"And if she will, she will! you may depend on't."
Old Saying.
It did not prove, in truth, a matter altogether so easy of accomplishment as Guendolen, in her warm enthusiasm and sympathy, had boasted, to effect that small thing, as she had termed it in her thoughtless eagerness, the liberation of three human beings, and the posterity of two, through countless generations, from the curse and degradation of hereditary bondage.
The value, in the first place, of the unhappy beings, to each of whom, as to a beast of burden, or to a piece of furniture, a regular money-price was attached, although they could not be sold away from the land to which they appertained, unless by their own consent, was by no means inconsiderable even to one so rich as Sir Yvo de Taillebois; for in those days the wealth even of the greatest landed proprietors lay rather in the sources of revenue, than in revenue itself; and men, whose estates extended over many parishes, exceeding far the limits of a modern German principality, whose forests contained herds of deer to be numbered by the thousand head, whose cattle pastured over leagues of hill and valley, who could raise armies, at the lifting of their banners, larger than many a sovereign prince of the nineteenth century, were often hard set to find the smallest sums of ready money on emergency, unless by levying tax or scutage on their vassals, or by applying to the Jews and Lombards.
In the second place, the scruples of Kenric, which justly appeared so generous and noble to the fine, unsophisticated intellect of the young girl, by no means appeared in the same light to the proud barons, accustomed to regard the Saxon, and more especially the serf, as a being so palpably and manifestly inferior, that he was scarcely deemed to possess rights, much less sentiments or feelings, other than those of the lower animals.
To them, therefore, the Saxon's refusal to consent to his own sale as a step necessary to manumission, appeared an act of insolent outrecuidance, or at the best a bold and impudent piece of chicanery, whereby to extort from his generous patrons a recompense three times greater than they had thought of conferring on him, in the first instance.
It was with scorn, therefore, and almost with anger, that Sir Yvo listened to the first solicitations of Guendolen in behalf of her clients; and he laughed at her high-flown sentiments of admiration and wonder at the self-devotion, the generosity, the immovable constancy, of the noble Saxon.
"ThenobleSaxon! By the glory of Heaven!" he exclaimed, "these women would talk one out of all sense of reason, with their sympathetic jargon! Why, here's a sturdy knave, who has done what, to win all this mighty gratitude? Just stuck his whittle into a wild stag's weasard, and saved a lady's life, more by good luck than by good service—as any man, or boy, of Norman blood, would have done in a trice, and thought no more of it; and then, when his freedom's tendered him as a reward for doing that for which ten-pence had well paid him, and for failing to do which he had deserved to be scourged till his bones lay bare, he is too mighty to accept it—marry! he names conditions, he makes terms, on which he will consent to oblige his lords by becoming free; and you—you plead for him. ThenobleSaxon! by the great gods, I marvel at you, Guendolen."
But she, with the woman's wily charm, replied not a word while he was in the tide of indignation and invective; but when he paused, exhausted for the moment by his own vehemence, she took up the word—
"Ten-pence would have well paid him! At least, I am well content to know," she said, "the value of my life, and that, too, at my own father's rating. The Saxons may be, as I have heard tell, but have not seen that they are, sordid, degraded, brutal, devoid of chivalry and courtesy and love of fame; but I would wager my life there is not a free Saxon man—no, not the poorest Franklin, who would not rate the life of his coarse-featured, sun-burned daughter at something higher than the value of a heifer. But it is very well. I am rebuked. I will trouble you no farther, valiant Sir Yvo de Taillebois. I have norightto trouble you, beausire, for I must sure be base-born, though I dreamed not of it, that my blood should be dearly bought at ten-pence. Were it of the pure current that mantled in the veins of our high ancestors, it should fetch something more, I trow, in the market."
"Nay! nay! thou art childish, Guendolen, peevish, and all unreasonable. I spoke not of thy life, and thou knowest it right well, but of the chance, the slight merit of his own, by which he saved it."
"Slight merit, father!"
"Pshaw! girl, thou hast gotten me on the mere play of words. But how canst make it tally with the vast ideas of this churl's chivalry and heaven-aspiring nobility of soul, that he so little values liberty, the noblest, most divine of all things, not immortal, as to reject it thus ignobly?"
"It skills not to argue with you, sir," she answered, sadly; "for I see you are resolved to refuse me my boon, as wherefore should you not, setting so little value on this poor life of mine. I know that I am but a poor, weak child, that I was a disappointment to you in my cradle, seeing that I neither can win fresh honors to your house amid the spears and trumpets, nor transmit even the name, of which you are so proud, to future generations; but I am, at least in pride, too much a Taillebois to crave, as an importunate, unmannerly suitor, what is denied to me as a free grace. Only this—were you and I in the hands of the Mussulman, captives and slaves together, and you should accept freedom as a gift, leaving your own blood in bondage, I think the Normans would hold you dishonored noble, and false knight; I am sure the Saxons would pronounce younidering. I have done, sir. Let the Saxon die a slave, if you think it comports with the dignity of De Taillebois to be a slave's debtor. I thought, if you did not love me, that you loved the memory of my mother better."
"There! there!" replied Sir Yvo, quite overpowered, and half amused by the mixture of art and artlessness, of real passion and affected sense of injury by which she had worked out her purpose. "There! there! enough said, Guendolen. You will have it as you will, depend on't. I might have known you would, from the beginning, and so have spared myself the pains of arguing with you. It must be as you will have it, and I will go buy the brood of Sir Philip at once; pray Heaven only that they will condescend to be manumitted, without my praying them to accept their liberty upon my knee. It will cost me a thousand zecchins or more, I warrant me, at the first, and then I shall have to find them lands of my lands, and to be security for their "were and mund," and I know not what. Alack-a-day! women ever! ever women! when we are young it is our sisters, our mistresses, our wives; when we grow old, our daughters!—and by my hopes of Heaven, I believe the last plague is the sorest!"
