A lady, the wonder of her kind,Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind;Which dilating had moulded her mien and motion,Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean.SHELLEY.
A lady, the wonder of her kind,Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind;Which dilating had moulded her mien and motion,Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean.SHELLEY.
A lady, the wonder of her kind,Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind;Which dilating had moulded her mien and motion,Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean.
SHELLEY.
A few days made it apparent that York acquired a stronger power over the generous and amiable king of Scotland, than could be given by motives of state policy. He became his friend; no empty name with James, whose ardent soul poured itself headlong into this new channel, and revelled in a kind of ecstasy in the virtues and accomplishments of his favoured guest. Both these princes were magnanimous and honourable, full of grandeur of purpose, and gentleness of manner; united by these main qualities, the diversities of their dispositions served rather to draw them closer. Though Richard's adventures and disasters had been so many, his countenance, his very mind was less careworn than that of James. The White Rose, even in adversity, was the nursling of love; the Scottish prince, in his palace-fostered childhood, had been the object of his father's hatred and suspicion: cabal, violence, and duplicity had waited on him. James governed those around him by demonstrating to them, that it was their interest to obey a watchful, loving, generous monarch: Richard's power was addressed to the most exalted emotions of the human heart, to the fidelity, self-devotion, and chivalric attachment of his adherents. James drew towards himself the confidence of men; Richard bestowed his own upon them. James was winning from his courtesy, Richard from his ingenuousness. Remorse had printed a fadeless stamp of thought and pain on the king's countenance; an internal self-communion and self-rebuke were seated in the deep shadows of his thoughtful eyes. Richard's sorrow for the disasters he might be said to have occasioned his friends, his disdain of his own vagabond position, his sadness when his winged thoughts flew after the Adalid, to hover over his sweet Monina; all these emotions were tinged by respect for the virtues of those around him, conscious rectitude, pious resignation to Providence, gratitude to his friends, and a tender admiration of the virgin virtues of her he loved: so that there arose thence only a softer expression for his features, a sweetness in the candour of his smile, a gentle fascination in his frank address, that gave at once the stamp of elevated feeling and goodness to his mien. He looked innocent, while James's aspect gave token, that in his heart good and ill had waged war: the better side had conquered, yet had not come off scathless from the fight.
In the first enthusiasm of his new attachment, James was eager to lavish on his friend every mark of his favour and interest; he was obliged to check his impatience, and to submit to the necessity of consulting with and deferring to others. His promises, though large, continued therefore to be vague; and York knew that he had several enemies at the council-board. The intimacy between him and the king prevented him from entertaining any doubts as to the result; but he had a difficult task in communicating this spirit of patient forbearance to his friends. Sometimes they took sudden fright, lest they should all at once meet a denial to their desires; sometimes they were indignant at the delays that were interposed. None was more open in his expressions of discontent than Master Secretary Frion. He who had been the soul of every enterprise until now, who had fancied that his talents for negotiation would be of infinite avail in the Scottish court, found that the friendship between the princes, and Richard's disdain of artfully enticing to his side his host's noble subjects, destroyed at once his diplomatic weaving. He craftily increased the discontent of the proud Neville, the disquietude of the zealous Lady Brampton, and the turbulent intolerance of repose of Lord Barry; while Richard, on the other hand, exerted himself to tranquillize and reduce them to reason: he was sanguine in his expectations, and above all, confident in his friend's sincere intention to do more than merely assist him by force of arms. He saw a thousand projects at work in James's generous heart, every one tending to exalt him in the eyes of the world, and to rescue him for ever from the nameless, fugitive position he occupied. Nor was his constant intercourse with the king of small influence over his happiness; the genius, the versatile talents, the grace and accomplishments of this sovereign, the equality and sympathy that reigned between them, was an exhaustless source of more than amusement, of interest and delight. The friends of James became his friends: Sir Patrick Hamilton was chief among these, and warmly attached to the English prince: another, whom at first ceremony had placed at a greater distance from him, grew into an object of intense interest and continual excitation.
"This evening," said the king to him, soon after his arrival, "you will see the flower of our Scottish damsels, the flower of the world well may I call her; for assuredly, when you see the Lady Katherine Gordon, you will allow that she is matchless among women."
