"Nay, I must do him justice," answered the knight; "he did not know it, Mary; and perhaps what you suppose is the case, for the man did mention something of danger, and besought him to save her. We will look upon it in as fair a light as may be, and I will send to him early in the morning to bid him come hither and explain. He will then have two advocates instead of one, my child; and I am very ready to be convinced, for I love him for his love to you."
"Can you not send to-night?" whispered Mary Grey, resting her hands upon her father's arm.
"Nay, nay," replied the knight, smiling kindly on her. "It is late to-night, dear girl. To-morrow will do."
Does to-morrow ever do? But seldom; for the hour that is, we can only call our own. All that is to come is in the hands of that dark mysterious fate, which, ruling silent and unseen the acts and wills of men, reserves to itself, in its own dim council-chamber, each purpose unfulfilled, each resolution made and not performed; sporting with chances and with hopes, trampling into dust expectations and designs, and leaving to man but the past for his instruction, and the present for his energies. The word to-morrow should be blotted out from the catalogue. It is what never exists in the form we think to find it; and thus it was with Sir John Grey. When the morning came he wrote briefly to Richard of Woodville, requesting him to come to him, and making the tone of his epistle more kindly than his words the night before; but it was returned unopened from the Graevensteen, with the tidings that the young knight and all his band had set out on some expedition a few hours after midnight. As she heard the answer, the gay and happy eyes of Mary Grey filled with tears; and her father, gazing on her, reproached himself for having lost the moment that was theirs.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
[THE RESCUE.]
It was a sultry summer morning, in the midst of July, and there was a dull oppressive weight in the air, although neither mist nor cloud hung upon the lazy wings of a south wind, when an armed party rode through the deep forest of Auvillers, a part of the ancient Ardennes. Road, properly so called, there was none; but yet the way, though somewhat difficult to find for those not accustomed to all the intricacies of the wood, was not difficult to travel; for no care had been taken to plant new trees where old ones had fallen by the stroke of Time or the axe; all had been left to nature; and thus amidst the thick copses and the tall groves of old trees, wide open spaces and long uncovered tracts had spread here and there, over which the soft turf afforded pleasant footing for man or beast. True, the whole district was rocky and mountainous, and without a guide, the wanderer might have found it a wearisome journey in a sultry day, having to climb a high hill in one place, or wind in and out to avoid the long projecting cliffs of slaty stone in another. But for one directed by any persons well acquainted with the track, the journey was far more easy; and by choosing the proper breaks in the forest, and the long spaces which lay midway up the hills, he might ride along for many miles, without having to ascend any mountain, or deviate very greatly from a straight course, on account either of the wood or of the rocks.
Such was the course followed by the party of which I speak, under the direction of a tall powerful man, clothed from head to heel in steel; for those were not times, nor was that a part of the country in which men of rank and station could travel in safety without being armed in proof. Waleran de St. Paul, indeed, might better have risked his life with scanty arms and few attendants, than any other noble of the day, in that district, for he was well known and generally beloved by the lesser lords around; and his redoubted name rendered it a somewhat fearful task to strive with him, even if taken unprepared; but it would still have been a hazardous experiment, for in those remote and uncultivated tracts, bordering upon several great states, and very uncertain in their attachment to any, numerous bands of wild and lawless men took refuge, and, secure from the arm of justice, lived a life of plunder and oppression, only varied by the mimic warfare of the chase. None of the great nobles in the vicinity--generally engaged in the civil strifes and incessant broils of their own countries--had time to suppress them, even if they had the inclination. But it may well be doubted whether they felt at all disposed to put down, with the strong hand, the troops of roving plunderers which at that time infested the great forests that stretched along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle; for in those very bands they frequently found a sort of dépôt for brave and determined followers, from which their forces might at any moment be recruited for a short space of time. It is, moreover, whispered that in many instances, the more civilized and polite of the powerful barons round were accustomed to exact a certain share of the plunder from their marauding neighbours, as the price of toleration; and the inferior lords sometimes shared the peril as well as the spoil; and received as welcome guests into their strong castles the leaders of the freebooters, when any accidental reverse of fortune rendered the green wood no longer a secure abode.
Such was the state of the land through which now rode the Lord of St. Paul, still holding the sword, if not the office of Constable of France, with Richard of Woodville by his side, and a train of about forty men-at-arms behind them; so that all peril from their somewhat covetous neighbours of the Ardennes was unthought of by either; and the beauty of the scene, the heat of the day, their approaching meeting with the young Count of Charolois, the state of France, and the probability of speedy deeds of arms, were the subjects of the conversation.
The landscapes, indeed, were most lovely as they proceeded. Beneath, upon the left, sloped down the hill side, here and there covered with green wood, here and there broken with wild and rugged rocks; but everywhere so much below them, that the eye could generally catch the shining course of the Meuse, wandering on with a thousand sinuosities, and could then roam at large over the wide and varied country on the other side, sometimes reaching distant towns and cities many leagues away, sometimes checked by a bold mountain near at hand. Above rose the hills with their woody garmenture, from which would often start out a high grey cliff of cold slaty stone, sheer up and perpendicular as a wall; or at other times would rise a conical peak, smooth at the sides, or broken into points; and, through many of the gorges that they passed, perched upon isolated hills that seemed inaccessible, were seen the towers and walls of some stern feudal fortress, frowning down the valley, as if prognosticating woe to the traveller who ventured there alone.