"I would I were but a king! Wouldn't I lead a brave life!"

"That would not I be for all the riches in Christendom."

"The which speech showeth thine unwisdom. Why, a king can have his purveyor to pick of the finest in the market ere any other be serven; he can lay tax on his people whenas it shall please him [this was true at that time]; he can have a whole pig or goose to his table every morrow; and as for the gifts that be brought him, they be without number.

Marry, but if I were a king, wouldn't I have a long gown of blue velvet, all o'er broidered of seed-pearl, and a cap of cramoisie [crimson velvet], with golden broidery! And a summer jack [the garment of which jacket is the diminutive] of samitelle would I have--let me see--green, I reckon, bound with gold ribbon; and fair winter hoods of miniver and ermine, and b.u.t.tons of gold by the score. Who so bravely apparelled as I, trow?"

"Be your garments not warm enough, Matthew?"

"Warm enough? certes! But they be only camoca and lamb's far, with never a silver b.u.t.ton, let be gold."

"What advantage should gold b.u.t.tons be to you? Those pearl do attach your gown full evenly as well."

"Hylton, thou hast no ambitiousness in thee! Seest not that folks should pay me a deal more respect, thus donned [dressed] in my bravery?"

"That is, they should pay much respect to the blue velvet and the gold b.u.t.tons? You should be no different that I can see."

"I should be a vast sight comelier, man alive!"

"You!" returned Hylton.

"Where's the good of talking to thee? As well essay to learn a sparrow to sing, '_J'ay tout perdu mon temps_.'"

"I think you should have lost your time in very deed, and your labour belike, if you spent them on broidering gowns and st.i.tching on b.u.t.tons, when you had enow aforetime."

"Thou sely loon! [Simple creature!] Dost reckon I mean to work mine own broidery, trow? I'd have a fair score of maidens alway a-broidering for me, so that I might ever have a fresh device when I lacked a new gown."

"The which should come in a year to--how much?"

"Dost look for me to know?"

"I do, when I have told you. Above an hundred and twenty pound, Master Matthew. That should your bravery cost you, in broidering-maids alone."

"Well! what matter, so I had it?"

"It might serve you. I should desire to buy more happiness with such a sum than could be st.i.tched into golden broidery and seed-pearl."

"Now come, Norman, let us hear thy notion of happiness. If thou hadst in thine hand an hundred pound, what should'st do withal?"

"I would see if I could not dry up as many widows' tears as I had golden pieces, and bring as many smiles to the lips of orphans as they should divide into silver."

"Prithee, what good should that do thee?"

"It should keep mine heart warm in the chillest winter thereafter. But I thought rather of the good it should do them than me."

"But what be such like folks to thee?"

"Our Lord died for them, and He is something to me."

"Fate meant thee for a monk, Hylton. Thou rannest thine head against the wall to become a squire."

"Be monks the sole men that love G.o.d?"

"They be the sole men that hold such talk."

"I have known monks that held full different talk, I do ensure you. And I have known laymen that loved G.o.d as well as any monk that ever paced cloister."

"Gramercy! do leave preaching of sermons. I have enow of them from my Lady my mother. Let's be jolly, if we can."

"You should have the better right to be jolly, to know whither you were going, and that you should surely come out safe at the far end."

"Happy man be my dole! I'm no wise feared. I'll give an hundred pound to the Church the week afore I die, and that shall buy me a soft-cushioned seat in Heaven, I'll warrant."

"Who told you so much? Any that had been there?"

"Man alive! wilt hold thy peace, and let man be? Thou art turned now into a predicant friar. I'll leave thee here to preach to the gilly-flowers."

And Matthew walked off, with a sprig of mint in his mouth. He was not a bad man, as men go. He was simply a man who wanted to please himself, and to be comfortable and easy. In his eyes the whole fabric of the universe revolved round Matthew Foljambe. He did not show it as the royal savage did, who beat a primitive gong in token that, as he had sat down to dinner, the rest of the world might lawfully satisfy their hunger; but the sentiment in Matthew's mind was a civilised and refined form of the same idea. If he were comfortable, what did it signify if everybody else were uncomfortable?

