Chapter Twenty Nine.
A Tale of the Great Passion.
In the good old times—the very good old times, before trade, competition, and the spreading of knowledge, had upset and spoiled everything—sending people off in a mad hurry, here, there, and everywhere; by road, rail, and river; sea, sky, and last, but not least, blown through tubes to their journey’s end; in the good old times, before people thought about Atlantic cables, or understood the meaning of the words cheap and clear, chivalry used to flourish throughout our land: everybody who did not happen to have been born a vassal, serf, or villein, was a knight, and used to wear a first-class suit of mail—rather uncomfortable suits, by the way, that took no end of emery powder and Bath brick to keep them clean; besides which they were terribly cold in winter, and horribly hot in summer, and had the unpleasant propensity of rubbing the skin off the corners of the person. But then it all appertained to knighthood, and it was very glorious to go pricking over the plain as a gallant upon a Barclay and Perkins style of horse, and shining like an ironmonger’s shop on a market day; excepting such times as it rained, when the lordly gallant would most probably ride rusty while his waving plumes would hang streaky and straight. But those were the days. Every man was his own lawyer then, and if any base varlet offended his knighthood, he exclaimed—“Grammercy!”
“By my halidame,” or something of that kind, and most probably ended by having the aforesaid base varlet pitched neck and crop into the lowest dungeon beneath the castle to amuse himself after the fashion of the gentleman who stayed so many years in Chillon’s dungeon, deep and old. “Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic,” were then of no account; for the knights of old, when they had anything to do with a deed, made their marks with their swords.
Well, in these good old times, when knights, troubadours, damsels in distress, tourneys, tyrannical barons, and all those most romantic accessories for keeping up the aforesaid good old times, flourished upon our soil, there stood a goodly castle at Stanstead, of the same breed as those at Bishop Stortford, and Saffron Walden, and a great many other places that don’t concern the thread of our story the slightest bit in the world; and in this said flint and mortar, thick-walled, uncomfortable building, where there was neither gas, glass, nor china, dwelt one Sir Aylmer de Mountfitchett, a tremendous swell in his way, one who conceived that he had only to look to conquer, like the Roman barbarian he had once heard tell of as having visited this isle. Now Sir Aylmer had come in for his property early in life, from the fact of his father, who was own brother to the celebrated Red Cross Knight, who came home and put the warder into such a ferment, making him blow his horn so loudly, and call till he was hoarse, at a time when a voice lozenge, or a “haporth” of Spanish liquorice could not have been had for love nor money—well! from the fact of his father having rubbed his head so sharply against the edge of a pagan’s scimitar that it—that is to say, Sir Aylmer’s father’s head—fell off, and was lost, so that his brother came home from the holy wars without him; and young Sir Aylmer went into mourning by stepping into his father’s shoes, and doing a bill with the Jew of the neighbourhood—payable at sight, fifty per cent, interest; and he took a third in cash, a third in pictures, and the remainder in Bass’s pale ale and best French kid gloves.
Now as soon as the young knight could have it all his own way, he had the best suit of armour well rubbed up; the best horse in the stable well rubbed down; put an extra quantity of bears’ grease upon his hair—the hair of his head, for the mirrors of those days were so imperfect that he could not discover his beard; and lastly he sallied forth like a true knight in search of adventure.
Now if I were to write the whole of the adventures of this gallant knight, I should require the entire space of the Times every day, and have to keep on writing “to be continued in our next” until there was enough to form a respectable library; but as either the reader or the writer might be fatigued, I content myself with relating the influence that the great passion first had upon the gallant young knight.
There was one Geoffrey de Mandeville in those days; and a regular man devil he was, but he had a redeeming feature in the shape of the prettiest niece that ever set a number of thick-headed fellows breaking lances, or knocking their iron-pot covered skulls together in a tournament in her honour. Her eyes were so bright that they gave young Aylmer de Mountfitchett a coup de lodestars and so turned his brain that he went home and determined to make an end of himself. But he did not know how to do it; for, as he very reasonably said—it he cut his head off with his sword, he would be making two ends to himself. So he tried running upon the point of his lance, but it was so blunt that it hurt dreadfully; when all at once a bright thought struck him:—He would take an antidote for his trouble, and follow the advice of his friend, the Scotch knight, Sir Ben Nevis: he would take a hair of the dog that bit him, by trying whether the eyes that wounded so sharply would not cure.
That very night he took a mandoline—which was the kind of banjo popular in those days,—and walked over to the castle at Stortford where the damsel dwelt, and after trying very hard to tune his instrument in the dark—not an easy task when a young man is nervous and keeps catching hold of the wrong peg—he tried a song—a light thing, written by one Alfrede de Tennyesone, beginning—“Come into ye garden, Maude.” Well, the young man sang the song pretty well, considering that he was in one key, and the mandoline in another; while he had no voice at all, and several of the strings of the instrument were really and truly string; so that altogether, though he struck the light guitar and its strings, the effect was not striking, neither were the chords good.
