Part 1

THE MINSTREL’S CURSE.

By Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller, _Author of “The Bride of the Tomb,” etc._

IN FOUR PARTS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I. PART II. PART III. PART IV.

_PART I._

“‘When nightly my wild harp I bring To wake all its music for thee, So sweet looks that face while I sing, To reason no longer I’m free. I forget thou art queen of the land-- ’Tis thy beauty alone that I see: And, trembling at touch of thy hand, All else is forgotten by me!

“‘The spell is upon me in sleep, In the region of dreams thou art mine! I wake--but, ah! ’tis to weep, And the hope of my slumbers resign. Ah! hadst thou been less than thou art, Or I more deserving of thee, Thou mightst have been queen of my heart, Thou mightst have been all things to me!’”

The exquisite tenor voice of the singer died away into mournful echoes; the low accompaniment wailed along the piano-keys like the cry of a breaking heart, then sobbed itself out--and silence reigned.

“There is still another verse, Mr. Winthrop,” said Lady Edith Chilton, softly.

“Which I shall not sing,” answered Guy Winthrop, coolly.

“_Shall_ not?” the girl repeated after him, in a rising tone of displeasure. “No one ever says ‘_shall not_’ to me, Mr. Winthrop.”

“I suppose not”--Mr. Winthrop bowed slightly in homage to her fair young beauty--“therefore I say it. I--whom fate has placed so far beneath you, that I am not restricted to the sweet flatteries of your ladyship’s lordly admirers, nor yet to the passive subservience of your vassals--can afford to speak my mind!”

The long, magnificent drawing-room was deserted save for these two at the grand piano--Lady Edith Chilton of Chilton Park, Somersetshire, and Guy Winthrop, her young brother’s handsome tutor, who had just been singing at her request, the touching lines written in commemoration of Catlett’s love for the hapless Queen of Scots.

A sudden gleam of anger in her azure eyes reminded him of summer lightning in evening skies.

“At least you are very ungracious,” she said, petulantly; “you refuse out of mere perversity to sing that song for me, although you know I am not clever in singing, and have to learn after others like a parrot.”

An amused smile curved Guy Winthrop’s handsome mouth at her girlish pique.

“Pardon me, Lady Edith, but, to quote the compliments of your lordly admirers, you sing divinely, and even the dullest parrot might have learned that song during the three months in which I have daily sung it for you!”

“Well, then,” she confessed, frankly, “I like the song and like to hear you sing it. I regret that I have asked you to sing it once too often.”

“Once too often!” the young man rose to his feet, speaking impetuously, forgetting all restraint “Twice too often, twenty times too often for my peace of mind, Lady Edith, and you know it! You know as well as I that Catlett cherished no more hopeless love for beauteous Mary Stuart than I for you. Nay, start not--your brother’s humble tutor presumes not too much! He but tells you what you deserve to hear! Lady Edith, you knew when you asked me to teach you to sing, when you stood at my side in the pride of your high-born beauty and mingled your heavenly voice with mine, what the end must be! Perhaps you planned it all, you fair coquette!”

“Hush!” she cried, indignantly, but he went on, bitterly:

“You knew while I sung that song that it was but the expression of my love for you, that the heart throbbing bitterly below, lent its passion to the voice. There was your triumph, trifler with human hearts! Not content with your higher lovers, you bent from your loftly sphere to ensnare an humble heart--one weak enough to own your charms, but too lowly even to dare to hope!”

She stood still, confused, surprised, unable to speak one word in self-defense, her color rising and falling by turns, her lips half parted, the pale winter sunshine glinting through the stained-glass window crowning her golden head like a halo, making her seem not like a “trifler with human hearts,” but some fair saint or angel.

And ere she could recover herself, Guy Winthrop bowed with cold deference and withdrew.

Springing to the window, half-hidden behind the rich lace curtain, she watched the tall, straight figure striding swiftly down the elm avenue.

Something--perhaps it was the red evening light shining on a waste of snow, or perhaps a tear--blurred the outlines of the fair winter landscape, and, sighing, she turned away.

