Traditions of Lancashire Volume II Part 2

Here the unhappy miller began to weep; but the lady was dumb with astonishment.

"Forgive me, lady, in this matter; but I was in a manner bound to accomplish mine errand."

"And what if I should accompany thee? Wouldest thou be my champion, my protector from onslaught and evil?"

Here he opened his huge grey eyes to such an alarming extent that Eleanor had much ado to refrain from smiling.

"If you will go, lady, I shall be a living man; and you"--a dead woman, probably he would have said; but the denunciation did not escape his lips, and the joy and surprise of the wary miller were beyond utterance.

"But whence thy message, friend?" said the deluded maiden, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Why; the message was whispered in my ear. A stranger brought it together with a dismal threat should I not bring you at the time appointed."

Here the miller again became uneasy and alarmed. A cold shudder crept over him, and he looked imploringly upon her.

"But they say, my trusty miller, that this chapel of the fairies may not be visited, forbidden as it is to all catholic and devout Christians, after nightfall."

At this intimation the peccant miller displayed his broad thumbs, and looked so dolorous and apprehensive, sprawling out his large ungainly proportions, that Eleanor, though not p.r.o.ne to the indulgence of mirth, was mightily moved thereto by the cowardly and dismal aspect he betrayed.

"Nay, lady, I beseech you," he stammered out. "I am a dead dog--a piece of useless and unappropriated carrion, if you go not. Ha' pity on your poor knave, and deliver me from my tormentors!"

"Then to-morrow I will deliver thee," said the maiden, "and break thine enchantment. But the hour?"

"Ere the moonbeam touches the pillar in the Fairies' Hall."

"Agreed, knave. So begone. Yet--and answer truly for thy life--was no pledge, no token, sent with this message?"

Ralph unwillingly drew forth the token from his belt. Fearful that it might divulge more than he wished, the treacherous messenger had kept back the tablets entrusted to him. He suspected that should she be aware it was the good people who were a-wanting her, he would have but a slender chance of success.

She glanced hastily, anxiously, over the page, though with great surprise.

"How now?" said she, thoughtfully. "Here is a pretty love-billet truly. The page is fair and unspotted--fit emblem of a lover's thoughts."

"You are to write thereon, lady, your lover's wish, and throw it into the brook here, hard by. The stream, a trusty messenger will carry it back to its owner."

Ralph delivered his message with great reluctance, fearful lest she might be alarmed and retract her promise.

To his great joy, however, she placed the mystic token in her bosom, and bade him attend on the morrow.

This he promised faithfully; and with a light heart he returned to his abode.

Eleanor watched his departure with impatience. She took the tablets from her bosom. Horror seemed to fold his icy fingers round her heart.

She remembered the injunction. Her mind misgave her, and as she drew towards the lamp it shot forth a tremulous blaze and expired. Yet with desperate haste, bent, it might seem, on her own destruction, she hastily approached the window. The moonbeam shone full upon the page as she scrawled with great trepidation the word "THINE." To her unspeakable horror the letters became a track of fire, but as she gazed a drop of dark blood fell on them and obliterated the writing.

"Must the compact be in blood?" said she, evidently shrinking from this unhallowed pledge. "Nay then, farewell! Thou art not of yon bright heaven. My hopes are yet there, whatever be thy doom! If thou art aught within the pale of mercy I am thine, but not in blood."

Again, but on another page, she wrote the word "THINE." Again the blood-drop effaced the letters.

"Never, though I love thee! Why urge this compact?" With a trembling hand she retraced her pledge, and the omen was not repeated. She had dared much; but her hope of mercy was yet dearer than her heart's deep and overwhelming pa.s.sion. With joy she saw the writing was unchanged.

Throwing on her hood and kerchief, she stole forth to the brook, and in the rivulet, where it was yet dark and unfrozen, she threw the mystic tablet.

