Chapter 2

He was now alone, shivering from cold and fright. He felt as though undergoing the unpleasant process of being frozen to the spot, consciously metamorphosing into stone, peradventure a sort of ornamental fixture for the fairies' apartment. His great hoofs were already immovable; he felt his hair congealing; his locks hung like icicles; and his whole body seemed like one solid lump of ice, through which the blood crept with a gradually decreasing current. Suddenly he heard a loud yelping, as though the hounds were in full cry. The sound passed right through the midst of the Fairies' Hall, and almost close to his ear; but there was no visible sign of their presence, except a slight movement, and then a shiver amongst the frost-bitten boughs above the rocks. He had not power to bethink him of his Paternosters and Ave Marias, which, doubtless, would have dissolved the impious charm. Ralph had so neglected these ordinances that his tongue refused to repeat the usual nostrums for protection against evil spirits. His creed was nigh forgotten, and his "_salve_" was not heard. Whilst he was pondering on this occurrence, there started through a crevice a single light, like a glow-worm's lantern. Then a tiny thing came forth, clad in white, like a miniature of the human form, and, peeping about cautiously, ran back on beholding the unfortunate miller bolt upright in the narrow glen.

Ralph now saw plainly that he had been enticed hither by some evil being for no good. It might be for the malicious purpose of drawing down upon him the puny but fearful vengeance of those irritable creatures the fairies; and soon he saw a whole troop of them issuing out of the crevice. As they came nearer he heard the short sharp tread of this tiny host. One of them mounted the little pillar called the "Fairies' Chair," round which multitudes gathered, as if waiting for the fiat of their king. It was evident that their purpose was to inflict a signal chastisement on him for his intrusion.

Ralph watched their movements with a deplorable look. Horrible indeed were his anticipations. The elf on the pillar, a little wrinkled being with a long nose, bottle-green eyes, and shrivelled yellowish-green face, in a shrill squeaking tone, addressed him courteously, though with an ill-suppressed sneer, inquiring his business in these regions. But Ralph was too terrified to reply.

"How lucky!" said the old fairy: "we have a mortal here, just in the nick of time. He will do our bidding rarely, for 'tis the stout miller hard by, who fears neither fiend nor fairy, man nor witch, by his own confession. We'll put his courage to the proof."

Ralph was now thawing through terror.

"We would have punished this thine impertinent curiosity, had we not other business for thee, friend," said the malicious little devilkin. "Place thy fingers on thy thigh, and swear by Hecate, Merlin, and the Fairies' Hall, that within three days thou wilt fulfil our behest."

Ralph assented, with a hideous grimace, glad upon any terms to escape.

The whole company disappeared, but a faint, sulphur-like flame hovered for a while over the spot they had left.

Soon he heard the following words, in a voice of ravishing sweetness:--

"Mortal I must cease to be, If no maiden, honestly, Plight her virgin troth to me, By yon cold moon's silver shower, In the chill and mystic hour, When the arrowy moonbeams fall In the fairies' festive hall. Twice her light shall o'er me pass, Then I am what once I was, Should no maid, betrothed, but free, Plight her virgin vow to me."

The music ceased for a short space; then a voice, like the soft whisper of the summer winds, chanted the following lines in a sort of monotonous recitation:--

"Mortal, take this unstained token, Unpledged vows were never broken; Lay it where a Byron's hand This message finds from fairy-land,-- Fair Eleanor, the love-sick maid, Who sighs unto her own soft shade:-- Bid her on this tablet write What lover's wish would e'er indite; Then give it to the faithful stream (As bright and pure as love's first dream) That murmurs by,--'twill bring to me The messenger I give to thee.

"But the maiden thou must bring Hither, to our elfin king, Ere three days are come and gone, When the moon hath kissed the stone By our fairy monarch's throne. Shouldst thou fail, or she refuse, Death is thine; or thou may'st choose With us to chase the moonbeams bright, Around the busy world. Good night!"

He now felt something slipped into his hand.

"Remember," said the voice, "when that shadow is on the pillar, thou must return."

Immediately his bodily organs resumed their office, and the astonished miller was not long in regaining his own threshold.

