GARNAUT HALL.
Here or hereafter? In the body here,
Or in the soul hereafter do we writhe,
Atoning for the malice of our lives?
Of the uncounted millions that have died,
Not one has slipped the napkin from his chin
And loosed the jaw to tell us: even he,
The intrepid Captain, who gave life to find
A doubtful way through clanging worlds of ice,—
A fine inquisitive spirit, you would think,
One to cross-question Fate complacently,
Less for his own sake than Science's,—
Not even he, with his rich gathered lore,
Returns from that dark journey down to death.
Here or hereafter? Only this I know,
That, whatsoever happen afterwards,
Some men do penance on this side the grave.
Thus Regnald Garnaut for his cruel heart.
Owner and lord was he of Garnaut Hall,
A relic of the Norman conquerors,—
A quaint, rook-haunted pile of masonry,
From whose top battlement, a windy height,
Regnald could view his twenty prosperous farms;
His creaking mill, that, perched upon a cliff,
With outspread wings seemed ever taking flight;
The red-roofed cottages, the high-walled park,
The noisy aviary, and, nearer by,
The snow-white Doric parsonage,—all his own.
And all his own were chests of antique plate,
Horses and hounds and falcons, curious books,
Chain-armor, helmets, Gobelin tapestry,
And half a mile of painted ancestors.
Lord of these things, he wanted one thing more,
Not having which, all else to him was dross.
For Agnes Vail, the curate's only child,—
A little Saxon wild-flower that had grown
Unheeded into beauty day by day,
And much too delicate for this rude world,—
With that intuitive wisdom of the pure,
Saw that he loved her beauty, not herself,
And shrank from him, and when he came to speech
Parried his meaning with a woman's wit,
Then sobbed an hour when she was all alone.
And Regnald's mighty vanity was hurt.
"Why, then," snarled he, "if I had asked the Queen
To pick me some fair woman from the Court,
'T were but the asking. A blind curate's girl,
It seems, is somewhat difficult,—must have,
To warm her feet, our coronet withal!"
And Agnes evermore avoided him,
Clinging more closely to the old man's side;
And in the chapel never raised an eye,
But knelt there like a medieval saint,
Her holiness her buckler and her shield,—
That, and the golden floss of her long hair.
And Regnald felt that somehow he was foiled,—
Foiled, but not beaten. He would have his way.
Had not the Garnauts always had their will
These six or seven centuries, more or less?
Meanwhile he chafed; but shortly after this
Regnald received the sorest hurt of all.
For, one eve, lounging idly in the close,
Watching the windows of the parsonage,
He heard low voices in the alder-trees,
Voices he knew, and one that sweetly said,
"Thine!" and he paused with choking heart, and saw
Eustace, his brother, and fair Agnes Vail
In the soft moonrise lingering with clasped hands.
The two passed on, and Regnald hid himself
Among the brushwood, where his vulpine eyes
Dilated in the darkness as they passed.
There, in the dark, he lay a bitter hour
Gnawing his nails, and then arose unseen
And crept away with murder in his soul.
Eustace! curse on him, with his handsome eyes!
Regnald had envied Eustace many a day,—
Envied his fame, and that exceeding grace
And courtliness which he had learned at Court
Of Sidney, Raleigh, Essex, and the rest:
For when their father, lean Sir Egbert, died,
Eustace, whose fortune dangled at his thigh,—
A Damask blade,—had hastened to the Court
To line his purse, perchance to build a name;
And catching there the passion of the time,
He, with a score of doughty Devon lads,
Sailed with bold Drake into the Spanish seas;
Returning whence, with several ugly scars,—
Which made him lovelier in women's eyes,—
And many a chest of ingots,—not the less
These latter made him lovely,—sunned himself,
Sometimes at Court, sometimes at Garnaut Hall,—
At Court, by favor of the Virgin Queen,
For great Elizabeth had smiled on him.
So Regnald, who was neither good nor brave
Nor graceful, liked not Eustace from the start,
And this night hated him. With angry brows,
He sat in a bleak chamber of the Hall,
His fingers toying with his poniard's point
Abstractedly. Three times the ancient clock,
Bolt-upright like a mummy in its case,
Doled out the hour: at length the round red moon,
Rising above the ghostly poplar-tops,
Looked in on Regnald nursing his dark thought,
Looked in on the stiff portraits on the wall,
And dead Sir Egbert's empty coat-of-mail.
A quick step sounded on the gravel-walk,
And then came Eustace, humming a sea-song,
Of how the Grace of Devon, with ten guns,
And Master Raleigh on the quarter-deck,
Bore down and tackled the great galleon,
Madre de Dios, raked her fore and aft,
And took her bullion,—singing, light at heart,
His first love's first kiss warm upon his lip.
Straight onward came young Eustace to his death!
For hidden behind the arras near the stair
Stood Regnald, like the Demon in the play,
Grasping his rapier part-way down the blade
To strike the foul blow with its heavy hilt.
Straight on came Eustace,—blithely ran the song,
"Old England's darlings are her hearts of oak."
The lights were out, and not a soul astir,
Or else the dead man's scabbard, as it clashed
Against the marble pavement when he fell,
Had brought a witness. Not a breath or sound,
Only the sad wind wailing in the tower,
Only the mastiff growling in his sleep,
Outside the gate, and pawing at his dream.
Now in a wing of that old gallery,
Hung with the relics of forgotten feuds,
A certain door, which none but Regnald knew,
Was fashioned like the panels of the wall,
And so concealed by carven grapes and flowers
A man could search for it a dozen years
And swear it was not, though his touch had been
Upon the very panel where it was.
The secret spring that opened it unclosed
An inner door of iron-studded oak,
Guarding a narrow chamber, where, perchance,
Some bygone lord of Garnaut Hall had hid
His threatened treasure, or, most like, bestowed
Some too adventurous antagonist.
Sealed in the compass of that stifling room,
A man might live, at best, but half an hour.