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Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times

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<h4>CHAPTER XIII.</h4> As unpleasant a moment as any in the ordinary course of life is when a conversation with the being we love best--one of the few sweet entrancing resting-places of the heart which fate sometimes affords us in the midst of the ocean of cares, anxieties, sorrows, and trifles, that surrounds us on every side--is interrupted suddenly by some one to whom we are wholly indifferent. The step upon the stairs, and the knock that followed it at the door, were amongst the most ungrateful sounds that could have struck the ear of Hugh de Monthermer and Lucy de Ashby; and there was no slight impatience in the tone of the former, as he said, "Come in!" The door opened slowly; but, instead of either of Lucy's maids or pretty Cicely, who waited upon them, the ape-like face and figure of poor Tangel, the dwarf, appeared, beckoning Hugh out of the room with one of his strange gestures. "What would you, boy?" said Hugh, without rising from his seat. "I would have you get upon your walking-sticks," replied Tangel, "and come with me." "I must first know why," answered Hugh de Monthermer. "Go away, good Tangel; I will come presently." "Nay, you must come now," said the dwarf. "Robin stays for no man; and Robin and the t'other fellow sent me for him of the purfled jerkin. He has matter of counsel for thine ear, though well I wot that it is for all the world like sticking a flower in a cock's tail." "I see not the likeness, good Tangel," answered Hugh, slowly rising. "It will soon fall out again," said Tangel. "Counsel, I mean, Sir Man at Arms. What's the wit of giving counsel to a man in a purfled jerkin? But you must come and have it, whether you will or not." "It must be so, I suppose," answered Hugh. But Lucy held him for a moment by the sleeve, saying, anxiously-- "You will come back, Hugh? You will come back?" "Think you that I will leave you here now, Lucy?" he asked, with a smile. "No, no, dear Lucy; as I said before, if I take you not with me, I will remain and spend my life in the forest with you." "Ho, ho!" cried the dwarf, as if he had made a discovery, "Ho, ho! I were better away, methinks." "We did not wish for you, good Tangel," answered Hugh, laughing. "Lead on, however. Where is your master?" The dwarf again made a sign, waving one of his long arms in the direction of the stairs, and Hugh de Monthermer, after a word or two more to Lucy de Ashby, in a lower tone, quitted the room, and followed the boy down to the same chamber into which the Outlaw had led him on his first arrival. It was now tenanted by two men--the bold forester, and another, who was standing with his back towards the door. At the step of the young lord, however, the latter turned round, displaying the face of the good franklin, Ralph Harland. Hugh de Monthermer started; for in the short space which had passed since last he saw him on the village green, a change had taken place in his countenance such as nothing but intense grief can work. Indeed, mortal sickness itself but rarely produces so rapid an alteration; he looked like one of those, whom we read of, stricken with the plague of the fourteenth century, where the warning sign of the coming death was read by others in the face and eyes, before the person doomed was at all aware that the malady had even laid the lightest touch upon them. Of poor Ralph Harland, it might indeed be said, as then of those attacked by the pestilence, "the plague was at his heart." Hugh de Monthermer instantly took him by the hand, exclaiming, "Good Heaven! Ralph, what ails thee? Thou art ill, my good friend--thou art very ill!" "Sick in mind, my lord, and ill in spirit," replied Ralph Harland, gloomily, "but nothing more." "Nay, nay, Ralph," exclaimed Hugh de Monthermer, "you must not speak to me so coldly. We have wrestled on the turf in our boyhood, we have galloped together through the woodland in our youth; I have eaten your good father's bread and drank his wine, and rested my head upon the same pillow with yourself--and Hugh de Monthermer must have a brother's answer from Ralph Harland. What is it ails thee, man? On my honour and my knighthood, if my sword, or my voice, or my power can do you service--But I know, I know what it is," he continued, suddenly recollecting the events of the May-day; and though he was not fully aware of the whole, divining more than he actually knew, by combining one fact with another--"I remember now, Ralph; and I know what is the serpent that has stung thee. Alas, Ralph, that is a wound I have no balm to cure! "There is none for it on earth," replied Ralph Harland. "Ay," said Robin Hood, "but though there be none to cure, there may be balm to allay, my lord; and yours must be the hand to give it. I will tell you the truth; we hold here a certain fair young lady, whom, as you see, we treat with all respect. You may ask, why we hold her--why we have taken her from her friends? My lord, one of her noble house has taken from a father's care, a child beloved as she can be; has broken bonds asunder which united many a heart together--parent and child, lover and beloved--has made a home desolate, crushed the hopes of an honest spirit, and made a harlot of a once innocent country girl. This is all bad enough, my lord; but still we seek not for