“Poor and proud!” faltered in a soft undertone from her lips. “Why, he has nothing in the world but his profession, yet he talks to me like a prince royal, upbraids me with my coquetry, and leaves me with cold disdain! Ah, my haughty lover, did you but know”--then she started and bit her lip as if not even to solitude would she whisper the secret trembling on that coral portal.

“So the Minstrel’s Curse is like to be fulfilled again,” said a mocking voice behind her.

She turned with a start, the rosy color flooding cheek and throat, but it was only old Katharine, her nurse, who was almost a century old, and in her dotage.

There she sat, curled cozily behind the curtain that draped that odd little bay-window, and she had heard every word Guy Winthrop uttered.

Lady Edith paled with indignation.

“How came you there? How dared you listen?” she cried, and rushed away in a pet.

Old Katharine hobbled slowly after her mistress, and found her sobbing on her silken couch.

“Don’t cry, that’s a dearie,” she whispered, smoothing the silken curls with a tender hand. “Old Kathie didn’t mean to make her bairn angry. She only feared the curse would fall again. She hid herself in the window to see for herself, and she _has_ seen--alas, alas!” the old creature moaned half deliriously, rocking her body to and fro.

“What curse is it you’re talking of, Katharine?” sobbed Edith in a sort of awe.

“The Minstrel’s Curse, to be sure,” answered Katharine, between intervals of her rocking. “It’s never been told you, child. Pity it hadn’t. It might have been better for the poor young man.”

“Well, tell me about it now,” exclaimed the imperious young beauty. She loved to hear the old crone’s tales of the past, and settling herself among her silken pillows, she prepared to enjoy some marvelous story.

“Tell me, then, first,” said old Katharine, seriously--“you love the young man with the handsome dark eyes and the voice of music, do you not, my pet?”

A little storm of blushing denial answered her, but the protest was all in vain. The old nurse had seen three generations of fair Chilton dames bloom and fade. She paid no heed to the angry remonstrance, but looking in her nurseling’s eyes, read the secret in her heart.

“Ah, I knew it!” she sighed. “I knew it; but you must crush that love out of your heart, my child. It is his doom--his death. Better if you hated him.”

“Katharine,” cried her young mistress, growing suddenly white and chill, “cease this foolish driveling at once, and tell me what you mean by the Minstrel’s Curse.”

“I will then,” muttered the old nurse, crouching down on the floor beside the couch.

“Go on,” said her young mistress, almost sternly in her impatience.

“Almost two centuries ago,” said Katherine, “when the Chiltons were richer and more powerful than they are to-day, and before English minstrelsy was on the wane, there was a Lady Edith Chilton as fair and sweet as yourself. Her portrait hangs in the gallery now, and you have her sweet blue eyes, her golden hair, her lovely face. The Chiltons were a proud race; proud of their long line of ancestry, proud of their blue blood, and their sovereign’s favor. But the men of the race were as cruel and harsh as the women were fair and loving. It was the fashion then for all the fair ladies of the court to have a minstrel attached to the household to beguile the idle hours with songs and improvisations. Lady Edith followed the fashion and had a favorite minstrel, too, one Douglas North. He was of gentle blood, handsome, brave, and chivalrous. My Lady Edith, was a flirt in her day. She angled for the young minstrel’s heart, meaning to play with it a moment, then cast it aside like a broken toy. But in the meanwhile she lost her own, and when they found it out they made a precious pair of lovers, you may be sure, and she persuaded Douglas North to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Well, my lady, to make the story as short as possible, the youth was murdered among those proud, lawless Chiltons. They blamed him for it all, never said a word to her, but shut him up in a lonely tower, and one night he was secretly taken out, and made way with. One of the castle retainers told afterward a story of how young Douglas sat up until after midnight improvising and playing sad tunes upon his harp up in the lonely tower. The last song he sung the old servitor remembered, and long afterward it was printed in a book of Chilton legends and has come down to us as ‘The Minstrel’s Curse.’”

