You--happy--across whose tablets a kind fate draws the sponge of
oblivion even while you write, who leave the cup half emptied, and the
feast half finished; you, from whose thoughts ambition passes in warm
meridian glow, who nourish expectation and hope to the very verge of
the unknown; you, who leave warm with the sweet wine of living, your
dim way lit with the shine of love, your fingers locked in the clasp of
friendship; you, to whom all these things gently minister and smooth
the path of the inevitable; you, who die but once and die so easily,
surely cannot comprehend the full measure of my sufferings!
Oh! it was horrible and sickening to feel the old world reel and spin
like this beneath my laggard feet; to see crowns and states and people
flit by like idle shadows on a sunny wall; to espouse great quarrels
that set men into wide-asunder camps, and to wake and find the quarrel
long since over and forgotten; to swear allegiance to a king and love
and serve him, and then to find, in the beat of a pulse, that he had
gone and was forgotten; to be the bearer of proud news that should
kindle joy in a thousand thousand hearts, and then to wake when even
the meaning of that news, the very cause and purport of it, was long
since past and gone--it was surely bitter!
And for myself--I, who, as you know, link a ready sympathy with any
cause, who love and live and hope with a fervor which no experience
quenches and no adversity can dim--to be thus cut adrift from all I
lived and hoped for, to be cast like this on to the bleak, friendless
shore of some age, remote, unknown, unvalued--surely it was a mischance
as heavy as any mischance could be!
I had not any friend in all that universe, I said to myself as I lay
and thought sad thoughts upon the grassy mound--a friend!--not one kind
human heart in this hive of human atoms set store by me--not one had
heard I lived--not one cared if I died! There was not in all the world
one question of how I fared, one wish that ran in union with any wish
of mine--one single link to join me to my kind. And what links could
I forge again? How could I set out to hope afresh or love, or fear or
wish for? Hope! gods! had I not hopes yesterday? And what were they
now?--a tawdry, silly sheaf of tinseled fancies. And love!--how could
I love, remembering the new-dead Isobel?--and fear and desire! neither
touched the accursed monotony of my desolation; either would have been
a boon from Heaven to break the miserable calm of my despair!
It was thus I reasoned with myself for hours as the gathering darkness
settled down; and, poor as I had often been, and comradeless, I do not
think, in all a long and varied life, I had ever felt more reft of
friends or melancholy lonesome. In vain my mind was racked to piece
the evidence of that huge lapse of time which, there was no doubt, had
passed since the great battle on the Crecy hills. I could recall as
they have been set down every incident of the voyage, my escape, and
what had followed the awakening: but the sleep itself was to me even
now just one long, soft, dreamless, well-earned slumber from point
to point. So absolutely natural had been that wondrous trance that
to think on it would make me start up with a cry, and shake my fist
to where, in the valley, the lights of Elizabeth’s camp were faintly
shining among the trees, and half persuade myself that this were the
dream--that the yellow-haired Princess had somehow mocked me, that
Edward indeed still lived, with my jolly comrades, and I might still
hope to win renown and smiles amid them, and see those that I knew, and
drink red wine from friendly flagons. Then I would remember all the
many signs that told the Princess had not fooled me--had but spoke the
cruel, naked truth--and down I would sink again on the turf under the
deepening shadows, and bewail my lot.
Tossed fiercely about like this, time passed unnoticed; the day went
out in the west behind the pale amber and green satin curtains of
the sunset, and, while I sat and grieved, the yellow stars climbed
into the sky, all the sweet silent planets of the night set out upon
their unseen pathways and airy paraboles, and behind the thicket that
sheltered me the moon got up and threw across the lonely road a tracery
of black and silver shadows. The evening air blew strong and cool upon
my flushed, hot brow, and lulled the teeming thoughts that crowded
there. Soft velvet bats came down, and the faint lisp of their hollow
wings brushing by me was kindly and sympathetic. Overhead, the sallows
hung out a thousand golden points to the small people of the twilight,
and a faint perfume--an incense of hope--fell on me with the yellow
dust of those gentle flowers. If I say these cool influences somewhat
respirited me, you will deride my changing mood. Yet why should I
hesitate for that? I did grow calmer under the gentle caressing of the
evening; it was all so fair and still about me presently, and there was
this star that I knew and that; and the night-owl churning overhead
was surely the very same bird that had sung above my hunter-couch
in the Saxon woodlands; and the lonely trumpet of the heron, flying
homeward up the valley, brought back a score of peaceful memories.
