The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWyndham TowersThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Wyndham TowersAuthor: Thomas Bailey AldrichRelease date: July 1, 1999 [eBook #1830]Most recently updated: January 27, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Donald Lainson, and David Widger*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WYNDHAM TOWERS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Wyndham TowersAuthor: Thomas Bailey AldrichRelease date: July 1, 1999 [eBook #1830]Most recently updated: January 27, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Donald Lainson, and David Widger
Title: Wyndham Towers
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release date: July 1, 1999 [eBook #1830]Most recently updated: January 27, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WYNDHAM TOWERS ***
TO EDWIN BOOTH. MY DEAR BOOTH:
In offering these verses to you, I beg you to treat them (as you have many a time advised a certain lord chamberlain to treat the players) not according to their desert. “Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.”
These many years your friend and comrade,
T. B. ALDRICH.
NOTE
WYNDHAM TOWERS.
The motif of the story embodied in the following poem was crudely outlined in a brief sketch printed in an early collection of the authors verse, and subsequently cancelled for a purpose not until now accomplished. Wyndham Towers is not to be confused with this discarded sketch, the text of which has furnished only a phrase, or an indirect suggestion, here and there. That the writer's method, when recasting the poem, was more or less influenced by the poets he had been studying—chiefly the dramatists of the Elizabethan era—will, he hopes, be obvious. It was part of his design, however far he may have fallen from it, to give his narrative something of the atmosphere and color of the period in which the action takes place, though the story is supposed to be told at a later date.
Before you reach the slender, high-arched bridge,Like to a heron with one foot in stream,The hamlet breaks upon you through green boughs—A square stone church within a place of gravesUpon the slope; gray houses oddly grouped,With plastered gables set with crossed oak-beams,And roofs of yellow tile and purplish slate.That is The Falcon, with the swinging signAnd rustic bench, an ancient hostelry;Those leaden lattices were hung on hingeIn good Queen Bess's time, so old it is.On ridge-piece, gable-end, or dove-cot vane,A gilded weathercock at intervalsGlimmers—an angel on the wing, most like,Of local workmanship; for since the reignOf pious Edward here have carvers thrived,In saints'-heads skillful and winged cherubimMeet for rich abbeys. From yon crumbling tower,Whose brickwork base the cunning Romans laid—And now of no use else except to trainThe ivy of an idle legend on—You see, such lens is this thin Devon air,If it so chance no fog comes rolling in,The Torridge where its branching crystal spreadsTo join the Taw. Hard by from a chalk cliffA torrent leaps: not lovelier Sappho wasGiving herself all silvery to the seaFrom that Leucadian rock. Beneath your feetLie sand and surf in curving parallels.Off shore, a buoy gleams like a dolphin's backDripping with brine, and guards a sunken reefWhose sharp incisors have gnawed many a keel;There frets the sea and turns white at the lip,And in ill-weather lets the ledge show fang.A very pleasant nook in Devon, this,Upon the height of old was Wyndham Towers,Clinging to rock there, like an eagle's nest,With moat and drawbridge once, and good for siege;Four towers it had to front the diverse winds:Built God knows when, all record being lost,Locked in the memories of forgotten men.In Caesar's day, a pagan temple; nextA monastery; then a feudal hold;Later a manor, and at last a ruin.Such knowledge have we of it, vaguely caughtThrough whispers fallen from tradition's lip.This shattered tower, with crenellated topAnd loops for archers, alone marks the spot,Looming forlornly—a gigantic harpWhereon the invisible fingers of the windIts fitful and mysterious dirges play.Here dwelt, in the last Tudor's virgin reign,One Richard Wyndham, Knight and Gentleman,(The son of Rawdon, slain near Calais wallWhen Bloody Mary lost her grip on France,)A lonely wight that no kith had nor kinSave one, a brother—by ill-fortune's spiteA brother, since 't were better to have none—Of late not often seen at Wyndham Towers,Where he in sooth but lenten welcome gotWhen to that gate his errant footstep strayed.Yet held he dear those gray majestic walls,Time-stained and crusted with the sea's salt breath;There first his eyes took color of the sea,There did his heart stay when fate drove him thence,And there at last—but that we tell anon.Darrell they named him, for an ancestorWhose bones were whitening in Holy Land,The other Richard; a crusader name,Yet it was Darrell had the lion-heart.No love and little liking served this pair,In look and word unpaired as white and black—Of once rich bough the last unlucky fruit.The one, for straightness like a Norland pineSet on some precipice's perilous edge,Intrepid, handsome, little past blown youth,Of all pure thought and brave deed amorous,Moulded the court's high atmosphere to breathe,Yet liking well the camp's more liberal air—Poet, soldier, courtier, 't was the mode;The other—as a glow-worm to a star—Suspicious, morbid, passionate, self-involved,The soul half eaten out with solitude,Corroded, like a sword-blade left in sheathAsleep and lost to action—in a word,A misanthrope, a miser, a soured man,One fortune loved not and looked at askance.Yet he a pleasant outward semblance had.Say what you will, and paint things as you may,The devil is not black, with horn and hoof,As gossips picture him: he is a personQuite scrupulous of doublet and demeanor,As was this Master Wyndham of The Towers,Now latterly in most unhappy case,Because of matters to be here set forth.A thing of not much moment, as life goes,A thing a man with some philosophyHad idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnatThat winged itself between him and the light,Had, through the crooked working of his mind,Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass.Yet 't was a grapestone choked AnacreonAnd hushed his song. There is no little thingIn nature: in a raindrop's compass lieA planet's elements. This Wyndham's woeWas one Griselda, daughter to a manOf Bideford, a shipman once, but sinceTurned soldier; now in white-haired, wrinkled ageSitting beneath the olive, valiant still,With sword on nail above the chimney-shelfIn case the Queen should need its edge again.An officer he was, though lowly born.The man aforetime, in the NetherlandsAnd through those ever-famous French campaigns(Marry, in what wars bore he not a hand?)In Rawdon Wyndham's troop of horse had served,And when he fell that day by Calais wallHad from the Frenchmen's pikes