PART I.
“‘When nightly my wild harp I bringTo wake all its music for thee,So sweet looks that face while I sing,To reason no longer I’m free.I forget thou art queen of the land—’Tis thy beauty alone that I see:And, trembling at touch of thy hand,All else is forgotten by me!“‘The spell is upon me in sleep,In the region of dreams thou art mine!I wake—but, ah! ’tis to weep,And the hope of my slumbers resign.Ah! hadst thou been less than thou art,Or I more deserving of thee,Thou mightst have been queen of my heart,Thou mightst have been all things to me!’”
“‘When nightly my wild harp I bringTo wake all its music for thee,So sweet looks that face while I sing,To reason no longer I’m free.I forget thou art queen of the land—’Tis thy beauty alone that I see:And, trembling at touch of thy hand,All else is forgotten by me!“‘The spell is upon me in sleep,In the region of dreams thou art mine!I wake—but, ah! ’tis to weep,And the hope of my slumbers resign.Ah! hadst thou been less than thou art,Or I more deserving of thee,Thou mightst have been queen of my heart,Thou mightst have been all things to me!’”
“‘When nightly my wild harp I bringTo wake all its music for thee,So sweet looks that face while I sing,To reason no longer I’m free.I forget thou art queen of the land—’Tis thy beauty alone that I see:And, trembling at touch of thy hand,All else is forgotten by me!
“‘When nightly my wild harp I bring
To wake all its music for thee,
So sweet looks that face while I sing,
To reason no longer I’m free.
I forget thou art queen of the land—
’Tis thy beauty alone that I see:
And, trembling at touch of thy hand,
All else is forgotten by me!
“‘The spell is upon me in sleep,In the region of dreams thou art mine!I wake—but, ah! ’tis to weep,And the hope of my slumbers resign.Ah! hadst thou been less than thou art,Or I more deserving of thee,Thou mightst have been queen of my heart,Thou mightst have been all things to me!’”
“‘The spell is upon me in sleep,
In the region of dreams thou art mine!
I wake—but, ah! ’tis to weep,
And the hope of my slumbers resign.
Ah! hadst thou been less than thou art,
Or I more deserving of thee,
Thou mightst have been queen of my heart,
Thou mightst have been all things to me!’”
The exquisite tenor voice of the singer died away into mournful echoes; the low accompaniment wailed along the piano-keys like the cry of a breaking heart, then sobbed itself out—and silence reigned.
“There is still another verse, Mr. Winthrop,” said Lady Edith Chilton, softly.
“Which I shall not sing,” answered Guy Winthrop, coolly.
“Shallnot?” the girl repeated after him, in a rising tone of displeasure. “No one ever says ‘shall not’ to me, Mr. Winthrop.”
“I suppose not”—Mr. Winthrop bowed slightly in homage to her fair young beauty—“therefore I say it. I—whom fate has placed so far beneath you, that I am not restricted to the sweet flatteries of your ladyship’s lordly admirers, nor yet to the passive subservience of your vassals—can afford to speak my mind!”
The long, magnificent drawing-room was deserted save for these two at the grand piano—Lady Edith Chilton of Chilton Park, Somersetshire, and Guy Winthrop, her young brother’s handsome tutor, who had just been singing at her request, the touching lines written in commemoration of Catlett’s love for the hapless Queen of Scots.
A sudden gleam of anger in her azure eyes reminded him of summer lightning in evening skies.
“At least you are very ungracious,” she said, petulantly; “you refuse out of mere perversity to sing that song for me, although you know I am not clever in singing, and have to learn after others like a parrot.”
An amused smile curved Guy Winthrop’s handsome mouth at her girlish pique.
“Pardon me, Lady Edith, but, to quote the compliments of your lordly admirers, you sing divinely, and even the dullest parrot might have learned that song during the three months in which I have daily sung it for you!”
“Well, then,” she confessed, frankly, “I like the song and like to hear you sing it. I regret that I have asked you to sing it once too often.”
“Once too often!” the young man rose to his feet, speaking impetuously, forgetting all restraint “Twice too often, twenty times too often for my peace of mind, Lady Edith, and you know it! You know as well as I that Catlett cherished no more hopeless love for beauteous Mary Stuart than I for you. Nay, start not—your brother’s humble tutor presumes not too much! He but tells you what you deserve to hear! Lady Edith, you knew when you asked me to teach you to sing, when you stood at my side in the pride of your high-born beauty and mingled your heavenly voice with mine, what the end must be! Perhaps you planned it all, you fair coquette!”