"My funeral expenses, with the dole and alms and masses, would scarcely have cost you so much, Sir Yvo. Pity he did not let the stag work his will on me! Don't you think so, sir?"
"Leave off your pouting, silly child. You have your own way, and that is all you care for; I don't believe you care the waving of a feather for the Saxons, so you may gratify your love of ruling, and force your father, who should show more sense and firmness, to yield to every one of your small caprices. So smooth that bent brow, and let us see a smile on those rosy lips again, and you may tell your Edith, if that's her name, that she shall be a free woman before sunset."
"So you confess, after all this flurry, that it was but asmallcaprice, concerning which you have so thwarted me. Well, I forgive you, sir, by this token,"—and, as she spoke, she threw her white arms about his neck, and kissed him on the forehead tenderly, before she added, "and now, to punish you, the next caprice I take shall be a great one, and you shall grant it to me without wincing. Hark you, there are the trumpets sounding for dinner, and you not point-device for the banquet-hall! but never heed to-day. There are no ladies to the feast, since I am not so well at ease as to descend the stair. Send me some ortolans and beccaficos from the table, sir; and above all, be sure, with the comfits and the Hypocras, you send me the deeds of manumission for Kenric and Edith, all in due form, else I will never hold you true knight any more, or gentle father."
"Fare you well, my child, and be content. And if you rule your husband, when you get one, as you now rule your father, Heaven in its mercy help him, for he will have less of liberty to boast than the hardest-worked serf of them all. Fare you well, little wicked Guendolen."
And she laughed a light laugh as the affectionate father, who used so little of the father's authority, left the Bower, and cried joyously, "Free, free! all free! I might have been sure that I should succeed with him. Dear, gentle father! and yet once, once for a time, I was afraid. Yet I was right, I was right; and the right must ever win the day. Edith! Edith!" she cried, as she heard her light foot without. "You are free. I have conquered!"
It is needless, perhaps it were impossible, to describe the mingled feelings of delight, gratitude, and wonder, coupled to something akin to incredulity, which were aroused in the simple breast of the Saxon maiden, by the tidings of her certain manumission, and, perhaps even gladder yet, of her transference, in company with all those whom she loved, to a new home among scenes which, if not more lovely than those in which her joyless childhood and unregretted youth had elapsed, were at least free from recollections of degradation and disgrace.
The news circulated speedily through the castle, how the gratitude of the Lady Guendolen had won the liberty of the whole family of her preserver, with the sole exception of the gross thrall Eadwulf; and it was easily granted to Edith, that she should be the bearer of the happy tidings to the Saxon quarter.
Sweet ever to the captive's, to the slave's, ear must be the sound of liberty, and hard the task, mighty the sacrifice, to reject it, on any terms, however hard or painful; but if ever that delightful sound was rendered doubly dear to the hearer, it was when the sweetest voice of the best beloved—even of her for whom the blessed boon had been refused, as without her nothing worth—conveyed it to the ears of the brave and constant lover, enhanced by the certainty that she, too, who announced the happiness, had no small share in procuring it, as she would have a large share of enjoying it, and in rendering happy the life which she had crowned with the inestimable gift of freedom.
That was a happy hearth, a blessed home, on that calm summer evening, though death had been that very day borne from its darkened doors, though pain and suffering still dwelt within its walls. But when the heart is glad, and the soul contented and at peace, the pains of the body are easily endured, if they are felt at all; and happier hearts, save one alone, which was discontent and bitter, perhaps bitterer from the contemplation of the unparticipated bliss of the others, were never bowed in prayer, or filled with gratitude to the Giver of all good.
Eadwulf sat, gloomy, sullen, and hard of heart, beside the cheerful group, though not one of it, refusing to join in prayer, answering harshly that he had nothing for which to praise God, or be thankful to him; and that to pray for any thing to him would be useless, for that he had never enjoyed his favor or protection.
His feelings were not those of natural regret at the continuance of his own unfortunate condition, so much as of unnatural spite at the alteration in the circumstances of his mother, his brother, and that brother's beautiful betrothed; and it was but too clear that, whether he should himself remain free or no, he had been better satisfied that they should continue in their original condition, rather than that they should be elevated above himself by any better fortune.
Kenric had in vain striven to soothe his morose and selfish mood, to cheer his desponding and angry, rather than sorrowful, anticipations—he had pointed out to him that his own liberation from slavery, and elevation to the rank and position of a freeman and military tenant of a fief of land, did not merely render it probable, but actually make it certain, that Eadwulf also would be a freeman, and at liberty to join his kindred in a short time in their new home; "for it must be little, indeed, that you know of my heart," said the brave and manly peasant, "or of that of Edith, either, if you believe that either of us could enjoy our own liberty, or feel our own happiness other than unfinished and incomplete, so long as you, our own and only brother, remain in slavery and sorrow. Your price is not rated so high, brother Eadwulf, but that we may easily save enough from our earnings, when once free to labor for ourselves, within two years at the farthest, to purchase your freedom too from Sir Philip; and think how easy will be the labor, and how grateful the earnings, when every day's toil finished, and every zecchin saved, will bring us a day nearer to a brother's happy manumission."
