Chatelaine

“ She Visits the Demons
“What does the Countess Cathleen wish to obtain from two poor stranger merchants?” said the elder with an evil smile; and the younger, bowing deeply said: “Lady, you may command us in all things, save what touches our allegiance to our king.” Cathleen replied: “I have no merchandise to barter, nothing for trade with you, for you buy such things as I will never sell: you buy men’s souls for Hell. I come only to beg that you will release the poor souls whom you have bought for Satan’s kingdom, and will have mercy on my ignorant people and deceive them no more. ”

“ He was now at a loss what to do, and half ashamed to return to the castle and own to the lady that he had lost, not merely two or three sheep, but the whole flock. But while he [Pg 13] was considering how to put the best face on the matter, he found himself right in front of the castle, which he had deemed to be at a great distance, and there still sat the lady, singing most exquisitely, and holding a goblet of wine in her hand. As soon as Gilbert drew near: "Drink," said she, "for you must need refreshment after your day's work." ”

“ The evil influence clung all about the country-side, and seemed in league with the pitiless powers of Nature against the souls of men, till at last the stricken Countess, putting her trust in God, sought out the forest lodge where the demon merchants dwelt, trafficking for souls. The way was easy to find now, for a broad beaten track led to the dwelling, and as the evil spirits saw Cathleen coming slowly along the path their wicked eyes gleamed and their clawlike hands worked convulsively in their jewelled gloves, for they hoped she had come to sell her pure soul. ”

“ A ghostly moon in a steel cold sky,
A dance of leaves by the wind swept by,
Like the mirthless rushing of phantom feet.
But the Lady Kathleen murmured: “Sweet!
Love keeps a woman's summer young.”
She sped without fear in the awe of night,
Though the shuddering shadows would stay her flight
With the thought of a horror unknown,
Or a streamlet would laugh 'neath the hedge unshown
But the Lady Kathleen wept no more :
“Oh, joy is mine, for my trial's o'er!” ”

“ The lady pointed to the flocks grazing on the hill, saying he would merely have to tend the sheep, and, above [Pg 9] all, to mind that none got lost. She then gave him the ivory fiddle, saying he need only draw the bow across the strings, when the sheep, being accustomed to the sound, would follow at his bidding. "Now roam about wherever you please," added she, "only mind you return to yonder castle at nightfall, and bring the flock back with you, and then you shall have your reward." ”

“ So pensive was Kathleen, my poor little Kathleen, my
Kathleen, O.
Cold was the night-breeze that sigh’d round her bower,
It chill’d my poor Kathleen, she droop’d from that hour,
And I lost my poor Kathleen, my own little Kathleen,
my Kathleen, O.
The bird of all birds that I love the best,
Is the Robin that in the churchyard builds his nest,
For he seems to watch Kathleen, hops lightly on Kathleen,
my Kathleen, O.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ The mistress of Catheron Royals,—the biggest, oldest, queerest, grandest place in all sunny Cheshire,—this slim, dark girl of nineteen, for three years past the bride-elect of Sir Victor Catheron, baronet, the last of his Saxon race and name, the lord of all these sunny acres, this noble Norman pile, the smiling village of Catheron below. The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and "bothy" in the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of Wight. "A darling of the gods," young, handsome, healthy; and best of all, with twenty thousand a year. ”

“ Brave Kathleen, noble Kathleen, you are not one-half a second too soon! The swift revolutions of the saw are drawing your doomed lover closer to the encroaching steel! Throw out in an agony those fair white arms, gifted with such momentary, wondrous strength, grasp your loved one wildly, eagerly, and draw him madly from his couch of deadly peril! Saved! And watching angels weep joyful tears at the victory of love over hate and revenge. ”

“ When Ralph Chainey had left Kathleen alone the stranger boldly approached the weeping girl.
Standing before Kathleen, she touched her on the shoulder, and when Kathleen shrunk back and lifted her white face in piteous fear and entreaty, the stranger almost started at its wonderful beauty.
"Ralph Chainey is deceiving you," was the startling sentence that fell on Kathleen's ear.
[Pg 84]
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed in bewilderment; but the blonde beauty went on:
"He has promised to marry you, but he does not mean it, you poor, pretty child. It is only a plot to betray you." ”

