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Title: Wyndham Towers Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich Release Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1830] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WYNDHAM TOWERS ***
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WYNDHAM TOWERS
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
TO EDWIN BOOTH. MY DEAR BOOTH: In offering these verses to you, I beg you to treat them (as you have many a time advised a certain lord chamberlain to treat the players) not according to their desert. "Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty." These many years your friend and comrade, T. B. ALDRICH.
Contents
NOTE
WYNDHAM TOWERS.
NOTE The motif of the story embodied in the following poem was crudely outlined in a brief sketch printed in an early collection of the authors verse, and subsequently cancelled for a purpose not until now accomplished. Wyndham Towers is not to be confused with this discarded sketch, the text of which has furnished only a phrase, or an indirect suggestion, here and there. That the writer's method, when recasting the poem, was more or less influenced by the poets he had been studying—chiefly the dramatists of the Elizabethan era —will, he hopes, be obvious. It was part of his design, however far he may have fallen from it, to give his narrative something of the atmosphere and color of the period in which the action takes place, though the story is supposed to be told at a later date.
WYNDHAM TOWERS. Before you reach the slender, high-arched bridge, Like to a heron with one foot in stream, The hamlet breaks upon you through green boughs— A square stone church within a place of graves Upon the slope; gray houses oddly grouped, With plastered gables set with crossed oak-beams, And roofs of yellow tile and purplish slate. That is The Falcon, with the swinging sign And rustic bench, an ancient hostelry; Those leaden lattices were hung on hinge In good Queen Bess's time, so old it is. On ridge-piece, gable-end, or dove-cot vane, A gilded weathercock at intervals Glimmers—an angel on the wing, most like, Of local workmanship; for since the reign Of pious Edward here have carvers thrived, In saints'-heads skillful and winged cherubim Meet for rich abbeys. From yon crumbling tower, Whosebrickwork base the cunning Romans laid— And now of no use else except to train The ivy of an idle legend on— You see, such lens is this thin Devon air, If it so chance no fog comes rolling in, TheTorridge where its branching crystal spreads
To join the Taw. Hard by from a chalk cliff A torrent leaps: not lovelier Sappho was Giving herself all silvery to the sea From that Leucadian rock. Beneath your feet Lie sand and surf in curving parallels. Off shore, a buoy gleams like a dolphin's back Dripping with brine, and guards a sunken reef Whose sharp incisors have gnawed many a keel; There frets the sea and turns white at the lip, And in ill-weather lets the ledge show fang. A very pleasant nook in Devon, this,
Upon the height of old was Wyndham Towers, Clinging to rock there, like an eagle's nest, With moat and drawbridge once, and good for siege; Four towers it had to front the diverse winds: Built God knows when, all record being lost, Locked in the memories of forgotten men. InCaesar's day, a pagan temple; next A monastery; then a feudal hold; Later a manor, and at last a ruin. Such knowledge have we of it, vaguely caught Through whispers fallen from tradition's lip. This shattered tower, with crenellated top And loops for archers, alone marks the spot, Looming forlornly—a gigantic harp Whereon the invisible fingers of the wind Its fitful and mysterious dirges play.
Here dwelt, in the last Tudor's virgin reign, One Richard Wyndham, Knight and Gentleman, (The son of Rawdon, slain near Calais wall When Bloody Mary lost her grip on France,) A lonely wight that no kith had nor kin Save one, a brother—by ill-fortune's spite A brother, since 't were better to have none— Of late not often seen at Wyndham Towers, Where he in sooth but lenten welcome got When to that gate his errant footstep strayed. Yet held he dear those gray majestic walls, Time-stained and crusted with the sea's salt breath; Therefirst his eyes took color of the sea, There did his heart stay when fate drove him thence, And there at last—but that we tell anon. Darrell they named him, for an ancestor Whose bones were whitening in Holy Land, The other Richard; a crusader name, Yet it was Darrell had the lion-heart. No love and little liking served this pair, In look and word unpaired as white and black— Ofonce rich bough the last unlucky fruit. The one, for straightness like a Norland pine Set on some precipice's perilous edge, Intrepid, handsome, little past blown youth, Of all pure thought and brave deed amorous, Moulded the court's high atmosphere to breathe, Yet liking well the camp's more liberal air— Poet, soldier, courtier, 't was the mode; Theother—as a glow-worm to a star—
Suspicious, morbid, passionate, self-involved, The soul half eaten out with solitude, Corroded, like a sword-blade left in sheath Asleep and lost to action—in a word, A misanthrope, a miser, a soured man, One fortune loved not and looked at askance. Yet he a pleasant outward semblance had. Say what you will, and paint things as you may, The devil is not black, with horn and hoof, Asgossips picture him: he is a person Quite scrupulous of doublet and demeanor, As was this Master Wyndham of The Towers, Now latterly in most unhappy case, Becauseof matters to be here set forth.
