Part 13 (1/2)
”A woodp.e.c.k.e.r,” he cried, directing momentarily a sedulous, clear eye on me. And lo, ”inviolable quietness” and the smooth beech-boughs!
”And thus,” he said, sitting closer, ”the martlets were wont to whimper about the walls of the castle of Inverness, the castle of Macbeth.”
”Macbeth!” I repeated--”Macbeth!”
”Ay,” he said, ”it was his seat while yet a simple soldier--flocks and flocks of them, wheeling hither, thither, in the evening air, crying and calling.”
I listened in a kind of confusion. ”... And Duncan,” I said....
He eyed me with immense pleasure, and nodded with brilliant eyes on mine.
”What looking man was he?” I said at last as carelessly as I dared.
”... The King, you mean,--of Scotland.”
He magnanimously ignored my confusion, and paused to build his sentence.
”'Duncan'?” he said. ”The question calls him straight to mind. A lean-locked, womanish countenance; sickly, yet never sick; timid, yet most obdurate; more sly than politic. An _ignis fatuus_, sir, in a world of soldiers.” His eye wandered.... ”'Twas a marvellous sanative air, crisp and pure; but for him, one draught and outer darkness. I myself viewed his royal entry from the gallery--pacing urbane to slaughter; and I uttered a sigh to see him. 'Why, sir, do you sigh to see the king?' cried one softly that stood by. 'I sigh, my lord,' I answered to the instant, 'at sight of a monarch even Duncan's match!'”
He looked his wildest astonishment at me.
”Not, I'd have you remember--not that 'twas blood I did foresee.... To kill in blood a man, and he a king, so near to natural death ...
foul, foul!”
”And Macbeth?” I said presently--”Macbeth...?”
He laid down his viol with prolonged care.
”His was a soul, sir, n.o.bler than his fate. I followed him not without love from boyhood--a youth almost too fine of spirit; shrinking from all violence, over-nicely; eloquent, yet chary of speech, and of a dark profundity of thought. The questions he would patter!--unanswerable, searching earth and heaven through.... And who now was it told me the traitor Judas's hair was red?--yet not red his, but of a reddish chestnut, fine and bushy. Children have played their harmless hands at hide-and-seek therein. O sea of many winds!
”For come gloom on the hills, floods, discolouring mist; breathe but some grandam's tale of darkness and blood and doubleness in his hearing: all changed. Flame kindled; a fevered unrest drove him out; and Ambition, that spotted hound of h.e.l.l, strained at the leash towards the Pit.
”So runs the world--the ardent and the lofty. We are beyond earth's story as 'tis told, sir. All's shallower than the heart of man....
Indeed, 'twas one more shattered altar to Hymen.”
”'Hymen!'” I said.
He brooded long and silently, clipping his small beard. And while he was so brooding, a mouse, a moth, dust--I know not what, stirred the listening strings of his viol to sound, and woke him with a start.
”I vowed, sir, then, to dismiss all memory of such unhappy deeds from mind--never to speak again that broken lady's name. Oh! I have seen sad ends--pride abased, splendour dismantled, courage to terror come, guilt to a crying guilelessness.”
”'Guilelessness?'” I said. ”Lady Macbeth at least was past all changing.”
The doctor stood up and cast a deep scrutiny on me, which yet, perhaps, was partly on himself.
”Perceive, sir,” he said, ”this table--broader, longer, splendidly burdened; and all adown both sides the board, thanes and their ladies, lords, and gentlemen, guests bidden to a royal banquet. 'Twas then in that bleak and dismal country--the Palace of Forres. Torches flared in the hall; to every man a servant or two: we sat in pomp.”
He paused again, and gravely withdrew behind the tapestry.