“And the curse? What was it?” breathed the young girl eagerly.

“I’ll get the book and show you,” answered Katharine, hobbling out of the room. When she tottered back with the antique volume, Lady Edith eagerly turned the musty, yellow pages. She looked eagerly at the date. It was more than a hundred years old--a book of traditions and stories of the great Chilton race.

“Oh, Kathie, you should have shown me this long ago,” she began, reproachfully, and just then her fascinated gaze lighted upon:

“THE MINSTREL’S CURSE!

“The minstrel’s curse be on the love Of all who bear the Chilton name Long after he shall sleep in death, Who, blameless, bore their blame. A Chilton maiden ne’er shall love A man of low degree, But she shall bring on him the doom That one has brought on me. Until there meet in future years Some Chilton of _her_ name, And some proud branch of my own blood Who knows not whence he came, But bears the name that now I bear-- Douglas the True--and she Is named for my lost Edith-- Edith, so dear to me-- When these shall meet, and, meeting, wed, The minstrel’s curse has died, And Douglas and his love shall know The bliss I was denied!”

Lady Edith read these singular lines over twice before she turned her inquiring gaze on old Katharine. The nurse nodded, gravely.

“You see how it is, my lady. You dare not love ‘a man of low degree,’ for the curse of Douglas North, the murdered minstrel, always comes upon every such man that the ladies of Chilton have doomed with their love. They have all died, one after another, strange, unnatural deaths; and this young singer you love will die, too, if you do not in mercy to him forget your fancy for his handsome face and sweet voice.”

“Nonsense!” cried Lady Edith; but she was still pale, and her voice trembled. There was a vein of superstition in her nature that she could not overcome. It had descended to her along with the blue blood that flowed in her veins. Then a gleam of hope brightened her eyes as she continued: “You forget, Katharine, that my name is Edith, and the curse says expressly, that when the lady’s name is Edith the curse is ended.”

“It says no such thing,” the privileged old nurse answered flatly. “It says when her name is Edith, and he is a descendant of the Norths’, and named Douglas, the doom is ended--not before. And now I have warned you! If you keep on loving this Guy Winthrop, with his sweet voice, and his ‘low degree,’ you love him to his doom and to his death.”

_PART II._

“The _curse_ is come upon me!” cried The lady of Shalott.

--_Tennyson._

Lady Edith tried to banish the memory of her eventful day in the gayety and splendor of the masquerade ball she attended that night. In vain, for, strangely enough, it seemed to her excited fancy, she had not been in the rooms more than an hour before a black domino in the costume of a minstrel of the Fifteenth Century approached her and begged for the honor of a promenade with the “beauteous Mary.”

Lady Edith, in the superb costume of the lovely Mary, Queen of Scots, and looking magnificently grand, bowed with queenly dignity, and placing her white-gloved hand on the minstrel’s arm, moved on with him among the throng of revelers.

Who was he, she wondered. His face was so shrouded in his mask that she could not guess his identity, and his voice sounded unfamiliar. Yet, as she leaned upon his arm a sweet sense of restfulness and peace crept over her such as she had never known before, and a quick thought of Guy Winthrop thrilled her, only to be dispelled with a shuddering sigh at the memory of Nurse Katherine’s warning.

“You tremble,” murmured her stately companion, in deep musical tones. “What earthly emotion can have power to disturb the serenity of a crowned forehead?”

“A woman’s heart is the same, whether born to the russet or the purple,” she answered lowly, and almost, it seemed to her, without volition of her own.

“I should like to believe it,” the minstrel answered, simply.

The queen asked lightly:

“Have any of my fair subjects given you cause to doubt my assertion? If so, you have but to speak--and I punish!”

“‘He jests at scars who never felt a wound.’”

“You have no proof that your assertion applies to me,” the queen replied tremblingly.

“Your pardon, my liege, but:

“‘Your heart is a snowdrift where foot never trod, Love’s sun has not wakened a bud on its sod.’”

A laugh rippled sweetly over her lips, like the soft music of a little stream dashing over rocks and pebbles.

