AN OLD TALE RETOLD

From the terrace here, where the hills indent, You can see the uttermost battlement Of the castle there: the Clifford's home Where the seasons go and the seasons come And never a footstep else doth fall Save the prowling fox's; the ancient hall Echoes no voice save the owlet's call: Its turret chambers are homes for the bat; And its courts are tangled and wild to see; And where in the cellar was once the rat, The viper and toad move stealthily. Long years have passed since the place was burned, And he sailed to the wars in France and earned The name that he bears of the bold and true On his tomb.—Long years, since my lord, Sir Hugh, Lived, and I was his favorite page, And the thing then happened; and he of an age When a man will love and be loved again, Or off to the wars or a monastery; Or toil till he deaden his heart's hard pain; Or drink and forget it and finally bury. I was his page. And often we fared Through the Clare demesne, in autumn, hawking— If the Baron had known, how they would have glared, 'Neath their bushy brows, those eyes of mocking!— That last of the Strongbows, Richard, I mean— And growling some six of his henchmen lean To mount and after this Clifford and hang With his crop-eared page to the nearest oak, How he would have cursed us while he spoke! For Clare and Clifford had ever a fang In the other's side.... And I hear the clang Of his rage in the hall when the hawker told— If he told!—how we met on the autumn wold His daughter, sweet Clara of Clare, the day Her hooded tiercel its brails did burst, And trailing its jesses, came flying our way— An untrained haggard the falconer cursed While he tried to secure:—as the eyas flew Slant, low and heavily over us, Hugh,— Who saw it coming, and had just then cast His peregrine hawk at a heron quarry,— In his saddle rising thus, as it passed By the jesses caught, and to her did carry, Where she stood near the wood. Her face flushed rose With the glad of the meeting.—No two foes Her eyes and my lord's, I swear, who saw 'Twas love from the start.—And I heard him speak; Dismount, then kneel—and the sombre shaw, With the sad of the autumn waste and bleak, Grew spring with her smile, as the hawk she took On her slender wrist, where it pruned and shook Its callowness. Then I saw him seize The hand that she reached to him, long and white, As she smilingly bade him rise from his knees— When he kissed her fingers her eyes grew bright. But her cheeks were pallid when, lashing through The thicket there, his face a-flare With the sting of the wind, and his gipsy hair Flying, the falconer came, and two Or three of the people of Castle Clare. And the leaves of the autumn made a frame For the picture there in the morning's flame. What was said in that moment I do not know, That moment of meeting between those lovers: Whatever it was, 'twas whispered low, Soft as a leaf that swings and hovers, A twinkling gold, when the woods are yellow. And her face with the joy was still aglow When out of the wood that burly fellow Came with his frown, and made a pause In the pulse of their words.—My lord, Sir Hugh, Stood with the soil on his knee. No cause Had he, but his hanger he partly drew, Then clapped it sharp in its sheath again, And bowed to my lady, and strode away; And vaulting his horse, with a loosened rein Rode with a song in his heart all day. He loved and was loved, I knew; for, look! All other sports for the chase he forsook. And strange that he never went to hawk, Or hunt, but Clara would meet him there In the Strongbow forest!—I know the rock, With its ferns and its moss, by the bramble lair, Where oft and often he met—by chance, Shall I say?—the daughter of Clare; as fair Of face as a queen in an old romance, Who waits expectant and pale; her hair Night-deep; and eyes dove-gray with dreams;— By the fountain-side where the statue gleams And the moonbeam lolls in the lily white,— For her knightly lover who comes at night. Heigh-ho! they ceased, those meetings. I wot, Betrayed to the Baron by some of his crew Of menials who followed and saw and knew. For she loved too well to have once forgot The time and the place of their trysting true. "Why and when?" would ask Sir Hugh In the labored letters he used to lock —The lovers' post—in a coigne of that rock. She used to answer, but now did not. But, nearing Yule, love gat them again A twilight tryst—through frowardness sure!— They met. And the day was gray with rain, And snow: and the wind did ever endure A long bleak moaning through the wood, That chapped i' the cheek and smarted the blood; And a burne in the forest went throb and throb, And over it all was the wild-beast sob Of the rushing boughs like a thing pursued. And then it was that he learned how she, (God's blood! how it makes my old limbs quiver To think what a miserable tyrant he— The Baron Richard—aye and ever To his daughter was!) forsooth! must wed With an eastern earl—a Lovell: to whom (Would God o' His mercy had struck him dead!) Clara of Clare when merely a child,— With a face like a flower, that blows in the wild Of the hills, and a soul like its soft perfume,— Was given—say, sealed—to strengthen some ties Of power and wealth—say bartered, then, Like the veriest chattel. With tearful eyes And lips a-tremble she spoke. And when My lord, her lover, had learned and heard,— He'd have had her flee with him then, 'sdeath! In spite of them all! Let her say the word, They would fly together: the baron's men Might follow; and if ... and he touched his sword— It should answer! But she, while she seemed to stay, With a hand on her bosom, her heart's quick breath, Replied to his heat: "They would take and slay Thee who art life of my life!—Not thus Will we fly!