Come in to breakfast, lad; and stop grinding and creaking upon those miserable limpets, before thou hast set every tooth in my head on edge!
Amyas, whether by dint of holding his head straight, or by higher means, had got the thoughts of the said head straight enough by this time; and in he came, and fell to upon the broiled fish and strong ale, with a sort of fury, as determined to do his duty to the utmost in all matters that day, and therefore, of course, in that most important matter of bodily sustenance; while his mother and Frank looked at him, not without anxiety and even terror, doubting what turn his fancy might have taken in so new a case; at last
My dear Amyas, you will really heat your blood with all that strong ale! Remember, those who drink beer, think beer.
Then they think right good thoughts, mother. And in the meanwhile, those who drink water, think water. Eh, old Frank? and heres your health.
And clouds are water, said his mother, somewhat reassured by his genuine good humor; and so are rainbows; and clouds are angels thrones, and rainbows the sign of Gods peace on earth.
Amyas understood the hint, and laughed. Then Ill pledge Frank out of the next ditch, if it please you and him. But firstI sayhe must hearken to a parable; a manner mystery, miracle play, I have got in my head, like what they have at Easter, to the town-hall. Now then, hearken, madam, and I and Frank will act. And up rose Amyas, and shoved back his chair, and put on a solemn face.
Mrs. Leigh looked up, trembling; and Frank, he scarce knew why, rose.
No; you pitch again. You are King David, and sit still upon your throne. David was a great singer, you know, and a player on the viols; and ruddy, too, and of a fair countenance; so that will fit. Now, then, mother, dont look so frightened. I am not going to play Goliath, for all my cubits; I am to present Nathan the prophet. Now, David, hearken, for I have a message unto thee, O King!
There were two men in one city, one rich, and the other poor: and the rich man had many flocks and herds, and all the fine ladies in Whitehall to court if he liked; and the poor man had nothing but
And in spite of his broad honest smile, Amyass deep voice began to tremble and choke.
Frank sprang up, and burst into tears: Oh! Amyas, my brother, my brother! stop! I cannot endure this. Oh, God! was it not enough to have entangled myself in this fatal fancy, but over and above, I must meet the shame of my brothers discovering it?
What shame, then, Id like to know? said Amyas, recovering himself. Look here, brother Frank! Ive thought it all over in the garden; and I was an ass and a braggart for talking to you as I did last night. Of course you love her! Everybody must; and I was a fool for not recollecting that; and if you love her, your taste and mine agree, and what can be better? I think you are a sensible fellow for loving her, and you think me one. And as for who has her, why, youre the eldest; and first come first served is the rule, and best to keep to it. Besides, brother Frank, though Im no scholar, yet Im not so blind but that I tell the difference between you and me; and of course your chance against mine, for a hundred to one; and I am not going to be fool enough to row against wind and tide too. Im good enough for her, I hope; but if I am, you are better, and the good dog may run, but its the best that takes the hare; and so I have nothing more to do with the matter at all; and if you marry her, why, it will set the old house on its legs again, and thats the first thing to be thought of, and you may just as well do it as I, and better too. Not but that its a plague, a horrible plague! went on Amyas, with a ludicrously doleful visage; but so are other things too, by the dozen; its all in the days work, as the huntsman said when the lion ate him. One would never get through the furze-croft if one stopped to pull out the prickles. The pig didnt scramble out of the ditch by squeaking; and the less said the sooner mended; nobody was sent into the world only to suck honey-pots. What must be must, man is but dust; if you cant get crumb, you must fain eat crust. So Ill go and join the army in Ireland, and get it out of my head, for cannon balls fright away love as well as poverty does; and thats all Ive got to say. Wherewith Amyas sat down, and returned to the beer; while Mrs. Leigh wept tears of joy.
Amyas! Amyas! said Frank; you must not throw away the hopes of years, and for me, too! Oh, how just was your parable! Ah! mother mine! to what use is all my scholarship and my philosophy, when this dear simple sailor-lad outdoes me at the first trial of courtesy!
My children, my children, which of you shall I love best? Which of you is the more noble? I thanked God this morning for having given me one such son; but to have found that I possess two! And Mrs. Leigh laid her head on the table, and buried her face in her hands, while the generous battle went on.
But, dearest Amyas!
But, Frank! if you dont hold your tongue, I must go forth. It was quite trouble enough to make up ones mind, without having you afterwards trying to unmake it again.
Amyas! if you give her up to me, God do so to me, and more also, if I do not hereby give her up to you!
