Whereon the lady burst out laughing. “Oh,” she said, “you are shallow and ignorant past all conception and precedent. Why, the rosiest urchin that ever went afield upon a plow-horse has better stock of learning! In faith, I shall have to put you to school at the very beginning!”
I let the fair maid mock, for her gentle raillery was all upon her lips, and in her eyes was dawning a light it moved me much to see. We wandered away through pleasant copses, where the yellow catkins and the red were out upon the hazels, and late ivory blackthorn buds, like webs of pearls, were overhung upon those ebony-fingered bushes, and fair pale primroses shone in starry carpets under the fresh green canopy of the new-tented woods. And my fair Bess knew where the mavis built; and when I began to speak warm, and close into her ear, she would turn away her head and laugh, and, to change the matter, play traitor to the little birds and point their mossy home, and make me stoop and peer under the leaves, and in pretty excitement—but was it all absent-mindedly?—would lay a hand upon my own and be cheek to cheek with me for a moment, and then, with country pleasure, take the sapphire shells of future woodland singers in her rosy palm, and count and con them, and post me in the lore of spots and specks and hues and colors, and all the fair, incomprehensible alchemy of nature—then put those tender things back, and lead on again to more.
Pleasant is the sunshine in such circumstances! Fair Elizabeth knew all the flowers by name. She knew where the gorgeous celandine, like bright-blazoned heralds of the spring, was flashing down by the stream that ran sparkling through the woods; the underglow upon the frail anemone was not fairer than her English skin, as she did bind a bunch into her bosom-knot. She could tell the reasons of affinity between cuckoo-pint and cuckoo, and how it was that orchid-leaves came spotted, and the virtue of the blue-eyed pimpernels, and why the gently rasping tongues of the great meadow kine forswore the nodding clumps of buttercup. And she liked cowslips and made me pick them—ah! swarthy, strong, and sad-eyed me—me, with the wild alarums of battle still ringing in the ambient country air—me, to whose eyes the fleecy clouds, even as she babbled, were full of pictures of purple ambition, of red mêlée, of the sweeping yellow war-dust that canopies contending hosts—me, who heard on every sigh of the valley wind the shouting of princes and paladins, the fierce deep cry of captains and the struggling cheer that breaks from swinging ranks fast locked in deadly conflict as the foemen give.
But nothing she knew of that, and would lead from cowslip-banks back to coppice, and from coppice-path to orchard, and there mayhap, in the eye of the sun, secure from interruption we would sit—she meetly throned upon the great stem of a fallen apple-tree, whose rind was tapestried betimes for that dear country sovereign by green moss and tissued gold and silver lichens, and overhead the leaves, and at her feet the velvet cushions of the turf, and me a solitary courtier there.
A very pleasant wooing—and if you call me fickle, why should I argue it? Think of the vast years that lapsed between my lovings; think how solitary was the lovely, loveless world I was born into anew each time; think how I longed to light it with the comradeship that shines in dear eyes and hearts, how I thirsted to prejudice some sweet stranger to my favor against all others, and claim again kinship of passion for a moment with one, at least, of those dear, fickle, mocking shadows that glanced through this fitful dream of mine!
Besides, I was young—only some trivial fifteen hundred years or so had gone by since they first swaddled me and dried my mother’s tears—my limbs were full and round, my blood beat thick and fast, youth and soldier spirit shone in my undimmed eyes; not a strand of silver glanced in that beard I peaked so carefully; and if my mind was full of ancient fancies—ah! crowded with the dust and glitter of bygone ages fuller than yonder old fellow’s strange museum—why, my heart was fresh. Jove! I think it was as young as it had ever been; and that maid was fair and rosy, and kind and tender. All in the glow of her hat-brim her face shone like the ripe side of a peach; her smooth hands hung down convenient to my touch, and her head, crowned with its sweet crown of sunlit hair, was ever bent indulgent to catch my courtier whispers. What? I argued, shall the river play with no more blossoms because last year its envious fingers shook some petals down into its depth? Must the lonely hill forever frown in solitude and put by the white mist’s clinging arms, because, forsooth, some other earlier cloud once harbored on its rugged bosom? ’Twas miserly and monstrous, said my youthfulness. So, nothing forgetting and nothing diminishing of those memories that I had, I plunged into the new.
And that kind country girl played Phyllis to my new-tried Corydon as prettily as any one could wish. I will not weary you with all we did or said—the murmur of a summer brook is only good to go to sleep by—but picture us immersed in solitary conclave, or wandering about in the sweet green math of April meadows and finding the long days some six hours all too short to say the nothing that we had to. Suppose this written, and I turn to other scenes which, perhaps, shall amuse you better.
It by no means followed that because Mistress Elizabeth proved so charming, her father was neglected. That old fellow had taken me for his helper, had fed and harbored me, and something seemed owing him in return. His huge and bulky engine was growing apace; indeed, it was just upon the finishing. It was that my strong arms might second him in some final parts he had brought me hither, and, being by nature something of a smith, I helped him readily.
Each day was spent in the sunshine and flowers, then, when evening came and my fair playmate was gone to bed, I descended into old Faulkener’s crypt, and, adding one more character to the many already played, turned Vulcan. Hard and long we worked. Had you looked upon us, you would have seen, by the sullen furnace glow, two men, bare-armed and leather-aproned, toiling in that black gallery until the sweat ran trickling from them; forging, riveting, and hammering bars of iron, plying the creaking bellows until the white heart of the fire-heap was whiter than a glowworm-lamp; hurrying here and there about that glistening mountain of cunning-fashioned steel that they were building; filling their grimy den with flying dust and smoke and sparks; and thus working on and on through the long midnight hours as though their very lives depended on it, until the black curtain of the night outside faded to pallid blue, and the chirrup of the homing bats coming to sleep upon the rafters sounded pleasantly; and the furnace gave out, and tired muscles flagged, and the night’s work was over with the night!