Miss Alken hesitated a moment, and then said: ‘Mr Creelock—well, Ben, then!’—as the ex-miner made a gesture of impatience; ‘I have indeed something on my mind, which I ought to have told you earlier, and which I see I had better tell now.—Nay; do not look so alarmed. It is nothing which ought to give me pain, or yourself, yet it does distress me. Shall I go on?’
‘Go on!’ echoed Ben; ‘of course you must go on. And you know, Ruth, that if it is in the power of man or money to relieve you, I am the man—and ought to be the man—who will do it.’
Miss Alken smiled faintly, then proceeded: ‘I had thought to keep back the information until you had met the person most concerned in it; but as I learn now there will be another delay, and as the suspense is terrible to me, I will hesitate no longer. The new partner in Showle and Bynnes—Mr Morede—is my brother. My half-brother, I should say,’ continued Ruth. ‘I had hoped, until his arrival actually took place, that he would not come; for he has been uncertain and unreliable all his life. But he has kept to his purpose now, it seems. He has been the bane of our family. His recklessness and extravagance brought down our home, from which, eventually, his quarrelsome and revengeful spirit forced him to fly to save his life. I suffered, as did my sisters; and but for the kindness of Mr Bynnes, who was distantly akin to my mother, it would have been worse for us. Very strangely, however, Mr Bynnes never quite lost his liking for Morede, and has, I believe, supplied part of the capital necessary to make him a partner here. But stranger still, although he has reduced me, with the rest of the family, to poverty, I believe my brother, as we have always called him, is, in his way, really fond of me. Yet I dreaded his presence here, as being certain in some sort to bring evil with it I cannot tell how, but I dread it. Yet, now I have seen him, he appears changed. It may be that added years have given him reflection and steadiness; yet I do not think it is that. There is something utterly inexplicable in him, which of course no stranger could see. He is entirely silent about his life of late years, although willing enough to speak of early days at home. He has heard me speak of you, and says he knows he shall like you, and is anxious to know you. And all this is so very different from what I remember of him, that I hope he is changed.’
‘Changed! Of course he is, Ruth!’ exclaimed Ben. ‘As they say in the old country, he has sown his wild-oats. Don’t think that because a boy has once been bad, he is never to be good; or once wild, that he will never be steady. I shall like him for his own sake, and for yours too, Ruth, I am quite certain. I cannot see him to-night, for a reason I have; but to-morrow I will meet him, and reckon I shall have gained a fresh friend in Ruth’s brother.’
THE TROUBADOURS.
There is a charm in the very name of the troubadours that surrounds those wandering minstrels of old with peculiar interest. Their canzons, sirventés, and pastorelas carry us back to the picturesque ages of colour and splendour, and are almost our only source of information as to those heroes of medieval romance whose names have acquired a legendary fame. During the brilliant period in which they sang, the country of the Langue d’Oc was awake with the din of arms, the stir of thousands in the crusades against the Saracens, which had their origin in the south of France; and in the chivalrous character of the holy wars; the quarrels of rival families, the gorgeous pageantry of the tournaments, and above all, in the glorification of love and martial fame, were found inexhaustible materials for descriptive poetry.
The troubadours—harbingers of reviving culture in the middle ages—displayed in their highly finished literature a refinement and splendour of imagination, an intensity and warmth, which, with the power they wielded, gradually changed the life, the tastes, the manners, of their times; whilst the quaint imagery, with the richness of colouring of Provençal song, left traces of its ascendency in the works of more than one celebrated Italian poet, as well as in English poetry long before the Elizabethan age. It was between the tenth and thirteenth centuries that all the varied forms of Provençal poetry flourished, affording the means of livelihood—even, in some instances, the acquisition of considerable wealth—to many wandering minstrels. Thierry says: ‘In the twelfth century, the songs of the troubadours circulating rapidly from castle to castle, and from town to town, supplied the place of periodical gazettes in all the country between the rivers Isère and Vienne, the mountains of Auvergne and the two seas.’
By far the greater number of troubadours known to us were nobles of high birth, or soldiers who had won knighthood on the field, with whom poetry was a passion, and who devoted themselves with enthusiasm to the cultivation of the gay science. Such were the Barons of the March, the Dauphin of Auvergne, the Viscounts of Limoges, Ventadour, and Camborn, with many other renowned princes and knights. Who has not heard of the lays of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and of Alfonso, king of Portugal—those paladins of old, whose heroic exploits against the Infidel were the theme of wandering minstrels in every Christian court throughout Europe? In those days, when chivalry surrounded woman with an atmosphere of sacredness, and love was looked upon as a sort of feudal service, wherein the knight played the part of vassal, and the lady that of suzerain, it was part of the code of honour to become the champion of some one mistress, whose charms were extolled in verse; and each powerful châtelain, in the intervals of war, after ruthless slaughter, battles, and treason, would indite to his lady-love pastorals full of tender sentiment, and redolent of the fragrance of fields and flowers.
The aristocracy of fair Provence, in its heyday of glory and prosperity, was, notwithstanding this addiction to verse, perhaps the most reckless and profligate the world has ever seen. One of the foremost Barons of the March was Bertrand Von Born, a typical war-like troubadour of the twelfth century. Prominent in the political quarrels of the day, a perfect firebrand of war, he was courted and dreaded by princes and kings; ever in search of new lands and new loves, wielding with equal vigour the lyre and the sword, in the science of war and the art of love he was without a rival. Sometimes fighting with Cœur-de-Lion, sometimes against him, this true child of the Langue d’Oc, after many gallant defences, was captured, but through the extraordinary influence he exerted over his captors, escaped with life and liberty. After a long and stormy career, Bertrand Von Born ended his days as a monk in the monastery of Coteaux.
In the gallery of noble and stately figures furnished by Provençal poetry, we have a picture of enduring historic interest left us by the troubadour Rambaud of Vaquieras, of the famous Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, one of an heroic family of crusaders, who was himself a troubadour and the beau-idéal of a knight-errant, comforting the afflicted, punishing the wicked, and relieving distressed damsels. When the preaching of Fulk of Neuilly roused the chivalry of France, Champagne, and Flanders to a new crusade, Rambaud followed the banner of his brother-in-arms the Marquis to Palestine, winning knighthood, singing and fighting his way through all the perils of the holy war. His songs are a record of splendidly dramatic incidents; and in the vivid sketches of his surroundings, we are enabled to trace the events in the life of the great soldier-poet, in whom all the virtues and vices of his ancestors seem to have been personified.