“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—