I said, "Why have you done this?" I was half-frightened by the sudden whirl of Dame Fortune"s wheel.
"Dear cousin in motley," grinned the beldame, ""twas for hatred of Tom Allonby and all his accursed race that I have kept the secret thus long.
Now comes a braver revenge: and I settle my score with the black sp.a.w.n of Allonby--euh, how entirely!--by setting you at their head."
"Nay, I elect for a more flattering reason. I begin to suspect you, cousin, of some human compunction."
"Well, Willie, well, I never hated you as much as I had reason to," she grumbled, and began to cough very lamentably. "So at the last I must make a marquis of you--ugh! Will you jest for them in counsel, Willie, and lead your henchman to battle with a bawdy song--ugh, ugh!"
Her voice crackled like burning timber, and sputtered in groans that would have been fanged curses had breath not failed her: for my aunt Elinor possessed a nimble tongue, whetted, as rumor had it, by the attendance of divers Sabbats, and the chaunting of such songs as honest men may not hear and live, however highly the succubi and warlocks and were-cats, and Satan"s courtiers generally, commend them.
I squinted down at one green leg, scratched the crimson fellow to it with my bauble, and could not deny that, even so, the witch was dealing handsomely with me to-night.
"Twas a strange tale which my Aunt Elinor had ended, speaking swiftly lest the worms grow impatient and Charon weigh anchor ere she had done: and the proofs of the tale"s verity, set forth in a fair clerkly handwriting, rustled in my hand,--scratches of a long-rotted pen that transferred me to the right side of the blanket, and transformed the motley of a fool into the ermine of a peer.
All Devon knew I was son to Tom Allonby, who had been Marquis of Falmouth at his uncle"s death, had not Tom Allonby, upon the very eve of that event, broken his neck in a fox-hunt; but Dan Gabriel, come post-haste from Heaven had with difficulty convinced the village idiot that Holy Church had smiled upon Tom"s union with a tanner"s daughter, and that their son was lord of Allonby Shaw. I doubted it, even as I read the proof. Yet it was true,--true that I had precedence even of the great Monsieur de Puysange, who had kept me to make him mirth on a shifty diet, first coins, then curses, these ten years past,--true that my father, rogue in all else, had yet dealt equitably with my mother ere he died,--true that my aunt, less honorably used by him, had shared their secret with the priest who married them, maliciously preserving it till this, when her words fell before me as anciently Jove"s shower before the Argive Danae, coruscant and awful, pregnant with undreamed-of chances which stirred as yet blindly in Time"s womb.
A sick anger woke in me, remembering the burden of ign.o.ble years this hag had suffered me to bear; yet my so young gentility bade me avoid reproach of the dying peasant woman, who, when all was said, had been but ill-used by our house. Death hath a strange potency: commanding as he doth, unquestioned and unchidden, the emperor to have done with slaying, the poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death"s gaunt standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death"s chill finger hath fallen. I doubt not that Cain"s children wept about his deathbed, and that the centurions spake in whispers as they lowered Iscariot from the elder-tree: and in like manner the reproaches which stirred in my brain had no power to move my lips. The frail carnal tenement, swept and cleansed of all mortality, was garnished for Death"s coming; and I could not sorrow at his advent here: but I perforce must pity rather than revile the prey which Age and Poverty, those ravenous forerunning hounds of Death yet harried, at the door of the tomb.
Running over these considerations in my mind, I said, "I forgive you."
"You posturing lack-wit!" she returned, and her sunk jaws quivered angrily. "D"ye play the condescending gentleman already! Dearie, your master did not take the news so calmly."
"You have told him?"
I had risen, for the wried, and yet sly, malice of my aunt"s face was rather that of Bellona, who, as clerks avow, ever bore carnage and dissension in her train, than that of a mortal, mutton-fed woman. Elinor Sommers hated me--having G.o.d knows how just a cause--for the reason that I was my father"s son; and yet, for this same reason as I think, there was in all our intercourse an odd, harsh, grudging sort of tenderness.
She laughed now,--flat and shrill, like the laughter of the d.a.m.ned heard in h.e.l.l between the roaring of flames. "Were it not common kindness to tell him, since this old sleek fellow"s fine daughter is to wed the cuckoo that hath your nest? Yes, Willie, yes, your master hath known since morning."
