Part 6 (1/2)
And when he walked self-invited, like the loud-shouting Menelaus, into the long dark wainscoted hall of the court, the first object he beheld was thetable, was alternately burying his face in a pasty, and the pasty in his face, his sorrows having, as it see Will Cary, kneeling on the opposite bench, with his elbows on the table, was in that graceful attitude laying down the law fiercely to him in a low voice
”Hillo! lad,” cried Amyas; ”come hither and deliver me out of the hands of this fire-eater, who I verily believe will kill me, if I do not let him kill some one else”
”Ah! Mr Frank,” said Will Cary, who, like all other young gentleh honor, and considered him a very oracle and cynosure of fashi+on and chivalry, ”welco for you, too; I wanted your advice on half-a-dozen matters Sit down, and eat There is the ale”
”None so early, thank you”
”Ah no!” said A Frank, ”avoid strong ale o' s It heats the blood, thickens the animal spirits, and obfuscates the cerebrum with frenetical and lyht of the pure reason Eh? young Plato, young Daniel, coh the bottoh still to see this, that Will shall not fight”
”Shall I not, eh? who says that? Mr Frank, I appeal to you, now; only hear”
”We are in the judg to the pasty ”Proceed, appellant”
”Well, I was telling Aer”
”Let him be, then,” said Amyas; ”he could stand very well by hiue on you, hold your tongue Has he any right to look at me as he does, whenever I pass him?”
”That depends on how he looks; a cat , provided she don't take him for a mouse”
”Oh, I kno he looks, and what he means too, and he shall stop, or I will stop hiroaned Frank, ”Ate's apple again!”--”(neverin my face; and is not that a fair quarrel? And what is more, I know that he wrote a sonnet, and sent it to her to Stow by a ht has he to write sonnets when I can't? It's not fair play, Mr Frank, or I am a Jew, and a Spaniard, and a Papist; it's not!” And Will sain
”My dear knight of the burning pestle, I have a plan, a device, a disentangle to most approved rules of chivalry Let us fix a day, and sue of thirty, dwelling within fifteen miles of the habitation of that peerless Oriana”
”And all 'prentice-boys too,” cried Amyas, out of the pasty
”And all 'prentice-boys The bold lads shall fight first, with good quarterstaves, in Bideford Market, till all heads are broken; and the head which is not broken, let the back belonging to it pay the penalty of the noble rand tournament, to which that of Tottenham shall be but a flea-bite and a batracho words, sir,” said poor Will, ”I know you are flouting nor Cavaliere; that which is to co, but bloody and warlike earnest For afterwards all the young gentle-- which last will be better, as no man will be able to run away, if he be up to his knees in soft peat: and there stripping to our shi+rts, with rapiers of equal length and keenest temper, each shall slay his ain, like a amecocks as we are, till all be dead, and out of their woes; after which the survivor, bewailing before heaven and earth the cruelty of our Fair Oriana, and the slaughter which her basiliscine eyes have caused, shall fall gracefully upon his sword, and so end the woes of this our lovelorn generation Placetne Domini? as they used to ask in the Senate at Oxford”
”Really,” said Cary, ”this is too bad”
”So is, pardon er than a bodkin”
”Bodkins are too short for such fierce Bobadils,” said Amyas; ”they would close in so near, that we should have the to fisticuffs after the first bout”
”Then let theht with squirts across the market-place; for by heaven and the queen's laws, they shall fight with nothing else”
”My dear Mr Cary,” went on Frank, suddenly changing his bantering tone to one of thesweetness, ”do not fancy that I cannot feel for you, or that I, as well as you, have not known the stings of love and the bitterer stings of jealousy But oh, Mr Cary, does it not see to waste selfishly upon your own quarrel that divine wrath which, as Plato says, is the very root of all virtues, and which has been given you, like all else which you have, that you may spend it in the service of her whom all bad souls fear, and all virtuous souls adore,--our peerless queen? Who dares, while she rules England, call his sword or his courage his own, or any one's but hers? Are there no Spaniards to conquer, no wild Irish to deliver froentlemen of Devon can find no better place to flesh their blades than in each other's valiant and honorable hearts?”
”By heaven!” cried Amyas, ”Frank speaks like a book; and for entlemen may leave love quarrels to bulls and rams”
”And that the heir of Clovelly,” said Frank, ss in his own deer-park”
”Well,” said Will, penitently, ”you are a great scholar, Mr Frank, and you speak like one; but gentleht sometimes, or where would be their honor?”