Richard was surprised: did James's devotion to Lady Jane Kennedy, nay, his conscious look whenever he mentioned her, mean nothing? Besides, on this appeal to his own judgment, he pictured his soft-eyed Spaniard, with all her vivacity and all her tenderness, and he revolted from the idea of being the slave of any other beauty. "Speak to our guest, Sir Patrick," continued the king, "and describe the fair earthly angel who makes a heaven of our bleak wilds; or rather, for his highness might suspect you, let me, not her lover, but her cousin, her admirer, her friend, tell half the charms, half the virtues of the daughter of Huntley. Is it not strange that I, who have seen her each day since childhood, and who still gaze with wonder on her beauty, should yet find that words fail me when I would paint it? I am apt to see, and ready to praise, the delicate arch of this lady's brow, the fire of another's eyes, another's pouting lip and fair complexion, the gay animation of one, the chiselled symmetry of a second. Often, when our dear Lady Kate has sat, as is often her wont, retired from sight, conversing with some travelled greybeard, or paying the homage of attention to some ancient dame (of late I have remarked her often in discourse with Lady Brampton), I have studied her face and person to discover where the overpowering charm exists, which, like a strain of impassioned music, electrifies the senses, and touches the hearts of all near her. Is it in her eyes? A poet might dream of dark blue orbs like hers, and that he had kissed eyelids soft as those, when he came unawares on the repose of young Aurora, and go mad for ever after, because it was only a dream: yet I have seen brighter; nor are they languishing. Her lips, yes, the soul of beauty is there, and so is it in her dimpled chin. In the delicate rounding of her cheeks, and the swanlike loveliness of her throat, in the soft ringlets of her glossy hair, down to the very tips of her roseate-tinged fingers, there is proportion, expression, and grace. You will hardly see all this: at first you will be struck; extreme beauty must strike; but your second thought will be, to wonder what struck you, and then you will look around, and see twenty prettier and more attractive; and then, why, at the first words she speaks, you will fancy it an easy thing to die upon the mere thought of her: her voice alone will take you out of yourself, and carry you into another state of being. She is simple as a child, straightforward, direct: falsehood—pah! KatherineisTruth. This simplicity, which knows neither colouring nor deviation, might almost make you fear, while you adore her, but that her goodness brings you back to love. She is good, almost beyond the consciousness of being so: she is good because she gives herself entirely up to sympathy; and, beyond every other, she dives into the sources of your pleasures and pains, and takes a part in them. The better part of yourself will, when she speaks, appear to leap out, as if, for the first time, it found its other half; while the worse is mute, like a stricken dog, before her. She is gay, more eager to create pleasure than to please; for to please, we must think of ourselves, and be ourselves the hero of the story, and Katherine is ever forgetful of self: she is guileless and gall-less; all love her; her proud father, and fiery, contentious Highland brothers, defer to her; yet, to look at her, it is as if the youngest and most innocent of the graces read a page of wisdom's book, scarce understanding what it meant, but feeling that it was right."
It was dangerous to provoke the spirit of criticism by excessive praise; Richard felt half inclined to assert that there was something in the style of the king's painting that showed he should not like this lauded lady; but she was his cousin, he was proud of her, and so he was silent. There was a ball at court that night; and he would see many he had never seen before; James made it a point that he should discover which was his cousin. He could not mistake. "She is loveliness itself!" burst from his lips; and from that moment he felt what James had said, that there was a "music breathing from her face," an unearthly, spirit-stirring beauty, that inspired awe, had not her perfect want of pretension, her quite, unassuming simplicity, at once led him back to every thought associated with the charms and virtues of woman. Lady Brampton was already a link between them; and, in a few minutes, he found himself conversing with more unreserve and pleasure than he had ever done. There are two pleasures in our intercourse in society, one is to listen, another to speak. We may frequently meet agreeable, entertaining people, and even sometimes individuals, whose conversation, either by its wit, its profundity, or its variety, commands our whole rapt attention: but very seldom during the course of our lives do we meet those who thaw every lingering particle of ice, who set the warm life-springs flowing, and entice us, with our hearts upon our lips, to give utterance to its most secret mysteries; to disentangle every knot and fold of thought, and, like sea-weed in the wave, to spread the disregarded herbage, as a tracery matchlessly fair before another's eyes. Such pleasure Richard felt with Katherine; and, ever and anon, her melodious voice interposed with some remark, some explanation of his own feelings, at once brilliant and true.
Richard knew that Sir Patrick Hamilton loved the Lady Katherine Gordon; he also was related to the royal family. Hamilton, in the eyes of all, fair ladies and sage counsellors, was acknowledged to be the most perfect knight of Scotland; what obstacle could there be to their union? Probably it was already projected, and acceded to. Richard did not derogate from the faith that he told himself he owed to Monina, by cultivating a friendship for the promised bride of another, and moreover one whom, after the interval of a few short months, he would never see again. Satisfied with this reasoning, York lost no opportunity of devoting himself to the Lady Katherine.
His interests were the continual subject of discussion in the royal counsel-chamber. There were a few who did not speak in his favour. The principal of these was the earl of Moray, the king's uncle: the least in consideration, for he was not of the council, though he influenced it: but the bitterest in feeling, was Sir John Ramsey, laird of Balmayne, who styled himself Lord Bothwell. He had been a favourite of James the Third. His dark, fierce temper was exasperated by his master's death, and he brooded perpetually for revenge. He had once, with several other nobles, entered into a conspiracy to deliver up the present king to Henry the Seventh; and the traitorous intent was defeated, not from want of will, but want of power in his abettors. Since then, Lord Bothwell, though nominally banished and attainted, was suffered to live in Edinburgh, nay, to have access to the royal person. James, whose conscience suffered so dearly by the death of his father, had no desire to display severity towards his ancient faithful servant; besides, one who was really so insignificant as Sir John Ramsey. This man was turbulent, dissatisfied: he was sold to Henry of England, and had long acted as a spy; the appearance of York at Edinburgh gave activity and importance to his function: his secret influence and covert intrigues retarded somewhat the projects and desires of the king.
When the first opposition made to acknowledging this pretender to the English crown was set aside, other difficulties ensued. Some of the counsellors were for making hard conditions with the young duke, saying, that half a kingdom were gift enough to a Prince Lackland: a golden opportunity was this, they averred, to slice away a bonny county or two from wide England; he whom they gifted with the rest could hardly say them nay. But James was indignant at the base proposal, and felt mortified and vexed when obliged to concede in part, and to make conditions which he thought hard with his guest. After a noisy debate, these propositions were drawn out, and York was invited to attend the council, where they were submitted for his assent.
