Wyndham Towers | Page 4

star--
Suspicious, morbid, passionate, self-involved,

The soul half eaten out with solitude,
Corroded, like a sword-blade
left in sheath
Asleep and lost to action--in a word,
A misanthrope, a
miser, a soured man,
One fortune loved not and looked at askance.

Yet he a pleasant outward semblance had.
Say what you will, and
paint things as you may,
The devil is not black, with horn and hoof,

As gossips picture him: he is a person
Quite scrupulous of doublet
and demeanor,
As was this Master Wyndham of The Towers,
Now
latterly in most unhappy case,
Because of matters to be here set forth.
A thing of not much moment, as life goes,
A thing a man with some

philosophy
Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat
That winged
itself between him and the light,
Had, through the crooked working of
his mind,
Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass.
Yet 't was a
grapestone choked Anacreon
And hushed his song. There is no little
thing
In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie
A planet's elements.
This Wyndham's woe
Was one Griselda, daughter to a man
Of
Bideford, a shipman once, but since
Turned soldier; now in
white-haired, wrinkled age
Sitting beneath the olive, valiant still,

With sword on nail above the chimney-shelf
In case the Queen
should need its edge again.
An officer he was, though lowly born.

The man aforetime, in the Netherlands
And through those
ever-famous French campaigns
(Marry, in what wars bore he not a
hand?)
In Rawdon Wyndham's troop of horse had served,
And
when he fell that day by Calais wall
Had from the Frenchmen's pikes
his body snatched,
And so much saved of him, which was not much,

The good knight being dead. For this deed's sake,
That did enlarge
itself in sorrow's eye,
The widow deemed all guerdon all too small,

And held her dear lord's servant and his girl,
Born later, when that
clash of steel was done,
As her own kin, till she herself was laid
I'
the earth and sainted elsewhere. The two sons
Let cool the friendship:
one in foreign parts
Did gold and honor seek; at hall stayed one,

The heir, and now of old friends negligent:
Thus fortune hardens the
ignoble heart.
Griselda even as a little maid,
Demure, but with more
crotchets in the brain,
I warrant ye, than minutes to the hour,
Had
this one much misliked; in her child-thought
Confused him somehow
with those cruel shapes
Of iron men that up there at The Towers

Quickened her pulse. For he was gaunt, his face,

Mature beyond the
logic of his years,
Had in it something sinister and grim,
Like to the
visage pregnant fancy saw
Behind the bars of each disused casque

In that east chamber where the harness hung
And dinted shields of
Wyndhams gone to grace--
At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt,

That other on the sands of Palestine:
A breed of fierce man-slayers,
sire and son.
Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow


Killing the doves in very wantonness--
The gentle doves that to the
ramparts came
For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill.
Each
well-sent dart that stained a snowy breast
Straight to her own
white-budding bosom went.
Fled were those summers now, and she
had passed
Out of the child-world of vain fantasy
Where many a
rainbow castle lay in ruin;
But to her mind, like wine-stain to a flask,

The old distrust still clung, indelible,
Holding her in her
maidhood's serious prime
Well pleased from his cold eyes to move
apart,
And in her humble fortunes dwell secure.
Indeed, what was
she?--a poor soldier's girl,
Merely a tenant's daughter. Times were
changed,
And life's bright web had sadder colors in 't:
That most
sweet gentle lady--rest her soul!--
Shrunk to an epitaph beside her
lord's,
And six lines shorter, which was all a shame;
Gaunt Richard
heir; that other at earth's end,
(The younger son that was her
sweetheart once,)
Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance;

And all dear old-time uses quite forgot.
Slowly, unnoted, like the
creeping rust
That spreads insidious, had estrangement come,
Until
at last, one knew not how it fell,
And little cared, if sober truth were
said,
She and the father no more climbed the hill
To Twelfth Night
festival or May-day dance,
Nor commerce had with any at The
Towers.
Yet in a formless, misty sort of way
The girl had place in
Wyndham's mind--the girl,
Why, yes, beshrew him! it was even she

Whom his soft mother had made favorite of,
And well-nigh spoiled,
some dozen summers gone.
Perhaps because dull custom made her tame,
Or that she was not
comely in the bud,
Her sweetness halting like a tardy May
That
wraps itself in mist, and seems not fair,
For this or finer reason
undivined,

His thought she touched not, and was glad withal
When
she did note how others took his eye
And wore rue after. Thus was
her white peace
Undarkened till, it so befell, these two
Meeting as
they a hundred times had met
On hill-path or at crossing of the weir,

Her beauty broke on him like some rare flower
That was not

yesterday. Ev'n so the Spring
Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness

Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts
Linger in hollows, long on
bough and briar
No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth

Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth
Is nought but scent and