A bright dazzle of sunshine roused me with the following sunrise.
I rubbed my sleepy lids and sat up, vaguely gazing round upon the
tarnished hangings, the immovable white faces of the pictures on the
wall, and the dusty floor whereon, in the grayness of countless years,
was marked just the outlines of last night’s feet, and nothing more.
However, it was truly a lovely morning, and, moved by that subtle tonic
which comes with sunshine, I felt brighter and more confident.
Having dressed, I went down the old staircase again to the breakfast
which would certainly be ready, unbarring as I passed the casements and
setting wide the great hall door, that the cool breath of that spring
morning might sweep away the mustiness of the old house, even humming a
snatch of an old camp song, learned in Picardy, to myself the while.
Thus, I gained the dining-hall in good spirits, and saw, as had been
expected, a new meal set with modest food and drink for me, and me
alone, but no other sign or trace of human presence.
I sat and ate, vowing as I did so this riddle had gone far enough
unanswered, and before that shiny, sparkling world outside (all tears
and laughter like a young maid’s face) was a few hours older I would
know who was my host, who served me thus persistent and invisible,
and what might be the service I was looked to to pay for such quaint
entertainment. Therefore, as soon as the meal was done, I belted on my
sword and straightened down my finery, the which had lost its creases
and sat extremely well, and, smoothing the thick mass of my black
Eastern hair under my velvet Tudor cap, sallied forth.
There was nothing new about the garden save the sunshine, and, having
intently regarded the broad-terraced and mullioned front of the house
without learning one single atom more than I knew before, I resolved
to force a way round to the rear if it were possible. But this was not
so easy. On one hand were thickets of shrub and bramble laced into
dense, impenetrable barriers, and on the other great yew hedges in
solemn ranks, with vast masses of ivy and holly forbidding a passage.
But, nothing daunted, I walked down to these yews, and peering about
soon perceived a tangled pathway leading into their fastness. It was
a narrow little way, begrudgingly left between those sullen hedges,
thick-grown with dank weeds below, and arched over by neglected growth
so that the sun could not shine into these dusky alleys, and the paths
were wet and chilly still.
Well, I pushed on, now to right and now to left, amid the tangles of
one of those old mazes that gardeners love to grow, and until only the
tall smokeless chimney-stacks of the deserted house shone red under
the sunshine over the bough-tops in the distance, and then I paused.
It was all so strangely quiet, and so lonesome--I had been solitary so
long, it seemed doubtful whether any one was alive in the world but
me--why, surely, I was thinking, there were no human beings at least
about this shadow-haunted spot. It were idle to seek for them. I would
give it up. And just as I was meditating that--had half turned to go,
and yet was standing irresolute--Jove! right from the air in front of
me, right out from the black bosom of the shadowy yew and ivies, there
burst a wild elfin strain of laughter, a merry bubbling peal, a ringing
cascade of fairy merriment, a sparkling avalanche of disembodied
mirth, that, like some sweet essence, permeated on an instant all
that gloomy place, and thrilled down the damp alleys, and shook the
thousand colored drops of dew from bent and leaf, and vibrated in the
misty prismatic sunshine up above, and then was gone, leaving me rooted
to the ground with the suddenness of it, and half delighted and half
amazed. But only for a moment, and then I leaped forward and saw a
turning, and found at bottom of it a gap, and plunged headlong through!
It was a pretty scene I staggered into. In front of me spread the open
center of the maze, a grassy space some twenty paces all about, and
lying clear to the sunshine falling warm and strong upon it. In the
midst of that fair opening, shut off from wind and outer barrenness,
had once been a fountain with a basin, and, though the jet played
no longer, yet the white marble pool below it, stained golden and
green with moss and weather, held from brim to brim a little lake
of sparkling water. And about that fountain, bright in decay, the
green ferns were unwinding, while great clumps of gold narcissus hung
trembling over their own reflection in the broken basin. Overhead,
there was a blossoming almond-tree, a cloud of pale-pink buds wherefrom
a constant cheerful hum of bees came forth, and a pale rain of petals
fell on to the ground beneath and tinted it like a rosy snow. No
other way existed in or out of that delightful circle save where I
had entered, but little paths ran here and there among the grass, and
industrious love had marked them out with pretty country flowers--pale
primroses all damp and cool among the shadows, broad bands of purple
violets lining seductive alleys, splendid starlike saffron outshining
even the gorgeous sun, and blushing daisies, with varnished kingcups
where the fountain ran to waste. It was as pretty a dominion--as sweet
an oasis in that dank, dark desert beyond--as you could wish to see,
and the clear, strong breath of flowers, and the warm wine of the
sunshine set my blood throbbing deep and swift to a new sense of love
and pleasure as I stood there spellbound on the dewy threshold.
