Hither did Regnald bear his brother's corse
And set it down. Perhaps he paused to gaze
A moment on the quiet moon-lit face,
The face yet beautiful with new-told love!
Perhaps his heart misgave him,—or, perhaps——
Now, whether 't was some dark avenging Hand,
Or whether 't was some fatal freak of wind,
We may not know, but suddenly the door
Without slammed to, and there was Regnald shut
Beyond escape, for on the inner side
Was neither spring nor bolt to set him free!
Mother of Mercy! what were a whole life
Of pain and penury and conscience-smart
To that half-hour of Regnald's with his Dead?
—The joyous sun rose over the white cliffs
Of Devon, sparkled through the poplar-tops,
And broke the death-like slumber of the Hall.
The keeper fetched their breakfast to the hounds;
The smart, young ostler whistled in the stalls;
The pretty housemaid tripped from room to room;
And grave and grand behind his master's chair,
But wroth within to have the partridge spoil,
The senile butler waited for his lord.
But neither Regnald nor young Eustace came.
And when 't was found that neither slept at Hall
That night, their couches being still unpressed,
The servants stared. And as the day wore on,
And evening came, and then another day,
And yet another, till a week had gone,
The wonder spread, and riders sent in haste
Scoured the country, dragged the neighboring streams,
Tracked wayward footprints to the great chalk bluffs,
But found not Regnald, lord of Garnaut Hall.
The place that knew him knew him never more.
The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
And Agnes Vail, the little Saxon rose,
Waxed pale and paler, till the country-folk
Half guessed her fate was somehow intertwined
With that dark house. When her pure soul had passed,—
Just as a perfume floats from out the world,—
Wild tales were told of how the brothers loved
The self-same maid, whom neither one would wed
Because the other loved her as his life;
And that the two, at midnight, in despair,
From one sheer cliff plunged headlong in the sea.
And when, at night, the hoarse east-wind rose high,
Rattled the lintels, clamoring at the door,
The children huddled closer round the hearth
And whispered very softly with themselves,
"That's Master Regnald looking for his Bride!"
The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
Decay and dolor settled on the Hall.
The wind went howling in the dismal rooms,
Rustling the arras; and the wainscot-mouse
Gnawed through the mighty Garnauts on the wall,
And made a lodging for her glossy young
In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat-of-mail;
The griffon dropped from off the blazoned shield;
The stables rotted; and a poisonous vine
Stretched its rank nets across the lonely lawn.
For no one went there,—'t was a haunted spot.
A legend killed it for a kindly home,—
A grim estate, which every heir in turn
Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,
The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse.
The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
And once, 't is said, the Queen reached out her hand
And let it rest on Cecil's velvet sleeve,
And said, "I prithee, Cecil, tell us now,
Was 't ever known what happened to those men,—
Those Garnauts?—were they never, never found?"
The weasel face had fain looked wise for her,
But no one of that century ever knew.
The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
And in that year the good Prince Albert died
The land changed owners, and the new-made lord
Sent down his workmen to revamp the Hall
And make the waste place blossom as the rose.
By chance, a workman in the eastern wing,
Fitting the cornice, stumbled on a door,
Which creaked, and seemed to open of itself;
And there within the chamber, on the flags,
He saw two figures in outlandish guise
Of hose and doublet,—one stretched out full-length,
And one half fallen forward on his breast,
Holding the other's hand with vice-like grip:
One face was calm, the other sad as death,
With something in it of a pleading look,
As might befall a man that dies at prayer.
Amazed, the workman hallooed to his mates
To see the wonder; but ere they could come,
The figures crumbled and were shapeless dust.