Maid Marian | Page 8

fare
better on fast-day for the violent death of two lovers two hundred years
ago. The inference is most consecutive, that wherever you catch a
red-fleshed trout, love lies bleeding under the water: an occult quality,
which can only act in the stationary waters of a lake, being neutralised
by the rapid transition of those of a stream."
"And why is the trout shyer for that?" asked Sir Ralph.
"Do you not see?" said brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers
diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour
makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty
makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish
which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder
are the towers of Arlingford."

The little friar stopped. He seemed suddenly struck with an awful
thought, which caused a momentary pallescence in his rosy complexion;
and after a brief hesitation, he turned his galloway, and told his
companions he should give them good day.
"Why, what is in the wind now, brother Peter?" said Friar Michael.
"The lady Matilda," said the little friar, "can draw the long-bow. She
must bear no goodwill to Sir Ralph; and if she should espy him from
her tower, she may testify her recognition with a cloth-yard shaft. She
is not so infallible a markswoman, but that she might shoot at a crow
and kill a pigeon. She might peradventure miss the knight, and hit me,
who never did her any harm."
"Tut, tut, man," said brother Michael, "there is no such fear."
"Mass," said the little friar, "but there is such a fear, and very strong too.
You who have it not may keep your way, and I who have it shall take
mine. I am not just now in the vein for being picked off at a long shot."
And saying these words, he spurred up his four-footed better half, and
galloped off as nimbly as if he had had an arrow singing behind him.
"Is this lady Matilda, then, so very terrible a damsel?" said Sir Ralph to
brother Michael.
"By no means," said the friar. "She has certainly a high spirit; but it is
the wing of the eagle, without his beak or his claw. She is as gentle as
magnanimous; but it is the gentleness of the summer wind, which,
however lightly it wave the tuft of the pine, carries with it the
intimation of a power, that, if roused to its extremity, could make it
bend to the dust."
"From the warmth of your panegyric, ghostly father," said the knight, "I
should almost suspect you were in love with the damsel."
"So I am," said the friar, "and I care not who knows it; but all in the
way of honesty, master soldier. I am, as it were, her spiritual lover; and
were she a damsel errant, I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar

militant. I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might
thresh me black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her
cause. Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your
soldiership, the earl is her liege lord, and she is his liege lady. I am her
father confessor and ghostly director: I have taken on me to show her
the way to the next world; and how can I do that if I lose sight of her in
this? seeing that this is but the road to the other, and has so many
circumvolutions and ramifications of byeways and beaten paths (all
more thickly set than the true one with finger-posts and milestones, not
one of which tells truth), that a traveller has need of some one who
knows the way, or the odds go hard against him that he will ever see
the face of Saint Peter."
"But there must surely be some reason," said Sir Ralph, "for father
Peter's apprehension."
"None," said brother Michael, "but the apprehension itself; fear being
its own father, and most prolific in self-propagation. The lady did, it is
true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother, for
reprimanding her in that she would go hunting a-mornings instead of
attending matins. She cut short the thread of his eloquence by
sportively drawing her bow-string and loosing an arrow over his head;
he waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for
many months. I thought he had forgotten it: but let that pass. In truth,
she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had liked the
chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds: yet I know
not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally
fashioned each other