The course of true love never did run smooth.
SHAKSPEARE.
The ominous anxiety of our armourer had not played him false. When the good glover parted with his intended son in law, after the judicial combat had been decided, he found what he indeed had expected, that his fair daughter was in no favourable disposition towards her lover. But although he perceived that Catharine was cold, restrained, collected, had cast away the appearance of mortal passion, and listened with a reserve, implying contempt, to the most splendid description he could give her of the combat in the Skinners’ Yards, he was determined not to take the least notice of her altered manner, but to speak of her marriage with his son Henry as a thing which must of course take place. At length, when she began, as on a former occasion, to intimate that her attachment to the armourer did not exceed the bounds of friendship, that she was resolved never to marry, that the pretended judicial combat was a mockery of the divine will, and of human laws, the glover not unnaturally grew angry.
“I cannot read thy thoughts, wench; nor can I pretend to guess under what wicked delusion it is that you kiss a declared lover, suffer him to kiss you, run to his house when a report is spread of his death, and fling yourself into his arms when you find him alone [alive]. All this shows very well in a girl prepared to obey her parents in a match sanctioned by her father; but such tokens of intimacy, bestowed on one whom a young woman cannot esteem, and is determined not to marry, are uncomely and unmaidenly. You have already been more bounteous of your favours to Henry Smith than your mother, whom God assoilzie, ever was to me before I married her. 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.”
“Then, may Heaven help us,” said Catharine; “for, if you are obstinate in your purpose, we are all lost.”
“We can expect no help from Heaven,” said the glover, “when we act with indiscretion. I am clerk enough myself to know that; and that your causeless resistance to my will is sinful, every priest will inform you. Ay, and more than that, you have spoken degradingly of the blessed appeal to God in the combat of ordeal. Take heed! for the Holy Church is awakened to watch her sheepfold, and to extirpate heresy by fire and steel; so much I warn thee of.”
Catharine uttered a suppressed exclamation; and, with difficulty compelling herself to assume an appearance of composure, promised her father that, if he would spare her any farther discussion of the subject till tomorrow morning, she would then meet him, determined to make a full discovery of her sentiments.
With this promise Simon Glover was obliged to remain contented, though extremely anxious for the postponed explanation. It could not be levity or fickleness of character which induced his daughter to act with so much apparent inconsistency towards the man of his choice, and whom she had so lately unequivocally owned to be also the man of her own. What external force there could exist, of a kind powerful enough to change the resolutions she had so decidedly expressed within twenty-four hours, was a matter of complete mystery.
“But I will be as obstinate as she can be,” thought the glover, “and she shall either marry Henry Smith without farther delay or old Simon Glover will know an excellent reason to the contrary.”
The subject was not renewed during the evening; but early on the next morning, just at sun rising, Catharine knelt before the bed in which her parent still slumbered. Her heart sobbed as if it would burst, and her tears fell thick upon her father’s face. The good old man awoke, looked up, crossed his child’s forehead, and kissed her affectionately.
“I understand thee, Kate,” he said; “thou art come to confession, and, I trust, art desirous to escape a heavy penance by being sincere.”
Catharine was silent for an instant.
“I need not ask, my father, if you remember the Carthusian monk, Clement, and his preachings and lessons; at which indeed you assisted so often, that you cannot be ignorant men called you one of his converts, and with greater justice termed me so likewise?”
“I am aware of both,” said the old man, raising himself on his elbow; “but I defy foul fame to show that I ever owned him in any heretical proposition, though I loved to hear him talk of the corruptions of the church, the misgovernment of the nobles, and the wild ignorance of the poor, proving, as it seemed to me, that the sole virtue of our commonweal, its strength and its estimation, lay among the burgher craft of the better class, which I received as comfortable doctrine, and creditable to the town. And if he preached other than right doctrine, wherefore did his superiors in the Carthusian convent permit it? If the shepherds turn a wolf in sheep’s clothing into the flock, they should not blame the sheep for being worried.”
“They endured his preaching, nay, they encouraged it,” said Catharine, “while the vices of the laity, the contentions of the nobles, and the oppression of the poor were the subject of his censure, and they rejoiced in the crowds who, attracted to the Carthusian church, forsook those of the other convents. But the hypocrites — for such they are — joined with the other fraternities in accusing their preacher Clement, when, passing from censuring the crimes of the state, he began to display the pride, ignorance, and luxury of the churchmen themselves — their thirst of power, their usurpation over men’s consciences, and their desire to augment their worldly wealth.”
“For God’s sake, Catharine,” said her father, “speak within doors: your voice rises in tone and your speech in bitterness, your eyes sparkle. It is owing to this zeal in what concerns you no more than others that malicious persons fix upon you the odious and dangerous name of a heretic.”
“You know I speak no more than what is truth,” said Catharine, “and which you yourself have avouched often.”