After all, men might change and go--shallow, small puppets that they
were!--but this, at least, was the same old earth about me, and that
was something. I would find a sheltered corner and sleep. Mayhap, with
to-morrow’s dawn the world might look a little brighter!
Just as this wise resolution was on the point of being put in force,
the faint sound of horse-hoofs, demurely walking up toward my
lurking-place, came down on the night wind, and, retiring a moment into
the deep shadows, I had not long to wait before the same shaggy palfrey
and the same dreamy old fellow met earlier in the day came pacing along
the road. The scholar--for so I guessed him--looked neither to right
nor left; his strange thin face was turned full up to the moonlight,
and the bright rays shone upon his vacant eyes and long white beard
with a strange sepulchural luster. He was letting the reins hang loose
upon his pony’s neck, and, as he came near, thinking himself alone,
he stretched out his long, sinewy hands in front; and it was plain to
see his lips worked in the moonlight with unspoken thoughts quicker
than an abbot’s at unpaid-for mass. Utterly oblivious to everything
around, in the white shine of the great night planet, old, lunatic,
and gaunt, he looked, methought, the strangest wayfarer that ever
rode down a woodland lane by nightfall. He was indeed so weird and
unapproachable in his reverie that, though I had felt a small gleam of
pleasure in first recognizing something which, if not friend, was at
least acquaintance, yet now as he drew nigh, remote and visionary, with
glassy eyes fixed on the twinkling stars, and thin white locks lifting
about his broad and wrinkled forehead, I hesitated to greet him, and
stood back.
But that palfrey he bestrode was more watchful than his rider. He saw
me loom dark among the hazels, and came to so sudden a stop as threw
the old man forward upon his ears, and, whatever his fancies may have
been, jerked them clean from sky to earth in less time than it takes to
write.
The scholar pulled himself together, and, with some show of valor,
threw back his wide cloak from his right shoulder, and uncovered on
his other side the hilt of a tarnished, rusty sword. Then, peeping
and peering all about, he cried: “Ho! you there in the shadows! Be ye
thieves or beggars, know that I have nothing to give and less to lose!”
“And he who stops your way, Sir,” I answered, stepping forward into the
clear, “is exactly in like circumstance.”
“Oh! it is you, friend, is it?” cried the old man, seeming much
relieved. “I thought I had fallen into a nest of footpads, or at the
least a camp of beggars.”
“Your open declaration, Sir, backed by certain evidences of its obvious
truth, ought to have taken you safely through the worst infested
thicket hereabouts.”
“No doubt, no doubt; but I am glad it is you and not another--first,
because desirable friendships are rarely made by moonlight; and
secondly, because you have been in my mind the few hours since we
parted.”
“I am honored in that particular, and your courtesy moves me the more
because I was only now thinking there were none upon the face of the
earth who were doing so much by me.”
“You are green, young man, and therefore apt to let a passing whim, a
shadow of disappointment, lead to hasty generalizing. You fared not as
you hoped at yonder Court?” And the old man bent his keen gray eyes
upon me with a searching shrewdness there was no gainsaying.
“No! in faith I fared badly beyond all expectation.”
“And what were you projecting just now when, like the ass of Balaam,
this most patient beast saw you in the way and interrupted my
reflection so roughly?”
“Why, at that very moment, Sir,” I said, “I was looking for a likely
place to pass the night.”
“What, on the moss? with no better hangings to your couch than these
lean, draughty, leafless boughs?”
“’Tis an honorable bed, Sir, and I have fared worse when I have been
far richer.”
“Oh! what a happy thing it is to be young and full of choler and folly!
Not but that I have done the same myself,” chuckled the old man: “for
thou knowest mandrake must be gathered only at the full moon, and
hemlock roots are digged in the dark--many a twilight such as this I
spent groping in the murky woods, picking those things that witches
love--and not gone home with full wallet until the owls were homing
and the pale white stars were waxing sickly in the morning light.
Nevertheless, Sir, take an old man’s word, and presume not too largely
on the immunities of youth.”
