Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times
make him give up the wretched girl, and send her back to her father!"
"We cannot do it ourselves," replied the forester, "but we can make
others do it. Did you not hear the message I sent to the good old Lord
of Monthermer?"
Ralph Harland bent down his eyes with a look of bitter disappointment.
"If that be your only hope, it is all in vain," he said; "the
Monthermer is linked to the Earl of Ashby by a common cause; and in the
great movements of people such as these, the feelings, and even the
rights of us lesser men are never heeded. The old Earl, good as he is,
will not quarrel with Richard de Ashby for John Greenly's daughter,
lest it breed a feud between him and the other Lord. There is but cold
hope to be found there."
His companion heard him to an end, but with a faint smile upon his
countenance. "I asked the Earl of Ashby, too," he said; "perhaps we may
do something more with him."
Ralph Harland shook his head. "Not till you have got his neck under
your baldrick," he said.
"Perhaps I may have by that time," replied the forester; "I mean," he
continued, in a serious tone, "that I may by that time have a hold upon
him which will make him use his power to send back this light-o'-love
girl to her father's house. I know old John Greenly well, and grieve
for him. Once I found shelter with him when I was under the ban of a
tyrant, and no one else would give me refuge.--I never forget such
things. He is somewhat worldly, it is true; but what host is not? It is
a part of their trade; they draw their ale and affection for every
guest that comes, the one as readily as another, so that he pay his
score. But still the man has not a bad heart, and it will be well-nigh
broken by his daughter's shame."
"She has broken mine," said Ralph Harland.
"Nay--nay!" replied his companion; "you must think better of all this.
You loved her--she has proved false. Forget her--seek another. You will
find many as fair."
"Ay," replied Harland, "I shall find many as fair, perhaps fairer; but
I shall find none that had my first love--none with whom all the
thoughts of my early years were in common--none with whom I have
wandered about the fields in boyhood, and gathered spring flowers for
our May-day games--none with whom I have listened to the singing of the
birds when my own heart was as light and tuneful as theirs--none for
whom I have felt all those things which I cannot describe, which are
like the dawning of love's morning, and which I am sure can never be
felt twice over. No--no! those times are past; and I must think of such
things no more!"
"It is all true," said Robert of the Lees, "but the same, good youth,
is the case with every earthly joy; each day has its pleasure, each
year of our life has things of its own. As the spring brings the fruit,
and the autumn brings the corn, so every period of man's existence has
its apportioned good and evil. I have ever found it so, from infancy
till this day, now eight-and-thirty years, and you will find it
likewise. You will love another--differently, but as well; with less
tenderness, but more trust; with less passion, but with more esteem;
and you will be happier with her than you would have been with this
idle one; for passion dies soon, killing itself with its own food;
esteem lives, and strengthens by its own power. Shake not thy head,
Ralph. I know it is vain to talk to thee as yet, for sorrow and
disappointment blind a man's eyes to the future, and he will look at
nothing but the past."
"But of the Earl of Ashby," said young Harland, little cheered, to say
the truth, by his companion's reasoning; "how can you get such a hold
of him as will make him constrain his own kinsman to give up his
paramour?--Alas! that I should call her so!"
"Take your bridle over your arm," replied the forester; "come with me,
and I will tell you more. You want rest, and food, and reflection; but
nothing can be done before to-morrow, so we shall have plenty of time
to discuss the means, and to arrange the plan."
CHAPTER VII.
Upon the edge of the merry forest-land, on the side nearest to
Derbyshire, not far from the little river Lind, and surrounded at that
time by woods which joined the district on to Sherwood itself, there
rose, in the days I speak of, a Norman castle of considerable extent.
It had been built in the time of William Rufus--had been twice attacked
in the turbulent reign of Stephen--had been partly dismantled by order
of Henry II.--and had been restored under the dominion of the weak
tyrant John. Being not far from Nottingham, it was frequently visited
by noble and royal personages, and was often the scene of the splendid
and ostentatious hospitality of the old baronage of England.
It has now crumbled down, indeed, and departed; the ploughshare has
passed over most of its walls, and the voice of song and merriment
is heard in it no more. The lower part of one of the square
flanking-towers in the outer wall is all that remains of the once
magnificent castle of Lindwell; and a dingly copse, where many a
whirring pheasant rises before the sportsman, now covers the hall and
the lady's bower.
In the days of which I speak, however, it was in its greatest
splendour, having come into the possession of the Earl of Ashby by his
father's marriage, and being the favourite dwelling of the race. It was
situated upon a gentle eminence, and the great gate commanded a view
over some sixty or seventy acres of meadow land, lying between the
castle and the nearest point of the wood; and for the distance of
nearly three miles on the Sherwood side, though there was no cultivated
land--except, indeed, a few detached fields here and there--the ground
assumed more the aspect of a wild chase than a forest, with the thick
trees grouping together to the extent of an acre or two, and then
leaving wide spaces between, as pasture for the deer and other wild
animals, only broken by bushes and hawthorns.
