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Page 42
"Now we are old,
And nigh the mould,
'Tis meet on feeble knees to pray;
When once we'd roam,
'Twas else cried, 'Come,
And sigh the dusk away,
With love, and love to stray.'"
So they gat in
To pray till nine;
Then called, "Come maids, true maids, away!
Kiss and begone,
Ha' done, ha' done,
Until another day
With love, and love to stray!"
Oh, it were best
If so to rest
Went man and maid in peace away!
The throes a heart
May make to smart
Unless love have his way,
In April woods to stray!--
In April woods to stray!
And that finished with another burst of laughter, he set very adroitly
to the mimicry of beasts and birds upon his frets. Never have I seen
a face so consummately the action's. His every fibre answered to the
call; his eyebrows twitched like an orator's; his very nose was
plastic.
"Hst!" he cried softly; "hither struts chanticleer!"
"Cock-a-diddle-doo!" crowed the wire. "Now, prithee, Dame Partlett!"
and down bustled a hen from an egg like cinnamon. A cat with kittens
mewed along the string, anxious and tender.
"A woodpecker," he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye
on me. And lo, "inviolable quietness" and the smooth beech-boughs!
"And thus," he said, sitting closer, "the martlets were wont to
whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle of
Macbeth."
"Macbeth!" I repeated--"Macbeth!"
"Ay," he said, "it was his seat while yet a simple soldier--flocks and
flocks of them, wheeling hither, thither, in the evening air, crying
and calling."
I listened in a kind of confusion. "... And Duncan," I said....
He eyed me with immense pleasure, and nodded with brilliant eyes on
mine.
"What looking man was he?" I said at last as carelessly as I dared.
"... The King, you mean,--of Scotland."
He magnanimously ignored my confusion, and paused to build his
sentence.
"'Duncan'?" he said. "The question calls him straight to mind. A
lean-locked, womanish countenance; sickly, yet never sick; timid, yet
most obdurate; more sly than politic. An _ignis fatuus_, sir, in a
world of soldiers." His eye wandered.... "'Twas a marvellous sanative
air, crisp and pure; but for him, one draught and outer darkness. I
myself viewed his royal entry from the gallery--pacing urbane to
slaughter; and I uttered a sigh to see him. 'Why, sir, do you sigh to
see the king?' cried one softly that stood by. 'I sigh, my lord,' I
answered to the instant, 'at sight of a monarch even Duncan's match!'"
He looked his wildest astonishment at me.
"Not, I'd have you remember--not that 'twas blood I did foresee.... To
kill in blood a man, and he a king, so near to natural death ...
foul, foul!"
"And Macbeth?" I said presently--"Macbeth...?"
He laid down his viol with prolonged care.
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