Maid Marian

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"But there must surely be some reason," said Sir Ralph,
"for father Peter's apprehension."

"None," said brother Michael, "but the apprehension itself; fear being
its own father, and most prolific in self-propagation. The lady did,
it is true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother,
for reprimanding her in that she would go hunting a-mornings instead
of attending matins. She cut short the thread of his eloquence by
sportively drawing her bow-string and loosing an arrow over his head;
he waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for
many months. I thought he had forgotten it: but let that pass.
In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had
liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds:
yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally
fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove.
Had either been less sylvan, the other might have been more saintly;
but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark,
nor reverence vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy.
They are twin plants of the forest, and are identified with its growth.

For the slender beech and the sapling oak,
That grow by the shadowy rill,
You may cut down both at a single stroke,
You may cut down which you will.

But this you must know, that as long as they grow
Whatever change may be,
You never can teach either oak or beech
To be aught but a greenwood tree."

CHAPTER III

Inflamed wrath in glowing breast.--BUTLER.

The knight and the friar arriving at Arlingford Castle,
and leaving their horses in the care of lady Matilda's groom,
with whom the friar was in great favour, were ushered
into a stately apartment, where they found the baron alone,
flourishing an enormous carving-knife over a brother baron--of beef--
with as much vehemence of action as if he were cutting down an enemy.
The baron was a gentleman of a fierce and choleric temperament:
he was lineally descended from the redoubtable Fierabras
of Normandy, who came over to England with the Conqueror,
and who, in the battle of Hastings, killed with his own
hand four-and-twenty Saxon cavaliers all on a row.
The very excess of the baron's internal rage on the preceding day
had smothered its external manifestation: he was so equally angry
with both parties, that he knew not on which to vent his wrath.
He was enraged with the earl for having brought himself into
such a dilemma without his privily; and he was no less enraged
with the king's men for their very unseasonable intrusion.
He could willingly have fallen upon both parties, but, he must
necessarily have begun with one; and he felt that on whichever
side he should strike the first blow, his retainers would
immediately join battle. He had therefore contented himself
with forcing away his daughter from the scene of action.
In the course of the evening he had received intelligence that
the earl's castle was in possession of a party of the king's men,
who had been detached by Sir Ralph Montfaucon to seize on it during
the earl's absence. The baron inferred from this that the earl's
case was desperate; and those who have had the opportunity
of seeing a rich friend fall suddenly into poverty, may easily
judge by their own feelings how quickly and completely the whole
moral being of the earl was changed in the baron's estimation.
The baron immediately proceeded to require in his daughter's mind
the same summary revolution that had taken place in his own,
and considered himself exceedingly ill-used by her non-compliance.
The lady had retired to her chamber, and the baron had passed
a supperless and sleepless night, stalking about his apartments
till an advanced hour of the morning, when hunger compelled
him to summon into his presence the spoils of the buttery,
which, being the intended array of an uneaten wedding feast,
were more than usually abundant, and on which, when the knight
and the friar entered, he was falling with desperate valour.
He looked up at them fiercely, with his mouth full of beef
and his eyes full of flame, and rising, as ceremony required,
made an awful bow to the knight, inclining himself forward
over the table and presenting his carving-knife en militaire,
in a manner that seemed to leave it doubtful whether he meant
to show respect to his visitor, or to defend his provision:
but the doubt was soon cleared up by his politely motioning
the knight to be seated; on which the friar advanced to the table,
saying, "For what we are going to receive," and commenced operations
without further prelude by filling and drinking a goblet of wine.
The baron at the same time offered one to Sir Ralph,
with the look of a man in whom habitual hospitality and courtesy
were struggling with the ebullitions of natural anger.
They pledged each other in silence, and the baron, having completed
a copious draught, continued working his lips and his throat,
as if trying to swallow his wrath as he had done his wine.
Sir Ralph, not knowing well what to make of these ambiguous signs,
looked for instructions to the friar, who by significant
looks and gestures seemed to advise him to follow his example
and partake of the good cheer before him, without speaking
till the baron should be more intelligible in his demeanour.
The knight and the friar, accordingly, proceeded to refect
themselves after their ride; the baron looking first at the one
and then at the other, scrutinising alternately the serious looks
of the knight and the merry face of the friar, till at length,
having calmed himself sufficiently to speak, he said,
"Courteous knight and ghostly father, I presume you have some
other business with me than to eat my beef and drink my canary;
and if so, I patiently await your leisure to enter on the topic."

"Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in obedience to my royal master,
King Henry, I have been the unwilling instrument of frustrating
the intended nuptials of your fair daughter; yet will you, I trust,
owe me no displeasure for my agency herein, seeing that the noble
maiden might otherwise by this time have been the bride of an outlaw."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the baron;
"very exceedingly obliged. Your solicitude for my daughter is
truly paternal, and for a young man and a stranger very singular
and exemplary: and it is very kind withal to come to the relief
of my insufficiency and inexperience, and concern yourself
so much in that which concerns you not."

"You misconceive the knight, noble baron," said the friar.
"He urges not his reason in the shape of a preconceived intent,
but in that of a subsequent extenuation. True, he has done
the lady Matilda great wrong----"

"How, great wrong?" said the baron. "What do you mean by great wrong?
Would you have had her married to a wild fly-by-night, that accident
made an earl and nature a deer-stealer? that has not wit enough to eat
venison without picking a quarrel with monarchy? that flings away his
own lands into the clutches of rascally friars, for the sake of hunting
in other men's grounds, and feasting vagabonds that wear Lincoln green,
and would have flung away mine into the bargain if he had had my daughter?
What do you mean by great wrong?"

"True," said the friar, "great right, I meant."

"Right!" exclaimed the baron: "what right has any man to do my daughter
right but myself? What right has any man to drive my daughter's
bridegroom out of the chapel in the middle of the marriage ceremony,
and turn all our merry faces into green wounds and bloody coxcombs,
and then come and tell me he has done us great right?"

"True," said the friar: "he has done neither right nor wrong."

"But he has," said the baron, "he has done both, and I will maintain it
with my glove."

"It shall not need," said Sir Ralph; "I will concede any thing in honour."

"And I," said the baron, "will concede nothing in honour:
I will concede nothing in honour to any man."

"Neither will I, Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in that sense:
but hear me. I was commissioned by the king to apprehend
the Earl of Huntingdon. I brought with me a party of soldiers,
picked and tried men, knowing that he would not lightly yield.
I sent my lieutenant with a detachment to surprise the earl's
castle in his absence, and laid my measures for intercepting
him on the way to his intended nuptials; but he seems to
have had intimation of this part of my plan, for he brought
with him a large armed retinue, and took a circuitous route,
which made him, I believe, somewhat later than his appointed hour.
When the lapse of time showed me that he had taken another track,
I pursued him to the chapel; and I would have awaited the close
of the ceremony, if I had thought that either yourself or your
daughter would have felt desirous that she should have been
the bride of an outlaw."

"Who said, sir," cried the baron, "that we were desirous of any such thing?
But truly, sir, if I had a mind to the devil for a son-in-law, I would fain
see the man that should venture to interfere."

"That would I," said the friar; "for I have undertaken to make
her renounce the devil."

"She shall not renounce the devil," said the baron, "unless I please.
You are very ready with your undertakings. Will you undertake to make
her renounce the earl, who, I believe, is the devil incarnate?
Will you undertake that?"

"Will I undertake," said the friar, "to make Trent run westward,
or to make flame burn downward, or to make a tree grow with its head
in the earth and its root in the air?"

"So then," said the baron, "a girl's mind is as hard to change as nature and
the elements, and it is easier to make her renounce the devil than a lover.
Are you a match for the devil, and no match for a man?"

"My warfare," said the friar, "is not of this world.
I am militant not against man, but the devil, who goes about
seeking what he may devour."

"Oh! does he so?" said the baron: "then I take it that makes you look for him
so often in my buttery. Will you cast out the devil whose name is Legion,
when you cannot cast out the imp whose name is Love?"

"Marriages," said the friar, "are made in heaven. Love is God's work,
and therewith I meddle not."

"God's work, indeed!" said the baron, "when the ceremony was
cut short in the church. Could men have put them asunder,
if God had joined them together? And the earl is now no earl,
but plain Robert Fitz-Ooth: therefore, I'll none of him."

"He may atone," said the friar, "and the king may mollify.
The earl is a worthy peer, and the king is a courteous king."

"He cannot atone," said Sir Ralph. "He has killed the king's men;
and if the baron should aid and abet, he will lose his castle and land."