“I have no drier bed.”
“No, but I have. Come back with me to-night, and I will lodge you safe
and sound until the morning.”
“Thanks for the proffer! Yet this is surely extreme courtesy between
two wayfarers so newly met as we are?”
“And do I, Sir,” he cried, holding out his thin and shaky palms
there in the pallid light, a gaunt and ragged-looking specter--a
houseless, homeless, visionary vagrant--“do I, Sir, seem some
broiling spend-thrift--some loose hedge-companion--some shallow-pated
swashbuckler--hail-fellow-well-met with one and all? I have not said so
much civility as I did just now to any one this twenty years!”
“The more thanks are due from him in whose favor you make so great and
generous exception. Is it distant to your lodgment?”
“But a few miles straight ahead of us.”
“Then I will go with you, for it were churlish to slight so good an
offer out of bare waywardness”; and I tightened my belt, and took the
ragged, ungroomed little steed by the rusty, cord-mended bit, and with
these two strange companions, set out I knew not how or where, and
cared but little.
At first that quaint old man seemed more elated than could reasonably
be expected at having secured me for a guest. He did not openly avow
it, but I was not so young or unread in men but that I could decipher
his pleasure in voice and eye, even while he talked on other subjects.
How this interest came, what he could hope to get or have of me,
however, was well past my comprehension. My dress and rustic garb
spoke me his inferior in place and station, while, certes! my rags
and tatters made me seem poor even after my humble kind. He was a
gentleman, though the sorriest-looking one who ever put a leg across a
saddle. And I? I was afoot, a gloomy, purseless, unweaponed loiterer
in the shadows. What could he need of me that lent such luster to his
eyes, and caused him to chuckle so hoarsely far down in his lean and
withered throat? The morrow no doubt would show, and in the meantime,
being still morose and sad, smarting to have unwittingly played the
fool so much, and full of grief and sorrow, I responded but dully to
his learned talk. Feeling this, and being only slenderly attached to
mundane things at best, his mind wandered from me after a mile or
two--his eyes grew fixed and expressionless, his hands dropped, supine
upon the pommel, his chin sank down upon the limp, worn, yellow ruffles
on his chest, and senseless, disconnected murmurs ran from his lips,
like water dripping from a leaky cask.
I let him babble as he liked, and trudged along in silence, leaving
the road to that sagacious beast, who, with drooped head and stolid
purpose, went pacing on without a look either to right or left. And
you will guess my thoughts were melancholy. Yesterday I was an honored
soldier, the confidant of a proud, victorious king, the comrade of
a shining band of princely brethren, as good a knight as any that
breathed among a host of heroes, the clear-honored leading star--the
bright example to a horde of stalwart veterans--with all the fair
wide fields of renown and reputation lying inviting before me!--all
the pleasant lethe of struggle and ambition open to my search, and I
had strong, true friends abroad, and loving ones at home--and now!
and now! Oh! I beat my hand upon my bosom, and spent impotent curses
on the starlight sky, to think how all was changed--to think how
those splendid princely shadows were gone--how all those sweet, rough
spearmen who had ridden with me, fetlock deep, through the crimson mire
of Crecy had passed out into the void, leaving me here desolate, poor,
accursed--this empty hand that trained the spear that had shot princes
and paladins to earth under the full gaze of crownèd Christendom,
turned to a low horse-boy’s duty, my golden mail changed to a
hedgeman’s muddy smock, on foot, degraded, friendless, and forlorn!
But it was no good grieving. My melancholy served somehow to pass
the way, and when, presently, I shook it off again with one fierce,
final sigh, and peered about, we were slowly winding down a dark road
between high banks into a deeply wooded glen lying straight ahead.
I had noticed now and then, as we came along, a twinkling light or
two standing off from the white roadway, amid the deep black shadows
of the evening, and each time had slowed my gloomy stride, thinking
this were the place we aimed for. Now it was a shepherd’s lonely cot,
high-perched amid the open furze and ling, with a faint red beam of
warmth and light coming from the glowing hearth within. “Ah! here we
be!” I thought. “So Learning is lodged with fleecy Simplicity, and cons
his Ovid amid the things the sweet Latin loved, or reads bucolic Horace
beneath a herdsman’s oak!”