“Hush!” she cried, indignantly, but he went on, bitterly:
“You knew while I sung that song that it was but the expression of my love for you, that the heart throbbing bitterly below, lent its passion to the voice. There was your triumph, trifler with human hearts! Not content with your higher lovers, you bent from your loftly sphere to ensnare an humble heart—one weak enough to own your charms, but too lowly even to dare to hope!”
She stood still, confused, surprised, unable to speak one word in self-defense, her color rising and falling by turns, her lips half parted, the pale winter sunshine glinting through the stained-glass window crowning her golden head like a halo, making her seem not like a “trifler with human hearts,” but some fair saint or angel.
And ere she could recover herself, Guy Winthrop bowed with cold deference and withdrew.
Springing to the window, half-hidden behind the rich lace curtain, she watched the tall, straight figure striding swiftly down the elm avenue.
Something—perhaps it was the red evening light shining on a waste of snow, or perhaps a tear—blurred the outlines of the fair winter landscape, and, sighing, she turned away.
“Poor and proud!” faltered in a soft undertone from her lips. “Why, he has nothing in the world but his profession, yet he talks to me like a prince royal, upbraids me with my coquetry, and leaves me with cold disdain! Ah, my haughty lover, did you but know”—then she started and bit her lip as if not even to solitude would she whisper the secret trembling on that coral portal.
“So the Minstrel’s Curse is like to be fulfilled again,” said a mocking voice behind her.
She turned with a start, the rosy color flooding cheek and throat, but it was only old Katharine, her nurse, who was almost a century old, and in her dotage.
There she sat, curled cozily behind the curtain that draped that odd little bay-window, and she had heard every word Guy Winthrop uttered.
Lady Edith paled with indignation.
“How came you there? How dared you listen?” she cried, and rushed away in a pet.
Old Katharine hobbled slowly after her mistress, and found her sobbing on her silken couch.
“Don’t cry, that’s a dearie,” she whispered, smoothing the silken curls with a tender hand. “Old Kathie didn’t mean to make her bairn angry. She only feared the curse would fall again. She hid herself in the window to see for herself, and shehasseen—alas, alas!” the old creature moaned half deliriously, rocking her body to and fro.
“What curse is it you’re talking of, Katharine?” sobbed Edith in a sort of awe.
“The Minstrel’s Curse, to be sure,” answered Katharine, between intervals of her rocking. “It’s never been told you, child. Pity it hadn’t. It might have been better for the poor young man.”
“Well, tell me about it now,” exclaimed the imperious young beauty. She loved to hear the old crone’s tales of the past, and settling herself among her silken pillows, she prepared to enjoy some marvelous story.
“Tell me, then, first,” said old Katharine, seriously—“you love the young man with the handsome dark eyes and the voice of music, do you not, my pet?”
A little storm of blushing denial answered her, but the protest was all in vain. The old nurse had seen three generations of fair Chilton dames bloom and fade. She paid no heed to the angry remonstrance, but looking in her nurseling’s eyes, read the secret in her heart.
“Ah, I knew it!” she sighed. “I knew it; but you must crush that love out of your heart, my child. It is his doom—his death. Better if you hated him.”
“Katharine,” cried her young mistress, growing suddenly white and chill, “cease this foolish driveling at once, and tell me what you mean by the Minstrel’s Curse.”
“I will then,” muttered the old nurse, crouching down on the floor beside the couch.
“Go on,” said her young mistress, almost sternly in her impatience.
“Almost two centuries ago,” said Katherine, “when the Chiltons were richer and more powerful than they are to-day, and before English minstrelsy was on the wane, there was a Lady Edith Chilton as fair and sweet as yourself. Her portrait hangs in the gallery now, and you have her sweet blue eyes, her golden hair, her lovely face. The Chiltons were a proud race; proud of their long line of ancestry, proud of their blue blood, and their sovereign’s favor. But the men of the race were as cruel and harsh as the women were fair and loving. It was the fashion then for all the fair ladies of the court to have a minstrel attached to the household to beguile the idle hours with songs and improvisations. Lady Edith followed the fashion and had a favorite minstrel, too, one Douglas North. He was of gentle blood, handsome, brave, and chivalrous. My Lady Edith, was a flirt in her day. She angled for the young minstrel’s heart, meaning to play with it a moment, then cast it aside like a broken toy. But in the meanwhile she lost her own, and when they found it out they made a precious pair of lovers, you may be sure, and she persuaded Douglas North to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Well, my lady, to make the story as short as possible, the youth was murdered among those proud, lawless Chiltons. They blamed him for it all, never said a word to her, but shut him up in a lonely tower, and one night he was secretly taken out, and made way with. One of the castle retainers told afterward a story of how young Douglas sat up until after midnight improvising and playing sad tunes upon his harp up in the lonely tower. The last song he sung the old servitor remembered, and long afterward it was printed in a book of Chilton legends and has come down to us as ‘The Minstrel’s Curse.’”