revenge. All that we require is, the only slight reparation that can be made by man. Let her be sent back to her home--let her be given up to her father--let her not be kept awhile in gaiety and evil, and then turned an outcast upon the bitter, biting world. You, my lord, must require this at the hands of the Earl of Ashby; he only can do that which is right, and to you we look to induce that noble lord to do justice even to us poor peasants." Hugh de Monthermer paused for a moment or two in thought ere he replied, but he then answered--"I can bear no compulsory message to the Earl, my good friend. What you have done here is but wild justice; this lady never injured you--her father never injured you. You take her unwilling from her home as a hostage for the return of one who went willingly where she did go--who stays willingly where she now is. If she chooses to stay there, who can send her back again? I can do nothing in this, so long as you keep this lady here. Indeed, I tell you fairly, as you have bound me by my honour not to mention what I have seen, I must e'en remain here, too; for my first act as a knight and a gentleman, when I am at liberty, must be to do my endeavour to set her free." "And as a lover, also," added Robin Hood; "but, my lord, we will spare you a useless trouble; for, let me tell you, that not all the men of Monthermer, and Ashby to boot, would liberate that lady if I chose to hold her. But there is some truth in what you say; and that truth struck me before you uttered it. It was on that account I left you an hour or two ago, and went to seek this much injured young man, to confess to him what I am never ashamed to confess, when it is so, that I have been rash--that I had no right to punish a fair and innocent lady for the fault of a false traitor. To-morrow morning she shall return under your good charge and guidance; but still, my lord, to you I look to demand of the Earl of Ashby that he compel his kinsman both to send back that light-o'-love, Kate Greenly, to her father's house, and to make such poor reparation, in the way of her dowry to a convent, as may at least punish the beggarly knave for the wrong he has committed. I charge you; my lord, as a knight and gentleman, to do this." "And I will do it," answered Hugh de Monthermer, "since you so willingly set the lady free, whatever be the consequences; and to me they may be bitterer than you think. I will do what you require because my heart tells me it is right, and my oath of chivalry binds me to perform it." "Ah, my lord!" said Robin Hood, "would the nobles of England but consult the dictates of the heart, and keep that heart unhardened--would they remember the oath of their chivalry, and act as that oath requires, there would be less mourning in the land--there would be more happiness in the cottage, and some reverence for men in high station." "You are wrong," said Hugh de Monthermer, laying his hand upon the bold forester's arm--"you are wrong, and give more way to common prejudice than I had hoped or expected. There are amongst us, Robin, men who disgrace the name of noble, whose foul deeds, like those of this Richard de Ashby, carry misery into other orders, and disgrace into their own. But vices and follies find ready chroniclers--virtues and good actions are rarely written but in the book of Heaven. One bad man's faults are remembered and talked of, and every one adds, 'He was a noble;' but how many good deeds and kindly actions, how many honourable feelings and fine thoughts remain without a witness and without a record? Who is there that says, This good old lord visited my cottage and soothed me in sickness or in sorrow? Who is there that says, I love this baron, or that, because he defended me against wrong, protected me against trouble, supported me in want, cheered me in adversity? And yet there are many such. I mean not to assert that there are not many corrupt and vicious, cruel and hard-hearted. I mean not to contend that there are any without faults, for every man has some, be be rich or poor. But if the merits and demerits could be fairly weighed, I do believe that the errors of my own class would not be found greater than those of any other, only that our rank serves to raise us, as it were, on a pedestal, that malice may see all flaws, and that envy may shoot at them." Robin Hood paused, with his eyes bent down upon the ground, making no reply; and Hugh de Monthermer went on a moment after, saying, "At least, do us justice in one point. In this age, and in others gone before, the nobles of England have stood forward against tyranny wherever they found it. Have they ever failed to shed their blood in defence of the rights of the people? Is it not their doing, that such a thing as human bondage is disappearing from the island? We may have vassals, followers, retainers, men who are bound, for the land they hold, to do us service in time of need, but we have no serfs, no theows, as in the olden time, and even villain tenure is passing away. Again, who is it, even at the very present time, that is calling deputies from the ranks of the people to the high parliament of the nation; to represent the rights and interests of those classes which had heretofore no voice in making the laws of the land? I say, it is the nobles of England; and I am much mistaken if, in all times to come, that body of men--though there may be, and ever will be, evildoers amongst