"Words!" he replied, doggedly—"mighty fine words, in truth. I marvel how eloquent we have become, all on the sudden. Your laborwillbe free, as you say, and your earnings your own; and wondrous little shall I profit by them. I should think now, since you are so mighty and powerful with the pretty Lady Guendolen, all for a mere chance which might have befallen me, or any one, all as well as yourself, you might have stipulated for my freedom—I had done so I am sure, though I do not pretend to your fine sympathies and heaven-reaching notions——"
"And so have losttheirfreedom!" replied Kenric, shaking his head, as he waved his hand toward the women; "for that would have been the end of it. For the rest, I made no stipulations; I only refused freedom, if it were procurable only by leaving my aged mother and my betrothed bride in slavery. As it was, I had lost my own liberty, and not gained theirs, if it had not been for Edith, who won for us all, what I had lost for one."
"And no one thought of me, or my liberty! I was not worth thinking of, nor worthy, I trow, to be free."
"You say well, Eadwulf—you say right well," cried Edith, her fair face flushing fiery red, and her frame quivering with excitement. "You arenotworthy to be free. There is no freedom, or truth, or love, or honor, in your heart. Your spirit, like your body, is a serf's, and one would do dishonor to the soul of a dog, if she likened it to yours. Hadyoubeen offered freedom, you had left all, mother, brother, and betrothed—had any maiden been so ill-advised as betroth herself to so heartless a churl—to slavery, and misery, and infamy, or death, to win your own coveted liberty. Nay! I believe, if they had been free, and you a serf, you would have betrayed them into slavery, so that you might be alone free. A man who can not feel and comprehend such a sacrifice as Kenric made for all of us, is capable of no sacrifice himself, and is not worthy to be called a man, or to be a freeman."
Thus passed away that evening, and with the morrow came full confirmation; and the bold Saxon stood upon his native soil, as free as the air he breathed; the son, too, of a free mother, and with a free, fair maiden by his side, soon to be the free wife of a free Englishman. And none envied them, not one of their fellow-serfs, who remained still condemned to toil wearily and woefully, until their life should be over—not one, save Eadwulf, the morose, selfish, slave-souled brother.
"He mounted himself on a steed so talle,And her on a pale palfraye,And slung his bugle about his necke,And roundly they rode awaye."
"He mounted himself on a steed so talle,And her on a pale palfraye,And slung his bugle about his necke,And roundly they rode awaye."
"He mounted himself on a steed so talle,And her on a pale palfraye,And slung his bugle about his necke,And roundly they rode awaye."
"He mounted himself on a steed so talle,
And her on a pale palfraye,
And slung his bugle about his necke,
And roundly they rode awaye."
The Childe of Elle.
The glad days rapidly passed over, and the morning of the tenth day, as it broke fair and full of promise in the unclouded eastern sky, looked on a gay and happy cavalcade, in all the gorgeous and glittering attire of the twelfth century, setting forth in proud array, half martial and half civil, from the gates of Waltheofstow.
First rode an old esquire, with three pages in bright half armor, hauberks of chain mail covering their bodies, and baçinets of steel on their heads, but with their arms and lower limbs undefended, except by the sleeves of their buff jerkins and their close-fitting hose of dressed buckskin. Behind these, a stout man-at-arms carried the guidon with the emblazoned bearings of his leader, followed by twenty mounted archers, in doublets of Kendal green, with yew bows in their hands, wood-knives, and four-and-twenty peacock-feathered cloth-yard arrows in their girdles, and battle-axes at their saddle-bows.
In the midst rode Sir Yvo de Taillebois, all armed save his head, which was covered with a velvet mortier with a long drooping feather, and wearing a splendid surcoat; and, by his side, on a fleet Andalusian jennet, in a rich purple habit, furred at the cape and cuffs, and round the waist, with snow-white swansdown, the fair and gentle Guendolen, followed by three or four gay girls of Norman birth, and, happier and fairer than the happiest and fairest, the charming Saxon beauty, pure-minded and honest Edith. Behind these followed a train of baggage vans, cumbrous and lumbering concerns, groaning along heavily on their ill-constructed wheels, and a horse-litter, intended for the use of the lady, if weary or ill at ease, but at the present conveying the aged freed-woman, who was departing, now in well-nigh her ninetieth summer, from the home of her youth, and the graves of her husband and five goodly sons, departing from the house of bondage, to a free new home in the far north-west.
The procession was closed by another body of twenty more horse-archers, led by two armed esquires; and with these rode Kenric, close shaven, and his short, cropped locks curling beneath a jaunty blue bonnet, with a heron's feather, wearing doublet and hose of forest green, with russet doeskin buskins, the silver badge of Sir Yvo de Taillebois on his arm, and in his hand the freeman's trusty weapon, the puissant English bow, which did such mighty deeds, and won suchlosthereafter, at those immortal fields of Cressy and Poictiers, and famous Agincourt.
As the procession wound down the long slope of the castle hill, and through the Saxon quarter, the serfs, who had collected to look on the show, set up a loud hurrah, the ancient Saxon cry of mirth, of greeting, or defiance. It was the cry ofcaste, rejoicing at the elevation of a brother to the true station of a man. But there was one voice which swelled not the cry; one man, who turned sullenly away, unable to bear the sight of another's joy, turned away, muttering vengeance—Eadwulf the Red—the only soul so base, even among the fallen and degraded children of servitude and sorrow, as to refuse to be glad at the happiness which it was not granted him to share, though that happiness were a mother's and a brother's escape from misery and degradation.
