_The Episode Called The Castle of Content_
1. _I Glimpse the Castle_
"And so, dearie," she ended, "you may seize the revenues of Allonby with
unwashed hands."
I said, "Why have you done this?" I was half-frightened by the sudden
whirl of Dame Fortune's wheel.
"Dear cousin in motley," grinned the beldame, "'twas for hatred of Tom
Allonby and all his accursed race that I have kept the secret thus long.
Now comes a braver revenge: and I settle my score with the black spawn of
Allonby--euh, how entirely!--by setting you at their head."
"Nay, I elect for a more flattering reason. I begin to suspect you,
cousin, of some human compunction."
"Well, Willie, well, I never hated you as much as I had reason to," she
grumbled, and began to cough very lamentably. "So at the last I must make
a marquis of you--ugh! Will you jest for them in counsel, Willie, and
lead your henchman to battle with a bawdy song--ugh, ugh!"
Her voice crackled like burning timber, and sputtered in groans that
would have been fanged curses had breath not failed her: for my aunt
Elinor possessed a nimble tongue, whetted, as rumor had it, by the
attendance of divers Sabbats, and the chaunting of such songs as honest
men may not hear and live, however highly the succubi and warlocks and
were-cats, and Satan's courtiers generally, commend them.
I squinted down at one green leg, scratched the crimson fellow to it with
my bauble, and could not deny that, even so, the witch was dealing
handsomely with me to-night.
'Twas a strange tale which my Aunt Elinor had ended, speaking swiftly
lest the worms grow impatient and Charon weigh anchor ere she had done:
and the proofs of the tale's verity, set forth in a fair clerkly
handwriting, rustled in my hand,--scratches of a long-rotted pen that
transferred me to the right side of the blanket, and transformed the
motley of a fool into the ermine of a peer.
All Devon knew I was son to Tom Allonby, who had been Marquis of Falmouth
at his uncle's death, had not Tom Allonby, upon the very eve of that
event, broken his neck in a fox-hunt; but Dan Gabriel, come post-haste
from Heaven had with difficulty convinced the village idiot that Holy
Church had smiled upon Tom's union with a tanner's daughter, and that
their son was lord of Allonby Shaw. I doubted it, even as I read the
proof. Yet it was true,--true that I had precedence even of the great
Monsieur de Puysange, who had kept me to make him mirth on a shifty diet,
first coins, then curses, these ten years past,--true that my father,
rogue in all else, had yet dealt equitably with my mother ere he
died,--true that my aunt, less honorably used by him, had shared their
secret with the priest who married them, maliciously preserving it till
this, when her words fell before me as anciently Jove's shower before the
Argive Danaë, coruscant and awful, pregnant with undreamed-of chances
which stirred as yet blindly in Time's womb.
A sick anger woke in me, remembering the burden of ignoble years this hag
had suffered me to bear; yet my so young gentility bade me avoid reproach
of the dying peasant woman, who, when all was said, had been but ill-used
by our house. Death hath a strange potency: commanding as he doth,
unquestioned and unchidden, the emperor to have done with slaying, the
poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to
cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs
that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains
of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death's gaunt
standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the
paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death's chill finger hath fallen. I
doubt not that Cain's children wept about his deathbed, and that the
centurions spake in whispers as they lowered Iscariot from the
elder-tree: and in like manner the reproaches which stirred in my brain
had no power to move my lips. The frail carnal tenement, swept and
cleansed of all mortality, was garnished for Death's coming; and I could
not sorrow at his advent here: but I perforce must pity rather than
revile the prey which Age and Poverty, those ravenous forerunning hounds
of Death yet harried, at the door of the tomb.
Running over these considerations in my mind, I said, "I forgive you."
"You posturing lack-wit!" she returned, and her sunk jaws quivered
angrily. "D'ye play the condescending gentleman already! Dearie, your
master did not take the news so calmly."
"You have told him?"
I had risen, for the wried, and yet sly, malice of my aunt's face was
rather that of Bellona, who, as clerks avow, ever bore carnage and
dissension in her train, than that of a mortal, mutton-fed woman. Elinor
Sommers hated me--having God knows how just a cause--for the reason that
I was my father's son; and yet, for this same reason as I think, there
was in all our intercourse an odd, harsh, grudging sort of tenderness.
She laughed now,--flat and shrill, like the laughter of the damned heard
in Hell between the roaring of flames. "Were it not common kindness to
tell him, since this old sleek fellow's fine daughter is to wed the
cuckoo that hath your nest? Yes, Willie, yes, your master hath known
since morning."
"And Adeliza?" I asked, in a voice that tricked me.
"Heh, my Lady-High-and-Mighty hath, I think, heard nothing as yet. She
will be hearing of new suitors soon enough, though, for her father,
Monsieur Fine-Words, that silky, grinning thief, is very keen in a
money-chase,--keen as a terrier on a rat-track, may Satan twist his neck!
Pshutt, dearie! here is a smiling knave who means to have the estate of
Allonby as it stands; what live-stock may go therewith, whether
crack-brained or not, is all one to him. He will not balk at a drachm or
two of wit in his son-in-law. You have but to whistle,--but to whistle,
Willie, and she'll come!"
I said, "Eh, woman, and have you no heart?"
"I gave it to your father for a few lying speeches," she answered, "and
Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile
upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in
welcome of that old Emperor Agamemnon, come in gory opulence from the
sack of Troy Town. "I gave it--" Her voice rose here to a despairing
wail. "Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby!
But do you kiss me first, for you have just his lying mouth. So, that is
better! And now go, my lord marquis; it is not fitting that death
should intrude into your lordship's presence. Go, fool, and let me die
in peace!"
I no longer cast a cautious eye toward the whip (ah, familiar unkindly
whip!) that still hung beside the door of the hut; but, I confess, my
aunt's looks were none too delectable, and ancient custom rendered her
wrath yet terrible. If the farmers thereabouts were to be trusted, I knew
Old Legion's bailiff would shortly be at hand, to distrain upon a soul
escheat and forfeited to Dis by many years of cruel witchcrafts, close
wiles, and nameless sorceries; and I could never abide unpared nails,
even though they be red-hot. Therefore, I relinquished her to the village
gossips, who waited without, and I tucked my bauble under my arm.
"Dear aunt," said I, "farewell!"
"Good-bye, Willie!" said she; "I shall often laugh in Hell to think of
the crack-brained marquis that I made on earth. It was my will to make a
beggar of Tom's son, but at the last I play the fool and cannot do it.
But do you play the fool, too, dearie, and"--she chuckled here--"and have
your posture and your fine long words, whatever happens."
"'Tis my vocation," I answered, briefly; and so went forth into
the night.
2. _At the Ladder's Foot_
I came to Tiverton Manor through a darkness black as the lining of
Baalzebub's oldest cloak. The storm had passed, but clouds yet hung
heavy as feather-beds between mankind and the stars; as I crossed the
bridge the swollen Exe was but dimly visible, though it roared beneath
me, and shook the frail timbers hungrily. The bridge had long been
unsafe: Monsieur de Puysange had planned one stronger and less hazardous
than the former edifice, of which the arches yet remained, and this was
now in the making, as divers piles of unhewn lumber and stone attested:
meanwhile, the roadway was a makeshift of half-rotten wood that even in
this abating wind shook villainously. I stood for a moment and heard the
waters lapping and splashing and laughing, as though they would hold it
rare and desirable mirth to swallow and spew forth a powerful marquis,
and grind his body among the battered timber and tree-boles and dead
sheep swept from the hills, and at last vomit him into the sea, that a
corpse, wide-eyed and livid, might bob up and down the beach, in quest of
a quiet grave where the name of Allonby was scarcely known. The
imagination was so vivid that it frightened me as I picked my way
cat-footed through the dark.
The folk of Tiverton Manor were knotting on their nightcaps, by this; but
there was a light in the Lady Adeliza's window, faint as a sick glowworm.
I rolled in the seeded grass and chuckled, as I thought of what a day or
two might bring about, and I murmured to myself an old cradle-song of
Devon which she loved and often sang; and was, ere I knew it, carolling
aloud, for pure wantonness and joy that Monsieur de Puysange was not
likely to have me whipped, now, however blatantly I might elect to
discourse.
