Maid Marian Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  'T is true, no lover has that power To enforce a desperate amour As he that has two strings to his bow And burns for love and money too.--BUTLER.

  The friar had often had experience of the baron's testy humour; butit had always before confined itself to words, in which the habit oftestiness often mingled more expression of displeasure than the internalfeeling prompted. He knew the baron to be hot and choleric, but at thesame time hospitable and generous; passionately fond of his daughter,often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact. Theearly attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon had giventhe baron no serious reason to interfere with her habits andpursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover; and not beingover-burdened with orthodoxy, that is to say, not being seasoned withmore of the salt of the spirit than was necessary to preserve him fromexcommunication, confiscation, and philotheoparoptesism, [1] he was notsorry to encourage his daughter's choice of her confessor in brotherMichael, who had more jollity and less hypocrisy than any of hisfraternity, and was very little anxious to disguise his love of the goodthings of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior. Thefriar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been accustomedto the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio, which was usuallycharmed into silence by some sudden turn in the witching melodies ofMatilda. They had therefore naturally calculated, as far as their wildspirits calculated at all, on the same effects from the same causes. Butthe circumstances of the preceding day had made an essential alterationin the case. The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had received,that the earl's offence was past remission: which would have been ofless moment but for the awful fact of his castle being in the possessionof the king's forces, and in those days possession was considerably morethan eleven points of the law. The baron was therefore convincedthat the earl's outlawry was infallible, and that Matilda must eitherrenounce her lover, or become with him an outlaw and a fugitive. Inproportion, therefore, to the baron's knowledge of the strength andduration of her attachment, was his fear of the difficulty of its everbeing overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, which he had neverbefore discouraged, now presented itself to him as matter of seriousalarm; and if her cheerfulness gave him hope on the one hand byindicating a spirit superior to all disappointments, it was suspiciousto him on the other, as arising from some latent certainty of being soonunited to the earl. All these circumstances concurred to rendertheir songs of the vanished deer and greenwood archery and Yoicks andHarkaway, extremely mal-a-propos, and to make his anger boil and bubblein the cauldron of his spirit, till its more than ordinary excitementburst forth with sudden impulse into active manifestation.

  But as it sometimes happens, from the might Of rage in minds that can no farther go, As high as they have mounted in despite In their remission do they sink as low, To our bold baron did it happen so. [2]

  For his discobolic exploit proved the climax of his rage, and wassucceeded by an immediate sense that he had passed the bounds oflegitimate passion; and he sunk immediately from the very pinnacle ofopposition to the level of implicit acquiescence. The friar's spiritswere not to be marred by such a little incident. He was half-inclined,at first, to return the baron's compliment; but his love of Matildachecked him; and when the baron held out his hand, the friar seized itcordially, and they drowned all recollection of the affair by pledgingeach other in a cup of canary.

  The friar, having stayed long enough to see every thing replaced on afriendly footing, rose, and moved to take his leave. Matilda told himhe must come again on the morrow, for she had a very long confessionto make to him. This the friar promised to do, and departed with theknight.

  Sir Ralph, on reaching the abbey, drew his followers together, andled them to Locksley Castle, which he found in the possession of hislieutenant; whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold itin safe keeping in the king's name, and proceeded to London to reportthe results of his enterprise.

  Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion, and sworeby Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated into a saint byhaving him knocked on the head), that he would give the castle and landsof Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensueda process of thought in the mind of the knight. The eyes of the fairhuntress of Arlingford had left a wound in his heart which only she whogave could heal. He had seen that the baron was no longer very partialto the outlawed earl, but that he still retained his old affection forthe lands and castle of Locksley. Now the lands and castle were veryfair things in themselves, and would be pretty appurtenances to anadventurous knight; but they would be doubly valuable as certainpassports to the father's favour, which was one step towards that of thedaughter, or at least towards obtaining possession of her either quietlyor perforce; for the knight was not so nice in his love as to considerthe lady's free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being, by anymeans whatever, the lord of Locksley and Arlingford, and the husbandof the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades of futurity a vistavery tempting to a soldier of fortune. He set out in high spirits witha chosen band of followers, and beat up all the country far and widearound both the Ouse and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposedto second his diligence, for no vestige whatever could he trace of theearl. His followers, who were only paid with the wages of hope, began tomurmur and fall off; for, as those unenlightened days were ignorant ofthe happy invention of paper machinery, by which one promise to pay issatisfactorily paid with another promise to pay, and that again withanother in infinite series, they would not, as their wiser posterity hasdone, take those tenders for true pay which were not sterling; so that,one fine morning, the knight found himself sitting on a pleasant bank ofthe Trent, with only a solitary squire, who still clung to the shadowof preferment, because he did not see at the moment any better chance ofthe substance.