Many days, many weeks, passed away, while that gay cavalcade were engaged in their long progress to the north-westward, through the whole length of the beautiful West Riding of Yorkshire, from its southern frontier, where it abuts on Nottinghamshire and the wild county of Derby, to its western border, where its wide moors and towering crag-crested peaks are blended with the vast treeless fells of Westmoreland.
And during all that lengthened but not weary progress, it was but rarely, and then only at short intervals, that they were out of the sight of the umbrageous and continuous forest.
Here and there, in the neighborhood of some ancient borough, such as Doncaster, Pontefract, or Ripon, through which lay their route, they came upon broad oases of cultivated lands, with smiling farms and pleasant corn-fields and free English homesteads, stretching along the fertile valley of some blue brimful river; again, and that more frequently, they found small forest-hamlets, wood-embosomed, with their little garths and gardens, clustering about the tower of some inferior feudal chief, literally set in a frame of verdure.
Sometimes vast tracks of rich and thriftily-cultured meadow-lands, ever situate in the loveliest places of the shire, pastured by abundant flocks, and dotted with sleek herds of the already celebrated short-horns, told where the monks held their peaceful sway, enjoying the fat of the land; and proclaimed how, in those days at least, the priesthood of Rome were not the sensual, bigot drones, the ignorant, oppressive tyrants, whose whereabout can be now easily detected by the squalid and neglected state of lands and animals and men, whenever they possess the soil and control the people. Such were the famous Abbey-stedes of Fountain's and Jorvaulx, then, as now, both for fertility and beauty, the boast of the West Riding.
Still, notwithstanding these pleasant interchanges of rural with forest scenery, occurring so often as to destroy all monotony, and to keep up a delightful anticipation in the mind of the voyager, as to what sort of view would meet his eye on crossing yon hill-top, or turning that curvature of the wood-road, by far the greater portion of their way led them over sandy tracks, meandering like ribbons through wide glades of greensward, under the broad protecting arms of giant oaks and elms and beeches, the soft sod no less refreshing to the tread of the quadrupeds, than was the cool shadow of the twilight trees delicious to the riders.
Those forests of the olden day were rarely tangled or thicketlike, unless in marshy levels, where the alder, the willow, and other water-loving shrubs replaced the monarchs of the wild; or where, in craggy gullies, down which brawled impetuous the bright hill-streams, the yew, the holly, and the juniper, mixed with the silvery stems and quivering verdure of the birches, or the deeper hues of the broad-leaved witch-elms and hazels, formed dingles fit for fairy bowers.
For the most part, the huge bolls of the forest-trees stood far apart, in long sweeping aisles, as regular as if planted by the hand of man, allowing the grass to grow luxuriantly in the shade, nibbled, by the vast herds of red and fallow deer and roes, into the softest and most even sward that ever tempted the foot of high-born beauty.
And no more lovely sight can be imagined than those deep, verdant solitudes, at early morn, when the luxuriant feathery ferns, the broom and gorse blazing with their clusters of golden blossoms, the crimson-capped foxgloves, the sky-blue campanulas by the roadside, the clustering honeysuckles overrunning the stunt hawthorns, and vagrant briars and waving grasses were glittering far and near in their morning garniture of diamond dewdrops, with the long level rays of the new-risen sun streaming in yellow lustre down the glades, and casting great blue lines of shadow from every mossy trunk—no sight more lovely than the same scenes in the waning twilight, when the red western sky tinged the gnarled bolls with lurid crimson, and carpeted the earth with sheets of copper-colored light, while the skies above were darkened with the cerulean robes of night.
Nor was there lack of living sounds and sights to take away the sense of loneliness from the mind of the voyager in the green wilderness—the incessant songs of the thrush and blackbird, and whistle of the wood-robin, the mellow notes of the linnets, the willow warblers and the sedge birds in the watery brake, the harsh laugh of the green-headed woodpecker, and the hoarse cooing of the innumerable stock-doves, kept the air vocal during all the morning and evening hours; while the woods all resounded far and wide with the loud belling of the great stags, now in their lusty prime, calling their shy mates, or defying their lusty rivals, from morn to dewy eve.
And ever and anon, the wild cadences of the forest bugles, clearly winded in the distance, and the tuneful clamor of the deep-mouthed talbots, would tell of some jovial hunts-up.
Now it would be some gray-frocked hedge priest plodding his way alone on foot, or on his patient ass, who would return the passenger's benedicite with his smoothpax vobiscum; now it would be some green-kirtled forest lass who would drop her demure curtsey to the fair Norman lady, and shoot a sly glance from her hazel eyes at the handsome Norman pages. Here it would be a lord-abbot, or proud prior with his lay brothers, his refectioners and sumptners, his baggage-mules, and led Andalusian jennets, and as the poet sung,
"With many a cross-bearer before,And many a spear behind,"
"With many a cross-bearer before,And many a spear behind,"
"With many a cross-bearer before,And many a spear behind,"
"With many a cross-bearer before,
And many a spear behind,"
who would greet them fairly in some shady nook beside the sparkling brook or crystal well-head, and pray them of their courtesy to alight and share his poor convent fare, no less than the fattest haunch, the tenderest peacock, and the purest wine of Gascony, on the soft green sward.
There, it would be a knot of sun-burned Saxon woodmen, in their green frocks and buckram hose, with long bows in their hands, short swords and quivers at their sides, and bucklers of a span-breadth on their shoulders, men who had never acknowledged Norman king, nor bowed to Norman yoke, who would stand at gaze, marking the party, from the jaws of some bosky dingle, too proud to yield a foot, yet too few to attack; proving that to be well accompanied, in those days, in Sherwood, was a matter less of pomp than of sound policy. Anon, receiving notice of their approach from the repeated bugle-blasts of his verdurers, as they passed each successivemereor forest-station, a Norman knight or noble, in his garb of peace, would gallop down some winding wood-path, with his slender train scattering far behind him, to greet his brother in arms, and pray him to grace his tower by refreshing his company and resting his fair and gentle daughter for a few days or hours, within its precincts.
