Thomas Love Peacock - Maid Marian

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

Matilda and the friar then sang together,—

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,—