”I speak,” said Frank, a little proudly, ”not ht ere now, and to whom it has happened, Mr Cary, to kill his man (on whose soul may God have mercy); but it is ht in my own quarrel, andht in behalf of those e love, so to fight in our own private behalf is a thing not to be allowed to a Christian man, unless refusal imports utter loss of life or honor; and even then, it h I would not lay a burden on any man's conscience), it is better not to resist evil, but to overcoood”
”And I can tell you, Will,” said Ahosts; but when I cut off the Frenchart had been slandering raciouson ht'”
”God forbid!” said Will, with a shudder ”But what shall I do? for to the o, if it were choke-full of Coffins, and a ghost in each coffin of the lot”
”Leave the matter to me,” said Amyas ”I have my device, as well as scholar Frank here; and if there be, as I suppose there must be, a quarrel in the market to-ood fellows,” said Will ”Let us have another tankard in”
”And drink the health of Mr Coffin, and all gallant lads of the North,” said Frank; ”and now to my business I have to take this runaway youth here hoo quietly, I have orders to carry hi back, then,” said Ao on and see Sir Richard, Frank It is all very well to jest as we have been doing, but my mind is ht; first, for good fellowshi+p's sake; and next, because I want the advice of our Phoenix here, our oracle, our paragon There, Mr Frank, can you construe that for entleive ?”
”Eh, co men, you are alelcome, and such as you Would there were ood mother, Frank, eh? Where have I been, Will? Round the house-farm, to look at the beeves That sheeted heifer of Prowse's is all wrong; her coat stares like a hedgepig's Tell Jewell to go up and bring her in before night And then up the forty acres; sprang two coveys, and picked a leash out of theard still, and will never make a bird I had to hand her to Toainst the world, after all; and--heigh ho, I ary! Half-past twelve, and dinner not served? What, Master A ale? Better have tried sack, lad; have so finished his oration, settled hireat bench inside the chimney, and put his hawk on a perch over his head, while his cockers coiled themselves up close to the warm peat-ashes, and his son set to work to pull off his father's boots, as to take care of his corns
”Coar, and a bit of a shoeing-horn to it ere we dine Some pickled prawns, now, or a rasher off the coals, to whet you?”
”Thank you,” quoth Amyas; ”but I have drunk a mort of outlandish liquors, better and worse, in the last three years, and yet never found aught to co- horn before nor after, but takes care of itself, and of all honest stomachs too, I think”
”You speak like a book, boy,” said old Cary; ”and after all, what a plague coled hot wines, and aqua vitaes, which have co of the brains, and fever of the blood?”
”I fear we have not seen the end of that yet,” said Frank ”My friends writeinto a swinish trick of swilling like the Hollanders Heaven grant that theyhome the fashi+on with theue, in those vile swaet horant it,” said Frank; ”I should be sorry to see Devonshi+re a drunken county; and there are many of our men out there with Mr Champernoun”
”Ah,” said Cary, ”there, as in Ireland, we are proving her ht hand, and the young children thereof like the arrows in the hand of the giant”
”They iants themselves, like my tall school-fellow opposite”
”He will be up and doing again presently, I'll warrant him,” said old Cary
”And that I shall,” quoth A brave deeds; and see in the distance enchanters to be bound, dragons choked, eh not in Holland”
”You do?” asked Will, a little sharply; for he had had a half suspicion that more wasoff his jest again, ”I go to what Raleigh calls the Land of the Nymphs Another month, I hope, will see me abroad in Ireland”
”Abroad? Call it rather at home,” said old Cary; ”for it is full of Devonfriends all day long George Bourchier froer is e Careith Lord Grey of Wilton (Poor Peter Careas killed at Glendalough); and after the defeat last year, when that villain Desmond cut off Herbert and Price, the companies were made up with six hundred Devon men, and Arthur Fortescue at their head; so that the old county holds her head as proudly in the Land of Ire as she does in the Low Countries and the Spanish Main”
”And where,” asked Amyas, ”is Davils of Marsland, who used to teachdown at Stow? He is in Ireland, too, is he not?”
”Ah, ht all England had known it”
”You forget, sir, I aer Surely he is not dead?”
”Murdered foully, lad! Murdered like a dog, and by the man whom he had treated as his son, and who pretended, the false knave! to call hied?” said Amyas, fiercely
”No, by heaven, not yet! Stay, don't cry out again I a old--I must tell my story my oay It was last July,--was it not, Will?--Over comes to Ireland Saunders, one of those Jesuit foxes, as the Pope's legate, with money and bulls, and a banner hallowed by the Pope, and the devil knohat beside; and with him James Fitzmaurice, the same felloho had sworn on his knees to Perrott, in the church at Kileman to Queen Elizabeth, and confirmed it by all his saints, and such a world of his Irish howling, that Perrott told me he was fain to stop his own ears Well, he had been practising with the King of France, but got nothing but laughter for his pains, and so went over to the Most Catholic King, and proain, and what not And he, I suppose, thinking it better that Ireland should belong to him than to the Pope's bastard, fits him out, and sends hih I will say, for the honor of Devon, if Stukely lived like a fool, he died like an honest man”