  The knight did not despair because of the desertion of his followers: hewas well aware that he could easily raise recruits if he could once findtrace of his game; he, therefore, rode about indefatigably over hilland dale, to the great sharpening of his own appetite and that of hissquire, living gallantly from inn to inn when his purse was full, andquartering himself in the king's name on the nearest ghostly brotherhoodwhen it happened to be empty. An autumn and a winter had passed away,when the course of his perlustations brought him one evening into abeautiful sylvan valley, where he found a number of young women weavinggarlands of flowers, and singing over their pleasant occupation. Heapproached them, and courteously inquired the way to the nearest town.

  "There is no town within several miles," was the answer.

  "A village, then, if it be but large enough to furnish an inn?"

  "There is Gamwell just by, but there is no inn nearer than the nearesttown."

  "An abbey, then?"

  "There is no abbey nearer than the nearest inn."

  "A house then, or a cottage, where I may obtain hospitality for thenight?"

  "Hospitality!" said one of the young women; "you have not far toseek for that. Do you not know that you are in the neighbourhood ofGamwell-Hall?"

  "So far from it," said the knight, "that I never heard the name ofGamwell-Hall before."

  "Never heard of Gamwell-Hall?" exclaimed all the young women together,who could as soon have dreamed of his never having heard of the sky.

  "Indeed, no," said Sir Ralph; "but I shall be very happy to get rid ofmy ignorance."

  "And so shall I," said his squire; "for it seems that in this caseknowledge will for once be a cure for hunger, wherewith I am grievouslyafflicted."

  "And why are you so busy, my pretty damsels, weaving these garlands?"said the knight.

  "Why, do you not know, sir," said one of the young women, "thatto-morrow is Gamwell feast?"

  The knight was again obliged, with all humility, to confess hisignorance.

  "Oh! sir," said his informant, "then you will have something to see,that I can tell you; for we shall
choose a Queen of the May, and weshall crown her with flowers, and place her in a chariot of flowers,and draw it with lines of flowers, and we shall hang all the trees withflowers, and we shall strew all the ground with flowers, and we shalldance with flowers, and in flowers, and on flowers, and we shall be allflowers."

  "That you will," said the knight; "and the sweetest and brightest ofall the flowers of the May, my pretty damsels." On which all the prettydamsels smiled at him and each other.

  "And there will be all sorts of May-games, and there will be prizes forarchery, and there will be the knight's ale, and the foresters' venison,and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak with his fiddle, and little TomWhistlerap with his fife and tabor, and Sam Trumtwang with his harp,and Peter Muggledrone with his bagpipe, and how I shall dance withWill Whitethorn!" added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, andbounding from the ground with the pleasure of the anticipation.

  A tall athletic young man approached, to whom the rustic maidenscourtesied with great respect; and one of them informed Sir Ralph thatit was young Master William Gamwell. The young gentleman invited andconducted the knight to the hall, where he introduced him to the oldknight his father, and to the old lady his mother, and to the young ladyhis sister, and to a number of bold yeomen, who were laying siege tobeef, brawn, and plum pie around a ponderous table, and taking copiousdraughts of old October. A motto was inscribed over the interior door,--

  EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY:

  an injunction which Sir Ralph and his squire showed remarkable alacrityin obeying. Old Sir Guy of Gamwell gave Sir Ralph a very cordialwelcome, and entertained him during supper with several of his beststories, enforced with an occasional slap on the back, and pointed witha peg in the ribs; a species of vivacious eloquence in which the oldgentleman excelled, and which is supposed by many of that pleasantvariety of the human spectes, known by the name of choice fellows andcomical dogs, to be the genuine tangible shape of the cream of a goodjoke.