But, fair as earth and sky looked in that magic circle, they were not
all. Kneeling at the broken marble fountain, her dainty sleeves rolled
to pearly elbows, the strands of her loose brown hair dipping as she
bent over the shining water, with white muslin smock neatly bunched
behind her, a milky kerchief knotted across her bosom, and a great
country hat of straw by her side, knelt a fair young English girl. She
did not see me at once, her face was turned away, and on her other hand
she was tending a noble peacock, a splendid fowl indeed--as stately
as though he were the Suzerain of all Heaven’s chickens--ivory white
from bill to spurs, crested with a coronet of living topaz, and with
a mighty fan upreared behind him of complete whiteness from quill
to fringe, saving the last outer row of gorgeous eyes that shone in
gold and purple and amethyst refulgent in that spotless field!--a
magnificent bird indeed, and fully wotting of it--and that kneeling
maid was dipping water for him in her rosy palm, and the great bird
was perched upon the marble rim and dropping his ivory beak into that
sweet chalice and lifting his lovely throttle and flashing coronet to
the sky ever and anon, while the thrill of the girl’s light laughter
echoed about the place, and the almond-blossoms showered down on them,
and the bees hummed, and the sweet incense of the spring was drawn from
the warm, budding earth, flowers glittered, the sun shone, and the sky
was blue, as I, the intruder, stood, silent and surprised, before that
dainty picture.
[Illustration: The great bird was dropping his ivory beak into the
sweet chalice]
In a moment the girl looked up and saw me in my amber suit and ruffle,
my rapier and cap, standing there against the black framing of the
maze; and then she did as I had done--stared, and rubbed her eyes, and
stared again! In a moment she seemed to understand I was something more
than a fancy, whereat, with a little scream of fear, she sprang to her
feet, and, crossing the kerchief closer on her bosom, pulled down her
sleeves and backed off toward the almond-tree. But I had that comely
apparition fairly at bay, and, after so many hours without company, did
not feel a mind to let her go too easily, whether she proved fay or
fairy, nymph, naïad, or just plain country flesh and blood.
I pulled off my cap, and, with a sweeping bow, advanced slowly toward
her, whereon she screamed again.
“Fair girl,” I said, “I grieve to interrupt so sweet a picture with
my uninvited presence, but, wandering down these paths, your laughter
burst upon the stillness and drew me here.”
“And now, Sir,” quoth that fair material sprite, recovering herself,
and with a pretty air, “you would ask the shortest way to the public
road. It lies there to your left, beyond the hollybank you see over by
the meadows.”
“Why, not exactly that,” I laughed. “I have an idle hour or two on
hand, and, since you seem to have the same, I would rather rest content
with the good fortune which brought me hither than try new paths for
lesser pleasures. If you would sit, I think this grassy mound is broad
enough for two.”
I meant it well, but the maid was timid, and far from rescue in the
wilderness of that maze. The color mounted to her cheeks until they
were pinker than the almond-buds overhead. She looked this way and
that, and gave one fleeting glance round the strong, close-set walls
of that sunny garden among the yews, then just one other glance at me,
that dangerous stranger in silk and satin, standing so gallant, cap in
hand, and finally she was away, running like a hind toward the only
outlet, the gap by which I had come in. But was I to be robbed of a
pretty comrade so? Was the lovely elf of the neglected garden to slip
between my fingers without answering one single question of the many I
would ask? I spun round upon my heels, and, quick as that maiden’s feet
were on the turf, mine were quicker. We got to the gap together, and,
in another minute, her kirtle fluttering in the breeze, her loose hair
adrift, and the flush of fear and exertion on her youthful face, that
comely lady was struggling in my grasp.
