Red Axe, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [top novels TXT] 📗

been an intruding spider she had perforce to put forth out of her chamber into the garden.
Yet formerly, upon occasion when, as it might be, she was reading or looking out of the window, if I but came behind her and called her "Little Sister," I might even put my hand upon her shoulder, and so stand for five minutes at a time and she never seem to notice it.


CHAPTER XIV
SIR AMOROUS IS PLEASED WITH HIMSELF
For, as I say, women have curious ways, and there are a good many of them recorded in this book. And yet more I have observed which I cannot find room for in a chronicle of so many sad and bad and warlike happenings. But none of them all is more notable than this--that women, or at least (for it is no use saying "women," every one being different in temper, though like as pease in some things) many women, will permit that which it suits them to be oblivious of, when if you ask them for permission or make a favor of the matter, they will promptly flame sky-high with indignation. So my advice to the young man who honestly goes a-courting is to keep talking earnestly, to occupy his mistress's attention withal, and progress in her favors during the abstractions of high discourse.
Of course in this, as in all other similar enterprises, Sir Amorous must have a certain trading-stock of favor to start with. But if he have this much, 'tis not difficult to increase it by honest endeavor, and, as it were, the sweat of his brain. So at least I am told by those who have proved it. Nevertheless, for myself, I have used no such nice refinements, but rather taken with thankfulness such things as came in my way.
And now when I look back over my paper--lord! what a pother of writing about it and about! But my excuse is that many young lads and gay bachelors will read this tale, so I desire to import what of instruction I can into it. And not having the learning of the clerks, I must e'en put in what wisdom I have gotten for myself in my passage through the world. For I never could plough with another man's heifer--least of all with that of a college-bred Mess John. Not but what Mess John knoweth somewhat of the lear of love also among the well-favored dames of the city. Or else, by my faith, Mess John is sorely belied.
But where was I in my tale? And if this present errant discourse be forgiven, surely I will not transgress again, but drive my team straight to the furrow's end and then back again, like an honest ploughman that has his eye ever upon the guide-poles on the windy ridge.
Well, the Little Playmate lifted a toad from her waist--I mean my hand--and dropped it as far from her as her arm would reach.
And then after that she ran up-stairs, slammed the door of her own chamber, and came not down to our nooning, so that old Hanne had to call her three times.
And once, when I had occasion to cross the court-yard to the guard-house, I saw her standing pensively by the window. But so soon as she saw me she vanished within and was seen no more.
Yet, indeed and indeed, as all may see, there was no cause for all this fret. For I cared no more about Christian's Elsa than about Christian himself--less, indeed, for Christian was a good soldier and master-at-arms, and taught me how to handle the match-lock, the pistolet, and the other new weapons that had begun to come in from France. And often upon Saturdays and wet days he would let me spend long mornings in the armory with him, oiling and cleaning the ordnance. Which it certainly was a great pleasure to do.
And what if the little dumpling Elsa, with her red cheeks and her babyish eyes, did run in and out. Her father was ever with us, and even had I been willing there was no opportunity for more than a word or a touch of her fingers--well, save once, when her father went himself to seek the bottle of oil she had been sent to fetch, and was some time in finding it. But even that was a mere nothing, and might have happened to any one.
But when I came home again that night, you would have thought that the whole happening had been printed legibly on my face. The Little Playmate would not let me come within a hundred miles of her. And it was "Keep your distance, sirrah!" Not perhaps said in words, but expressed as clearly by the warlike angle of an arm, the contumelious hitch of a shoulder, or the scornful sweep of an adverse skirt.
And all about nothing! Mighty Hector! I never saw such things as women.
And yet in her good moments she would call me "Great Brother," and tell me that she thought only of my future welfare, desiring that I should not compromise myself in any entanglement with such as were not worthy of me. Oh, a most wise and prudent counsellor was the Playmate in these days.
And I used ever to say: "Helene, when I am truly in love I will e'en bring her here to you, and, by my faith, if you approve not--why, there is an end of the matter. Back she goes to her mother like a parcel of returned goods--aye, if she were the Kaiser's daughter herself!"
Whereat she pouted and was not ill-pleased.
"Ah, my man," she would reply, "after a girl hath said you nay a time or two, it will bring you down from these high notions, and be much for your soul's final good!"