—There's another way for us; A way that is sure; an only way; I have thought on it this many a day."— The words that she spake how well I remember! As well as the mood o' that day of December, That bullied and blustered and seemed in league, Like a spiteful shrew, with the wind and the snow, To drown the words of their sweet intrigue, With the boom of the boughs tossed to and fro, That the storm swept through with its wild-beast low. Her last words these, "By curfew sure, On Christmas eve, at the postern door." And we were there; with a led horse too; Armed for a journey—I hardly knew Whither, but why, you well may guess. For often he whispered a certain name, The talisman dear of his happiness, That warmed his blood like a Yule-log's flame. While we waited there, till its owner came, We saw how the castle's baronial girth, Like a giant's, loosed for revelling more, Shone; and we heard the wassail and mirth Where the mistletoe hung in the hearth's red roar, And the holly brightened the weaponed wall Of carven oak in the banqueting hall. And the spits, I trow, by the scullions turned O'er the snoring logs, rich steamed and burned, Where the whole wild-boar and the deer were roasted, And the half of an ox and the roe-buck's haunches; While tuns of ale, that the cellars boasted, And casks of sack, were broached for paunches Of vassals who revelled in stable and hall. The song of the minstrel; the yeomen's quarrel O'er the dice and the drink; and the huntsman's bawl In the baying kennels, its hounds a-snarl O'er the bones of the feast; now loud, now low, We could hear where we crouched in the drifting snow. Was she long? did she come?... By the postern we Like shadows waited. My lord, Sir Hugh, Spoke, pointing a tower: "That casement, see? When a stealthy light in its slit burns blue And signals thrice slowly, thus—'tis she." And close to his breast his gaberdine drew, For the wind it whipped and the snow beat through. Did she come?—We had waited an hour or twain, When the taper flashed in the central pane, And flourished three times and vanished so. And under the arch of the postern's portal, Crouched down by the horses we stood in the snow, Stiff with the cold.—Ah, me! immortal Minutes we waited, breath-bated, and listened Shivering there in the hurl of the gale: The parapets whistled, the angles glistened, And the night around seemed one black wail Of death, whose ominous presence over The snow-swept battlements seemed to hover. Said my lord, Sir Hugh,—to himself he spoke,— "She feels for the spring in the sliding panel 'Neath the arras, hid in the carven oak. It opens. The stair, like a well's dark channel, Yawns, and the draught makes her taper slope. Wrapped deep in her mantle of fur, she puts One foot on the stair: now a listening pause As nearer and nearer the mad search draws Of the thwarted castle. No smallest hope That they find her now that the panel shuts! If the wind, that howls like a tortured thing, Would throttle itself with its cries, then I Might hear how her hurrying footsteps ring Down the secret ... there! 'tis her fingers try The postern's bolts that the rust makes cling."— But 'twas only some whim of the wind that shook A clanging ring on a creaking hook In the buttress or wall. And we waited, numb With the cold, till dawn—but she did not come. I must tell you why and have done: 'Tis said, On the eve of the marriage she fled the side Of the guests and the bridegroom there: she fled With a mischievous laugh,—"I'll hide! I'll hide! A kiss for the one who shall find!"—and led A long search after her; but defied All search for—a score and ten long years. Well, the laughter of Yule was turned to tears For them as for us. We saw the glare Of torches that hurried from chamber to stair; And we heard the castle reëcho her name, But she laughed no answer and never came, And that was the last of Clara of Clare. That winter it was, a month thereafter, That the home of the Cliffords, roof and rafter, Burned.—I could swear 'twas the Strongbow's doing, Were I sure that he knew of the Clifford's wooing His daughter; and so, by the Rood and Cross! Made a torch of Hugh's home to avenge his loss.— So over the Channel to France with his King, The Black Prince, sailed to the wars—to deaden The ache of the mystery—Hugh that spring And fell at Poitiers; for his loss lay leaden O' his heart; and his life was a weary sadness, So he flung it away in a moment's madness. And the baron died. And the bridegroom?—well, Unlucky was he in truth!—to tell Of him there is nothing.—The baron died, The last of the Strongbows he—gramercy! And the Clare estate with its wealth and pride Devolved to the Bloets, Walter and Percy. And years went by. And it happened that they Ransacked the old castle; and so, one day, In a lonesome tower uprummaged a chest, From Flanders; of ebon, and wildly carved All over with masks: a sinister crest 'Mid gargoyle faces distorted and starved: Fast-fixed with a spring, which they forced and, lo! When they opened it—Death, like a lady dressed, Grinned up at their terror!—but no, not so! Fantastic a skeleton, jeweled and wreathed With flowers of dust; and a miniver Around it clasped, that the ruin sheathed Of a once rich raiment of silk and of fur. I'd have given my life to hear him tell, The courtly Clifford, how this befell! He'd have known how it was: For, you see, in groping For the secret spring of that panel, hoping And fearing as nearer and nearer drew The search of retainers, why, out she blew The tell-tale taper; and seeing this chest, Would hide her a minute in it, mayhap, Till the hurry had passed; but the death-lock, pressed By the lid's great weight, shut down with a snap, And her life went out in the hellish trap.