“And the curse? What was it?” breathed the young girl eagerly.
“I’ll get the book and show you,” answered Katharine, hobbling out of the room. When she tottered back with the antique volume, Lady Edith eagerly turned the musty, yellow pages. She looked eagerly at the date. It was more than a hundred years old—a book of traditions and stories of the great Chilton race.
“Oh, Kathie, you should have shown me this long ago,” she began, reproachfully, and just then her fascinated gaze lighted upon:
“The Minstrel’s Curse!
“The minstrel’s curse be on the loveOf all who bear the Chilton nameLong after he shall sleep in death,Who, blameless, bore their blame.A Chilton maiden ne’er shall loveA man of low degree,But she shall bring on him the doomThat one has brought on me.Until there meet in future yearsSome Chilton ofhername,And some proud branch of my own bloodWho knows not whence he came,But bears the name that now I bear—Douglas the True—and sheIs named for my lost Edith—Edith, so dear to me—When these shall meet, and, meeting, wed,The minstrel’s curse has died,And Douglas and his love shall knowThe bliss I was denied!”
“The minstrel’s curse be on the loveOf all who bear the Chilton nameLong after he shall sleep in death,Who, blameless, bore their blame.A Chilton maiden ne’er shall loveA man of low degree,But she shall bring on him the doomThat one has brought on me.Until there meet in future yearsSome Chilton ofhername,And some proud branch of my own bloodWho knows not whence he came,But bears the name that now I bear—Douglas the True—and sheIs named for my lost Edith—Edith, so dear to me—When these shall meet, and, meeting, wed,The minstrel’s curse has died,And Douglas and his love shall knowThe bliss I was denied!”
“The minstrel’s curse be on the loveOf all who bear the Chilton nameLong after he shall sleep in death,Who, blameless, bore their blame.A Chilton maiden ne’er shall loveA man of low degree,But she shall bring on him the doomThat one has brought on me.Until there meet in future yearsSome Chilton ofhername,And some proud branch of my own bloodWho knows not whence he came,But bears the name that now I bear—Douglas the True—and sheIs named for my lost Edith—Edith, so dear to me—When these shall meet, and, meeting, wed,The minstrel’s curse has died,And Douglas and his love shall knowThe bliss I was denied!”
“The minstrel’s curse be on the love
Of all who bear the Chilton name
Long after he shall sleep in death,
Who, blameless, bore their blame.
A Chilton maiden ne’er shall love
A man of low degree,
But she shall bring on him the doom
That one has brought on me.
Until there meet in future years
Some Chilton ofhername,
And some proud branch of my own blood
Who knows not whence he came,
But bears the name that now I bear—
Douglas the True—and she
Is named for my lost Edith—
Edith, so dear to me—
When these shall meet, and, meeting, wed,
The minstrel’s curse has died,
And Douglas and his love shall know
The bliss I was denied!”
Lady Edith read these singular lines over twice before she turned her inquiring gaze on old Katharine. The nurse nodded, gravely.
“You see how it is, my lady. You dare not love ‘a man of low degree,’ for the curse of Douglas North, the murdered minstrel, always comes upon every such man that the ladies of Chilton have doomed with their love. They have all died, one after another, strange, unnatural deaths; and this young singer you love will die, too, if you do not in mercy to him forget your fancy for his handsome face and sweet voice.”
“Nonsense!” cried Lady Edith; but she was still pale, and her voice trembled. There was a vein of superstition in her nature that she could not overcome. It had descended to her along with the blue blood that flowed in her veins. Then a gleam of hope brightened her eyes as she continued: “You forget, Katharine, that my name is Edith, and the curse says expressly, that when the lady’s name is Edith the curse is ended.”
“It says no such thing,” the privileged old nurse answered flatly. “It says when her name is Edith, and he is a descendant of the Norths’, and named Douglas, the doom is ended—not before. And now I have warned you! If you keep on loving this Guy Winthrop, with his sweet voice, and his ‘low degree,’ you love him to his doom and to his death.”