But that glum palfrey did not stop, and his fantastic master made no
sign. Then it would be a way-side cottage, all criscross-faced with
beam of wood, after the new fashion, and overgrown with rose and
eglantine. “Then this is it,” I sighed--“a comely, peaceful harborage.
One could surely lie safer from the winds of blustering fortune in this
tiny shell than a small white maggot in a winter-hidden nut.” And I put
my hand upon the dim trestle-gate. But stamp--stamp! the steed went on;
and the master never took his chin from off his bosom!
Well, we had passed in this way some few small homesteads, and seen the
glow-worm lights of a fair, sleeping Tudor village or two shine remote
in the starlight valleys, and then we came all at the same solemn
pace, the same gloomy silence, into that deep-shadowed dell I spoke of.
We dipped down, out of the honest white radiance, between high banks
on either hand, so high that bush and scrub were locked in tangles
overhead and not a blink of light came through. Down that strange black
zigzag we slipped and scrambled, the loose stones rattling beneath our
feet, in pitchy darkness, with never a sound to break the stillness but
the heavy breathing of the horse, and now and then the gurgle of an
unseen streamlet running somewhere in the void. We staggered down this
hell-dark pathway for a lonely mile, and then there loomed up from the
blackness on my right hand a moldy, broken terrace wall, all loose and
cracked, with fallen coping slabs and pedestals displaced, and hideous,
stony, graven monsters here and there glowering in the blackness at
us who passed below. Two hundred paces down this wall we went, and
then came to an opening. At the same moment the pale moon shone out
full overhead and showed me a gate, a garden, and beyond an empty
mansion, so white, so ruinous and ghastly, so marvelously like a dead,
expressionless face suddenly gleaming over the black pall of the night,
that I tightened my hand upon the snaffle strap I held, and bit my lip,
and thanked my fate it was not there I had to sleep.
Yet could I not help staring at that place. The wall turned in on
either side to meet those gates. They had once been noble and well
wrought and gilded, for here and there the better metal shone in spots
amid the wide expanse of rusty iron that formed them, but now they were
like the broken fangs, methought, of some old hag more than aught else.
The left of these two rotten portals never opened, the nettle and wild
creepers were twined thick about its shattered lower bars, while its
fellow stood ajar, with one hinge gone, and sagging over, desperately
envious, it seemed, of the small footway that wound amid the rank wild
herbage past it. And then that garden! Jove! Was ever such a ghostly
wilderness, such a tangled labyrinth of decay and neglect born out
of the kind, fertile bosom of gentle Mother Earth? Never before had I
seen black cypresses throw such funereal shadows; never had I known
the winter-worn things of summer look so ghoul-like and horrible! But
worst of all was the mansion beyond--a straggling pile, with mighty
chimney stacks, from whence no pleasant smoke curled up, and silent,
grassy courtyards, and lonely flights of broken steps leading to lonely
terraces, and a hundred empty windows staring empty-socketed back upon
the dead white light that shone so straight and cruel on them. Oh! it
was all most forlorn and melancholy, surely an unholy place, steeped
deep with the indelible stain of some black story--and I turned me
gladly from it!
I turned, and as I did so the horse came to a sudden stop!--stopped
calm and resolute before that ill-omened portal! This woke his master,
who stared and looked up. He saw the house and gates in the full stream
of the moonlight, and then turned to me.
“Welcome!” he cried, “right welcome to my home! Ho! ho! you shall
sleep snug enough to-night. Look at the shine on it. They have lit up
to welcome us!” and he pointed with a long, fleshless finger to those
ghostly windows! “Ho! ho! ho!” came, like a dead voice, the echo of his
laughter out of the blank courtyard depth, and the old man, so strange
and wild, struck his rusty spurs upon the bare sounding ribs of his
beast and turned and rode through the portal.
For one minute I held back--’twas all so grim and tragic-looking, and I
was weak, shaken with grief and fasting, unweaponed and alone--for one
minute I held back, and then the red flush of anger burned hot upon my
forehead to think I had been so near to fearing. I tossed back my black
Phrygian locks, and with an angry stride--my spirit roused by that
moment’s weakness--strode sternly across the threshold.