But he was a moody and an altered man. The dame could not help shuddering as she saw his ashen visage, and his eyes fixed and almost starting from their sockets. His cheeks were sunken, his head was bare, and his locks covered with rime, and with fragments from the boughs that intercepted his path.

"Mercy on me!" cried she, lifting up her hands, "what terrible thing has happened? O Ralph, Ralph, thy silly gostering speeches, I do fear me, have had a sting in their tail thou hast little dreamed of!"

Here she crossed herself with much fervour and solemnity. She then turned to gaze on the doomed wretch, who, groaning heavily, seated himself on the old settle without speaking.

"He has seen the fairies or the black dog!" said the dame in great terror. "I will not upbraid thee with thy foolish speeches, yet would I thou hadst not spoken so lightly of the good people. But take courage, goodman; thou art never the worse yet for thy mishap, I trow; so tell me what has befallen thee, and ha' done snoring there, like an owl in a barn riggin'."

A long time elapsed ere the affrighted miller could reveal the nature and extent of his misfortunes. But woman's wits are more fertile in expedients, and therefore more adroit for plots and counterplots than our own. The dame was greatly terrified at the recital, yet not so as to prevent her from being able to counsel her husband as to the plan he should pursue.

We now leave our honest miller for a space, while we introduce another personage of great importance to the further development of our story.

Oliver Chadwyck was the second son of Jordan Chadwyck before-named, then residing at their fort or peel of the same name, nearly two miles from Healey. Oliver had, from his youth, been betrothed to Eleanor Byron, a young and noble dame of great beauty, residing with her uncle, Sir Nicholas Byron, at his mansion, two or three miles distant. Oliver was a hot-brained, amorous youth, fitted for all weathers, ready either for brotherhood or blows, and would have won his "ladye love" at the lance's point or by onslaught and hard knocks.

Eleanor seemed to suffer his addresses for lack of other occupation. She looked upon him as her future husband; but she would rather have been wooed to be won. The agonies of doubt and suspense, the pangs of jealousy and apprehension, would have been bliss compared to the dull monotony of the "betrothed." The lazy current would have sparkled if a few pebbles had been cast into the stream. Her sensitive spirit, likewise, shrank from contact with this fiery and impetuous youth; her heart yearned for some deep and hallowed affection. Strongly imbued with the witcheries of romance, she would rather have been sought by blandishments than blows, which, from his known prowess in the latter accomplishment, the youthful aspirant had no necessity to detail in the ears of his mistress. She liked not the coarse blunt manner of her gallant, nor the hard gripe and iron tramp for which he was sufficiently distinguished.

Yet was Oliver Chadwyck reckoned the best-looking cavalier in the neighbourhood, and, moreover, an adherent to the "Red Rose," under whose banner he had fought, and, even when very young, had gained distinction for his bravery--no mean recommendation, truly, in those days, when courage was reckoned a sure passport to a lady's favour, the which, it might seem, whoever held out longest and stuck the hardest was sure to win.

One evening, about the time of the miller's adventure in the Fairies' Chapel, Eleanor was looking through her casement listlessly, perhaps unconsciously. She sighed for occupation. The glorious hues of sunset were gone; the moon was rising, and she watched its course from the horizon of long dark hills up to the bare boughs of the sycamores by the banks of the little stream below. Again she sighed, and so heavily that it seemed to be re-echoed from the walls of her chamber. She almost expected the grim panels to start aside as she looked round, half-wishing, half-afraid that she might discover the intruder.

Disappointed, she turned again to the casement, through which the moonbeams, now partially intercepted by the branches, lay in chequered light and darkness on the floor.

"I thought thou wert here. Alas! I am unhappy, and I know not why." While she spoke a tear trembled on her dark eyelashes, and as the moonlight shone upon it, the reflection glanced back to the eye-ball, and a radiant form apparently glided through the chamber. But the spectre vanished as the eyelid passed over, and swept away the illusion. She leaned her glowing cheek upon a hand white and exquisitely formed as the purest statuary: an image of more perfect loveliness never glanced through a lady's lattice. She carelessly took up her cithern. A few wild chords flew from her touch. She bent her head towards the instrument, as if wooing its melody--the vibrations that crept to her heart. She hummed a low and plaintive descant, mournful and tender as her own thoughts. The tone and feeling of the ballad we attempt to preserve in the following shape:--

SONG.