These conditions principally consisted in the surrender of Berwick, and the promised payment of one hundred thousand marks. They were hard; for it would touch the new monarch's honour not to dismember his kingdom; and it were his policy not to burden himself with a debt which his already, oppressed subjects must be drawn on to pay. The duke asked for a day for consideration, which was readily granted.
With real zeal for his cause on one side, and perfect confidence in his friends' integrity on the other, these difficulties became merely nominal, and the treaty was speedily arranged. But the month of September was near its close; a winter campaign would be of small avail: money, arms, and trained men, were wanting. The winter was to be devoted to preparation; with the spring the Scottish army was to pass the English border. In every discussion, in every act, James acted as his guest's brother, the sharer of his risks and fortunes: one will, one desire, was theirs. Sir Patrick Hamilton went into the west to raise levies: no, third person interposed between them. It was the king's disposition to yield himself wholly up to the passion of the hour. He saw in Richard, not only a prince deprived of his own, and driven into exile, but a youth of royal lineage, exposed to the opprobium of nicknames and the accusation of imposture. The king of France acknowledged, but he had deserted him: the archduke had done the same: how could James prove that he would not follow in these steps? He levied the armies of his kingdom in his favour; he was to fight and conquer for him next spring. The intervening months were intolerable to the fervent spirit of the Stuart—something speedy, something now, he longed, he resolved to do; which, with a trumpet-note, should to all corners of the world declare, that he upheld Richard of York's right—that he was his defender, his champion. Once he penned a universal challenge, then another especially addressed to Henry Tudor; but his invasion were a better mode than this. Should he give him rank in Scotland?—that would ill beseem one who aspired to the English crown. Should he proclaim him Richard the Fourth in Edinburgh?—York strongly objected to this. Money?—it were a base gilding; besides, James was very poor, and had melted down his plate, and put his jewels to pawn, to furnish forth the intended expedition. Yet there was one way,—the idea was as lightning—James felt satisfied and proud; and then devoted all his sagacity, all his influence, all his ardent soul, to the accomplishment of a plan, which, while it insured young Richard's happiness, stamped him indelibly as being no vagabond impostor, but the honoured prince, the kinsman and ally of Scotland's royal house.
King James and the duke of York had ridden out to inspect a Lowland regiment, which the earl of Angus proudly displayed as the force of the Douglas. As they returned, James was melancholy and meditative. "It is strange and hard to endure," he said at last, fixing on his companion his eyes at once so full of fire and thought, "when two spirits contend within the little microcosm of man. I felt joy at sight of those bold followers of the Douglas, to think that your enemy could not resist them; but I do myself foolish service, when I place you on the English throne. You will leave us, my lord: you will learn in your bonny realm to despise our barren wilds: it will be irksome to you in prosperity, to think of your friends of the dark hour."
There was sincerity in these expressions, but exaggeration in the feelings that dictated them. Richard felt half-embarrassed, in spite of gratitude and friendship. The king, following the bent of his own thoughts, not those of others, suddenly continued: "Our cousin Kate at last, finds grace in your eyes; is she not good and beautiful, all cold and passionless as she is?"
"Cold!" the Lady Katherine, whose heartfelt sympathy, was a sunny clime in which he basked—whose sensibility perpetually varied the bright expression of her features—York repeated the word in astonishment.
"Thou findest her wax?" inquired James, smiling; "by my troth, she has proved but marble before."
"I cannot guess even at your meaning," replied York, with all the warmth of a champion; "the lady is in the estimation of all, in your own account, the best daughter, the most devoted friend, the kindest mistress in the world. How can we call that spirit cold, which animates her to these acts? It is not easy to perform, as she does, our simplest duties. How much of self-will, of engrossing humour, even of our innocent desires and cherished tastes, must we not sacrifice, when we devote ourselves to the pleasure and service of others? How much attention does it not require, how sleepless a feeling of interest, merely to perceive and understand the moods and wishes of those around us! An inert, sluggish nature, half ice, half rock, cannot do this. To achieve it, as methinks your fair kinswoman does, requires all her understanding, all her sweetness, all that exquisite tact and penetrative feeling I never saw but in her."
"I am glad you say this," said James. "Yes, Kate has a warm heart: none has a better right to say so than I. There are—there were times, for the gloom of the dark hour is somewhat mitigated—when no priest, no penance, had such power over me as my cousin Katherine's sweet voice. Like a witch she dived into the recesses of my heart, plucking thence my unholy distrust in God's mercy. By St. Andrew! when I look at her, all simple and gentle as she is, I wonder in what part of her resides the wisdom and the eloquence I have heard fall from her lips; nor have I had the heart to reprove her, when I have been angered to see our cousin Sir Patrick driven mad by her sugared courtesies."
"Does she not affect Sir Patrick?" asked Richard, while he wondered at the thrilling sensation of fear that accompanied his words.
