CHAPTER XIOF A GRIEVOUS HAP
Thoughan old little man, wizened like a pea, and peevish in his manners, the duke was wonderfully impressive in his look. He stood up as straight as a tree, and kept peering at the Englishman with a grave eye, as if in meditation upon the drastic form of his punishment. Yet all of a sudden, and quite strangely and oddly, a sharp kind of crackling and barking came out of him; as near, I suppose, to a chuckle of mirth as one of such dignity could allow himself to emit.
“Ha! ha!” he cackled. “Ods myself! good fellow, this is a roguish jest of yours. But daring, don’t you think, but daring? Yet a roguish jest.”
So great was my concern for the exceeding delicacy of the issue that at first the words of the duke seemed of no account. My mind could not address itself to their meaning, but could only marvel that so great a man should repeat his phrases.
“And why, sirrah,” asked the duke, “am I to be so especially of good courage at this season? My situation hath taken no kinder turn of late, so far as I can tell. Why must I be so cheerful then?”
“Because,” was the reply of this audacious foreigner, “Richard Pendragon, knight of England, hero of an hundred fields, is here to make you an offer ofhis service. This two and a quarter yards by a yard and a half of brawn and valiancy hath left a monstrous quantity of the kingly blood that flows beneath his doublet on the battle meads of Europe. How many a pretty daisy hath fed its damask on the azure blood of a Pendragon! This gentle knight in question is also pretty well at fighting, duke, for you shall search the three continents to match this modest swaggerer at sword, broadsword, sword and buckler, sword and target, and above all, and more particularly in a private brawl, with that peerless weapon, the Italian rapier of Ferrara steel. And mark you also, duke, there is a genius in his handling of the sweet Toledo blade. As for the mind of this incomparable character, it shines as brightly as his steel, for you will notice that his forehead rises perpendicular in the true Pendragon manner, and therefore he is a child of stratagem.”
You will suppose that I watched the passaging of the duke and this singular Sir Richard Pendragon with the gravest solicitude. There never was such a whimsically assorted pair: the small old man, the duke, one of the first gentlemen of his age, so well appointed in his dress, so fortunate in his person, so sedate in his mien for all his querulousness, which in one of less consideration might have incurred another name; the Englishman monstrous in his growth, gross and irregular in form and countenance, his clothes patched and pieced into the quaintest contexture. But beyond all this they were so opposed in address; the duke ever majestical in spite of his peevishness, with a highly musical civility in his speech, every word of which was simple, clear, and urbane, the ideal for a gentleman; while this Englishman’s,when it was not braggadocio and ruffling, with many uncomely foreign accents in it, ran into conceits and picturesqueness of every sort, and betraying a reverence for no man save the one who had all his worship.
Still the world is an incongruous place, as Don Ygnacio hath it, and reconcilable to none of the laws that we know. Therefore this grandee fell in with the whims of the mad Englishman, and kept turning the tail of an eye upon him, which yet seemed to have too much dignity to laugh outright at a cause so trivial; whilst to me, a gentleman of his own race and nation, who knew the consideration that belonged to him, and was careful to render it, he was as cold and unresponsive as one of the walls of his castle.
Presently Sir Richard Pendragon so delighted the old gentleman with one or two wonderfully cunning tricks of fence and manual dexterity, such as spinning his sword in the air and catching the naked point in his palm, and flicking buttons off the jerkin of the dwarf, that the duke clapped his hands for pleasure with the glee of a child, although he was one of the gravest rulers in Spain, and cried out heartily,—
“Brava, brava, sirrah! Now get thee to the buttery, and then do thou come back, and show us again.”
At the mention of the honest word “buttery” Sir Richard Pendragon turned upon his heel without delay, and made his way there with a haste that to my mind ill became one of his degree, although I had begun to doubt whether in his native country the title he bore was so eminently honourable as it is in ours.
“A very whimsical fellow,” said the duke to DonLuiz as the Englishman went forth. “He will serve to amuse us of a morning, and of an evening too. By my faith, Luiz, this is a good fellow.”
“A good fellow, my lord, as your lordship has deigned to remark,” said Don Luiz ponderously; “and I mind me that he has the name of a brave and cunning man. He gave your grace’s nephew of Castile a great deal of trouble a year ago with his bold and hardy band of adventurers. According to report he has the name of a skilful captain, who is as ingenious in his mind as he is warlike in his attributes.”
“That is well, Luiz,” said the duke. “I am pleased at this. See to it that he hath thirty crowns a month, and do you give him the command of our horse.”
Hearing this magnanimous and simple-hearted nobleman filled with the praises of one who, whatever his merit, was yet unacquainted with the true inner grace of the heart, my courage mounted in my veins, and hope whispered many things it pleased me mightily to hear. Yet, when I ventured to bespeak the duke, as I conceived in a mode highly proper, he returned immediately to that formal gravity of mien which he had worn when first I had come into his presence.
“Your lordship’s grace,” I began, “my name is Miguel Jesus Maria de Sarda y Boegas, and of the natural blood of him who fought with Alban II. against the Moor at Loja, at Lucena, and an hundred fields. I am, I would have your lordship to believe, of the first families of our Asturias; and hearing of the uneasy situation of your lordship in the south, I have adventured from my native mountains to proffer to your lordship my sword and service.”
“Don Miguel Jesus Maria de Sarda y Boegas,” said the duke, “I thank you for them.”
“And, my lord, I would crave the gentle permission of your lordship to serve your daughter, if daughter hath your grace, and rumour hath not lied; for it is written among the precepts of my late father, Don Ygnacio, that I should serve her, if served she is to be, as faithfully as I am fain to serve her sire.”
Was ever man so cursed with the unlucky tongue within him! No sooner had I dropped a word about his daughter than a lively purple ran into his face, and that countenance which had been so gracious grew suddenly so arrogant that I was filled with qualms.
“Are you a prince of the sangre azul of Spain, Don Miguel Jesus Maria de Sarda y Boegas,” said he, “that you seek to serve my daughter?”
“Not a prince, my lord,” said I with proud humility, “but there is no choicer blood than ours in the Asturias.”
“Then, sir, since you are not a prince, and you have made mention of my daughter, our interview is at an end.”
“My lord, when I spoke of your lordship’s daughter, I spoke in humility. Wherein have I had the unhappiness to offend the grace of your lordship?”
“The offence is nature’s, sir, in not making you a prince,” said the duke with a surprising choler. “I give you good day, Don Miguel.”
He bowed low, and the portly Don Luiz opened the door.
I found myself in the antechamber without the least recollection of my coming there. Indeed, in such adegree was I embarrassed by the duke’s anger that at first I did not know where I was or what I did. I stood lost in wonder. I wondered at the duke, I wondered at myself, but most of all I wondered at the world and its courses. I could not believe that a man should be so affronted at so seemly a mention of his daughter. I could have shed tears at this rebuff, and the deplorable case in which I stood, but my father’s wisdom stole through my veins like a balm, and I remembered that adversity is one of God’s stratagems to test the temper of the least of His servants.
As I took my way to the gate of the castle with my feathers drooping, I encountered the more fortunate Sir Richard Pendragon smiling at his private thoughts and sucking sack off his beard.
“Hullo, good springald youth,” he said, “you have met your fall I perceive. But, my young son of the Spains, I pray you to remember that a man with a provincial manner should not speak to a duke of his daughter. Sell oranges and make your fortune, for I fear that make it otherwise you never will. But, my young companion, I pray you do not take it too much amiss. There are many blows on the sconce to receive as you go through the world. And let me tell you, Miguel, I am prone to a tenderness in cases of grave, persistent, and determined folly. And so, Miguel, I have a tenderness to thee. Fare thee well, my young companion, and here is a purse containing eight crowns and an old heirloom, for I am determined upon it that thou shall not suffer for a start in life.”
These words were spoken not unkindly, and I was grateful to this barbarian for speaking them; but Ithink I might have been grateful had a dog so much as looked at me just then. And to my great astonishment here was my old dogskin and my father’s patrimony and my mother’s ring come back to me. But rejoiced as I was to get them again, I deemed it wise that no questions should pass upon the subject.
I told a servant to fetch Babieca, and when he had brought him to me he looked upon me askance because I did not vail him for the deed. I rode forth of the gates with the sun shining in the blue with fierce magnificence, and pointed my unprosperous course towards the city of Toledo. As these latitudes were much farther to the south than any I had been in before, I found the sun was even more against me than on the ill-starred day I had started from my home. Thus in great dejection of mind and body, I returned across the bridge of Alcantara, and in my heart’s extremity cast a final glance at that noble and deluding house, seated imperial on its promontory, beyond the yellow stretches of the fields. It could hardly have been more fair to the eye than formerly, yet now, because my fortunes looked another way and I had met rejection, and this beautiful castle had been placed beyond my ken, it seemed to take, even as I gazed, a thousand fresh glamours from the sun, and grew so gorgeous and desirable as to mock me with each of its gay turrets and pinnacles.
Overcome by the bitterness of my reflections, I checked my horse as he picked his way delicately down the steep winding path, and turning about, stood up in the saddle to confront that haughty palace that offered me disdain. Raising my right arm, I cried, “Proud castle,mock me if you please, but the hour shall dawn when you shall honour Miguel Jesus Maria de Sarda y Boegas!”
Doubtless these words were vain, yet there was that in my heart that seemed to give them warrant; and whether they made good the right to be uttered will be made clear in the process of this history.
Upon coming into the town and reaching the Chapel of the Consummation, I found a shady prospect beneath its walls. Tying Babieca to a railing, I sat down to meditate upon the course of my affairs. It was clear that I had much to learn before I might move with security into the world. Sir Richard Pendragon, barbarous foreigner as he was, had taught me already that we must learn to decipher the human character and its manifold complexities ere the smiles of Fortune can requite those who crave them. But at least, thought I, as I sought consolation of my father’s never-failing wisdom, this is a vicarious world, in which our material state is nothing, and of all things only an honest mind is virtuous.
To such a degree did I console my heart with this reflection that for a time I was put in a mood of philosophy. I was even led to consider that my poverty was a worthy thing, a symbol of purity, for was it not an evidence that my devices had not been of an unworthy nature? But, alas! all too soon my ingenuity overthrew my fortitude: for I was reminded by these thoughts that eight pieces of silver was my patrimony; that I was a stranger in a foreign country; that I was unskilled in war and knowledge; that I was hungry; that my cloak was wearing thin; that to sleep upon the bare groundwas to breed an ache in the bones; in fine, that I was penniless and friendless, and was at the end of my five wits to avert the soul and the body being torn asunder. Looking up, however, I beheld the placid, kindly face of the amiable Babieca; and then was I taken with a new resource.