I.

"It is the stream, Singing to the cold moon with babbling tongue; Yet, ah! not half so wildly as the song Of my heart's dream. Is not my love most beautiful, thou moon? Though pale as hope delayed; Methought, beneath his feet the wild-flowers played Like living hearts in tune.

2.

"We stood alone: Then, as he drew the dark curls from my sight, Through his transparent hand and arm of light, The far skies shone. List! 'twas the dove. It seemed the echo of his own fond tone; Sweet as the hymn of seraphs round the throne Of hope and love!"

But the moon was not the object of her love. Ladies are little apt to become enamoured of such a fit emblem of their own fickle and capricious humours; and yet, somebody she loved, but he was invisible! Probably her wild and fervid imagination had created a form--pictured it to the mind, and endowed it with her own notions of excellence and perfection: precisely the same as love in the ordinary mode, with this difference only--to wit, the object is a living and breathing substance, around which these haloes of the imagination are thrown; whereas, in the case of which we are speaking, the lady's ideal image was transferred to a being she had never seen.

It was but a short period before the commencement of our narrative that Eleanor Byron was really in love, and for the first time; for though her cousin Oliver, as she usually called him, had stormed, and perchance carried the outworks, yet the citadel was impregnable and unapproached. But she knew not that it was love. A soft and pleasing impression stole insensibly upon her, then dejection and melancholy. Her heart was vacant, and she sighed for an object, and for its possession. It was a silly wish, but so it was, gentle reader; and beware thou fall not in love with thine own dreams, for sure enough it was but a vision, bright, mysterious, and bewitching, that enthralled her. Love weaves his chains of the gossamer's web, as well as of the unyielding adamant; and both are alike binding and inextricable. She saw neither form nor face in her visions, and yet the impalpable and glowing impression stole upon her senses like an odour, or a strain of soft and soul-thrilling music. Her heart was wrapped in a delirium of such voluptuous melody, that she chided the morning when she awoke, and longed for night and her own forgetfulness. Night after night the vision was repeated; and when her lover came, it was as though some chord of feeling had jarred, some tie were broken, some delicious dream were interrupted, and she turned from him with vexation and regret. He chided her caprice, which he endured impatiently, and with little show of forbearance. This did not restore him to her favour, nor render him more winning and attractive; so that the invisible gallant, a rival he little dreamt of, was silently occupying the heart once destined for his own.

One evening, Ralph, in pursuance of the commands he had received, arrayed in his best doublet, his brown hose, and a huge waist or undercoat, beneath which lay a heavy and foreboding heart, made his appearance at the house of Sir Nicholas Byron, an irregular and ugly structure of lath and plaster, well ribbed with stout timber, situated in a sheltered nook near the edge of the Beil, a brook running below Belfield, once an establishment of the renowned knights of St John of Jerusalem, or Knights Templars.

Ralph was ushered into the lady's chamber; and she, as if expecting some more distinguished visitant, looked with an eye of disappointment and impatience upon the intruder as he made his homely salutation.

"Thine errand?" inquired she.

"Verily, a fool's, lady," replied Ralph, "and a thriftless one, I fear me, into the bargain."

"Stay thy tongue. Yet I bethink me now," said she, looking earnestly at him, "thou art from my cousin: a messenger from him, I trow."

"Nay," said the ambiguous hind, "'tis from other guess folk, belike; but--who--I--Like enough that the Lady Eleanor will go a fortune-hunting with such a simpleton as I am."

"Go with thee?" said the lady in amazement.

"Why, ay--I was bid to bring you to the Fairies' Chapel, beyond the waterfall in the wood by Healey, and that ere to-morrow night. But I am a doomed and a dying man, for how should the Lady Eleanor Byron obey this message?"

Here the unhappy miller began to weep; but the lady was dumb with astonishment.

"Forgive me, lady, in this matter; but I was in a manner bound to accomplish mine errand."