In short, whether in the forest or in the open country, scarcely an hour, never a day, was passed, without their encountering some pleasant sight, some amusing incident, some interesting adventure. There was a vast fund of romance in the daily life of those olden days, an untold abundance of the picturesque, not a little, indeed, of what we should call stage-effect, in the ordinary habits and every-day affairs of men, which we have now, in our busy, headlong race for affluence, ambition, priority, in every thing good or evil, overlooked, if not forgotten.
Life was in England then, as it was in France up to the days of the Revolution, as it never has been at any time in America, as it is nowhere now, and probably never will be any where again, unless we return to the primitive, social equality, and manful independence of patriarchal times; when truth was held truth, and manhood manhood, the world over; and some higher purpose in mortality was acknowledged than the mere acquiring, some larger nobleness in man than the mere possessing, of unprofitable wealth.
Much of life, then, was spent out of doors; the mid-day meal, the mid-day slumber, the evening dance, were enjoyed, alike by prince and peasant, under the shadowy forest-tree, or the verdure of the trellised bower. The use of flowers was universal; in every rustic festival, of the smallest rural hamlets, the streets would be arched and garlanded with wreaths of wild flowers; in every village hostelry, the chimney would be filled with fresh greens, the board decked with eglantine and hawthorn, the beakers crowned with violets and cowslips, just as in our days the richest ball-rooms, the grandest banquet-halls, are adorned with brighter, if not sweeter or more beautiful, exotics.
The great in those days had not lost "that touch of nature" which "makes the whole world kin" so completely, as to see no grace in simplicity, to find no beauty in what is beautiful alike to all, to enjoy nothing which can be enjoyed by others than the great and wealthy.
The humble had not been, then, bowed so low that the necessities had precluded all thought, all care, for the graces of the existence of man.
If the division between the noble and the common of the human race, as established by birth, by hereditary rank, by unalterable caste, were stronger and deeper and less eradicable than at this day, the real division, as visible in his nature, between man and man, of the noble and the common, the difference in his tastes, his enjoyments, his pleasures, his capacity no less than his power of enjoying, was a mere nothing then, to what it is to-day.
The servants, the very serfs, of aristocracy, in those days, when aristocracy was the rule of blood and bravery, were not, by a hundredth part, so far removed below the proudest of their lords, in every thing that renders humanity graceful and even glorious, in every thing that renders life enjoyable, as are, at this day, the workers fallen below the employers, when nobility has ceased to be, and aristocracy is the sway of capital, untinctured with intelligence, and ignorant of gentleness or grace.
It is not that the capitalist is richer, and the operative poorer—though this is true to the letter—than was the prince, than was the serf of those days. It is not only that the aristocrat of capital, the noble by the grace of gold, is ten times more arrogant, more insulting, more soulless, cold-hearted, and calmly cruel, than the aristocrat of the sword, the noble by the grace of God; and that the worker is worked more hardly, clad more humbly, fed more sparely, than the villain of the middle ages—though this, also, is true to the letter—but it is, that the very tastes, the enjoyments, and the capacities for enjoyment, in a word, almost the nature of the two classes are altered, estranged, unalterably divided.
The rich and great have, with a few rare exceptions that serve only to prove the rule, lost all taste for the simple, for the natural, for the beautiful, unless it be the beautiful of art and artifice; the poor and lowly have, for the most part, lost all taste, all perception of the beautiful, of the graceful, in any shape, all enjoyment of any thing beyond the tangible, the sensual, the real.
Hence a division, which never can be reconciled. Both classes have receded from the true nature of humanity, in the two opposite directions, that they no longer even comprehend the one the tastes of the other, and scarce have a desire or a hope in common; for what the poor man most desires, a sufficiency for his mere wants, physical and moral, the rich man can not comprehend, never having known to be without it; while the artificial nothings, for which the capitalist strives and wrestles to the last, would be to his workman mere syllabub and flummery to the tired and hungry hunter.
In those days the enjoyments, and, in a great measure, the tastes, of all men were alike, from the highest to the lowest—the same sports pleased them, the same viands, for the most part, nourished, the same liquors enlivened them. Fresh meat was an unusual luxury to the noble, yet not an impossible indulgence to the lowest vassal; wine and beer were the daily, the sole, beverages of all, differing only, and that not very widely, in degree. The same love of flowers, processions, out-of-door amusements, dances on the greensward, suppers in the shade, were common to all, constantly enjoyed by all.
Now, it is certain, the enjoyments, the luxuries of the one class—nay, the very delicacy of their tables, if attainable, would be utterly distasteful to the other; and the rich soups, the delicate-made dishes, the savor of the game, and the purity of the light French and Rhenish wines, which are thene plus ultraof the rich man's splendid board, would be even more distasteful to the man of the million, than would be his beans and bacon and fire-fraught whisky to the palate of the gaudy millionaire.
Throughout their progress, therefore, a thousand picturesque adventures befell our party, a thousand romantic scenes were presented by their halts for the noon-day repose, the coming meal, or the nightly hour of rest, which never could now occur, unless to some pleasure-party, purposely masquerading, and aping the romance of other days.
