Part 12 (1/2)
”The Rose!” said Frank quietly, seeing that his new love-philtre orking well, and determined to strike while the iron was hot, and carry the ain
”The Rose!” cried Cary, catching hold of Coffin's hand with his right, and Fortescue's with his left ”Come, Mr Coffin! Bend, sturdy oak! 'Woe to the stiffnecked and stout-hearted!' says Scripture”
And somehow or other, whether it was Frank's chivalrous speech, or Cary's fun, or A lad's heart, if their elders will take the trouble to call it out, the whole party came in to terms one by one, shook hands all round, and vowed on the hilt of Amyas's sword to make fools of themselves no more, at least by jealousy: but to stand by each other and by their lady-love, and neither grudge nor grumble, let her dance with, flirt with, or marry hom she would; and in order that the honor of their peerless daht be spread through all lands, and equal that of Angelica or Isonde of Brittany, they would each go hoh to obtain in those brave tiood wars,” to ee and the courtesy of Walter Manny and Gonzalo Fernandes, Bayard and Gaston de Foix Why not? Sidney was the hero of Europe at five-and-twenty; and why not they?
And Frank watched and listened with one of his quiet smiles (his eyes, as some folks' do, smiled even when his lips were still), and only said: ”Gentlemen, be sure that you will never repent this day”
”Repent?” said Cary ”I feel already as angelical as thou lookest, Saint Silvertongue What was it that sneezed?--the cat?”
”The lion, rather, by the roar of it,” said A a dash at the arras behind hi under the arras, through an open door behind, he returned, dragging out by the head Mr John Brimblecombe
Who was Mr John Briotten him, you have done pretty nearly what every one else in the room had done But you recollect a certain fat lad, son of the school three years before, by sending him, not to Coventry, but to Oxford That was the man He was now one-and-twenty, and a bachelor of Oxford, where he had learnt such things as were taught in those days, withabout Bideford onceto return after Christht become a parson, and a shepherd of souls in his native land
Jack was in person exceedingly like a pig: but not like every pig: not in the least like the Devon pigs of those days, which, I areyhound who pays Pat's ”rint” for him; or than the lanky e swineherd, beneath a shady lie h and four inches thick, which look as if they had passed their lives, as a collar of Oxford brawn is said to do, between two tight boards Such were then the pigs of Devon: not to be coh-withered, furry, grizzled, garunted about Swinley down and Braunton woods, Clovelly glens and Bursdon moor Not like these, nor like the tame abomination of those barbarous tiure, and complexion, of Fisher Hobbs and the triu of twelve stone, on his hind-legs--that hat he was, and nothing else; and if you do not know, reader, what a Fisher Hobbs is, you know nothing about pigs, and deserve no bacon for breakfast But such was Jack The saarnished with a few scattered black bristles; the sa always as if it was upon the point of bursting; the sas; the same dapper bend in the sht forehead, and tiny eyes; the sa sensitive little cocked nose, always on the look-out for a savory s for the best, contented with the worst; a pig of self-helpful and serene spirit, as Jack was, and therefore, like hih their skins
Such was Jack; and lucky it was for hiot to fat him at Oxford, in days when a servitor meant really a servant-student; and wistfully that day did his eyes, led by his nose, survey at the end of the shi+p Inn passage the preparations for Amyas's supper The innkeeper was a friend of his; for, in the first place, they had lived within three doors of each other all their lives; and next, Jack was quite pleasant co a learned man and an Oxford scholar, to be asked in now and then to the innkeeper's private parlor, when there were no gentlemen there, to crack his little joke and tell his little story, sip the leavings of the guests' sack, and sos of their supper And it was, perhaps, with some such hope that Jack trotted off round the corner to the shi+p that very afternoon; for that faithful little nose of his, as it sniffed out of a backof the school, had given hiales, and scents of Paradise, from the inn kitchen below; so he went round, and asked for his pot of small ale (his only luxury), and stood at the bar to drink it; and looked inith his little twinkling right eye, and sniffed inith his little curling right nostril, and beheld, in the kitchen beyond, salad in stacks and fagots: salad of lettuce, salad of cress and endive, salad of boiled coleworts, salad of pickled coleworts, salad of angelica, salad of scurvy- wort, and seven salads ht etable And on the dresser, and before the fire, whole hecatorant victims, which needed neither frankincense nor e saleese and woodcocks, curlew and snipe, haos of Cadiz, such as Pantagruel hied boy eyes the cakes in a pastrycook's ; and thought of the scraps fro out the hall; and meditated deeply on the unequal distribution of human bliss
”Ah, Mr Bri out with knife and apron to cool hientle to eat all that?”