I held her just so long as she might recognize how strong her bonds
were, then set her free. If she had been pink before, that maid was now
ruddier than the windflowers in the grass. “Oh, fie, Sir!” she began,
as soon as she could get her breath. “Oh, fie, and for shame! You wear
the raiment of a gentleman, you carry courtly arms, you do not look at
least a rough, uncivil rogue, and yet you burst into a privy garden and
fright and offend a harmless girl--oh! for shame, Sir!--if gentleness
and courtesy are so poor barriers, we shall need to look the better to
our hedges--let me by, Sir!” and, gathering her skirts in her hand and
tossing back her head with all the haughtiness she could command, that
damsel looked me boldly in the eyes.
Fair, foolish girl! she thought to stare me down--I, who had eyed
unmoved a thousand sights of dread and wonder--I, who had mocked the
stare of cruel tyrants and faced unblanching the worst that heaven or
hell could work--what! was I to be out of countenance under the feeble
battery of such gentle orbs as those? ’Twas boldly conceived, but it
would not do, and in a moment she felt it, and her eyes fell from mine,
the color rushed again from brow to chin, she let her flowered skirt
fall from her grip, she turned away for a moment, and there and then
burst out a-crying behind her hands as though the world were quite
inside out.
Now, to stand the fair open assault of her eyes was one thing, but such
sap as this was more than my resolution could abide. “You do mistake
me, maid, indeed,” I cried. “I swear there is no deed of courtesy or
good-will in all the world I would not do for you.”
“Why, then, Sir, do the least and easiest of all--stand from that gap
and let me pass.”
“If you insist upon it, even that I must submit to. There!--there is
your way free and unhampered!” and I stood back and left the passage
clear--“and yet, before you go, fair lady, let me crave of your
courtesy one question or two, such as civility might ask, and courtesy
very reasonably answer.”
Now that maid had dried her tears, and had been stealing some sundry
glances at me under the fringe of her wet lashes while we spoke, and
as a result she did not seem quite so wishful to be gone as she had
been. She eyed the free gap in the tall wall of yew and holly, and
then, demurely, me. The pretty corners of her mouth began to unbend,
and while her fingers played among her ribbons, and the color came and
went under her clear country skin, feminine curiosity got the better of
timidity, and she hesitated.
“Oh!” she murmured, “if it were a civil question civilly asked, I could
wait for that. What can I tell you?”
“First then, are you of true material substance, not vagrant and
spiritual, but, as you certainly look, a healthy, plain planed mortal?”
“Had I been else, Sir,” the damsel answered, with a smile, “I had found
a short way out of the trap you saw fit to hold me in.”
“That is true, no doubt, and I accept this initial answer with due
thanks. I had not asked it, but lodging so long amid shadows sets my
prejudice against the truth, even of the sweetest substance.”
“And next, Sir?”
“Next, how came you in this lonely place, with these pretty playthings
about you? How came you in my garden here, where I thought nothing but
silence and sadness grew?”
“Your garden! What hole in our outer fences gave you that warrant,
Sir?” queried the young lady, with a toss of her head. “How long user
of trespass makes that right presumptive? Faith! until you spoke I
thought the garden was mine and my father’s!” and the young lady, for
such I now acknowledged her to be, looked extremely haughty.
“What! Hast thou, then, a father?”
“Yes, Sir. Is it so unusual with our kind that you should be surprised?”
“And who is thy father?”
“A very learned man indeed, Sir; one who hath more wit in his little
finger than another brave gentleman will have in all his body. Of
nature so courteous that he instinctively would respect the privacy of
a neighbor’s property and manners, so finished he would never stay a
maiden at her morning walk to bandy idle questions with her all out of
vanity of black curled hair and a new, mayhap unpaid-for, yellow suit.
If you had no more to ask me, Sir, I think, I would wish you good-day.”
“But stay a minute. It seems to me I might know thy father; and this is
the very point and center of my inquisitiveness.”
“If you did, it were much to your advantage, but I doubt it. He is
recluse and grave, not given to chance companions, or, in fact, to
friend with any but some one or two.”
“Ah! that may well be so,” I said thoughtlessly, speaking with small
consideration and recalling the vision of my ancient host just as it
came to me--“a sour, wizened old carl, clad in rusty green, a-straddle
of a spavined, ragged palfrey; mean-seeming, morose, and sullen--why,
maid, is that thy father?”