But yet, when I could keep her in good-humor, it was exceedingly sweet to bide quietly in the house with the Little Playmate--far better than to gad about with Texels and meandering fools, which indeed I did oftentimes just because it made my little lass so full of moods and tenses--like one of Friar Laurence's irregular verbs in his cursed Humanities. For there is nothing so variously delightful as a woman when she is half in love and half out of it--more interesting (say some) though less delightful than when she is all and whole in love. Nevertheless, there are exceptions, and one woman at least I know more various, and more delicious also, since love's ocean hath gone over her head, than ever she was when, like a timid bather, she shivered on the brink or made little fearful plunges, as it were knee-deep, and so ran out again.
But I am not come to that in the story yet.
Well, on the afternoon of the next day, who should come to the house in the Red Tower but our Helene's gossip, for this week at least her bosom friend, Katrin Texel. She was even more impressive in manner than ever, and also a little pleasanter to behold. For her angles were clothing themselves into curves, and she was learning, perhaps from the Little Playmate, to leave off bouncing into a room like a cow at the trot, and to walk in sedately instead. By-and-by I knew she would come sailing down the street like a towered galleon from the isles of Ind. For all that, she looked not ill--an academic study for Juno, one might say. But to make love to--why, as Helene was wont to remark, _Feech!_
And the curious thing about Katrin Texel was that though her corporeal part might be a direct inheritance from her Burgomeister father and his substantial brewery, her spirit had been designed for an artful fairy of half her size, in order that it might go pirouetting into airy realms of the imagination. For she was gay enough and lightsome enough in her demeanor. She came in with a skip which would have been entrancing in some elfish mignonne who could dance light-foot on spring flowers without crushing them. But when this our solid Burgomagisterial Katrin tripped in, it nearly drove me wild with mirth. For it was as if some bland maternal cow out of the pasture had skipped with a hop and a circle of flying skirts into a ballroom or a butterfly of two hundred pounds' weight had taken to flitting from flower to flower.
And this Katrin talked in a quick, light voice, with ups and downs and skips and quivers in it, as spring-heeled as a chamois goat on the mountains of the south.
"Ah, Tiny-chen," she would cry, as she came undulating and cooing in to our Helene, "is it you, dearest? 'Tis as sweet to see you as for birds to kiss on bough! I have danced all day in the sunshine just to think that I should come to see you! And tell me why you have not been to visit me. Ah, bad one--cruelest--as cruel as she is pretty" (appealing to me), "is she not? And there, our Michael, great oaf, sits at home desolated that he does not hear her foot on the stairs. The foolish fellow tells me that he listens for four little pit-a-pats every time that I come up from the court-yard, and is disappointed when there come back only my poor two."
And Katrin becked and nodded and set her head to the side--like to the divine Io-Cow playing at being little Jenny Wren.
And as for me, I kept my gravity--or, rather, how could I lose it, hearing such nonsense about that great stupid beer-vat, Michael Texel.
Michael Texel, indeed! I should admire to hear of Michael Texel so much as raising his eyes to the Little Playmate. Why, I would stave him on the open street like a puncheon of eight, and think nothing of the doing of it.
Michael Texel, indeed!
But I am forgetting. My business at this time was to make love to Katrin, so that I might banish the ill impression which Helene had formed concerning that pleasant, harmless little Christian's Elsa over there. I never heard anything so foolish in my life. But, then, what women will think and say passes the imagination of man.
Michael Texel indeed!
The thought of that young man of beef and beer recurred so persistently and forcibly to me that for a time I could scarce command myself to speak civilly to his sister. Though, of course, she was quite different, being a woman, and informed with such a quick and dainty spirit that at times it seemed as it had been imprisoned in her too massive frame and held "in subjection to the flesh," as the clerics say. God wot, I never knew I had so much religion and morality about me till I came to write. If I do not have a care this tale of mine will turn out almost as painful as a book of devotion which they set children to read on saints' days to keep them from being over-happy.
But I subdued my feelings and drew up somewhat nearer to Katrin.
"My Little Sister--" so I began, cunningly, as I thought--"my sister Helene is, indeed, fortunate to have so fair a friend, and one so devoted--"
"As my brother Michael, yes," she twittered, with her most ponderous, cage-bird manner; "yes, indeed, he _is_ devoted to her."
"No," said I, hastily (confound the great hulking camel!), "I mean such a faithful friend as yourself. I, alas, have no friend. I am cut off from all society of my kind. Often and often have I felt the weight of loneliness press heavy upon me in this darksome tower."
I saw Helene rise, go to the window, and glance across with such a peculiar smile that I knew as well as if I had seen her that Christian's