You—happy—across whose tablets a kind fate draws the sponge of oblivion even while you write, who leave the cup half emptied, and the feast half finished; you, from whose thoughts ambition passes in warm meridian glow, who nourish expectation and hope to the very verge of the unknown; you, who leave warm with the sweet wine of living, your dim way lit with the shine of love, your fingers locked in the clasp of friendship; you, to whom all these things gently minister and smooth the path of the inevitable; you, who die but once and die so easily, surely cannot comprehend the full measure of my sufferings!
Oh! it was horrible and sickening to feel the old world reel and spin like this beneath my laggard feet; to see crowns and states and people flit by like idle shadows on a sunny wall; to espouse great quarrels that set men into wide-asunder camps, and to wake and find the quarrel long since over and forgotten; to swear allegiance to a king and love and serve him, and then to find, in the beat of a pulse, that he had gone and was forgotten; to be the bearer of proud news that should kindle joy in a thousand thousand hearts, and then to wake when even the meaning of that news, the very cause and purport of it, was long since past and gone—it was surely bitter!
And for myself—I, who, as you know, link a ready sympathy with any cause, who love and live and hope with a fervor which no experience quenches and no adversity can dim—to be thus cut adrift from all I lived and hoped for, to be cast like this on to the bleak, friendless shore of some age, remote, unknown, unvalued—surely it was a mischance as heavy as any mischance could be!
I had not any friend in all that universe, I said to myself as I lay and thought sad thoughts upon the grassy mound—a friend!—not one kind human heart in this hive of human atoms set store by me—not one had heard I lived—not one cared if I died! There was not in all the world one question of how I fared, one wish that ran in union with any wish of mine—one single link to join me to my kind. And what links could I forge again? How could I set out to hope afresh or love, or fear or wish for? Hope! gods! had I not hopes yesterday? And what were they now?—a tawdry, silly sheaf of tinseled fancies. And love!—how could I love, remembering the new-dead Isobel?—and fear and desire! neither touched the accursed monotony of my desolation; either would have been a boon from Heaven to break the miserable calm of my despair!
It was thus I reasoned with myself for hours as the gathering darkness settled down; and, poor as I had often been, and comradeless, I do not think, in all a long and varied life, I had ever felt more reft of friends or melancholy lonesome. In vain my mind was racked to piece the evidence of that huge lapse of time which, there was no doubt, had passed since the great battle on the Crecy hills. I could recall as they have been set down every incident of the voyage, my escape, and what had followed the awakening: but the sleep itself was to me even now just one long, soft, dreamless, well-earned slumber from point to point. So absolutely natural had been that wondrous trance that to think on it would make me start up with a cry, and shake my fist to where, in the valley, the lights of Elizabeth’s camp were faintly shining among the trees, and half persuade myself that this were the dream—that the yellow-haired Princess had somehow mocked me, that Edward indeed still lived, with my jolly comrades, and I might still hope to win renown and smiles amid them, and see those that I knew, and drink red wine from friendly flagons. Then I would remember all the many signs that told the Princess had not fooled me—had but spoke the cruel, naked truth—and down I would sink again on the turf under the deepening shadows, and bewail my lot.
Tossed fiercely about like this, time passed unnoticed; the day went out in the west behind the pale amber and green satin curtains of the sunset, and, while I sat and grieved, the yellow stars climbed into the sky, all the sweet silent planets of the night set out upon their unseen pathways and airy paraboles, and behind the thicket that sheltered me the moon got up and threw across the lonely road a tracery of black and silver shadows. The evening air blew strong and cool upon my flushed, hot brow, and lulled the teeming thoughts that crowded there. Soft velvet bats came down, and the faint lisp of their hollow wings brushing by me was kindly and sympathetic. Overhead, the sallows hung out a thousand golden points to the small people of the twilight, and a faint perfume—an incense of hope—fell on me with the yellow dust of those gentle flowers. If I say these cool influences somewhat respirited me, you will deride my changing mood. Yet why should I hesitate for that? I did grow calmer under the gentle caressing of the evening; it was all so fair and still about me presently, and there was this star that I knew and that; and the night-owl churning overhead was surely the very same bird that had sung above my hunter-couch in the Saxon woodlands; and the lonely trumpet of the heron, flying homeward up the valley, brought back a score of peaceful memories. After all, men might change and go—shallow, small puppets that they were!—but this, at least, was the same old earth about me, and that was something. I would find a sheltered corner and sleep. Mayhap, with to-morrow’s dawn the world might look a little brighter!
