The Abbot by Walter Scott (mobi reader .txt) 📕

assailed on all sides by rebels, traitors, and heretics, you let it glide out of your breast like water grasped in the hand. If you are driven from the faith of your fathers from fear of a traitor, is not that womanish?—If you are cajoled by the cunning arguments of a trumpeter of heresy, or the praises of a puritanic old woman, is not that womanish?—If you are bribed by the hope of spoil and preferment, is not that womanish?—And when you wonder at my venting a threat or an execration, should you not wonder at yourself, who, pretending to a gentle name and aspiring to knighthood, can be at the same time cowardly, silly, and self-interested!”

“I would that a man would bring such a charge,” said the page; “he should see, ere his life was a minute older, whether he had cause to term me coward or no.”

“Beware of such big words,” answered the maiden; “you said but anon that I sometimes wear hose and doublet.”

“But remain still Catharine Seyton, wear what you list,” said the page, endeavouring again to possess himself of her hand.

“You indeed are pleased to call me so,” replied the maiden, evading his intention, “but I have many other names besides.”

“And will you not reply to that,” said the page, “by which you are distinguished beyond every other maiden in Scotland?”

The damsel, unallured by his praises, still kept aloof, and sung with gaiety a verse from an old ballad,

“Oh, some do call me Jack, sweet love, And some do call me Gill; But when I ride to Holyrood, My name is Wilful Will.”

“Wilful Will” exclaimed the page, impatiently; “say rather Will o' the Wisp—Jack with the Lantern—for never was such a deceitful or wandering meteor!”

“If I be such,” replied the maiden, “I ask no fools to follow me—If they do so, it is at their own pleasure, and must be on their own proper peril.”

“Nay, but, dearest Catherine,” said Roland Graeme, “be for one instant serious.”

“If you will call me your dearest Catherine, when I have given you so many names to choose upon,” replied the damsel, “I would ask you how, supposing me for two or three hours of my life escaped from yonder tower, you have the cruelty to ask me to be serious during the only merry moments I have seen perhaps for months?”

“Ay, but, fair Catherine, there are moments of deep and true feeling, which are worth ten thousand years of the liveliest mirth; and such was that of yesterday, when you so nearly—”

“So nearly what?” demanded the damsel, hastily.

“When you approached your lips so near to the sign you had traced on my forehead.”

“Mother of Heaven!” exclaimed she, in a yet fiercer tone, and with a more masculine manner than she had yet exhibited,-“Catherine Seyton approach her lips to a man's brow, and thou that man!—vassal, thou liest!”

The page stood astonished; but, conceiving he had alarmed the damsel's delicacy by alluding to the enthusiasm of a moment, and the manner in which she had expressed it, he endeavoured to falter forth an apology. His excuses, though he was unable to give them any regular shape, were accepted by his companion, who had indeed suppressed her indignation after its first explosion—“Speak no more on't,” she said. “And now let us part; our conversation may attract more notice than is convenient for either of us.”

“Nay, but allow me at least to follow you to some sequestered place.”

“You dare not,” replied the maiden.

“How,” said the youth, “dare not? where is it you dare go, where I dare not follow?”

“You fear a Will o' the Wisp,” said the damsel; “how would you face a fiery dragon, with an enchantress mounted on its back?”

“Like Sir Eger, Sir Grime, or Sir Greysteil,” said the page; “but be there such toys to be seen here?”

“I go to Mother Nicneven's,” answered the maid; “and she is witch enough to rein the horned devil, with a red silk thread for a bridle, and a rowan-tree switch for a whip.”

“I will follow you,” said the page.

“Let it be at some distance,” said the maiden.

And wrapping her mantle round her with more success than on her former attempt, she mingled with the throng, and walked towards the village, heedfully followed by Roland Graeme at some distance, and under every precaution which he could use to prevent his purpose from being observed.