Part 17

The old strength of Roseallan cannot now boast even a site on the face of the earth; for (so at least says tradition) the waters of the Whitadder run over the place where it reared its proud turrets. It is sad enough to look upon the green grass, and contemplate, with a heart beating with the feelings that respond to antiquarian reminiscences, the velvet covering of nature spread over the place where chivalry, love, and hospitality claimed the base-court, the bower, and the banqueting hall; but green grass, though long, and whistling in the winds of winter, carries not to the sensitive mind the feeling of mournful change and desolation suggested by the murmuring stream, as, rolling over the site of an old castle, it speaks its eloquent anger and triumph over the proud structures of man. So long as there is apparent to the eye a place where the cherished object of memory might, without violence to the ordinary conditions of nature, have stood, the plastic fancy asserts instantly her constructive power, and sets before the eye of the mind a structure that satisfies all our historical associations; but the moment we see the favoured place occupied by a running water, vindicating, apparently, a right to an eternal and unchangeable course, the many-coloured goddess takes fright, and refuses to obey the behest of the will that wishes her to compete with nature in the work of creation. We have stated a tradition, and we do not answer for it. There may be doubts now about the precise locality of the old strength of Roseallan, but there are none in regard to the fact of its last proprietor having been Sir Gilbert Rollo, a favourite of King James V., who saw no better mode of rewarding his loyal subject for important services, than by giving him a grant of the castle and domains, upon the old feudal tenure of ward-holding. This the king was enabled to do, from the property having fallen to the crown by the constructive rebellion of its former proprietor, whose name we have not been able to discover. Sir Gilbert Rollo had a wife and one daughter, the latter of whom was called Matilda. According to the account contained in some letters still extant in the possession of a branch of the family, this young lady was possessed of charms of so extraordinary a nature as to make her famous throughout "broad Scotland." Having little faith in verbal descriptions, as a mean of conveying to the mind of one who has not seen the original, any adequate idea of those peculiar qualities of form, colour, proportion, and expression that go to form what is called female beauty, we will not transcribe the elaborate account of her perfections which we have had the privilege of perusing. We content ourselves with stating, what will give a far better notion of her excellence, that there can be no doubt of the fact of her having been famous throughout Scotland at that period as the fairest woman in the kingdom. It has been stated that Queen Mary showed her picture to some of her French followers, with a view to impress upon their minds that, beautiful as she was, her country had produced one even transcending her; though some have asserted that the picture which hung in Mary's bedroom was that of a daughter of Crighton of Brunston. We cannot reconcile the different statements; but it is enough for our purpose that Matilda Rollo was supposed to be entitled to compete for this distinction.

Sir Gilbert and Lady Rollo were staunch Catholics of the primary church. They gratified King James, by extending their hatred to all those who showed any disposition to favour the partial reformation effected by Henry VIII. of England; whose law of the six articles was then a subject of bitter contention among all parties, both in England and Scotland. This religious prejudice was of greater importance in the family of Roseallan Castle than as a mere question of faith. It interfered with the success of a suitor for the hand of Matilda--an English knight of the name of Sir Thomas Courtney. This individual, who was much famed on the English side of the Borders for his knightly bearing, manly proportions, and beauty of person, was ambitious of carrying off the fairest woman of Scotland; as well from an ardent passion with which he was inflamed, as from the pride of having to boast among his English compeers of being the possessor of so inestimable a jewel as the "Rose of Roseallan." His suit had been favoured for a time by Matilda's father, but had been discharged as soon as it was known that the lover of Matilda was an admirer of Henry's new system of religious reformation. This determination on the part of her parents was not disagreeable to the daughter, who had never been able to see, in the proud stateliness of the handsome Englishman, those softer qualities which could enable him to respond to the high aspirations and impassioned feelings of what she conceived to be genuine romantic love.

For a considerable period, Sir Thomas had not been a visiter at Roseallan. He had, however, left a deputy in the person of Bertha Maitland, who had been Matilda's nurse, and was still retained in the family as a favoured domestic. A favourer of the religious tenets of the new English reformers, she had looked favourably on the suit of the lover; and there was reason to suppose that English gold, as well as English principles of religion, had been employed to gain over her interest in behalf of the Englishman. Her efforts had been sedulously devoted to the excitement of some feeling of attachment on the part of Matilda; but as women can only excite love in their female companions by rivalship, her praises went for nothing more than an old woman's garrulity. Matilda felt it impossible to give her affections to her English suitor, and was glad to take refuge behind the commands of her father, never to see him, and never to listen to his high-flown professions of passion.