Just as this wise resolution was on the point of being put in force, the faint sound of horse-hoofs, demurely walking up toward my lurking-place, came down on the night wind, and, retiring a moment into the deep shadows, I had not long to wait before the same shaggy palfrey and the same dreamy old fellow met earlier in the day came pacing along the road. The scholar—for so I guessed him—looked neither to right nor left; his strange thin face was turned full up to the moonlight, and the bright rays shone upon his vacant eyes and long white beard with a strange sepulchural luster. He was letting the reins hang loose upon his pony’s neck, and, as he came near, thinking himself alone, he stretched out his long, sinewy hands in front; and it was plain to see his lips worked in the moonlight with unspoken thoughts quicker than an abbot’s at unpaid-for mass. Utterly oblivious to everything around, in the white shine of the great night planet, old, lunatic, and gaunt, he looked, methought, the strangest wayfarer that ever rode down a woodland lane by nightfall. He was indeed so weird and unapproachable in his reverie that, though I had felt a small gleam of pleasure in first recognizing something which, if not friend, was at least acquaintance, yet now as he drew nigh, remote and visionary, with glassy eyes fixed on the twinkling stars, and thin white locks lifting about his broad and wrinkled forehead, I hesitated to greet him, and stood back.
But that palfrey he bestrode was more watchful than his rider. He saw me loom dark among the hazels, and came to so sudden a stop as threw the old man forward upon his ears, and, whatever his fancies may have been, jerked them clean from sky to earth in less time than it takes to write.
The scholar pulled himself together, and, with some show of valor, threw back his wide cloak from his right shoulder, and uncovered on his other side the hilt of a tarnished, rusty sword. Then, peeping and peering all about, he cried: “Ho! you there in the shadows! Be ye thieves or beggars, know that I have nothing to give and less to lose!”
“And he who stops your way, Sir,” I answered, stepping forward into the clear, “is exactly in like circumstance.”
“Oh! it is you, friend, is it?” cried the old man, seeming much relieved. “I thought I had fallen into a nest of footpads, or at the least a camp of beggars.”
“Your open declaration, Sir, backed by certain evidences of its obvious truth, ought to have taken you safely through the worst infested thicket hereabouts.”
“No doubt, no doubt; but I am glad it is you and not another—first, because desirable friendships are rarely made by moonlight; and secondly, because you have been in my mind the few hours since we parted.”
“I am honored in that particular, and your courtesy moves me the more because I was only now thinking there were none upon the face of the earth who were doing so much by me.”
“You are green, young man, and therefore apt to let a passing whim, a shadow of disappointment, lead to hasty generalizing. You fared not as you hoped at yonder Court?” And the old man bent his keen gray eyes upon me with a searching shrewdness there was no gainsaying.
“No! in faith I fared badly beyond all expectation.”
“And what were you projecting just now when, like the ass of Balaam, this most patient beast saw you in the way and interrupted my reflection so roughly?”
“Why, at that very moment, Sir,” I said, “I was looking for a likely place to pass the night.”
“What, on the moss? with no better hangings to your couch than these lean, draughty, leafless boughs?”
“’Tis an honorable bed, Sir, and I have fared worse when I have been far richer.”
“Oh! what a happy thing it is to be young and full of choler and folly! Not but that I have done the same myself,” chuckled the old man: “for thou knowest mandrake must be gathered only at the full moon, and hemlock roots are digged in the dark—many a twilight such as this I spent groping in the murky woods, picking those things that witches love—and not gone home with full wallet until the owls were homing and the pale white stars were waxing sickly in the morning light. Nevertheless, Sir, take an old man’s word, and presume not too largely on the immunities of youth.”
