"For though my dear dead father was too wise for us, and knew it was for the best that I should not accept your love, believe me, John, I always knew the value of that love, and have held it an honor that any woman must prize."
"Dear lady," the knight suggested, with a slight grimace, "the world is not altogether of your opinion."
"I know not of the world," she said; "for we live away from it. But we have heard of you ever and anon; I have your life quite letter-perfect for these forty years or more."
"You have heard of me?" asked Sir John; and, for a seasoned knave, he looked rather uncomfortable.
"As a gallant and brave soldier," she answered; "of how you fought at sea with Mowbray that was afterward Duke of Norfolk; of your knighthood by King Richard; of how you slew the Percy at Shrewsbury; and captured Coleville o" late in Yorkshire; and how the Prince, that now is King, did love you above all men; and, in fine, of many splendid doings in the great world."
Sir John raised a protesting hand. He said, with commendable modesty: "I have fought somewhat. But we are not Bevis of Southampton; we have slain no giants. Heard you naught else?"
"Little else of note," replied the lady; and went on, very quietly: "But we are proud of you at home in Norfolk. And such tales as I have heard I have woven together in one story; and I have told it many times to my children as we sat on the old Chapel steps at evening, and the shadows lengthened across the lawn, and I bid them emulate this, the most perfect knight and gallant gentleman that I have known. And they love you, I think, though but by repute."
Once more silence fell between them; and the fire grinned wickedly at the mimic fire reflected by the old chest, as though it knew of a most entertaining secret.
"Do you yet live at Winstead?" asked Sir John, half idly.
"Yes," she answered; "in the old house. It is little changed, but there are many changes about."
"Is Moll yet with you that did once carry our letters?"
"Married to Hodge, the tanner," the lady said; "and dead long since."
"And all our merry company?" Sir John demanded. "Marian? And Tom and little Osric? And Phyllis? And Adelais? Zounds, it is like a breath of country air to speak their names once more."
"All dead," she answered, in a hushed voice, "save Adelais, and even to me poor Adelais seems old and strange. Walter was slain in the French wars, and she hath never married."
"All dead," Sir John informed the fire, as if confidentially; then he laughed, though his bloodshot eyes were not merry. "This same Death hath a wide maw! It is not long before you and I, my lady, will be at supper with the worms. But you, at least, have had a happy life."
"I have been content enough," she said, "but all that seems run by; for, John, I think that at our age we are not any longer very happy nor very miserable."
"Faith!" agreed Sir John, "we are both old; and I had not known it, my lady, until to-day."
Again there was silence; and again the fire leapt with delight at the jest.
Sylvia Vernon arose suddenly and cried, "I would I had not come!"
Then said Sir John: "Nay, this is but a feeble grieving you have wakened.
For, madam--you whom I loved once!--you are in the right. Our blood runs thinner than of yore; and we may no longer, I think, either sorrow or rejoice very deeply."
"It is true," she said; "but I must go; and, indeed, I would to G.o.d I had not come!"
Sir John was silent; he bowed his head, in acquiescence perhaps, in meditation it may have been; but he stayed silent.
"Yet," said she, "there is something here which I must keep no longer: for here are all the letters you ever writ me."
Whereupon she handed Sir John a little packet of very old and very faded papers. He turned them awkwardly in his hand once or twice; then stared at them; then at the lady.
"You have kept them--always?" he cried.
"Yes," she responded, wistfully; "but I must not be guilty of continuing such follies. It is a villainous example to my grandchildren," Dame Sylvia told him, and smiled. "Farewell."
Sir John drew close to her and took her hands in his. He looked into her eyes for an instant, holding himself very erect,--and it was a rare event when Sir John looked any one squarely in the eyes,--and he said, wonderingly, "How I loved you!"
"I know," she murmured. Sylvia Vernon gazed up into his bloated old face with a proud tenderness that was half-regretful. A quavering came into her gentle voice. "And I thank you for your gift, my lover,--O brave true lover, whose love I was not ever ashamed to own! Farewell, my dear; yet a little while, and I go to seek the boy and girl we know of."
"I shall not be long, madam," said Sir John. "Speak a kind word for me in Heaven; for I shall have sore need of it."
She had reached the door by this. "You are not sorry that I came?"
Sir John answered, very sadly: "There are many wrinkles now in your dear face, my lady; the great eyes are a little dimmed, and the sweet laughter is a little cracked; but I am not sorry to have seen you thus.
For I have loved no woman truly save you alone; and I am not sorry.
Farewell." And for a moment he bowed his unreverend gray head over her shrivelled fingers.
3. "_This Pitch, as Ancient Writers do Report, doth Defile_"
"Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!"
chuckled Sir John, and leaned back rheumatically in his chair and mumbled over the jest.
"Yet it was not all a lie," he confided, as if in perplexity, to the fire; "but what a coil over a youthful green-sickness "twixt a lad and a wench more than forty years syne!
"I might have had money of her for the asking," he presently went on; "yet I am glad I did not; which is a parlous sign and smacks of dotage."
He nodded very gravely over this new and alarming phase of his character.
"Were it not a quaint conceit, a merry tickle-brain of Fate," he asked of the leaping flames, after a still longer pause, "that this mountain of malmsey were once a delicate stripling with apple cheeks and a clean breath, smelling of civet, and as mad for love, I warrant you, as any Amadis of them all? For, if a man were to speak truly, I did love her.
"I had the special marks of the pestilence," he a.s.sured a particularly incredulous--and obstinate-looking coal,--a grim, black fellow that, lurking in a corner, scowled forbiddingly and seemed to defy both the flames and Sir John. "Not all the flagons and apples in the universe might have comforted me; I was wont to sigh like a leaky bellows; to weep like a wench that hath lost her grandam; to lard my speech with the f.a.g-ends of ballads like a man milliner; and did, indeed, indite sonnets, canzonets, and what not of mine own elaboration.
"And Moll did carry them," he continued; "plump brown-eyed Moll, that hath married Hodge the tanner, and reared her tannerkins, and died long since."
But the coal remained incredulous, and the flames crackled merrily.
"Lord, Lord, what did I not write?" said Sir John, drawing out a paper from the packet, and deciphering by the firelight the faded writing.
Read Sir John:
"_Have pity, Sylvia? Cringing at thy door Entreats with dolorous cry and clamoring, That mendicant who quits thee nevermore; Now winter chills the world, and no birds sing In any woods, yet as in wanton Spring He follows thee; and never will have done, Though nakedly he die, from following Whither thou leadest.
"Canst thou look upon His woes, and laugh to see a G.o.ddess" son Of wide dominion, and in strategy
"More strong than Jove, more wise than Solomon, Inept to combat thy severity?
Have pity, Sylvia! And let Love be one Among the folk that bear thee company_."
"Is it not the very puling speech of your true lover?" he chuckled; and the flames spluttered a.s.sent. "_Among the folk that bear thee company_,"
he repeated, and afterward looked about him with a smack of gravity.
"Faith, Adam Cupid hath forsworn my fellowship long since; he hath no score chalked up against him at the Boar"s Head Tavern; or, if he have, I doubt not the next street-beggar might discharge it."