“No, Sir!”
“Gads!” I laughed, “it was discourteously spoken. I should have said,
now I come to reflect more closely on it, a reverent gentleman, indeed,
white-bearded and sage, with keen eyes shining severe, the portals of
a well-filled mind. A carriage that bespoke good breeding and gentle
blood; raiment that disdained the pomp of silly, fickle fashion, and a
general air of learning and of mildness.”
“My father, Sir, to the very letter, Master Adam Faulkener, the wisest
man, they say, this side of the Trent, and greatly (I know he would
have me add) at your service.”
“And you?”
“I am Mistress Elizabeth Faulkener, daughter to that same; and if,
indeed, you know my father, then, as my father’s friend, I tender you
my humble and respectful duty,” and the young lady half mockingly, and
half out of gay spirit, picked up her flowered muslin skirt, by two
dainty fingers, on either side and made me a long, sweeping curtesy.
A pretty flower indeed, for such a rugged stem!
“But this is only half the matter, fair girl,” I went on, when my
responding bow had been duly made. “If that venerable gentleman indeed
be thy father, and this his house and thine, it is more strange than
ever. I came here two evenings since by his explicit invitation, but
since that time I have not set eyes upon him. High and low have I
hunted, I have pricked arras and rapped on hollow panels, trodden yon
ghostly corridors at every hour of the day and night, yet for all that
time no sight or sound of host or hostess could I get. Now, out of thy
generous nature and the civility due to a wondering guest, tell me how
was this.”
“Why, Sir! Do you mean to say since two nights past you have been
lodged back there?”
“Ah! three days, in yon grim, moldy mansion.”
“What! there, in that melancholy front of the many windows--and all
alone?”
“The very simple, native truth!--alone in yonder tenement of faint, sad
odors and mournful, sighing draughts, alone save for a mind stocked
with somewhat melancholy fancies--mislaid by him, it seemed, who
brought me thither--dull, solitary, and damp--why, damsel!”
And, in faith, when I had got so far as that, the maiden sank back
upon a grassy heap and hid her face behind her hands, and gave way to
a wild, tumultuous fit of laughter, a golden cascade of merriment that
fell thick and sparkling from the sunny places of her youthful joyance,
as you see the heavy rain-drops glint through a bright April sky; a
wild, irresistible torrent of frolic glee that wandered round the
faroff alleys, and raised a hundred answering echoes of pleasure in
that enchanted garden.
Presently the maid recovered, and, putting down her hands, asked--“And
your meals--how came you by them?”
“They were laid for me twice each day in the great hall by unseen
hands, most punctual and mysterious. ’Twas simple fare, but sufficient
to a soldier, and each time I cleared the table and went afield, when I
came back it was reset; yet no one could I see--no sound there was to
break the stillness----”
Again that lady burst into one of her merry trills, and, when it was
over, signed me to sit beside her. I was not loth. She was fair and
young and tender--as pretty an Amaryllis as ever a country Corydon did
pipe to. So down I sat.
“Now,” said she, “imprimis, Sir, I do confess we owe you recompense
for such scant courtesy; but I gather how it happened. This is, as I
have said, my father’s house, and mine; and time was, once, it has been
told me, when he had near as many servants as I have flowers here, with
friends unending; and all those blank windows, yonder, were full of
lights by night and faces in the day. Then this garden was trim--not
only here but everywhere--and great carriages ground upon the gravel
drive, and the courtyard was full of caparisoned palfreys. That was all
just so long ago, Sir, that I remember nothing of it.”
“I can picture it, damsel,” I said, as she sighed and hesitated; “and
how came this difference?”
“I do not know for certain--I have often wondered why, myself--but my
father presently had spent all his money, and perhaps that somehow
explained it,” sighed my fair philosopher. “Then, too, he took
studious, and let his estate shift for itself, while he pored over
great tomes and learned things, and hid himself away from light and
pleasure. That might have scared off those gay acquaintances--might it
not, Sir?” queried the lady so unlearned in worldly ways.