“ I found the story of the Countess Cathleen in what professed to be a collection of Irish folk-lore in an Irish newspaper some years ago. I wrote to the compiler, asking about its source, but got no answer, but have since heard that it was translated from Les Matin`ees de Timoth`e Trimm a good many years ago, and has been drifting about the Irish press ever since. L`eo Lesp`es gives it as an Irish story, and though the editor of Folklore has kindly advertised for information, the only Christian variant I know of is a Donegal tale, given by Mr. ”

“ Then the doctor's wife went out and left Ralph Chainey alone with the lovely corpse. Then it was he kissed her brow and hands, and his tears fell on her face. She heard him utter words of love and of farewell. She [Pg 59] knew that he took a flower from under her hand and went away, and then she realized that the man she loved better than any one else in the world had gone away and left her to her fate. No one else would greatly care if she were dead or living. Perhaps—they—would—bury—her—alive!
At this stage of thought Kathleen seemed to die indeed. ”

“ From the curtained darkness beyond a fiend is gliding toward you!
The shrouding hood of the long cloak has fallen back from the face of a woman—a bold, handsome face with steel-blue eyes, and glittering golden hair. In her upraised hand glitters a long thin dagger, on her face is stamped in awful, ashen pallor the fell purpose—murder!
But he sleeps on lightly, dreaming, perhaps, of Kathleen, while this beautiful fury glides soundlessly across the thick moquette carpet, gains his side, poises her shining weapon on high, aims for his heart, and—it descends, it pierces his breast! ”

“ She was clad only in her own loveliness, though the moonshine was about her as a garment.
“Like a green leaf, like a green leaf,” Cathal muttered over and over below his breath.
“Are you a dream?” he asked simply, having no words for his wonder.
“No, Cathal, I am no dream. I am a woman.”
“A woman? But ... but ... you have no body as other women have: and I see the moonbeam that is on your breast shining upon the moss behind you!”
[Pg 220] “Is it thinking you are, poor Cathal, that there are no women and no men in the world except those who are in thick flesh, and move about in the suntide.” ”

“ But when he looked up from his writing as the Angelus was ringing, two faces at once rose in the shadows outside the yellow circle of his lamp: the handsome face of his older daughter, surrounded by violet-dappled fur, with a cruel upper lip and scornful half-closed eyes, as she had approached her car that afternoon before she saw him; and Kathleen, her square little chin set so fiercely, her white cheeks actually becoming green under her swollen eyes. ”

“ He looked at beautiful Kathleen, with the fire of her dark eyes dim with tears, and her cheeks burning with resentment, feeling himself hardly able to refrain from taking her in his arms and kissing away the tempestuous tears.
Suddenly his repressed passion burst forth:
"Kathleen, my darling, do marry me! Can't you learn to love me just a little? I would be so fond of you, so devoted, that you could not help but learn to love me. And I am rich, you know. I would help you queen it over those insolent women." ”

“ Nearly at the same time, old Duchêne from outside called,—"Good-night, Master Jean-Claude. Is it you?"
"Yes. I come from Phalsbourg; and I am going to rest myself a minute before going down to the village. Is Catherine here?"
And then the good man came forward to the light, his hat pushed off his face, and his roll of sheepskins on his back.
"Good-night, my children," said he; "good-night! Always at work!"
"Yes, Monsieur Hullin, as you see," replied Jeanne, laughing. "If one had nothing to do, life would be very wearisome." ”

“ The names of other men for whom she had imagined that she cared were nothing to her. But this one man lived in her heart in death as he had done in life.
Many have written of Catharine as a great ruler, a wise diplomat, a creature of heroic mold. Others have depicted her as a royal wanton and have gathered together a mass of vicious tales, the gossip of the palace kitchens, of the clubs, and of the barrack-rooms. But perhaps one finds the chief interest of her story to lie in this—that besides being empress and diplomat and a lover of pleasure she was, beyond all else, at heart a woman. ”