“I have no drier bed.”
“No, but I have. Come back with me to-night, and I will lodge you safe and sound until the morning.”
“Thanks for the proffer! Yet this is surely extreme courtesy between two wayfarers so newly met as we are?”
“And do I, Sir,” he cried, holding out his thin and shaky palms there in the pallid light, a gaunt and ragged-looking specter—a houseless, homeless, visionary vagrant—“do I, Sir, seem some broiling spend-thrift—some loose hedge-companion—some shallow-pated swashbuckler—hail-fellow-well-met with one and all? I have not said so much civility as I did just now to any one this twenty years!”
“The more thanks are due from him in whose favor you make so great and generous exception. Is it distant to your lodgment?”
“But a few miles straight ahead of us.”
“Then I will go with you, for it were churlish to slight so good an offer out of bare waywardness”; and I tightened my belt, and took the ragged, ungroomed little steed by the rusty, cord-mended bit, and with these two strange companions, set out I knew not how or where, and cared but little.
At first that quaint old man seemed more elated than could reasonably be expected at having secured me for a guest. He did not openly avow it, but I was not so young or unread in men but that I could decipher his pleasure in voice and eye, even while he talked on other subjects. How this interest came, what he could hope to get or have of me, however, was well past my comprehension. My dress and rustic garb spoke me his inferior in place and station, while, certes! my rags and tatters made me seem poor even after my humble kind. He was a gentleman, though the sorriest-looking one who ever put a leg across a saddle. And I? I was afoot, a gloomy, purseless, unweaponed loiterer in the shadows. What could he need of me that lent such luster to his eyes, and caused him to chuckle so hoarsely far down in his lean and withered throat? The morrow no doubt would show, and in the meantime, being still morose and sad, smarting to have unwittingly played the fool so much, and full of grief and sorrow, I responded but dully to his learned talk. Feeling this, and being only slenderly attached to mundane things at best, his mind wandered from me after a mile or two—his eyes grew fixed and expressionless, his hands dropped, supine upon the pommel, his chin sank down upon the limp, worn, yellow ruffles on his chest, and senseless, disconnected murmurs ran from his lips, like water dripping from a leaky cask.
I let him babble as he liked, and trudged along in silence, leaving the road to that sagacious beast, who, with drooped head and stolid purpose, went pacing on without a look either to right or left. And you will guess my thoughts were melancholy. Yesterday I was an honored soldier, the confidant of a proud, victorious king, the comrade of a shining band of princely brethren, as good a knight as any that breathed among a host of heroes, the clear-honored leading star—the bright example to a horde of stalwart veterans—with all the fair wide fields of renown and reputation lying inviting before me!—all the pleasant lethe of struggle and ambition open to my search, and I had strong, true friends abroad, and loving ones at home—and now! and now! Oh! I beat my hand upon my bosom, and spent impotent curses on the starlight sky, to think how all was changed—to think how those splendid princely shadows were gone—how all those sweet, rough spearmen who had ridden with me, fetlock deep, through the crimson mire of Crecy had passed out into the void, leaving me here desolate, poor, accursed—this empty hand that trained the spear that had shot princes and paladins to earth under the full gaze of crownèd Christendom, turned to a low horse-boy’s duty, my golden mail changed to a hedgeman’s muddy smock, on foot, degraded, friendless, and forlorn!
But it was no good grieving. My melancholy served somehow to pass the way, and when, presently, I shook it off again with one fierce, final sigh, and peered about, we were slowly winding down a dark road between high banks into a deeply wooded glen lying straight ahead. I had noticed now and then, as we came along, a twinkling light or two standing off from the white roadway, amid the deep black shadows of the evening, and each time had slowed my gloomy stride, thinking this were the place we aimed for. Now it was a shepherd’s lonely cot, high-perched amid the open furze and ling, with a faint red beam of warmth and light coming from the glowing hearth within. “Ah! here we be!” I thought. “So Learning is lodged with fleecy Simplicity, and cons his Ovid amid the things the sweet Latin loved, or reads bucolic Horace beneath a herdsman’s oak!”