He had done it alreadythis morning! said Mrs. Leigh, looking up through her tears. He renounced her forever on his knees before me! only he is too noble to tell you so.
The more reason I should copy him, said Amyas, setting his lips, and trying to look desperately determined, and then suddenly jumping up, he leaped upon Frank, and throwing his arms round his neck, sobbed out, There, there, now! For Gods sake, let us forget all, and think about our mother, and the old house, and how we may win her honor before we die! and that will be enough to keep our hands full, without fretting about this woman and that.What an ass I have been for years! instead of learning my calling, dreaming about her, and dont know at this minute whether she cares more for me than she does for her fathers prentices!
Oh, Amyas! every word of yours puts me to fresh shame! Will you believe that I know as little of her likings as you do?
Dont tell me that, and play the devils game by putting fresh hopes into me, when I am trying to kick them out. I wont believe it. If she is not a fool, she must love you; and if she dont, why, be hanged if she is worth loving!
My dearest Amyas! I must ask you too to make no more such speeches to me. All those thoughts I have forsworn.
Only this morning; so there is time to catch them again before they are gone too far.
Only this morning, said Frank, with a quiet smile: but centuries have passed since then.
Centuries? I dont see many gray hairs yet.
I should not have been surprised if you had, though, answered Frank, in so sad and meaning a tone that Amyas could only answer
Well, you are an angel!
You, at least, are something even more to the purpose, for you are a man!
And both spoke truth, and so the battle ended; and Frank went to his books, while Amyas, who must needs be doing, if he was not to dream, started off to the dockyard to potter about a new ship of Sir Richards, and forget his woes, in the capacity of Sir Oracle among the sailors. And so he had played his move for Rose, even as Eustace had, and lost her: but not as Eustace had.
CHAPTER V
CLOVELLY COURT IN THE OLDEN TIME
It was among the ways of good Queen Bess,
Who ruled as well as ever mortal can, sir,
When she was stoggd, and the country in a mess,
She was wont to send for a Devon man, sir.
The next morning Amyas Leigh was not to be found. Not that he had gone out to drown himself in despair, or even to bemoan himself down by the Torridge side. He had simply ridden off, Frank found, to Sir Richard Grenville at Stow: his mother at once divined the truth, that he was gone to try for a post in the Irish army, and sent off Frank after him to bring him home again, and make him at least reconsider himself.
And both spoke truth, and so the battle ended; and Frank went to his books, while Amyas, who must needs be doing, if he was not to dream, started off to the dockyard to potter about a new ship of Sir Richards, and forget his woes, in the capacity of Sir Oracle among the sailors. And so he had played his move for Rose, even as Eustace had, and lost her: but not as Eustace had.
CHAPTER V
CLOVELLY COURT IN THE OLDEN TIME
It was among the ways of good Queen Bess,
Who ruled as well as ever mortal can, sir,
When she was stoggd, and the country in a mess,
She was wont to send for a Devon man, sir.
The next morning Amyas Leigh was not to be found. Not that he had gone out to drown himself in despair, or even to bemoan himself down by the Torridge side. He had simply ridden off, Frank found, to Sir Richard Grenville at Stow: his mother at once divined the truth, that he was gone to try for a post in the Irish army, and sent off Frank after him to bring him home again, and make him at least reconsider himself.
So Frank took horse and rode thereon ten miles or more: and then, as there were no inns on the road in those days, or indeed in these, and he had some ten miles more of hilly road before him, he turned down the hill towards Clovelly Court, to obtain, after the hospitable humane fashion of those days, good entertainment for man and horse from Mr. Cary the squire.
And when he walked self-invited, like the loud-shouting Menelaus, into the long dark wainscoted hall of the court, the first object he beheld was the mighty form of Amyas, who, seated at the long table, was alternately burying his face in a pasty, and the pasty in his face, his sorrows having, as it seemed, only sharpened his appetite, while young Will Cary, kneeling on the opposite bench, with his elbows on the table, was in that graceful attitude laying down the law fiercely to him in a low voice.
Hillo! lad, cried Amyas; come hither and deliver me out of the hands of this fire-eater, who I verily believe will kill me, if I do not let him kill some one else.
Ah! Mr. Frank, said Will Cary, who, like all other young gentlemen of these parts, held Frank in high honor, and considered him a very oracle and cynosure of fashion and chivalry, welcome here: I was just longing for you, too; I wanted your advice on half-a-dozen matters. Sit down, and eat. There is the ale.
