Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (rooftoppers TXT) ๐
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- Author: Thomas Love Peacock
Read book online ยซMaid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (rooftoppers TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Thomas Love Peacock
The baron was going to storm, but the friar paused, and Matilda sang in repetition,โ
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.
โA precious friar,โ said the baron.
But drown its toll with my clanging horn, sang Matilda.
โMore shame for you,โ 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.
โPenitent and confessor,โ said the baron: โa hopeful pair truly.โ
The friar went on,โ
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 wheneโer I hear Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!Matilda chimed in as before.
โAre you mad?โ said the baron. โAre you insane? Are you possessed? What do you mean? What in the devilโs name do you both mean?โ
Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho!roared the friar.
The baronโs 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.โNay father,โ said Matilda, taking the baronโs hand, โdo 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.โ
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, โSing on, in Godโs name, and crack away the flasks till your voice swims in canary.โ Then turning to Sir Ralph, he said, โYou see how it is, sir knight. Matilda is my daughter; but she has me in leading-strings, that is the truth of it.โ
CHAPTER V โT 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.โBUTLER.
The friar had often had experience of the baronโs 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 daughterโs 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 baronโs 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 earlโs 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 kingโs forces, and in those days possession was considerably more than eleven points of the law. The baron was therefore convinced that the earlโs 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 baronโs 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.
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. 2For his discobolic exploit proved the climax of his rage, and was succeeded by an immediate sense that he had passed the bounds of legitimate passion; and he sunk immediately from the very pinnacle of opposition to the level of implicit acquiescence. The friarโs spirits were not to be marred by such a little incident. He was half-inclined, at first, to return the baronโs compliment; but his love of Matilda checked him; and when the baron held out his hand, the friar seized it cordially, and they drowned all recollection of the affair by pledging each other in a cup of canary.
The friar, having stayed long enough
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