The Legendary and Poetical Remains of John Roby Part 27

CARLOS.

Oh--fly!--save ye, my friends--escape whilst yet-- The guards--this fiend hath summon'd---- [_Falls._

HERMIONE (_rushes towards the DUKE_).

Cowards! ye cannot escape. They come!

BERTRAND (_tearing off his mask_).

Then swifter come Insatiate vengeance. To thy place, proud Mantua!

[_Makes a desperate lunge at the DUKE, who falls._

DUKE.

A mortal thrust! Hermione, now--now-- Farewell--'tis past!

BERTRAND.

Thou leavest not thy paramour.

[_Stabs HERMIONE._ Hence! to the pale ghosts howl in company.

HERMIONE.

I'd bless thee----for this---- [_Dies._

_Enter Guard, Soldiers; they seize the Conspirators._

DUKE.

Too late ye come-- Life ebbs fast from my veins--mine eyes are dim; But there's a voice--or death unreins my fancy-- Comes o'er mine ear, I do remember, mingling Ere now 'mid mortal strife.

BERTRAND.

'Tis I: mine hate is quench'd but with the blood That nourish'd thee! Now to your dungeons lead me: Your rarest tortures--haste. This blest revenge Will slake your hottest fires, heal the hurt flesh, Make the unpitying rack a gentle pillow.

Softer than cygnet down, or thy death-couch, Unsceptred Duke. Guards, do your office.

DUKE.

Unhappy man! thy fierce, untamed spirit, In its own fiery nature, hath to endure What bodily tortures reach not. I forgive thee.

But this good city, thy most unjust hate This night bereaves of her protector, seeks Her just atonement! Bear me hence--Beatrice, To thy loved arms. Would that I ne'er had left thee-- A fearful meeting now--Hermione!

What--dead! My cup is drain'd e'en to the dregs, The vessel s.h.i.+ver'd, dash'd erewhile to earth!-- Just Heaven!

I bow to thee! Thou hast not sent my spirit Unshriven to thy bar--brief s.p.a.ce on earth My span of time, but unto thee I turn, Abused mercy; grant with my last last hour Repentance, and thy promised pardon!

[_Exeunt Attendants with the DUKE._

LEGENDS.

One of the following Legends, The Crystal Goblet, was written for the Traditions of the County of York. It appeared by permission in an Annual ent.i.tled, "The White Rose of York;" but having only had a local circulation at the time, and having been carefully revised by the Author during the last winter of his life, it finds a place in the present volume.

MOTHER RED CAP;

OR,

THE ROSICRUCIANS.

A LEGEND OF THE NORTH.

PART THE FIRST.

In the wild and mountainous region of East Lancas.h.i.+re, at the foot of the long line of hills called Blackstonedge, and not far from the town of Rochdale, stood one of those old grim-looking mansions, the abode of our Saxon ancestors; a quiet sheltered nest, where ages and generations had alike pa.s.sed by. The wave of time had produced no change; the name and the inheritance were the same, and seemingly destined to continue unaltered by the mutations, the common lot of all that man labours to perpetuate. This state of things existed at the date of our story; now, alas! the race of its former possessors is extinct, their name only remains a relic of things that were,--their former mansion standing[L], as if in mockery, amidst the hum of wheels, and in melancholy contrast with the toil and animation of this manufacturing, money-getting district.

Buckley Hall, to which we allude, is still an object of interest to the antiquary and the lover of romance, telling of days that are for ever departed, when the lords of these paternal acres were the occupants, not impoverishers, of the soil from unrecorded ages,--const.i.tuting a tribe, a race of st.u.r.dy yeomanry attached to their country and to the lands on which they dwelt. But they are nigh extinct,--other habits and other pursuits have prevailed. Profuse hospitality and rude benevolence have given place to habits of business as they are called, and to a more calculating and enterprising disposition. The most ancient families have become absorbed or overwhelmed by the mighty progress of this new element, this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and the plebeian.

Many of these dwellings remain,--a melancholy contrast to the trim erections, the symbols of a new race, along with new habits and forms of existence, sufficiently testifying to the folly and the vain expectations of those who toil and labour hard for a long lease with posterity.

