The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

she knoweth her right hand from her left, she sauceth me: then out I bundle her neck and crop, and take another dunce in her place. Dear heart, 'tis wearisome, teaching a string of fools by ones; but there—I am mistress:” here she forgot that she was defending Reicht, and turning rather spitefully upon her, added, “and you be mistress here, I trow.”

      “No more than that stool,” said the Van Eyck loftily. “She is neither mistress nor servant; but Gone. She is dismissed the house, and there's an end of her. What, did ye not hear me turn the saucy baggage off?”

      “Ay, ay. We all heard ye,” said Reicht, with vast indifference.

      “Then hear me!” said Denys solemnly.

      They all went round like things on wheels, and fastened their eyes on him.

      “Ay, let us hear what the man says,” urged the hostess. “Men are fine fellows, with their great hoarse voices.”

      “Mistress Reicht,” said Denys, with great dignity and ceremony, indeed so great as to verge on the absurd, “you are turned off. If on a slight acquaintance I might advise, I'd say, since you are a servant no more, be a mistress, a queen.”

      “Easier said than done,” replied Reicht bluntly.

      “Not a jot. You see here one who is a man, though but half an arbalestrier, owing to that devilish Englishman's arrow, in whose carcass I have, however, left a like token, which is a comfort. I have twenty gold pieces” (he showed them) “and a stout arm. In another week or so I shall have twain. Marriage is not a habit of mine; but I capitulate to so many virtues. You are beautiful, good-hearted, and outspoken, and above all, you take the part of my she-comrade. Be then an arbalestriesse!”

      “And what the dickens is that?” inquired Reicht.

      “I mean, be the wife, mistress, and queen of Denys of Burgundy here present.”

      A dead silence fell on all.

      It did not last long, though; and was followed by a burst of unreasonable indignation.

      Catherine. “Well, did you ever?”

      Margaret. “Never in all my born days.”

      Catherine. “Before our very faces.”

      Margaret. “Of all the absurdity, and insolence of this ridiculous sex—”

      Then Denys observed somewhat drily, that the female to whom he had addressed himself was mute; and the others, on whose eloquence there was no immediate demand, were fluent: on this the voices stopped, and the eyes turned pivot-like upon Reicht.

      She took a sly glance from under her lashes at her military assailant, and said, “I mean to take a good look at any man ere I leap into his arms.”

      Denys drew himself up majestically. “Then look your fill, and leap away.”

      This proposal led to a new and most unexpected result. A long white finger was extended by the Van Eyck in a line with the speaker's eye, and an agitated voice bade him stand, in the name of all the saints. “You are beautiful, so,” cried she. “You are inspired—with folly. What matters that? you are inspired. I must take off your head.” And in a moment she was at work with her pencil. “Come out, hussy,” she screamed to Reicht, “more in front of him, and keep the fool inspired and beautiful. Oh, why had I not this maniac for my good centurion? They went and brought me a brute with a low forehead and a shapeless beard.”

      Catherine stood and looked with utter amazement at this pantomime, and secretly resolved that her venerable hostess had been a disguised lunatic all this time, and was now busy throwing off the mask. As for Reicht, she was unhappy and cross. She had left her caldron in a precarious state, and made no scruple to say so, and that duties so grave as hers left her no “time to waste a playing the statee and the fool all at one time.” Her mistress in reply reminded her that it was possible to be rude and rebellious to one's poor, old, affectionate, desolate mistress, without being utterly heartless and savage; and a trampler on arts.

      On this Reicht stopped, and pouted, and looked like a little basilisk at the inspired model who caused her woe. He retorted with unshaken admiration. The situation was at last dissolved by the artist's wrist becoming cramped from disuse; this was not, however, until she had made a rough but noble sketch. “I can work no more at present,” said she sorrowfully.

      “Then, now, mistress, I may go and mind my pot?”

      “Ay, ay, go to your pot! And get into it, do; you will find your soul in it: so then you will all be together.”

      “Well, but, Reicht,” said Catherine, laughing, “she turned you off.”

      “Boo, boo, boo!” said Reicht contemptuously. “When she wants to get rid of me, let her turn herself off and die. I am sure she is old enough for't. But take your time, mistress; if you are in no hurry, no more am I. When that day doth come, 'twill take a man to dry my eyes; and if you should be in the same mind then, soldier, you can say so; and if you are not, why, 'twill be all one to Reicht Heynes.”

      And the plain speaker went her way. But her words did not fall to the ground. Neither of her female hearers could disguise from herself that this blunt girl, solitary herself, had probably read Margaret Brandt aright, and that she had gone away from Sevenbergen broken-hearted.

      Catherine and Denys bade the Van Eyck adieu, and that same afternoon Denys set out on a wild goose chase. His plan, like all great things, was simple. He should go to a hundred towns and villages, and ask in each after an old physician with a fair daughter, and an old long-bow soldier. He should inquire of the burgomasters about all new-comers, and should go to the fountains and watch the women and girls as they came with their pitchers for water.

      And away he went, and was months and months on the tramp, and could not find her.

      Happily, this chivalrous feat of friendship was in some degree its own reward.

      Those who sit at home blindfolded by self-conceit, and think camel or man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alias their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind. But those who look before they babble or scribble will see and say that men who risk their lives habitually thirst for exciting pleasures between the acts of danger, are not for innocent tranquility.

      To this Denys was no exception. His whole military life had been half sparta, half Capua. And he was too good a soldier and too good a libertine to have ever mixed either habit with the other. But now for the first time he found himself mixed; at peace and yet on duty; for he took this latter view of his wild goose chase, luckily. So all these months he was a demi-Spartan; sober, prudent, vigilant, indomitable; and happy, though constantly disappointed, as might have been expected. He flirted gigantically on the road; but wasted no time about it. Nor in these his wanderings did he tell a single female that “marriage was not one of his habits, etc.”

      And so we leave him on the tramp, “Pilgrim of Friendship,” as his poor comrade was of Love.

      CHAPTER XLVIII

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      Catherine was in dismay when she reflected that Gerard must reach home in another month at farthest, more likely in a week; and how should she tell him she had not even kept an eye upon his betrothed? Then there was the uncertainty as to the girl's fate; and this uncertainty sometimes took a sickening form.

      “Oh, Kate,” she groaned, “if she should have gone and made herself away!”

      “Mother, she would never be so wicked.”

      “Ah, my lass, you know not what hasty fools young lasses be, that have no mothers to keep 'em straight. They will fling themselves into the water for a man that the next man they meet would ha' cured 'em of in a week. I have known 'em to jump in like brass one moment and scream for help in the next. Couldn't