“What doleful tidings? Quick, speak, old man. My mother! is she ill? Good God, thou art pale. Oh, thy face doth speak too intelligibly—my mother, my beloved mother, is no more!”
The old man burst into tears. He could not command a single word; but the grief and agitation he could not hide was enough for Sir Patrick Hepborne. In a choked and hollow voice—
“Assueton,” said he, “walk up this way, so please thee; there is the banquet-hall; I must retire into this apartment for some moments. If thou hadst known my mother—my excellent, my tenderly affectionate mother—my mother, by whose benignant and joy-beaming eyes I looked to be now greeted withal—thou wouldst pardon me for being thus unmanned. But I shall be more composed anon.”
And with these words, and with an agitation he could not hide, he burst away into an adjacent chamber, where he shut himself in, that he might give way to his emotions without interruption.
It was his mother’s private room. In the little oratory opening from the farther end of it, was her prie-dieu and crucifix, and on the floor opposite to it was the very velvet cushion on which he found her kneeling, and offering up her fervent orisons to Heaven on his behalf, as he entered her apartment to embrace her for the last time, the morning he left Hailes for France. He remembered that his heart was then bounding with delight at the prospect of breaking into the world, and figuring among knights and warriors, amidst all the gay splendour of the French Court. Alas! he little thought then he was embracing her for the last time. He now looked round the chamber, and her missal-books, with a thousand trifles he had seen her use, called up her graceful figure and gentle expression fresh before his eyes. He wept bitterly, and, seating himself in the chair she used, wasted nearly an hour in giving way to past recollections, and indulging in the grief they occasioned. At last his sorrow began to exhaust itself, and he became more composed. The cushion and the little altar again caught his eye, and, rising from the chair, he prostrated himself before the emblem of the Saviour’s sufferings and the Christian’s faith and hope, pouring out his soul in devotional exercise. As his head was buried in the velvet drapery of the prie-dieu, and his eyes covered, his imagination pictured the figure of his mother floating over him in seraphic glory. He started up, almost expecting to see his waking vision realized; but it was no more than [[89]]the offspring of his fancy, and he again seated himself on his mother’s chair, to dry his eyes and to compose his agitated bosom.
Though still deeply afflicted, he now felt himself able to command his feelings, and he left his mother’s apartment to rejoin Assueton. At the door he met old Gabriel Lindsay, and he being now able to ask, and the hoary seneschal to tell, the date and circumstances of his mother’s death, he learned that she had been carried off by a sudden illness about three months previous to his arrival. The firmness of the warrior now returned upon him, and, with a staid but steady countenance, he rejoined his friend.
“Assueton,” said he, “if thou art disposed to ramble with me, it would give me ease to go forth a little. Let us doff our mail, and put on less cumbrous hunting-garbs and gippons, and go out into the woods. We may chance to hear their hunting-horns, and so fall in with them; else we may loiter idling it here till nightfall ere they return.”
Assueton readily agreed; and both having trimmed themselves for active exercise, and armed themselves with hunting-spears, and with the anelace, a kind of wood-knife or falchion, usually worn, together with the pouch, hanging from the girdlestead of the body, they left the Castle, with the intent of taking the direction they were informed the hunting-party had gone in. As they passed from the outer gateway, the great rough old wolf-hound again attracted his master’s attention.
“Alas! poor old Flo,” said Hepborne, going up to him, and stooping to caress him, “thou canst no more follow me as thou wert wont to do. Thou art now but as a withered and decayed log of oak—thou who used, whenever I appeared, to dart hither and thither around me like a firelevin.”
The old dog began to lick his master’s hand, and to whine a dull recognition.