“By needle and buckskin, no!” answered the glover, hastily. “Wouldst thou have me avouch what might cost me life and limb, land and goods? For a full commission hath been granted for taking and trying heretics, upon whom is laid the cause of all late tumults and miscarriages; wherefore, few words are best, wench. I am ever of mind with the old maker:
“Since word is thrall and thought is free,
Keep well thy tongue, I counsel thee.”
“The counsel comes too late, father,” answered Catharine, sinking down on a chair by her father’s bedside. “The words have been spoken and heard; and it is indited against Simon Glover, burgess in Perth, that he hath spoken irreverent discourses of the doctrines of Holy Church.”
“As I live by knife and needle,” interrupted Simon, “it is a lie! I never was so silly as to speak of what I understood not.”
“And hath slandered the anointed of the church, both regular and secular,” continued Catharine.
“Nay, I will never deny the truth,” said the glover: “an idle word I may have spoken at the ale bench, or over a pottle pot of wine, or in right sure company; but else, my tongue is not one to run my head into peril.”
“So you think, my dearest father; but your slightest language has been espied, your best meaning phrases have been perverted, and you are in dittay as a gross railer against church and churchmen, and for holding discourse against them with loose and profligate persons, such as the deceased Oliver Proudfute, the smith Henry of the Wynd, and others, set forth as commending the doctrines of Father Clement, whom they charge with seven rank heresies, and seek for with staff and spear, to try him to the death. But that,” said Catharine, kneeling, and looking upwards with the aspect of one of those beauteous saints whom the Catholics have given to the fine arts —“that they shall never do. He hath escaped from the net of the fowler; and, I thank Heaven, it was by my means.”
“Thy means, girl — art thou mad?” said the amazed glover.
“I will not deny what I glory in,” answered Catharine: “it was by my means that Conachar was led to come hither with a party of men and carry off the old man, who is now far beyond the Highland line.”
“Thou my rash — my unlucky child!” said the glover, “hast dared to aid the escape of one accused of heresy, and to invite Highlanders in arms to interfere with the administration of justice within burgh? Alas! thou hast offended both against the laws of the church and those of the realm. What — what would become of us, were this known?”
“It is known, my dear father,” said the maiden, firmly —“known even to those who will be the most willing avengers of the deed.”
“This must be some idle notion, Catharine, or some trick of those cogging priests and nuns; it accords not with thy late cheerful willingness to wed Henry Smith.”
“Alas! dearest father, remember the dismal surprise occasioned by his reported death, and the joyful amazement at finding him alive; and deem it not wonder if I permitted myself, under your protection, to say more than my reflection justified. But then I knew not the worst, and thought the danger exaggerated. Alas I was yesterday fearfully undeceived, when the abbess herself came hither, and with her the Dominican. They showed me the commission, under the broad seal of Scotland, for inquiring into and punishing heresy; they showed me your name and my own in a list of suspected persons; and it was with tears — real tears, that the abbess conjured me to avert a dreadful fate by a speedy retreat into the cloister, and that the monk pledged his word that you should not be molested if I complied.”
“The foul fiend take them both for weeping crocodiles!” said the glover.
“Alas!” replied Catharine, “complaint or anger will little help us; but you see I have had real cause for this present alarm.”
“Alarm! call it utter ruin. Alas! my reckless child, where was your prudence when you ran headlong into such a snare?”
“Hear me, father,” said Catharine; “there is still one mode of safety held out: it is one which I have often proposed, and for which I have in vain supplicated your permission.”
“I understand you — the convent,” said her father. “But, Catharine, what abbess or prioress would dare —”
“That I will explain to you, father, and it will also show the circumstances which have made me seem unsteady of resolution to a degree which has brought censure upon me from yourself and others. Our confessor, old Father Francis, whom I chose from the Dominican convent at your command —”
“Ay, truly,” interrupted the glover; “and I so counselled and commanded thee, in order to take off the report that thy conscience was altogether under the direction of Father Clement.”
“Well, this Father Francis has at different times urged and provoked me to converse on such matters as he judged I was likely to learn something of from the Carthusian preacher. Heaven forgive me my blindness! I fell into the snare, spoke freely, and, as he argued gently, as one who would fain be convinced, I even spoke warmly in defence of what I believed devoutly. The confessor assumed not his real aspect and betrayed not his secret purpose until he had learned all that I had to tell him. It was then that he threatened me with temporal punishment and with eternal condemnation. Had his threats reached me alone, I could have stood firm; for their cruelty on earth I could have endured, and their power beyond this life I have no belief in.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” said the glover, who was well nigh beside himself at perceiving at every new word the increasing extremity of his daughter’s danger, “beware of blaspheming the Holy Church, whose arms are as prompt to strike as her ears are sharp to hear.”
“To me,” said the Maid of Perth, again looking up, “the terrors of the threatened denunciations would have been of little avail; but when they spoke of involving thee, my father, in the charge against me, I own I trembl............