Sang I:
_"Through the mist of years does it gleam as yet--
That fair and free extent
Of moonlit turret and parapet,
Which castled, once, Content?
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,
With drowsy music drowning merriment
Where Dreams and Visions held high carnival,
And frolicking frail Loves made light of all,--
Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
As I ended, the casement was pushed open, and the Lady Adeliza came upon
the balcony, the light streaming from behind her in such fashion as made
her appear an angel peering out of Heaven at our mortal antics. Indeed,
there was always something more than human in her loveliness, though, to
be frank, it savored less of chilling paradisial perfection than of a
vision of some great-eyed queen of faery, such as those whose feet glide
unwetted over our fen-waters when they roam o' nights in search of unwary
travellers. Lady Adeliza was a fair beauty; that is, her eyes were of the
color of opals, and her complexion as the first rose of spring, blushing
at her haste to snare men's hearts with beauty; and her loosened hair
rippled in such a burst of splendor that I have seen a pale brilliancy,
like that of amber, reflected by her bared shoulders where the bright
waves fell heavily against the tender flesh, and ivory vied with gold in
beauty. She was somewhat proud, they said; and to others she may have
been, but to me, never. Her voice was a low, sweet song, her look that of
the chaste Roman, beneficent Saint Dorothy, as she is pictured in our
Chapel here at Tiverton. Proud, they called her! to me her condescensions
were so manifold that I cannot set them down: indeed, in all she spoke
and did there was an extreme kindliness that made a courteous word from
her of more worth than a purse from another.
She said, "Is it you, Will Sommers?"
"Madonna," I answered, "with whom else should the owls confer? It is a
venerable saying that extremes meet. And here you may behold it
exemplified, as in the conference of an epicure and an ostrich: though,
for this once, Wisdom makes bold to sit above Folly."
"Did you carol, then, to the owls of Tiverton?" she queried.
"Hand upon heart," said I, "my grim gossips care less for my melody than
for the squeaking of a mouse; and I sang rather for joy that at last I
may enter into the Castle of Content."
The Lady Adeliza replied, "But nobody enters there alone."
"Madonna," said I, "your apprehension is nimble. I am in hope that a
woman's hand may lower the drawbridge."
She said only "You--!" Then she desisted, incredulous laughter breaking
the soft flow of speech.
"Now, by Paul and Peter, those eminent apostles! the prophet Jeremy never
spake more veraciously in Edom! The fool sighs for a fair woman,--what
else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times
that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his
sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps
about us,--even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain
into the semblance of a lover's? Believe me, the change is not so great
as you might think. Yet if you will, laugh at me, madonna, for I love a
woman far above me,--a woman who knows not of my love, or, at most,
considers it but as the homage which grateful peasants accord the
all-nurturing sun; so that, now chance hath woven me a ladder whereby to
mount to her, I scarcely dare to set my foot upon the bottom rung."
"A ladder?" she said, oddly: "and are you talking of a rope ladder?"
"I would describe it, rather," said I, "as a golden ladder."
There came a silence. About us the wind wailed among the gaunt, deserted
choir of the trees, and in the distance an owl hooted sardonically.
The Lady Adeliza said: "Be bold. Be bold, and know that a woman loves
once and forever, whether she will or no. Love is not sold in the shops,
and the grave merchants that trade in the ultimate seas, and send forth
argosies even to jewelled Ind, to fetch home rich pearls, and strange
outlandish dyes, and spiceries, and the raiment of imperious queens of
the old time, have bought and sold no love, for all their traffic. It is
above gold. I know"--here her voice faltered somewhat--"I know of a woman
whose birth is very near the throne, and whose beauty, such as it is,
hath been commended, who loved a man the politic world would have none
of, for he was not rich nor famous, nor even very wise. And the world
bade her relinquish him; but within the chambers of her heart his voice
rang more loudly than that of the world, and for his least word said she
would leave all and go with him whither he would. And--she waits only for
the speaking of that word."
"Be bold?" said I.
"Ay," she returned; "that is the moral of my tale. Make me a song of it
to-night, dear Will,--and tomorrow, perhaps, you may learn how this
woman, too, entered into the Castle of Content."
"Madonna--!" I cried.
"It is late," said she, "and I must go."
