The Host and the Hostess—Preparing the Evening Meal.
On entering the kitchen, Master Mortimer Sang found the hostess, a
buxom dame with rosy cheeks, raven hair, and jet-black eyes, busily
employed in cooking the food intended for the two knights. Having
already had a glimpse of her, he remarked her to be of an age much too
green for so wintry a husband as Sylvester Kyle; so checking his haste,
he approached her with his best Parisian obeisance.
“Can it be,” said he, assuming an astonished air—“can it possibly be,
that the cruel Master Sylvester Kyle doth permit so much loveliness to
be melted over the vile fire of a kitchen, an ’twere a piece of butter,
and that to fry a paltry pig’s liver withal?”
The dame turned round, looked pleased, smiled, flirted her head, and
then went on frying. Sighing as if he were expiring his soul, Sang
continued,—
“Ah, had it been my happy fate to have owned thee, what would I not
have done to preserve the lustre of those charms unsullied?”
Mrs. Sylvester Kyle again looked round, again she smiled, again she
flirted her head, and, leaving the frying-pan to fry in its own way,
she dropped a curtsey, and called Master Sang a right civil and
fair-spoken gentleman.
“Would that thou hadst been mine,” continued Sang, throwing yet more
tenderness into his expression: “locked in these fond arms, thy beauty
should have been shielded from every chance of injury.” So saying he
suited the action to the word, and embracing Mrs. Kyle, he imprinted on
her cheeks kisses, which, though burning enough in themselves, were
cold compared to the red heat of the face that received them. Having
thus paved the way to his purpose—
“What could possess thee, beauteous Mrs. Kyle,” said he, “to marry that
gorbellied glutton of thine, a fellow who, to fill his own rapacious
bowke, and fatten his own scoundrel carcase, starveth thee to death? I
see it in thy sweet face, my fair hostess; ’tis vain to conceal it; the
wretch is miserably poor; he feedeth thee not. The absolute famine that
reigneth in his beggarly buttery, nay, rather flintery (for buttery it
were ridiculous to call it), cannot suffice to afford one meal a-day to
that insatiable maw of his, far less can it supply those cates and
niceties befitting the stomach of an angel like thyself.”
Mrs. Kyle was whirled up to the skies by this rhapsody; Master
Sylvester had never said anything half so fine. But her pride could not
stand the hits the squire had given against the poverty of her larder.
“Nay thee now, but, kind sir,” said she, “we be’s not so bad off as all
that; Master, my goodman Kyle hath as fat a buttery, I warrant thee, as
e’er a publican in all the Borders.”
“Nay, nay, ’tis impossible, beautiful Mrs. Kyle,” said Mortimer
again—“’tis impossible; else why these wretched pigs’ entrails for a
couple of knights, of condition so high that they may be emperors
before they die, if God give them good luck?”
“La, now there,” exclaimed Mrs. Kyle; “and did not Sylvester say that
they were nought but two lousy Scots, and that any fare would do for
sike loons. Well, who could ha’ thought, after all, that they could be
emperors? An we had known that, indeed, we might ha’ gi’en them
emperor’s fare. Come thee this way, kind sir, and I’ll let thee see our
spense.”
This was the very point which the wily Master Sang had been aiming at.
Seizing up a lamp, she led the way along a dark passage. As they
reached the end of it, their feet sounded hollow on a part of the
floor. Mrs. Kyle stopped, set down her lamp, slipped a small sliding
plank into a groove in the side wall made to receive it, and exposed a
ring and bolt attached to an iron lever. Applying her hand to this, she
lifted a trap door, and disclosed a flight of a dozen steps or more,
down which she immediately tripped, and Sang hesitated not a moment to
follow her. But what a sight met his eyes when he reached the bottom!
He found himself in a pretty large vault, hung round with juicy barons
and sirloins of beef, delicate carcases of mutton, venison, hams,
flitches, tongues, with all manner of fowls and game, dangling in most
inviting profusion from the roof. It was here that Master Kyle
preserved his stock-in-trade, in troublesome times, from the rapacity
of the Border-depredators. Mortimer Sang feasted his eyes for some
moments in silence, but they were allowed small time for their banquet.