“How do you know that?” she queried.

“Because I know you! You are glorious as Mary, Queen of Scots, but not less lovely as Edith, Queen of Hearts!”

She gave a violent start, then, tossing her head, tried to rectify the unconscious admittal that he had penetrated her mask.

“I think you mistake,” she said lightly. “But you show me your secret ‘as a bird betrays its nest by striving to conceal it.’ So you love some cruel, fair maid whose name is Edith?”

“_Edith!_”--he repeated it after her, in almost a passion of pain, “I have never dared call her so--she is as far above me as yonder star.” He paused at an open window and lifted his hand to a glorious planet glittering in mid heaven. “Ah, Mary, ah, my queen! ‘Hadst thou been less than thou art!’”

“Guy Winthrop!” broke wildly from her parted lips.

“Your majesty!” he straightened his fine form, and made a deprecatory movement with his white hand. “It seems that we have mutually mistaken each other for a different person. But suppose--remember, I only say suppose--that you were really the Edith whom I love, and I the Guy you named--what do you think they would say to each other? For instance now, what would Guy say to Edith? What do you think he would say, I mean?”

A sudden daring spirit, inherent in the grand old Chilton blood, leaped to her lips, and before she could think twice, she had uttered these words:

“He would say, ‘Edith, my darling, I love you!’”

The arm she leaned on trembled with the fierce throb of his heart.

“And what would Edith say?” he asked her, in low, unsteady tones.

“What would you like her to say?”--coquettishly.

“I should like to have her say, ‘Guy, I love you, and am yours forever!’ But what do you think she would say?”

Low and tenderly she whispered:

“Guy, I love you, and am yours forever!”

At that moment a fine courtier pushed in between the pair.

“Your majesty, your fair hand was promised me for this dance,” he reminded her; and with a slight, imperial bow to the young minstrel, the Queen of Scots swept away on the arm of her partner.

And then a great horror of remorse struck coldly to her heart. Oh, what had she done? Betrayed her heart to the man who loved her so well, but whom to love in return was to doom to a cruel death. Oh, horror of horrors!

The lights danced before her, the ballroom whirled around in a fantastic measure, the sea of faces grew dim and faded. She gasped for air, threw up her arms with a feeling of suffocation, and fell back fainting. The handsome courtier caught her in his arms and bore her to the door.

“Give her to me. She is _mine_!” cried a passionate voice; and the strong arms of the minstrel took her forcibly from the other’s clasp. Presently, with a weary sigh, she drifted back to life.

“The dressing-room,” she murmured, and the minstrel’s arm was again at her service. He left her with her maid, and mingled, as before, with the crowd.

“A word with you, Sir Poet,” said a stern voice in his ear.

It was the jeweled courtier. His eyes burned balefully beneath his mask.

“You forcibly took Mary Stuart from my arms--an insult for which I demand instant satisfaction.”

Two fiery spirits confronted each other in the wide grounds the next moment, two swords leaped from their scabbards, and two men struck at each other with vengeful fury.

The silver moon looked down on a scene of strife and bloodshed, and presently on a still form bathed in gore, around which a crowd was gathering, shouting, gesticulating, uttering all sorts of frenzied cries, while some struck out in hot haste after the murderer who had thrown away his sword and rushed headlong from the scene of his dastardly crime.

Presently, through the moving throng of excited maskers rushed the form of a beautiful woman. She flung herself on her knees by the dead man and tore the shrouding mask from his face.

As the moonlight fell on the closed eyes and pallid, handsome face, the Queen of Scots uttered a cry of sharp despair.

“The curse, oh, God! the curse! It is I--it is I who have killed him!”

Some one lifted the swooning form away, some one else knelt there by the still form and felt for the heart.

“He is not dead,” proclaimed the authoritative voice of a physician. “Let a litter be brought immediately and we will carry him into the house.”

The ball broke up in confusion as the wounded man was taken into Lady Heathcote’s house, and a stream of carriages marked the departure of the guests. In one of them was the weeping Lady Edith, attended by her uncle, who was also her guardian.

