Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (large screen ebook reader txt) 📗

the young lady of Arlingford; and he prepared in the morning to visit the castle, under the very plausible pretext of giving the baron an explanation of his intervention at the nuptials. Brother Michael and the little fat friar proposed to be his guides. The proposal was courteously accepted, and they set out together, leaving Sir Ralph’s followers at the abbey. The knight was mounted on a spirited charger; brother Michael on a large heavy-trotting horse; and the little fat friar on a plump soft-paced galloway, so correspondent with himself in size, rotundity, and sleekness, that if they had been amalgamated into a centaur, there would have been nothing to alter in their proportions.

“Do you know,” said the little friar, as they wound along the banks of the stream, “the reason why lake-trout is better than river-trout, and shyer withal?”

“I was not aware of the fact,” said Sir Ralph.

“A most heterodox remark,” said brother Michael: “know you not, that in all nice matters you should take the implication for absolute, and, without looking into the FACT WHETHER, seek only the reason why? But the fact is so, on the word of a friar; which what layman will venture to gainsay who prefers a down bed to a gridiron?”

“The fact being so,” said the knight, “I am still at a loss for the reason; nor would I undertake to opine in a matter of that magnitude: since, in all that appertains to the good things either of this world or the next, my reverend spiritual guides are kind enough to take the trouble of thinking off my hands.”

“Spoken,” said brother Michael, “with a sound Catholic conscience. My little brother here is most profound in the matter of trout. He has marked, learned, and inwardly digested the subject, twice a week at least for five-and-thirty years. I yield to him in this. My strong points are venison and canary.”

“The good qualities of a trout,” said the little friar, “are firmness and redness: the redness, indeed, being the visible sign of all other virtues.”

“Whence,” said brother Michael, “we choose our abbot by his nose:

The rose on the nose doth all virtues disclose: For the outward grace shows That the inward overflows, When it glows in the rose of a red, red nose.”

“Now,” said the little friar, “as is the firmness so is the redness, and as is the redness so is the shyness.”

“Marry why?” said brother Michael. “The solution is not physical-natural, but physical-historical, or natural-superinductive. And thereby hangs a tale, which may be either said or sung:

The damsel stood to watch the fight By the banks of Kingslea Mere, And they brought to her feet her own true knight Sore-wounded on a bier. She knelt by him his wounds to bind, She washed them with many a tear: And shouts rose fast upon the wind, Which told that the foe was near. “Oh! let not,” he said, “while yet I live, The cruel foe me take: But with thy sweet lips a last kiss give, And cast me in the lake.” Around his neck she wound her arms, And she kissed his lips so pale: And evermore the war’s alarms Came louder up the vale. She drew him to the lake’s steep side, Where the red heath fringed the shore; She plunged with him beneath the tide, And they were seen no more. Their true blood mingled in Kingslea Mere, That to mingle on earth was fain: And the trout that swims in that crystal clear Is tinged with the crimson stain.

“Thus you see how good comes of evil, and how a holy friar may fare better on fast-day for the violent death of two lovers two hundred years ago. The inference is most consecutive, that wherever you catch a red-fleshed trout, love lies bleeding under the water: an occult quality, which can only act in the stationary waters of a lake, being neutralised by the rapid transition of those of a stream.”

“And why is the trout shyer for that?” asked Sir Ralph.

“Do you not see?” said brother Michael. “The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are the towers of Arlingford.”

The little friar stopped. He seemed suddenly struck with an awful thought, which caused a momentary pallescence in his rosy complexion; and after a brief hesitation, he turned his galloway, and told his companions he should give them good day.

“Why, what is in the wind now, brother Peter?” said Friar Michael.

“The lady Matilda,” said the little friar, “can draw the long-bow. She must bear no goodwill to Sir Ralph; and if she should espy him from her tower, she may testify her recognition with a cloth-yard shaft. She is not so infallible a markswoman, but that she might shoot at a crow and kill a pigeon. She might peradventure miss the knight, and hit me, who never did her any harm.”

“Tut, tut, man,” said brother Michael, “there is no such fear.”

“Mass,” said the little friar, “but there is such a fear, and very strong too. You who have it not may keep your way, and I who have it shall take mine. I am not just now in the vein for being picked off at a long shot.” And saying these words, he spurred up his four-footed better half, and galloped off as nimbly as if he had had an arrow singing behind him.

“Is this lady Matilda, then, so very terrible a damsel?” said Sir Ralph to brother Michael.

“By no means,” said the friar. “She has certainly a high spirit; but it is the wing of the eagle, without his beak or his claw. She is as gentle as magnanimous; but it is the gentleness of the summer wind, which, however lightly it wave the tuft of the pine, carries with it the intimation of a power, that, if roused to its extremity, could make it bend to the dust.”

“From the warmth of your panegyric, ghostly father,” said the knight, “I should almost suspect you were in love with the damsel.”

“So I am,” said the friar, “and I care not who knows it; but all in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am, as it were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant, I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar militant. I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her cause. Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your soldiership, the earl is her liege lord, and she is his liege lady. I am her father confessor and ghostly director: I have taken on me to show her the way to the next world; and how can I do that if I lose sight of her in this? seeing that this is but the road to the other, and has so many circumvolutions and ramifications of byeways and beaten paths (all more thickly set than the true one with finger-posts and milestones, not one of which tells truth), that a traveller has need of some one who knows the way, or the odds go hard against him that he will ever see the face of Saint Peter.”

“But there must surely be some reason,” said Sir Ralph, “for father Peter’s apprehension.”