The Prior blessed them as they mounted to depart, and congratulated Quentin on the absence of his heathen guide; "for," said the venerable man, "better stumble in the path, than be upheld by the arm of a thief or robber."
Quentin was not quite of his opinion; for, dangerous as he knew the Bohemian to be, he thought he could use his services, and, at the same time, baffle his treasonable purpose, now that he saw clearly to what it tended. But his anxiety upon this subject was soon at an end, for the little cavalcade was not an hundred yards from the monastery and the village before Maugrabin joined it, riding as usual on his little active and wild-looking jennet. Their road led them along the side of the same brook where Quentin had overheard the mysterious conference of the preceding evening, and Hayraddin had not long rejoined them, ere they passed under the very willow-tree which had afforded Durward the means of concealment, when he became an unsuspected hearer of what then passed betwixt that false guide and the lanzknecht.
The recollections which the spot brought back stirred Quentin to enter abruptly into conversation with his guide, whom hitherto he had scarce spoken to.
"Where hast thou found night-quarter, thou profane knave?" said the Scot.
"Your wisdom may guess, by looking on my gaberdine," answered the Bohemian, pointing to his dress, which was covered with the seeds of hay.
"A good hay-stack," said Quentin, "is a convenient bed for an astrologer, and a much better than a heathen scoffer at our blessed religion, and its ministers, ever deserves."
"It suited my Klepper better than me, though," said Hayraddin, patting his horse on the neck; "for he had food and shelter at the same time. The old bald fools turned him loose, as if a wise man's horse could have infected with wit or sagacity a whole convent of asses. Lucky that Klepper knows my whistle, and follows me as truly as a hound, or we had never met again, and you in your turn might have whistled for a guide."
"I have told thee more than once," said Durward, sternly, "to restrain thy ribaldry when thou chancest to be in worthy men's company, a thing which, I believe, hath rarely happened to thee in thy life before now; and I promise thee, that, did I hold thee as faithless a guide as I esteem thee a blasphemous and worthless caitiff, my Scottish dirk and thy heathenish heart had ere now been acquainted, although the doing such a deed were as ignoble as the sticking of swine."
"A wild boar is near akin to a sow," said the Bohemian, without flinching from the sharp look with which Quentin regarded him, or altering, in the slightest degree, the caustic indifference which he affected in his language; "and many men," he subjoined, "find both pride, pleasure, and profit, in sticking them."
Astonished at the man's ready confidence, and uncertain whether he did not know more of his own history and feelings than was pleasant for him to converse upon, Quentin broke off a conversation in which he had gained no advantage over Maugrabin, and fell back to his accustomed post beside the ladies.
We have already observed, that a considerable degree of familiarity had begun to establish itself between them. The elder Countess treated him (being once well assured of the nobility of his birth) like a favoured equal; and though her niece showed her regard to their protector less freely, yet, under every disadvantage of bashfulness and timidity, Quentin thought he could plainly perceive, that his company and conversation were not by any means indifferent to her.
Nothing gives such life and soul to youthful gaiety as the consciousness that it is successfully received; and Quentin had accordingly, during the former period of their journey, amused his fair charge with the liveliness of his conversation, and the songs and tales of his country, the former of which he sung in his native language, while his efforts to render the latter into his foreign and imperfect French, gave rise to a hundred little mistakes and errors of speech, as diverting as the narratives themselves. But on this anxious morning, he rode beside the ladies of Croye without any of his usual attempts to amuse them, and they could not help observing his silence as something remarkable.
"Our young companion has seen a wolf," said the Lady Hameline, alluding to an ancient superstition, "and he has lost his tongue in consequence[32]."
"To say I had tracked a fox were nearer the mark," thought Quentin, but gave the reply no utterance.
"Are you well, Seignior Quentin?" said the Countess Isabelle, in a tone of interest at which she herself blushed, while she felt that it was something more than the distance between them warranted.
"He hath sat up carousing with the jolly friars," said the Lady Hameline; "the Scots are like the Germans, who spend all their mirth over the Rheinwein, and bring only their staggering steps to the dance in the evening, and their aching heads to the ladies' bower in the morning."
"Nay, gentle ladies," said Quentin, "I deserve not your reproach. The good friars were at their devotions almost all night; and for myself, my drink was barely a cup of their thinnest and most ordinary wine."
"It is the badness of his fare that has put him out of humour," said the Countess Isabelle. "Cheer up, Seignior Quentin; and should we ever visit my ancient Castle of Bracquemont together, if I myself should stand your cup-bearer, and hand it to you, you shall have a generous cup of wine, that the like never grew upon the vines of Hochheim or Johannisberg."
"A glass of water, noble lady, from your hand" – Thus far did Quentin begin, but his voice trembled; and Isabelle continued, as if she had been insensible of the tenderness of the accentuation upon the personal pronoun.
"The wine was stocked in the deep vaults of Bracquemont, by my great-grandfather the Rhinegrave Godfrey," said the Countess Isabelle.
"Who won the hand of her great-grandmother," interjected the Lady Hameline, interrupting her niece, "by proving himself the best son of chivalry, at the great tournament of Strasbourg – ten knights were slain in the lists. But those days are over, and no one now thinks of encountering peril for the sake of honour, or to relieve distressed beauty."
To this speech, which was made in the tone in which a modern beauty, whose charms are rather on the wane, may be heard to condemn the rudeness of the present age, Quentin took upon him to reply, "that there was no lack of that chivalry which the Lady Hameline seemed to consider as extinct, and that, were it eclipsed everywhere else, it would still glow in the bosoms of the Scottish gentlemen."
"Hear him!" said the Lady Hameline; "he would have us believe, that in his cold and bleak country still lives the noble fire which has decayed in France and Germany! The poor youth is like a Swiss mountaineer, mad with partiality to his native land – he will next tell us of the vines and olives of Scotland."
"No, madam," said Durward; "of the wine and the oil of our mountains I can say little, more than that our swords can compel these rich productions, as tribute from our wealthier neighbours. But for the unblemished faith and unfaded honour of Scotland, I must now put to the proof how far you can repose trust in them, however mean the individual who can offer nothing more as a pledge of your safety."
"You speak mysteriously – you know of some pressing and present danger," said the Lady Hameline.
"I have read it in his eye for this hour past!" exclaimed the Lady Isabelle, clasping her hands. "Sacred Virgin, what will become of us?"
"Nothing, I hope, but what you would desire," answered Durward. "And now I am compelled to ask – Gentle ladies, can you trust me?"
"Trust you?" answered the Countess Hameline – "certainly – But why the question? Or how far do you ask our confidence?"
Note 32
Vox quoque Moerim Jam fugit ipsa; lupi Moerim videre priores.
Virgilii, ix. ecloga.
The commentators add, in explanation of this passage, the opinion of Pliny: "The being beheld by a wolf in Italy is accounted noxious, and is supposed to take away the speech of a man, if these animals behold him ere he sees them."