"'Yea, heartily,' she will reply," replied the king; "'Would you have me disdain our kinsman?' she asks when I rail; but you, who are of gender masculine, though, by the mass! a smooth specimen of our rough kind, know full well that pride and impertinence are better than equable, smiling, impenetrable sweetness. Did the lady of my love treat me thus, 'sdeath, I think I should order myself the rack for pastime. But we forget ourselves; push on, dear prince. It is the hour, when the hawks and their fair mistresses are to meet us on the hill's side. I serve no such glassy damsel; nor would I that little Kennedy's eye darted fires on me in scorn of ray delay. Are not my pretty Lady Jane's eyes bright, Sir Duke?"
"As a fire-fly among dark-leaved myrtles."
"Or a dew-drop on the heather, when the morning sun glances on it, as we take our mountain morning-way to the chase. You look grave, my friend; surely her eyes are nought save as nature's miracle to you?"
"Assuredly not," replied York; "are they other to your majesty—you do not love the lady?"
"Oh, no!" reiterated James, with a meaning glance, "I do not love the Lady Jane; only I would bathe in fire, bask in ice, do each and every impossibility woman's caprice could frame for trials to gain—but I talk wildly to a youthful sage. Say, most revered anchorite, wherefore doubt you my love to my pretty mistress?"
"Love!" exclaimed Richard; his eyes grew lustrous in their own soft dew as he spoke. "Oh, what profanation is this! And this you think is love! to select a young, innocent, and beauteous girl—who, did she wed her equal, would become an honoured wife and happy mother—to select her, the more entirely to deprive her of these blessings—to bar her out for ever from a woman's paradise, a happy home; you, who even now are in treaty for a princess-bride, would entice this young thing to give up her heart, her all, into your hands, who will crush it, as boys a gaudy butterfly, when the chase is over. Dear my lord, spare her the pain—yourself remorse; you are too good, too wise, too generous, to commit this deed and not to suffer bitterly."
A cloud came over James's features. The very word "remorse" was a sound of terror to him. He smote his right hand against his side, where dwelt his heart, in sore neighbourhood to the iron of his penance.
At this moment, sweeping down the near hill-side, came a gallant array of ladies and courtiers. The king even lagged behind; when near, he accosted Katherine, he spoke to the earl of Angus, to Mary Boyd, to all save the Lady Jane, who first looked disdainful, then hurt, and, at last, unable to straggle with her pain, rode sorrowfully apart. James tried to see, to feel nothing. Her pride he resisted, her anger he strove to contemn, her dejection he could not endure: and, when riding up to her unaware, he saw the traces of tears on her cheek, usually so sunny bright with smiles, he forgot everything save his wish to console, to mollify, to cheer her. As they returned, his hand was on her saddle-bow, his head bent down, his eyes looking into hers, and she was smiling, though less gay than usual. From that hour James less coveted the prince's society. He began a little to fear him: not the less did he love and esteem him; and more, far more, did he deem him worthy of the honour, the happiness he intended to bestow upon him.
She is mine own;And I as rich in having such a jewel,As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.SHAKSPEARE.
She is mine own;And I as rich in having such a jewel,As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.SHAKSPEARE.
She is mine own;And I as rich in having such a jewel,As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
SHAKSPEARE.
The threads were spun, warp and woof laid on, and Fate busily took up the shuttle, which was to entwine the histories of two beings, at whose birth pomp and royalty stood sponsors, whose career was marked by every circumstance that least accorded with such a nativity. A thousand obstacles stood in the way; the king, with all his fervour, hesitated before he proposed to the earl of Huntley to bestow his daughter, of whom he was justly proud, on a fugitive sovereign, without a kingdom, almost without a name. Fortune, superstition, ten thousand of those imperceptible threads which fate uses when she weaves her most indissoluble webs, all served to bring about the apparently impossible.
The earl of Huntley was a man of a plain, straightforward, resolved ambition. His head was warm, his heart cold, his purpose one—to advance his house, and himself at the head of it, to as high a situation as the position of subject would permit. In the rebellion which occasioned the death of James the Third, he had vacillated, unable quite to ascertain which party would prove triumphant; and when the rebels, rebels then no more, but lieges to James the Fourth, won the day, they looked coldly on their lukewarm partizan. Huntley grew discontented: though still permitted to hold the baton of Earl Marshal, he saw a cloud of royal disfavour darkening his fortunes; in high indignation he joined in the nefarious plot of Buchan, Bothwell; and Sir Thomas Todd, to deliver his sovereign into the hands of Henry of England, a project afterwards abandoned.
Time had softened the bitter animosities which attended James at the beginning of his reign. He extended his favour to all parties, and reconciled them to each other. A wonder it was, to see the Douglases, Hamiltons, Gordons, Homes, the Murrays, and Lennoxes, and a thousand others, at peace with each other, and obedient to their sovereign. The earl of Huntley, a man advanced in life, prudent, resolute, and politic, grew into favour. He was among the principal of the Scottish peers; he had sons, to whom the honours of his race would descend, and this one daughter, whom he loved as well as he could love anything, and respected from the extent of her influence, and the perfect prudence of her conduct; she was his friend and counsellor, the mediator between him and her brothers; the kind mistress to his vassals, a gentle, but all-powerful link between him and his king, whose value he duly appreciated.
