Walter Scott

“ Think not of him, but come and see the Valentine whose honour and life you have saved this morning.”
“Let me but sheathe my weapon,” said the smith, “let me but wash my hands.”
“There is not an instant to lose, she is up and almost dressed. Come on, man. She shall see thee with thy good weapon in thy hand, and with villain’s blood on thy fingers, that she may know what is the value of a true man’s service. She has stopped my mouth overlong with her pruderies and her scruples. I will have her know what a brave man’s love is worth, and a bold burgess’s to boot.” ”

“ It was the fault of yon Highland cateran, whom it is my curse to be cumbered with; but he shall go back to his glens tomorrow, or taste the tolbooth of the burgh. An assault upon the life of his master’s guest in his house! It breaks all bonds between us. But let me see to thy wound.”
“Catharine!” repeated the armourer—“look to Catharine.”
“Dorothy will see to her,” said Simon; “surprise and fear kill not; skenes and dirks do. And she is not more the daughter of my blood than thou, my dear Henry, art the son of my affections. ”

“ A glove on the point of a spear is a sign and pledge of faith all the wide world over, as a gauntlet flung down is a gage of knightly battle; while I know no other emblem belonging to an old shoe, except that some crones will fling them after a man by way of good luck, in which practice I avow myself to entertain no confidence.”
“Nay,” said the smith, amused with his friend’s eloquent pleading for the dignity of the art he practised, “I am not the man, I promise you, to disparage the glover’s mystery. Bethink you, I am myself a maker of gauntlets. ”

“ Look up to thy daughter, good Simon? Alas, no! The captain of Clan Quhele, great as he is, and greater as he soon expects to be, looks down to the daughter of the Perth burgess, and considers himself demeaned in doing so. But, to use his own profane expression, Catharine is dearer to him than life here and Heaven hereafter: he cannot live without her.”
“Then he may die, if he lists,” said Simon Glover, “for she is betrothed to an honest burgess of Perth; and I would not break my word to make my daughter bride to the Prince of Scotland.” ”

“ The glee woman hastened to do as she was ordered, and Conachar’s half frenzied spirit seemed relieved by her absence.
“Catharine,” he said, “now she is gone, I will say I know thee—I know thy love of peace and hatred of war. But hearken; I have, rather than strike a blow at my enemy, given up all that a man calls dearest: I have lost honour, fame, and friends, and such friends! (he placed his hands before his face) . Oh! their love surpassed the love of woman! Why should I hide my tears? All know my shame; all should see my sorrow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Are we not both sons of the same Stuart of Scotland and of the same Elizabeth More?”
“I have not forgot that it is so,” said Albany, arising; “but I must not omit, in the familiarity of the brother, the respect that is due to the king.”
“Oh, true—most true, Robin,” answered the King. “The throne is like a lofty and barren rock, upon which flower or shrub can never take root. All kindly feelings, all tender affections, are denied to a monarch. A king must not fold a brother to his heart—he dare not give way to fondness for a son.” ”

“ I tell thee, Catharine, this trifling with the love of an honest man is what I neither can, will, nor ought to endure. I have given my consent to the match, and I insist it shall take place without delay, and that you receive Henry Wynd tomorrow, as a man whose bride you are to be with all despatch.”
“A power more potent than yours, father, will say no,” replied Catharine.
“I will risk it; my power is a lawful one, that of a father over a child, and an erring child,” answered her father. “God and man allow of my influence.” ”

“ But Catharine struggled in his embrace; and as her efforts implied alarmed modesty rather than maidenly coyness, her bashful lover suffered her to escape a grasp from which twenty times her strength could not have extricated her.
“Nay, be not angry, good Henry,” said Catharine, in the kindest tone, to her surprised lover. “I have paid my vows to St. Valentine, to show how I value the mate which he has sent me for the year. Let but my father be present, and I will not dare to refuse thee the revenge you may claim for a broken sleep.” ”

“ Hark, methinks I do hear his groans amid the whistling of the wind and the creaking of the chains. So—fair and softly; make fast the boat with the grappling, and get out the casket with my matters, we would be better for a little fire, but the light might bring observation on us. Come on, my men of valour, march warily, for we are bound for the gallows foot. Follow with the lantern; I trust the ladder has been left.
“Sing, three merry men, and three merry men, And three merry men are we, Thou on the land, and I on the sand, And Jack on the gallows tree.” ”

“ But I have studied among the sages of Granada, where the fiery souled Moor lifts high his deadly dagger as it drops with his enemy’s blood, and avows the doctrine which the pallid Christian practises, though coward-like he dare not name it.”
“Thou art then a more high souled villain than I deemed thee,” said Ramorny.
“Let that pass,” answered Dwining. “The waters that are the stillest are also the deepest; and the foe is most to be dreaded who never threatens till he strikes. You knights and men at arms go straight to your purpose with sword in hand. ”

“ Can it be the severely virtuous Father Clement who advises his child to aim at, or even to think of, the possession of a throne and a bed which cannot become vacant but by an act of crying injustice to the present possessor? Can it be the wise reformer of the church who wishes to rest a scheme, in itself so unjust, upon a foundation so precarious? Since when is it, good father, that the principal libertine has altered his morals so much, to be likely to court in honourable fashion the daughter of a Perth artisan? ”