his body snatched,And so much saved of him, which was not much,The good knight being dead. For this deed's sake,That did enlarge itself in sorrow's eye,The widow deemed all guerdon all too small,And held her dear lord's servant and his girl,Born later, when that clash of steel was done,As her own kin, till she herself was laidI' the earth and sainted elsewhere. The two sonsLet cool the friendship: one in foreign partsDid gold and honor seek; at hall stayed one,The heir, and now of old friends negligent:Thus fortune hardens the ignoble heart.Griselda even as a little maid,Demure, but with more crotchets in the brain,I warrant ye, than minutes to the hour,Had this one much misliked; in her child-thoughtConfused him somehow with those cruel shapesOf iron men that up there at The TowersQuickened her pulse. For he was gaunt, his face,Mature beyond the logic of his years,Had in it something sinister and grim,Like to the visage pregnant fancy sawBehind the bars of each disused casqueIn that east chamber where the harness hungAnd dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace—At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt,That other on the sands of Palestine:A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son.Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bowKilling the doves in very wantonness—The gentle doves that to the ramparts cameFor scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill.Each well-sent dart that stained a snowy breastStraight to her own white-budding bosom went.Fled were those summers now, and she had passedOut of the child-world of vain fantasyWhere many a rainbow castle lay in ruin;But to her mind, like wine-stain to a flask,The old distrust still clung, indelible,Holding her in her maidhood's serious primeWell pleased from his cold eyes to move apart,And in her humble fortunes dwell secure.Indeed, what was she?—a poor soldier's girl,Merely a tenant's daughter. Times were changed,And life's bright web had sadder colors in 't:That most sweet gentle lady—rest her soul!—Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord's,And six lines shorter, which was all a shame;Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end,(The younger son that was her sweetheart once,)Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance;And all dear old-time uses quite forgot.Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rustThat spreads insidious, had estrangement come,Until at last, one knew not how it fell,And little cared, if sober truth were said,She and the father no more climbed the hillTo Twelfth Night festival or May-day dance,Nor commerce had with any at The Towers.Yet in a formless, misty sort of wayThe girl had place in Wyndham's mind—the girl,Why, yes, beshrew him! it was even sheWhom his soft mother had made favorite of,And well-nigh spoiled, some dozen summers gone.Perhaps because dull custom made her tame,Or that she was not comely in the bud,Her sweetness halting like a tardy MayThat wraps itself in mist, and seems not fair,For this or finer reason undivined,His thought she touched not, and was glad withalWhen she did note how others took his eyeAnd wore rue after. Thus was her white peaceUndarkened till, it so befell, these twoMeeting as they a hundred times had metOn hill-path or at crossing of the weir,Her beauty broke on him like some rare flowerThat was not yesterday. Ev'n so the SpringUnclasps the girdle of its lovelinessAbruptly, in the North here: long the driftsLinger in hollows, long on bough and briarNo slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen toothNip it, and then all suddenly the earthIs nought but scent and bloom. So unto himGriselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his witThat guessed not of the bud that slept in stem,Nor hint had of the flower within the bud?If so much beauty had a tiger been,'T had eaten him! In all the wave-washed lengthOf rocky Devon where was found her likeFor excellence of wedded red and white?Here on that smooth and sunny field, her cheek,The hostile hues of Lancaster and YorkDid meet, and, blending, make a heavenly truce,This were indeed a rose a king might wearUpon his bosom. By St. Dunstan, now,Himself would wear it. Then by seeming chanceCrossed he her walks, and stayed her with discourseDevised adroitly; spoke of common thingsAt first—of days when his good mother lived,If 't were to live, to pass long dolorous hoursBefore his father's effigy in church;Of one who then used often come to hall,Ever at Yule-tide, when the great log flamedIn chimney-place, and laugh and jest went round,And maidens strayed beneath the mistletoe,Making believe not see it, so got kissed—Of one that joined not in the morrice-dance,But in her sea-green kirtle stood at gaze,A timid little creature that was scaredBy dead men's armor. Nought there suffered change,Those empty shells of valor grew not old,Though something rusty. Would they fright her nowLooked she upon them? Held she in her mind—'T was Spring and loud the mavis piped outside—The day the Turkish helmet slipped from peg,And clashing on the floor, congealed her bloodAnd sent both hands to terror-smitten eyes,She trembling, ready to yield up the ghost?Right merry was it! Finally he touchedOn matters nearer, things she had forebodedAnd this one time must needs lend hearing to,And end so sorry business ere woe came,Like a true maid and honest, as she was.So, tutoring the tremble on her lipAnd holding back hot tears, she gave replyWith such discretion as straight tied his tongue,Albeit he lacked not boldness in discourse:“Indeed, indeed, sir, you speak but in jest!Lightly, not meaning it, in courtier-way.I have heard said that ladies at the Court—I judge them not!—have most forgiving ears,And list right willingly to idle words,Listen and smile and never stain a cheek.Yet not such words your father's son should useWith me, my father's daughter. You forgetWhat should most precious be to memory's heart,Love that dared death; and so, farewell.” FarewellIt was in sooth; for after that one time,Though he had fain with passion-breathed vowsBesieged that marble citadel her breast,He got no speech of her: she chose her walks;Let only moon and star look on the faceThat could well risk the candor of the sun;Ran not to lattice at each sound of hoof;By stream or hedge-row plucked no pansies more,Mistrusting Proserpina's cruel fate,Herself up-gathered in Sicilian fields;At chapel—for one needs to chapel goA-Sunday—glanced not either right or left,But with black eyelash wedded to white cheekKnelt there impassive, like the marble girlThat at the foot-end of his father's tomb,Inside the chancel where the Wyndhams lay,Through the long years her icy vigil kept.As leaves turn into flame at the frost's touch,So Richard's heart on coldness fed its fire,And burned with surfeit of indifference.All flavor and complexion of contentWent out of life; what served once