Simon Dale. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ had given me, and yet still with mockery of my tragic airs. "Yes, you must by all means come to London," she went on, patting my arm. "Is not Mistress Barbara in London? And I think—am I wrong, Simon?—that there is something for which you will want to ask her pardon."

      "If I come to London, it is for you and you only that I shall come," I cried.

      "No, no. You will come to love where the King loves, to know what he hides, and to drink of his cup. I, sir, cannot interfere with your great destiny"; she drew away from me, curtseyed low, and stood opposite to me, smiling.

      "For you and for you only," I repeated.

      "Then will the King love me?" she asked.

      "God forbid," said I fervently.

      "Oh, and why, pray, your 'God forbid'? You're very ready with your 'God forbids.' Am I then to take your love sooner than the King's, Master Simon?"

      "Mine is an honest love," said I soberly.

      "Oh, I should doat on the country, if everybody didn't talk of his honesty there! I have seen the King in London and he is a fine gentleman."

      "And you have seen the Queen also, may be?"

      "In truth, yes. Ah, I have shocked you, Simon? Well, I was wrong. Come, we're in the country; we'll be good. But when we've made a townsman of you, we'll—we will be what they are in town. Moreover, in ten minutes I am going home, and it would be hard if I also left you in anger. You shall have a pleasanter memory of my going than Mistress Barbara's gave you."

      "How shall I find you when I come to town?"

      "Why, if you will ask any gentleman you meet whether he chances to remember Cydaria, you will find me as soon as it is well you should."

      I prayed her to tell me more; but she was resolved to tell no more.

      "See, it is late. I go," said she. Then suddenly she came near to me. "Poor Simon," she said softly. "Yet it is good for you, Simon. Some day you will be amused at this, Simon"; she spoke as though she were fifty years older than I. My answer lay not in words or arguments. I caught her in my arms and kissed her. She struggled, yet she laughed. It shot through my mind then that Barbara would neither have struggled nor laughed. But Cydaria laughed.

      Presently I let her go, and kneeling on my knee kissed her hand very humbly, as though she had been what Barbara was. If she were not—and I knew not what she was—yet should my love exalt her and make a throne whereon she might sit a Queen. My new posture brought a sudden gravity to her face, and she bent over me with a smile that seemed now tender and almost sorrowful.

      "Poor Simon, poor Simon," she whispered. "Kiss my hand now; kiss it as though I were fit for worship. It will do you no harm, and—and perhaps—perhaps I shall like to remember it." She bent down and kissed my forehead as I knelt before her. "Poor Simon," she whispered, as her hair brushed mine. Then her hand was gradually and gently withdrawn. I looked up to see her face; her lips were smiling but there seemed a dew on her lashes. She laughed, and the laugh ended in a little gasp, as though a sob had fought with it. And she cried out loud, her voice ringing clear among the trees in the still evening air.

      "That ever I should be so sore a fool!"

      Then she turned and left me, running swiftly over the grass, with never a look behind her. I watched till she was out of sight, and then sat down on the ground; with twitching lips and wide-open dreary eyes.

      Ah, for youth's happiness! Alas for its dismal woe! Thus she came into my life.

CHAPTER III

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THE MUSIC OF THE WORLD

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      If a philosopher, learned in the human mind as Flamsteed in the courses of the stars or the great Newton in the laws of external nature, were to take one possessed by a strong passion of love or a bitter grief, or what overpowering emotion you will, and were to consider impartially and with cold precision what share of his time was in reality occupied by the thing which, as we are in the habit of saying, filled his thoughts or swayed his life or mastered his intellect, the world might well smile (and to my thinking had better smile than weep) at the issue of the investigation. When the first brief shock was gone, how few out of the solid twenty-four would be the hours claimed by the despot, however much the poets might call him insatiable. There is sleeping, and meat and drink, the putting on and off of raiment and the buying of it. If a man be of sound body, there is his sport; if he be sane, there are the interests of this life and provision for the next. And if he be young, there is nature's own joy in living, which with a patient scornful smile sets aside his protest that he is vowed to misery, and makes him, willy-nilly, laugh and sing. So that, if he do not drown himself in a week and thereby balk the inquiry, it is odds that he will compose himself in a month, and by the end of a year will carry no more marks of his misfortune than (if he be a man of good heart) an added sobriety and tenderness of spirit. Yet all this does not hinder the thing from returning, on occasion given.

      In my own case—and, if my story be followed to its close, I am persuaded that I shall not be held to be one who took the disease of love more lightly than my fellows—this process of convalescence, most salutary, yet in a sense humiliating, was aided by a train of circumstances, in which my mother saw the favour of Heaven to our family and the Vicar the working of Betty Nasroth's prophecy. An uncle of my mother's had some forty years ago established a manufactory of wool at Norwich, and having kept always before his eyes the truth that men must be clothed, howsoever they may think on matters of Church and State, and that it is a cloth-weaver's business to clothe them and not to think for them, had lived a quiet life through all the disturbances and had prospered greatly in his trade. For marriage either time or inclination had failed him, and, being now an old man, he felt a favourable disposition towards me, and declared the intention of making me heir to a considerable portion of his fortune provided that I showed myself worthy of such kindness. The proof he asked was not beyond reason, though I found cause for great lamentation in it; for it was that, in lieu of seeking to get to London, I should go to Norwich and live there with him, to solace his last years and, although not engaged in his trade, learn by observation something of the serious occupations of life and of the condition of my fellow-men, of which things young gentlemen, said he, were for the most part sadly ignorant. Indeed, they were, and they thought no better of a companion for being wiser; to do anything or know anything that might redound to the benefit of man or the honour of God was not the mode in those days. Nor do I say that the fashion has changed greatly, no, nor that it will change. Therefore to Norwich I went, although reluctantly, and there I stayed fully three years, applying myself to the comforting of my uncle's old age, and consoling my leisure with the diversions which that great and important city afforded, and which, indeed, were enough for any rational mind. But reason and youth are bad bedfellows, and all the while I was like the Israelites in the wilderness; my thoughts were set upon the Promised Land and I endured my probation hardly. To this mood I set down the fact that little of my life at Norwich lives in my memory, and to that little I seldom recur in thought; the time before it and the time after engross my backward glances. The end came with my uncle's death, whereat I, the recipient of great kindness from him, sincerely grieved, and that with some remorse, since I had caused him sorrow by refusing to take up his occupation as my own, preferring my liberty and a moderate endowment to all his fortune saddled with the condition of passing my days as a cloth-weaver. Had СКАЧАТЬ