Death the Knight and the Lady/Prologue
DEATH THE KNIGHT
AND THE LADY
PROLOGUE
I had almost forgotten James Wilder's existence, when, one night in June, I received an urgent message asking me to call upon him without delay.
An hour later I was sitting in his library, and in the arm-chair opposite mine was sunk what seemed the spectre of my friend. During the ten months that had elapsed since our last meeting he had passed from middle life to premature old age.
"I am glad you have come," he said, "I am in need of a friend, but do not speak to me yet, that is, for a moment, I wish to think."
His eyes fell from me to the carpet, he seemed watching something, and his thin lips were curled in a ghostly smile.
The room was hot and oppressive, flowers were heaped everywhere in profusion, and the large wood fire burning in the grate mixed its faint aromatic smell with the perfume of the roses and tube-roses lolling in their porcelain bowls.
I sat watching the burning logs and thinking. I had known Wilder for some years, I had been his intimate friend, but how much did I know really about him? Not much. I had dined with him, talked with him, exchanged opinions; I knew that he was wealthy, that he owned a house somewhere in the country, to which he never invited friends, and of which I had heard rumours needless to set down here. That he was an opium eater I knew, and that was the extent of my knowledge of the man.
Of the being who existed behind that careworn, weary face, I knew absolutely nothing, but I had always guessed it to be occupied with some secret trouble, pressed upon by some sin or sorrow of which it dared not speak; also, by some freak of imagination, I had always coupled this imaginary sorrow of Wilder's with that house in the country of which I had received so many mysterious hints.
Suddenly I started from my reverie. Wilder was speaking.
"Ah, my dear , I have been trying to brace myself for the effort, but I cannot, I cannot; what I have to ask of you, you will do without question if you are my friend, but to speak of it all, to go over that terrible ground, oh! impossible, impossible, impossible."
His voice died away into a whisper, and he struck with his thin hand on the arm of his chair, as if beating time to some dreary tune heard by him alone.
"What I ask of you is this, to start as soon as possible for my place in Yorkshire, and to see carried out after the fashion I desire, the obsequies of a man—I mean, a woman—who is lying there dead."
Again his voice sank to a whisper, his eyes turned from mine evasively, and he covered them with one of his thin white hands.
A man—I mean a woman—what did he mean?
"Will you do this?"
"Yes, I will do as you ask; it seems strange, no matter, I will do it."
"You take a load from me. Ah, my dear , if you could only guess what I have suffered, the terrors, the tortures, the nameless misery. I ought to be at the grave side when this terrible burial—Oh, how my head wanders, I have scarcely the power of thought, but say it once again, you will do what I ask, promise me that again."
"Yes, yes, I promise, set your mind at rest—I will do what you require."
"You will start, then, at once?"
"To-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow early, to-morrow early; and now as to what you are to do. Listen, at Ashworth, near my place, there lives a man who works in granite, you will get him to cut a memorial tablet. These words are to be upon it, they are written on this piece of paper, take it; the body is to be buried in the vault of the little church in the park; remember it is to be interred dressed exactly as I have ordered it to be dressed, this is my chief reason for asking you to attend the last ceremonies. I dare not leave this matter to the hands of servants, and I—may not go myself, I am broken down with ill-health and sorrow, and the journey would kill me, though, indeed, I am dying fast enough."
His eyes were wandering again, as if following some imaginary spectre about the room. I looked at the piece of paper, on it was written—
"Sir Gerald Wilder, Knt.
Rest in Peace."
Sir Gerald Wilder! why, a moment ago he said "a woman." What mystery was in this? And then, "Rest in Peace," it sounded like a command.
"The coffin is ordered," broke out Wilder, suddenly seeming to return to this world from the world of his imagination. "The coffin is made, promise me again, you will go."
"I will go."
The next morning I started for Ashworth, in Yorkshire, to fulfil my strange mission. I had asked no more of Wilder, content to act without question, which is the first office of friendship. I started early, and arrived at Ashworth shortly after three o'clock. A carriage was waiting to take me to the Gables. The weather was exquisite, and the moors over which the white road led us stretched on either side, far as the eye could reach, like a rolling sea under the blue summer sky and hot June sun. The rocking motion sent me to sleep. When I woke the wheels were crashing on gravel, and the carriage was passing swiftly through a long, dark avenue.
This was, then, the Gables, this great old-fashioned gloomy house, with a broad portico supported on fluted granite pillars, facing the broad park dotted with clumps of trees, so broad and so far-reaching that the deer in the furthermost parts were reduced to moving specks.
The door was opened by an ill-looking servant-maid, whose sour and crabbed face struck an unpleasant note against the old-fashioned and romantic surroundings.
The great hall, oak-panelled, and lit by stained glass windows, hid amongst its other treasures an echo, whose dreamy voice repeated my footsteps with a sound like the pattering of a ghost. I stood for a moment, my heart absorbing the silence of this place, so far removed from the spirit of to-day. The air held something, I know not what, it seemed like an odour left from the perfumed robes of Romance.
I heard a sound behind me, and turning, I saw an old servant man with silvery white hair. He showed me to my room, and I kept him whilst I explained fully my business.
He listened respectfully, but like a person who had ceased to take any interest in life. When I had finished, I asked him to take me to the room where the dead person lay.
He led the way down a corridor, opened a door, and stood aside whilst I entered. I found myself in a bedroom hung with rose-coloured silk; the window was open, and through it came the warm evening breeze and the far-off cawing of rooks.
On the bed I saw a form, but I could scarcely believe that what I saw was real. Stretched upon the snow-white coverlet lay the body of a cavalier, full-dressed in amber satin doublet and long buff-coloured riding-boots, his hair long, curling, and black as night, surrounded a face pale as marble and beautiful as a woman's. His white right hand, peeping from its lace ruffle, grasped the hilt of a sword, his left hand grasped a silver trumpet. Attached to the trumpet a crimson silk cord streaked the coverlet like a thin and tortuous stream of blood. He seemed to have stepped from the pages of romance, and to have laid himself down here to rest. I trembled as I looked, feared to stir lest he should wake, yet I well knew him to be dead. I might have fancied myself in a dream but for the far-off clamour of the rooks coming through the evening sky outside and the sound of my own heart beating.
Was it a man? was it a woman? the face might have done for either, yet it was the most beautiful face I had ever beheld, the most romantic, the most pathetic. Then recollection woke up, and I shuddered. This, then, was Sir Gerald Wilder. This form, more beautiful than a picture, was the sorrow of James Wilder, the thing that had driven him to opium, the thing that had broken his heart and crowned him with premature old age. How? Why? I dared scarcely think.
I stole from the room. In the passage I found the old man-servant waiting for me; he shut the door softly, and I followed him back to my own room. There I took his arm and looked in his face.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"I dursn't tell you, sir; oh, sir, my heart be gone with the sorrow of it all, but if you wish, I will bring the book that he was always a-writing in for these months past."
"Yes, get the book, please, at once: no thank you, nothing to eat yet, I wish to see the book first."
He went, and returned with a large, old-fashioned common-place book, the leaves of which were covered with writing. It was a woman's hand.
I took it down stairs, and went with it into the garden.
There, on a seat in the middle of an old Dutch garden, very prim, very silent, where the sunlight fell upon the faces of the amber and purple pansies, and the great white carnations shook their ruffles to the wind with a dreamy and seventeenth century air, I sat and read this story, written by the hand of a dead cavalier who craves, through me, your sympathy for his deathless sorrow.