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Page 41
We devoured our meal of cold meats and pickled fish, fruit and junket
and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious
was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my
host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the
dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to,
bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would
overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a
cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down
would drop his chin over his plate, and away go finger and spoon among
his victuals in a dance as brisk and whole-hearted as the other.
He took me out again into his garden after supper, and we walked
beneath the trees.
"'Tis bliss to be a bachelor, sir," he said, gazing on the resinous
trunk of an old damson tree. "I gorge, I guzzle; I am merry, am
melancholy; studious, harmonical, drowsy,--and none to scold
or deny me. For the rest, why, youth is vain: yet youth had
pleasure--innocence and delight. I chew the cud of many a peaceful
acre. Ay, I have nibbled roses in my time. But now, what now? I have
lived so long far from courts and courtesy, grace and fashion, and am
so much my own close and indifferent friend--Why! he is happy who has
solitude for housemate, company for guest. I say it, I say it; I marry
daily wives of memory's fashioning, and dream at peace."
It seemed an old bone he picked with Destiny.
"There's much to be said," I replied as profoundly as I could.
The air he now lulled youth asleep with was a very cheerless
threnody, but he brightened once more at praise of his delightful
orchard.
"You like it, sir? You speak kindly, sir. It is my all; root and
branch: how many a summer's moons have I seen shine hereon! I know
it--there is bliss to come;--miraculous Paradise for men even dull as
I. Yet 'twill be strange to me--without my house and orchard. Age
tends to earth, sir, till even an odour may awake the dead--a branch
in the air call with its fluttering a face beyond Time to vanquish
dear. 'Soul, soul,' I cry, 'forget thy dust, forget thy vaunting
ashes!'--and speak in vain. So's life!"
And when we had gone in again, and candles had been lit in his fresh
and narrow chamber, seeing a viol upon a chest, I begged a little
music.
He quite eagerly, with a boyish peal of laughter, complied; and sat
down with a very solemn face, his brows uplifted, and sang between the
candles to a pathetic air this doggerel:--
There's a dark tree and a sad tree,
Where sweet Alice waits, unheeded,
For her lover long-time absent,
Plucking rushes by the river.
Let the bird sing, let the buck sport,
Let the sun sink to his setting;
Not one star that stands in darkness
Shines upon her absent lover.
But his stone lies 'neath the dark tree,
Cold to bosom, deaf to weeping;
And 'tis gathering moss she touches,
Where the locks lay of her lover.
"A dolesome thing," he said; "but my mother was wont to sing it to the
virginals. 'Cold to bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I
remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And
then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles,
into this ingenuous ditty:
The goodman said,
"'Tis time for bed,
Come, mistress, get us quick to pray;
Call in the maids
From out the glades
Where they with lovers stray,
With love, and love do stray."
"Nay, master mine,
The night is fine,
And time's enough all dark to pray;
'Tis April buds
Bedeck the woods
Where simple maids away
With love, and love do stray.
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