The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (popular romance novels txt) 📗

to wait till I had to answer you. But I cannot, after what has happened this morning, suffer my feelings towards you to remain unexplained, without the possibility of my being greatly misconceived. Nay, do not answer till you have heard me out. You are brave, Henry, beyond most men, honest and true as the steel you work upon—”

“Stop—stop, Catharine, for mercy’s sake! You never said so much that was good concerning me, save to introduce some bitter censure, of which your praises were the harbingers. I am honest, and so forth, you would say, but a hot brained brawler, and common sworder or stabber.”

“I should injure both myself and you in calling you such. No, Henry, to no common stabber, had he worn a plume in his bonnet and gold spurs on his heels, would Catharine Glover have offered the little grace she has this day voluntarily done to you. If I have at times dwelt severely upon the proneness of your spirit to anger, and of your hand to strife, it is because I would have you, if I could so persuade you, hate in yourself the sins of vanity and wrath by which you are most easily beset. I have spoken on the topic more to alarm your own conscience than to express my opinion. I know as well as my father that, in these forlorn and desperate days, the whole customs of our nation, nay, of every Christian nation, may be quoted in favour of bloody quarrels for trifling causes, of the taking deadly and deep revenge for slight offences, and the slaughter of each other for emulation of honour, or often in mere sport. But I knew that for all these things we shall one day be called into judgment; and fain would I convince thee, my brave and generous friend, to listen oftener to the dictates of thy good heart, and take less pride in the strength and dexterity of thy unsparing arm.”

“I am—I am convinced, Catharine” exclaimed Henry: “thy words shall henceforward be a law to me. I have done enough, far too much, indeed, for proof of my bodily strength and courage; but it is only from you, Catharine, that I can learn a better way of thinking. Remember, my fair Valentine, that my ambition of distinction in arms, and my love of strife, if it can be called such, do not fight even handed with my reason and my milder dispositions, but have their patrons and sticklers to egg them on. Is there a quarrel, and suppose that I, thinking on your counsels, am something loth to engage in it, believe you I am left to decide between peace or war at my own choosing? Not so, by St. Mary! there are a hundred round me to stir me on. ‘Why, how now, Smith, is thy mainspring rusted?’ says one. ‘Jolly Henry is deaf on the quarrelling ear this morning!’ says another. ‘Stand to it, for the honour of Perth,’ says my lord the Provost. ‘Harry against them for a gold noble,’ cries your father, perhaps. Now, what can a poor fellow do, Catharine, when all are hallooing him on in the devil’s name, and not a soul putting in a word on the other side?”

“Nay, I know the devil has factors enough to utter his wares,” said Catharine; “but it is our duty to despise such idle arguments, though they may be pleaded even by those to whom we owe much love and honour.”

“Then there are the minstrels, with their romaunts and ballads, which place all a man’s praise in receiving and repaying hard blows. It is sad to tell, Catharine, how many of my sins that Blind Harry the Minstrel hath to answer for. When I hit a downright blow, it is not—so save me—to do any man injury, but only to strike as William Wallace struck.”

The minstrel’s namesake spoke this in such a tone of rueful seriousness, that Catharine could scarce forbear smiling; but nevertheless she assured him that the danger of his own and other men’s lives ought not for a moment to be weighed against such simple toys.

“Ay, but,” replied Henry, emboldened by her smiles, “methinks now the good cause of peace would thrive all the better for an advocate. Suppose, for example, that, when I am pressed and urged to lay hand on my weapon, I could have cause to recollect that there was a gentle and guardian angel at home, whose image would seem to whisper, ‘Henry, do no violence; it is my hand which you crimson with blood. Henry, rush upon no idle danger; it is my breast which you expose to injury;’ such thoughts would do more to restrain my mood than if every monk in Perth should cry, ‘Hold thy hand, on pain of bell, book, and candle.’”

“If such a warning as could be given by the voice of sisterly affection can have weight in the debate,” said Catharine, “do think that, in striking, you empurple this hand, that in receiving wounds you harm this heart.”

The smith took courage at the sincerely affectionate tone in which these words were delivered.

“And wherefore not stretch your regard a degree beyond these cold limits? Why, since you are so kind and generous as to own some interest in the poor ignorant sinner before you, should you not at once adopt him as your scholar and your husband? Your father desires it, the town expects it, glovers and smiths are preparing their rejoicings, and you, only you, whose words are so fair and so kind, you will not give your consent.”

“Henry,” said Catharine, in a low and tremulous voice, “believe me I should hold it my duty to comply with my father’s commands, were there not obstacles invincible to the match which he proposes.”

“Yet think—think but for a moment. I have little to say for myself in comparison of you, who can both read and write. But then I wish to hear reading, and could listen to your sweet voice for ever. You love music, and I have been taught to play and sing as well as some minstrels. You love to be charitable, I have enough to give, and enough to keep, as large a daily alms as a deacon gives would never be missed by me. Your father gets old for daily toil; he would live with us, as I should truly hold him for my father also. I would be as chary of mixing in causeless strife as of thrusting my hand into my own furnace; and if there came on us unlawful violence, its wares would be brought to an ill chosen market.”

“May you experience all the domestic happiness which you can conceive, Henry, but with some one more happy than I am!”

So spoke, or rather so sobbed, the Fair Maiden of Perth, who seemed choking in the attempt to restrain her tears.

“You hate me, then?” said the lover, after a pause.

“Heaven is my witness, no.”

“Or you love some other better?”

“It is cruel to ask what it cannot avail you to know. But you are entirely mistaken.”

“Yon wildcat, Conachar, perhaps?” said Henry. “I have marked his looks—”

“You avail yourself of this painful situation to insult me, Henry, though I have little deserved it. Conachar is nothing to me, more than the trying to tame his wild spirit by instruction might lead me to take some interest in a mind abandoned to prejudices and passions, and therein, Henry, not unlike your own.”

“It must then be some of these flaunting silkworm sirs about the court,” said the armourer, his natural heat of temper kindling from