University of Virginia Library

Through silence, gloom, and star-strown paths of Night
The breathless hours like phantoms stole away.
Black lay the earth, in primal blackness wrapped
Ere the great miracle once more was wrought.
A chill wind freshened in the pallid East
And brought sea-smell of newly blossomed foam,
And stirred the leaves and branch-hung nests of birds.
Fainter the glow-worm's lantern glimmered now
In the marsh land and on the forest's hem,
And the slow dawn with purple laced the sky
Where sky and sea lay sharply edge to edge.
The purple melted, changed to violet,
And that to every delicate sea-shell tinge,
Blush-pink, deep cinnabar; then no change was,
Save that the air had in it sense of wings,
Till suddenly the heavens were all aflame,
And it was morning. O great miracle!
O radiance and splendor of the Throne,
Daily vouchsafed to us! Yet saith the fool,
“There is no God!” And now a level gleam,
Thrust like a spear-head through the tangled boughs,
Smote Wyndham turrets, and the spell was broke.

And one by one, on pallet stretched or floor,
The sleepers wakened; each took up afresh
His load of life; but two there were woke not,
Nor knew 't was daybreak. From the rusty nail
The gateman snatched his bunch of ancient keys,
And, yawning, vowed the sun an hour too soon;
The scullion, with face shining like his pans,
Hose down at heel and jerkin half unlaced,
On hearthstone knelt to coax the smouldering log;
The keeper fetched the yelping hounds their meat;
The hostler whistled in the stalls; anon,
With rustling skirt and slumber-freshened cheek,
The kerchief'd housemaid tripped from room to room
(Sweet Gillian, she that broke the groom his heart),
While, wroth within, behind a high-backed chair
The withered butler for his master waited,
Cursing the cook. That day the brewis spoiled.

That day came neither kinsman to break bread.
When it was seen that both had lain abroad,
The wolf-skins of their couches made that plain
As pike-staff, or the mole on Gillian's cheek,
The servants stared. Some journey called them hence;
At dead of night some messenger had come
Of secret import, may be from the Queen,
And they paused not for change of raiment even.
And yet, in faith, that were but little like;
Sir Richard had scant dealings with the Court.
Still—if Northumberland were in arms again.
'T was passing strange. No beast had gone from rack.
How had they gone, then? Who looked on them last?
Up rose the withered butler, he it was:
They supped together, of no journey spoke,
Spoke little, 't was their custom; after meal
The master's brother sallied forth alone,
The master stayed within. “That did he not,”
Quoth one, “I saw Sir Richard in the close
I' the moonrise.” “'T was eleven on the stroke,
Said Gillian softly, “he, or 't was his ghost—
Methought his face was whiter than my smock—
Passed through the courtyard, and so into house.
Yet slept he not there!” And that other one,
The guest unwelcome, kinsman little loved
(How these shrewd varlets turn us inside out
At kitchen-conclaves, over our own wine!)
Him had no eye seen since he issued forth
As curfew sounded. “Call me lying knave”—
He of the venison-pasty had the word—
“And let me nevermore dip beak in ale
Or sit at trencher with good smoking meat,
If I heard not, in middle of the night,
The cock crow thrice, and took it for a sign.”
“So, marry, 't was—that thou wert drunk again.”
But no one laughed save he that made the jest,
Which often happens. The long hours wore on,
And gloaming fell. Then came another day,
And then another, until seven dawns
In Time's slow crucible ran ruddy gold
And overflowed the gray horizon's edge;
And yet no hosts at table—an ill thing!
And now 't was on the eve of Michaelmas.

What could it bode? From out their lethargy
At last awaking, searchers in hot haste,
Some in the saddle, some afoot with hounds,
Scoured moor and woodland, dragged the neighboring weirs
And salmon-streams, and watched the wily hawk
Slip from his azure ambush overhead,
With ever a keen eye for carrion:
But no man found, nor aught that once was man.
By land they went not; went they water-ways?
Might be, from Bideford or Ilfracombe.
Mayhap they were in London, who could tell?
God help us! do men melt into the air?
Yet one there was whose dumb unlanguaged love
Had all revealed, had they but given heed.
Across the threshold of the armor-room
The savage mastiff stretched himself, and starved.

Now where lags he, upon what alehouse bench
'Twixt here and London, who shall lift this weight?
Were he not slain upon the Queen's highway
Ere he reached Town, or tumbled into ford
With too much sack-and-sugar under belt,
Then was his face set homeward this same hour.
Why lingers he? Ill news, 't is said, flies fast,
And good news creeps; then his must needs be good
That lets the tortoise pass him on the road.
Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fen
And haunted hollow! Look not where in chains
On Hounslow Heath the malefactor hangs,
A lasting terror! Give thy roan jade spur,
And spare her not! All Devon waits for thee,
Thou, for the moment, most important man!
A sevennight later, when the rider sent
To Town drew rein before The Falcon inn
Under the creaking of the windy sign,
And slipped from saddle with most valorous call
For beer to wash his throat out, then confessed
He brought no scrap of any honest news,
The last hope died, and so the quest was done.
“They fared afoot,” quoth one, “but where God knows.”

The blackthorn bloomed anew, and the long grass
Was starred with flowers that once Griselda prized,
But plucked not. She, poor wench, from moon to moon
Waxed pale and paler: of no known disease,
The village-leech averred, with lips pursed out
And cane at chin; some inward fire, he thought,
Consumed. A dark inexplicable blight
Had touched her, thinned her, till of that sweet earth
Scarce more was left than would have served to grow
A lily. Later, at a fresh-turned grave,
From out the maiden strewments, as it were,
A whisper rose, of most pathetic breath,
Of how one maid had been by two men loved—
No names, God's mercy!—and that neither man
Would wed her: why?—conjecture faltered there,
For whiter was she than new-drifted snow,
Or bleached lamb's wool, or any purest thing,
Such stuff in sooth as Heaven shapes angels of;
And how from their warm, comfortable beds
These two men wandered out into the night,
Sore stricken and distempered in their mind,
And being by Satan blinded and urged on
Flung themselves headlong from a certain crag
That up Clovelly way o'erhangs the sea—
O'erhangs the sea to tempt unhappy folk.
From door to door the piteous legend passed,
And like a thrifty beggar took from each.
And when the long autumnal season came
To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night
The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke
Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven,
And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale
Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes,
Then to low sobs and murmurs died away,
The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeks
Lit by the flickering driftwood's ruddy glow,
Drew closer to the crane, and under breath
To awestruck maidens told the fearful tale.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
'T was said that once the Queen reached out her hand—
This was at Richmond in her palace there—
And let it rest on Burleigh's velvet sleeve,
And spoke—right stately was she in her rouge:
“Prithee, good Master Cecil, tell us now
Was 't ever known what ill befell those men,
Those Wyndhams? Were they never, never found?
Look you, 't will be three years come Michaelmas:
'T were well to have at least the bones of them.
'Fore God, sir! this is something should be seen!
When the Armada, which God smote and sunk,
Threatened our Realm, our buckler and our shield
Were such stout hearts as that young Wyndham was.
The elder brother—well, Heaven made us all.
Our subjects are our subjects, mark you that.
Not found, forsooth! Why, then, they should be found!”
Fain had my good Lord Burleigh solved the thing,
And smoothed that ominous wrinkle on the brow
Of her Most Sweet Imperious Majesty.
Full many a problem his statecraft had solved—
How strangle treason, how soothe turbulent peers,
How foil the Pope and Spain, how pay the Fleet—
Mere temporal matters; but this business smelt
Strongly of brimstone. Bring back vanished folk!
That could not Master Cecil if he would.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
Dark were the days that came to Wyndham Towers
With that grim secret rusting in its heart.
On the sea's side along the fissured wall
The lichen spread in patches of dull gold
Up to the battlements, at times assailed
By sheeted ghosts of mist blown from the sea,
Now by the whistling arrows of the sleet
Pelted, and thrice of lightning scorched and seamed,
But stoutly held from dreary year to year
By legions of most venerable rooks,
Shrill black-robed prelates of the fighting sort.
In the wide moat, run dry with summer drought,
Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps,
Like bodies fallen there in some vain assault.
Within, decay and dolor had their court—
Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all.
From room to room the wind went shuddering
On some vague endless quest; now pausing here
To lift an arras, and then hurrying on,
To some fresh clue, belike! The sharp-nosed mouse
Through joist and floor discreetly gnawed her way,
And for her glossy young a lodging made
In a cracked corselet that once held a heart.
The meditative spider undisturbed
Wove his gray tapestry from sill to sill.
Over the transom the stone eagle drooped,
With one wing gone, in most dejected state
Moulting his feathers. A blue poisonous vine,
Whose lucent berry, hard as Indian jade,
No squirrel tried his tooth on, June by June
On the south hill-slope festered in the sun.
Man's foot came not there. It was haunted ground.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
An oak stood where an acorn tumbled once,
Ages ago, and all the world was strange.
Now, in that year King Charles the Second left
Forever the soft arms of Mistress Gwynn
And wrapped him in that marble where he lies,
The moulder'd pile with its entombèd Crime
Passed to the keep of a brave new-fledged lord,
Who, liking much the sane and wholesome air
That bent the boughs and fanned the turret's top,
Cried, “Here dwell I!” So fell it on a day
The stroke of mallets and the screech of saws
In those bleak chambers made such din as stopped
The careful spider half-way up his thread,
And panic sent to myriad furtive things
That dwelt in wainscots and loved not the sun.
Vainly in broken phalanx clamorous
Did the scared rooks protest, and all in vain
The moths on indolent white damask wings
At door and casement rallied. Wyndham Towers
Should have a bride, and ghosts had word to quit.

And now, behold what strange thing came to pass.
A certain workman, in the eastern wing
Plying his craft alone as the day waned—
One Gregory Nokes, a very honest soul,
By trade wood-carver—stumbled on a door
Leading to nowhere at an alcove's end,
A double door that of itself swung back
In such strange way as no man ever saw;
And there, within a closet, on the flags
Were two grim shapes which, vaguely seen at first
In the half light, grew presently distinct—
Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire imps
Straight from the Pit, in guise fantastical
Of hose and doublet: one stretched out full length
Supine, and one in terror-stricken sort
Half toppled forward on the bended knee,
Grasping with vise-like grip the other's wrist,
As who should say, Arouse thee, sleep no more!
But said it not. If they were quick or dead,
No sign they gave beyond this sad dumb show.
Blurred one face was, yet luminous, like the moon
Caught in the fleecy network of a cloud,
Or seen glassed on the surface of a tarn
When the wind crinkles it and makes all dim;
The other, drawn and wrenched by mortal throes,
And in the aspect such beseeching look
As might befall some poor wretch called to compt
On the sudden, even as he kneels at prayer,
With Mercy! turned to frost upon his lip.

Thus much saw Nokes within the closet there
Ere he drew breath; then backing step by step,
The chisel clutched in still uplifted hand,
His eyes still fixed upon the ghosts, he reached
An open window giving on the court
Where the stone-cutters were; to them he called
Softly, in whispers under his curved palm,
Lest peradventure a loud word should rouse
The phantoms; but ere foot could climb the stair,
Or the heart's pulses count the sum of ten,
Through both dread shapes, as at God's finger-touch,
A shiver ran, the wavering outlines broke,
And suddenly a chill and mist-like breath
Touched Nokes's cheek as he at casement leaned,
And nought was left of that most piteous pair
Save two long rapiers of some foreign make
Lying there crossed, a mass of flaky rust.

O luckless carver of dead images,
Saint's-head or gargoyle, thou hast seen a sight
Shall last thee to the confines of the grave!
Ill were thy stars or ever thou wert born
That thou shouldst look upon a thing forbid!
Now in thine eye shall it forever live,
And the waste solitudes of night inhabit
With direful shadows of the nether world,
Yet leave thee lonely in the throng of men—
Not of them, thou, but creature set apart
Under a ban, and doomed henceforth to know
The wise man's scorn, the dull man's sorry jest.
For who could credence give to that mad tale
Of churchyard folk appearing in broad day,
And drifting out at casement like a mist?
Marry, not they who crowded up the stair
In haste, and peered into that empty cell,
And had half mind to buffet Master Nokes,
Standing with finger laid across his palm
In argumentative, appealing way,
Distraught, of countenance most woe-begone.
“See!—the two swords. As I'm a Christian soul!”
“Odds, man!” cried one, “thou 'st been a-dreamin', man.
Cleave to thy beer, an' let strong drink alone!”

So runs the legend. So from their long sleep
Those ghosts arose and fled across the night.
But never bride came to that dark abode,
For wild flames swept it ere a month was gone,
And nothing spared but that forlorn old tower
Whereon the invisible fingers of the wind
Its fitful and mysterious dirges play.