“It were a good recipe, indeed,” was my answer: “none better! To grow
poor and wise is high offense with such a gilded throng as you have
mentioned. So then the house emptied, and the gates no longer stood
wide open; the garden was forsaken, and grass grew on thy steps; owls
built in thy corridors--a dismal picture, and sad for thee, but this
does not explain the strange entertainment I have had. Where is your
father lodged? And you--how is it we have not met before?”
“Oh,” said the damsel, brightening up again, “that is easily
explained. When his friends left him, my father dismissed all his
servants but one--a Spanish steward--and good old Mistress Margery, my
nurse (and, saving my father, my only friend), then lodged himself back
yonder in the far rear of our great house, and there I have grown up.”
“Like a fair flower in a neglected spot,” I hazarded.
“Ah! and secure from the shallow tongues of silly flatterers, old
Margery tells me. Now, my father, as you may have noted, is at times
somewhat visionary and absent. It thus may well have happened that,
bringing you here a guest, he would by old habit have taken you, as he
was so long accustomed, to the great barren front and lodged you so.
Once lodged there, it is perfectly within his capacity to have utterly
forgot your very existence.”
“But the meals--for whom were they spread, if not for me?”
“Why, simply for my father. He has, where he works, a cupboard, wherein
is kept brown bread and wine, and, sometimes, when studious studies
keep him close, he goes to it and will not look at better or more
ordered meals. Then, again, when the fancy takes him, he will have
a place put for himself in the great deserted hall, and sups there
all alone. Now, this has been his mood of late, and I can only fancy
that when you came the whim did change all on a sudden, and thus you
inherited each day that which was laid for him, who, too studious, came
not, and old slow-witted Margery, finding every time the provender was
gone, laid and relaid with patient remembrance of her orders.”
“A very pretty coil indeed!--and I, no doubt, being sadly wandering
afield all day, just missed thy ancient servitor each time.”
“And had you ever come in upon her heels you would have seen her hobble
up one silent corridor and down another, and press a button on a panel,
and so pass through a doorway that you would never find alone, from
your tenement to ours. Oh, it makes me laugh to think of you pent
there! I would have given a round dozen of my whitest hen’s eggs to
have been by to see how you did look.”
“That had been a contingency, fair maid, which had greatly lightened my
captivity,” I answered; and the lady went babbling on in the prettiest,
simplest way, half rustic and half courtly in her tones, as might be
looked for in one brought up as she had been.
For an hour, perhaps, we lay and basked in the pleasant warmth, while
the rheums of melancholy and dampness were slowly drawn from me by the
sun and that fair companionship, then she rose, and, shaking a shower
of almond petals from her apron, re-knotted her kerchief, and, taking
a look at the sky, said it was past midday and time for dinner. If I
liked, she would guide me to her father. Up I got, and, side by side
with that fair Elizabethan girl, went sauntering through her flowery
walks, down past shrubberies and along the warm red old wall of her
great empty house, until we came into a quiet way overgrown with giant
weeds and smelling sweet of green sheep’s parsley and cool, fair
vegetable odors. Here the maid lifted a latch, and led me through a
well-hidden gateway into the sunny rearward courtyard.
It showed as different as could be from the dreary front. The ground
was cobblestones all neatly weeded round a square of close-cut grass.
On one side the great black wall of the manor-place towered windowless
above us, with red roofs, mighty piles of smokeless chimney-stacks and
corbie steps far overhead; and, on the other hand, at an angle to that
wall, were lesser buildings to left and right, enclosing the grass plot
and shining in the sun, warm, lattice-windowed, quaint-gabled. The
third side of the square was open, and sloped down to fair meadows,
beyond which came flowering orchards, bounded by a brook. Moreover,
there was life here, plain, homely, honest country life. The wild,
loose-hanging roses and eglantine were swinging in the sunshine over
the deep-seated porches of these modest places; the lavender smoke
was drifting among the budding branches overhead, proud maternal hens
were clucking to their broods about the open doorways; there were
blooming flowers growing by one deep-set window--ah! and fair Mistress
Elizabeth’s snowy linen was all out on cords across that pretty sunny
courtyard, struggling in sparkling, white confusion against the loose
caresses of the April wind.