"And what if I should accompany thee? Wouldest thou be my champion, my protector from onslaught and evil?"

Here he opened his huge grey eyes to such an alarming extent that Eleanor had much ado to refrain from smiling.

"If you will go, lady, I shall be a living man; and you"--a dead woman, probably he would have said; but the denunciation did not escape his lips, and the joy and surprise of the wary miller were beyond utterance.

"But whence thy message, friend?" said the deluded maiden, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Why; the message was whispered in my ear. A stranger brought it together with a dismal threat should I not bring you at the time appointed."

Here the miller again became uneasy and alarmed. A cold shudder crept over him, and he looked imploringly upon her.

"But they say, my trusty miller, that this chapel of the fairies may not be visited, forbidden as it is to all catholic and devout Christians, after nightfall."

At this intimation the peccant miller displayed his broad thumbs, and looked so dolorous and apprehensive, sprawling out his large ungainly proportions, that Eleanor, though not prone to the indulgence of mirth, was mightily moved thereto by the cowardly and dismal aspect he betrayed.

"Nay, lady, I beseech you," he stammered out. "I am a dead dog--a piece of useless and unappropriated carrion, if you go not. Ha' pity on your poor knave, and deliver me from my tormentors!"

"Then to-morrow I will deliver thee," said the maiden, "and break thine enchantment. But the hour?"

"Ere the moonbeam touches the pillar in the Fairies' Hall."

"Agreed, knave. So begone. Yet--and answer truly for thy life--was no pledge, no token, sent with this message?"

Ralph unwillingly drew forth the token from his belt. Fearful that it might divulge more than he wished, the treacherous messenger had kept back the tablets entrusted to him. He suspected that should she be aware it was the good people who were a-wanting her, he would have but a slender chance of success.

She glanced hastily, anxiously, over the page, though with great surprise.

"How now?" said she, thoughtfully. "Here is a pretty love-billet truly. The page is fair and unspotted--fit emblem of a lover's thoughts."

"You are to write thereon, lady, your lover's wish, and throw it into the brook here, hard by. The stream, a trusty messenger will carry it back to its owner."

Ralph delivered his message with great reluctance, fearful lest she might be alarmed and retract her promise.

To his great joy, however, she placed the mystic token in her bosom, and bade him attend on the morrow.

This he promised faithfully; and with a light heart he returned to his abode.

Eleanor watched his departure with impatience. She took the tablets from her bosom. Horror seemed to fold his icy fingers round her heart. She remembered the injunction. Her mind misgave her, and as she drew towards the lamp it shot forth a tremulous blaze and expired. Yet with desperate haste, bent, it might seem, on her own destruction, she hastily approached the window. The moonbeam shone full upon the page as she scrawled with great trepidation the word "THINE." To her unspeakable horror the letters became a track of fire, but as she gazed a drop of dark blood fell on them and obliterated the writing.

"Must the compact be in blood?" said she, evidently shrinking from this unhallowed pledge. "Nay then, farewell! Thou art not of yon bright heaven. My hopes are yet there, whatever be thy doom! If thou art aught within the pale of mercy I am thine, but not in blood."

Again, but on another page, she wrote the word "THINE." Again the blood-drop effaced the letters.

"Never, though I love thee! Why urge this compact?" With a trembling hand she retraced her pledge, and the omen was not repeated. She had dared much; but her hope of mercy was yet dearer than her heart's deep and overwhelming passion. With joy she saw the writing was unchanged.

Throwing on her hood and kerchief, she stole forth to the brook, and in the rivulet, where it was yet dark and unfrozen, she threw the mystic tablet.

The following night she watched the moon, as it rose above the huge crags, breaking the long undulating horizon of Blackstone Edge, called "Robin Hood's Bed," or "Robin Hood's Chair."[5]

One jagged peak, projected upon the moon's limb, looked like some huge spectre issuing from her bright pavilion. She rose, red and angry, from her dark couch. Afterwards a thin haze partially obscured her brightness; her pale, wan beam seemed struggling through a wide and attenuated veil. The wind, too, began to impart that peculiar chill so well understood as the forerunner of a change. A loud sough came shuddering through the frozen bushes, moaning in the grass that rustled by her path. Muffled and alone, she took her adventurous journey to the mill, where she arrived in about an hour from her departure. Ralph was anxiously expecting her, together with his dame.