Her marriage was often the subject of his meditation. Superstition was ever rife in Scotland. James the Third had driven all his brothers from him, because he had been told to beware of one near of kin; and his death, of which his sou was the ostensible agent, fulfilled the prophecy. Second-sight, in the Highlands, was of more avail than the predictions of a Lowland sibyl. The seer of the house of Gordon had, on the day of her birth, seen the Lady Katherine receive homage as a queen, and standing at the altar with one, on whose young brow he perceived, all dim and shadowy, "the likeness of a kingly crown." True, this elevation was succeeded by disasters: he had beheld her a fugitive; he saw her stand on the brow of a cliff that overlooked the sea, while the wild clouds careered over the pale moon, alone, deserted; he saw her a prisoner; he saw her stand desolate beside the corpse of him she had wedded—the diadem was still there, dimly seen amid the disarray of his golden curls. These images haunted the earl's imagination, and made him turn a slighting ear to Sir Patrick Hamilton, and other noble suitors of his lovely child. Sometimes he thought of the king, her cousin, or one of his brothers: flight, desolation, and death, were no strange attendants on the state of the king of Scotland, and these miseries he regarded as necessary and predestined; he could not avert, and so he hardly regarded them, while his proud bosom swelled at the anticipation of the thorny diadem, which was to press the brow of a daughter of the Gordon.
Lord Huntley had looked coldly on the English prince. Lord Bothwell, as he called himself, otherwise Sir John Ramsay, of Balmayne, his former accomplice, tampered with him on the part of Henry the Seventh, to induce him to oppose warmly the reception of this "feigned boy," and to negative every proposition to advance his claims. King Henry's urgent letters, and Ramsay's zeal, awakened the earl's suspicions; a manifest impostor could hardly engender such fears, such hate; and, when midnight assassination, or the poisoned bowl, were plainly hinted at by the monarch of wide England, Huntley felt assured that the enemy he so bitterly pursued was no pretender, but the rightful heir of the sceptre Henry held. He did not quite refuse to join with Bothwell, especially when he heard that he was listened to by the bishop of Moray and the earl of Buchan; but involuntarily he assumed a different language with regard to York, became more respectful to him, and by his demeanour crushed at once the little party who had hitherto spoken of him with contempt. The king perceived this change; it was the foundation-stone of his project. "Tell me, you who are wise, my lord," said the monarch to his earl marshal, "how I may raise our English prince in the eyes of Scotland. We fight for him in the spring—for him, we say—but few of ours echo the word; they disdain to fight for any not akin to them."
"They would fight for the Foul Fiend," said Huntley, "whom they would be ill-pleased to call cousin, if he led them over the English border."
"Ay, if he took them there to foray; but the duke of York will look on England as his own, and when the nobles of the land gather round him, it will be chauncy work to keep them and our Scots from shedding each other's blood; they would spill Duke Richard's like water, if no drop of it can be deemed Scotch."
"It were giving him a new father and mother," replied the earl, "to call him thus."
"When two even of hostile houses intermarry, our heralds pale their arms; the offspring pale their blood."
"But what Scottish lady would your grace bestow on him whose rank were a match for royalty? There is no princess of the Stuarts."
"And were there," asked James, quickly, "would it beseem us to bestow our sister on a King Lackland?"
"Or would your majesty wait till he were king of England, when France, Burgundy, and Spain would compete with you? I do believe that this noble gentleman has fair right to his father's crown; he is gallant and generous, so is not King Henry; he is made to be the idol of a warlike people, such as the English, so is not his rival. Do you strike one stroke, the whole realm rises for him, and he becomes its sovereign: then it were a pride and a glory for us, for him a tie to bind him for ever, did he place his diadem on the head of a Scottish damsel."
"You are sanguine and speak warmly," replied the king: "see you beyond your own words? to me they suggest a thought which I entertain, or not, as is your pleasure: there is but one lady in our kingdom fitting mate for him, and she is more Gordon than Stuart. Did your lordship glance at the Lady Katherine in your speech?"
Lord Huntley changed colour: a sudden rush of thought palsied the beatings of his heart. Was he called upon to give his child, his throne-destined daughter, to this king-errant? Nay, nay, thus did fortune blindly work; her hand would insure to him the crown, and so fulfil to her the dark meaning of the seer: hesitating, lost to his wonted presence of mind, Huntley could only find words to ask for a day for reflection. James wondered at this show of emotion; he could not read its full meaning: "At your pleasure, my lord," he said, "but if you decide against my honoured, royal friend, remember that this question dies without record—you will preserve our secret."
Every reflection that could most disquiet an ambitious man possessed the earl marshal. That his daughter should be queen of England was beyond his hopes; that she should be the errant wife of a pretender, who passed his life in seeking ineffectual aid at foreign courts, was far beneath them. He canvassed every likelihood of York's success; now they dwindled like summer-snow on the southern mountain's side—now they strode high and triumphant over every obstacle; the clinging feeling was—destiny had decreed it—she being his wife, both would succeed and reign. "There is fate in it," was his last reflection, "and I will not gainsay the fulfilment. Andrew of the Shawe was the prince of seers, as I have good proof. Still to a monarch alone shall she give her hand, and I must make one condition."