A distant foot was heard at the farther extremity of the passage, and
then the angry voice of Kyle calling his wife. Mortimer sprang to the
top of the steps, just as mine host had reached the trap-door.
“Eh! what!” exclaimed Kyle with horror and surprise—“A man in the
spense with my wife! Thieves! Murder!”
He had time to say no more, for Sang grappled him by the throat, as he
was in the very act of stooping to shut the trap-door on him, and down
he tugged the bulky host, like a huge sack; but, overpowered by the
descent of such a mountain upon his head, he rolled over the steps with
his burthen into the very middle of the vault. More afraid of her
husband’s wrath than anxious for his safety, Mrs. Kyle put her lamp on
the ground, jumped nimbly over the prostrate strugglers, and escaped.
The active and Herculean Sang, rising to his knees, with his left hand
pressed down the half-stunned publican, who lay on his back gasping for
breath; then seizing the lamp with his right, he rose suddenly to his
legs, and, regaining the trap-door in the twinkling of an eye, sat him
down quietly on the floor to recover his own breath; and, taking the
end of the lever in his hand, and half closing the aperture, he waited
patiently till his adversary had so far recovered himself as to be able
to come to a parley.
“So, Master Sylvester Kyle,” said the esquire, “thou art there, art
thou—caught in thine own trap? So much for treating noble Scots, the
flower of chivalry, with stinking hog’s entrails. By’r Lady, ’tis well
for thee thou hast such good store of food there. Let me see; methinks
thou must hold out well some week or twain ere it may begin to putrify.
Thou hadst better fall to, then, whiles it be fresh; time enow to begin
starving when it groweth distasteful. So wishing thee some merry meals
ere thou diest, I shall now shut down the trap-door—bolt it fast—nail
up the sliding plank—and as no one knoweth on’t but thy wife, who, kind
soul, hath agreed to go off with me to Scotland to-night, thou mayest
reckon on quiet slumbers for the next century.”
“Oh, good Sir Squire,” cried Kyle, wringing his hands like a maniac,
“let me out, I beseech thee; leave me not to so dreadful a death. Thou
and thy knights and all shall feast like princes; thou shalt float in
sack and canary; thou shalt drink Rhinwyn in barrelfuls, and Malvoisie
in hogsheads, to the very lowest lacquey of ye. No, merciful Sir
Squire, thou canst not be so cruel—Oh, oh!”
“Hand me up,” said Sang, with a stern voice, “hand me up, I say, that
venison, and these pullets there, that neat’s tongue, and a brace of
the fattest of these ducks; I shall then consider whether thou art
worthy of my most royal clemency.”
Mine host had no alternative but to obey. One by one the various
articles enumerated by Sang were handed up to him, and deposited beside
him on the floor of the passage.
“Take these flagons there,” said he, “and draw from each of these buts,
that I may taste.—Ha! excellent, i’ faith, excellent.—Now, Sir knave,
those of thy kidney mount up a ladder to finish their career of
villainy, but thy fate lieth downwards; so down, descend, and mingle
with thy kindred dirt.”
He slapped down the trap-door with tremendous force, bolted it firmly,
and replaced the sliding plank, so that the wretch’s shrieks of
horrible despair came deafened through the solid oak, and sounded but
as the moaning of some deep subterranean stream.
Master Sang had some difficulty in piling up the provender he had
acquired, and carrying it with the flagons to the kitchen. There he
found Mrs. Kyle, who, in the apprehension of a terrible storm from her
lord, was sitting in a corner drowned in tears.
“Cheer up, fair dame,” said Sang to the disconsolate Mrs. Kyle; “thou
needest be under no fear of him to-night. I have left him in prison,
and thou mayest relieve him thyself when thou mayest, and on thine own
terms of capitulation. Meanwhile, hash up some of that venison, and
dress these capons, and this neat’s tongue, for the knights, our
masters, and make out a supper for my comrade and me and the rest as
fast as may be. I’ll bear in the wine myself.”
Mrs. Kyle felt a small smack of disappointment to find that the so
lately gallant esquire, after all he had said, should himself put such
an office upon her; but she dried her eyes, and quickly begirding
herself for her duty, set to work with alacrity.