Sometimes, when no convent, castle, hostelry, or hermitage, lay on the day's route, the harbingers would select some picturesque glen and sparkling fountain; and, when the party halted at the spot, an extempore pavilion would be found pitched, of flags and pennoncelles, outspread on a lattice-work of lances, with war-cloaks spread for cushions, and flasks andbottiauscooling in the spring, and pasties and boar's meat, venison and game, plates of silver and goblets of gold, spread on the grass, amid pewter-platters and drinking-cups of horn, a common feast for man and master, partaken with the same appetite, hallowed by the same grace, enlivened by the same minstrelsy and music, and enjoyed no less by the late-enfranchised serfs, than by the high-born nobles to whom they owed their freedom.
Sometimes, when it was known beforehand that they must encamp for the night in the greenwood, the pages and waiting-women would ride forward, in advance of the rest, with the foragers, the baggage, and a portion of the light-armed archery; and, when the shades of evening were falling, the welcome watch-setting of the mellow-winded bugles would bid the voyagers hail; and, as they opened some moon-lit grassy glade, they would behold green bowers of leafy branches, garlanded with wild roses and eglantine, and strewn with dry, soft moss, and fires sparkling bright amid the shadows, and spits turning before the blaze, and pots seething over it, suspended from the immemorial gipsy tripods. And then the horses would be unbridled, unladen, groomed, and picketed, to feed on the rich forest herbage; and the evening meal would be spread, and the enlivening wine-cup would go round, and the forest chorus would be trolled, rendered doubly sweet by the soft notes of the girls, until the bugles breathed a soft good-night, and, the females of the party withdrawing to their bowers of verdure, meet tiring rooms for Oberon and his wild Titania, the men, from the haughty baron to the humblest groom, would fold them in their cloaks, and sleep, with their feet to the watch-fires, and their untented brows toward heaven, until the woodlark, and the merle and mavis, earlier even than the village chanticleer, sounded their forest reveillé.
"Great mountains on his right hand,Both does and roes, dun and red,And harts aye casting up the head.Bucks that brays and harts that hailes,And hindes running into the fields,And he saw neither rich nor poor,But moss and ling and bare wild moor."
"Great mountains on his right hand,Both does and roes, dun and red,And harts aye casting up the head.Bucks that brays and harts that hailes,And hindes running into the fields,And he saw neither rich nor poor,But moss and ling and bare wild moor."
"Great mountains on his right hand,Both does and roes, dun and red,And harts aye casting up the head.Bucks that brays and harts that hailes,And hindes running into the fields,And he saw neither rich nor poor,But moss and ling and bare wild moor."
"Great mountains on his right hand,
Both does and roes, dun and red,
And harts aye casting up the head.
Bucks that brays and harts that hailes,
And hindes running into the fields,
And he saw neither rich nor poor,
But moss and ling and bare wild moor."
Sir Eger, Sir Greysted, and Sir Gryme.
In this life there was much of that peculiar charm which seems to pervade all mankind, of whatever class or country, and in whatever hemisphere; which irresistibly impels him to return to his, perhaps, original and primitive state, as a nomadic being, a rover of the forest and the plain; which, while it often seduces the refined and civilized man of cities to reject all the conveniences and luxuries of polite life, for the excitement and freshness, the inartificial liberty and self-confiding independence of semi-barbarism, has never been known to allow the native savage to renounce his freeborn instincts, or to abandon his natural and truant disposition, for all the advantage, all the powers, conferred by civilization.
And if, even to the freeborn and lofty-minded noble, the careless, unconventional, equalizing life of the forest was felt as giving a stronger pulsation to the free heart, a wider expansion to the lungs, a deeper sense of freedom and power, how must not the same influences have been enjoyed by those, who now, for the first time since they were born, tasted that mysterious thing, liberty—of which they had so often dreamed, for which they had longed so wistfully, and of which they had formed, indeed, so indefinite an idea—for it is one of the particulars in the very essence of liberty, as it is, perhaps, of that kindred gift of God, health, that although all men talk of it as a thing well understood and perfectly appreciated, not one man in ten understands or appreciates it in the least, unless he has once enjoyed it, and then been deprived of its possession.
It is true that, personally, neither Kenric nor Edith had ever known what it is to be free; but they came of a free, nay! even of an educated stock, and, being children of that Northern blood, which never has long brooked even the suspicion of slavery, and, in some sort, of the same race with their conquerors and masters, they had never ceased to feel the consciousness of inalienable rights; the galling sense of injustice done them, of humiliating degradation inflicted on them, by their unnatural position among, but not of, their fellows; had never ceased to hope, to pray, and to labor for a restitution to those self-existing and immutable rights—the rights, I mean, of living for himself, laboring for himself, acquiring for himself, holding for himself, thinking, judging, acting for himself, pleasing and governing himself, so long as he trench not on the self-same right of others—to which the meanest man that is born of a woman is entitled, from the instant when he is born into the world, as the heir of God and nature.
The Saxon serf was, it is true, a being fallen, debased, partially brutalized, deprived of half the natural qualities of manhood, by the state of slavery, ignorance, and imbecility, into which he had been deforced, and in which he was willfully detained by his masters; but he had not yet become so utterly degraded, so far depressed below the lowest attributes of humanity, as to acquiesce in his own debasement, much less to rejoice in his bondage for the sake of the flesh-pots of Egypt, or to glory in his chains, and honor the name of master.
From this misery, from this last perversion and profanation of the human intellect divine—the being content to be a slave—the Saxon serf had escaped thus far; and, thanks to the great God of nature, of revelation, that last curse, that last profanation, he escaped forever. His body the task-master had enslaved; his intellect he had emasculated, debased, shaken, but he had not killed it; for there, there, amid the dust and ashes of the all-but-extinguished fire, there lurked alive, ready to be enkindled by a passing breath into a devouring flame, the sacred spark of liberty.
