Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth, - [e books for reading .TXT] 📗

least I could mend and wash for you. I suppose it is as easy to play the good housewife afloat as on shore? Come, now!”

Amyas looked from one to the other.

“God only knows which of the two is less fit to go. Mother! mother! you know not what you ask. Frank! Frank! I do not want you with me. This is a sterner matter than either of you fancy it to be; one that must be worked out, not with kind words, but with sharp shot and cold steel.”

“How?” cried both together, aghast.

“I must pay my men, and pay my fellow-adventurers; and I must pay them with Spanish gold. And what is more, I cannot, as a loyal subject of the queen's, go to the Spanish Main with a clear conscience on my own private quarrel, unless I do all the harm that my hand finds to do, by day and night, to her enemies, and the enemies of God.”

“What nobler knight-errantry?” said Frank, cheerfully; but Mrs. Leigh shuddered.

“What! Frank too?” she said, half to herself; but her sons knew what she meant. Amyas's warlike life, honorable and righteous as she knew it to be, she had borne as a sad necessity: but that Frank as well should become “a man of blood,” was more than her gentle heart could face at first sight. That one youthful duel of his he had carefully concealed from her, knowing her feeling on such matters. And it seemed too dreadful to her to associate that gentle spirit with all the ferocities and the carnage of a battlefield. “And yet,” said she to herself, “is this but another of the self-willed idols which I must renounce one by one?” And then, catching at a last hope, she answered—

“Frank must at least ask the queen's leave to go; and if she permits, how can I gainsay her wisdom?”

And so the conversation dropped, sadly enough.

But now began a fresh perplexity in Frank's soul, which amused Amyas at first, when it seemed merely jest, but nettled him a good deal when he found it earnest. For Frank looked forward to asking the queen's permission for his voyage with the most abject despondency and terror. Two or three days passed before he could make up his mind to ask for an interview with her; and he spent the time in making as much interest with Leicester, Hatton, and Sidney, as if he were about to sue for a reprieve from the scaffold.

So said Amyas, remarking, further, that the queen could not cut his head off for wanting to go to sea.

“But what axe so sharp as her frown?” said Frank in most lugubrious tone.

Amyas began to whistle in a very rude way.

“Ah, my brother, you cannot comprehend the pain of parting from her.”

“No, I can't. I would die for the least hair of her royal head, God bless it! but I could live very well from now till Doomsday without ever setting eyes on the said head.”

“Plato's Troglodytes regretted not that sunlight which they had never beheld.”

Amyas, not understanding this recondite conceit, made no answer to it, and there the matter ended for the time. But at last Frank obtained his audience; and after a couple of hours' absence returned quite pale and exhausted.

“Thank Heaven, it is over! She was very angry at first—what else could she be?—and upbraided me with having set my love so low. I could only answer, that my fatal fault was committed before the sight of her had taught me what was supremely lovely, and only worthy of admiration. Then she accused me of disloyalty in having taken an oath which bound me to the service of another than her. I confessed my sin with tears, and when she threatened punishment, pleaded that the offence had avenged itself heavily already,—for what worse punishment than exile from the sunlight of her presence, into the outer darkness which reigns where she is not? Then she was pleased to ask me, how I could dare, as her sworn servant, to desert her side in such dangerous times as these; and asked me how I should reconcile it to my conscience, if on my return I found her dead by the assassin's knife? At which most pathetic demand I could only throw myself at once on my own knees and her mercy, and so awaited my sentence. Whereon, with that angelic pity which alone makes her awfulness endurable, she turned to Hatton and asked, 'What say you, Mouton? Is he humbled sufficiently?' and so dismissed me.”

“Heigh-ho!” yawned Amyas;

“If the bridge had been stronger, My tale had been longer.”

“Amyas! Amyas!” quoth Frank, solemnly, “you know not what power over the soul has the native and God-given majesty of royalty (awful enough in itself) when to it is superadded the wisdom of the sage, and therewithal the tenderness of the woman. Had I my will, there should be in every realm not a salique, but an anti-salique law: whereby no kings, but only queens should rule mankind. Then would weakness and not power be to man the symbol of divinity; love, and not cunning, would be the arbiter of every cause; and chivalry, not fear, the spring of all obedience.”

“Humph! There's some sense in that,” quoth Amyas. “I'd run a mile for a woman when I would not walk a yard for a man; and—Who is this our mother is bringing in? The handsomest fellow I ever saw in my life!”

Amyas was not far wrong; for Mrs. Leigh's companion was none other than Mr. Secretary, Amyas's Smerwick Fort acquaintance; alias Colin Clout, alias Immerito, alias Edmund Spenser. Some half-jesting conversation had seemingly been passing between the poet and the saint; for as they came in she said with a smile (which was somewhat of a forced one)—“Well, my dear sons, you are sure of immortality, at least on earth; for Mr. Spenser has been vowing to me to give your adventure a whole canto to itself in his 'Faerie Queene'.”

“And you no less, madam,” said Spenser. “What were the story of the Gracchi worth without the figure of Cornelia? If I honor the fruit, I must not forget the stem which bears it. Frank, I congratulate you.”

“Then you know the result of my interview, mother?”

“I know everything, and am content,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“Mrs. Leigh has reason to be content,” said Spenser, “with that which is but her own likeness.”

Spare your flattery to an old woman, Mr. Spenser. When, pray, did I” (with a most loving look at Frank) “refuse knighthood for duty's sake?”

“Knighthood?” cried Amyas. “You never told me that, Frank!”

“That may well be, Captain Leigh,” said Spenser; “but believe me, her majesty (so Hatton assures me) told him this day, no less than that by going on this quest he deprived himself of that highest earthly honor, which crowned heads are fain to seek from their own subjects.”

Spenser did not exaggerate. Knighthood was then the prize of merit only; and one so valuable, that Elizabeth herself said, when asked why she did not bestow a peerage upon some favorite, that having already knighted him, she had nothing better to