"Good e'en, lady," said the latter, with great alacrity, as Eleanor crossed the threshold. She returned the salutation; but her features were lighted up with a wild and deceptive brightness, and her glowing eye betrayed the fierce and raging conflict within.

"The shadow will soon point to the hour, and we must be gone," said the impatient miller.

"Lead on," replied the courageous maiden; and he shrank from her gaze, conscious of his own treachery and her danger.

The hard and ice-bound waters were dissolving, and might be heard to gurgle in their deep recesses; drops began to trickle from the trees, the bushes to relax their hold, and shake off their icy trammels. Towards the south-west lay a dense range of clouds, their fleecy tops telling with what message they were charged. Still the moon cast a subdued and lingering light over the scene, from which she was shortly destined to be shut out.

Ralph led the way silently and with great caution through the slippery ravine. The moonlight flickered through the leafless branches on the heights above them, their path winding through the shadows by the stream.

"We must hasten," said her guide, "or we may miss the signal. We shall soon take leave of the moonlight, and perhaps lose our labour thereby."

They crept onwards until they saw the dark rocks in the Fairies' Chapel. The miller pointed to a long withered bough that flung out its giant arms far over the gulph from a great height. The moon threw down the shadow quite across to the bank on the other side, marking its rude outline on the crags.

"The signal," said Ralph; "and by your favour, lady, I must depart. I have redeemed my pledge."

"Stay, I prithee, but within hearing," said Eleanor. "I like not the aspect of this place. If I call, hasten instantly to my succour."

The miller promised, but with a secret determination not to risk his carcase again for all the bright-eyed dames in Christendom.

She listened to his departing footsteps, and her heart seemed to lose its support. An indescribable feeling crept upon her--a consciousness that another was present in this solitude. She was evidently under the control of some invisible agent; the very freedom of her thoughts oppressed and overruled by a power superior to her own. She strove to escape this thraldom, but in vain. She threw round an apprehensive glance, but all was still--the dripping boughs alone breaking the almost insupportable silence that surrounded her. Suddenly she heard a sigh, and a rustling at her ear; and she felt an icy chillness breathing on her. Then a voice, musical but sad, whispered--

"Thou hast rejected my suit. Another holds thy pledge."

"Another! Who art thou?" said the maiden, forgetting her fears in the first emotion of surprise.

"Thou hast been conscious of my presence in thy dreams!" replied the mysterious visitor. She felt her terrors dissipated, for the being whom she loved was the guardian of her safety.

"I have loved thee, maiden," said the voice; "I have hovered round thee when thou slept, and thou hast answered my every thought. Wherefore hast thou not obeyed? Why not seal thy compact and our happiness together?"

"Because it was unhallowed," replied she firmly, though her bosom trembled like the leaf fluttering from its stem.

"Another has taken thy pledge. Yet is it not too late. Renew the contract, even with thy blood, and I am thine! Refuse, and thou art his. If this hour pass, I am lost to thee for ever!"

"To whom," inquired Eleanor, "has it been conveyed?"

"To thy first, thy betrothed lover. He found the pledge that I would not receive."

The maiden hesitated. Her eternal hopes might be compromised by this compliance. But she dreaded the loss of her insidious destroyer.

"Who art thou? I fear me for the tempter!"

"And what boots it, lady? But, listen. These elves be my slaves; and yet I am not immortal. My term is nigh run out, though it may be renewed if, before the last hour be past, a maiden plight her hopes, her happiness to me! Ere that shadow creeps on the fairy pillar thou art irrevocably mine, or his whom thou dreadest."

Eleanor groaned aloud. She felt a cold hand creeping on her brow. She screamed involuntarily. On a sudden the boughs bent with a loud crash above her head, and a form, rushing down the height, stood before her. This unexpected deliverer was Oliver Chadwyck. Alarmed by the cries of a female, as he was returning from the chase, he interposed at the very moment when his mistress was ensnared by the wiles of her seducer.