Ever hoping, ever struggling to be free, when the day dawned of freedom, the Saxon slave was fit to be free, and became free, with no fierce outbreak of servile rage and vengeance, consequent on servile emancipation, but with the calm although enthusiastical gladness which fitted him to become a freeman, a citizen, and, as he is, the master of one half of the round world. It is not, ah! it is not the chain, it is not the lash, it is not the daily toil, it is not the disruption of domestic ties and affections, that prove, that constitute the sin, the sorrow, and the shameful reproach of slavery.
Ah! no. But it is the very converse of these—the very point insisted on so complacently, proclaimed so triumphantly, by the advocates of this accursed thing—it is that, in spite of the chain, in spite of the lash, in spite of the enforced labor, in spite of the absence or disruption of family ties and affections, the slave is sleek, satisfied, self-content; that he waxes fat among the flesh-pots; that he comes fawning to the smooth words, and frolics, delighted, fresh from the lash of his master, in no wise superior to the spaniel, either in aspiration or in instinct. It is in that he envies not the free man his freedom, but, in his hideous lack of all self-knowledge, self-reliance, self-respect, is content to be a slave, content to eat, and grow fat and die, without a present concern beyond the avoidance of corporeal pain and the enjoyment of sensual pleasure, without an aspiration for the future, beyond those of the beasts, which graze and perish.
It is in this that lies the mortal sin, the never-dying reproach, of him who would foster, would preserve, would propagate, the curse of slavery; not that he is a tyrant over the body, but that he is a destroyer of the soul—that he would continue a state of things which reduces a human being, a fellow-man, whether of an inferior race or no—for, as of congenerous cattle there are many distinct tribes, so of men, and of Caucasian men too, there be many races, distinct in physical, in moral, in animal, in intellectual qualities, as well as in color and conformation, if not distinct in origin—to the level of the beast which knoweth not whence he cometh or whither he goeth, nor what is to him for good, or what for evil, which hopes not to rise or to advance, either here or hereafter, but toils day after day, contented with his daily food, and lies down to sleep, and rises up to labor and to feed, as if God had created man with no higher purpose than to sleep and eat alternately, until the night cometh from which, on earth, there shall be no awakening.
But of this misery the Saxon serf was exempt: and, to do him justice, of this reproach was the Norman conqueror exempt also. Of the use of arms, and the knowledge of warfare, he indeed deprived his serfs, for as they outnumbered him by thousands in the field, equalled him in resolution, perhaps excelled him in physical strength, to grant such knowledge would have been to commit immediate suicide—but of no other knowledge, least of all of the knowledge that leads to immortality, did he strive to debar him. Admittance to holy orders was patent to the lowest Saxon, and in those days the cloister was the gate to all knowledge sacred or profane, to all arts, all letters, all refinements, and above all to that knowledge which is the greatest power—the knowledge of dealing with the human heart, to govern it—the knowledge, which so often set the hempen sandal of the Saxon monk upon the mailed neck of the Norman king, and which, in the very reign of which I write, had raised a low-born man of the common Saxon race to be Archbishop of Canterbury, the keeper of the conscience of the king, the primate, and for a time the very ruler of the realm.
Often, indeed, did the superior knowledge of the cowled Saxon avenge on his masters the wrongs of his enslaved brethren; and while the learned priesthood of the realm were the brethren of its most abject slaves, no danger that those slaves should ever become wholly ignorant, hopeless, or degraded—and so it was seen in the end; for that very knowledge which it was permitted to the servile race to gain, while it taught them to cherish and fitted them to deserve freedom, in the end won it for them; at the expense of no floods of noble blood, through the sordure and soil of no savage Saturnalia, such as marked the emancipation alike of the white serfs of revolutionized France, and the black slaves of disenthralled St. Domingo.
And so it was seen in the deportment of Kenric the serf, and of the slave girl Edith, even in these first days of their newly-acquired freedom.
Self-respect they had never lost altogether; and their increased sense of it was shown in the increased gravity and calmness and becomingness of their deportment.
Slaves may be merry, or they may be sullen. But they can not be thoughtful, or calm, or careworn. The French, while they were feudal slaves, before the Revolution, were the blithest, the most thoughtless, the merriest, and most frolicsome, of mortals; they had no morrows for which to take care, no liberties which to study, no rights which to guard. The English peasant was then, as the French is fast becoming now, grave rather than frivolous, a thinker more than a fiddler, a doer very much more than a dancer. Was he, is he, the less happy, the less respectable, the lower in the scale of intellect, that he is the farther from the monkey, and the nearer to the man?
The merriment, the riotous glee, the absolute abandonment of the plantation African to the humor, the glee of the moment, is unapproached by any thing known of human mirthfulness.
The gravity, the concentrated thought, the stern abstractedness, the careworn aspect of the free American is proverbial—the first thing observable in him by foreigners. He has more to guard, more at which to aspire, more on which he prides himself, at times almost boastfully, more for which to respect himself, at times almost to the contempt of others, than any mortal man, his co-equal, under any other form of government, on any other soil. Is he the less happy for his cares, or would he change them for the recklessness of the well-clad, well-fed slave—for the thoughtlessness of the first subject in a despotic kingdom?
