“‘And ne’er but once, my son,’ he said,
‘Was yon dark cavern trod;
In persecution’s iron days,
When the land was left by God.
From Bewley’s bog, with slaughter red,
A wanderer hither drew;
And oft he stopp’d and turn’d his head,
As by fits the night-winds blew.
For trampling round by Cheviot-edge
Were heard the troopers keen;
And frequent from the Whitelaw ridge
The death-shot flash’d between.’” &c. &c.
The old Scotch ballad was partly recited, then dropt; a pause ensued; then another strain followed, in French, of which the purport, translated, ran as follows:—
I gave, at first, attention close;
Then interest warm ensued;
From interest, as improvement rose,
Succeeded gratitude.
Obedience was no effort soon,
And labour was no pain;
If tired, a word, a glance alone
Would give me strength again.
From others of the studious band,
Ere long he singled me;
But only by more close demand,
And sterner urgency.
The task he from another took,
From me he did reject;
He would no slight omission brook,
And suffer no defect.
If my companions went astray,
He scarce their wanderings blam’d;
If I but falter’d in the way,
His anger fiercely flam’d.
Something stirred in an adjoining chamber; it would not do to be surprised eaves-dropping; I tapped hastily, and as hastily entered. Frances was just before me; she had been walking slowly in her room, and her step was checked by my advent: Twilight only was with her, and tranquil, ruddy Firelight; to these sisters, the Bright and the Dark, she had been speaking, ere I entered, in poetry. Sir Walter Scott’s voice, to her a foreign, far-off sound, a mountain echo, had uttered itself in the first stanzas; the second, I thought, from the style and the substance, was the language of her own heart. Her face was grave, its expression concentrated; she bent on me an unsmiling eye—an eye just returning from abstraction, just awaking from dreams: well-arranged was her simple attire, smooth her dark hair, orderly her tranquil room; but what—with her thoughtful look, her serious self-reliance, her bent to meditation and haply inspiration—what had she to do with love? “Nothing,” was the answer of her own sad, though gentle countenance; it seemed to say, “I must cultivate fortitude and cling to poetry; one is to be my support and the other my solace through life. Human affections do not bloom, nor do human passions glow for me.” Other women have such thoughts. Frances, had she been as desolate as she deemed, would not have been worse off than thousands of her sex. Look at the rigid and formal race of old maids—the race whom all despise; they have fed themselves, from youth upwards, on maxims of resignation and endurance. Many of them get ossified with the dry diet; self-control is so continually their thought, so perpetually their object, that at last it absorbs the softer and more agreeable qualities of their nature; and they die mere models of austerity, fashioned out of a little parchment and much bone. Anatomists will tell you that there is a heart in the withered old maid’s carcass—the same as in that of any cherished wife or proud mother in the land. Can this be so? I really don’t know; but feel inclined to doubt it.