Part 11 (2/2)
”Dear father alive, Mr A by the moor road all alone with that chap?”
”Why not, then? I' for hiht, I tell you; not coo forth with creatures as has flames of fire in their inwards; 'tis temptation of Providence, indeed, then, it is”
”Tale of a tub”
”Tale of a Christian, sir There o boys pig-, seed him at it down the hill, beside a maiden that was takenasterisks non to the o by--and saw the flames come out of the mouth of mun, and the s of o with he after dark over ainst you, because you'ainst his sarvants the Pope of Room and the Spaniard; and you'll be Pixy-led, sure as life, and locked into a bog, you will, and see mun vanish away to fire and brimstone, like a jack-o'-lantern Oh, have a care, then, have a care!”
And the old hter, rode off down the park, with the unconscious Yeo at his stirrup, chatting away about the Indies, and delighting Ah eloquence
They had gone ten an to draw in, and the western wind to sweepthat there was not an inn hard by around for many a mile ahead, took a pull at a certain bottle which Lady Grenville had put into his holster, and then offered Yeo a pull also
He declined; he had meat and drink too about him, Heaven be praised!
”Meat and drink? Fall to, then,an old decayedby a brook, went to it, and took therefroht with his knife and a stone, while Amyas watched, a little puzzled and startled, as Yeo's fiery reputation ca to war tinder? But now Yeo, in his solemn an rolling a piece of it up neatly to the size of his little finger; and then, putting the one end into his mouth and the other on the tinder, sucked at it till it was a-light; and drinking down the srunt of deepest satisfaction, and resu chih, and cried-- ”Why, no wonder they said you breathed fire? Is not that the Indians' tobacco?”
”Yea, verily, Heaven be praised! but did you never see it before?”
”Never, though we heard talk of it along the coast; but we took it for one more Spanish lie Humph--well, live and learn!”
”Ah, sir, no lie, but a blessed truth, as I can tell, who have ere now gone in the strength of this weed three days and nights without eating; and therefore, sir, the Indians always carry it with thes were made none was made better than this; to be a lone ry man's food, a sad man's cordial, a wakefulof wounds, purging of rheu of the stomach, there's no herb like unto it under the canopy of heaven”
The truth of which eulogium Amyas tested in after years, as shall be fully set forth in due place and time But ”Mark in the meanwhile,” says one of the veracious chroniclers froly in the pal” (as he says) ”before his eyes the fear of thatStuart,” ”that not to South Devon, but to North; not to Sir Walter Raleigh, but to Sir Ah; not to the banks of Dart, but to the banks of Torridge, does Europe owe the day-spring of the latter age, that age of se of brass shall have vanished like those of iron and of gold; for whereas Mr Lane is said to have brought hoinia, in the year 1584, it is hereby indisputable that full four years earlier, by the bridge of Putford in the Torridge moors (which all true smokers shall hereafter visit as a hallowed spot and point of pilgrie) first twinkled that fiery beacon and beneficent lodestar of Bidefordian commerce, to spread hereafter from port to port and peak to peak, like the watch-fires which proclai of the Armada or the fall of Troy, even to the shores of the Bosphorus, the peaks of the Caucasus, and the farthest isles of the Malayan sea, while Bideford, inian traders, and the pave beneath the savory bales of roll Trinadado, leaf, and pudding; and her grave burghers, bolstered and blocked out of their own houses by the scarce less savory stock-fish casks which filled cellar, parlor, and attic, were fain to sit outside the door, a silver pipe in every strong right hand, and each left hand chinking cheerfully the doubloons deep lodged in the auriferous caverns of their trunk- hose; while in those fairy-rings of fragrant mist, which circled round their contemplative brows, flittedinto Sherborne fair, their heaviest shi+llings in their pockets, to buy (unless old Aubrey lies) the lotus-leaf of Torridge for its weight in silver, and draw from thence, after the example of the Caciques of Dariena, supplies of inspiration ions And yet did these ies; for the latter (so Salvation Yeo reported as a truth, and Daeon Mr Wafer after him), when they will deliberate of war or policy, sit round in the hut of the chief; where being placed, enter to the-pin and puffs the smoke thereof into the face of each warrior, fro their hand funnel-wise round their mouths, draw into the sinuosities of the brain that more than Delphic vapor of prophecy; which boy presently falls down in a swoon, and being dragged out by the heels and laid by to sober, enter another to puff at the sacred cigarro, till he is dragged out likewise; and so on till the tobacco is finished, and the seed of wisdom has sprouted in every soul into the tree ofthe flowers of eloquence, and in due time the fruit of valiant action” With which quaint fact (for fact it is, in spite of the bombast) I end the present chapter