Many other suitors sought the favour of the far-famed Rose of Roseallan. They were of the highest of the land--many of them the courtiers of King James; and the rules and canons of love-making, taken from the old romances--"Amadis de Gaul" and others--were learned by heart, and acted on by tongue and eyes. But all was in vain. There was not a single individual among all those who resorted to Roseallan, not even Sir George Douglas (who had been favoured by her father), that had been able to excite the least spark of affection in the bosom of the fair object of their suit. The circumstance was remarkable, but not the less true; and the difficulty could not be solved by the ordinary expedients. Though the most beautiful woman in Scotland at that time, she was the humblest; and no rejected lover could lay his bad fortune to the account of pride, or solace his self-love by an imputed arrogance of beauty. The perfect disengagement (so far as could be observed) of her affections, kept up the hopes of her English admirer, who learned everything that took place at the castle through the medium of his hired agent. The mediations of Bertha were kept up; but her praises had, by repetition, become tiresome, and fell upon the ear of her fair mistress like the tuneless notes of the birds that, unfitted to be of the choir of the forest, chirped on the old walls of Roseallan.

The castle was so situated that one end of it was almost washed by the waters of the Whitadder. A small bridge was thrown over the river, and communicated with a deep wood on the other side, then called the Satyr's Hall. In this wood, and towards the end of the bridge, was a small bower, which had been built for the sake of Matilda, and in which she often sat during the heat of the mid-day sun, listening to the songs of the birds, or reading some of the old romances and ballads of Scotland, which she loved with the devotion of the heart. It seemed to be in the imaginary world of these narratives that she had found the lover who defied the efforts of so many suitors to obtain a place in her affections. Her rapt fancy, occupied in the contemplation of some form which it had painted with all the fond colours of exaggerated beauty, carried her away from the ordinary thoughts and feelings of life. Yet it was not all imagination; she did not carry her romance so far as to uphold that no man of mere flesh and blood, however well put together, and however well decorated by the smiles of nature (the artificial ornaments of fashion she valued not), could satisfy the heart that had enshrined within it those hallowed images of a beautiful creative imagination. One who knew human nature, and the habits of thinking and acting of imaginative females, would have discovered, in this love of the fair inhabitants of her own Elysium, the true reason of her apparent coldness towards the most beautiful and accomplished men of her time; but they would have suspected that the form of beauty she thus cherished had some foundation in nature; and that--though an excited fancy engages in its service the young female heart, and, having limned for it an ideal object to contemplate, ceases not till it engages for the image the most pure, and sometimes the strongest affections of the heart--there is still a substratum in reality to which all may be referred. So was it with Matilda Rollo. One day, when sitting in her bower, she had fallen asleep with a volume of Italian poems in her hand. She had been busy culling roses--the bower was strewed with them; and the sun sent his rays past the window and entrance of the retreat, as if to avoid an interruption of her repose. She was, however, interrupted by another cause; and, looking up, she saw the face of a man gazing steadfastly upon her through the window. Alarmed, she started up--the individual disappeared; but the beauty of his countenance, which transcended anything she had ever seen on earth, or dreamed of in the grandest of her rapt imaginations, left an impression on her which she never forgot. She was supplied with a form of beauty on which her fancy might luxuriate, and to which she would refer all the descriptions in her favourite works; nor did she fail in this--for, though she could not discover who the individual was, and did not see him again, she cherished the beloved image as a treasure, and, day and night, in her fanciful musings and in her dreams, she delighted to contemplate the beauty of her imaginary lover.

One morning Bertha accosted her young mistress in such a manner as to excite her curiosity.

"The cushat doesna use to coo when the owl flies," said she. "Heard ye, my young leddy, the sounds last night in the beechwood?"

"The owl is generally busy there at night," replied Matilda. "I went to sleep early, and never waked till morning, when I heard the wind booming like a moon-baying spaniel through the forest. It had begun before you slept; but you know, Bertha, you find often a magic virtue in night sounds that no one else has the wits to discover."

"A lover's flute has mair virtue in it for young maidens than for auld witches," replied the other, looking knowingly. "Sir George Douglas has tried his looks and his speech upon you; his success may, peradventure, be greater through the means o' music, the lover's charm."

"I understand you not, good Bertha," replied Matilda; "you do not mean to say that Sir George Douglas was bold enough to serenade me in that house into which he might have entered, and, by a father's authority, claimed my attention."

"If it wasna Sir George, ye can maybe tell me wha it was," replied the old nurse, looking cunningly into the face of Matilda.

"I can tell ye nothing, Bertha, for I heard nothing," said the other.

