THE LADY'S GAME.
"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.
"The _noble_ Saxon! 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. The _noble_
Saxon! 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 no
_right_ to 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 you _nidering_. 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 a _small_
caprice, 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 labor _will_
be 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 lost _their_ freedom!" 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
are _not_ worthy 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. Had _you_ been 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.