served no more.His hound and falcon ceased to pleasure him;He read—some musty folios there wereOn shelf—but even in brave Froissart's page,Where, God knows, there be wounds enough, no herbNor potion found he to purge sadness with.The gray dust gathered on the leaf unturned,And then the spider drew his thread across.Certain bright coins that he was used to countWith thrill at fingers' ends uncounted lay,Suddenly worthless, like the conjurer's goldThat midst the jeers and laughter of the crowdTurns into ashes in the rustic's hand.Soft idleness itself bore now a thornTwo-pronged with meditation and desire.The cold Griselda that would none of him!The fair Griselda! Not alone by day,With this most solid earth beneath his feet,But in the weird and unsubstantial sphereOf slumber did her beauty hold him thrall.Herself of late he saw not; 't was a wraithHe worshipped, a vain shadow. Thus he pinedFrom dawn to dusk, and then from dusk to dawn,Of that miraculous infection caughtFrom any-colored eyes, so they be sweet.Strange that a man should let a maid's slim footStamp on his happiness and quench it quite!With what snail-pace the traitor time creeps byWhen one is out with fortune and undone!how tauntingly upon the dial's plateThe shadow's finger points the dismal hour!Thus Wyndham, with hands clasped behind his back,Watching the languid and reluctant sunFade from the metal disk beside the door.The hours hung heavy up there on the hill,Where life was little various at bestAnd merriment had long since ta'en its flight.Sometimes he sat and conned the flying cloudsTill on dusk's bosom nestled her one star,And spoke no word, nor seemed alive at all,But a mere shape and counterfeit of life;Or, urged by some swift hunger for green boughs,Would bid the hound to heel, and disappearInto the forest, with himself communingFor lack of gossip. So do lonely menMake themselves tedious to their tedious selves.Thus passed he once in a white blaze of noonUnder his oaks, and muttered as he went:“'My father's daughter' and 'your father's son'!Faith, but it was a shrewd and nimble phrase,And left me with no fitting word at tongue.The wench hath wit and matter of her own,And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit,Nature hath painted her a proper brown—A russet-colored wench that knows her worth.And mincing, too—should have her ruff propt upWith supertasses, like a dame at Court,And go in cloth-of-gold. I'll get a suitOf Genoa velvet, and so take her eye.Has she a heart? The ladies of WhitehallAre not so skittish, else does Darrell lieMost villainously. Often hath he saidThe art of blushing 's a lost art at Court.If so, good riddance! This one here lets lovePlay beggar to her prudery, and starve,Feeding him ever on looks turned aside.To be so young, so fair, and wise withal!Lets love starve? Nay, I think starves merely me.For when was ever woman logicalBoth day and night-time? Not since Adam fell!I doubt a lover somewhere. What shrewd beeHath buzzed betimes about this clover-top?Belike some scrivener's clerk at Bideford,With long goose-quill and inkhorn at his thigh—Methinks I see the parchment face of him;Or one of those swashbuckler Devon ladsThat haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold,Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree;Or else the sexton's son”—here Wyndham laughed,Though not a man of mirth—indeed, a manOf niggard humor; but that sexton's son—Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire,Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned,Like nothing in the circle of this earthBut a death's-head that from a mural slabWithin the chancel leers through sermon-time,Making a mock of poor mortality.The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laughThat from his noonday slumber roused an owlSnug in his oaken hermitage hard by.A very rare conceit—the sexton's son!Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mouldAnd musty odors of moth-eaten palls—A living death, a walking epitaph!No lover that for tingling flesh and bloodTo rest soft cheek on and change kisses with.Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoonTime would unshell him. In the interimWhat was to do but wait, and mark who strolledOf evenings up the hill-path and made haltThis side the coppice at a certain gate?For by that chance which ever serves ill ends,Within the slanted shadow of The TowersThe maid Griselda dwelt. Her gray scarred sireHad for cloth doublet changed the steel cuirass,The sword for gardener's fork, and so henceforthIn the mild autumn and sundown of life,Moving erect among his curves and squaresOf lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce,Set none but harmless squadrons in the field—Save now and then at tavern, where he posed,Tankard in hand and prattling of old days,A white-mustached epitome of wars.How runs the proverb touching him who waits?Who waits shall have the world. Time's heir is he,Be he but patient. Thus the thing befellWherefrom grew all this history of woe:Haunting the grounds one night, as his use wasWho loved the dark as bats and owlets do,Wyndham got sound of voices in the airThat did such strange and goblin changes ringAs left him doubtful whence the murmurs came,Now here, now there, as they were winged things—Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wightChance-caught in lonely places where she dwells,Anon a laugh rang out, melodious,Like the merle's note when its ecstatic heartIs packed with summer-time; then all was still—So still the soul of silence seemed to grieveThe loss of that sweet laughter. In his tracksThe man stopped short, and listened. As he leanedAnd craned his neck, and peered into the gloom,And would the fabulous hundred eyes were hisThat Argus in the Grecian legend had,He saw two figures moving through a driftOf moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn:A man's tall shape, a slim shape close at side,Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his,The woven snood about her shoulders fallen,And from the sombre midnight of her hairAn ardent face out-looking like a star—As in a vision saw he this, for straightThey vanished. Where those silvery shadows wereWas nothing. Had he dreamed it? Had he goneMad with much thinking on her, and so madeGhosts of his own sick fancies? Like a manCarved out of alabaster and set upWithin a woodland, he stood rooted there,Glimmering wanly under pendent boughs.Spell-bound he stood, in very woeful plight,Bewildered; and then presently with shockOf rapid pulses hammering at heart,As mad besiegers hammer at a gate,To life came back, and turned on heel to flyFrom that accursed spot and all that was,When once more the girl's laugh made rich the night,And melted, and the silence grieved anew.Like lead his feet were, and he needs must halt.Close upon this, but further off, a voiceFrom somewhere—Echo at her trick again!—Took up the rhyme of Sweetheart, sigh no more.
It was with doubt and tremblingI whispered in her ear.Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough,That all the world may hear—Sweetheart, sigh no more!Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,Upon the wayside tree,How fair she is, how true she is,How dear she is to me—Sweetheart sigh no more!Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,And through the summer longThe winds among the clover-tops,And brooks, for all their silvery stops,Shall envy you the song—Sweetheart, sigh no more.
'T is said the Malays have an arrow steepedIn some strange drug whose subtile propertiesAre such that if the point but prick the skinDeath stays there. Like to that fell cruel shaftThis slender rhyme was. Through the purple darkStraight home it sped, and into Wyndham's veinsIts drop of sudden poison did distill.Now no sound was, save when a dry twig snappedAnd rustled softly down from branch to branch,Or on its pebbly shoals the meagre brookMade intermittent murmur. “So, 't is he!”Thus Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyesDilating in the darkness, “Darrell—he!I set my springe for other game than this;Of hare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf.His frequent visitations have of latePerplexed me; now the riddle reads itself.A proper man, a very proper man!A fellow that burns Trinidado leafAnd sends smoke through his nostril like a flue!A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts—A murrain on him! Would ElizabethIn some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower—Ay, through the Traitor's Gate. Would he were dead.Within the year what worthy men have died,Persons of substance, civic ornaments,And here 's this gilt court-butterfly on wing!O thou most potent lightning in the cloud,Prick me this fellow from the face of earth!I would the Moors had got him in AlgiersWhat time he harried them on land and sea,And done their will with scimitar or cordOr flame of fagot, and so made an end;Or that some shot from petronel or bowHad winged him in the folly of his flight.Well had it been if the Inquisitors,With rack and screw, had laid black claw on him!”In days whose chronicle is writ in bloodThe richest ever flowed in English veinsSome foul mischance in this sort might have been;For at dark Fortune's feet had Darrell flungIn his youth's flower a daring gauntlet down.A beardless stripling, at that solemn hourWhen, breaking its frail filaments of clay,The mother's spirit soared invisible,The younger son, unhoused as well he knew,Had taken horse by night to London town,With right sore heart and nought else in his scripBut boyish hope to footing find at Court—A page's place, belike, with some great lord,Or some small lord, that other proving shyOf merit that had not yet clipt its shell.Day after day, in weather foul or fair,With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort,At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard,Reading men's faces with most anxious eye.There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland,But none would pause at plucking of the sleeveTo hearken to him, and the lad had diedOn London stones for lack of crust to gnawBut that he caught the age's malady,The something magical that was in air,And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods—Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, Oxenham,And set them stars in the fore-front of Time.In fine, young Darrell drew of that same airA valiant breath, and shipped with Francis Drake,Of Tavistock, to sail the Spanish seasAnd teach the heathen manners, with God's aid;And so, among lean Papists and black Moors,He, with the din of battle in his ears,Struck fortune. Who would tamely bide at homeAt beck and call of some proud swollen lordNot worth his biscuit, or at Beauty's feetSit making sonnets, when was work to doOut yonder, sinking Philip's caravelsAt sea, and then by way of episodeSetting quick torch* to pirate-nests ashore?
* Sir Francis Drake called this “singeing theKing of Spayne's beard.”
Brave sport to singe the beard o' the King of Spain!Brave sport, but in the end dreamed he of home—Of where the trout-brook lisped among the reeds,Of great chalk cliffs and leagues of yellow gorse,Of peaceful lanes, of London's roaring streets,The crowds, the shops, the pageants in Cheapside,And heard the trumpets blaring for the QueenWhen 't was the wind that whistled in the shroudsOff Cadiz. Ah, and softer dreams he hadOf an unnamed and sweetest mystery,And from the marble of his soul's desireHewed out the white ideal of his love—A new Pygmalion! All things drew him home,This mainly. Foot on English earth once more,Dear earth of England his propitious fameA thorn in none but crooked Envy's side,He went cross-gartered, with a silken roseAt golden lovelock, diamond brooch at hatLooping one side up very gallantly,And changed his doublet's color twice a day.Ill fare had given his softer senses edge;Good fortune, later, bade him come to dine,Mild Spenser's scholar, Philip Sidney's friend.So took he now his ease; in Devonshire,When Town was dull, or he had need at heartFor sight of Wyndham Towers against the sky;But chiefly did he bask him by the Thames,For there 't was that Young England froze and thawedBy turns in GLORIANA'S frown and smile.As some wild animal that gets a wound,And prescience hath of death, will drag itselfBack to its cavern sullenly to die,And would not have heaven's airs for witnesses,So Wyndham, shrinking from the very starsAnd tell-tale places where the moonlight fell,Crept through the huddled shadows back to hall,And in a lonely room where no light was,Save what the moon made at the casement there,Sat pondering his hurt, and in the darkGave audience to a host of grievances.For never comes reflection, gay or grave,But it brings with it comrades of its hue.So did he fall to thinking how his dayDeclined, and how his narrow life had runObscurely through an age of great eventsSuch as men never saw, nor will againUntil the globe be riven by God's fire.Others had ventured for the Golden Fleece,Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown,(By force of circumstance and not desert,)While he up there on that rock-bastioned coastHad rotted like some old hulk's skeleton,Whose naked and bleached ribs the lazy tideLaps day by day, and no man thinks of more.Then was jade Fortune in her lavish mood.Why had he not for distant Colchis sailedAnd been the Jason of these Argonauts?True, some had come to block on Tower Hill,Or quittance made in a less noble sort;Still they had lived, from life's high-mantling cupHad blown the bead. In such case, if one's headBe of its momentary laurel strippedAnd made a show of stuck on Temple BarOr at the Southwark end of London Bridge,What mattered it? At worst man dies but once—So far as known. One may not master death,But life should be one's lackey. He had beenTime's dupe and bondsman; ever since his birthHad walked this planet with his eye oblique,Grasped what was worthless, what were most dear missed;Missed love and fame, and all the sum of thingsFame gets a man in England—the Queen's smile,Which means, when she 's in humor, abbey-lands,Appointments, stars and ribbons for the breast,And that sleek adulation that takes shapeI' the down-drooping of obsequious lidsWhen one ascends a stair or walks the pave.Good Lord! but it was excellent to seeHow Expectation in the ante-roomCrooks back to Greatness passing to the Queen—“Kind sir!” “Sweet sir!” “I prithee speed my suit!”'T was somewhat to be flattered, though by fools,For even a fool's coin hath a kind of ring.Yet after all—thus did the grapes turn sourTo master Fox, in fable—who would careTo moil and toil to gain a little fame,And have each rascal that prowls under heavenStab one for getting it? Had he wished power,The thing was in the market-place for saleAt stated rates—so much for a man's soul!His was a haughty spirit that bent not,And one to rise had need to cringe and creep.So had his brother into favor crawled,Like slug into the bosom of a rose,And battened in the sun. At thought of him,Forgotten for a moment, Wyndham winced,And felt his wound. “Why bides he not in TownWith his blond lovelock and wench-luring ways—There runs his fox! What foul fiend sends him hereTo Wyndham Towers? Is there not space enoughIn this our England he needs crowd me so?Has London sack upon his palate staled,That he must come to sip my Devon cream?Are all maids shut in nunneries save this one?What magic philtre hath he given herTo thaw the ice that melted not for me?Rich is he now that at his setting forthHad not two silver pieces to his purse.It is his brave apparel dazzles her.Thus puts he bound and barrier to my love.Another man were he abused as I...I'll have no more of him! If I but dared—Nay, I dare not. I have fawn's blood, I think;I would, and dare not!” Thrice the hooded clockSolemnly, like some old Carthusian monkWith meagre face half seen beneath his cowl,Intoned the quarter. Memory went not backWhen this was not a most familiar sound,Yet as each stroke on the dead silence fellWyndham turned, startled. Now the sanguine moon,To clouded opal changing momently,Rose sheer above the pine-trees' ragged edge,And through the wide-flung casement reaching handWith cold and spectral finger touched the platesOf his dead father's armor till it gleamedOne mass of silver. There it stood complete,That august panoply which once struck dreadTo foemen on the sunny plains of France,Menacing, terrible, this instant stood,With vizard down and jousting-lance at chargeAs if that crumbled knight were quick within.A footfall on the shingle walk belowGrated, a footfall light as Mercury'sDisdaining earth, and Wyndham in the dark,Half crouched upon the settle with his nailsIndenting the soft wood-work, held his breath.Then suddenly a blind rage like a flameSwept over him and hurled him to his feet—Such rage as must have seized the soul of CainMeeting his brother in the stubble-field.Anon came one that hummed a blithe sea-song,As he were fresh from tavern and brave cheer,And held the stars that blinked there in the blueBoon comrades. Singing in high-hearted way,His true-love's kiss a memory on his lip,Straight on he came to unrenowned endWhose dream had been in good chain-mail to dieOn some well-foughten field, at set of sun,With glorious peal of trumpets on his earProclaiming victory. So had he dreamed.And there, within an arch at the stair-topAnd screened behind a painted hanging-clothOf coiled gold serpents ready to make spring,Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive handGrasping a rapier part-way down the bladeTo deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt—Black Death, turned white with horror of himself.Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song;And now his step was on the stair, and nowHe neared the blazoned hanging-cloth, and now...The lights were out, and all life lay in tranceOn floor or pallet, blanketed to chin,Each in his mask of sullen-seeming death—Fond souls that recked not what was in the air,Else had the dead man's scabbard as it clashedAgainst the balustrade, then on the tiles,Brought awkward witness. One base hind there wasHad stolen a venison-pasty on the shelf,And now did penance; him the fall half rousedFrom dreadful nightmare; once he turned and gasped,Then straightway snored again. No other soundWithin the dream-enchanted house was heard,Save that the mastiff, lying at the gateWith visionary bone, snarled in his sleep.Secret as bridal-kiss may murder be,Done was the deed that could not be undoneThroughout eternity. O silent tongueThat would blab all with silence! What to do?How hide this speechless witness from men's gaze?Living, that body vexed us; being dead'T is like to give us trouble and to spare.O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth!Quick, ere the dusky petals of the nightUnclosing bare the fiery heart of dawnAnd thus undo us with its garish light,Let us this mute and pale accusing clayIn some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow,But where? Hold back thy fleet-wing'd coursers, Time,Whilst we bethink us! Ah—such place there is!Close, too, at hand—a place wherein a manMight lie till doomsday safer from the touchOf prying clown than is the spiced dustOf an Egyptian in his pyramid.At a dark alcove's end of that long hall,The ancient armor-room in the east wing,A certain door (whereof no mortal knewsave Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold)Was to the panels of the wall so set,And with such devilish shrewdness overlaidBy carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf,That one not in the favor of the trick,Albeit he knew such mechanism was,Ere he put finger on the secret springHad need of Job for ancestor, in faith!You pressed a rose, a least suspected rose,And two doors turned on hinge, the inner doorClosing a space of say some six feet square,Unlighted, sheathed with iron. Doubtless hereThe mediaeval Wyndhams hid their plateWhen things looked wicked from the outer wall,Or, on occasion, a grim ruthless lordImmured some inconvenient two-faced friend—To banquet bidden, and kept over night.Such pranks were played in Merrie England then.Sealed in the narrow compass of that cell,Shut from God's light and his most precious air,A man might have of life a half-hour's leaseIf he were hale and well-breathed at the start.Hither did Richard bear his brother's corseAnd fling it down. Upon the stone-paved floorIn a thin strip of moonlight flung it down,And then drew breath. Perhaps he paused to glanceAt the white face there, with the strange half-smileOut-living death, the brightness of the hairLying in loops and tangles round the brow—A seraph's face of silver set in gold,Such as the deft Italians know to carve;Perhaps his tiger's blood cooled then, perhapsSwift pity at his very heart-strings tugged,And he in that black moment of remorse,Seeing how there his nobler self lay slain,Had bartered all this jewel-studded earthTo win life's color back to that wan cheek.Ah, let us hope it, and some mercy feel,Since each at compt shall need of mercy have.Now how it happened, whether 't was the wind,Or whether 't was some incorporeal handThat reached down through the dark and did the thing,Man knoweth not, but suddenly both doors,Ere one could utter cry or put forth arm,Closed with dull clang, and there in his own trapIncontinent was red-stained Richard caught,And as by flash of lightning saw his doom.Call, an thou wilt, but every ear is stuffedWith slumber! Shriek, and run quick frenzied handsAlong the iron sheathing of thy grave—For 't is thy grave—no egress shalt thou find,No lock to break, no subtile-sliding bolt,No careless rivet, no half loosened plateFor dagger's point to fret at and pry offAnd let a stifling mortal get to air!Angels of Light! what were a thousand yearsOf rankling envy and contemned loveAnd all the bitter draughts a man may drinkTo that half hour of Richard's with his Dead?Through silence, gloom, and star-strown paths of NightThe breathless hours like phantoms stole away.Black lay the earth, in primal blackness wraptEre the great miracle once more was wrought.A chill wind freshened in the pallid EastAnd brought sea-smell of newly blossomed foam,And stirred the leaves and branch-hung nests of birds.Fainter the glow-worm's lantern glimmered nowIn the marsh land and on the forest's hem,And the slow dawn with purple laced the skyWhere sky and sea lay sharply edge to edge.The purple melted, changed to violet,And that to every delicate sea-shell tinge,Blush-pink, deep cinnabar; then no change was,Save that the air had in it sense of wings,Till suddenly the heavens were all aflame,And it was morning. O great miracle!O radiance and splendor of the Throne,Daily vouchsafed to us! Yet saith the fool,“There is no God!” And now a level gleam,Thrust like a spear-head through the tangled boughs,Smote Wyndham's turrets, and the spell was broke.And one by one, on pallet stretched or floor,The sleepers wakened; each took up afreshHis load of life; but two there were woke not,Nor knew 't was daybreak. From the rusty nailThe gateman snatched his bunch of ancient keys,And, yawning, vowed the sun an hour too soon;The scullion, with face shining like his pans,Hose down at heel and jerkin half unlaced,On hearthstone knelt to coax the smouldering log;The keeper fetched the yelping hounds their meat;The hostler whistled in the stalls; anon,With rustling skirt and slumber-freshened cheek,The kerchief'd housemaid tripped from room to room(Sweet Gillian, she that broke the groom his heart),While, wroth within, behind a high-backed chairThe withered butler for his master waited,Cursing the cook. That day the brewis spoiled.That day came neither kinsman to break bread.When it was seen that both had lain abroad,The wolf-skins of their couches made that plainAs pike-staff, or the mole on Gillian's cheek,The servants stared. Some journey called them hence;At dead of night some messenger had comeOf secret import, may be from the Queen,And they paused not for change of raiment even.And yet, in faith, that were but little like;Sir Richard had scant dealings with the Court.Still—if Northumberland were in arms again.'T was passing strange. No beast had gone from rack.How had they gone, then? Who looked on them last?Up rose the withered butler, he it was:They supped together, of no journey spoke,Spoke little, 't was their custom; after mealThe master's brother sallied forth alone,The master stayed within. “That did he not,”Quoth one, “I saw Sir Richard in the closeI' the moonrise.” “'T was eleven on the stroke,”Said Gillian softly, “he, or 't was his ghost—Methought his face was whiter than my smock—Passed through the courtyard, and so into house.Yet slept he not there!” And that other one,The guest unwelcome, kinsman little loved(How these shrewd varlets turn us inside outAt kitchen-conclaves, over our own wine!)Him had no eye seen since he issued forthAs curfew sounded. “Call me lying knave”—He of the venison-pasty had the word—“And let me nevermore dip beak in aleOr sit at trencher with good smoking meat,If I heard not, in middle of the night,The cock crow thrice, and took it for a sign.”“So, marry, 't was—that thou wert drunk again.”But no one laughed save he that made the jest,Which often happens. The long hours wore on,And gloaming fell. Then came another day,And then another, until seven dawnsIn Time's slow crucible ran ruddy goldAnd overflowed the gray horizon's edge;And yet no hosts at table—an ill thing!And now 't was on the eve of Michaelmas.What could it mean? From out their lethargyAt last awaking, searchers in hot haste,Some in the saddle, some afoot with hounds,Scoured moor and woodland, dragged the neighboring weirsAnd salmon-streams, and watched the wily hawkSlip from his azure ambush overhead,With ever a keen eye for carrion:But no man found, nor aught that once was man.By land they went not; went they water-ways?Might be, from Bideford or Ilfracombe.Mayhap they were in London, who could tell?God help us! do men melt into the air?Yet one there was whose dumb unlanguaged loveHad all revealed, had they but given heed.Across the threshold of the armor-roomThe savage mastiff stretched himself, and starved.Now where lags he, upon what alehouse bench'Twixt here and London, who shall lift this weight?Were he not slain upon the Queen's highwayEre he reached Town, or tumbled into fordWith too much sack-and-sugar under belt,Then was his face set homeward this same hour,Why lingers he? Ill news, 't is said, flies fast,And good news creeps; then his must needs be goodThat lets the tortoise pass him on the road.Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fenAnd haunted hollow! Look not where in chainsOn Hounslow heath the malefactor hangs,A lasting terror! Give thy roan jade spur,And spare her not! All Devon waits for thee,Thou, for the moment, most important man!A sevennight later, when the rider sentTo Town drew rein before The Falcon innUnder the creaking of the windy sign,And slipped from saddle with most valorous callFor beer to wash his throat out, then confessedHe brought no scrap of any honest news,The last hope died, and so the quest was done.“They far'd afoot,” quoth one, “but where God wot.”The blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grassWas starred with flowers that once Griselda prized,But plucked not. She, poor wench, from moon to moonWaxed pale and paler: of no known disease,The village-leech averred, with lips pursed outAnd cane at chin; some inward fire, he thought,Consumed. A dark inexplicable blightHad touched her, thinned her, till of that sweet earthScarce more was left than would have served to growA lily. Later, at a fresh-turned grave,From out the maiden strewments, as it were,A whisper rose, of most pathetic breath,Of how one maid had been by two men loved—No names, God's mercy!—and that neither manWould wed her: why?—conjecture faltered there,For whiter was she than new-drifted snow,Or bleached lamb's wool, or any purest thing,Such stuff in sooth as Heaven shapes angels of;And how from their warm, comfortable bedsThese two men wandered out into the night,Sore stricken and distempered in their mind,And being by Satan blinded and urged onDid fling them headlong from a certain cragThat up Clovelly way o'erhangs the sea—O'erhangs the sea to tempt unhappy folk.From door to door the piteous legend passed,And like a thrifty beggar took from each.And when the long autumnal season cameTo that bleak, bitter coast, and when at nightThe deep was shaken, and the pent cloud brokeCrashing among the lurid hills of heaven,And in brief sudden swoonings of the galeContentious voices rose from the sand-dunes,Then to low sobs and murmurs died away,The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeksLit by the flickering driftwood's ruddy glow,Drew closer to the crane, and under breathTo awestruck maidens told the fearful tale.The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.'T was said that once the Queen reached out her hand—This was at Richmond in her palace there—And let it rest on Burleigh's velvet sleeve,And spoke—right stately was she in her rouge:“Prithee, good Master Cecil, tell us nowWas 't ever known what ill befell those men,Those Wyndhams? Were they never, never found?Look you, 't will be three years come Michaelmas:'T were well to have at least the bones of them.'Fore God, sir! this is something should be seen!When the Armada, which God smote and sunk,Threatened our Realm, our buckler and our shieldWere such stout hearts as that young Wyndham was.The elder brother—well, Heaven fashioned him.Our