"Will I?" said the baron; "not while I have a drop of blood in my veins.
He that comes to take them shall first serve me as the friar serves my
flasks of canary: he shall drain me dry as hay. Am I not disparaged?
Am I not outraged? Is not my daughter vilified, and made a mockery?
A girl half-married? There was my butler brought home with a broken head.
My butler, friar: there is that may move your sympathy.
Friar, the earl-no-earl shall come no more to my daughter."

"Very good," said the friar.

"It is not very good," said the baron, "for I cannot get her to say so."

"I fear," said Sir Ralph, "the young lady must be much
distressed and discomposed."

"Not a whit, sir," said the baron. "She is, as usual, in a most
provoking imperturbability, and contradicts me so smilingly that it
would enrage you to see her."

"I had hoped," said Sir Ralph, "that I might have seen her,
to make my excuse in person for the hard necessity of my duty."

He had scarcely spoken, when the door opened, and the lady
made her appearance.

CHAPTER IV

Are you mad, or what are you, that you squeak out your catches
without mitigation or remorse of voice? Twelfth Night.

Matilda, not dreaming of visitors, tripped into the apartment
in a dress of forest green, with a small quiver by her side,
and a bow and arrow in her hand. Her hair, black and glossy as
the raven's wing, curled like wandering clusters of dark ripe grapes
under the edge of her round bonnet; and a plume of black feathers fell
back negligently above it, with an almost horizontal inclination,
that seemed the habitual effect of rapid motion against the wind.
Her black eyes sparkled like sunbeams on a river:
a clear, deep, liquid radiance, the reflection of ethereal fire,--
tempered, not subdued, in the medium of its living and gentle mirror.
Her lips were half opened to speak as she entered the apartment;
and with a smile of recognition to the friar, and a courtesy
to the stranger knight, she approached the baron and said,
"You are late at your breakfast, father."

"I am not at breakfast," said the baron. "I have been at supper:
my last night's supper; for I had none."

"I am sorry," said Matilda, "you should have gone to bed supperless."

"I did not go to bed supperless," said the baron:
"I did not go to bed at all: and what are you doing with that
green dress and that bow and arrow?"

"I am going a-hunting," said Matilda.

"A-hunting!" said the baron. "What, I warrant you, to meet with the earl,
and slip your neck into the same noose?"

"No," said Matilda: "I am not going out of our own woods to-day."

"How do I know that?" said the baron. "What surety have I of that?"

"Here is the friar," said Matilda. "He will be surety."

"Not he," said the baron: "he will undertake nothing but where the devil
is a party concerned."

"Yes, I will," said the friar: "I will undertake any thing
for the lady Matilda."

"No matter for that," said the baron: "she shall not go hunting to day."

"Why, father," said Matilda, "if you coop me up here in this odious castle,
I shall pine and die like a lonely swan on a pool.

"No," said the baron, "the lonely swan does not die on the pool.
If there be a river at hand, she flies to the river, and finds her a mate;
and so shall not you."

"But," said Matilda, "you may send with me any, or as many,
of your grooms as you will."

"My grooms," said the baron, "are all false knaves.
There is not a rascal among them but loves you better than me.
Villains that I feed and clothe."

"Surely," said Matilda, "it is not villany to love me:
if it be, I should be sorry my father were an honest man."
The baron relaxed his muscles into a smile. "Or my lover either," added
Matilda. The baron looked grim again.

"For your lover," said the baron, "you may give God thanks of him.
He is as arrant a knave as ever poached."

"What, for hunting the king's deer?" said Matilda. "Have I not heard
you rail at the forest laws by the hour?"

"Did you ever hear me," said the baron, "rail myself out of house and land?
If I had done that, then were I a knave."

"My lover," said Matilda, "is a brave man, and a true man, and a generous man,
and a young man, and a handsome man; aye, and an honest man too."

"How can he be an honest man," said the baron, "when he has neither
house nor land, which are the better part of a man?"

"They are but the husk of a man," said Matilda, "the worthless coat
of the chesnut: the man himself is the kernel."

"The man is the grape stone," said the baron, "and the pulp of the melon.
The house and land are the true substantial fruit, and all that give him
savour and value."

"He will never want house or land," said Matilda, "while the meeting
boughs weave a green roof in the wood, and the free range of the hart
marks out the bounds of the forest."

"Vert and venison! vert and venison!" exclaimed the baron.
"Treason and flat rebellion. Confound your smiling face!
what makes you look so good-humoured? What! you think I can't
look at you, and be in a passion? You think so, do you?
We shall see. Have you no fear in talking thus, when here
is the king's liegeman come to take us all into custody,
and confiscate our goods and chattels?"

"Nay, Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "you wrong me in your report.
My visit is one of courtesy and excuse, not of menace and authority."

"There it is," said the baron: "every one takes a pleasure
in contradicting me. Here is this courteous knight, who has
not opened his mouth three times since he has been in my house
except to take in provision, cuts me short in my story with
a flat denial."

"Oh! I cry you mercy, sir knight," said Matilda; "I did not mark you before.
I am your debtor for no slight favour, and so is my liege lord."

"Her liege lord!" exclaimed the baron, taking large strides
across the chamber.

"Pardon me, gentle lady," said Sir Ralph. "Had I known you
before yesterday, I would have cut off my right hand ere it
should have been raised to do you displeasure.

"Oh sir," said Matilda, "a good man may be forced on an ill office:
but I can distinguish the man from his duty." She presented to him
her hand, which he kissed respectfully, and simultaneously with the
contact thirty-two invisible arrows plunged at once into his heart,
one from every point of the compass of his pericardia.

"Well, father," added Matilda, "I must go to the woods."

"Must you?" said the baron; "I say you must not."

"But I am going," said Matilda

"But I will have up the drawbridge," said the baron.

"But I will swim the moat," said Matilda.

"But I will secure the gates," said the baron.

"But I will leap from the battlement," said Matilda.

"But I will lock you in an upper chamber," said the baron.

"But I will shred the tapestry," said Matilda, "and let myself down."

"But I will lock you in a turret," said the baron, "where you
shall only see light through a loophole."

"But through that loophole," said Matilda, "will I take my flight,
like a young eagle from its eerie; and, father, while I go out freely,
I will return willingly: but if once I slip out through a loop-hole----"
She paused a moment, and then added, singing,--

The love that follows fain
Will never its faith betray:
But the faith that is held in a chain
Will never be found again,
If a single link give way.

The melody acted irresistibly on the harmonious propensities of the friar,
who accordingly sang in his turn,--

For hark! hark! hark!
The dog doth bark,
That watches the wild deer's lair.
The hunter awakes at the peep of the dawn,
But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone,
And the hunter knows not where.

Matilda and the friar then sang together,--

Then follow, oh follow! the hounds do cry:
The red sun flames in the eastern sky:
The stag bounds over the hollow.
He that lingers in spirit, or loiters in hall,
Shall see us no more till the evening fall,
And no voice but the echo shall answer his call:
Then follow, oh follow, follow:
Follow, oh follow, follow!

During the process of this harmony, the baron's eyes wandered from
his daughter to the friar, and from the friar to his daughter again,
with an alternate expression of anger differently modified:
when he looked on the friar, it was anger without qualification;
when he looked on his daughter it was still anger, but tempered
by an expression of involuntary admiration and pleasure.
These rapid fluctuations of the baron's physiognomy--the habitual,
reckless, resolute merriment in the jovial face of the friar,--
and the cheerful, elastic spirits that played on the lips
and sparkled in the eyes of Matilda,--would have presented
a very amusing combination to Sir Ralph, if one of the three
images in the group had not absorbed his total attention
with feelings of intense delight very nearly allied to pain.
The baron's wrath was somewhat counteracted by the reflection
that his daughter's good spirits seemed to show that they
would naturally rise triumphant over all disappointments;
and he had had sufficient experience of her humour to know
that she might sometimes be led, but never could be driven.
Then, too, he was always delighted to hear her sing, though he was
not at all pleased in this instance with the subject of her song.
Still he would have endured the subject for the sake of the melody
of the treble, but his mind was not sufficiently attuned to unison
to relish the harmony of the bass. The friar's accompaniment
put him out of all patience, and--"So," he exclaimed, "this is
the way, you teach my daughter to renounce the devil, is it?
A hunting friar, truly! Who ever heard before of a hunting friar?
A profane, roaring, bawling, bumper-bibbing, neck-breaking,
catch-singing friar?"

"Under favour, bold baron," said the friar; but the friar was warm
with canary, and in his singing vein; and he could not go on in plain
unmusical prose. He therefore sang in a new tune,--

Though I be now a grey, grey friar,
Yet I was once a hale young knight:
The cry of my dogs was the only choir
In which my spirit did take delight.
Little I recked of matin bell,
But drowned its toll with my clanging horn:
And the only beads I loved to tell
Were the beads of dew on the spangled thorn.