A thing of not much moment, as life goes, A thing a man with some philosophy Had idly brushed aside, as 't were a gnat That winged itself between him and the light, Had, through the crooked working of his mind, Brought Wyndham to a very grievous pass. Yet 't was a grapestone choked Anacreon And hushed his song. There is no little thing In nature: in a raindrop's compass lie A planet's elements. This Wyndham's woe Was one Griselda, daughter to a man Of Bideford, a shipman once, but since Turnedsoldier; now in white-haired, wrinkled age Sitting beneath the olive, valiant still, With sword on nail above the chimney-shelf In case the Queen should need its edge again. An officer he was, though lowly born. The man aforetime, in the Netherlands And through those ever-famous French campaigns (Marry, in what wars bore he not a hand?) InRawdon Wyndham's troop of horse had served, Andwhen he fell that day by Calais wall Had from the Frenchmen's pikes his body snatched, And so much saved of him, which was not much, The good knight being dead. For this deed's sake, That did enlarge itself in sorrow's eye, Thewidow deemed all guerdon all too small, And held her dear lord's servant and his girl, Born later, when that clash of steel was done, As her own kin, till she herself was laid I' the earth and sainted elsewhere. The two sons Let cool the friendship: one in foreign parts Did gold and honor seek; at hall stayed one, The heir, and now of old friends negligent: Thus fortune hardens the ignoble heart. Griselda even as a little maid, Demure, but with more crotchets in the brain, I warrant ye, than minutes to the hour, Hadthis one much misliked; in her child-thought Confused him somehow with those cruel shapes Of iron men that up there at The Towers Quickened her pulse. For he was gaunt, his face, Mature beyond the logic of his years, Had in it something sinister and grim,
Liketo the visage pregnant fancy saw Behind the bars of each disused casque In that east chamber where the harness hung And dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace— At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt, That other on the sands of Palestine: A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son. Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow Killing the doves in very wantonness— The gentle doves that to the ramparts came For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill. Eachwell-sent dart that stained a snowy breast Straight to her own white-budding bosom went. Fledwere those summers now, and she had passed Out of the child-world of vain fantasy Where many a rainbow castle lay in ruin; But to her mind, like wine-stain to a flask, The old distrust still clung, indelible, Holding her in her maidhood's serious prime Well pleased from his cold eyes to move apart, And in her humble fortunes dwell secure. Indeed, what was she?—a poor soldier's girl, Merely a tenant's daughter. Times were changed, And life's bright web had sadder colors in 't: That most sweet gentle lady—rest her soul!— Shrunk to an epitaph beside her lord's, And six lines shorter, which was all a shame; Gaunt Richard heir; that other at earth's end, (The younger son that was her sweetheart once,) Fighting the Spaniards, getting slain perchance; And all dear old-time uses quite forgot. Slowly, unnoted, like the creeping rust That spreads insidious, had estrangement come, Until at last, one knew not how it fell, And little cared, if sober truth were said, She and the father no more climbed the hill ToTwelfth Night festival or May-day dance, Nor commerce had with any at The Towers. Yet in a formless, misty sort of way The girl had place in Wyndham's mind—the girl, Why, yes, beshrew him! it was even she Whom his soft mother had made favorite of, And well-nigh spoiled, some dozen summers gone.
Perhaps because dull custom made her tame, Or that she was not comely in the bud, Hersweetness halting like a tardy May That wraps itself in mist, and seems not fair, For this or finer reason undivined, His thought she touched not, and was glad withal When she did note how others took his eye And wore rue after. Thus was her white peace Undarkened till, it so befell, these two Meeting as they a hundred times had met On hill-path or at crossing of the weir, Her beauty broke on him like some rare flower That was not yesterday. Ev'n so the Spring Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts
Linger in hollows, long on bough and briar No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth Is nought but scent and bloom. So unto him Griselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his wit That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem, Nor hint had of the flower within the bud? If so much beauty had a tiger been, 'T had eaten him! In all the wave-washed length Of rocky Devon where was found her like For excellence of wedded red and white? Here on that smooth and sunny field, her cheek, The hostile hues of Lancaster and York Did meet, and, blending, make a heavenly truce, This were indeed a rose a king might wear Upon his bosom. By St. Dunstan, now, Himself would wear it. Then by seeming chance Crossed he her walks, and stayed her with discourse Devised adroitly; spoke of common things At first—of days when his good mother lived, If 't were to live, to pass long dolorous hours Before his father's effigy in church; Of one who then used often come to hall, Ever at Yule-tide, when the great log flamed In chimney-place, and laugh and jest went round, And maidens strayed beneath the mistletoe, Making believe not see it, so got kissed— Of one that joined not in the morrice-dance, But in her sea-green kirtle stood at gaze, A timid little creature that was scared By dead men's armor. Nought there suffered change, Those empty shells of valor grew not old, Though something rusty. Would they fright her now Looked she upon them? Held she in her mind— 'T was Spring and loud the mavis piped outside— Theday the Turkish helmet slipped from peg, And clashing on the floor, congealed her blood And sent both hands to terror-smitten eyes, Shetrembling, ready to yield up the ghost? Right merry was it! Finally he touched On matters nearer, things she had foreboded And this one time must needs lend hearing to, And end so sorry business ere woe came, Like a true maid and honest, as she was. So, tutoring the tremble on her lip Andholding back hot tears, she gave reply With such discretion as straight tied his tongue, Albeit he lacked not boldness in discourse:
"Indeed,indeed, sir, you speak but in jest! Lightly, not meaning it, in courtier-way. I have heard said that ladies at the Court— I judge them not!—have most forgiving ears, And list right willingly to idle words, Listen and smile and never stain a cheek. Yet not such words your father's son should use With me, my father's daughter. You forget What should most precious be to memory's heart, Lovethat dared death; and so, farewell." Farewell
It was in sooth; for after that one time, Though he had fain with passion-breathed vows Besieged that marble citadel her breast, He got no speech of her: she chose her walks; Let only moon and star look on the face That could well risk the candor of the sun; Ran not to lattice at each sound of hoof; By stream or hedge-row plucked no pansies more, Mistrusting Proserpina's cruel fate, Herself up-gathered in Sicilian fields; At chapel—for one needs to chapel go A-Sunday—glanced not either right or left, But with black eyelash wedded to white cheek Knelt there impassive, like the marble girl That at the foot-end of his father's tomb, Inside the chancel where the Wyndhams lay, Through the long years her icy vigil kept.
As leaves turn into flame at the frost's touch, So Richard's heart on coldness fed its fire, And burned with surfeit of indifference. All flavor and complexion of content Went out of life; what served once served no more. His hound and falcon ceased to pleasure him; He read—some musty folios there were On shelf—but even in brave Froissart's page, Where, God knows, there be wounds enough, no herb Nor potion found he to purge sadness with. Thegray dust gathered on the leaf unturned, And then the spider drew his thread across. Certain bright coins that he was used to count With thrill at fingers' ends uncounted lay, Suddenly worthless, like the conjurer's gold That midst the jeers and laughter of the crowd Turns into ashes in the rustic's hand. Soft idleness itself bore now a thorn Two-pronged with meditation and desire. The cold Griselda that would none of him! The fair Griselda! Not alone by day, With this most solid earth beneath his feet, But in the weird and unsubstantial sphere Ofslumber did her beauty hold him thrall. Herself of late he saw not; 't was a wraith He worshipped, a vain shadow. Thus he pined From dawn to dusk, and then from dusk to dawn, Of that miraculous infection caught From any-colored eyes, so they be sweet. Strange that a man should let a maid's slim foot Stamp on his happiness and quench it quite!
With what snail-pace the traitor time creeps by Whenone is out with fortune and undone! how tauntingly upon the dial's plate The shadow's finger points the dismal hour! Thus Wyndham, with hands clasped behind his back, Watching the languid and reluctant sun Fade from the metal disk beside the door. Thehours hung heavy up there on the hill, Where life was little various at best
And merriment had long since ta'en its flight. Sometimes he sat and conned the flying clouds Till on dusk's bosom nestled her one star, And spoke no word, nor seemed alive at all, But a mere shape and counterfeit of life; Or, urged by some swift hunger for green boughs, Would bid the hound to heel, and disappear Into the forest, with himself communing For lack of gossip. So do lonely men Make themselves tedious to their tedious selves. Thus passed he once in a white blaze of noon Under his oaks, and muttered as he went:
"'My father's daughter' and 'your father's son'! Faith, but it was a shrewd and nimble phrase, And left me with no fitting word at tongue. The wench hath wit and matter of her own, And beauty, that doth seldom mate with wit, Nature hath painted her a proper brown— A russet-colored wench that knows her worth. And mincing, too—should have her ruff propt up With supertasses, like a dame at Court, And go in cloth-of-gold. I'll get a suit OfGenoa velvet, and so take her eye. Has she a heart? The ladies of Whitehall Arenot so skittish, else does Darrell lie Most villainously. Often hath he said The art of blushing 's a lost art at Court. If so, good riddance! This one here lets love Play beggar to her prudery, and starve, Feeding him ever on looks turned aside. To be so young, so fair, and wise withal! Lets love starve? Nay, I think starves merely me. For when was ever woman logical Both day and night-time? Not since Adam fell! I doubt a lover somewhere. What shrewd bee Hath buzzed betimes about this clover-top? Belike some scrivener's clerk at Bideford, Withlong goose-quill and inkhorn at his thigh— Methinks I see the parchment face of him; Or one of those swashbuckler Devon lads That haunt the inn there, with red Spanish gold, Rank scurvy knaves, ripe fruit for gallows-tree; Or else the sexton's son"—here Wyndham laughed, Though not a man of mirth—indeed, a man Of niggard humor; but that sexton's son— Lean as the shadow cast by a church spire, Eyes deep in the sockets, noseless, high cheek-boned, Like nothing in the circle of this earth But a death's-head that from a mural slab Within the chancel leers through sermon-time, Making a mock of poor mortality. The fancy touched him, and he laughed a laugh That from his noonday slumber roused an owl Snug in his oaken hermitage hard by. A very rare conceit—the sexton's son!
Not he, forsooth; he smacked of churchyard mould And musty odors of moth-eaten palls—
A living death, a walking epitaph! No lover that for tingling flesh and blood To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with. Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon Time would unshell him. In the interim Whatwas to do but wait, and mark who strolled Of evenings up the hill-path and made halt This side the coppice at a certain gate? For by that chance which ever serves ill ends, Withinthe slanted shadow of The Towers The maid Griselda dwelt. Her gray scarred sire Had for cloth doublet changed the steel cuirass, The sword for gardener's fork, and so henceforth In the mild autumn and sundown of life, Moving erect among his curves and squares Of lily, rose, and purple flower-de-luce, Set none but harmless squadrons in the field— Save now and then at tavern, where he posed, Tankard in hand and prattling of old days, A white-mustached epitome of wars.