This mansion, like the rest of our ancestral dwellings of the better sort, was built of wood, on a stone bas.e.m.e.nt. The outside structure curiously vand.y.k.ed in a zig-zag fas.h.i.+on with wooden part.i.tions, the interstices were filled with wicker-work, plastered with well-tempered clay, to which chopped straw imparted additional tenacity. When newly embellished, looking like the pattern, black and white, of some discreet magpie perched on the wooden pinnacles terminating each gable, or hopping saucily about the porch,--that never-failing adjunct to these homely dwellings. Here, on a well-scoured bench, the master of the house would sit in converse with his family or his guests, enjoying the fresh and cheering breeze, without being fully exposed to its effects. The porch was universally adopted as a protection to the large flagged hall called the "house-part," which otherwise might have been seriously incommoded by the inclement atmosphere of these bleak districts. On one side of the hall, containing the great fire-place, was the "guest parlour." Here the best bed was usually fixed; and here, too, all great "occasions" took place. Births, christenings, burials, all emanated from, or were accomplished in, this family chamber. Every member was there transmitted from the cradle to the grave. The low wide oaken stairs, to the first bending of which an active individual might have leaped without any such superfluous media. The naked gallery, with its little quaint doors on each side, hatched in the usual fas.h.i.+on, this opening into the store-room, that into the servants' lodging, another into the closet where the choicest confections were kept. Opposite were the bedchambers, and at the extremity of the gallery a ladder generally pointed the way to a loft, where, amongst heaps of winter stores, dried roots, and other vegetables, probably reposed one or two of the male servants on a straw mattra.s.s, well fortified from cold by an enormous quilt.

Our description will apply with little variation to all.--We love these deserted mansion-houses, that speak of the olden time, its good cheer and its rude but pleasant intercourse; times and seasons that are for ever gone,--though we crave pardon for indulging in what may perhaps find little favour in the eyes of this generation, whose hopes and desires are to the future, who say the past is but the childhood of our existence,--it is gone, and shall not return. But there are yet some who love to linger on the remnants, the ruins of a former state, who look at these time-honoured relics but as links that bring them into closer communion with bygone ages, and would fain live in the twilight of other years rather than the meridian splendour of the present. But we must not be seduced any further by these reflections; our present business concerns the legend whose strange t.i.tle stands at the head of this article.

In one of the upper chambers at Buckley Hall before named, and not long ago, was an iron ring fixed to a strong staple in the wall; and to this ring a fearful story is still attached. The legend, as it is often told, is one of those wild improbable fictions based on facts, distorted and embellished to suit the taste of the listener or the fancy of the narrator. It will be our task to make out from these imaginative materials a narrative divested, as much as possible, of the marvellous, but, at the same time, retaining so much as will interest and excite the reader and lover of legendary lore.

It was in one of those genial, mellow, autumnal evenings,--so dear to all who can feel their influence, and so rare a luxury to the inhabitants of this weeping climate,--when all living things wear the hue and warmth of the glowing atmosphere in which they are enveloped, that two lovers were sauntering by the rivulet, a "wimpling burn" that, rising among the bare and barren moorlands of this uncultivated region, runs past Buckley Hall into the valley of the Roch.

It was near the close of the sixteenth century, in the days of good Queen Bess, yet their apparel was somewhat homely even for this era of stuffed doublets and trunk-hose. Such unseemly fas.h.i.+ons had hardly travelled into these secluded districts; and the plain, stout, woollen jacket of their forefathers, and the ruffs, tippets, stays, and stomachers of their grandmothers, formed the ordinary wear of the belles and beaux of the province. Fardingales, or hooped petticoats, we are happy to say, for the sake of our heroine, were unknown.

"Be of good cheer," said the lover; "there be troubles enow, believe me, without building them up out of our own silly fears--like boys with their snow hobgoblins, terrible enough in the twilight of fancy, but a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne will melt and dissipate them. Thou art sad to-night without reason. Imaginary fears are the worst to cope withal; having nor shape nor substance, we cannot combat with them. 'Tis hard, indeed, fighting with shadows."

"I cannot smile to-night, Gervase; there's a mountain here--a foreboding of some deadly sort. I might as soon lift 'Robin Hood's Bed,' yonder, as remove it."

