Part 7 (1/2)
Again the lad shuddered
”Shall I tell you o over this poor life of hts utterance it may be that they will take more vivid shape For the rest my tale may wile away a little of the tie me, Kenneth What say you?”
Despite the parlous condition whereunto the fear of the ht upon hier in his request that Sir Crispin should unfold his story And this the Tavern Knight then set himself to do
CHAPTER VII THE TAVERN KNIGHT'S STORY
Sir Crispin walked froh bed, and flung hith upon it The only chair that dismal rooh of physical satisfaction
”Fore George, I knew not I was so tired,” he murmured And with that he lapsed for some moments into silence, his brows contracted in the frown of one who collects his thoughts At length he began, speaking in calm, unemotional tones that held perchance deeper pathos than a more passionate utterance could have endowed theo--I was, as I have said, an honourable lad, to whorant with hope Those, Kenneth, were my illusions They are the illusions of youth; they are youth itself, for when our illusions are gone we are no longer young no matter what years we count Keep your illusions, Kenneth; treasure the as you may”
”I dare swear, sir,” answered the lad, with bitter humour, ”that such illusions as I have I shall treasure all et, Sir Crispin”
”'Slife, I had indeed forgotten For the one back twenty years, and to-h his lapse of memory amused him Then he resuentleman that ever lived--the heir to an ancient, honoured name, and to a castle as proud and lands as fair and broad as any in England
”They lie who say that frohter dawn than that ofso dark But let that be
”Our lands were touched upon the northern side by those of a house hich we had been at feud for two hundred years and hty in their unGodly righteousness They held us dissolute because we enjoyed the life that God had given us, and there I aan
”When I was a lad of your years, Kenneth, the hall--ours was the castle, theirs the hall--was occupied by two young sparks who made little shi+ft to keep up the pious reputation of their house They dwelt there with their , ether puritanical They discarded the sober black their forbears had worn for generations, and donned gay Cavalier garrow; set plumes in their castors and jewels in their ears; they drank deep, ruffled it with the boldest and decked their utterance with great oaths--for to none doth blasphemy come more readily than to lips that in youth have been over prayer
”Me they avoided as they would a plague, and when at tirave as those of,swords
I despised the apostasy ot, and they guessing or knowing by instinct as in my mind held me in deeper rancour even than their ancestors had donestill and yet a sharper spur to their hatred did those whelps find in the realization that all the countryside held, as it had held for ages, us to be their betters A hard blow to their pride was that, but their revenge was not long in co
”It chanced they had a cousin--a maid as sweet and fair and pure as they were hideous and foul Wewas the ti towards the other forgot the traditions of the names we bore And as at first we had met by chance, so did we meet later by contrivance, not once or twice, but many times God, hoeet she was! Hoas all the world! Hoeet it was to live and to be young! We loved How else could it have been? What to us were traditions, what to us the hatred that for centuries had held our families asunder? In us it lay to set aside all that
”And so I sought my father He cursed me at first for an unnatural son who left unheeded the dictates of our blood But anon, when on ed my cause with all the eloquent fervour that is but of youth--youth that loves--hts went back o a-wooing as I listed Nay, more than that he did The first of our naenerations to set foot across the threshold of the hall; he went on my behalf to sue for their cousin's hand
”Then was their hour To the lesson that ere their betters, one of us ca They from whom the countryside looked for silence when one of us spoke, had it in their hands at length to say us nay And they said it What answer my father made them, Kenneth, I know not, but very white was his face when Iwords he told me of the insult they had put upon him, then silently he pointed to the Toledo that two years before he had brought me out of Spain, and left in blade and read the Spanish inscription, that through e and shame seemed blurred; a proud inscription was it, instinct with the punctilio of proud Spain--'Draw me not without motive, sheathe me not without honour' Motive there was and to spare; honour I swore there should be; and with that oath, and that brave sword girt to me, I set out to h escaped hih of bitterness
”I lost that sword years ago,” said he ly ”The sword and I have been close friends in life, butno inscriptions to prick at a hed again, and again he fell a-, till Kenneth's voice aroused hiathering in their garret, and as he turned his face towards the youth, he was unable to er, and Crispin noted that he sat with head bent forward and that his eyes shone feverishly
”It interests you, eh? Ah, well--hot foot I went to the hall, and with burning words I called upon those dogs to render satisfaction for the dishonour they had put upon my house Will you believe, Kenneth, that they denied me? They sheltered their craven lives behind a shi+eld of ht a boy, they said, and bade rievance
”And so, a shae a hundredfold more bitter than that which I had borne thither did I carry thence My father bade ainst the time when my riper years should compel them to attend me, and this, by my every hope of heaven, I swore to do He bade ht or hope of union with their cousin, and though I made him no answer at the time, yet in --scarce twenty A ithout sight of th I caony of passion and hopelessness I flung myself at her feet, and implored her to keep true toswore that she would You are yourself a lover, Kenneth, and youof the impatience that anon beset me How could I wait? I asked her this
”Some fifty miles from the castle there was a little farm, in the very heart of the country, which had been left me by a sister of my mother's