"To-morrow--?" I said. My heart was racing now.
"Ay, to-morrow,--the morrow that by this draws very near. Farewell!" She
was gone, casting one swift glance backward, even as the ancient
Parthians are fabled to have shot their arrows as they fled; and, if the
airier missile, also, left a wound, I, for one, would not willingly have
quitted her invulnerate.
3. _Night, and a Stormed Castle_
I went forth into the woods that stand thick about Tiverton Manor, where
I lay flat on my back among the fallen leaves, dreaming many dreams to
myself,--dreams that were frolic songs of happiness, to which the papers
in my jerkin rustled a reassuring chorus.
I have heard that night is own sister to death; now, as the ultimate torn
cloud passed seaward, and the new-washed harvest-moon broke forth in a
red glory, and stars clustered about her like a swarm of golden bees, I
thought this night was rather the parent of a new life. But, indeed,
there is a solemnity in night beyond all jesting: for night knits up the
tangled yarn of our day's doings into a pattern either good or ill; it
renews the vigor of the living, and with the lapsing of the tide it draws
the dying toward night's impenetrable depths, gently; and it honors the
secrecy of lovers as zealously as that of rogues. In the morning our
bodies rise to their allotted work; but our wits have had their season in
the night, or of kissing, or of junketing, or of high resolve; and the
greater part of such noble deeds as day witnesses have been planned in
the solitude of night. It is the sage counsellor, the potent physician
that heals and comforts the sorrows of all the world: and night proved
such to me, as I pondered on the proud race of Allonby, and knew that in
the general record of time my name must soon be set as a sonorous word
significant, as the cat might jump, for much good or for large evil.
And Adeliza loved me, and had bidden me be bold! I may not write of what
my thoughts were as I considered that stupendous miracle.
But even the lark that daily soars into the naked presence of the sun
must seek his woven nest among the grass at twilight; and so, with many
yawns, I rose after an hour of dreams to look for sleep. Tiverton Manor
was a formless blot on the mild radiance of the heavens, but I must needs
pause for a while, gazing up at the Lady Adeliza's window, like a hen
drinking water, and thinking of divers matters.
It was then that something rustled among the leaves, and, turning, I
stared into the countenance of Stephen Allonby, until to-day Marquis of
Falmouth, a slim, comely youth, and son to my father's younger brother.
"Fool," said he, "you walk late."
"Faith!" said I, "instinct warned me that a fool might find fit company
here,--dear cousin." He frowned at the word, for he was never prone to
admit the relationship, being in disposition somewhat precise.
"Eh?" said he; then paused for a while. "I have more kinsmen than I knew
of," he resumed, at length, "and to-day spawns them thick as herrings.
Your greeting falls strangely pat with that of a brother of yours,
alleged to be begot in lawful matrimony, who hath appeared to claim the
title and estates, and hath even imposed upon the credulity of Monsieur
de Puysange."
I said, "And who is this new kinsman?" though his speaking had brought my
heart into my mouth. "I have many brethren, if report speak truly as to
how little my poor father slept at night."
"I do not know," said he. "The vicomte had not told me more than half the
tale when I called him a double-faced old rogue. Thereafter we
parted--well, rather hastily!"
I was moved with a sort of pity, since it was plainer than a pike-staff
that Monsieur de Puysange had bundled this penniless young fellow out of
Tiverton, with scant courtesy and a scantier explanation. Still, the
wording of this sympathy was a ticklish business. I waved my hand upward.
"The match, then, is broken off, between you and the Lady Adeliza?"
"Ay!" my cousin said, grimly.
Again I was nonplussed. Since their betrothal was an affair of rank
conveniency, my Cousin Stephen should, in reason, grieve at this
miscarriage temperately, and yet if by some awkward chance he, too,
adored the delicate comeliness asleep above us, equity conceded his taste
to be unfortunate rather than remarkable. Inwardly I resolved to bestow
upon my Cousin Stephen a competence, and to pick out for him somewhere a
wife better suited to his station. Meanwhile a silence fell.
He cleared his throat; swore softly to himself; took a brief turn on the
grass; and approached me, purse in hand. "It is time you were abed," said
my cousin.
