Ay, he was a man that was brave and strong and single-minded, daring, patient, resolute, fearing nothing under heaven, humble and child-like only with her. How often might she unwittingly have wrung the gentle, uncomplaining heart; how often purposely, just to essay and feel her power! She could hate herself to think of a hundred trifles now! Ah! too late—too late! He was gone where neither foeman’s lance nor lady’s look could reach; where cold words and bare steel were alike powerless to wound. Gone—gone altogether, and she would never see him more.
It seemed to Mary Seton, as she stood there and looked at her comrades, that she alone would fulfil that vow of celibacy from which to-day’s festival had enfranchised the Queen’s Maries. Where could she expect to find hereafter such an affection as she had neglected and lost? No; henceforth she would devote herself heart and hand to the service of her mistress; cling to the Queen through rain and shine, calm and storm, good and evil. If prosperity blessed her dear mistress, she would rejoice; if adversity frowned, she would console her; if danger or calamity came, she would share it. Let the others marry, an’ they must; for her, she would belong to her Queen! And nobly, in after years, Mary Seton redeemed her vow.
But there was one of the maids-of-honour whose wedding was indeed to succeed Her Majesty’s, who looked forward to its arrival with more than maidenly longing; who hoped for it, and relied on it with more than a woman’s trust. Mary Hamilton, with her pale face and wasted form, had continued her service with the Queen, silent and uncomplaining, never unbosoming herself to her companions, not even confiding her sorrows to her mistress until now. To-morrow she would be free; to-morrow would be the day of her espousals, and the poor weary head would lay itself to rest, the poor sore heart find comfort and relief at last. It was for this she had been waiting so patiently, for this she had borne her burden so uncomplainingly. To-morrow she would become the Bride of Heaven, and the veil she would then put on must never be taken off again this side the grave!
In her cell (so her religion taught her, hopeful even in death), in her cell she could pray for the soul of him she had loved so fondly; could believe, when his fiery sufferings and her own prayers and tears had obliterated his crimes, she would meet him, never again to part, on the shining hills beyond the dark shadowy valley that she feared no whit, nay, that she only longed to tread.
Mary Hamilton took the vows on the day subsequent to the Queen’s marriage, at the bright midsummer season, when the blooming world should have looked fairest and most captivating to her who turned her back upon it so willingly for evermore. During a twelvemonth, so the Romish Church enforced, she must make trial of her new profession, and at the expiration of that period, should she continue in the same mind, the novice was to become a nun.
There is little doubt she would have fulfilled her intention had the occasion ever arrived.
It was an early harvest that year in Scotland, but ere the barley was white, Mary Hamilton had done with nuns and nunneries, vows and ceremonies, withered hopes and mortal sorrows, and had gone to that place where the weary heart can alone find the rest it had so longed for at last.
There is but one more of the Maries with whom we have to do: Mistress Carmichael must speak for herself in another chapter.