But that glum palfrey did not stop, and his fantastic master made no sign. Then it would be a way-side cottage, all criscross-faced with beam of wood, after the new fashion, and overgrown with rose and eglantine. “Then this is it,” I sighed—“a comely, peaceful harborage. One could surely lie safer from the winds of blustering fortune in this tiny shell than a small white maggot in a winter-hidden nut.” And I put my hand upon the dim trestle-gate. But stamp—stamp! the steed went on; and the master never took his chin from off his bosom!
Well, we had passed in this way some few small homesteads, and seen the glow-worm lights of a fair, sleeping Tudor village or two shine remote in the starlight valleys, and then we came all at the same solemn pace, the same gloomy silence, into that deep-shadowed dell I spoke of. We dipped down, out of the honest white radiance, between high banks on either hand, so high that bush and scrub were locked in tangles overhead and not a blink of light came through. Down that strange black zigzag we slipped and scrambled, the loose stones rattling beneath our feet, in pitchy darkness, with never a sound to break the stillness but the heavy breathing of the horse, and now and then the gurgle of an unseen streamlet running somewhere in the void. We staggered down this hell-dark pathway for a lonely mile, and then there loomed up from the blackness on my right hand a moldy, broken terrace wall, all loose and cracked, with fallen coping slabs and pedestals displaced, and hideous, stony, graven monsters here and there glowering in the blackness at us who passed below. Two hundred paces down this wall we went, and then came to an opening. At the same moment the pale moon shone out full overhead and showed me a gate, a garden, and beyond an empty mansion, so white, so ruinous and ghastly, so marvelously like a dead, expressionless face suddenly gleaming over the black pall of the night, that I tightened my hand upon the snaffle strap I held, and bit my lip, and thanked my fate it was not there I had to sleep.
Yet could I not help staring at that place. The wall turned in on either side to meet those gates. They had once been noble and well wrought and gilded, for here and there the better metal shone in spots amid the wide expanse of rusty iron that formed them, but now they were like the broken fangs, methought, of some old hag more than aught else. The left of these two rotten portals never opened, the nettle and wild creepers were twined thick about its shattered lower bars, while its fellow stood ajar, with one hinge gone, and sagging over, desperately envious, it seemed, of the small footway that wound amid the rank wild herbage past it. And then that garden! Jove! Was ever such a ghostly wilderness, such a tangled labyrinth of decay and neglect born out of the kind, fertile bosom of gentle Mother Earth? Never before had I seen black cypresses throw such funereal shadows; never had I known the winter-worn things of summer look so ghoul-like and horrible! But worst of all was the mansion beyond—a straggling pile, with mighty chimney stacks, from whence no pleasant smoke curled up, and silent, grassy courtyards, and lonely flights of broken steps leading to lonely terraces, and a hundred empty windows staring empty-socketed back upon the dead white light that shone so straight and cruel on them. Oh! it was all most forlorn and melancholy, surely an unholy place, steeped deep with the indelible stain of some black story—and I turned me gladly from it!
I turned, and as I did so the horse came to a sudden stop!—stopped calm and resolute before that ill-omened portal! This woke his master, who stared and looked up. He saw the house and gates in the full stream of the moonlight, and then turned to me.
“Welcome!” he cried, “right welcome to my home! Ho! ho! you shall sleep snug enough to-night. Look at the shine on it. They have lit up to welcome us!” and he pointed with a long, fleshless finger to those ghostly windows! “Ho! ho! ho!” came, like a dead voice, the echo of his laughter out of the blank courtyard depth, and the old man, so strange and wild, struck his rusty spurs upon the bare sounding ribs of his beast and turned and rode through the portal.
For one minute I held back—’twas all so grim and tragic-looking, and I was weak, shaken with grief and fasting, unweaponed and alone—for one minute I held back, and then the red flush of anger burned hot upon my forehead to think I had been so near to fearing. I tossed back my black Phrygian locks, and with an angry stride—my spirit roused by that moment’s weakness—strode sternly across the threshold.