None so early, thank you.
Ah no! said Amyas, burying his head in the tankard, and then mimicking Frank, avoid strong ale o mornings. It heats the blood, thickens the animal spirits, and obfuscates the cerebrum with frenetical and lymphatic idols, which cloud the quintessential light of the pure reason. Eh? young Plato, young Daniel, come hither to judgment! And yet, though I cannot see through the bottom of the tankard already, I can see plain enough still to see this, that Will shall not fight.
Shall I not, eh? who says that? Mr. Frank, I appeal to you, now; only hear.
We are in the judgment-seat, said Frank, settling to the pasty. Proceed, appellant.
Well, I was telling Amyas, that Tom Coffin, of Portledge; I will stand him no longer.
Let him be, then, said Amyas; he could stand very well by himself, when I saw him last.
Plague on you, hold your tongue. Has he any right to look at me as he does, whenever I pass him?
That depends on how he looks; a cat may look at a king, provided she dont take him for a mouse.
Oh, I know how he looks, and what he means too, and he shall stop, or I will stop him. And the other day, when I spoke of Rose SalterneAh! groaned Frank, Ates apple again!(never mind what I said) he burst out laughing in my face; and is not that a fair quarrel? And what is more, I know that he wrote a sonnet, and sent it to her to Stow by a market woman. What right has he to write sonnets when I cant? Its not fair play, Mr. Frank, or I am a Jew, and a Spaniard, and a Papist; its not! And Will smote the table till the plates danced again.
My dear knight of the burning pestle, I have a plan, a device, a disentanglement, according to most approved rules of chivalry. Let us fix a day, and summon by tuck of drum all young gentlemen under the age of thirty, dwelling within fifteen miles of the habitation of that peerless Oriana.
And all prentice-boys too, cried Amyas, out of the pasty.
And all prentice-boys. The bold lads shall fight first, with good quarterstaves, in Bideford Market, till all heads are broken; and the head which is not broken, let the back belonging to it pay the penalty of the noble members cowardice. After which grand tournament, to which that of Tottenham shall be but a flea-bite and a batrachomyomachy
Confound you, and your long words, sir, said poor Will, I know you are flouting me.
Pazienza, Signor Cavaliere; that which is to come is no flouting, but bloody and warlike earnest. For afterwards all the young gentlemen shall adjourn into a convenient field, sand, or bogwhich last will be better, as no man will be able to run away, if he be up to his knees in soft peat: and there stripping to our shirts, with rapiers of equal length and keenest temper, each shall slay his man, catch who catch can, and the conquerors fight again, like a most valiant main of gamecocks as we are, till all be dead, and out of their woes; after which the survivor, bewailing before heaven and earth the cruelty of our Fair Oriana, and the slaughter which her basiliscine eyes have caused, shall fall gracefully upon his sword, and so end the woes of this our lovelorn generation. Placetne Domini? as they used to ask in the Senate at Oxford.
Really, said Cary, this is too bad.
So is, pardon me, your fighting Mr. Coffin with anything longer than a bodkin.
Bodkins are too short for such fierce Bobadils, said Amyas; they would close in so near, that we should have them falling to fisticuffs after the first bout.
Then let them fight with squirts across the market-place; for by heaven and the queens laws, they shall fight with nothing else.
My dear Mr. Cary, went on Frank, suddenly changing his bantering tone to one of the most winning sweetness, do not fancy that I cannot feel for you, or that I, as well as you, have not known the stings of love and the bitterer stings of jealousy. But oh, Mr. Cary, does it not seem to you an awful thing to waste selfishly upon your own quarrel that divine wrath which, as Plato says, is the very root of all virtues, and which has been given you, like all else which you have, that you may spend it in the service of her whom all bad souls fear, and all virtuous souls adore,our peerless queen? Who dares, while she rules England, call his sword or his courage his own, or any ones but hers? Are there no Spaniards to conquer, no wild Irish to deliver from their oppressors, that two gentlemen of Devon can find no better place to flesh their blades than in each others valiant and honorable hearts?
By heaven! cried Amyas, Frank speaks like a book; and for me, I do think that Christian gentlemen may leave love quarrels to bulls and rams.
And that the heir of Clovelly, said Frank, smiling, may find more noble examples to copy than the stags in his own deer-park.
Well, said Will, penitently, you are a great scholar, Mr. Frank, and you speak like one; but gentlemen must fight sometimes, or where would be their honor?