How runs the proverb touching him who waits? Who waits shall have the world. Time's heir is he, Be he but patient. Thus the thing befell Wherefrom grew all this history of woe: Haunting the grounds one night, as his use was Who loved the dark as bats and owlets do, Wyndham got sound of voices in the air That did such strange and goblin changes ring Asleft him doubtful whence the murmurs came, Now here, now there, as they were winged things— Such trick plays Echo upon hapless wight Chance-caught in lonely places where she dwells, Anon a laugh rang out, melodious, Likethe merle's note when its ecstatic heart Ispacked with summer-time; then all was still— So still the soul of silence seemed to grieve The loss of that sweet laughter. In his tracks The man stopped short, and listened. As he leaned And craned his neck, and peered into the gloom, And would the fabulous hundred eyes were his That Argus in the Grecian legend had, He saw two figures moving through a drift Of moonlight that lay stretched across the lawn: A man's tall shape, a slim shape close at side, Her palm in tender fashion pressed to his, The woven snood about her shoulders fallen, And from the sombre midnight of her hair Anardent face out-looking like a star— As in a vision saw he this, for straight They vanished. Where those silvery shadows were Was nothing. Had he dreamed it? Had he gone Mad with much thinking on her, and so made Ghosts of his own sick fancies? Like a man Carved out of alabaster and set up Within a woodland, he stood rooted there, Glimmering wanly under pendent boughs. Spell-bound he stood, in very woeful plight, Bewildered; and then presently with shock
Of rapid pulses hammering at heart, As mad besiegers hammer at a gate, To life came back, and turned on heel to fly From that accursed spot and all that was, When once more the girl's laugh made rich the night, And melted, and the silence grieved anew. Like lead his feet were, and he needs must halt. Close upon this, but further off, a voice From somewhere—Echo at her trick again!— Took up the rhyme of Sweetheart, sigh no more. It was with doubt and trembling I whispered in her ear. Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough, That all the world may hear— Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat, Upon the wayside tree, How fair she is, how true she is, How dear she is to me— Sweetheart sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat, And through the summer long The winds among the clover-tops, Andbrooks, for all their silvery stops, Shall envy you the song— Sweetheart, sigh no more. 'T is said the Malays have an arrow steeped In some strange drug whose subtile properties Are such that if the point but prick the skin Death stays there. Like to that fell cruel shaft This slender rhyme was. Through the purple dark Straight home it sped, and into Wyndham's veins Its drop of sudden poison did distill. Now no sound was, save when a dry twig snapped And rustled softly down from branch to branch, Or on its pebbly shoals the meagre brook Made intermittent murmur. "So, 't is he!" Thus Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyes Dilating in the darkness, "Darrell—he! I set my springe for other game than this; Ofhare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf. His frequent visitations have of late Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself. A proper man, a very proper man! A fellow that burns Trinidado leaf And sends smoke through his nostril like a flue! A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts— A murrain on him! Would Elizabeth In some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower— Ay, through the Traitor's Gate. Would he were dead. Within the year what worthy men have died, Persons of substance, civic ornaments, And here 's this gilt court-butterfly on wing! O thou most potent lightning in the cloud, Prick me this fellow from the face of earth!
Iwould the Moors had got him in Algiers What time he harried them on land and sea, Anddone their will with scimitar or cord Or flame of fagot, and so made an end; Or that some shot from petronel or bow Had winged him in the folly of his flight. Well had it been if the Inquisitors, With rack and screw, had laid black claw on him!" In days whose chronicle is writ in blood The richest ever flowed in English veins Some foul mischance in this sort might have been; For at dark Fortune's feet had Darrell flung In his youth's flower a daring gauntlet down.
A beardless stripling, at that solemn hour When, breaking its frail filaments of clay, The mother's spirit soared invisible, Theyounger son, unhoused as well he knew, Had taken horse by night to London town, Withright sore heart and nought else in his scrip But boyish hope to footing find at Court— A page's place, belike, with some great lord, Or some small lord, that other proving shy Ofmerit that had not yet clipt its shell. Day after day, in weather foul or fair, Withlackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Readingmen's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw But that he caught the age's malady, The something magical that was in air, And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods— Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, Oxenham, And set them stars in the fore-front of Time. In fine, young Darrell drew of that same air A valiant breath, and shipped with Francis Drake, OfTavistock, to sail the Spanish seas And teach the heathen manners, with God's aid; And so, among lean Papists and black Moors, He, with the din of battle in his ears, Struck fortune. Who would tamely bide at home At beck and call of some proud swollen lord Not worth his biscuit, or at Beauty's feet Sit making sonnets, when was work to do Out yonder, sinking Philip's caravels At sea, and then by way of episode Setting quick torch* to pirate-nests ashore? * Sir Francis Drake called this "singeing the King of Spayne's beard." Brave sport to singe the beard o' the King of Spain! Brave sport, but in the end dreamed he of home— Of where the trout-brook lisped among the reeds, Of great chalk cliffs and leagues of yellow gorse, Of peaceful lanes, of London's roaring streets,