Down the white gravel way we twined, the loose, neglected path gleaming wet with night-dew; we brushed by thickets of dead garden things, such as had once been tall and fair, but now tainted the night air with their rottenness. We stepped over giant brambles and great fallen hemlocks—little hedge-pigs, so forsaken was it all, trotting down the path before us—and bats flitting about our heads. In one place had been a fountain, and Pan himself standing by it. The fountain was choked with giant dock and cress, wherefrom some frogs croaked with dismal glee, while Pan had fallen and lay in pieces on his face across the way. So we came in a moment or two to the house, and there my guide dismounted and pulled bit and bridle, saddle and saddle-cloth from his pony. That beast turned and stepped back into the shadows of the desolate garden, vanishing with strange suddenness, but whither I could not guess. Then the old man produced a green-rusty key from under his belt, and putting it to the lock of the door at top of that flight of broken steps, which looked as though no foot had trodden them for fifty years, he turned the rusty wards. The grind and wail of those stiff bolts had almost human sadness in it, and then we entered a long, lonely chilly hall. Here my guide felt for flint and steel, and I own I heard the click of the stone and metal, and saw the first sparks spring and die upon the pavement, with reasonable satisfaction.
’Twould have made a good picture, had some one been by to limn it—that ghastly pale face that might have topped a skeleton, so bloodless was it, with sharp, keen eyes, a glint in the red glow that came presently upon the tinder, that strange slouch hat, that ragged, sorrel, graveyard cloak, and all about the gleam, glancing off the crumbling finery, the worm-eaten furniture, the broken tile-stones, the empty, voiceless corridors, the doors set half ajar, the great carved banisters of the stairway that mounted into the black upper emptiness of that deserted hall. And then I myself, there by the porch, watchful and grim, in my sorry rags, the greatest wonder of it all, eyeing with haughty speculation that old fellow, so ancient and yet so young, tottering and venerable under the weight of a poor eighty years, perhaps, while it was three times as much since strong-limbed, supple I had even sat to a meal! It was truly strange, and I waited for anything that might come next with calm resignation—a listless faith in the integrity of chance which put me beyond all those gusty emotions of hope and fear which play through the fledgling hearts of lesser men.
The red train of sparks lit upon the tinder while I glanced around, the old man’s breath blew them into a flame, and this he set to a rushlight, then turned that pale flame in my direction as he surveyed his guest from top to toe. I bore the inspection with folded arms, and when he had done he said:
“Such thews and sinews, son, as show beneath that hempen shirt of yours, such breadth of shoulder and stalwartness can scarcely be nourished on evening dew and sad reflections. Have you eaten lately?”
“In truth, Sir, it was some time ago I last sat to meat,” was my response; “and, whether it be our walk or the night-air, I could almost fancy your father’s father might have shared that meal with me.”
“Well, come, then, to the banquet-hall—the feast is spread, and, for guests, people these shadows with whom you will!” and, taking the rushlight from its socket and hobbling off in front, that strange host of mine led down the corridor to where a great archway led into the main chamber of the house.
It was as desolate and silent as every other place, vast, roomy, blank, and gloomy. All along one side were latticed windows looking out upon that dead garden, and the moonbeams coming through them threw faint reflections of escutcheon and painted glass upon the dusty floor. Here and there the panes were broken, and draughts from these swayed the frayed and tattered hangings with ghostly undulations—ah! and at the top of the room an open door, leading into unknown blackness, kept softly opening and shutting in the current, as though, with melancholy monotony, it was giving admittance to unseen, voiceless company.
But nothing said my friend to excuse all this. He led up the long black table, with rows of seats and benches fit to seat a hundred guests, until at the lonely top he found and lit the four branches of a little oil lamp of green moldy bronze, such as one takes from ancient crypts, and when the four little flames grew up smoky and dim they shone upon a napkin ready laid, a flask, a pitcher, and a plate, flanked by a horn-handled knife and spoon, and an oaken salt-cellar. Then the old carl next went to a cupboard in a niche, and brought out bread on a trencher, a cheese upon a round leaden dish, and a curious flask of old Italian wine. I stared at my host in wonder, for I could have sworn a Saxon hand had trimmed his knife and spoon, his lamp was Etruscan, as truly as I lived, though Heaven only knew how he came by it—and that pitcher—why, Jove! I knew the very Roman pottery marks upon it, the maker’s sign and name—the very kiln that glazed it.