subjects are our subjects, mark you that.Not found, forsooth! Why, then, they should be found!”Fain had my good Lord Burleigh solved the thing,And smoothed that ominous wrinkle on the browOf her Most Sweet Imperious Majesty.Full many a problem his statecraft had solved—How strangle treason, how soothe turbulent peers,How foil the Pope and Spain, how pay the Fleet—Mere temporal matters; but this business smeltStrongly of brimstone. Bring back vanished folk!That could not Master Cecil an he would.The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.Dark were the days that came to Wyndham TowersWith that grim secret rusting in its heart.On the sea's side along the fissured wallThe lichen spread in patches of dull goldUp to the battlements, at times assailedBy sheeted ghosts of mist blown from the sea,Now by the whistling arrows of the sleetPelted, and thrice of lightning scorched and seamed,But stoutly held from dreary year to yearBy legions of most venerable rooks,Shrill black-robed prelates of the fighting sort.In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughtsGreat scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps,Like bodies fall'n there in some vain assault.Within, decay and dolor had their court—Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all.From room to room the wind went shudderingOn some vague endless quest; now pausing hereTo lift an arras, and then hurrying on,To some fresh clue, belike! The sharp-nosed mouseThrough joist and floor discreetly gnawed her way,And for her glossy young a lodging madeIn a cracked corselet that once held a heart.The meditative spider undisturbedWove his gray tapestry from sill to sill.Over the transom the stone eagle drooped,With one wing gone, in most dejected stateMoulting his feathers. A blue poisonous vine,Whose lucent berry, hard as Indian jade,No squirrel tried his tooth on, June by JuneOn the south hill-slope festered in the sun.Man's foot came not there. It was haunted ground.The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.An oak stood where an acorn tumbled once,Ages ago, and all the world was strange.Now, in that year King Charles the Second leftForever the soft arms of Mistress GwynnAnd wrapt him in that marble where he lies,The moulder'd pile with its entombed CrimePassed to the keep of a brave new-fledged lord,Who, liking much the sane and wholesome airThat bent the boughs and fanned the turret's top,Cried, “Here dwell I!” So fell it on a dayThe stroke of mallets and the screech of sawsIn those bleak chambers made such din as stoppedThe careful spider half-way up his thread,And panic sent to myriad furtive thingsThat dwelt in wainscots and loved not the sun.Vainly in broken phalanx clamorousDid the scared rooks protest, and all in vainThe moths on indolent white damask wingsAt door and casement rallied. Wyndham TowersShould have a bride, and ghosts had word to quit.And now, behold what strange thing came to pass.A certain workman, in the eastern wingPlying his craft alone as the day waned—One Gregory Nokes, a very honest soul,By trade wood-carver—stumbled on a doorLeading to nowhere at an alcove's end,A double door that of itself swung backIn such strange way as no man ever saw;And there, within a closet, on the flagsWere two grim shapes which, vaguely seen at firstIn the half light, grew presently distinct—Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire impsStraight from the Pit, in guise fantasticalOf hose and doublet: one stretched out full lengthSupine, and one in terror-stricken sortHalf toppled forward on the bended knee,Grasping with vise-like grip the other's wrist,As who should say, Arouse thee, sleep no more!But said it not. If they were quick or dead,No sign they gave beyond this sad dumb show.Blurred one face was, yet luminous, like the moonCaught in the fleecy network of a cloud,Or seen glassed on the surface of a tarnWhen the wind crinkles it and makes all dim;The other, drawn and wrenched by mortal throes,And in the aspect such beseeching lookAs might befall some poor wretch called to comptOn the sudden, even as he kneels at prayer,With Mercy! turned to frost upon the lip.Thus much saw Nokes within the closet thereEre he drew breath; then backing step by step,The chisel clutched in still uplifted hand,His eyes still fixed upon the ghosts, he reachedAn open window giving on the courtWhere the stone-cutters were; to them he calledSoftly, in whispers under his curved palm,Lest peradventure a loud word should rouseThe phantoms; but ere foot could climb the stair,Or the heart's pulses count the sum of ten,Through both dread shapes, as at God's finger-touch,A shiver ran, the wavering outlines broke,And suddenly a chill and mist-like breathTouched Nokes's cheek as he at casement leaned,And nought was left of that most piteous pairSave two long rapiers of some foreign makeLying there crossed, a mass of flaky rust.O luckless carver of dead images,Saint's-head or gargoyle, thou hast seen a sightShall last thee to the confines of the grave!Ill were thy stars or ever thou wert bornThat thou shouldst look upon a thing forbid!Now in thine eye shall it forever live,And the waste solitudes of night inhabitWith direful shadows of the nether world,Yet leave thee lonely in the throng of men—Not of them, thou, but creature set apartUnder a ban, and doomed henceforth to knowThe wise man's scorn, the dull man's sorry jest.For who could credence give to that mad taleOf churchyard folk appearing in broad day,And drifting out at casement like a mist?Marry, not they who crowded up the stairIn haste, and peered into that empty cell,And had half mind to buffet Master Nokes,Standing with finger laid across his palmIn argumentative, appealing way,Distraught, of countenance most woe-begone.“See!—the two swords. As I 'm a Christian soul!”“Odds, man!” cried one, “thou 'st been a-dreamin', man.Cleave to thy beer, an' let strong drink alone!”So runs the legend. So from their long sleepThose ghosts arose and fled into the night.But never bride came to that dark abode,For wild flames swept it ere a month was gone,And nothing spared but that forlorn old towerWhereon the invisible fingers of the windIts fitful and mysterious dirges play.