This one condition Lord Huntley communicated to his royal master. It was that York should, as of right he might, assume the style and title of king. James smiled at his earl marshal's childish love of gauds, and did not doubt that the duke would pay so easy price for a jewel invaluable as Katherine. But granting this, the king, knowing the noble's despotic character, required one condition also on his part, that he should first announce the intended union to the lady, and that it should not have place without her free and entire consent. Huntley was surprised: "Surely, my liege," he began, "if your majesty and I command——"
"Our sweet Kate will obey," interrupted James; "but this is no mere marriage of policy; hazards, fearful hazards may attend it. Did I not believe that all would end well, by the Holy Rood he should not have her; but she may see things with different eyes—she may shrink from becoming the wife of an exile, a wanderer without a home: yet that need never be."
York little guessed the projects of his royal friend. Love, in its most subtle guise, had insinuated itself into his soul, becoming a very portion of himself. That part of our nature, which to our reflections appears the most human, and yet which forms the best part of humanity, is our desire of sympathy; the intense essence of sympathy is love. Love has been called selfish, engrossing, tyrannic—as the root, so the green leaf that shoots from it—love is a part of us—it is our manifestation of life; and poisonous or sweet will be the foliage, according to the stock. When we love, it is our aim and conclusion to make the object a part of ourselves—if we are self-willed and evilly inclined, little good can arise; but deep is the fount of generous, devoted, godlike feeling, which this silver key unlocks in gentle hearts. Richard had found in the Lady Katherine a magic mirror, which gave him back himself, arrayed with a thousand alien virtues; his soul was in her hands, plastic to her fairy touch, and tenderness and worship and wonder took his heart, ere passion woke, and threw a chain over these bosom guests, so that they could never depart. A mild, yet golden light dawned upon his soul, and beamed from it, lighting up creation with splendour—filling his mind with mute, yet entrancing melody. He walked in a dream; but far from being rendered by his abstraction morose or inattentive to others, never had he been so gay, never so considerate and amiable. He felt that, beneath the surface of his life, there was the calm and even the bliss of Paradise; and his lightest word or act must be, by its grace and benevolence, in concord with the tranquil spirit that brooded over his deeper-hidden self. All loved him the better for the change, save Frion; there was something in him that the wily Frenchman did not understand; he went about and about, but how could this man of "low-thoughted care" understand the holy mysteries of love.
Katherine accompanied her father to Gordon Castle, in Aberdeenshire. Where was the light now, that had made a summer noon in Richard's soul? There was memory: it brought before him her cherub-face, her voice, the hours when at her side he had poured out his overbrimming soul in talk—not of love, but of ideas, feelings, imaginations he had never spoken before. Two days passed, and by that time he had collected a whole volume of things he wished to say—and she was far: then hope claimed entrance to his heart, and with her came a train he dreamt not of—of fears, anticipations, terror, despair; and then a tenfold ardour for his enterprise. Should he not win Katherine and a kingdom?
On the third day after her departure, King James informed the prince, that Lord Huntley had invited them to visit him at his castle, "Will your grace venture," he asked, "so far into the frozen circles of the icy north? You will traverse many a savage defile and wild mountain-top; torrents and dark pine forests bar the way, and barrenness spreads her hag's arms to scare the intruder. I speak your language, the effeminate language of an Andalusian, who loves the craggy heights, only when summer basks upon them; and the deep sunless dell, when myrtles and geranium impregnate the air with sweets. I love the mist and snow, the tameless winds and howling torrent, the bleak unadorned precipice, the giant pines where the north makes music. The grassy upland and the corn-field, these belong to man, and to her they call Nature, the fair, gaudy dame; but God takes to himself, and lives among these sublime rocks, where power, majesty and eternity are shaped forth, and the grandeur of heaven-piercing cliffs allies us to a simple but elevating image of the Creator."
King James was a poet, and could feel thus—York might smile at his enthusiasm for the bleak and horrific. But had the path to Gordon Castle been ten times more frightful, the thoughts of love were roses, the hopes of love vernal breezes, to adorn it with beauty. "Say, my lord," continued James, "shall we go throwing aside the cumbrous burthen of pomp? We are here in Perth. Yonder, over those peaks, lies our direct path. Shall we, two woodland rovers, with bows in our hand and quivers at our back, take our solitary way through the wild region? It is my pastime ofttimes so to do; and well I know the path that leads me to the abode of my cousin Kate. We will send our attendants by the easier path to the eastern sea-shore, at once to announce our approach, and bear such gear as we may need, not to play too humble a part in Huntley's eyes."
A thousand motives of policy and pride had induced the earl to desire that this marriage should be celebrated in the Highlands. Here he would appear almost a sovereign to his royal son-in-law; here also he should avoid the sarcasms of the Tudor party, and the anger of those who had pretended to fair Katherine's hand. James consented to his wish, and now led his friend and guest, through the very heart of his craggy kingdom over the Grampians, towards Aberdeen. It was the end of October; a few sweet autumnal days still lingered among these northern hills, as if to light on their way the last feathered migrators hastening towards the south; but dark mists invested their morning progress. The rivers were swollen; and the mountain peaks often saluted the rising sun, garmented in radiant snow. It was a little drear, yet grand, sublime, wondrous. York suppressed his chilling distaste, till it grew into admiration; the king played the guide featly; and the honoured name of the Bruce, which peopled this region with proud memories, was the burthen of many a tale; nor was his account of the fierce people of these wilds unwelcome to a warrior. York remarked that the king was generally known to them, not, indeed, as a monarch, but as a hunter, a traveller, sometimes as a skilful mediciner, or as a bard, and always hospitably received.