Kenric had been always a thinker, though a serf; his elder brother had been a monk, a man of strong sense and some attainment; his mother had been the daughter of one who had known, if he had lost, freedom. With his mother's milk he had imbibed the love of freedom; from his brother's love and teachings he had learned what a freeman should be; by his own passionate and energetic will he had determined to become free. He would have become so ere long, had not accident anticipated his resolve; for he had laid by, already, from the earnings of his leisure hours, above one half of the price whereby to purchase liberty. He was now even more thoughtful and calmer; but his step was freer, his carriage bolder, his head was erect. He was neither afraid to look a freeman in the eye, nor to render meet deference to his superior. For the freeman ever knows, nor is ashamed to acknowledge, that while the equality of man in certain rights, which may be called, for lack of a better title, natural and political, is co-existent with himself, inalienable, indefeasible, immutable, and eternal, there is no such thing whatever, nor can ever be, as the equality of man in things social, more than there can be in personal strength, grace, or beauty, in the natural gifts of intellect, or in the development of wisdom. Of him who boasts that he has no superior, it may almost be said that he has few inferiors.
Thereof Kenric—as he rode along with his harness on his back, and his weapons in his hand, a freeman among freemen, a feudal retainer among the retainers, some Norman, some Saxon, of his noble lord—was neither louder, nor noisier, nor more exultant, perhaps the reverse, than his wont, though happier far than he had conceived it possible for him to be.
And by his bearing, his comrades and fellows judged him, and ruled their own bearing toward him. The Saxons of the company naturally rejoiced to see their countryman free by his own merit, and, seeing him in all things their equal, gladly admitted him to be so. The haughtier Normans, seeing that he bore his bettered fortunes as became a man, ready for either fortune, admitted him as one who had won his freedom bravely, and wore it as if it had been his from his birth—they muttered beneath their thick mustaches, that he deserved to be a Norman.
Edith, on the contrary, young yet, and unusually handsome, who had been the pet of her own people, and the favorite of her princely masters, who had never undergone any severe labor, nor suffered any poignant sorrow, who knew nothing of the physical hardships of slavery, more than she did of the real and tangible blessings of liberty, had ever been as happy and playful as a kitten, and as tuneful as a bird among the branches.
But now her voice was silent of spontaneous song, subdued in conversation, full fraught with a suppressed deeper feeling. The very beauty of the fair face was changed, soberer, more hopeful, farther seeing, full no longer of an earthly, but more with something of an angel light.
The spirit had spoken within her, the statue had learned that it had a soul.
And Guendolen had noted, yet not fully understood the change or its nature. More than once she had called her to her bridle-rein and conversed with her, and tried to draw her out, in vain. At last, she put the question frankly—
"You are quieter, Edith, calmer, sadder, it seems to me," she said, "than I have ever seen you, since I first came to Waltheofstow. I have done all that lies in me to make you happy, and I should be sorry that you were sad or discontented."
"Sad, discontented! Oh! no, lady, no!" she replied, smiling among her tears. "Only too happy—too happy, to be loud or joyous. All happiest things, I think, have a touch of melancholy in them. Do you think, lady, yonder little stream," pointing to one which wound along by the roadside, now dancing over shelvy rapids, now sleeping in silent eddies, "is less happy where it lies calm and quiet, reflecting heaven's face from its deep bosom, and smiling with its hundred tranquil dimples, than where it frolics and sings among the pebbles, or leaps over the rocks which toss it into noisy foam-wreaths? No! lady, no. There it gathers its merriment and its motion, from the mere force of outward causes; here it collects itself from the depth of its own heart, and manifests its joy and love, and thanks God in silence. It is so with me, Lady Guendolen. My heart is too full for music, but not too shallow to reflect boundless love and gratitude forever."
The lady smiled, and made some slight reply, but she was satisfied; for it was evident that the girl's poetry and gratitude both came direct from her heart; and in the smile of the noble demoiselle there was a touch of half-satiric triumph, as she turned her quick glance to Sir Yvo, who had heard all that passed, and asked him, slyly, "And do you, indeed, think, gentle father, that these Saxons are so hopelessly inferior, that they are fitting for nothing but mere toil; or is this the mere inspiration that springs from the sense of freedom?"
"I think, indeed," he replied, "that my little Guendolen is but a spoiled child at the best; and, as to my thoughts in regard to the Saxons, them I shall best consult my peace of mind and pocket by keeping my own property; since, by our Lady's Grace! you may take it into your head to have all the serfs in the north emancipated; and that is a little beyond my powers of purchase. But see, Guendolen, see how the sunbeams glint and glitter yonder on the old tower of Barden, and how redly it stands out from those purple clouds which loom so dark and thunderous over the peaceful woods of Bolton. Give your jennet her head, girl, and let her canter over these fair meadows, that we may reach the abbey and taste the noble prior's hospitality before the thunder gust is upon us."
And quickening its pace, the long train wound its way upward, by the bright waters of the beautiful Wharfe, and speedily obtained the shelter, and the welcome they expected from the good and generous monks of Bolton, the noblest abbaye in the loveliest dale of all the broad West Riding.
The next morning found them traversing the broken green country that lies about the head of the romantic Eyre, and threading the wild passes of Ribbledale, beneath the shadow of the misty peaks of Pennigant and Ingleborough, swathed constantly in volumed vapor, whence the clanging cry of the eagle, as he wheeled far beyond the ken of mortal eyes, came to the ears of the voyagers, on whom he looked securely down as he rode the storm.
That night, no castle or abbey, no village even, with its humble hostelry, being, in those days, to be found among those wild fells and deep valleys, bowers were built of the materials with which the hillsides were plentifully feathered throughout that sylvan and mountainous district, of which the old proverbial distich holds good to this very day: