a thousand fond ideas of the past, arrayed themselves before the mind of Isabel, and deepened the grief which the parting from her father — now her only and long loved parent, gave birth to. For the moment was close by that was to change her home, her affections, and her duties — to resign her to another to whom her heart must promise, “ thy people shall be my people; — whither thou goest I will go, and where thou diest I will die.” It was a heavy trial, and she sustained it with difficulty.

  If the features of Chiverton seemed, to careless observers, placid, and less indicative of emotion than those of the bride, it was not that thought slumbered within him. Grief may seek to dispel or weaken itself in the tempest of passion — despair stagnates like a dull lake, whose unstirred waters rot in their own stillness. Never did manly form and gay attire veil a heart less at repose than Chiverton’s, as he stood by the altar, from which his eyes were studiously averted.

  “Now wit defend me from matrimony,” whispered the beau Vivian, “if its approach only transforms a man into a thing more melancholy than a night owl.”

  “Lack of wit,” observed another in reply, “with lack of means, are like to be thy more effectual preservative against the contagion. For a couple of silver tagged points I will gage to defend thee from marriage with any of gentler degree than a milk maid.”

  “‘Twere a shame to waste good points on so indifferent hose as thine,” retorted Vivian, glancing first at his own gay garments, and then at the less fashionable drapery of the other speaker.

  “A truce — a truce with this,” said Faynton, “you two are eternally at your quips. I would you could bestow some of your ready spirit on Sir John, who, in sober truth, seems a most sad man for a husband. This day, I think, has infected us all. A five minutes sunshine were worth thy new beaver, Vivian.”

  “Now what a—”

  “Silence, man — Sir John, the priest is beginning,” said Faynton, interrupting the answer of the impatient gallant.

  “Sir John the priest,” said he who had before spoken, “seems as dull as Sir John the Knight to the full. They are well matched, faith.”

  “Peace, peace — thou wilt interrupt the business,” whispered Faynton.

  The clergyman having assumed his place at the altar, had now commenced the reading of the beautif
ul service, which the reformed liturgy assigned to the solemnization of the marriage ceremony. Though the voice of the reader was harsh, his manner was energetic and impressive, forcibly chaining the attention of his auditors, many of whom were seldom in the habit of attending the devotional exercises, which were usually performed in the chapel by Wayword.

  When the priest arrived at the solemn adjuration that requires a disclosure of impediments to the union, Chiverton started, and cast a furtive and hurried glance around him, as fearing some horrid interruption of the ceremony. But no one spake, and the Knight’s emotion was perceived only by the priest, and by Scymel, who had silently approached. On the former it was not lost, and in a louder and more authoritative tone, he repeated the request. But no response interfered with his progress, and the ceremony proceeded.

  At the conclusion of the service, the clergyman intimated his intention of delivering a discourse to the new married pair, on the discharge of their relative duties. This annunciation, which was little palatable to any present, was forthwith followed by the promised sermon. This was delivered with the straight forward earnestness characteristic of the non-conforming clergy, of whom the present holder forth was a member, though, like many of his brethren, he made no scruple of retaining a benefice under the same establishment which he railed against as usurped and idolatrous. On the present occasion he was merciful to his congregation; that is to say, he was content with a brief bestowal of spiritual food, the short space of an hour and forty-five minutes only being occupied by the discourse. At length, he concluded.

  “Now heaven be praised,” exclaimed Vivian, as they left the chapel, “that we are escaping from bondage! I would dinner were ready. I incline not to make this spiritual food my only aliment. And how now, Master Priam — how is it, venerable Sir, that you are not looking to the marshalling of the flesh pots, rather than dispending your time here?”

  “An it please you, fair Sir,” replied the captious steward, “to mind your doublets and your ruffs, your Spanish hose, and your rebata, the curation of which I ween forms your sole business, I will essay to discharge my functions without the aid of your counsel.”