”Well, I can't say--that Mr Aood as three to his trencher: but still there's crumbs, Mr Brimblecombe, crumbs; and waste not want not is my doctrine; so you and I ht o'clock”
”Eight?” said Jack, looking wistfully at the clock ”It's but four now Well, it's kind of you, and perhaps I'll look in”
”Just you step in now, and look to this venison There's a breast! you et to the botto He's all for thehs, and no wonder, they'm brave lads, surely; and there's a saddle-o'-mutton! I rode twenty miles for mun yesterday, I did, over beyond Barnstaple; and five year old, Mr John, it is, if ever five years was; and not a tooth to mun's head, for I looked to that; and smelt all the way home like any apple; and if it don't ate so soft as ever was scald cream, never you call me Thomas Burman”
”Humph!” said Jack ”And that's their dinner Well, some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth”
”So in their pocket to take away the taste o' mun; and that's better than eet it,” said Jack ”But for theh he returned to his s the dinner as it went into the best rooed there, Amyas went in, and saw hioes the world? How you've grown!” and passed on;--what had Jack Briered on, hovering around the fragrant smell like a fly round a honey-pot, till he found himself invisibly attracted, and as it were led by the nose out of the passage into the adjoining room, and to that side of the room where there was a door; and once there he could not help hearing what passed inside; till Rose Salterne's name fell on his ear So, as it was ordained, he was taken in the fact And now behold himent, not without a kick or two froh Whereat there fell on hiallant coe to say, seemed to have no effect on the iet his breath,
”What business have I here? As much as any of you If you had asked me in, I would have co”
”You shameless rascal!” said Cary ”Coood wine? I'll warrant you for that!”
”Why,” said A him up one street and down another all day for the cru spaniel!”
”Patience, nathonic and parasitic soul, or stomach, all Bideford apple-woht hi, then We shall have the whole story over the town by to-ht to feel somewhat ashamed of his late enthusiasm
”Ah, Mr Frank! You were always the only one that would stand up for me! Deus Venter, quotha? 'Twas Deus Cupid, it was!”
A roar of laughter followed this announcement
”What?” asked Frank; ”was it Cupid, then, who sneezed approval to our love, Jack, as he did to that of Dido and Aeneas?”
But Jack went on desperately
”I was in the next roo of my beer I couldn't help that, could I? And then I heard her na then Flesh and blood couldn't”
”Nor fat either!”
”No, nor fat, Mr Cary Do you suppose fat men haven't souls to be saved as well as thin ones, and hearts to burst, too, as well as stomachs? Fat! Fat can feel, I reckon, as well as lean Do you suppose there's naught inside here but beer?”
And he laid his hand, as Drayton ht have said, on that stout bastion, hornwork, ravelin, or demilune, which formed the outworks to the citadel of his purple isle of ht but beer?--Cheese, I suppose?”
”Bread?”
”Beef?”
”Love!” cried Jack ”Yes, Love!--Ay, you laugh; but rown up with fat but what I can see what's fair as well as you”
”Oh, Jack, naughty Jack, dost thou heap sin on sin, and luxury on gluttony?”
”Sin? If I sin, you sin: I tell you, and I don't care who knows it, I've loved her these three years as well as e'er a one of you, I have I've thought o' nothing else, prayed for nothing else, God forgive h at entleiving her up to-day Why, it's what I've done for three miserable years as ever poor sinner spent; ay, from the first day I said to myself, 'Jack, if you can't have that pearl, you'll have none; and that you can't have, for it's meat for your masters: so conquer or die' And I couldn't conquer I can't help loving her, worshi+pping her, no h ain”
”It is the old tale,” said Frank to himself; ”ill not love transfor voice was firestures were so free and earnest, that the ungainliness of his figure was forgotten; and when he finished with a violent burst of tears, Frank, forgetting his wounds, sprang up and caught hiive ht to ask his pardon Has he not shown already more chivalry, more self-denial, and therefore more true love, than any of us? My friends, let the fierceness of affection, which we have used as an excuse forto a conversation in which he well deserved to bear a part”
”Ah,” said Jack, ”you make me one of your brotherhood; and see if I do not dare to suffer as h? Do you fancy none can use a sword unless he has a baker's dozen of quarterings in his arms, or that Oxford scholars know only how to handle a pen?”
”Let us try his er ”Here's my sword, Jack; draw, Coffin! and have at hiusted at the notion of fighting a ht at the weapon offered to him
”Give me a buckler, and have at any of you!”
”Here's a chair botto it in his left, flourished his sword so fiercely, and called so loudly to Coffin to come on, that all present found it necessary, unless they wished blood to be spilt, to turn the h: but Jack would not hear of it
”Nay: if you will let ood: but if not, one or other I will fight: and that's flat”
”You see, gentlemen,” said Ao when Sir Urian drives Coentlemen?”