"And Adeliza?" I asked, in a voice that tricked me.
"Heh, my Lady-High-and-Mighty hath, I think, heard nothing as yet. She will be hearing of new suitors soon enough, though, for her father, Monsieur Fine-Words, that silky, grinning thief, is very keen in a money-chase,--keen as a terrier on a rat-track, may Satan twist his neck!
Pshutt, dearie! here is a smiling knave who means to have the estate of Allonby as it stands; what live-stock may go therewith, whether crack-brained or not, is all one to him. He will not balk at a drachm or two of wit in his son-in-law. You have but to whistle,--but to whistle, Willie, and she"ll come!"
I said, "Eh, woman, and have you no heart?"
"I gave it to your father for a few lying speeches," she answered, "and Tom Allonby taught me the worth of all such commerce." There was a smile upon her lips, sister to that which Clytemnestra may have flaunted in welcome of that old Emperor Agamemnon, come in gory opulence from the sack of Troy Town. "I gave it--" Her voice rose here to a despairing wail. "Ah, go, before I lay my curse upon you, son of Thomas Allonby!
But do you kiss me first, for you have just his lying mouth. So, that is better! And now go, my lord marquis; it is not fitting that death should intrude into your lordship"s presence. Go, fool, and let me die in peace!"
I no longer cast a cautious eye toward the whip (ah, familiar unkindly whip!) that still hung beside the door of the hut; but, I confess, my aunt"s looks were none too delectable, and ancient custom rendered her wrath yet terrible. If the farmers thereabouts were to be trusted, I knew Old Legion"s bailiff would shortly be at hand, to distrain upon a soul escheat and forfeited to Dis by many years of cruel witchcrafts, close wiles, and nameless sorceries; and I could never abide unpared nails, even though they be red-hot. Therefore, I relinquished her to the village gossips, who waited without, and I tucked my bauble under my arm.
"Dear aunt," said I, "farewell!"
"Good-bye, Willie!" said she; "I shall often laugh in h.e.l.l to think of the crack-brained marquis that I made on earth. It was my will to make a beggar of Tom"s son, but at the last I play the fool and cannot do it.
But do you play the fool, too, dearie, and"--she chuckled here--"and have your posture and your fine long words, whatever happens."
""Tis my vocation," I answered, briefly; and so went forth into the night.
2. _At the Ladder"s Foot_
I came to Tiverton Manor through a darkness black as the lining of Baalzebub"s oldest cloak. The storm had pa.s.sed, but clouds yet hung heavy as feather-beds between mankind and the stars; as I crossed the bridge the swollen Exe was but dimly visible, though it roared beneath me, and shook the frail timbers hungrily. The bridge had long been unsafe: Monsieur de Puysange had planned one stronger and less hazardous than the former edifice, of which the arches yet remained, and this was now in the making, as divers piles of unhewn lumber and stone attested: meanwhile, the roadway was a makeshift of half-rotten wood that even in this abating wind shook villainously. I stood for a moment and heard the waters lapping and splashing and laughing, as though they would hold it rare and desirable mirth to swallow and spew forth a powerful marquis, and grind his body among the battered timber and tree-boles and dead sheep swept from the hills, and at last vomit him into the sea, that a corpse, wide-eyed and livid, might bob up and down the beach, in quest of a quiet grave where the name of Allonby was scarcely known. The imagination was so vivid that it frightened me as I picked my way cat-footed through the dark.
The folk of Tiverton Manor were knotting on their nightcaps, by this; but there was a light in the Lady Adeliza"s window, faint as a sick glowworm.
I rolled in the seeded gra.s.s and chuckled, as I thought of what a day or two might bring about, and I murmured to myself an old cradle-song of Devon which she loved and often sang; and was, ere I knew it, carolling aloud, for pure wantonness and joy that Monsieur de Puysange was not likely to have me whipped, now, however blatantly I might elect to discourse.
Sang I:
_"Through the mist of years does it gleam as yet-- That fair and free extent Of moonlit turret and parapet, Which castled, once, Content?
