Presently this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon," he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and have at you."
"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered, "yet in reason, messire, I may not deny you."
With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, but throughout he found himself the stronger man, and he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he never ascertained.
"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after a half-hour of this; "or, to be perfectly exact, I never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and claret."
"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen."
"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?" Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in a proper spirit of levity: it is only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his divinity will ascend no pedestal save the carcass of his happiness. Yet have many men since time was young been addicted to the practice, as were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I ashamed of my sex."
Gwyllem said: "That is all very fine. Perhaps it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason."
"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about either window, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.
"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.
Sang Gwyllem:
"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem has blundered without any astonishment I would perform—I wonder, now, what miracle?"
For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all so unvexed by any rational afterthought; and each desire controlled him as varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded.".
The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He claimed to be a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over into England.
And Richard whistled. "Now will my cousin be quite sure, and now will my anxious cousin come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now, by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England."
He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of grass between his fingers what while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would kill Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of vermin, but, hand upon heart, he was unable to protest any particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored of a tyranny a shade too gross. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient malevolence, which, despite yourself, compelled both admiration and envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as he recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and in consequence be daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought.
"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: presently is Branwen married to this Gwyllem and grown fat and old, and I am remarried to Dame Isabel of France, and am King of England: and a trifle later all four of us will be dead. Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself."