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Page 1
He was a large man of florid good looks, black eyes, and full habit of
body, and had been much renowned in his youth for his great strength,
which was indeed almost that of a giant, and for his deeds of prowess in
the saddle and at the table when the bottle went round. There were many
evil stories of his roysterings, but it was not his way to think of them
as evil, but rather to his credit as a man of the world, for, when he
heard that they were gossiped about, he greeted the information with a
loud triumphant laugh. He had married, when she was fifteen, the
blooming toast of the county, for whom his passion had long died out,
having indeed departed with the honeymoon, which had been of the
briefest, and afterwards he having borne her a grudge for what he chose
to consider her undutiful conduct. This grudge was founded on the fact
that, though she had presented him each year since their marriage with a
child, after nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was
bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his
offspring an ill turn done him.
He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle
creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her
lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another
sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce
remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was
certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view,
and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was shortening a stirrup and
being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by accident cast his eye upward to
a chamber window peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he
saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look down upon him as if
searching for him with a purpose.
He uttered an exclamation of anger.
"Damnation! Mother Posset again," he said. "What does she there, old
frump?"
The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an
unheard-of thing happened--among the servants in the hall, the same old
woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she
descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on
his black horse.
"The Devil!" he exclaimed--"what are you here for? 'Tis not time for
another wench upstairs, surely?"
"'Tis not time," answered the old nurse acidly, taking her tone from his
own. "But there is one, but an hour old, and my lady--"
"Be damned to her!" quoth Sir Jeoffry savagely. "A ninth one--and 'tis
nine too many. 'Tis more than man can bear. She does it but to spite
me."
"'Tis ill treatment for a gentleman who wants an heir," the old woman
answered, as disrespectful of his spouse as he was, being a time-serving
crone, and knowing that it paid but poorly to coddle women who did not as
their husbands would have them in the way of offspring. "It should have
been a fine boy, but it is not, and my lady--"
"Damn her puling tricks!" said Sir Jeoffry again, pulling at his horse's
bit until the beast reared.
"She would not let me rest until I came to you," said the nurse
resentfully. "She would have you told that she felt strangely, and
before you went forth would have a word with you."
"I cannot come, and am not in the mood for it if I could," was his
answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time she
hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she--but nine is
more than I have patience for."
"She is light-headed, mayhap," said the nurse. "She lieth huddled in a
heap, staring and muttering, and she would leave me no peace till I
promised to say to you, 'For the sake of poor little Daphne, whom you
will sure remember.' She pinched my hand and said it again and again."
Sir Jeoffry dragged at his horse's mouth and swore again.
"She was fifteen then, and had not given me nine yellow-faced wenches,"
he said. "Tell her I had gone a-hunting and you were too late;" and he
struck his big black beast with the whip, and it bounded away with him,
hounds and huntsmen and fellow-roysterers galloping after, his guests,
who had caught at the reason of his wrath, grinning as they rode.
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