"No more of this, my dearest Grace; at least, not now. Let us enjoy this bright and sunny landscape. How sharply cut are those crags, yonder, on the sky. Blackstonedge looks almost within a stride, or at least a good stone's throw. Thou knowest the old legend of Robin Hood; how that he made yonder rocks his dormitory, and by way of amus.e.m.e.nt pitched or coited huge stones at a mark on the hill just above us, being some four or five miles from his station. It is still visible along with several stones lying near, and which are evidently from the same rock as that on which it is said he slept."

"I've heard such silly tales often. Nurse had many of these old stories wherewith to beguile us o' winter nights. She used to tell, too, about Eleanor Byron, who loved a fay or elf, and went to meet him at the fairies' chapel away yonder where the Spodden gushes through its rocky cleft,--'tis a fearful story--and how she was delivered from the spell.

I sometimes think on't till my very flesh creeps, and I could almost fancy that such an invisible thing is about me."

With such converse did they beguile their evening walk, ever and anon making the subject bend to the burden of their own sweet ditty of mutual _unchanging_ love!

Grace Ashton was the only daughter of a wealthy yeoman, one of the gentry of that district, residing at Clegg Hall, a mile or two distant.

Its dark, low gables and quiet smoke might easily be distinguished from where they stood. It was said that the Cleggs, its original owners, had been beggared and dispossessed by vexatious and fraudulent lawsuits; and the Ashtons had achieved their purpose by dishonesty and chicane.

However this might be, busy rumour gave currency and credit to the tale, though, probably, it had none other foundation than the idle and malevolent gossip of the envious and the unthinking.

They had toiled up a narrow pathway on the right of a woody ravine, where the stream had evidently formed itself a pa.s.sage through the loose strata in its course. The brook was heard, though hidden by the tangled underwood, and they stopped to listen. Soothing but melancholy was the sound. Even the birds seemed to chirp there in a sad and pensive twitter, not unnoticed by the lovers, though each kept the gloomy and fanciful apprehensions untold.

Soon they gained the summit of a round heathery knoll, whence an extensive prospect rewarded their ascent. The squat, square tower of Rochdale Church might be seen above the dark trees nestling under its grey walls. The town was almost hidden by a glowing canopy of smoke gleaming in the bright sunset,--towards the north the bare bleak hills, undulating in sterile loneliness, and a.s.sociating only with images of barrenness and desolation. Easterly, a long, level burst of light swept across meadow, wood, and pasture; green slopes dotted with bright homesteads, to the very base apparently of, though at some distance from, Blackstonedge, now of the deepest, the most intense blue. Such a daring contrast of colour gave a force and depth to the landscape, which, had it been portrayed, would to critical eyes, perhaps, have outraged the modesty of Nature.

The sky was already growing cold and grey above the ridge opposed to the burning brightness of the western horizon, and Grace Ashton pointed out the beautiful but fleeting hues of the landscape around them. Her companion, however, was engrossed by another object. Before them was an eminence marking the horizon to the north-west, though not more than a good bow-shot from where they stood. Between this and their present standing was a little gra.s.sy hollow, through which the brook we have described trickled rather than ran, amidst moss and rushes, rendering the ground swampy and unsafe. On this hill stood "Robin Hood's coit-stones;" and on the largest, called the "marking-stone," a wild-looking and haggard figure was couched. Her garments, worn and tattered, were of a dingy red; and her cap, or _coiffure_ as it was then called, was of the same colour. Her head was bent forward beyond the knee, as though she were listening towards the ground, or was expecting the approach of the individuals who now came suddenly, and to themselves unexpectedly, in view. Her figure, in the glow of that rich autumnal sky, looked of the deepest crimson, and of a b.l.o.o.d.y and portentous aspect.

"What strange apparition is yonder," said Gervase Buckley, "on the hill top there before us? Beshrew me, Grace, but it hath an evil and a rancorous look."

But Grace, along with a short scream of surprise, betrayed, too, her recognition of the object, and clung with such evident terror to her companion that he turned from the object of his inquiries to gaze on his mistress.

"What!" said he, "hath yonder unknown such power? Methinks it hath moved thee strangely. Speak, Grace; can that hideous appearance in any way be linked with our destiny?"