Kenilworth by Walter Scott (cool books to read txt) 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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“She is gone, then,” said the smith, interpreting after his own fashion the sigh with which Tressilian uttered these words—“she is gone, young, beautiful, and beloved as she was!—I crave your worship's pardon—I should have hammered on another theme. I see I have unwarily driven the nail to the quick.”
This speech was made with a mixture of rude feeling which inclined Tressilian favourably to the poor artisan, of whom before he was inclined to judge very harshly. But nothing can so soon attract the unfortunate as real or seeming sympathy with their sorrows.
“I think,” proceeded Tressilian, after a minute's silence, “thou wert in those days a jovial fellow, who could keep a company merry by song, and tale, and rebeck, as well as by thy juggling tricks—why do I find thee a laborious handicraftsman, plying thy trade in so melancholy a dwelling and under such extraordinary circumstances?”
“My story is not long,” said the artist, “but your honour had better sit while you listen to it.” So saying, he approached to the fire a three-footed stool, and took another himself; while Dickie Sludge, or Flibbertigibbet, as he called the boy, drew a cricket to the smith's feet, and looked up in his face with features which, as illuminated by the glow of the forge, seemed convulsed with intense curiosity. “Thou too,” said the smith to him, “shalt learn, as thou well deservest at my hand, the brief history of my life; and, in troth, it were as well tell it thee as leave thee to ferret it out, since Nature never packed a shrewder wit into a more ungainly casket.—Well, sir, if my poor story may pleasure you, it is at your command, But will you not taste a stoup of liquor? I promise you that even in this poor cell I have some in store.”
“Speak not of it,” said Tressilian, “but go on with thy story, for my leisure is brief.”
“You shall have no cause to rue the delay,” said the smith, “for your horse shall be better fed in the meantime than he hath been this morning, and made fitter for travel.”
With that the artist left the vault, and returned after a few minutes' interval. Here, also, we pause, that the narrative may commence in another chapter.
CHAPTER XI. I say, my lord, can such a subtilty (But all his craft ye must not wot of me, And somewhat help I yet to his working), That all the ground on which we ben riding, Till that we come to Canterbury town, He can all clean turnen so up so down, And pave it all of silver and of gold. —THE CANON'S YEOMAN'S PROLOGUE, CANTERBURY TALES.
THE artist commenced his narrative in the following terms:—
“I was bred a blacksmith, and knew my art as well as e'er a black-thumbed, leathern-aproned, swart-faced knave of that noble mystery. But I tired of ringing hammer-tunes on iron stithies, and went out into the world, where I became acquainted with a celebrated juggler, whose fingers had become rather too stiff for legerdemain, and who wished to have the aid of an apprentice in his noble mystery. I served him for six years, until I was master of my trade—I refer myself to your worship, whose judgment cannot be disputed, whether I did not learn to ply the craft indifferently well?”
“Excellently,” said Tressilian; “but be brief.”
“It was not long after I had performed at Sir Hugh Robsart's, in your worship's presence,” said the artist, “that I took myself to the stage, and have swaggered with the bravest of them all, both at the Black Bull, the Globe, the Fortune, and elsewhere; but I know not how—apples were so plenty that year that the lads in the twopenny gallery never took more than one bite out of them, and threw the rest of the pippin at whatever actor chanced to be on the stage. So I tired of it—renounced my half share in the company, gave my foil to my comrade, my buskins to the wardrobe, and showed the theatre a clean pair of heels.”
“Well, friend, and what,” said Tressilian, “was your next shift?”
“I became,” said the smith, “half partner, half domestic to a man of much skill and little substance, who practised the trade of a physicianer.”
“In other words,” said Tressilian, “you were Jack Pudding to a quacksalver.”
“Something beyond that, let me hope, my good Master Tressilian,” replied the artist; “and yet to say truth, our practice was of an adventurous description, and the pharmacy which I had acquired in my first studies for the benefit of horses was frequently applied to our human patients. But the seeds of all maladies are the same; and if turpentine, tar, pitch, and beef-suet, mingled with turmerick, gum-mastick, and one bead of garlick, can cure the horse that hath been grieved with a nail, I see not but what it may benefit the man that hath been pricked with a sword. But my master's practice, as well as his skill, went far beyond mine, and dealt in more dangerous concerns. He was not only a bold, adventurous practitioner in physic, but also, if your pleasure so chanced to be, an adept who read the stars, and expounded the fortunes of mankind, genethliacally, as he called it, or otherwise. He was a learned distiller of simples, and a profound chemist—made several efforts to fix mercury, and judged himself to have made a fair hit at the philosopher's stone. I have yet a programme of his on that subject, which, if your honour understandeth, I believe you have the better, not only of all who read, but also of him who wrote it.”
He gave Tressilian a scroll of parchment, bearing at top and bottom, and down the margin, the signs of the seven planets, curiously intermingled with talismanical characters and scraps of Greek and Hebrew. In the midst were some Latin verses from a cabalistical author, written out so fairly, that even the gloom of the place did not prevent Tressilian from reading them. The tenor of the original ran as follows:—
“Si fixum solvas, faciasque volare solutum, Et volucrem figas, facient te vivere tutum; Si pariat ventum, valet auri pondere centum; Ventus ubi vult spirat—Capiat qui capere potest.”“I protest to you,” said Tressilian, “all I understand of this jargon is that the last words seem to mean 'Catch who catch can.'”
“That,” said the smith, “is the very principle that my worthy friend and master, Doctor Doboobie, always acted upon; until, being besotted with his own imaginations, and conceited of his high chemical skill, he began to spend, in cheating himself, the money which he had acquired in cheating others, and either discovered or built for himself, I could never know which, this secret elaboratory, in which he used to seclude himself both from patients and disciples, who doubtless thought his long and mysterious absences from his ordinary residence in the town of Farringdon were occasioned by his progress in the mystic sciences, and his intercourse with the invisible world. Me also he tried to deceive; but though I contradicted him not, he saw that I knew too much of his secrets to be any longer a safe companion. Meanwhile, his name
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