After three days they drew near their journey's end: curiosity as to the cause of their visit, anxiety concerning his reception, all faded in Richard's heart; dimmed by the glad expectation of seeing her again, who had dawned the glowing orient of his darkened heart. They had departed from their rude shelter before the sun rose: the mountain peaks were awake with day, while night still slumbered in the plain below: some natural sights speak to the heart more than others, wherefore we know not: the most eloquent is that of the birth of day on the untrodden hill-tops, while we, who behold it, are encompassed by shadows. York paused: the scene appeared to close in on him, and to fill him, even to overflowing, with its imagery. They were toiling up the mountain's side: below, above, the dark pines, in many a tortuous shape, clung to the rifted rocks; the fern clustered round some solitary old oak; while, beetling over, were dark frowning crags, or the foldings of the mountains, softened into upland, painted by the many coloured heather. With the steady pace of a mountaineer, King James breasted the hill-side; nor did York bely his rugged Spanish home. As a bravado, the king, in the very sheer ascent, trolled a ballad, a wild Scottish song, and Richard answered by a few notes of a Moorish air. A voice seemed to answer him, not an echo, for it was not his own, but taking the thrilling sweetness of Monina's tones. Ah! ungentle waves, and untaught winds, whither bear ye now the soft nursling of Andalusia? Such a thought darkened York's brow; when the king, pausing in his toil, leaned against a jutting crag—both young, both gallant, both so noble and so beautiful; of what could they think—of what speak? Not of the well-governed realm of the one, nor the yet unconquered kingdom of the other; of such they might have spoken among statesmen and warriors, in palaces or on the battle plain; but here, in this wild solitude, the vast theatre whose shifting scenes and splendid decorations were the clouds, the mountain, the forest, and the wave, where man stood, not as one of the links of society, forced by his relative position to consider his station and his rank, but as a human being, animated only by such emotions as were the growth of his own nature—of what should they speak—the young, the beautiful—but love!
"Tell me, gentle cavalier," cried James, suddenly; "hast thou ever been in love? Now would I give my jewel-hilted dagger to tear thy secret from thee," continued the king, laughing; for York's eyes had flashed with sudden light, and then fell downcast. Where were his thoughts? at his journey's goal, or on the ocean sea? If he smiled, it was for Kate; but the tear that glittered on his long eyelashes, spoke of his Spanish maid. Yet it was not the passion of love that he now felt for his childhood companion; it was tenderness, a brother's care, a friend's watchfulness, all that man can feel for woman, unblended with the desire of making her his; but gratitude and distance had so blended and mingled his emotions, that, thus addressed, he almost felt as if he had been detected in a crime.
"Now, by the Holy Rood, thou blushest," said James, much amused; "not more deeply was fair Katherine's cheek bedyed, when I put the self-same question to her. Does your grace guess, wherefore we journey northwards?"
Richard turned an inquiring and unquiet look upon his royal companion. A kind of doubt was communicated to James's mind; he knew little of his friend's former life: was it not possible that engagements were already formed, incompatible with his plans? With some haughtiness, for his impetuous spirit ill brooked the slightest check, he disclosed the object of their visit to Castle Gordon, and the proposal he had made to the earl to unite him in marriage to the Scottish princess.
"When I shall possess my kingdom—when I may name my wife, that which she is, or nothing—queen!" Richard exclaimed.
"Nay, I speak of no millenium, but of the present hour," said James.
The enthusiastic king, bent upon his purpose, went on to speak of all the advantages that would result from this union. York's silence nettled him: the prince's thoughts were, indeed, opposed to the exultation and delight which his friend had expected to see painted on his face. The first glad thought of a lover is to protect and exalt her he loves. Katherine was a princess in her native land;—and what was he?—an outcast and a beggar—a vagabond upon the earth—a man allied to all that was magnificent in hope—to all that imagination could paint of gallant and true in himself, and devoted and noble in his friends. But these were idealities to the vulgar eye; and he had only a title as unreal as these, and a mere shadowy right, to bestow. It had been sinful even to ally Monina to his broken fortunes; but this high offspring of a palace—the very offer, generous as it was, humbled him. A few minutes' silence intervened; and, in a colder tone James was about to address him, when York gave words to all the conflicting emotions in his breast—speaking such gratitude, love, hope, and despair, as reassured his friend, and made him the more resolved to conquer the difficulties unexpectedly given birth to by the disinterestedness of his guest.
A contest ensued; Richard deprecating the rich gift offered to him—the king warmly asserting that he must accept it. The words vagabond and outcast were treason to his friendship: if, which was impossible, they did not succeed in enforcing the rights to his ancestral kingdom, was not Scotland his home—for ever his home—if he married Katherine? And the monarch went on to describe the happiness of their future lives—a trio bound by the ties of kindred—by affection—by the virtues, nay, even by the faults of each. He spoke also of the disturbances that so often had wrecked the fortunes of the proudest Scottish nobles, and said, that a princess of that land, united, it might be, to one of its chiefs, trimmed her bark for no summer sea. "Like these wild Highlands are our storm-nursed lives," continued James. "By our ruder thanes the beautiful and weak are not respected; and tempest and ruin visit ever the topmost places. Kate is familiar to such fears, or rather to the resignation and courage such prospects may inspire. Look around on these crags! listen! the storm is rising on the hills—howling among the pines. Such has been my cousin's nursery—such the school which has made her no slave of luxury; no frail floweret, to be scared when the rough wind visits her cheek."