Down the white gravel way we twined, the loose, neglected path gleaming
wet with night-dew; we brushed by thickets of dead garden things, such
as had once been tall and fair, but now tainted the night air with
their rottenness. We stepped over giant brambles and great fallen
hemlocks--little hedge-pigs, so forsaken was it all, trotting down
the path before us--and bats flitting about our heads. In one place
had been a fountain, and Pan himself standing by it. The fountain was
choked with giant dock and cress, wherefrom some frogs croaked with
dismal glee, while Pan had fallen and lay in pieces on his face across
the way. So we came in a moment or two to the house, and there my
guide dismounted and pulled bit and bridle, saddle and saddle-cloth
from his pony. That beast turned and stepped back into the shadows of
the desolate garden, vanishing with strange suddenness, but whither I
could not guess. Then the old man produced a green-rusty key from under
his belt, and putting it to the lock of the door at top of that flight
of broken steps, which looked as though no foot had trodden them for
fifty years, he turned the rusty wards. The grind and wail of those
stiff bolts had almost human sadness in it, and then we entered a long,
lonely chilly hall. Here my guide felt for flint and steel, and I own I
heard the click of the stone and metal, and saw the first sparks spring
and die upon the pavement, with reasonable satisfaction.
’Twould have made a good picture, had some one been by to limn it--that
ghastly pale face that might have topped a skeleton, so bloodless
was it, with sharp, keen eyes, a glint in the red glow that came
presently upon the tinder, that strange slouch hat, that ragged,
sorrel, graveyard cloak, and all about the gleam, glancing off the
crumbling finery, the worm-eaten furniture, the broken tile-stones,
the empty, voiceless corridors, the doors set half ajar, the great
carved banisters of the stairway that mounted into the black upper
emptiness of that deserted hall. And then I myself, there by the porch,
watchful and grim, in my sorry rags, the greatest wonder of it all,
eyeing with haughty speculation that old fellow, so ancient and yet so
young, tottering and venerable under the weight of a poor eighty years,
perhaps, while it was three times as much since strong-limbed, supple I
had even sat to a meal! It was truly strange, and I waited for anything
that might come next with calm resignation--a listless faith in the
integrity of chance which put me beyond all those gusty emotions of
hope and fear which play through the fledgling hearts of lesser men.
The red train of sparks lit upon the tinder while I glanced around,
the old man’s breath blew them into a flame, and this he set to a
rushlight, then turned that pale flame in my direction as he surveyed
his guest from top to toe. I bore the inspection with folded arms, and
when he had done he said:
“Such thews and sinews, son, as show beneath that hempen shirt of
yours, such breadth of shoulder and stalwartness can scarcely be
nourished on evening dew and sad reflections. Have you eaten lately?”
“In truth, Sir, it was some time ago I last sat to meat,” was my
response; “and, whether it be our walk or the night-air, I could almost
fancy your father’s father might have shared that meal with me.”
“Well, come, then, to the banquet-hall--the feast is spread, and, for
guests, people these shadows with whom you will!” and, taking the
rushlight from its socket and hobbling off in front, that strange host
of mine led down the corridor to where a great archway led into the
main chamber of the house.
It was as desolate and silent as every other place, vast, roomy, blank,
and gloomy. All along one side were latticed windows looking out upon
that dead garden, and the moonbeams coming through them threw faint
reflections of escutcheon and painted glass upon the dusty floor. Here
and there the panes were broken, and draughts from these swayed the
frayed and tattered hangings with ghostly undulations--ah! and at the
top of the room an open door, leading into unknown blackness, kept
softly opening and shutting in the current, as though, with melancholy
monotony, it was giving admittance to unseen, voiceless company.
But nothing said my friend to excuse all this. He led up the long black
table, with rows of seats and benches fit to seat a hundred guests,
until at the lonely top he found and lit the four branches of a little
oil lamp of green moldy bronze, such as one takes from ancient crypts,
and when the four little flames grew up smoky and dim they shone upon
a napkin ready laid, a flask, a pitcher, and a plate, flanked by a
horn-handled knife and spoon, and an oaken salt-cellar. Then the old
carl next went to a cupboard in a niche, and brought out bread on a
trencher, a cheese upon a round leaden dish, and a curious flask of old
Italian wine. I stared at my host in wonder, for I could have sworn a
Saxon hand had trimmed his knife and spoon, his lamp was Etruscan, as
truly as I lived, though Heaven only knew how he came by it--and that
pitcher--why, Jove! I knew the very Roman pottery marks upon it, the
maker’s sign and name--the very kiln that glazed it.
He laid a plate for me, and cut the loaf and filled our tankards,
and--“Eat!” he said. “The feast is small, but we have that sauce the
wise have told us would make a worse into a banquet.”
“Thanks!” I said. “I have, in truth, sat to wider spreads, yet this
is more than I could, a few short hours since, have reasonably hoped
for.” And so I began and broke his bread, and turned about the cheese,
and poured the wine, and made a very good repast out of such modest
provender. But, as you may guess, between every mouthful I could not
help looking up and about me--at the wise-mad features of that quaint
old man, now far away and visionary, again lost in thought and fantasy;
and then out through the broken mullions into that pallid garden of
white spectral things and inky shadows lying so death-like in the
moonshine; and so once more my eye would wander to the long, somber
hall--the stately high-backed chairs all rickety and moth-eaten, and
the door that gently opened now and then to admit the sighing of the
night-wind, and nothing more!
Well! I will not weary you with experiences so empty. At last the most
spectral meal that ever mortal sat to was over, and the old man roused
himself, and, like one who comes reluctantly from deep thought, drained
out his goblet to the dregs, and turned it down and swept the crumbs
into his plate, and standing up, said in somewhat friendly tone: “You
will be weary, stranger guest, and mayhap I am to-night but a poor
host. If it pleased you, I would show you to a chamber, which, though
mayhap somewhat musty, like much else of mine, shall nevertheless be
drier than yon couch of yours out there by the hazel thicket.”
“Musty or not, good Sir, I do confess a bed will be welcome. It must be
near four hundred years at least--that is to say, it must be very long,
my sleepy eyes suggest--since I was lain on one.”
“Come, then!”
“Yet half a minute, Sir, before we go. This garb of mine--I do not
deign to advert to its poorness, for my own sake, but it does such
small credit to your honor and hospitality. Fortune, in other times,
gave me the right to wear the hose and surtout of a gentleman--if you
had such a livery by you.”
The scholar thought a space, then bid me stay where I was, and took the
rushlight and went down the passage. In a few minutes he was back, with
a swathe of faded raiment upon his arm, and threw them down upon the
bench.
“There, choose!” he cried. “It was like a young man to think of
to-morrow’s clothing, between supper-time and bed.”
The raiment was as mysterious as everything else hereabout. It was all
odds and ends, and quaint old fashions and tags of finery, the faded
panoply of state and pride, the green vest of a forest ranger, the
gaberdine of a marshal of the lists, suits for footmen with the devices
I had seen upon the ruined gates worked on the front in golden thread,
and some few courtly things, such as idle young lords will wear a day
or two and then throw by to wear some newer.
Out of the latter I selected a suit that looked as though it would fit
me, and, though a little crumpled, was still in reasonable condition.
This vestment, after the fashion of the time, consisted of tight hose
and much-puffed breeches, a fine silk waistcoat coming far down, and
a loose and ample coat upon it, with wide shoulders and long, tight
sleeves. When I add this suit was of amber velvet, lined and puffed
with primrose satin, you will understand that, saving the certain
moldiness about it I have mentioned, it was as good as any reasonable
man could desire. I rolled it up, and put it under my arm, then turned
to my host with something of a smile at the strangeness of it all.
“A supper, Sir,” I said, “and shelter; a suit of velvet; and then a
bed! Why, surely, this is rare civility between two chance companions
met on a country road!”
“Ah!” answered the old man, “and if you were as old as I am, you would
know it is rare, but that such things must, somehow, be paid for,” and
he eyed me curiously a moment from under those penthouse eyebrows. “Is
there anything more you lack?” he continued. “To-night it is yours to
ask, and mine to give.”
“Since you put it to me, worthy host,” I responded, “there is one
other thing I need--something a soldier likes, whether it be in
court or camp, in peaceful hall like this or on the ridges of dank
battlefield--a straight, white comrade that I could keep close
to me all day, a dear companion who would lie nigh by my side at
night--believe me, I have never been without such.”