_PART III._

“Alas! it’s far from russet frieze To silks and satin gowns, But I doubt if God made like degrees In courtly hearts and clowns; Yet homely hose must step apart Where gartered princes stand; Ah, may he wear my love at heart That wins her lily hand!”

--_Hood._

“Well, I warned you,” said old Katharine, “but you would not heed an old crone’s tale. I warned your grandmother before you, but she would not listen, and there was the young squire of Elmdale broke his heart and died for love of her, and she knowing all the time that she caused it all by her unwise love of him. Oh, I’ve no patience with these willful Chiltons! But I’m getting on, thank the Lord! I won’t live to see your unborn children, my lady, driving thoughtless men to their death.”

“Oh, Kathie, how wicked and cruel you are!” sobbed Lady Edith.

Lady Edith lifted a warm, white face from the pillow and looked at old Katharine with heavy eyes full of pain and remorse. The long wretched night had worn away, and the old nurse was opening the blinds, letting in the morning sunshine. It glowed through the rosy silk of the curtains, and made Edith’s face look terribly pale and sad in its dim light. She had not slept all night, and she looked as conscience-stricken and remorseful as her nurse could possibly desire.

“Don’t think I’m not sorry for you, dearie,” soothed the old crone. “But I’m grieved for the manly young fellow--yester eve so full of life and love and health--to-day another victim to the dreadful curse that has come down to us from barbarous times to blight the innocent and unoffending.”

Lady Edith bowed her head in a passion of tears.

“Oh,” she sobbed. “I never knew the truth until it was too late, too late! Guy, Guy, I would have given my life to have saved yours!” she cried in a passion of impotent despair.

Old Katharine took the slight form into her motherly arms, and let Edith sob on until the rest of exhaustion stole over her, and, too weak for tears or cries, she lay still, with her violet eyes fixed on vacancy, and a frozen calm, more terrible than tears, on her lovely face.

Presently the kind old face of the earl, her uncle and guardian, looked in upon his petted darling.

“Dear uncle, you--have--news! Speak, but do not tell me that--that--he is dead!” she cried, with trembling lips.

“Tut, no, of course he is not dead, my love; but----” He broke off and looked distressfully at her pale face.

“Speak!” she cried, almost imperiously in her impatience.

“Yes, I have news,” he said. “Eustace and I went to Lady Heathcote’s this morning to see the poor fellow, and she told us that it had been discovered that Guy was not mortally wounded--a flesh wound, deep, but not necessarily fatal, but----” He paused and regarded her curiously.

“Poor darling, how badly she looks! Yet I never suspected before that she and her brother’s handsome tutor were in love with each other,” he thought.

“Dear uncle, please go on,” she exclaimed, eagerly.

“Oh, yes. Where was I when I stopped to think? Yes, Lady Heathcote told us that this morning, at daybreak, a conveyance was sent for Mr. Winthrop. An old gentleman was in it who claimed to be a relative of the young man. He insisted on taking the wounded man away, and as no one had the authority to prevent him, he did so.”

“And you followed?” she asked.

“No, for he left no address, saying bitterly that the young fellow had no friends to mourn for him. That is all I have to tell you, Edith.”

“But Guy will certainly send and let Eustace know where he is, uncle, do you not think so?”

Lord Chilton looked relieved at her brightening face.

“Certainly, undoubtedly, to-day or to-morrow,” he replied, cheerily. “Keep up your heart, little one. I will go now and send your brother to sit with you this morning if indeed he can tear himself away from the library, dry book-worm that he is. By-by, dear.”

He kissed her, smoothed her fair curls lovingly, and went out.

Presently came Eustace--pale, studious, quiet--a handsome pair they made--he was twenty, she eighteen.

Edith leaned her head on his shoulder and wept softly. Poor Eustace, he hardly knew how to soothe a girl’s grief. He was shy and quiet, his thoughts were up among the stars. He meant to be a great scholar. But he smoothed her hair and said, tenderly: