said Diana, placing her fore-finger on her mouth,—“Hush! no more of that. Forsake the faith of my gallant fathers! I would as soon, were I a man, forsake their banner when the tide of battle pressed hardest against it, and turn, like a hireling recreant, to join the victorious enemy.”
“I honour your spirit, Miss Vernon; and as to the inconveniences to which it exposes you, I can only say, that wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.”
“Ay; but they are fretful and irritating, for all that. But I see, hard of heart as you are, my chance of beating hemp, or drawing out flax into marvellous coarse thread, affects you as little as my condemnation to coif and pinners, instead of beaver and cockade; so I will spare myself the fruitless pains of telling my third cause of vexation.”
“Nay, my dear Miss Vernon, do not withdraw your confidence, and I will promise you, that the threefold sympathy due to your very unusual causes of distress shall be all duly and truly paid to account of the third, providing you assure me, that it is one which you neither share with all womankind, nor even with every Catholic in England, who, God bless you, are still a sect more numerous than we Protestants, in our zeal for church and state, would desire them to be.”
“It is indeed,” said Diana, with a manner greatly altered, and more serious than I had yet seen her assume, “a misfortune that well merits compassion. I am by nature, as you may easily observe, of a frank and unreserved disposition — a plain true-hearted girl, who would willingly act openly and honestly by the whole world, and yet fate has involved me in such a series of nets and toils, and entanglements, that I dare hardly speak a word for fear of consequences — not to myself, but to others.”
“That is indeed a misfortune, Miss Vernon, which I do most sincerely compassionate, but which I should hardly have anticipated.”
“O, Mr. Osbaldistone, if you but knew — if any one knew, what difficulty I sometimes find in hiding an aching heart with a smooth brow, you would indeed pity me. I do wrong, perhaps, in speaking to you even thus far on my own situation; but you are a young man of sense and penetration — you cannot but long to ask me a hundred questions on the events of this day — on the share which Rashleigh has in your deliverance from this petty scrape — upon many other points which cannot but excite your attention; and I cannot bring myself to answer with the necessary falsehood and finesse — I should do it awkwardly, and lose your good opinion, if I have any share of it, as well as my own. It is best to say at once, Ask me no questions,— I have it not in my power to reply to them.”
Miss Vernon spoke these words with a tone of feeling which could not but make a corresponding impression upon me. I assured her she had neither to fear my urging her with impertinent questions, nor my misconstruing her declining to answer those which might in themselves be reasonable, or at least natural.
“I was too much obliged,” I said, “by the interest she had taken in my affairs, to misuse the opportunity her goodness had afforded me of prying into hers — I only trusted and entreated, that if my services could at any time be useful, she would command them without doubt or hesitation.”
“Thank you — thank you,” she replied; “your voice does not ring the cuckoo chime of compliment, but speaks like that of one who knows to what he pledges himself. If — but it is impossible — but yet, if an opportunity should occur, I will ask you if you remember this promise; and I assure you, I shall not be angry if I find you have forgotten it, for it is enough that you are sincere in your intentions just now — much may occur to alter them ere I call upon you, should that moment ever come, to assist Die Vernon, as if you were Die Vernon’s brother.”
“And if I were Die Vernon’s brother,” said I, “there could not be less chance that I should refuse my assistance — And now I am afraid I must not ask whether Rashleigh was willingly accessory to my deliverance?”
“Not of me; but you may ask it of himself, and depend upon it, he will say yes; for rather than any good action should walk through the world like an unappropriated adjective in an ill-arranged sentence, he is always willing to stand noun substantive to it himself.”
“And I must not ask whether this Campbell be himself the party who eased Mr. Morris of his portmanteau,— or whether the letter, which our friend the attorney received, was not a finesse to withdraw him from the scene of action, lest he should have marred the happy event of my deliverance? And I must not ask”—
“You must ask nothing of me,” said Miss Vernon; “so it is quite in vain to go on putting cases. You are to think just as well of me as if I had answered all these queries, and twenty others besides, as glibly as Rashleigh could have done; and observe, whenever I touch my chin just so, it is a sign that I cannot speak upon the topic which happens to occupy your attention. I must settle signals of correspondence with you, because you are to be my confidant and my counsellor, only you are to know nothing whatever of my affairs.”
“Nothing can be more reasonable,” I replied, laughing; “and the extent of your confidence will, you may rely upon it, only be equalled by the sagacity of my counsels.”
This sort of conversation brought us, in the highest good-humour with each other, to Osbaldistone Hall, where we found the family far advanced in the revels of the evening.
“Get some dinner for Mr. Osbaldistone and me in the library,” said Miss Vernon to a servant.—“I must have some compassion upon you,” she added, turning to me, “and provide against your starving in this mansion of brutal abundance; otherwise I am not sure that I should show you my private haunts. This same library is my den — the only corner of the Hall-house where I am safe from the Ourang-Outangs, my cousins. They never venture there, I suppose for fear the folios should fall down and crack their skulls; for they will never affect their heads in any other way — So follow me.”
And I followed through hall and bower, vaulted passage and winding stair, until we reached the room where she had ordered our refreshments.
37 [The lines here quoted belong to or were altered from a set of verses at one time very popular in England, beginning, Tobacco that is withered quite. In Scotland, the celebrated Ralph Erskine, author of the Gospel Sonnets, published what he called “Smoking Spiritualized, in two parts. The first part being an Old Meditation upon Smoking Tobacco.” It begins —
This Indian weed now withered quite,
Tho’ green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay;
All flesh is hay.
Thus thank, and smoke tobacco.]
38 The Abbess of Wilton.
The nunnery of Wilton was granted to the Earl of Pembroke upon its dissolution, by the magisterial authority of Henry VIII., or his son Edward VI. On the accession of Queen Mary, of Catholic memory, the Earl found it necessary to reinstate the Abbess and her fair recluses, which he did with many expressions of his remorse, kneeling humbly to the vestals, and inducting them into the convent and possessions from which he had expelled them. With the accession of Elizabeth, the accommodating Earl again resumed his Protestant faith, and a second time drove the nuns from their sanctuary. The remonstrances of the Abbess, who reminded him of his penitent expressions on the former occasion, could wring from him no other answer than that in the text —“Go spin, you jade!— Go spin!”
Chapter Tenth.
In the wide pile, by others heeded not,
Hers was one sacred solitary spot,
Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves contain
For moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain.
Anonymous.
The library at Osbaldistone Hall was a gloomy room, whose antique oaken shelves bent beneath the weight of the ponderous folios