Like all men in his day--and a good many in our own--Matthew had a low opinion of woman. It had been instilled into him, as it was at that time into every man who wrote himself "esquire," that the utmost chivalrous reverence was due to the ladies as an abstract idea; but this abstract idea was quite compatible with the rudest behaviour and the supremest contempt for any given woman in the concrete. Woman was an article of which there were two qualities: the first-cla.s.s thing was a toy, the second was a machine. Both were for the use of man--which was true enough, had they only realised that it meant for man's real help and improvement, bodily, mental, and spiritual; but they understood it to mean for the bodily comfort and mental amus.e.m.e.nt of the n.o.bler half of the human race. The natural result of this was that every woman must be appropriated to some master. The bare notion of allowing a woman to choose whether she would go through life unattached to a master, or, if otherwise, to reject one she feared or disliked, would have seemed to Matthew the most preposterous audacity on the part of the inferior creature, as it would also have appeared if the inferior creature had shown discontent with the lot marked out for it. The inferior creature, on the whole, walked very meekly in the path thus swept for it. This was partly, no doubt, because it was so taught as a religious duty; but partly, also, because the style of education then given to women left no room for the mental wings to expand. The bird was supplied with good seed and fresh water, and the idea of its wanting anything else was regarded as absurd. Let it sit on the perch and sing in a properly subdued tone. That it was graciously allowed to sing was enough for any reasonable bird, and ought to call forth on its part overflowing grat.i.tude.

Even then, a few of the caged birds were not content to sit meekly on the perch, but they were eyed askance by the properly behaved ones, and held up to the unfledged nestlings as sorrowful examples of the pernicious habit of thinking for one's self. Never was bird less satisfied to be shut up in a cage than the hapless prisoner in that manor house, whom the peasants of the neighbourhood knew as the White Lady. Now and then they caught a glimpse of her at the window of her chamber, which she insisted on having open, and at which she would stand sometimes by the hour together, looking sorrowfully out on the blue sky and the green fields, wherein she might wander no more. A wild bird was Marguerite of Flanders, in whose veins ran the blood of those untamed sea-eagles, the Vikings of Denmark; and though bars and wires might keep her in the cage, to make her content with it was beyond their power.

So thought Norman Hylton, looking up at the white figure visible behind the bars which crossed the cas.e.m.e.nt of the captive's chamber. He knew little of her beyond her name.

"Saying thy prayers to the moon, Hylton? or to the White Lady?" asked a voice behind him.

"Neither, G.o.dfrey. I was marvelling wherefore she is mewed up there.

Dost know?"

"I know she was a full wearisome woman to my Lord Duke her son, and that he is a jollier man by the acre since she here dwelt."

"Was she his own mother?" asked Norman.

"His own?--ay, for sure; and did him a good turn at the beginning, by preserving his kingdom for him when he was but a lad."

"And could he find no better reward for her than this?"

"Tut! she sharped [teased, irritated] him, man. He could not have his will for her."

"Could he ne'er have put up with a little less of it? Or was his will so much dearer to him than his mother?"

"Dost reckon he longed sore to be ridden of an old woman, and made to trot to market at her pleasure, when his own was to take every gate and hurdle in his way? Thou art old woman thyself, an' thou so dost. My Lord Duke is no jog-trot market-a.s.s, I can tell thee, but as fiery a war-charger as man may see in a summer's day. And dost think a war-charger should be well a-paid to have an old woman of his back?"

"My Lady his mother, then, hath no fire in her?" said Norman, glancing up at her where she stood behind the bars in her white weeds, looking down on the two young men in the garden.

"Marry, enough to burn a city down. She did burn the King of France's camp afore Hennebon. And whenas she was prisoner in Tickhill Castle, a certain knight, whose name I know not, [the name of this knight is apparently not on record], covenanted secretly with her by means of some bribe, or such like, given to her keepers, that he would deliver her from durance; and one night scaled he the walls, and she herself gat down from her window, and clambered like a cat by means of the water-spout and slight footholds in the stonework, till she came to the bottom, and then over the walls and away. They were taken, as thou mayest lightly guess, yet they gat them nigh clear of the liberties ere they could again be captivated. Fire! ay, that hath she, and ever will.

Forsooth, that is the cause wherefore she harried her son. If she would have sat still at her spinning, he'd have left her be. But, look thou, she could not leave him be."

"Wherein did she seek to let him, wot you?"