REUNION.
"The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by."
--ROBERT BROWNING.
"So ends my story. If ye think it sad,
It is because ye look with weeping eyes,
Because for gloom ye cannot see the skies
Where Love is Lord, and life forever glad."
--JOHN JERVIS BERESFORD.
So at break of day a wandering peasant found the lovers sleeping, and
he stood awhile and marvelled at the beauty of the holy upturned
faces, ere he passed along the river-bank towards the hamlet to tell
what he had seen. And ere the sun was high came Master Jeremy
Taylor, wandering with slow and reverent step along the riverside,
conning the manuscript pages of his _Holy Living and Dying_ as he
walked, and ever and anon lifting his eyes to gaze upon the
devastation wrought upon the fair river's banks by the wild storm,
now succeeded by a still, sad morning. Scarcely had he closed his
eyes throughout that fearful night for thinking of his bosom-friend,
whom he had perforce left to pursue alone his homeward battle with
the storm, and to find on his arrival his beloved church a heap of
blackened ruins; and very early he had left his uneasy couch and
taken the road to Cwmfelin, that he might be the first, after the
Lady Shanno, to offer consolation to his friend. But finding it yet
very early, on his arrival at the vicarage, and unwilling to disturb
Percival at his morning meal, he had strolled on to the riverside, to
note what havoc might have been wrought during the night; and so,
after some half-hour's ramble and mingled study of his manuscript and
of nature, he too came to the silent pool under the willow-tree, and
gazed, awe-struck and dumb with horrified amazement, upon the
sleeping pair. Around their motionless forms the waters rippled
gently in mournful whisper, and the early morning breezes sobbed
through the willow-boughs, which bent, weeping, over them; and
through the bare branches a few pale sunbeams, struggling from out
the watery sky, glinted down upon the pale, upturned faces, bathing
them in an ethereal glow. And in the silence of that early winter
morning a bitter cry burst forth from Master Taylor's loving heart,
as he knelt upon the cold ground, and, stooping over the river brink,
passionately kissed the pale icy forehead of his friend. And still
kneeling over those sleeping figures, his whole frame shaken with
sobs, he was found some while later by the eager crowd who at the
peasant's tidings came hastening to the riverside, and forgetting the
strife and bitterness of the night past, stepped forward one by one,
with hushed and reverent tread, to gaze with weeping eyes upon the
faces of those whom they had so dearly loved; and on the still air
there rose a wail of bitter weeping and lamentation for Master Vere
and his fair dead love--a wail so heart-rending that certain ones
among his enemies who had mingled with the crowd, unseen, were fain
to slink away like evil things of darkness from the scene of woe.
And soon to their cries of sorrow succeeded such wild threats and
terrible execrations against their enemies for the horrid deed of the
past night, that good Master Taylor rose, pale and haggard, from his
knees, and rebuked them in his dead friend's name for their thoughts
of vengeance, exhorting them for the sake of those dear, sleeping
forms they were gazing upon with so great love and sorrow to pray
like their Lord upon the bitter cross; "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do!"--and to disperse in peace and quietness
to their own homes. And with many other holy words he strove amid
his own tears there upon the river bank to soothe their grief and
calm their angry passions, till at length they stole sadly homewards
one by one, leaving him, their vicar's ever-faithful friend, once
more alone with the holy dead, to await the arrival of the castle
guardsmen, who should bear homewards the lifeless forms of the
lovers. And presently, to join him in his watch, came with tottering
step the aged Master Rhys, bowed down with sorrow, and refusing to be
convinced that the lovers truly slept in death; and together they
kept vigil beneath the willow-tree. But among the mourners who came
and went upon the river bank the weather-beaten face and bent form of
Jack the boatman were missing, for he too was quietly sleeping his
last sleep within the castle walls, in the fireside corner where his
grand-daughter had left him, his deaf ears having heard nothing of
the strife upon the hillside, nor his calm sleep been disturbed by
the mighty crash of his beloved bridge as it had fallen headlong into
the roaring river--for the loud report had stolen in upon his
slumbers but as some far-distant echo, which to his dreaming soul had
sounded as a call from his daughter in Paradise, and to which the
maid-servants, rushing wildly into the room as they heard the
terrifying sounds from below, had heard him answer in clear, glad
tones, "Yes, my daughter, I follow quickly!" And one of them,
stealing gently to his side, marvelling at his words, saw him give
but one deep sigh ere his spirit passed from the land of dreams into
Paradise, there to join those twin souls who at that same moment had
quitted their cold prison in the waters.
The bodies of the lovers were laid in one grave in the peaceful
hillside churchyard, where nought but a blackened ruin remained of
the sacred building they had loved, and close beside them, and at the
foot of the grass-grown graves of his daughter and her noble husband,
faithful Jack the boatman was by his own wish laid. And the
venerable hands of their friend, good Master Rhys, who lived to a
great old age among his books in his quiet home in the valley,
brought flowers day by day to the grassy mounds he loved, and Master
Jeremy Taylor rarely failed at eventide to steal away from his
school-house at Craig Arthur and spend an hour in prayer and
meditation in that quiet spot where lay the earthly remains of his
dearest friend. And often the childish feet of the little Elidore of
Caer Caradoc were wont to follow upon his master's track, unseen,
till a sudden outburst of childlike grief, interrupting the holy
man's musings, revealed the presence of the Lady Shanno's infant
champion, who loved to help his master in tending her grave and that
of her lover, and in planting them with choicest flowers from the
treasure-houses of Craig Arthur, and who through all his boyish days
clung to the memory of his "faire ladye" with all the chivalry of a
true knight of olden time.
By the order of Master Rhys and Master Jeremy Taylor a cross of white
marble was placed at the head of the lovers' grave, inscribed with
the text, "They, being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long
time," and beneath it the Psalmist's words; "Gather my saints
together unto Me, those that have made a covenant with Me with
sacrifice."
And strangers passing by in after years would pause by the well-kept
graves, and reading some beautiful meaning in the words upon the
marble, would ask to whose memory they had been written, and would
hear from the faithful villagers the story of the curse of Bryn Afon
and of the beautiful lives of the lovers who had restored the
crumbling walls to honour and renown, and caused the ancient name of
that house to be once more loved and revered throughout the valley.
And their tears would fall as they told of the faithful, yet in this
world ever hopeless, love of their vicar for the Lady Shanno, who had
been worshipped by rich and poor for her exceeding loveliness, and
who, for the curse inherited from her forefathers, had forsworn for
the sake of Christ all earthly love and marriage. And with hushed
voices they would yet further tell of that wild night in January,
when all the village wept for the murder of the king, and when to
crown their woe their church was burnt to the ground by their
enemies, and in wrath the river-spirit arose, and swept away the
boatman's bridge, and drowned the luckless lovers in its fury. And
the travellers, passing on, would gaze up from the river banks upon
the fast-crumbling battlements, frowning above them from the steep
greensward's summit, and think with mingled awe and pleasure upon the
tragic scenes enacted within those old walls; then, walking yet
farther down the stream, would, an it chanced to be in the
spring-time, marvel at the wondrous wealth of the yellow primroses
which clothed the mossy banks, and would be told by the children how,
ever since the night when the Lily and the Primrose had slept their
last sleep in the river, the primroses had sprung up each spring
season, along the banks by which their bodies had floated, in
ever-increasing profusion; and how, in the hollow by the still pool
in which their fair forms had been discovered, some lingering yellow
blossoms ever tarried year by year until the lilies of the valley
sprang up behind their shining leaves, that they might greet them
with a lover's kiss of welcome, ere they passed away beneath the
brightness of the summer sun.
THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.