“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?
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