This conversation, which was interrupted by the entrance of Lady Rollo, roused the curiosity of Matilda, who, ignorant of the interest felt by Bertha in the suit of the English lover, did not observe in her words or manner any wish to acquire information, but only a simple badinage on a subject of love. She trusted her nurse implicitly as her best friend, and sought her counsel often in those moments of unhappiness when her mother interrupted the imaginative course of her life by some effort to get her affections fixed on a proud baron or a courtly knight. The consolations of Bertha were ever ready; and her innocent and unsuspicious friend did not observe, in the nurse's zealous efforts to confirm her against the marriage-plans of her mother, the anxious workings of the concealed and paid deputy of a lover also rejected. She intended to have questioned her father about the sounds in the wood; but that day did not afford an opportunity for the gratification of her wish. Left to her own imagination, she concluded that some of her lovers had presumed to address her after the Spanish form of the evening serenade; and, while she resolved upon listening on the following evening, she was determined to take no notice of the importunities of her impassioned lover.

The evening set in with great beauty. The full moon rose high in the heavens, in which there was not discernible the thinnest wreath of vapour to form a resting-place for the eye, as it wandered among the endless regions of pure illuminated ether. The bright queen, paramount over all, engrossed the whole hemisphere, reducing the twinkling stars to the dimensions of small satraps of distant provinces, whose smallness increased the splendour of her august majesty. The stillness of nature suggested the idea of a general worship of the presiding genius of the night. Every wind was stilled, and even the Whitadder seemed to glide along with a greater smoothness than usual; while its singing, mellow voice seemed as if it rejoiced in the bright reflection of the gay queen of the heavens it held in its bosom. It was now about nine o'clock. Matilda was sitting at the casement of her apartment, overlooking the stream--her eyes were fixed on the beautiful scene; the towers of Roseallan threw over a part of the river a shadow, at the farther extremity of which, and, as it were, at the point of the eastern turret, the round form of the moon, like a bright silver salver, lay still in the bosom of the water. A little beyond this striking object stood her bower in the wood; and so bright was the flood of light that penetrated every part of the forest, that she saw the door and window of the romantic retreat so perfectly, that she could have detected the entrance of the august Oberon, or even Piggwiggan himself, if either of them could have left their revels on the greensward, in that auspicious night, to favour her bower with a visit. The scene was so inviting, that she would have been tempted to wander over the bridge into the wood, if the information of Bertha had not pointed out to her the danger.

As she continued her gaze on the beautiful scene, her attention was claimed by the form of a man gliding between the trees in the wood. He came forward to the edge of the river, and stood in a contemplative attitude, with his arm resting on the branch of an old beech, and his head directed in such a way as to suggest the idea that he was looking towards the casement of Matilda's apartment. On seeing him take this attitude, she retired back, to prevent her white dress from attracting his attention. A slight examination satisfied her that he was an individual below the rank of life in which she moved. He was of great height and commanding aspect; but his dress was that of the son of a free farmer of that time, being composed of the rough doublet, bound with a broad leather belt, and the slouched hat, made of thick plaits of coarse straw, and ornamented with a black riband tied round the junction of the rim and the crown. Though worn by the inferior orders, the dress was a noble one, imparting to the wearer an air of robust strength, with that easy carelessness and rude grace which forms the _dignite_ of the freeborn son of the mountain. It was only the general outline of his appearance and dress which Matilda could thus discover through the light of the moon; but she saw enough to excite her attention, and she continued to notice his motions.

The stranger stood in the same attitude of mute contemplation for a considerable time, his face still directed toward the same part of the building, in spite of the powerful claims on his eye and attention that were put forth by the splendid scene around him, with the round figure of the moon shining in the waters at his feet. At length he took his arm from the branch of the old beech, and, turning round, slowly directed his steps towards Matilda's wood-bower, into which he entered, bending his tall person to enable him to get in at the door--a circumstance that satisfied Matilda of his great height, as her father--a very tall man--could enter without that preliminary. All was for a time still and silent; the gentle rippling of the Whitadder deriving from the absence of any other sound a distinctness which, in its turn, added to the depth of the quiet of sleeping nature. A soft sound began to rise in low strains of sweet music, coming apparently from the bower. It was the voice of a man, modulated into the tones of the pathetic expression of heart-felt sentiment; the air was slow, and filled with cadences which brought down the voice to the lowest note; the words--pronounced in the low tone of the music, and run together by the fluent character of the melody which accompanied them--could not be distinguished; but the effect of the plaintive sounds, co-operating with the silence of night, and the extraordinary scene of lunar splendour exhibited by earth and heaven, was felt by Matilda as the nearest approximation she had yet experienced to the realisation of her imaginative creations. The music continued for some time, and then ceased at the termination of one of the deep cadences, prolonged apparently for the purpose of expressing a finale. The individual came out of the bower, and stood again on the side of the river--the shadow of his tall figure fell on the ground like the reflection of the beech on which he leaned; he continued his gaze for some time in dead silence, and then, turning, disappeared in the wood.

Matilda was unable, after all the consideration she could bestow on the subject, to come to any conclusion satisfactory to herself, as to either the identity of the individual, or the object he had in view. During the night, the scene, which had been deeply impressed on her mind, was verified by the power of fancy; and there was a certain romance about it which recommended it to her heart. In the morning she questioned Bertha, to whom she confided her every secret.

"I am perplexed, Bertha," she began. "You asked me yesterday if I had heard any sounds in the Satyr's Hall, and I have that question now to put to you. The man that sings in my bower must have some other object in view than gratifying his own ears or those of the night birds with his plaintive melody. What means it, Bertha? Come, my good friend, unravel the mystery, and the grateful thanks of your Matilda will reward you."

"If the throstle hen kens nae the mottled lover that sings to her, what other bird o' the wood can come to the knowledge?" answered Bertha. "I'm owre auld a bird to ken noo the notes o' a lover, or to tell a moulted feather frae the new plume; but, as far as my auld een would carry, your night freend looked mair curiously at the east tower o' Roseallan than men generally do at grey wa's in the light o' the moon. He's as tall, at ony rate, as Sir Thomas, and I thocht there was only ae man o' his height in the land where he sojourns. But I think I could unmask his secresy."

Bertha looked, to see the effect of her allusion to her principal; but she got no encouragement.

"Whoever he may be," answered Matilda, "he is a very different kind of individual from Sir George Douglas; nor is it Sir Thomas Courtney. The melody is too sweet for the execution of an English throat. He is a Scotchman; probably some of my Edinburgh courtly lovers, in the disguise of a free son of the mountains. I cannot listen to his strains; but you can safely approach the bower, and may, as you yourself have proffered, ascertain for me who and what he is."

"My young leddy's wish is Bertha's command," answered the old woman; "watch me with your hazel eyes, over the white bridge, this night at nine. If he comes again, he shall not go away unknown."

When the evening came, Matilda was again at her casement. The night was as beautiful as the preceding one; but there was a thin halo round the moon that gave her a softer aspect; and the diminished sound of the mellow ripple of the Whitadder seemed to indicate that there was a zephyr abroad whose presence could be detected only by that delicate test. About the hour of nine, she saw the thin figure of old Bertha, rolled up in a cloak, steal silently from a postern of the east wall, and creep slowly down to the end of the light, airy bridge, that spanned, with its pure white arms, the bosom of the river. Stretching forth her bony hand, she seized the rail, and, having got a firm footing, walked with slow steps along the planks. Her progress was slow, nervous, and unsteady. Matilda was solicitous for her safety; for she had never seen Bertha venture along the bridge at night, and she herself seldom crossed it after nightfall, even with the aid of a resplendent moon. Her attention was fixed upon her to the exclusion of all notice of any proceedings on the other side of the stream. The old woman had got to the middle of the bridge, and Matilda saw with horror her supposed faithful friend fall. Starting from her seat, she rushed down, and in an instant was at the end of the bridge. Seizing the rail, she hurried along, and found the body of the nurse lying extended on the planks, apparently senseless, though she had merely experienced an ordinary fall, the result of a stumble. Bending down, the anxious girl was proceeding to lift her up, when she was, in an instant, seized by the arms of a strong man, and hurried away to the further end of the bridge. Stunned by this sudden seizure, succeeding as it did the anxiety under which she laboured for her nurse, she was unable even to scream, and lay in the arms of the person that bore her away, helpless, and nearly senseless. When she recovered herself so far as to be conscious of her situation, she found she was in the wood, and heard the sound of the voices of several men, among whom she thought she observed the disguised figure of a gentleman. They had wrapped a large cloak round her, and were in the act of putting her on the back of a jennet that stood ready saddled and bridled, when the man that held her was struck to the ground by some one that came behind him. He lay senseless at her feet; a second one shared his fate in an instant; and a third, after dealing a treacherous blow on the head of her deliverer, flung himself on a horse that stood alongside of the jennet, and galloped off at the top of his speed. Meanwhile, she was again seized by another man, and soon found herself reclining in her own bower.

"The feet o' the remaining horses," said a voice at her feet, "are raisin the echoes o' the Satyr's wood. The spoilers have recovered, and have fled after their master, who is, by this time, by the side o' the Tweed. Hoo fares Matilda Rollo? Can it be excused by high birth and beauty that the salvation o' their possessor frae the arms o' an English reformer cam frae the courage or the good fortune o' ane that daurna lift his face to ask forgiveness for doin the duty o' a fellow-creature?"

"Whoever you are," cried Matilda, as she recovered, "you have done little in saving me, if Bertha Maitland lies drowned in the Whitadder; and that blood that flows down your face may be the dear price of my safety." And she started to her feet, as if she were to fly to save her friend.