He laid a plate for me, and cut the loaf and filled our tankards, and—“Eat!” he said. “The feast is small, but we have that sauce the wise have told us would make a worse into a banquet.”
“Thanks!” I said. “I have, in truth, sat to wider spreads, yet this is more than I could, a few short hours since, have reasonably hoped for.” And so I began and broke his bread, and turned about the cheese, and poured the wine, and made a very good repast out of such modest provender. But, as you may guess, between every mouthful I could not help looking up and about me—at the wise-mad features of that quaint old man, now far away and visionary, again lost in thought and fantasy; and then out through the broken mullions into that pallid garden of white spectral things and inky shadows lying so death-like in the moonshine; and so once more my eye would wander to the long, somber hall—the stately high-backed chairs all rickety and moth-eaten, and the door that gently opened now and then to admit the sighing of the night-wind, and nothing more!
Well! I will not weary you with experiences so empty. At last the most spectral meal that ever mortal sat to was over, and the old man roused himself, and, like one who comes reluctantly from deep thought, drained out his goblet to the dregs, and turned it down and swept the crumbs into his plate, and standing up, said in somewhat friendly tone: “You will be weary, stranger guest, and mayhap I am to-night but a poor host. If it pleased you, I would show you to a chamber, which, though mayhap somewhat musty, like much else of mine, shall nevertheless be drier than yon couch of yours out there by the hazel thicket.”
“Musty or not, good Sir, I do confess a bed will be welcome. It must be near four hundred years at least—that is to say, it must be very long, my sleepy eyes suggest—since I was lain on one.”
“Come, then!”
“Yet half a minute, Sir, before we go. This garb of mine—I do not deign to advert to its poorness, for my own sake, but it does such small credit to your honor and hospitality. Fortune, in other times, gave me the right to wear the hose and surtout of a gentleman—if you had such a livery by you.”
The scholar thought a space, then bid me stay where I was, and took the rushlight and went down the passage. In a few minutes he was back, with a swathe of faded raiment upon his arm, and threw them down upon the bench.
“There, choose!” he cried. “It was like a young man to think of to-morrow’s clothing, between supper-time and bed.”
The raiment was as mysterious as everything else hereabout. It was all odds and ends, and quaint old fashions and tags of finery, the faded panoply of state and pride, the green vest of a forest ranger, the gaberdine of a marshal of the lists, suits for footmen with the devices I had seen upon the ruined gates worked on the front in golden thread, and some few courtly things, such as idle young lords will wear a day or two and then throw by to wear some newer.
Out of the latter I selected a suit that looked as though it would fit me, and, though a little crumpled, was still in reasonable condition. This vestment, after the fashion of the time, consisted of tight hose and much-puffed breeches, a fine silk waistcoat coming far down, and a loose and ample coat upon it, with wide shoulders and long, tight sleeves. When I add this suit was of amber velvet, lined and puffed with primrose satin, you will understand that, saving the certain moldiness about it I have mentioned, it was as good as any reasonable man could desire. I rolled it up, and put it under my arm, then turned to my host with something of a smile at the strangeness of it all.
“A supper, Sir,” I said, “and shelter; a suit of velvet; and then a bed! Why, surely, this is rare civility between two chance companions met on a country road!”
“Ah!” answered the old man, “and if you were as old as I am, you would know it is rare, but that such things must, somehow, be paid for,” and he eyed me curiously a moment from under those penthouse eyebrows. “Is there anything more you lack?” he continued. “To-night it is yours to ask, and mine to give.”
“Since you put it to me, worthy host,” I responded, “there is one other thing I need—something a soldier likes, whether it be in court or camp, in peaceful hall like this or on the ridges of dank battlefield—a straight, white comrade that I could keep close to me all day, a dear companion who would lie nigh by my side at night—believe me, I have never been without such.”
