Sir Norman

“ And so King Norman ruled, sufficient unto himself, with the commerce of an every-day world slipping past his dominion, amassing wealth, making his position more secure, the great passion for the girl growing with the years, standing now and again on the decks of his tugs as they passed the lake ships, the broad brim of his black, round-crowned hat blown back, hands clasped lightly behind him, head forward—truly a kingly figure, powerful, aloof, unchallenged. ”

“ The white hands removed the mask, and the floating coils of hair, and revealed, to Sir Norman's horror-struck gaze, the grisly face and head, and the hollow eye-sockets, the grinning mouth, and fleshless cheeks of a skeleton!
He saw it but for one fearful instant—the next, she had thrown up both arms, and leaped headlong into the loathly plague-pit. He saw her for a second or two, heaving and writhing in the putrid heap; and then the strong man reeled and fell with his face on the ground, not feigning, but sick unto death. ”

“ Sir Norman and Hubert looked at each other, one between despair and rage, the other with a thoughtful, half-inquiring air, as if he had some secret to tell, and was mentally questioning whether it was safe to do so. On the whole, he seemed to come to the conclusion, that a silent tongue maketh a wise head, and nodding and saying “Thank you!” to the watchman, he passed his arm through Sir Norman's, and drew him back to the door of Leoline's house.
“There is a light within,” he said, looking up at it; “how comes that?” ”

“ The count blandly waved Sir Norman to follow, which Sir Norman did, with much the mein of a sulky lion; and, a moment after, both were facing each other within the archway.
“Well!” cried the young knight, impatiently; “I am waiting. Go on!”
“My dear Kingsley,” responded the count, in his easy way, “I think you are laboring under a little mistake. I have nothing to go on about; it is you who are to begin the controversy.”
“Do you dare to play with me?” exclaimed Sir Norman, furiously. “I tell you to take care how you speak! What have you done with Leoline?” ”

“ Sir Norman was in a very bad way, beyond doubt, but no worse than millions of young men before and after him; and he heaved a great many profound sighs, and drank a great many glasses of sack, and came to the sorrowful conclusion that Dame Fortune was a malicious jade, inclined to poke fun at his best affections, and make a shuttlecock of his heart for the rest of his life. ”

“ It was a gloomy scene and hour, and Sir Norman's heart turned sick within him as he noticed the ruin and devastation the pestilence had everywhere wrought. And he remembered, with a shudder, the prediction of Lilly, the astrologer, that the paved streets of London would be like green fields, and the living be no longer able to bury the dead. Long before this, he had grown hardened and accustomed to death from its very frequence; but now, as he looked round him, he almost resolved to ride on and return no more to London till the plague should have left it. ”

“ The night was intensely dark when Sir Norman got into it once more; and to any one else would have been intensely dismal, but to Sir Norman all was bright as the fair hills of Beulah. When all is bright within, we see no darkness without; and just at that moment our young knight had got into one of those green and golden glimpses of sunshine that here and there checker life's rather dark pathway, and with Leoline beside him would have thought the dreary shores of the Dead Sea itself a very paradise. ”

“ Sir Norman's feelings, which had been rising ever since their meeting, got up to such a height at this aggravating question, that he gave vent to an oath, and laid his hand on his sword; but the count's hand lightly interposed before it came out.
“Not yet, Sir Norman. Be calm; talk rationally. What do you accuse me of doing with Leoline?”
“Do you dare deny having carried her off?”
“Deny it? No; I am never afraid to father my own deeds.”
“Ah!” said Sir Norman grinding his teeth. “Then you acknowledge it?” ”

“ I hate him! I hate him! I would kill him if I could: and if you, Sir Norman, are half the man I take you to be, you will rid the world of the horrible monster before morning dawns!”
“My dear lady, you seem to forget that the case is reversed, and that he is going to rid the world of me,” said Sir Norman, with a sigh.
“No, not if you do as I tell you; and when I have told you how much cause I have to abhor him, you will agree with me that killing him will be no murder! Oh, if there is One above who rules this world, and will judge us all, why, why does He permit such monsters to live?” ”

“ At this shocking statement Sir Norman looked helplessly round, as if for relief; and Miranda, after a moment's silence, broke into another mirthless laugh.
“Of all the pictures of ugliness you ever saw or heard of, Sir Norman Kingsley, do tell me if there ever was one of them half so repulsive or disgusting as that thing?”
“Really,” said Sir Norman, in a subdued tone, “he is not the most prepossessing little man in the world; but, madame, you do look and speak in a manner quite dreadful. Do let me prevail on you to calm yourself, and tell me your story, as you promised.” ”

“ A number of men were loitering about, smoking, drinking, and discussing the all-absorbing topic of the plague, and the fires that might be kindled. There was a moment's pause, as Sir Norman entered, took a seat, and called for a glass of sack, and then the conversation went on as before. The landlord hastened to supply his wants by placing a glass and a bottle of wine before him, and Sir Norman fell to helping himself, and to ruminating deeply on the events of the night. ”

“ Here was a land as wild as the Armorican forests in the old tales of chivalry and legends of monasticism—a virgin land of practical freedom, where new empires might be carved by the strong and willing hand, and new mines of knowledge laid open by the daring intellect. It was not money that the simple Norman thought of; it was excitement, adventure, vague possibilities, limitless solitudes where hermits and hunters might live and dream. To leave Normandy was not exile to him; to leave all those he loved was not separation ”