He sang it once as he stood upon the edge of the moat, getting his feet very wet. He sang it twice as he stood there getting his clothes wet, too, for the dew was very heavy. He sang it three times and was beginning to think that a flagon of Rhenish, or one of his bottles of Bass would be very acceptable when—
The lattice was illumined—there was a slight noise, and the casement was opened. Aylmer’s heart beat violently, and he was about to speak, only he was tongue-tied; and, sinking upon his knees in the wet mud, and so spoiling his trunk hose, he awaited the result—his hand involuntarily breaking the silence that his tongue could not break:
“Tumple, tumple; tumple; tumple; turn, turn, turn,” went the mandoline.
Then there was the sound of two bodies falling close by his side, and he sought for them—the pale moon lending her light—and he found—
One of the clumsy coppers they used in those days for half-pence, and a wedge of cold venison pasty, wrapped in a piece of Bell’s Life.
Sir Aylmer de Mountfitchett then heard the casement closed, when from the force of habit he spun the copper in the air, caught it, put it in his pocket; opened the paper, smelt the pasty,—which by the way was not sweet,—pitched it into the moat, and went home in dudgeon; which is the ancient form for expressing that he went back to his castle saying all the bad words that he had picked up through playing skittles and billiards with the fast men of his day.
But the maiden did not always take Sir Aylmer for an Ethiopian serenader, or a Christy’s Minstrel; for at last, instead of throwing him out coppers and wedges of pasty, she used to blow him kisses across the moat. But after a twelvemonth spent at that sort of fun, without success, for not one of the kisses ever reached the mark, the lovers hit upon a plan by which they might enjoy one another’s society, and cease wasting the salutes which they had been sending “out upon the night winds” every evening as soon as it grew dusk.
It was a warm dark night in Autumn and there was high revelry in the castle upon the mound, for Sir Geoffrey had been giving a rent dinner, and according to custom, he had made himself slightly inebriated by drinking sack—a celebrated old beverage famous for enveloping the intellects. The warders of the castle walls had watched whether it was likely that the knight would come out again that night, and then gone to sleep in the room by the portcullis. The moon was not up, and all was still but the croaking of the frogs in the moat, when Sir Aylmer crept up to the edge, and putting his fingers in his mouth gave a long whistle. Directly after there was a slight cough above his head, and the noise of something falling.
After a good deal of fumbling Sir Aylmer’s hands came in contact with a pair of scissors, to which was attached a thread. All had been previously arranged, and at a given signal the thread was drawn up again, having with it, in addition to the scissors, a thin cord—then followed a thick cord—then followed a rope—and then followed a rope ladder—and, lastly, when the ladder was made tight, followed Sir Aylmer de Mountfitchett.
“Hist,” said the lady.
“Hist,” said Sir Aylmer, as he climbed like a very Blondin, the rope that would keep spinning round like a jack, till the young knight felt that he should soon be done brown if it did not stop.
“Hist,” said the lady again.
“Hist,” said the knight, as he reached the window-sill.
“Hist,” said the lady again to her panting lover, who felt rather sick and giddy.
“How is the rope fastened?” said the knight.
“To the bed-post,” said the lady modestly.
“Your hand a moment, fair dame,” said the knight, trying to climb on the window-sill.
“Oh! dear me, No!” said the lady, “I could not think of such a thing.”
“But I can’t stay here,” said the knight, “this rope cuts like fury.”
“Oh! but I could not think for a moment of admitting you,” said the lady, “But, hist! speak low, or the Lady Maude will hear.”
“Eh? who?” said the knight.
“The Lady Maude,” said the maiden again.
“And you then are?—”
“Her hand—”
What she would have said will never be known, for Sir Aylmer himself said something so startling that the maiden, who had only twisted the rope several times round the post, and retained the end in her hand, suddenly let go. There was a whistling of rope,—a loud scream,—a loud splash,—a great deal of floundering,—and then Sir Aylmer de Mountfitchett hastened home, this time also in dudgeon, and had to be grueled and nose-tallowed for a violent cold which he had somehow caught; while in the archives of the castle might at one time have been seen the following curious manuscript written in a clerkly hand by one Friar Malvoisey, for whom the good dame named therein used to wash.
“Sir Aylmer Mountfitchett
To Sarah Brown.
Balance............1 merck 11 groates.
Washing doublet and hose clean from ye black mud 111 groates.”
There may be some sceptical people who will doubt the truth of this legend; and to such, as the writer is unable to produce the ancient manuscript, he says in the language of the good old times, “I crave your mercy!”