Wyndham Towers | Page 8

from the very stars?And tell-tale places where the moonlight fell,?Crept through the huddled shadows back to hall,?And in a lonely room where no light was,?Save what the moon made at the casement there,?Sat pondering his hurt, and in the dark?Gave audience to a host of grievances.?For never comes reflection, gay or grave,?But it brings with it comrades of its hue.?So did he fall to thinking how his day?Declined, and how his narrow life had run?Obscurely through an age of great events?Such as men never saw, nor will again?Until the globe be riven by God's fire.?Others had ventured for the Golden Fleece,?Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown,?(By force of circumstance and not desert,)?While he up there on that rock-bastioned coast?Had rotted like some old hulk's skeleton,?Whose naked and bleached ribs the lazy tide?Laps day by day, and no man thinks of more.?Then was jade Fortune in her lavish mood.?Why had he not for distant Colchis sailed?And been the Jason of these Argonauts??True, some had come to block on Tower Hill,?Or quittance made in a less noble sort;?Still they had lived, from life's high-mantling cup?Had blown the bead. In such case, if one's head?Be of its momentary laurel stripped?And made a show of stuck on Temple Bar?Or at the Southwark end of London Bridge,?What mattered it? At worst man dies but once--?So far as known. One may not master death,?But life should be one's lackey. He had been?Time's dupe and bondsman; ever since his birth?Had walked this planet with his eye oblique,?Grasped what was worthless, what were most dear missed;?Missed love and fame, and all the sum of things?Fame gets a man in England--the Queen's smile,?Which means, when she 's in humor, abbey-lands,?Appointments, stars and ribbons for the breast,?And that sleek adulation that takes shape?I' the down-drooping of obsequious lids?When one ascends a stair or walks the pave.?Good Lord! but it was excellent to see?How Expectation in the ante-room?Crooks back to Greatness passing to the Queen--?"Kind sir!" "Sweet sir!" "I prithee speed my suit!"?'T was somewhat to be flattered, though by fools,?For even a fool's coin hath a kind of ring.?Yet after all--thus did the grapes turn sour?To master Fox, in fable--who would care?To moil and toil to gain a little fame,?And have each rascal that prowls under heaven?Stab one for getting it? Had he wished power,?The thing was in the market-place for sale?At stated rates--so much for a man's soul!?His was a haughty spirit that bent not,?And one to rise had need to cringe and creep.?So had his brother into favor crawled,?Like slug into the bosom of a rose,?And battened in the sun. At thought of him,?Forgotten for a moment, Wyndham winced,?And felt his wound. "Why bides he not in Town?With his blond lovelock and wench-luring ways--?There runs his fox! What foul fiend sends him here?To Wyndham Towers? Is there not space enough?In this our England he needs crowd me so??Has London sack upon his palate staled,?That he must come to sip my Devon cream??Are all maids shut in nunneries save this one??What magic philtre hath he given her?To thaw the ice that melted not for me??Rich is he now that at his setting forth?Had not two silver pieces to his purse.?It is his brave apparel dazzles her.?Thus puts he bound and barrier to my love.?Another man were he abused as I . . .?I'll have no more of him! If I but dared--?Nay, I dare not. I have fawn's blood, I think;?I would, and dare not!" Thrice the hooded clock?Solemnly, like some old Carthusian monk?With meagre face half seen beneath his cowl,?Intoned the quarter. Memory went not back?When this was not a most familiar sound,?Yet as each stroke on the dead silence fell?Wyndham turned, startled. Now the sanguine moon,?To clouded opal changing momently,?Rose sheer above the pine-trees' ragged edge,?And through the wide-flung casement reaching hand?With cold and spectral finger touched the plates?Of his dead father's armor till it gleamed?One mass of silver. There it stood complete,?That august panoply which once struck dread?To foemen on the sunny plains of France,?Menacing, terrible, this instant stood,?With vizard down and jousting-lance at charge?As if that crumbled knight were quick within.
A footfall on the shingle walk below?Grated, a footfall light as Mercury's?Disdaining earth, and Wyndham in the dark,?Half crouched upon the settle with his nails?Indenting the soft wood-work, held his breath.?Then suddenly a blind rage like a flame?Swept over him and hurled him to his feet--?Such rage as must have seized the soul of Cain?Meeting his brother in the stubble-field.?Anon came one that hummed a blithe sea-song,?As he were fresh from tavern and brave cheer,?And held the stars that blinked there in the blue?Boon comrades. Singing in high-hearted way,?His true-love's kiss a memory on his lip,?Straight on he came to unrenowned end?Whose dream had been in good chain-mail to die?On some well-foughten