The following night she watched the moon, as it rose above the huge crags, breaking the long undulating horizon of Blackstone Edge, called "Robin Hood's Bed," or "Robin Hood's Chair."[5]

One jagged peak, projected upon the moon's limb, looked like some huge spectre issuing from her bright pavilion. She rose, red and angry, from her dark couch. Afterwards a thin haze partially obscured her brightness; her pale, wan beam seemed struggling through a wide and attenuated veil. The wind, too, began to impart that peculiar chill so well understood as the forerunner of a change. A loud sough came shuddering through the frozen bushes, moaning in the gra.s.s that rustled by her path. m.u.f.fled and alone, she took her adventurous journey to the mill, where she arrived in about an hour from her departure. Ralph was anxiously expecting her, together with his dame.

"Good e'en, lady," said the latter, with great alacrity, as Eleanor crossed the threshold. She returned the salutation; but her features were lighted up with a wild and deceptive brightness, and her glowing eye betrayed the fierce and raging conflict within.

"The shadow will soon point to the hour, and we must be gone," said the impatient miller.

"Lead on," replied the courageous maiden; and he shrank from her gaze, conscious of his own treachery and her danger.

The hard and ice-bound waters were dissolving, and might be heard to gurgle in their deep recesses; drops began to trickle from the trees, the bushes to relax their hold, and shake off their icy trammels.

Towards the south-west lay a dense range of clouds, their fleecy tops telling with what message they were charged. Still the moon cast a subdued and lingering light over the scene, from which she was shortly destined to be shut out.

Ralph led the way silently and with great caution through the slippery ravine. The moonlight flickered through the leafless branches on the heights above them, their path winding through the shadows by the stream.

"We must hasten," said her guide, "or we may miss the signal. We shall soon take leave of the moonlight, and perhaps lose our labour thereby."

They crept onwards until they saw the dark rocks in the Fairies'

Chapel. The miller pointed to a long withered bough that flung out its giant arms far over the gulph from a great height. The moon threw down the shadow quite across to the bank on the other side, marking its rude outline on the crags.

"The signal," said Ralph; "and by your favour, lady, I must depart. I have redeemed my pledge."

"Stay, I prithee, but within hearing," said Eleanor. "I like not the aspect of this place. If I call, hasten instantly to my succour."

The miller promised, but with a secret determination not to risk his carcase again for all the bright-eyed dames in Christendom.

She listened to his departing footsteps, and her heart seemed to lose its support. An indescribable feeling crept upon her--a consciousness that another was present in this solitude. She was evidently under the control of some invisible agent; the very freedom of her thoughts oppressed and overruled by a power superior to her own. She strove to escape this thraldom, but in vain. She threw round an apprehensive glance, but all was still--the dripping boughs alone breaking the almost insupportable silence that surrounded her. Suddenly she heard a sigh, and a rustling at her ear; and she felt an icy chillness breathing on her. Then a voice, musical but sad, whispered--

"Thou hast rejected my suit. Another holds thy pledge."

"Another! Who art thou?" said the maiden, forgetting her fears in the first emotion of surprise.

"Thou hast been conscious of my presence in thy dreams!" replied the mysterious visitor. She felt her terrors dissipated, for the being whom she loved was the guardian of her safety.

"I have loved thee, maiden," said the voice; "I have hovered round thee when thou slept, and thou hast answered my every thought.

Wherefore hast thou not obeyed? Why not seal thy compact and our happiness together?"

"Because it was unhallowed," replied she firmly, though her bosom trembled like the leaf fluttering from its stem.

"Another has taken thy pledge. Yet is it not too late. Renew the contract, even with thy blood, and I am thine! Refuse, and thou art his. If this hour pa.s.s, I am lost to thee for ever!"

"To whom," inquired Eleanor, "has it been conveyed?"

"To thy first, thy betrothed lover. He found the pledge that I would not receive."

The maiden hesitated. Her eternal hopes might be compromised by this compliance. But she dreaded the loss of her insidious destroyer.