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE nobLE BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE WAS FOUNDED
”It is virtue, yea virtue, gentleentlemen; that maketh the poor rich, the base-born noble, the subject a sovereign, the defor, the most miserable ifts in the nature of e and reason; the one cos neither the whirling wheel of fortune can change, neither the deceitful cavillings of worldlings separate, neither sickness abate, neither age abolish”--LILLY's Euphues, 1586
It now falls to my lot to write of the foundation of that most chivalrous brotherhood of the Rose, which after a few years made itself not only famous in its native country of Devon, but formidable, as will be related hereafter, both in Ireland and in the Netherlands, in the Spanish Main and the heart of South America And if this chapter shall seem to any Quixotic and fantastical, let theeneration who spoke and acted thus in matters of love and honor were, nevertheless, practised and valiant soldiers, and prudent and crafty politicians; that he rote the ”Arcadia” was at the same time, in spite of his youth, one of the subtlest diplomatists of Europe; that the poet of the ”Faerie Queene” was also the author of ”The State of Ireland;” and if they shall quote against me with a sneer Lilly's ”Euphues” itself, I shall only answer by asking--Have they ever read it? For if they have done so, I pity them if they have not found it, in spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as man need look into: and wish for no better proof of the nobleness and virtue of the Elizabethan age, than the fact that ”Euphues” and the ”Arcadia” were the two popular romances of the day It may have suited the purposes of Sir Walter Scott, in his cleverly drawn Sir Piercie Shafton, to ridicule the Euphuists, and that affectatauet complains; but over and above the anachronisive but one instance, the Euphuist knight talks of Sidney's quarrel with Lord Oxford at least ten years before it happened), we do deny that Lilly's book could, if read by any man of common sense, produce such a coxcomb, whose spiritual ancestors would rather have been Gabriel Harvey and Lord Oxford,--if indeed the forned the latter, and ill-tener in his turn
But, indeed, there is a double anachronis to the days of Sidney, but to those worse tian in the latter years of Elizabeth, and after breaking her hty heart, had full license to bear their crop of fools' heads in the profligate days of James Of them, perhaps, hereafter And in the meanwhile, let those who have not read ”Euphues” believe that, if they could train a son after the fashi+on of his Ephoebus, to the great saving of their owndays, would rise up and call them blessed Let us rather open our eyes, and see in these old Elizabeth gallants our own ancestors, showing forth with the luxuriant wildness of youth all the virtues which still go to the lishman Let us not only see in their co, in their political astuteness, in their deep reverence for law, and in their solelish nation, the antitypes or rather the examples of our own: but let us confess that their chivalry is only another garb of that beautiful tenderness and lish valor; and even in their extravagant fondness for Continental lo-Norman teachableness and wide-heartedness, which has enabled us to profit by the wisdoes and of all lands, without prejudice to our own distinctive national character
And so I go to my story, which, if any one dislikes, he has but to turn the leaf till he finds pasturage which suits him better
Amyas could not sail the next day, or the day after; for the southwester freshened, and blew three parts of a gale dead into the bay So having got the ”Mary Grenville” down the river into Appledore pool, ready to start with the first shi+ft of wind, he went quietly home; and when his -man to ride to Clovelly, where Frank lay wounded, he went in with her as far as Bideford, and there h Street, a procession of horsemen headed by Will Cary, who, clad cap-a-pie in a shi+ning arallant a young gentleman as ever Bideford dames peeped at from door andBehind hi--boords, and bucklers; and behind all, in a horse-litter, to Mrs Leigh's great joy, Master Frank himself He deposed that his wounds were only flesh-wounds, the dagger having turned against his ribs; that he ood leave he would not coh, but take up his abode with Cary in the shi+p Tavern, close to the Bridge-foot This he did forthwith, and settling himself on a couch, held his levee there in state, ossips of the town, not without white fibs as to who had brought hiht
