Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (best self help books to read .txt) 📗

“I know.”

“Whereon Gospatrick sends to me for the girl and her dowry. What was I to do? Give her up? Little it is, lad, that I ever gave up, after I had it once in my grip, or I should be a poorer man than I am now. Have and hold, is my rule. What should I do? What I did. I was coming hither on business of my own, so I put her on board ship, and half her dower,—where the other half is, I know; and man must draw me with wild horses, before he finds out;—and came here to my kinsman, Baldwin, to see if he had any proper young fellow to whom we might marry the lass, and so go shares in her money and the family connection. Could a man do more wisely?”

“Impossible,” quoth Hereward.

“But see how a wise man is lost by fortune. When I come here, whom should I find but Dolfin himself? The dog had scent of my plan, all the way from Dolfinston there, by Peebles. He hunts me out, the hungry Scotch wolf; rides for Leith, takes ship, and is here to meet me, having accused me before Baldwin as a robber and ravisher, and offers to prove his right to the jade on my body in single combat.”

“The villain!” quoth Hereward. “There is no modesty left on earth, nor prudence either. To come here, where he might have stumbled on Tosti, who murdered his son, and I would surely do the like by him, himself. Lucky for him that Tosti is off to Norway on his own errand.”

“Modesty and prudence? None now-a-days, young sire; nor justice either, I think; for when Baldwin hears us both—and I told my story as cannily as I could—he tells me that he is very sorry for an old vassal and kinsman, and so forth,—but I must either disgorge or fight.”

“Then fight,” quoth Hereward.

“‘Per se aut per campioneem,’—that’s the old law, you know.”

“Not a doubt of it.”

“Look you, Hereward. I am no coward, nor a clumsy man of my hands.”

“He is either fool or liar who says so.”

“But see. I find it hard work to hold my own in Scotland now. Folks don’t like me, or trust me; I can’t say why.”

“How unreasonable!” quoth Hereward.

“And if I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet’s nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]—but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them take up the quarrel. And beside, that Dolfin is a big man. If you cross Scot and Saxon, you breed a very big man. If you cross again with a Dane or a Norseman, you breed a giant. His grandfather was a Scots prince, his grandmother an English Etheliza, his mother a Norse princess, as you know,—and how big he is, you should remember. He weighs half as much again as I, and twice as much as you.”

“Butchers count by weight, and knights by courage,” quoth Hereward.

“Very well for you, who are young and active; but I take him to be a better man than that ogre of Cornwall, whom they say you killed.”

“What care I? Let him be twice as good, I’d try him.”

“Ah! I knew you were the old Hereward still. Now hearken to me. Be my champion. You owe me a service, lad. Fight that man, challenge him in open field. Kill him, as you are sure to do. Claim the lass, and win her,—and then we will part her dower. And (though it is little that I care for young lasses’ fancies), to tell you truth, she never favored any man but you.”

Hereward started at the snare which had been laid for him; and then fell into a very great laughter.

“My most dear and generous host: you are the wiser, the older you grow. A plan worthy of Solomon! You are rid of Sieur Dolfin without any blame to yourself.”

“Just so.”

“While I win the lass, and, living here in Flanders, am tolerably safe from any blood-feud of the Gospatricks.”

“Just so.”

“Perfect: but there is only one small hindrance to the plan; and that is—that I am married already.”

Gilbert stopped short, and swore a great oath.

“But,” he said, after a while, “does that matter so much after all?”

“Very little, indeed, as all the world knows, if one has money enough, and power enough.”

“And you have both,” they say.

“But, still more unhappily, my money is my wife’s.”

“Peste!”

“And more unhappily still, I am so foolishly fond of her, that I would sooner have her in her smock, than any other woman with half England for a dower.”

“Then I suppose I must look out for another champion.”

“Or save yourself the trouble, by being—just as a change—an honest man.”

“I believe you are right,” said Gilbert, laughing; “but it is hard to begin so late in life.”

“And after one has had so little practice.”

“Aha! Thou art the same merry dog of a Hereward. Come along. But could we not poison this Dolfin, after all?”

To which proposal Hereward gave no encouragement.

“And now, my très beausire, may I ask you, in return, what business brings you to Flanders?”

“Have I not told you?”

“No, but I have guessed. Gilbert of Ghent is on his way to William of Normandy.”

“Well. Why not?”

“Why not?—certainly. And has brought out of Scotland a few gallant gentlemen, and stout housecarles of my acquaintance.”

Gilbert laughed.

“You may well say that. To tell you the truth, we have flitted, bag and baggage. I don’t believe that we have left a dog behind.”

“So you intend to ‘colonize’ in England, as the learned clerks would call it? To settle; to own land; and enter, like the Jews of old, into goodly houses which you builded not, farms which you tilled not, wells which you digged not, and orchards which you planted not?”

“Why, what a clerk you are! That sounds like Scripture.”

“And so it is. I heard it in a French priest’s sermon, which he preached here in St. Omer a Sunday or two back,