“ As he spoke, the Earl of March entered the hall of audience, dressed in the ordinary riding garb of the time, and wearing his poniard. He had left in the anteroom the page of honour who carried his sword. The Earl was a well built, handsome man, fair complexioned, with a considerable profusion of light coloured hair, and bright blue eyes, which gleamed like those of a falcon. He exhibited in his countenance, otherwise pleasing, the marks of a hasty and irritable temper, which his situation as a high and powerful feudal lord had given him but too many opportunities of indulging. ”

“ Did there come war to the gates of our fair burgh, down went needles, thread, and shamoy leather, and out came the good head piece and target from the dark nook, and the long lance from above the chimney. Show me a day that either he or I was absent when the provost made his musters! Thus we have led our lives, my girl, working to win our bread, and fighting to defend it. I will have no son in law that thinks himself better than me; and for these lords and knights, I trust thou wilt always remember thou art too low to be their lawful love, and too high to be their unlawful loon. ”

“ And shouldst not thou, of all women, deem thyself honoured and glorious, that so true a heart and so strong an arm has termed himself thy bachelor? In what do the proudest dames take their loftiest pride, save in the chivalry of their knight; and has the boldest in Scotland done more gallant deeds than my brave son Henry, though but of low degree? Is he not known to Highland and Lowland as the best armourer that ever made sword, and the truest soldier that ever drew one? ”

“ Therefore, avoid you, Father Clement, or speak to those who can understand your doctrine. I have no heart to be a martyr: I have never in my whole life had courage enough so much as to snuff a candle with my fingers; and, to speak the truth, I am minded to go back to Perth, sue out my pardon in the spiritual court, carry my fagot to the gallows foot in token of recantation, and purchase myself once more the name of a good Catholic, were it at the price of all the worldly wealth that remains to me. ”

“ I would take the palmer’s staff in my hand, and wherever chivalry is honoured, or the word Scotland has been heard, I would proclaim the heir of a hundred kings, the son of the godly Robert Stuart, the heir of the heroic Bruce, a truthless, faithless man, unworthy of the crown he expects and of the spurs he wears. Every lady in wide Europe would hold your name too foul for her lips; every worthy knight would hold you a baffled, forsworn caitiff, false to the first vow of arms, the protection of woman and the defence of the feeble. ”

“ And yet I must needs say that, had this nursling of the doe been shrivelled, haggard, cross made, and red haired, like some Highlanders I have known, I question if the Fair Maiden of Perth would have bestowed so much zeal upon his conversion; and if Catharine had been as aged, wrinkled, and bent by years as the old woman that opened the door for me this morning, I would wager my gold spurs against a pair of Highland brogues that this wild roebuck would never have listened to a second lecture. You laugh, glover, and Catharine blushes a blush of anger. Let it pass, it is the way of the world. ”

“ But I am jealous of thee, my child, as a father is of his only daughter, lest thou shouldst throw thyself away upon some one unworthy of thee. Thy parent, I know, less nice in thy behalf than I am, countenances the addresses of that fierce and riotous reveller whom they call Henry of the Wynd. He is rich it may be; but a haunter of idle and debauched company—a common prizefighter, who has shed human blood like water. Can such a one be a fit mate for Catharine Glover? ”

“ The Fair Maiden of Perth and her companion walked slowly on a path that ran within this parapet, looked at the romantic prospect, and judged what it must be when the advancing summer should clothe the grove with leaves. They observed for some time a deep silence. At length the gay and bold spirit of the glee maiden rose above the circumstances in which she had been and was now placed.
“Do the horrors of Falkland, fair May, still weigh down your spirits? Strive to forget them as I do: we cannot tread life’s path lightly, if we shake not from our mantles the raindrops as they fall.” ”

“ Look you, I will play Dame Marjory, disposed on this day bed here with a mourning veil and a wreath of willow, to show my forsaken plight; thou, John, wilt look starch and stiff enough for her Galwegian maid of honour, the Countess Hermigild; and Dwining shall present the old Hecate, her nurse—only she hath more beard on her upper lip than Dwining on his whole face, and skull to boot. He should have the commodity of a beard to set her forth conformably. Get thy kitchen drudges, and what passable pages thou hast with thee, to make my women of the bedroom. Hearest thou? ”

“ They will fight like men for the supremacy, and he who gets it will deal with the King of Scotland as an equal, not as a superior. Pray that the victory may fall to MacIan, my pious St. Catharine, for thou shalt pray for one who loves thee dearly.”
“I will pray for the right,” said Catharine; “or rather, I will pray that there be peace on all sides. Farewell, kind and excellent Father Clement. Believe I shall never forget thy lessons; remember me in thy prayers. But how wilt thou be able to sustain a journey so toilsome?” ”

“ Thou knowest the maiden who ventures to kiss a sleeping man wins of him a pair of gloves. Come to my booth; thou shalt have a pair of delicate kid skin that will exactly suit her hand and arm. I was thinking of her poor mother when I shaped them,” added honest Simon, with a sigh; “and except Catharine, I know not the woman in Scotland whom they would fit, though I have measured most of the high beauties of the court. Come with me, I say, and thou shalt be provided with a theme to wag thy tongue upon, providing thou hast courage and caution to stand by thee in thy wooing.” ”