But in the meanwhile he and Amyas concocted a sche an under A, unparalleled in the annals of the shi+p Tavern; and next by A out into the market, invited as many of his old schoolfellows, one by one apart, as Frank had pointed out to him, to a merry supper and a ”rowse” thereon consequent; by which crafty scheentle adust, seated at the same table with six rivals, to none of whom had he spoken for the last six hs discern as h, of course, they knew all) settled their guests, Frank on his couch lying at the head of the table, and A allto each other till the wine should have loosened their tongues and warnoring the silence of their guests with the ood-humor, chatted, and joked, and told stories, and ood company, that Will Cary, who always found merriment infectious, ood-huh, and only h, and onlyhis light artillery upon the waiters, till he drove theood And when the cloth was drawn, and sack and sugar became the order of the day, and ”Queen and Bible” had been duly drunk with all the honors, Frank tried a fresh entlemen of the Irish wars; and er to stand by a Fortescue, a Fortescue to stand by a St Leger, and a Chichester to stand by both'”
Which toast of course involved the drinking the healths of the three representatives of those fa a compliment each to the other's house: and so the ice cracked a little further; and young Fortescue proposed the health of ”Ah and all bold mariners;” to which Amyas replied by a few blunt kindly words, ”that he wished to know no better fortune than to sail round the world again with the present coive the Spaniards another taste of thedoeetly, caused the lips of theether, and every lishentlerand assault which he had planned all along; ”let ive you a health which none of you, I dare say, will refuse to drink with heart and soul as well as with lips;--the health of one whoht the shadow of lowly birth is unseen;--the health of one whom I would proclaientleirdle of Venus: and yet what else dare I say, while those same lovely ladies who, if they but use their own es of beauty than I can be, have in ned the pal theolden apple, Paris himent-seat Gentlemen, your hearts, I doubt not, have already bid you, as e'”
If the Rose of Torridge herself had walked into the room, she could hardly have caused uest turned red, and pale, and red again, and looked at the other as ht has any one but I to drink her? Lift your glass, and I will dash it out of your hand;” but Frank, with sweet effrontery, drank ”The health of the Rose of Torridge, and a double health to that worthy gentleman, whosoever he may be, whom she is fated to honor with her love!”
”Well done, cunning Frank Leigh!” cried blunt Will Cary; ”none of us dare quarrel with you noever much we may sulk at each other For there's none of us, I'll warrant, but thinks that she likes him the best of all; and so we are bound to believe that you have drunk our healths all round”
”And so I have: and what better thing can you do, gentlemen, than to drink each other's healths all round likewise: and so show yourselves true gentlemen, true Christians, ay, and true lovers? For what is love (let uests), what is love, but the very inspiration of that Deity whose name is Love? Be sure that not without reason did the ancients feign Eros to be the eldest of the Gods, by who elements of chaos were attuned into harmony and order How, then, shall lovers make hi forth a cockatrice's egg? or the soul be filled with love, the likeness of the immortals, to burn with envy and jealousy, division and distrust? True, the rose has its thorn: but it leaves poison and stings to the nettle Cupid has his arrow: but he hurls no scorpions Venus is ahen despised, as the daughters of Proetus found: but her handht will not only find love lovely, but becoentle wits have already perceived, to judge by your honorable blushes) my discourse tends; but to point you, if you will but permit me, to that rock which I ood hap, attained; if, indeed, I have attained it, and aain by the next tide”
Frank's rapid and fantastic oratory, utterly unexpected as it was, had as yet left their wits no time to set their tempers on fire; but when, weak frohty entleman, who took his speech as an iht to make a fool of hiht, and looking at the opposite wall, now rose as quietly, and with a face which tried to look utterly unconcerned, alking out of the room: another minute, and Lady Bath's prophecy about the feast of the Lapithae ht have come true
But Frank's heart and head never failed him
