Wyndham Towers | Page 9

field, at set of sun,?With glorious peal of trumpets on his ear?Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed.?And there, within an arch at the stair-top?And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth?Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring,?Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand?Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade?To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt--?Black Death, turned white with horror of himself.?Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song;?And now his step was on the stair, and now?He neared the blazoned hanging-cloth, and now . . .
The lights were out, and all life lay in trance?On floor or pallet, blanketed to chin,?Each in his mask of sullen-seeming death--?Fond souls that recked not what was in the air,?Else had the dead man's scabbard as it clashed?Against the balustrade, then on the tiles,?Brought awkward witness. One base hind there was?Had stolen a venison-pasty on the shelf,?And now did penance; him the fall half roused?From dreadful nightmare; once he turned and gasped,?Then straightway snored again. No other sound?Within the dream-enchanted house was heard,?Save that the mastiff, lying at the gate?With visionary bone, snarled in his sleep.?Secret as bridal-kiss may murder be,
Done was the deed that could not be undone?Throughout eternity. O silent tongue?That would blab all with silence! What to do??How hide this speechless witness from men's gaze??Living, that body vexed us; being dead?'T is like to give us trouble and to spare.?O for a cavern in deep-bowelled earth!?Quick, ere the dusky petals of the night?Unclosing bare the fiery heart of dawn?And thus undo us with its garish light,?Let us this mute and pale accusing clay?In some undreamed-of sepulchre bestow,?But where? Hold back thy fleet-wing'd coursers, Time,?Whilst we bethink us! Ah--such place there is!?Close, too, at hand--a place wherein a man?Might lie till doomsday safer from the touch?Of prying clown than is the spiced dust?Of an Egyptian in his pyramid.
At a dark alcove's end of that long hall,?The ancient armor-room in the east wing,?A certain door (whereof no mortal knew?save Wyndham, now that other lay a-cold)?Was to the panels of the wall so set,?And with such devilish shrewdness overlaid?By carvings of wild-flower and curled grape-leaf,?That one not in the favor of the trick,?Albeit he knew such mechanism was,?Ere he put finger on the secret spring?Had need of Job for ancestor, in faith!?You pressed a rose, a least suspected rose,?And two doors turned on hinge, the inner door?Closing a space of say some six feet square,?Unlighted, sheathed with iron. Doubtless here?The mediaeval Wyndhams hid their plate?When things looked wicked from the outer wall,?Or, on occasion, a grim ruthless lord?Immured some inconvenient two-faced friend--?To banquet bidden, and kept over night.?Such pranks were played in Merrie England then.?Sealed in the narrow compass of that cell,?Shut from God's light and his most precious air,?A man might have of life a half-hour's lease?If he were hale and well-breathed at the start.
Hither did Richard bear his brother's corse?And fling it down. Upon the stone-paved floor?In a thin strip of moonlight flung it down,?And then drew breath. Perhaps he paused to glance?At the white face there, with the strange half-smile?Out-living death, the brightness of the hair?Lying in loops and tangles round the brow--?A seraph's face of silver set in gold,?Such as the deft Italians know to carve;?Perhaps his tiger's blood cooled then, perhaps?Swift pity at his very heart-strings tugged,?And he in that black moment of remorse,?Seeing how there his nobler self lay slain,?Had bartered all this jewel-studded earth?To win life's color back to that wan cheek.?Ah, let us hope it, and some mercy feel,?Since each at compt shall need of mercy have.?Now how it happened, whether 't was the wind,?Or whether 't was some incorporeal hand?That reached down through the dark and did the thing,?Man knoweth not, but suddenly both doors,?Ere one could utter cry or put forth arm,?Closed with dull clang, and there in his own trap?Incontinent was red-stained Richard caught,?And as by flash of lightning saw his doom.?Call, an thou wilt, but every ear is stuffed?With slumber! Shriek, and run quick frenzied hands?Along the iron sheathing of thy grave--?For 't is thy grave--no egress shalt thou find,?No lock to break, no subtile-sliding bolt,?No careless rivet, no half loosened plate?For dagger's point to fret at and pry off?And let a stifling mortal get to air!
Angels of Light! what were a thousand years?Of rankling envy and contemned love?And all the bitter draughts a man may drink?To that half hour of Richard's with his Dead?
Through silence, gloom, and star-strown paths of Night?The breathless hours like phantoms stole away.?Black lay the earth, in primal blackness wrapt?Ere the great miracle once more was wrought.?A chill wind freshened in the pallid East?And brought sea-smell of newly blossomed foam,?And stirred the leaves and branch-hung nests of birds.?Fainter the glow-worm's lantern glimmered now?In the marsh land and on the forest's hem,?And the slow dawn with purple laced