In such discussions the travellers beguiled the time. The day was stormy; but, eager to arrive, they did not heed its pelting. York had a sun in his own heart, that beamed on him in spite of the clouds overhead. Notwithstanding his first keen emotion of pain at the idea of linking one so lovely to his dark fate, the entrancing thought of possessing Katherine—that she had already consented to be his—animated him with delight, vague indeed; for yet he struggled against the flattering illusion.
After battling the whole day against a succession of steep acclivities, as evening drew near, the friends gained the last hill-top, and stood on its brow, overlooking a fertile plain or strath—an island of verdure amidst the black, precipitous mountains that girded it. The sun was hidden by the western mountains, which cast their shadow into the valley; but the clouds were dispersed, and the round full silvery moon was pacing up the eastern heaven. The plain at their feet was studded by villages, adorned by groves, and threaded by two rivers, whose high, romantic banks varied the scene. An extensive, strongly-built castle stood on the hill that overhung one of the streams, looking proudly down on this strath, which contained nearly thirty-six square miles of fertile ground. "Behold," said James, "the kingdom of Lord Huntley, where he is far more absolute than I in my bonny Edinburgh. The Gordon fought for the Bruce; and the monarch bestowed on him this fair, wide plain as his reward. Bruce flying before his enemies, on foot, almost alone, among these savage Grampians, then looked upon it as now we do."
King James's thoughts were full of that wild exhilaration of spirit, which none, save the inhabitant of a mountainous country, knows, when desolation is around—a desolation which is to him the pledge of freedom and of power. But York had other ideas: he had been told that the Lady Katherine had yielded a willing consent to the proposal made; and she whom he had before conversed with only as a gentle friend—she, the lovely and the good—his young heart beat thick,—it had no imagery, far less words, expressive of the rapture of love, tortured by the belief that such a prize he ought to—he must—resign.
The petty tyranny of trivial circumstance often has more power over our best-judged designs, than our pride permits us to confess. From the moment York entered Castle Gordon, he found an almost invisible, but all-conquering net thrown over him. The Gordon, for thus the earl of Huntley preferred being called, when surrounded by his clan in his northern fastness, received the princes with barbaric, but extreme magnificence: his dress was resplendent; his followers numerous, and richly clad according to Highland ideas of pomp. But no Lady Katherine was there, and it soon became apparent that Richard was first to see her at the altar. Sounds of nuptial festivity rang through the castle; instead of grace or generosity attending his meditated declining of the honour, it would have borne the guise of an arrogant refusal. There was also something in the savage look of the clansmen, in the rude uncivilization of her native halls, where defence and attack formed the creed and practice of all, that reconciled him to the idea of leading her from the wild north to softer, milder scenes; where every disaster wears a gentler shape; soothed, not exasperated by the ministrations of nature.
At midnight, but a very few hours after his arrival, he stood, beside her in the chapel to interchange their vows. The earl had decorated the holy place with every emblem that spoke of his own greatness, and that of his son-in-law. The style of royalty was applied to him, and the ambitious noble, "overleaping" himself, grasped with childish or savage impetuosity at the shadowy sceptre, and obscure cloud-wrapt crown of the royal exile. York, when he saw the princess, summoned all his discernment to read content or dissatisfaction in her eyes; if any of the latter should appear, even there he would renounce his hopes. All was calm, celestially serene. Nay, something almost of exultation struggled through the placid expression of her features, as she cast her eyes up to heaven, till modest gentleness veiled them again, and they were bent to earth.
The generosity and pride of woman had kindled these sentiments. The Lady Katherine, a princess by birth, would scarcely have dreamed of resisting her father's behests, even if they had been in opposition to her desires; but here she was to sacrifice no inclination, nothing but prosperity; that must depart for ever, she felt she knew, when she became the bride of England's outcast prince. Yet should aught of good and great cling to him, it was her gift; and to bestow was the passion of her guileless heart. It was not reason; it was feeling, perhaps superstition, that inspired these ideas. The seer who foretold her fortunes, had been her tutor and her poet; she believed in him, and believed that all would be accomplished; even to the death of the beautiful and beloved being who stood in the pride and strength of youth at her side. All must be endured; for it was the will of Heaven. Meanwhile, that he should be happy during his mortal career was to be her study, her gift, the aim of her life. In consenting to be his, she also had made a condition, that, if defeat awaited his arms, and that again a wanderer he was obliged to fly before his enemies, she was not to be divided from him; if no longer here, she was to be permitted to join him; if he departed, she should accompany him.
As the priest bestowed his benediction on the illustrious and beauteous pair, a silent vow was formed in the heart of either. Doomed by his ill-fate to hardship and dependence, he would find in her a medicine for all his woes, a wife, even the better, purer part of himself, who would never suffer him to despair; but who would take the bitterer portion of his sorrow on herself, giving in return the heroism, the piety, the serene content which was the essence of her being. His vow, it depended not on himself, poor fellow! "Never through me shall she suffer," was the fervent resolve. Alas! as if weak mortal hands could hold back giant Calamity, when he seizes the heart, and rends it at his pleasure.