”Mr Coffin!” said he, in a tone which coht him under the power of a face which none could have beheld for five , tender, earnest was it ”My dear Mr Coffin! If et even for a ive rief of losing a friend Only hear enerously, I know, you will hear ain entreat your forgiveness a second time”
Mr Coffin, to tell the truth, had at that time never been to Court; and he was therefore somewhat jealous of Frank, and his Court talk, and his Court clothes, and his Court couests, and only two years younger than Frank hi classed in the sahteen And if Frank had given the least hint which seemed to assume his own superiority, all had been lost: but when, instead thereof, he sued in forma pauperis, and threw himself upon Coffin's h, and after all had known Frank ever since either of theain and submit, while Frank went on more earnestly than ever
”Believe ate to myself a superiority over you than does the sailor hurled on shore by the surge fancy hi with the foa in you I may, perhaps, win you to confide in me,--have loved, ay and do love, where you love also Do not start Is it a matter of wonder that the sun which has dazzled you has dazzled me; that the lodestone which has drawn you has drawn entle what I love, and to ad that which I admire Will you not try the same lesson: so easy, and, when learnt, so blissful? What breeds iance to the same queen? between brothers, than duty to the same father? between the devout, than adoration for the same Deity? And shall not worshi+p for the same beauty be likewise a bond of love between the worshi+ppers? and each lover see in his rival not an enemy, but a fellow-sufferer? You sh all may worshi+p, but one can enjoy; and that one h I deny it Shall we anticipate our own doo? Shall we erness to win her, and show ourselves her faithful knights, by cherishi+ng envy,--htly of all sins? Shall we dream with the Italian or the Spaniard that we can beco hateful in the eyes of God and of each other? Will she love us the better, if we come to her with hands stained in the blood of him whom she loves better than us? Let us recollect ourselves rather, gentle her, if she be worth winning, is to hat she wills, honor whom she honors, love who us, let it be a rivalry in nobleness, an emulation in virtue Let each try to outstrip the other in loyalty to his queen, in valor against her foes, in deeds of courtesy and mercy to the afflicted and oppressed; and thus our love will indeed prove its own divine origin, by raising us nearer to those Gods whose gift it is But yet I show you a more excellent way, and that is charity Why should we not make this common love to her, whom I am unworthy to name, the sacrament of a common love to each other? Why should we not follow the heroical exarief, one desire, one Goddess, held that one heart was enough to contain that grief, to nourish that desire, to worshi+p that divinity; and so uniting themselves in friendshi+p till they became but one soul in two bodies, lived only for each other in living only for her, vowing as faithful worshi+ppers to abide by her decision, to find their own bliss in hers, and whomsoever she esteemed most worthy of her love, to esteem most worthy also, and count themselves, by that her choice, the bounden servants of hinity of her enerous strife) do here promise to be the faithful friend, and, to my ability, the hearty servant, of hie”
He ceased, and there was a pause
At last young Fortescue spoke
”Iyou a left-handed compliment, sir: but it seems to me that you are so likely, in that case, to become your own faithful friend and hearty servant (even if you have not borne off the bell already while we have been asleep), that the bargain is hardly fair between such a gay Italianist and us country swains”
”You undervalue yourself and your country, my dear sir But set your mind at rest I know no more of that lady's mind than you do: nor shall I know For the sake of my own peace, I have made a vow neither to see her, nor to hear, if possible, tidings of her, till three full years are past Dixi?”
Mr Coffin rose
”Gentleh in eloquence, but not in generosity; if he leaves these parts for three years, I do so also”
”And go in charity with all mankind,” said Cary ”Give us your hand, old fellow If you are a Coffin, you were sawn out of no wishy-washy el, too, as Amyas here can tell, to Ireland away, to cool ive us thy neif, and let us part in peace I was ht thee this day--”
”I should have been most happy, sir,” said Coffin
--”But now I am all love and charity topardon of the world in general, and thee in particular? Does any one wish to pull my nose; send me an errand; make me lend him five pounds; ay,hi! Join hands all round, and swear eternal friendshi+p, as brothers of the sacred order of the--of what Frank Leigh? Open thy mouth, Daniel, and christen us!”