I assented to this. "And since one may sleep anywhere," I reasoned, "why
not here?" Thereupon, for I was somewhat puzzled at his bearing, I lay
down upon the gravel and snored.
"Fool," he said. I opened one eye. "I have business here"--I opened
the other--"with the Lady Adeliza." He tossed me a coin as I sprang
to my feet.
"Sir--!" I cried out.
"Ho, she expects me."
"In that case--" said I.
"The difficulty is to give a signal."
"'Tis as easy as lying," I reassured him; and thereupon I began to sing.
Sang I:
_"Such toll we took of his niggling hours
That the troops of Time were sent
To seise the treasures and fell the towers
Of the Castle of Content.
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,
With flaming tower and tumbling battlement
Where Time hath conquered, and the firelight streams
Above sore-wounded Loves and dying Dreams,--
Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
And I had scarcely ended when the casement opened.
"Stephen!" said the Lady Adeliza.
"Dear love!" said he.
"Humph!" said I.
Here a rope-ladder unrolled from the balcony and hit me upon the head.
"Regard the orchard for a moment," the Lady Adeliza said, with the
wonderfullest little laugh.
My cousin indignantly protested, "I have company,--a burr that
sticks to me."
"A fool," I explained,--"to keep him in countenance."
"It was ever the part of folly," said she, laughing yet again, "to be
swayed by a woman; and it is the part of wisdom to be discreet. In any
event, there must be no spectators."
So we two Allonbys held each a strand of the ladder and stared at the
ripening apples, black globes among the wind-vext silver of the leaves.
In a moment the Lady Adeliza stood between us. Her hand rested upon mine
as she leapt to the ground,--the tiniest velvet-soft ounce-weight that
ever set a man's blood a-tingle.
"I did not know--" said she.
"Faith, madonna!" said I, "no more did I till this. I deduce but now that
the Marquis of Falmouth is the person you discoursed of an hour since,
with whom you hope to enter the Castle of Content."
"Ah, Will! dear Will, do not think lightly of me," she said. "My
father--"
"Is as all of them have been since Father Adam's dotage," I ended; "and
therefore is keeping fools and honest horses from their rest."
My cousin said, angrily, "You have been spying!"
"Because I know that there are horses yonder?" said I. "And fools
here--and everywhere? Surely, there needs no argent-bearded Merlin come
yawning out of Brocheliaunde to inform us of that."
He said, "You will be secret?"
"In comparison," I answered, "the grave is garrulous, and a death's-head
a chattering magpie; yet I think that your maid, madonna,--"
"Beatris is sworn to silence."
"Which signifies she is already on her way to Monsieur de Puysange. She
was coerced; she discovered it too late; and a sufficiency of tears and
pious protestations will attest her innocence. It is all one." I winked
an eye very sagely.
"Your jesting is tedious," my cousin said. "Come, Adeliza!"
Blaise, my lord marquis' French servant, held three horses in the
shadow, so close that it was incredible I had not heard their trampling.
Now the lovers mounted and were off like thistledown ere Blaise put foot
to stirrup.
"Blaise," said I.
"Ohé!" said he, pausing.
"--if, upon this pleasurable occasion, I were to borrow your horse--"
"Impossible!"
"If I were to take it by force--" I exhibited my coin.
"Eh?"
"--no one could blame you."
"And yet perhaps--"
"The deduction is illogical," said I. And pushing him aside, I mounted
and set out into the night after my cousin and the Lady Adeliza.
4. _All Ends in a Puff of Smoke_
They rode leisurely enough along the winding highway that lay in the
moonlight like a white ribbon in a pedlar's box; and staying as I did
some hundred yards behind, they thought me no other than Blaise, being,
indeed, too much engrossed with each other to regard the outer world very
strictly. So we rode a matter of three miles in the whispering, moonlit
woods, they prattling and laughing as though there were no such monster
in all the universe as a thrifty-minded father, and I brooding upon many
things beside my marquisate, and keeping an ear cocked backward for
possible pursuit.
In any ordinary falling out of affairs they would ride unhindered to
Teignmouth, and thence to Allonby Shaw; they counted fully upon doing
this; but I, knowing Beatris, who was waiting-maid to the Lady Adeliza,
and consequently in the plot, to be the devil's own vixen, despite an
innocent face and a wheedling tongue, was less certain.