“ I am Cathal the son of Art the son of Aodh of the race of Alpein, from the isles of the sea. But I am not a druid. I am a priest of Christ, a servant of Mary the Mother of God, and a son of God.”
Ardanna looked at him. A flush came into his face. In his eyes the same light flamed that was there when the Frankish prince told him of the delights of the world.
“Is it true, O Cathal, that the druids—that the priests of Christ and the two other gods, the white-robed men whom we call Culdees, and of whom you are one, is it true that they will have nought to do with women?” ”

“ Could any one be cowardly enough to strike a poor old man unable to defend himself. Ah! brigand, if I only held thee!"
"Come along, Catherine," said Jean-Claude; "that's enough; what is the use of gazing at such a spectacle any longer?"
"You are right," said the old mistress; "let us go on, or I shall be tempted to go back and revenge myself."
On approaching the red rocks, incrusted with large white and black pebbles, overhanging the precipice like the arches of an immense cathedral, Louise and Catherine stopped in ecstasy. ”

“ Tell me that it is not so! My one great hope is for freedom, that I may yet have the hope of winning you. Life without that hope would be a living death. [Pg 162] Oh, Kathleen, my love, my darling! pity me—pity yourself! You have not learned to love the man you have promised to marry. Send him from you. Wait a little, my darling, and happiness will come to us!
"Ralph."
"Oh, my poor boy—my poor boy!" sobbed Kathleen.
She forgot herself, she forgot Teddy Darrell, to whom she had promised herself, and she kissed Ralph Chainey's letter with red, clinging lips, as if it had been his handsome face. ”

“ When the morrow dawned Kathleen was ill with a low fever, and so it chanced that while her friends were frantic with anxiety over her fate, Kathleen lay passive in the river cottage, carefully watched by Mrs. Franklyn, who wondered much over her mysterious guest.
[Pg 191]
"So young and beautiful; and she can not be a poor girl, for her clothing is of the finest quality," Mrs. Franklyn said to her grandson. "Perhaps there are people who are anxious over her fate. ”

“ While the servant was gone to the cellar, Dame Catherina went up to the fiddler, and, laying her hand on his shoulder, said to him in a whisper—
“Coucou Peter, this gentleman is your friend?”
“My intimate friend, Dame Catherina.”
“A handsome man,” she said, looking him full in the face.
“Aha!” said Coucou Peter, looking at her in the same way and with a strange smile; “do you think so, Dame Catherina?”
“Yes, I think him quite a gentleman.”
“Ha! ha!” said Coucou Peter, “I should rather think so; a man with land of his own, a savant, a first-rate physician.” ”

“ The word “intrusion” brought Cathleen to the crux of her difficulty. She saw, with some exaggeration, that this was her condition, and the quality of her affection, that she had been hungering for possession of her lover with no intrusion from the past.
“O Lotta,” she said, “we are fools to set our faces against what cannot be altered. I thought I had broken away from narrow conventions, but I had only rid myself of the names of things, not of the things themselves, the silly pretense that people wake for a moment out of a sleep in which nothing can happen, love and go to sleep again. ”

“ With a prayer in his heart to Heaven, he turned his dark, despairing eyes toward the beautiful, anguished face at the window.
"Courage, my own love!" he called to her, bravely. "Death is but a fleeting pang, and then it will be life forever. Turn your sweet eyes away, my own Kathleen; do not torture yourself with the sight of my fate. ”

“ Follow therefore courageously, the inspiration which will enlighten thee; for I shall draw, by thy aid, numerous souls from the gulf of hell, and I will conduct them, with the help of my grace, to the Kingdom of Heaven." Catherine heard these words several times, and when our Lord repeated to her: "Fear nothing, be not troubled," she answered: "you are my God, and I am but thy little handmaid: may thy will ever be accomplished, but remember me and incline unto my aid, according to the greatness of thy mercy. ”

“ Prayer, word and example render them powerful in heaven and on earth. They triumph over justice itself and change its most vigorous decrees into treasures of mercy. It was thus that St. Catharine influenced the events of her time.
After having made known Saint Catharine in the verity of her life we hope to cause her to be admired in the beauty of her doctrine, and in the greatness of her action. If God permit, we shall give to the public her spiritual dialogues, which contain the sublimity of her teaching, and her letters which will lead to the comprehension of her extended power. ”