Wyndham Towers | Page 4

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 bloom. So unto him?Griselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his wit?That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem,?Nor hint had of the flower within the bud??If so much beauty had a tiger been,?'T had eaten him! In all the wave-washed length?Of rocky Devon where was found her like?For excellence of wedded red and white??Here