“And believe me, young man, I cannot humor you. Fie! if that’s your
fancy, why did you leave yon wanton camp? Gads! but they would have
lined you there civilly enough, but I----What, do you think I can
conjure you a pretty, painted leman for a plaything out of these black
shadows all about us?”
Whereat I answered seriously: “You mistake my meaning, Sir. It was
no gentle damsel that I needed, but such a companion as I have ever
had--in brief, a weapon, a sword. It was only this I thought of.”
I heard the old man mutter as he turned away--“A curse on young men and
their wants--new suits, supper and wine, leman, weapons--oh! it’s just
the same with all of them,” and he took the taper from the table and
signed to me to follow.
He led me down the hall with its bare, cold flagstones and somber
paneling dimly seen under the feeble gleaming light he carried, and in
a few paces my grim host stopped and held that shine aloft. It shone
redly on a tarnished trophy of arms, chain-mail, and helmets, whence
he bid me choose whatever took my fancy, making the while small effort
to hide his contempt for the obvious eagerness and pleasure with
which I sampled that dusty hoard. After a minute or two I selected a
strong Spanish blade, a little light and playful, perhaps, with golden
arabesques all down it, and a pretty fluted hollow for the foeman’s
blood, and a chased love-knot at the hilt; yet, nevertheless, a good
blade, and serviceable, with an edge as keen as a lover’s eye, and a
temper as true as ever was got into good steel, I thought, as I sprang
it on the tiles, between hammer and anvil. This Toledo blade had a
cover of black velvet, bound and hooped with silver bands, and a stout
belt of like kind, nicely suiting that livery I carried upon my arm. I
bound the sword about me, and, after being so long unweaponed, found it
wondrous comfortable and pleasant wear.
“Now then, Sir Host,” I cried, “lead on! If this chamber of thine were
in the porch of paradise or in the nethermost pit of hell, I am equally
ready to explore it.”
Up the gloomy stairs we went, now to right and then to left, by
corridors and passages, until the road we came was hopelessly mazed to
me; and soon my host led to a wider, gloomier avenue of silent doorways
than any we had passed.
“Choose!”--he laughed--“choose you a bed! Better men than you have
lodged--and died--within these cheerful chambers.” And that wild old
man, with furrowed face and mad, sparkling eyes, seeming in that small,
round globe of light like some spectral remnant of the fortunes of his
lonely house, opened door after door for me to note the grim black
solitudes within. In every chamber hung the same staring portraits
on the wall, cold, proud, dead eyes fixed hard upon you wherever you
might look! on every rotten cornice were tattered hangings, half
shrouding those dim cobwebbed windows that gazed so wistfully out upon
the moonlit garden; and dusky panel doors and cupboard casements that
gently creaked and moved upon the sighing draught till you could
swear ghostly fingers played upon the latches; the same stern black
furniture, crumbling and decayed, was in each set straight against the
walls; the same cenotaph four-posted bedsteads with ruined tapestries
and moldy coverlets--“Choose,” he laughed, with a horrid goblin
laughter that rattled down the empty corridors--“my house is roomy,
though the guests be few and silent.”
But, in truth, there was little to choose where all was so alike.
Therefore, and not to seem the least bit moved by all this
dreadfulness, I threw down my borrowed clothes and rapier upon the
settle in one of the first rooms we happed upon, and said: “Here, then,
good host--and thanks for courteous harborage! What time doth sound
reveillé--what time, I mean, doth thy household wake?”
“My household, stranger, sleeps on forever. They will not wake for
any mortal sunrise, and I spend the long night-hours in work and
vigil”--and he looked at me with the gloomy fanaticism of an absent
mind--“yet you must wake again,” he went on after a minute. “I have
something to ask thee to-morrow, perhaps something to show----”
“Why, then, until we meet again, good-night and pleasant vigils, since
it is to them you go.”
“Good-night, young man, and sober sleep! Remember this is no place to
dream of tilts and tourneys, of lost causes or light leman love”; and,
muttering to himself as he shuffled down the bare, dusty floors, I
heard him pass away from corridor to corridor, and flight to flight,
until even that faint sound was swallowed by the cavernous silence of
the sepulchral mansion, and night and impenetrable stillness fell on
those empty stairways and gaunt voiceless rooms.