“ The count had given the order to start, the moment they had left the ruin, and the conversation had been carried on while riding at a break-neck gallop. Sir Norman thanked him for his offer, and they rode in silence until they reached the city, and their paths diverged; Sir Norman's leading to the apothecary's shop where he had left Ormiston, and the count's leading—he best knew where. George—the attendant referred to—joined the knight, and leaving his horse in his care, Sir Norman entered the shop, and encountered the spectral proprietor at the door. ”

“ All the heroes of the fantastic adventure are Norman, or become Norman, or play their part in the Norman country.
What a fascinating procession through the ages! What a rousing spectacle was that of all those barons, dukes and kings, starting from such widely opposite points to meet in this particular corner of the world! Beautrelet turned the pages of history at haphazard: it was Rolf, or Rou, or Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, who was master of the secret of the Needle, according to the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte! ”

“ Fashioned and enriched by the hand of man, the land of Normandy has in turn profoundly influenced the character of its inhabitants. First and foremost, the Norman is a peasant, industrious, tenacious, cautious, secretive, distrustful of strangers, close-fisted, shrewd, even to the point of cunning, a hard man at a bargain, eager for gain, but with the genius for small affairs rather than for great, for labor and economy rather than enterprise and daring. ”

“ A good Norman is no Norman who has not a lawsuit on hand.
Anything will serve as a pretext for a quarrel No sum of money is so small as not to warrant a breaking of the closest blood ties, if thereby one's rights may be secured. Those beautiful stripes of rye, barley, corn, and wheat up yonder in the fields, that melt into one another like sea-tones—down here on the benches before the juge de paix—what quarrels, what hatreds, what evil passions these few acres of land have brought their owners, facing each other here like so many demons, ready to spring at the others' throats! ”

“ Let us therefore suffer the old Norman chronicler to transport our imaginations to the fair Sussex scenery, north-west of Hastings, with its breezy uplands, its grassy slopes, and ridges of open down swelling inland from the sparkling sea, its scattered copses, and its denser glades of intervening forests, clad in all the varied tints of autumn, as they appeared on the morning of the fourteenth of October, seven hundred and eighty-five years ago. The Norman host is pouring forth from its tents; and each troop, and each company, is forming fast under the banner of its leader. ”

“ But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. They were always hungering and thirsting for the riches of the English; and the more he gave, the more they wanted. His priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We know of only one Norman who plainly told his master, the King, that he had come with him to England to do his duty as a faithful servant, and that property taken by force from other men had no charms for him. His name was Guilbert. We should not forget his name, for it is good to remember and to honor honest men. ”

“ When that other man who called himself a king came here, it was with a measure of pomp and dignity. He had followers; he had the driving purpose of religious fanaticism, but when King Norman came, it was without the fervor of a pilgrim seeking new soil for his faith and deeds, without a follower except the shy little girl with the great blue eyes and blue-black hair, her face whitened by infancy spent in a convent school, and the sooty-faced ruffian in the fire-hole of the rickety tug which Eldred wheeled out of the straits himself—for that was all men called him when he came: Norman Eldred. ”

“ Norman broke off a piece of the sand-stone as a memorial of the cave, and then hastened to the carriage.
Over the prairie, with its abundant blossoms; along the high bluffs upon which St. Paul is built; through a long busy street; a pause at the door of a gentleman whom Mrs. Lester had known in her old home in the East, and they were once more on the Grey Eagle. ”

“ He shall have Normandy and Mans, and serve the king of France for the same. There are many brave men in Normandy; I know none equal to them. They are noble and valiant knights, conquering in all [Pg 274] lands whither they go. If they have a good captain [15] , a company of them is much to be dreaded; but if they have not a lord whom they fear, and who governs them severely, the service they will render will soon be but poor. The Normans are worth little without strict justice; they must be bent and bowed to their ruler's will ”

“ To those of us who knew Norman intimately, the news of his death comes as a distinct shock, and every member of our class feels proud to have known and to have been affiliated with one who had the courage to give in such a noble way everything he possessed to the great cause in which he believed. ”

“ He said too, long ago, that he thought Harry cut out for a sailor.
“A spirited fellow!” said Norman, with a look of saddened pride and approval, not at all like one so near the same age. “He is up to anything, afraid of nothing, he can lick any boy in the school already. It will be worse than ever without him!”
“Yes, you will miss your constant follower. He has been your shadow ever since he could walk. But there’s the clock, I must not keep you any longer; good-bye, Norman.” ”

“ And then this extraordinary person, who united in himself all the types of an age that vanished for ever in his grave, and who is the more interesting, as in him we see the race from which the Norman sprang, began, in the rich full voice that pealed deep as an organ, to chaunt his impromptu war-song. ”

“ The droning Norman voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before him on the left. He caught a jest, the coarse chuckling laughter which attended it, and the gurgle of applause which followed; and he knew that at any moment one of the men might step out and discover him. ”

“ Thus the Norman Bruce becomes a Scot; thus the descendant of the Norman Strongbow becomes an Irishman. No men less than Normans can be conceived as remaining as a superior caste until the present time. But this alien and adventurous loyalty in the Norman, which appears in these other national histories, appears most strongly of all in the history we have here to follow. The Duke of Normandy does become a real King of England; his claim through the Confessor, his election by the Council, even his symbolic handfuls of the soil of Sussex, these are not altogether empty forms. ”

“ Their bones lay white on every island in the fens; their corpses rotted on gallows beneath every Norman keep; their few survivors crawled into monasteries, with eyes picked out, or hands and feet cut off, or took to the wild wood as strong outlaws, like their successors and representatives, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee. But they never really bent their necks to the Norman yoke; they kept alive in their hearts that proud spirit of personal independence, which they brought with them from the moors of Denmark and the dales of Norway ”