I shall not easily forget that riding away from the old vicomte's
preparations to make a match of it between Adeliza and me. About us the
woods sighed and whispered, dappled by the moonlight with unstable
chequerings of blue and silver. Tightly he clung to my crupper, that
swart tireless horseman, Care; but ahead rode Love, anterior to all
things and yet eternally young, in quest of the Castle of Content. The
horses' hoofs beat against the pebbles as if in chorus to the Devon
cradle-song that rang idly in my brain. 'Twas little to me--now--whether
the quest were won or lost; yet, as I watched the Lady Adeliza's white
cloak tossing and fluttering in the wind, my blood pulsed more strongly
than it is wont to do, and was stirred by the keen odors of the night and
by many memories of her gracious kindliness and by a desire to serve
somewhat toward the attainment of her happiness. Thus it was that my
teeth clenched, and a dog howled in the distance, and the world seemed
very old and very incurious of our mortal woes and joys.
Then that befell which I had looked for, and I heard the clatter of
horses' hoofs behind us, and knew that Monsieur de Puysange and his men
were at hand to rescue the Lady Adeliza from my fine-looking young
cousin, to put her into the bed of a rich fool. So I essayed a gallop.
"Spur!" I cried;--"in the name of Saint Cupid!"
With a little gasp, she bent forward over her horse's mane, urging him
onward with every nerve and muscle of her tender body. I could not keep
my gaze from her as we swept through the night. Picture Europa in her
traverse, bull-borne, through the summer sea, the depths giving up their
misshapen deities, and the blind sea-snakes writhing about her in hideous
homage, while she, a little frightened, thinks resolutely of Crete beyond
these unaccustomed horrors and of the god desirous of her contentation;
and there, to an eyelash, you have Adeliza as I saw her.
But steadily our pursuers gained on us: and as we paused to pick our way
over the frail bridge that spanned the Exe, their clamor was very near.
"Take care!" I cried,--but too late, for my horse swerved under me as I
spoke, and my lord marquis' steed caught foot in a pile of lumber and
fell heavily. He was up in a moment, unhurt, but the horse was lamed.
"You!" cried my Cousin Stephen. "Oh, but what fiend sends me this
burr again!"
I said: "My fellow-madmen, it is all one if I have a taste for
night-riding and the shedding of noble blood. Alack, though, that I have
left my brave bauble at Tiverton! Had I that here, I might do such deeds!
I might show such prowess upon the person of Monsieur de Puysange as
your Nine Worthies would quake to hear of! For I have the honor to inform
you, my doves, that we are captured."
Indeed, we were in train to be, for even the two sound horses were
well-nigh foundered: Blaise, the idle rogue, had not troubled to provide
fresh steeds, so easy had the flitting seemed; and it was conspicuous
that we would be overtaken in half an hour.
"So it seems," said Stephen Allonby. "Well! one can die but once." Thus
speaking, he drew his sword with an air which might have been envied by
Captain Leonidas at Thermopylae.
"Together, my heart!" she cried.
"Madonna," said I, dismounting as I spoke, "pray you consider! With
neither of you, is there any question of death; 'tis but that Monsieur de
Puysange desires you to make a suitable match. It is not yet too late;
his heart is kindly so long as he gets his will and profit everywhere,
and he bears no malice toward my lord marquis. Yield, then, to your
father's wishes, since there is no choice."
She stared at me, as thanks for this sensible advice. "And you--is it you
that would enter into the Castle of Content?" she cried, with a scorn
that lashed.
I said: "Madonna, bethink you, you know naught of this man your father
desires you to wed. Is it not possible that he, too, may love--or may
learn to love you, on provocation? You are very fair, madonna. Yours is a
beauty that may draw a man to Heaven or unclose the gates of Hell, at
will; indeed, even I, in my poor dreams, have seen your face as bright
and glorious as is the lighted space above the altar when Christ's blood
and body are shared among His worshippers. Men certainly will never cease
to love you. Will he--your husband that may be--prove less susceptible,
we will say, than I? Ah, but, madonna, let us unrein imagination!
