The Line of Love; Dizain des Mariages, James Branch Cabell [most important books of all time txt] 📗

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 God 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 assured 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 fag-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 goddess' 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 assent. "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."

"And she hath commended me to her children as a very gallant gentleman and a true knight," Sir John went on, reflectively. He cast his eyes toward the ceiling, and grinned at invisible deities. "Jove that sees all hath a goodly commodity of mirth; I doubt not his sides ache at times, as if they had conceived another wine-god."

"Yet, by my honor," he insisted to the fire; then added, apologetically,—"if I had any, which, to speak plain, I have not,—I am glad; it is a brave jest; and I did love her once."

Then the time-battered, bloat rogue picked out another paper, and read:

"'My dear lady,—That I am not with thee to-night is, indeed, no fault of mine; for Sir Thomas Mowbray hath need of me, he saith. Yet the service that I have rendered him thus far is but to cool my heels in his antechamber and dream of two great eyes and of that net of golden hair wherewith Lord Love hath lately snared my poor heart. For it comforts me—' And so on, and so on, the pen trailing most juvenal sugar, like a fly newly crept out of the honey-pot. And ending with a posy, filched, I warrant you, from some ring.

"I remember when I did write her this," he explained to the fire. "Lord, Lord, if the fire of grace were not quite out of me, now should I be moved. For I did write it; and it was sent with a sonnet, all of Hell, and Heaven, and your pagan gods, and other tricks of speech. It should be somewhere."

He fumbled with uncertain fingers among the papers. "Ah, here it is," he said at last, and he again began to read aloud.

Read Sir John:

  "Cupid invaded Hell, and boldly drove
  Before him all the hosts of Erebus,
  Till he had conquered: and grim Cerberus
  Sang madrigals, the Furies rhymed of love,
  Old Charon sighed, and sonnets rang above
  The gloomy Styx; and even as Tantalus
  Was Proserpine discrowned in Tartarus,
  And Cupid regnant in the place thereof.

  "Thus Love is monarch throughout Hell to-day;
  In Heaven we know his power was always great;
  And Earth acclaimed Love's mastery straightway
  When Sylvia came to gladden Earth's estate:—
  Thus Hell and Heaven and Earth his rule obey,
  And Sylvia's heart alone is obdurate.

"Well, well," sighed Sir John, "it was a goodly rogue that writ it, though the verse runs but lamely! A goodly rogue!

"He might," Sir John suggested, tentatively, "have lived cleanly, and forsworn sack; he might have been a gallant gentleman, and begotten grandchildren, and had a quiet nook at the ingleside to rest his old bones: but he is dead long since. He might have writ himself armigero in many a bill, or obligation, or quittance, or what not; he might have left something behind him save unpaid tavern bills; he might have heard cases, harried poachers, and quoted old saws; and slept in his own family chapel through sermons yet unwrit, beneath his presentment, done in stone, and a comforting bit of Latin: but he is dead long since."

Sir John sat meditating for a while; it had grown quite dark in the room as he muttered to himself. He rose now, rather cumbrously and uncertainly, but with a fine rousing snort of indignation.

"Zooks!" he said, "I prate like a death's-head. A thing done hath an end,
God have mercy on us all! And I will read no more of the rubbish."

He cast the packet into the heart of the fire; the yellow papers curled at the edges, rustled a little, and blazed; he watched them burn to the last spark.

"A cup of sack to purge the brain!" cried Sir John, and filled one to the brim. "And I will go sup with Doll Tearsheet."

* * * * *

SEPTEMBER 29, 1422

"Anoon her herte hath pitee of his wo, And with that pitee, love com in also; Thus is this quene in pleasaunce and in loye."

_Meanwhile had old Dome Sylvia returned contentedly to the helpmate whom she had accepted under compulsion, and who had made her a fair husband, as husbands go. It is duly recorded, indeed, on their shared tomb, that their forty years of married life were of continuous felicity, and set a pattern to all Norfolk. The more prosaic verbal tradition is that Lady Vernon retained Sir Robert well in hand by pointing out, at judicious intervals, that she had only herself to blame for having married such a selfish person in preference to a hero of the age and an ornament of the loftiest circles.

I find, on consultation of the Allonby records, that Sylvia Vernon died of a quinsy, in 1419, surviving Sir Robert by some three months. She had borne him four sons and four daughters: of these there remained at Winstead in 1422 only Sir Hugh Vernon, the oldest son, knighted by Henry V at Agincourt, where Vernon had fought with distinction; and Adelais Vernon, the youngest daughter, with whom the following has to do._

CHAPTER IV

The Episode Called "Sweet Adelais"

1. Gruntings at Aeaea

It was on a clear September day that the Marquis of Falmouth set out for France. John of Bedford had summoned him posthaste when Henry V was stricken at Senlis with what bid fair to prove a mortal distemper; for the marquis was Bedford's comrade-in-arms, veteran of Shrewsbury, Agincourt and other martial disputations, and the Duke-Regent suspected that, to hold France in case of the King's death, he