The baron was going to storm, but the friar paused, and Matilda
sang in repetition,--

Little I reck of matin bell,
But drown its toll with my clanging horn:
And the only beads I love to tell
Are the beads of dew on the spangled thorn.

And then she and the friar sang the four lines together,
and rang the changes upon them alternately.

Little I reck of matin bell,

sang the friar.

"A precious friar," said the baron.

But drown its toll with my clanging horn, sang Matilda.

"More shame for you," said the baron.

And the only beads I love to tell
Are the beads of dew on the spangled thorn,

sang Matilda and the friar together.

"Penitent and confessor," said the baron: "a hopeful pair truly."

The friar went on,--

An archer keen I was withal,
As ever did lean on greenwood tree;
And could make the fleetest roebuck fall,
A good three hundred yards from me.
Though changeful time, with hand severe,
Has made me now these joys forego,
Yet my heart bounds whene'er I hear
Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!

Matilda chimed in as before.

"Are you mad?" said the baron. "Are you insane? Are you possessed?
What do you mean? What in the devil's name do you both mean?"

Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!

roared the friar.

The baron's pent-up wrath had accumulated like the waters above the dam
of an overshot mill. The pond-head of his passion being now filled to
the utmost limit of its capacity, and beginning to overflow in the quivering
of his lips and the flashing of his eyes, he pulled up all the flash-boards
at once, and gave loose to the full torrent of his indignation, by seizing,
like furious Ajax, not a messy stone more than two modern men could raise,
but a vast dish of beef more than fifty ancient yeomen could eat,
and whirled it like a coit, in terrorem, over the head of the friar,
to the extremity of the apartment,

Where it on oaken floor did settle,
With mighty din of ponderous metal.

"Nay father," said Matilda, taking the baron's hand, "do not harm the friar:
he means not to offend you. My gaiety never before displeased you.
Least of all should it do so now, when I have need of all my spirits
to outweigh the severity of my fortune."

As she spoke the last words, tears started into her eyes, which, as if
ashamed of the involuntary betraying of her feelings, she turned away
to conceal. The baron was subdued at once. He kissed his daughter,
held out his hand to the friar, and said, "Sing on, in God's name,
and crack away the flasks till your voice swims in canary."
Then turning to Sir Ralph, he said, "You see how it is, sir knight.
Matilda is my daughter; but she has me in leading-strings, that is
the truth of it."

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;
but it had always before confined itself to words,
in which the habit of testiness often mingled more expression
of displeasure than the internal feeling prompted.
He knew the baron to be hot and choleric, but at the same time
hospitable and generous; passionately fond of his daughter,
often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact.
The early attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon
had given the baron no serious reason to interfere with her habits
and pursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover;
and not being over-burdened with orthodoxy, that is to say,
not being seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was
necessary to preserve him from excommunication, confiscation,
and philotheoparoptesism,[1] he was not sorry to encourage
his daughter's choice of her confessor in brother Michael,
who had more jollity and less hypocrisy than any of his fraternity,
and was very little anxious to disguise his love of the good things
of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior.
The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been
accustomed to the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio,
which was usually charmed into silence by some sudden turn
in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore
naturally calculated, as far as their wild spirits calculated at all,
on the same effects from the same causes. But the circumstances
of the preceding day had made an essential alteration in the case.
The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had received,
that the earl's offence was past remission: which would
have been of less moment but for the awful fact of his castle
being in the possession of the king's forces, and in those days
possession was considerably more than eleven points of the law.
The baron was therefore convinced that the earl's outlawry
was infallible, and that Matilda must either renounce
her lover, or become with him an outlaw and a fugitive.
In proportion, therefore, to the baron's knowledge of the strength
and duration of her attachment, was his fear of the difficulty
of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase,
which he had never before discouraged, now presented itself
to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness
gave him hope on the one hand by indicating a spirit superior
to all disappointments, it was suspicious to him on the other,
as arising from some latent certainty of being soon united
to the earl. All these circumstances concurred to render
their songs of the vanished deer and greenwood archery and
Yoicks and Harkaway, extremely mal-a-propos, and to make
his anger boil and bubble in the cauldron of his spirit,
till its more than ordinary excitement burst forth with sudden
impulse into active manifestation.

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