Suppose, were it possible, that he--even now--yearns to enter into the
Castle of Content, and that your hand, your hand alone, may draw the bolt
for him,--that the thought of you is to him as a flame before which honor
and faith shrivel as shed feathers, and that he has loved you these many
years, unknown to you, long, long before the Marquis of Falmouth came
into your life with his fair face and smooth sayings. Suppose, were it
possible, that he now stood before you, every pulse and fibre of him
racked with an intolerable ecstasy of loving you, his heart one vast
hunger for you, Adeliza, and his voice shaking as my voice shakes, and
his hands trembling as my hands tremble,--ah, see how they tremble,
madonna, the poor foolish hands! Suppose, were it possible,--"
"Fool! O treacherous fool!" my cousin cried, in a fine rage.
She rested her finger-tips upon his arm. "Hush!" she bade him; then
turned to me an uncertain countenance that was half pity, half wonder.
"Dear Will," said she, "if you have ever known aught of love, do you not
understand how I love Stephen here?"
But she did not any longer speak as a lord's daughter speaks to the fool
that makes mirth for his betters.
"In that case," said I,--and my voice played tricks,--"in that case, may
I request that you assist me in gathering such brushwood as we may find
hereabout?"
They both stared at me now. "My lord," I said, "the Exe is high, the
bridge is of wood, and I have flint and steel in my pocket. The ford is
five miles above and quite impassable. Do you understand me, my lord?"
He clapped his hands. "Oh, excellent!" he cried.
Then, each having caught my drift, we heaped up a pile of broken boughs
and twigs and brushwood on the bridge, all three gathering it together.
And I wondered if the moon, that is co-partner in the antics of most
rogues and lovers, had often beheld a sight more reasonless than the
foregathering of a marquis, a peer's daughter, and a fool at dead of
night to make fagots.
When we had done I handed him the flint and steel. "My lord," said I,
"the honor is yours."
"Udsfoot!" he murmured, in a moment, swearing and striking futile sparks,
"but the late rain has so wet the wood that it will not kindle."
I said, "Assuredly, in such matters a fool is indispensable." I heaped
before him the papers that made an honest woman of my mother and a
marquis of me, and seizing the flint, I cast a spark among them that set
them crackling cheerily. Oh, I knew well enough that patience would coax
a flame from those twigs without my paper's aid, but to be patient does
not afford the posturing which youth loves. So it was a comfort to wreck
all magnificently: and I knew that, too, as we three drew back upon the
western bank and watched the writhing twigs splutter and snap and burn.
The bridge caught apace and in five minutes afforded passage to nothing
short of the ardent equipage of the prophet Elias. Five minutes later the
bridge did not exist: only the stone arches towered above the roaring
waters that glistened in the light of the fire, which had, by this,
reached the other side of the river, to find quick employment in the
woods of Tiverton. Our pursuers rode through a glare which was that of
Hell's kitchen on baking-day, and so reached the Exe only to curse vainly
and to shriek idle imprecations at us, who were as immune from their
anger as though the severing river had been Pyriphlegethon.
"My lord," I presently suggested, "it may be that your priest
expects you?"
"Indeed," said he, laughing, "it is possible. Let us go." Thereupon they
mounted the two sound horses. "Most useful burr," said he, "do you follow
on foot to Teignmouth; and there--"
"Sir," I replied, "my home is at Tiverton."
He wheeled about. "Do you not fear--?"
"The whip?" said I. "Ah, my lord, I have been whipped ere this. It is
not the greatest ill in life to be whipped."
He began to protest.
"But, indeed, I am resolved," said I. "Farewell!"
He tossed me his purse. "As you will," he retorted, shortly. "We thank
you for your aid; and if I am still master of Allonby--"
"No fear of that!" I said. "Farewell, good cousin marquis! I cannot weep
at your going, since it brings you happiness. And we have it on excellent
authority that the laughter of fools is as the crackling of thorns under
a pot. Accordingly, I bid you God-speed in a discreet silence."
I stood fumbling my cousin's gold as he went forward into the night; but
she did not follow.
"I am sorry--" she began. She paused and the lithe fingers fretted with
her horse's mane.
I said: "Madonna, earlier in this crowded night, you told me of love's
nature: must my halting commentary prove the glose upon your text? Look,
then, to be edified while the fool is delivered of his folly. For upon
the maternal side, love was born of the ocean, madonna, and the ocean is
but salt water, and salt water is but tears; and thus may love claim
love's authentic kin with sorrow. Ay, certainly, madonna, Fate hath
ordained for her diversion that through sorrow alone we lovers may attain
to the true Castle of Content."
There was a long silence, and the wind wailed among the falling,
tattered leaves. "Had I but known--" said Adeliza, very sadly.
I said: "Madonna, go forward and God speed you! Yonder your lover waits
for you, and the world is exceedingly fair; here is only a fool. As for
this new Marquis of Falmouth, let him trouble you no longer. 'Tis an
Eastern superstition that we lackbrains are endowed with peculiar gifts
of prophecy: and as such, I predict, very confidently, madonna, that you
will see and hear no more of him in this life."
I caught my breath. In the moonlight she seemed God's master-work. Her
eyes were big with half-comprehended sorrow, and a slender hand stole
timorously toward me. I laughed, seeing how she strove to pity my great
sorrow and could not, by reason of her great happiness. I laughed and was
content. "As surely as God reigns in Heaven," I cried aloud, "I am
content, and this moment is well purchased with a marquisate!"
Indeed, I was vastly uplift and vastly pleased with my own nobleness,
just then, and that condition is always a comfort.
More alertly she regarded me; and in her eyes I saw the anxiety and the
wonder merge now into illimitable pity. "That, too!" she said, smiling
sadly. "That, too, O son of Thomas Allonby!" And her mothering arms were
clasped about me, and her lips clung and were one with my lips for a
moment, and her tears were wet upon my cheek. She seemed to shield me,
making of her breast my sanctuary.
"My dear, my dear, I am not worthy!" said Adeliza, with a tenderness I
cannot tell you of; and presently she, too, was gone.
I mounted the lamed horse, who limped slowly up the river bank; very
slowly we came out from the glare of the crackling fire into the cool
darkness of the autumn woods; very slowly, for the horse was lamed and
wearied, and patience is a discreet virtue when one journeys toward
curses and the lash of a dog-whip: and I thought of many quips and jests
whereby to soothe the anger of Monsieur de Puysange, and I sang to myself
as I rode through the woods, a nobleman no longer, a tired Jack-pudding
whose tongue must save his hide.
Sang I:
_"The towers are fallen; no laughter rings
Through the rafters, charred and rent;
The ruin is wrought of all goodly things
In the Castle of Content.
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content,
Rased in the Land of Youth, where mirth was meant!
Nay, all is ashes 'there; and all in vain
Hand-shadowed eyes turn backward, to regain
Disastrous memories of that dear domain,--
Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
* * * * *
MAY 27, 1559
_"'O welladay!' said Beichan then,
'That I so soon have married thee!
For it can be none but Susie Pie,
That sailed the sea for love of me.'"_
_How Will Sommers encountered the Marchioness of Falmouth in the
Cardinal's house at Whitehall, and how in Windsor Forest that noble lady
died with the fool's arms about her, does not concern us here. That is
matter for another tale.
You are not, though, to imagine any scandal. Barring an affair with Sir
Henry Rochford, and another with Lord Norreys, and the brief interval in
1525 when the King was enamored of her, there is no record that the
marchioness ever wavered from the choice her heart had made, or had any
especial reason to regret it.
So she lived and died, more virtuously and happily than most, and found
the marquis a fair husband, as husbands go; and bore him three sons and
a daughter.
But when the ninth Marquis of Falmouth died long after his wife, in the
November of 1557, he was survived by only one of these sons, a junior
Stephen, born in 1530, who at his father's demise succeeded to the title.
The oldest son, Thomas, born 1531, had been killed in Wyatt's Rebellion
in 1554; the second, George, born 1526, with a marked look of the King,
was, in February, 1556, stabbed in a disreputable tavern brawl.
Now we have to do with the tenth Marquis of Falmouth's suit for the hand
of Lady Ursula Heleigh, the Earl of Brudenel's co-heiress. You are to
imagine yourself at Longaville Court, in Sussex, at a time when Anne
Bullen's daughter was very recently become Queen of England._