"Ei ho! Ei ho! the Castle of Content, With drowsy music drowning merriment Where Dreams and Visions held high carnival, And frolicking frail Loves made light of all,-- Ei ho! the vanished Castle of Content!"_
As I ended, the cas.e.m.e.nt was pushed open, and the Lady Adeliza came upon the balcony, the light streaming from behind her in such fashion as made her appear an angel peering out of Heaven at our mortal antics. Indeed, there was always something more than human in her loveliness, though, to be frank, it savored less of chilling paradisial perfection than of a vision of some great-eyed queen of faery, such as those whose feet glide unwetted over our fen-waters when they roam o" nights in search of unwary travellers. Lady Adeliza was a fair beauty; that is, her eyes were of the color of opals, and her complexion as the first rose of spring, blushing at her haste to snare men"s hearts with beauty; and her loosened hair rippled in such a burst of splendor that I have seen a pale brilliancy, like that of amber, reflected by her bared shoulders where the bright waves fell heavily against the tender flesh, and ivory vied with gold in beauty. She was somewhat proud, they said; and to others she may have been, but to me, never. Her voice was a low, sweet song, her look that of the chaste Roman, beneficent Saint Dorothy, as she is pictured in our Chapel here at Tiverton. Proud, they called her! to me her condescensions were so manifold that I cannot set them down: indeed, in all she spoke and did there was an extreme kindliness that made a courteous word from her of more worth than a purse from another.
She said, "Is it you, Will Sommers?"
"Madonna," I answered, "with whom else should the owls confer? It is a venerable saying that extremes meet. And here you may behold it exemplified, as in the conference of an epicure and an ostrich: though, for this once, Wisdom makes bold to sit above Folly."
"Did you carol, then, to the owls of Tiverton?" she queried.
"Hand upon heart," said I, "my grim gossips care less for my melody than for the squeaking of a mouse; and I sang rather for joy that at last I may enter into the Castle of Content."
The Lady Adeliza replied, "But n.o.body enters there alone."
"Madonna," said I, "your apprehension is nimble. I am in hope that a woman"s hand may lower the drawbridge."
She said only "You--!" Then she desisted, incredulous laughter breaking the soft flow of speech.
"Now, by Paul and Peter, those eminent apostles! the prophet Jeremy never spake more veraciously in Edom! The fool sighs for a fair woman,--what else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night"s wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us,--even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool"s brain into the semblance of a lover"s? Believe me, the change is not so great as you might think. Yet if you will, laugh at me, madonna, for I love a woman far above me,--a woman who knows not of my love, or, at most, considers it but as the homage which grateful peasants accord the all-nurturing sun; so that, now chance hath woven me a ladder whereby to mount to her, I scarcely dare to set my foot upon the bottom rung."
"A ladder?" she said, oddly: "and are you talking of a rope ladder?"
"I would describe it, rather," said I, "as a golden ladder."
There came a silence. About us the wind wailed among the gaunt, deserted choir of the trees, and in the distance an owl hooted sardonically.
The Lady Adeliza said: "Be bold. Be bold, and know that a woman loves once and forever, whether she will or no. Love is not sold in the shops, and the grave merchants that trade in the ultimate seas, and send forth argosies even to jewelled Ind, to fetch home rich pearls, and strange outlandish dyes, and spiceries, and the raiment of imperious queens of the old time, have bought and sold no love, for all their traffic. It is above gold. I know"--here her voice faltered somewhat--"I know of a woman whose birth is very near the throne, and whose beauty, such as it is, hath been commended, who loved a man the politic world would have none of, for he was not rich nor famous, nor even very wise. And the world bade her relinquish him; but within the chambers of her heart his voice rang more loudly than that of the world, and for his least word said she would leave all and go with him whither he would. And--she waits only for the speaking of that word."
"Be bold?" said I.
"Ay," she returned; "that is the moral of my tale. Make me a song of it to-night, dear Will,--and tomorrow, perhaps, you may learn how this woman, too, entered into the Castle of Content."
"Madonna--!" I cried.
"It is late," said she, "and I must go."
"To-morrow--?" I said. My heart was racing now.
"Ay, to-morrow,--the morrow that by this draws very near. Farewell!" She was gone, casting one swift glance backward, even as the ancient Parthians are fabled to have shot their arrows as they fled; and, if the airier missile, also, left a wound, I, for one, would not willingly have quitted her invulnerate.