them--will not stand between the people and oppression and wrong--will not prove the great bulwark of our institutions, preserving them from all the tempests that may assail them, let the point of attack be where it will." "Perhaps it may be so," said Robin Hood; "but yet, my good lord, I could wish that persons in high station would remember that, with their advantages and privileges, with wealth, power, and dignity, greater than their fellow-men, they have greater duties and obligations likewise; and, as envy places them where all their faults may be observed, it would be as well if, as a body, they were to remember that each man who disgraces himself disgraces his whole order, and were to punish him for that crime by withdrawing from him the countenance of those upon whom he has brought discredit. When the virtuous associate with the vicious, they make the fault their own; and no wonder that men of high birth, though good men in themselves, are classed together with the wicked of their own order when they tolerate the evildoer, and leave him unpunished even by a frown." "I cannot but agree with you," said Hugh de Monthermer; "but----" "Ay, my lord, there is many a but," replied the bold outlaw, after having waited for a moment to hear the conclusion of the young lord's sentence; "and there ever will be a but, so long as men are men, and have human passions and human follies. There was but one in whose life there was no but, and Him they nailed upon a tree;" and the outlaw raised his hand, and touched his bonnet, reverently, for he felt deep reverence, however much his words might seem to want it. Hugh de Monthermer was not inclined to pursue the conversation any farther, and, turning to the young franklin, he said, "I fear, Ralph, that after all the wrong you have suffered from one of my class, you will not be inclined to allow us much merit in any respect; but, believe me, we are not all like him." "I know it, my lord--I know it," replied Ralph. "If I were ignorant that, as well as the blackest vices which can degrade man, there are to be found in your order the brightest virtues, I should not merit to have known you.--But in good sooth, my lord, my thoughts are not of general subjects just now. One private grief presses on me so hard that I can think of nothing else." "I would fain have you wean yourself from those remembrances," said his friend. "Nay, shake not your head, I know that it can only be done by banishing all those sights and sounds that are the watchwords of memory, and by seeking other matter for thought. Ay, even matter that will force your mind away from the subject that it clings to, and occupy you whether you will or not. There are stirring times before us, Ralph,--times when the great interests of the state,--when dangers to our liberties and rights may well divide men's attention with private griefs. What say you; will you come with me to the west, and take a part in the struggle that I see approaching?" "I will follow you right willingly, my lord," replied Ralph Harland, "though I cannot well go with you. I must not forget, in my selfish sorrow, that I have a father who loves me; and whose life and happiness rests upon mine, as I have seen an old wall held up by the ivy which it first raised from the ground. I must speak with him before I go--must bid him adieu, and do what I can to comfort and console him. He will not seek to make me stay, and I will soon follow you; but it shall not be alone, for I can bring you many a heart right willing to fight under the same banner with yourself. Where shall I find you, my good lord?" "As soon as I have taken this fair lady's orders," said Hugh de Monthermer, "and conducted her whither she is pleased to go, I shall turn my steps direct to Hereford by the way of Gloucester, hoping to overtake my uncle and the good Earl of Ashby, and should I find with him his cousin Richard, he shall render to me no light account of more than one base act." "Nay, my lord, nay," replied the young franklin, "I do beseech you, quarrel not for me. I know, or at least guess, what dear interests you may peril. But, moreover, though I be neither knight nor noble, there are some wrongs that set aside all vain distinctions, and I do not despair of the time coming when I shall find that base traitor alone to give me an answer. When that moment arrives, it will be a solemn one; but I would not part with the hope thereof for a king's crown. But now, my lord, let me not keep you from the lady of your love. Go to her; let her know she is free to come and go, as far as I at least am concerned; but tell her, my lord, I charge you, why she was brought here, that she may be aware of what a serpent her father and her brother cherish." "Ay, tell her--tell her," said Robin Hood--"tell her, for her own sake; for there is something that makes me fear--I know not why--that the day will come when that knowledge may be to her a safeguard and a shield against one who now seems powerless. Scoff not at it, my lord, as if he were too pitiful to give cause for alarm. The scorpion is a small, petty-looking insect, but yet there is death in his sting. And now, good night; when you have spent another hour in the sweet dreams that lovers like, betake you to repose, and early to-morrow you shall have some one to guide you on your way." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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