This district was properly within the limits of Sherwood; but, as all
persons know, who are acquainted with the forest laws, certain
individuals frequently possessed private woods in the royal forest,
which was the case of the Earl of Ashby in his manor of Lindwell; and,
whether or not he had originally any legal right of chase therein, such
a privilege had been secured to the manor in the reign of John, by the
king's special grant and permission. His rights of vert and venison,
then, as they were called, extended over a wide distance around, and it
was reported that some disputes had arisen between himself and his
sovereign, whether he had not extended the exercise of those rights
somewhat beyond their legitimate bounds.
In the same merry month of May, however, of which we have just been
writing, and but one day after the occurrences took place which have
just occupied our attention, a gay party issued forth from the gates of
the castle, and took its way in the direction of Nottingham. We have
called it gay, and it was so altogether: gay in colouring, gay
in movement, gay in feeling. At the head of it appeared three
light-hearted young women, a lady and her two maids, all about the same
age, and none of them having as yet numbered twenty years. Their
clothing, was rich and glittering; and they were followed by a page,
possessing all the requisite qualities for his office in saucy boldness
and light self-confidence. Three or four yeomen came next, who, having
been left behind while their lord went with numerous attendants upon a
distant progress, had necessarily had all the love and the merriment of
the lower hall to themselves. The horses which bore the whole party
were fresh, proud, and spirited; and never, perhaps, was more
brightness of appearance and heart embodied in one group than in that
which took its way down from the castle gate and through the meadows
below; but we must pause, for a moment upon the fair leader of the
cavalcade, for she is worth a short description.
The Earl's daughter, Lucy de Ashby, wanted yet a few months of that
period when girlhood may be said to end and womanhood begin; where the
teens--which are so longingly looked for by the child--come to their
end, and the third ten of the allotted seven begins. Oh, how long do
the five tens that are to follow appear, when viewed from the brow of
the hill of youth! And yet the two that are gone contain the brightest
and the sweetest part of our apportioned time.
Lucy looked not older than her years, for she was small and delicately
formed; but yet there was the fulness of womanhood in every line. Her
face had not much colour, and yet it was not pale, but the whole hue
was warm and healthy, and fairer than that of the southern nations of
Europe, though still evidently the complexion of what is now called a
brunette. The brow, the nose, the lips, the chin, were all beautifully
cut; though the model was not Greek, for the forehead was wider and
higher, and there was a slight, a very slight wave in the line between
the brow and the nose. The eyebrows were dark, small, and long,
slightly depressed in the middle over the eye, but by no means either
arched or strongly defined, according to the eastern notions of beauty,
but, on the contrary, shaded softly off, so as only to show a definite
line to beholders when at a little distance. The eyes beneath them were
large and long, but with the deep black eyelashes, which she had
derived from her mother, shading them so completely, that the sparkling
of the dark iris was only clearly seen when she looked up.
That, however, was often the case; for in her gay liveliness, when she
had said some little thing to tease or to surprise, she would still
raise the "fringed curtain" of her eye to mark the effect it produced,
and to have her smile at anything like astonishment that appeared upon
the countenance of those who heard her.
The lip, too, was full of playfulness; for, indeed, sorrow had but sat
there once, and tears were very unfrequent in those dark, bright eyes.
There had been people seen, perhaps, more beautiful in mere feature,
but few more beautiful in expression, and certainly none ever more
captivating in grace of movement and in variety of countenance. Her
dress was full of gay and shining colours, but yet so well assorted, so
harmonious in their contrast, that the effect could not be called
gaudy.
The same was not the case with her two women, who, with the pleasant
familiarity of those times, were chattering lightly to their mistress
as they rode along, upon the ordinary subject of women's thoughts in
all ages--alas! I mean dress. There was, on the contrary, a good deal
of gaudiness about their apparel, and their taste did not appear to be
of the most refined kind.
"Nay, dear lady," said one of them, "I would have put on the robe of
arms when I was going to Nottingham to wait for my father. It does look
so magnificent, with the escutcheon of pretence for Minorca just on
your breast, the silver field on one side, and the azure field on the
other, and the beautiful wyverns all in gold."
"I cannot bear it, silly girl," replied the lady; "to hear you talk
about wearing the fields, one would suppose that I was a piece of
arable land; and as to coats of arms, Judith, I like not this new
custom; women have nothing to do with coats of arms. I put it on once
to please my brother, but I will never wear it again, so he may cut the
skirt off and use it himself next time he goes to a tournament."
"Dear, now, lady, how you jest," replied the girl; "he could never get
it on; why, Lord Alured's thigh is thicker than your waist; and I do
declare I think it much handsomer than that azure and gold you are so
fond of. I would not wear that, at all events."