Wyndham Towers | Page 6

the hound to heel, and disappear
Into the forest, with
himself communing
For lack of gossip. So do lonely men
Make
themselves tedious to their tedious selves.
Thus passed he once in a
white blaze of noon
Under his oaks, and muttered as he went:
"'My father's daughter' and 'your father's son'!
Faith, but it was a
shrewd and nimble phrase,
And left me with no fitting word at tongue.

The wench hath wit and matter of her own,
And beauty, that doth
seldom mate with wit,
Nature hath painted her a proper brown--
A
russet-colored wench that knows her worth.
And mincing,
too--should have her ruff propt up
With supertasses, like a dame at
Court,
And go in cloth-of-gold. I'll get a suit
Of Genoa velvet, and
so take her eye.
Has she a heart? The ladies of Whitehall
Are not so

skittish, else does Darrell lie
Most villainously. Often hath he said

The art of blushing 's a lost art at Court.
If so, good riddance! This
one here lets love
Play beggar to her prudery, and starve,
Feeding
him ever on looks turned aside.
To be so young, so fair, and wise
withal!
Lets love starve? Nay, I think starves merely me.
For when
was ever woman logical
Both day and night-time? Not since Adam
fell!
I doubt a lover somewhere. What shrewd bee
Hath buzzed
betimes about this clover-top?
Belike some scrivener's clerk at
Bideford,
With long goose-quill and inkhorn at his thigh--
Methinks
I see the parchment face of him;
Or one of those swashbuckler Devon
lads
That haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold,
Rank scurvy
knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree;
Or else the sexton's son"--here
Wyndham laughed,
Though not a man of mirth--indeed, a man
Of
niggard humor; but that sexton's son--
Lean as the shadow cast by a
church spire,
Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned,

Like nothing in the circle of this earth
But a death's-head that from a
mural slab
Within the chancel leers through sermon-time,
Making a
mock of poor mortality.
The fancy touched him, and he laughed a
laugh
That from his noonday slumber roused an owl
Snug in his
oaken hermitage hard by.
A very rare conceit--the sexton's son!
Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould
And musty odors
of moth-eaten palls--
A living death, a walking epitaph!
No lover
that for tingling flesh and blood
To rest soft cheek on and change
kisses with.
Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon
Time would
unshell him. In the interim
What was to do but wait, and mark who
strolled
Of evenings up the hill-path and made halt

This side the
coppice at a certain gate?
For by that chance which ever serves ill
ends,
Within the slanted shadow of The Towers
The maid Griselda
dwelt. Her gray scarred sire
Had for cloth doublet changed the steel
cuirass,
The sword for gardener's fork, and so henceforth
In the
mild autumn and sundown of life,
Moving erect among his curves
and squares
Of lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce,
Set none but

harmless squadrons in the field--
Save now and then at tavern, where
he posed,
Tankard in hand and prattling of old days,
A
white-mustached epitome of wars.
How runs the proverb touching him who waits?
Who waits shall have
the world. Time's heir is he,
Be he but patient. Thus the thing befell

Wherefrom grew all this history of woe:
Haunting the grounds one
night, as his use was
Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do,

Wyndham got sound of voices in the air
That did such strange and
goblin changes ring
As left him doubtful whence the murmurs came,

Now here, now there, as they were winged things--
Such trick
plays Echo upon hapless wight
Chance-caught in lonely places where
she dwells,
Anon a laugh rang out, melodious,
Like the merle's note
when its ecstatic heart
Is packed with summer-time; then all was
still--
So still the soul of silence seemed to grieve
The loss of that
sweet laughter. In his tracks
The man stopped short, and listened. As
he leaned
And craned his neck, and peered into the gloom,
And
would the fabulous hundred eyes were his
That Argus in the Grecian
legend had,
He saw two figures moving through a drift
Of
moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn:
A man's tall shape, a
slim shape close at side,
Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his,

The woven snood about her shoulders fallen,
And from the sombre
midnight of her hair
An ardent face out-looking like a star--
As in a
vision saw he this, for straight
They vanished. Where those silvery
shadows were
Was nothing. Had he dreamed it? Had he gone
Mad
with much thinking on her, and so made
Ghosts of his own sick
fancies? Like a man
Carved out of alabaster and set up
Within a
woodland, he stood rooted there,
Glimmering wanly under pendent
boughs.

Spell-bound he stood, in very woeful plight,
Bewildered;
and then presently with shock
Of rapid pulses hammering at heart,

As mad besiegers hammer at a gate,
To life came back, and turned on
heel to fly
From that accursed spot and all that was,
When once
more the girl's laugh made rich the night,
And melted, and the silence

grieved anew.
Like lead his feet were, and he needs must halt.

Close upon this, but further off, a voice
From somewhere--Echo at
her trick again!--
Took