“And believe me, young man, I cannot humor you. Fie! if that’s your fancy, why did you leave yon wanton camp? Gads! but they would have lined you there civilly enough, but I——What, do you think I can conjure you a pretty, painted leman for a plaything out of these black shadows all about us?”
Whereat I answered seriously: “You mistake my meaning, Sir. It was no gentle damsel that I needed, but such a companion as I have ever had—in brief, a weapon, a sword. It was only this I thought of.”
I heard the old man mutter as he turned away—“A curse on young men and their wants—new suits, supper and wine, leman, weapons—oh! it’s just the same with all of them,” and he took the taper from the table and signed to me to follow.
He led me down the hall with its bare, cold flagstones and somber paneling dimly seen under the feeble gleaming light he carried, and in a few paces my grim host stopped and held that shine aloft. It shone redly on a tarnished trophy of arms, chain-mail, and helmets, whence he bid me choose whatever took my fancy, making the while small effort to hide his contempt for the obvious eagerness and pleasure with which I sampled that dusty hoard. After a minute or two I selected a strong Spanish blade, a little light and playful, perhaps, with golden arabesques all down it, and a pretty fluted hollow for the foeman’s blood, and a chased love-knot at the hilt; yet, nevertheless, a good blade, and serviceable, with an edge as keen as a lover’s eye, and a temper as true as ever was got into good steel, I thought, as I sprang it on the tiles, between hammer and anvil. This Toledo blade had a cover of black velvet, bound and hooped with silver bands, and a stout belt of like kind, nicely suiting that livery I carried upon my arm. I bound the sword about me, and, after being so long unweaponed, found it wondrous comfortable and pleasant wear.
“Now then, Sir Host,” I cried, “lead on! If this chamber of thine were in the porch of paradise or in the nethermost pit of hell, I am equally ready to explore it.”
Up the gloomy stairs we went, now to right and then to left, by corridors and passages, until the road we came was hopelessly mazed to me; and soon my host led to a wider, gloomier avenue of silent doorways than any we had passed.
“Choose!”—he laughed—“choose you a bed! Better men than you have lodged—and died—within these cheerful chambers.” And that wild old man, with furrowed face and mad, sparkling eyes, seeming in that small, round globe of light like some spectral remnant of the fortunes of his lonely house, opened door after door for me to note the grim black solitudes within. In every chamber hung the same staring portraits on the wall, cold, proud, dead eyes fixed hard upon you wherever you might look! on every rotten cornice were tattered hangings, half shrouding those dim cobwebbed windows that gazed so wistfully out upon the moonlit garden; and dusky panel doors and cupboard casements that gently creaked and moved upon the sighing draught till you could swear ghostly fingers played upon the latches; the same stern black furniture, crumbling and decayed, was in each set straight against the walls; the same cenotaph four-posted bedsteads with ruined tapestries and moldy coverlets—“Choose,” he laughed, with a horrid goblin laughter that rattled down the empty corridors—“my house is roomy, though the guests be few and silent.”
But, in truth, there was little to choose where all was so alike. Therefore, and not to seem the least bit moved by all this dreadfulness, I threw down my borrowed clothes and rapier upon the settle in one of the first rooms we happed upon, and said: “Here, then, good host—and thanks for courteous harborage! What time doth sound reveillé—what time, I mean, doth thy household wake?”
“My household, stranger, sleeps on forever. They will not wake for any mortal sunrise, and I spend the long night-hours in work and vigil”—and he looked at me with the gloomy fanaticism of an absent mind—“yet you must wake again,” he went on after a minute. “I have something to ask thee to-morrow, perhaps something to show——”
“Why, then, until we meet again, good-night and pleasant vigils, since it is to them you go.”
“Good-night, young man, and sober sleep! Remember this is no place to dream of tilts and tourneys, of lost causes or light leman love”; and, muttering to himself as he shuffled down the bare, dusty floors, I heard him pass away from corridor to corridor, and flight to flight, until even that faint sound was swallowed by the cavernous silence of the sepulchral mansion, and night and impenetrable stillness fell on those empty stairways and gaunt voiceless rooms.