“And look you there,” cried Mistress Faulkener, when she saw it,
pointing far down the distant meadows, “’tis there we keep our milk
and cows--oh! as you are courteous, as you would wish to deserve your
gentle livery, count those cattle for a minute,” and thereat, while
I, obedient, turned my back and mustered the distant beasts grazing
knee-deep among the yellow buttercups--she outflew upon those linens,
and pulled them down and rolled them up in swathes, and set them on
a bench; then tucked back some disheveled strands of hair behind her
ears, and, somewhat out of breath, turned to me again.
“Here,” she said, “on this side lives old Margery and our steward,
black Emanuel Marcena; there, on the other, is my room--that one with
the flowers below and open lattices. Next is my father’s; below, again,
is the room where we do eat; and all that yonder--those many windows
alike above, and those steps going down beneath the ground--those
half-hidden cobwebbed windows ablink with the level of the turf--that
is where my father works.”
“By all the saints, fair girl!” I exclaimed impetuously, as she led
me toward that place, “thy father’s workshop is on fire! See the gray
smoke curling from the lintel of the doorway, and the broken panes--and
yonder I catch a glint of flame! Here, let me burst the door!” and I
sprang forward.
But the lady put her hand upon my arm, saying with a somewhat rueful
smile, “No, not so bad as that--there is fire there, but it is servant
not master. Come in and you shall see.” She took me down six damp stone
steps, then lifted the latch of a massy, weather-beaten, oaken doorway,
and led me within.
It was a vast, dim, vaulted cellar. The rough black roof of rugged
masonry was hung by vistas of such mighty tapestries of grimy cobwebs
as never mortal saw before. On the near side the row of little windows,
dusty and neglected, let in thin streams of light that only made the
general darkness the more visible. All the other wall was rough and
bare; beset with great spikes and nails wherefrom depended a thousand
forms of ironware, and ancient useless metal things, the broken, rusty
implements of peace and war. The floor seemed, as I took in every
detail of this subterranean chamber, to be bare earth, stamped hard
and glossy with constant treading, while here and there in hollows
black water stood in pools, and gray ashes from a furnace-fire margined
those miry places. It was a gloomy hall, without a doubt, and as my
eyes wandered round the shadows they presently discovered the presiding
genius.
In the hollow of the great final arch was a cobwebbed, smoke-grimed
blacksmith’s forge and bellows. The little heap of fuel on it was
glowing white, and the curling smoke ascended part up the rugged
chimney and part into the chamber. On one side of this forge stood a
heavy anvil, and by it, as we entered, a man was toiling on a molten
bar of iron, plying his blows so slow and heavy it was melancholy to
watch them. That man, it did not need another glance to tell me, was my
host! If he had looked gaunt and wild by night, the yellow flicker of
the furnace and the pale mockery of daylight which stole through his
poor panes did not improve him now. The bright fire of enthusiasm still
burned in his keen old eyes, I saw, but they were red and heavy with
long sleeplessness; his ragged, open shirt displayed his lean and hairy
chest, stained and smudged with the hue of toil; his arms were bare to
the elbow, and his knotted old fingers clutched like the talons of a
bird upon the handle of the hammer that he wielded. Grim old fellow!
He was near double with weariness and labor; the breath came quick
and hectic as he toiled; the painful sweat cut white furrows down his
pallid, ash-stained face; and his wild, gray elfin locks were dank and
heavy with the foul fumes of that black hole of his. Yet he stopped
not to look to left or to right, but still kept at it, unmindful of
aught else--hammer, hammer, hammer! and sigh, sigh, sigh!--with a fine
inspired smile of misty, heroic pleasure about his mouth, and the light
of prophecy and quenchless courage in his eyes!
It was very strange to watch him, and there was something about
the unbroken rhythm of his blows, and the inflexible determination
hanging about him, that held me spellbound, waiting I knew not for
what, but half thinking to witness that red iron whereinto his soul
was being welded spring into something wild and strange and fair--half
thinking to witness these sooty walls fall back into the wide arcades
of shadowy realm, and that old magician blossom out of his vile rags
into some splendid flower of humankind. It was foolish, but it was an
unlearned age, and I only a rough soldier. That fair maid by my side,
more familiar with these strange sights and sounds, roused me from my
expectant watching in a minute.
She had come in after me, had paused as I did, and now with pretty
filial pity in her face, and outspread hands, she ran to that old man
and laid a tender finger upon his yellow arm, and stayed its measured
labor. At this he looked up for the first time since we entered, as
dazed and sleepy as one newly waked, and, seeing that he scarce knew
her, Elizabeth shook her head at him, and took his grizzled cheeks
between her rosy palms, and kissed him first on one side and then on
the other, kissed him sweet and tenderly upon his pallid unwashed
cheeks, and then, with kind imperiousness, loosed his cramped fingers
from the hammer-shaft and threw it away, and led him by gentle force
back from his forge and anvil. “Oh, father!” she said, bustling round
him and fastening up his shirt and pulling down his sleeves, and
looking in his face with real solicitude, “indeed I do think you are
the worst father that ever any maid did have,” and here was another
kiss. “Oh! how long have you worked down here? Two nights and days
on end. Fie, for shame! And how much have you eaten? What? Nothing,
nothing all that time? Did ever child have such a parent? Oh! would
to Heaven you had less wisdom and more wit--why, if you go on like
this, you will be thinner than any of these spiders overhead in
springtime--and weary--nay, do not tell me you are not--and, oh! so
dirty, alack that I should let a stranger see thee like this!” and,
taking her own white kerchief from her apron, that damsel wiped her
father’s face in love and gentleness, and stroked his gritty beard and
smoothed, as well as she was able, his ancient locks, then took him by
the hand and pointed to me, standing a little way off in the gloom.
At first the old man gazed at the amber-suited gallant shining in the
blackness of his workshop, stolidly, without a trace of recognition,
but, when in a minute or two by an effort he drew his wits together, he
took me for one of those gay fellows, who, no doubt, had haunted his
courtyards and spent his money in brighter times, and taxed me with it.
But I laughed at that and shook my head, whereon he mused--“What! are
thou, then, young John Eldrid of Beaulieu, come to pay those twenty
crowns your father borrowed twelve years since?”
No! I was not John Eldrid, and there were no crowns in my wallet. Then
I must be Lord Fossedene’s reeve come to complain again of broken
fences and cattle straying, or, perhaps, a bailiff for the Queen’s
dues, and, if that were so, it was little I would get from him.
Thereon his daughter burst out laughing and stroking the old man’s
hand. “Oh, father,” she said gently, “you were not always thus
forgetful. This excellent gentleman I found trespassing among my
flowers, and did arrest him; he is your guest, and declares you brought
him here two nights since, lodging him in our empty front, where he has
subsisted all this time on melancholy and stolen meals. Surely, father,
you recall him now?”
The old man was puzzled, but slowly a ray of recollection pierced
through the thick mists of forgetfulness. Indeed, he did remember, he
muttered, something of the kind, but it was a sturdy, shrewd-looking
yeoman, tall, and bronzed under his wide cap, a rustic fellow in
country cloth that he had brought along, and not this yellow gentleman.
So then I explained how he had resuited me, and jogged his memory
gently, lifting it down the trail of our brief acquaintance as a good
huntsman lifts a hound over a cold scent, until at last, when he had
given him a cup of red wine from his cupboard in the niche, his eyes
brightened up, the vacuity faded from his face, and, laughing in turn,
he knew me; then, holding out two withered hands in very courteous
wise, old Andrew Faulkener welcomed me, and in civil, courtly speech,
that seemed strange enough in that grim hole, and from that grizzly,
bent, unwashed old fellow, made apology for the neglect and seeming
slight which he feared I must have suffered.
We spoke together for some minutes, and then I ventured to ask, “Was
there not something, Master Faulkener, you had to tell or ask of me? I
do remember you mentioned such a wish that evening when we parted, and
certain circumstances of our short friendship make me curious to know
what service it is I have to pay you in return for the hospitality your
goodness put upon me.”
“In truth there was something,” Faulkener answered, with a show of
embarrassment, “but it was a service better sought of frieze than silk.”
“Tell it, good Sir, tell it! It were detestable did silk repudiate the
debts that honest frieze incurred.”
“Why, then, I will, and chance your displeasure. Sweet Bess, get thee
out and see to dinner. This gentleman will dine with me to-day!” And
as Mistress Elizabeth picked up her pretty skirts and vanished up the
grass-grown steps the old recluse turned to me.