"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.

"And presently," he cried therefrom, suiting his action to the word, "to the blast of hautboys enters the king in state thus, with his attendant lords. And with all that rich and familiar courtesy of which he was master in his easier moods he pa.s.sed from one to another, greeting with supple dignity on his way, till he came at last softly to the place prepared for him at table. And suddenly--shall I ever forget, it, sir?--it seemed silence ran like a flame from mouth to mouth as there he stood, thus, marble-still, his eyes fixed in a leaden glare. And he raised his face and looked once round on us all with a forlorn astonishment and wrath, like one with a death-wound--I never saw the like of such a face.

"Whereat, beseeching us to be calm, and pay no heed, the queen laid her hand on his and called him. And his...o...b.. rolled down once more upon the empty place, and stuck as if at grapple with some horror seen within. He muttered aloud in peevish altercation--once more to heave up his frame, to sigh and shake himself, and lo!--"

The viol-strings rang to his "lo!"

"Lo, sir, the Unseen had conquered. His lip sagged into his beard, he babbled with open mouth, and leaned on his lady with such an impotent and slavish regard as I hope never to see again man pay to woman....

We thought no more of supper after that....

"But what do I--?" The doctor laid a cautioning finger on his mouth.

"The company was dispersed, the palace gloomy with night (and they were black nights at Forres!), and on the walls I heard the sentinel's replying.... In the wood's last glow I entered and stood in his self-same station before the empty stool. And even as I stood thus, my hair creeping, my will concentred, gazing with every cord at stretch, fell a light, light footfall behind me." He glanced whitely over his shoulder.

"Sir, it was the queen come softly out of slumber on my own unquiet errand."

The doctor strode to the door, and peered out like a man suspicious or guilty of treachery. It was indeed a house of broken silences. And there, in the doorway, he seemed to be addressing his own saddened conscience.

"With all my skill, and all a leal man's gentleness, I solaced and persuaded, and made an oath, and conducted her back to her own chamber unperceived. How weak is sleep!... It was a habit, sir, contracted in childhood, long dormant, that Evil had woke again. The Past awaits us all. So run Time's sands, till mercy's globe is empty and ..."

He stooped and whispered it across to me: "... A child, a comparative child, shrunk to an anatomy, her beauty changed, ghostly of youth and all its sadness, baffled by a word, slave to a doctor's nod! None knew but I, and, at the last, one of her ladies--a gentle, faithful, and fearful creature. Nor she till far beyond all mischief....

"Wild deeds are done. But to have blood on the hands, a cry in the ears, and one same gla.s.sy face eye to eye, that nothing can dim, nor even slumber pacify--dreams, dreams, intangible, enorm! Forefend them, G.o.d, from me!"

He stood a moment as if he were listening; then turned, smiling irresolutely, and eyed me aimlessly. He seemed afraid of his own house, askance at his own furniture. Yet, though I scarce know why, I felt he had not told me the whole truth. Something fidelity had yet withheld from vanity. I longed to enquire further. I put aside how many burning questions awhile!

XIV

_And if we gang to sea, master, I fear we'll come to harm._

--OLD BALLAD.

By and by less anxious talk soothed him. Indeed it was he who suggested one last bright draught of air beneath his trees before retiring. Down we went again with some unnecessary clatter. And here were stars between the fruited boughs, silvery Capella and the Twins, and low on the sky's moonlit border Venus excellently bright.

He asked me whither I proposed going, if I needs must go; besought there and then in the ambrosial night-air the history of my wanderings--a mere nine days' wonder; and told me how he himself much feared and hated the sea.

He questioned me also with not a little subtilty (and double-dealing too, I fancied,) regarding my own country, and of things present, and things real. In fact nothing, I think, so much flattered his vanity--unless it was my wonder at Dame Partlett's clucking on his viol-strings--as to learn himself was famous even so far as to ages yet unborn. He gazed on the simple moon with limpid, amiable eyes, and caught my fingers in his.

How, then, could I even so much as hint to enquire which century indeed was his, who had no need of any? How could I abash that kindly vanity of his by adding also that, however famous, he must needs be to all eternity--nameless?

We conversed long and earnestly in the coolness. He very frankly counselled me not to venture unconducted further into this country.

The land of Tragedy was broad. And though on this side it lay adjacent to the nave and civil people of Comedy; on the further, in the shadow of those bleak, unfooted mountains, lurked unnatural horror and desolation, and cruelty beyond all telling.

He very kindly offered me too, if I was indeed bent on seeking the sea, an old boat, still seaworthy, that lay in a creek in the river near by, from which he was wont to fish. As for Rosinante, he supposed a rest would be by no means unwelcome to so faithful a friend. He himself rode little, being indolent, and a happier host than guest; and when I returned here, she should be stuffed with dainties awaiting me.

To this I cordially and gratefully agreed; and also even more cordially to remain with him the next day; and the next night after that to take my watery departure.

So it was. And a courteous, versatile, and vivacious companion I found him. Rare tales he told me, too, of better days than these, and rarest of his own never-more-returning youth. He loved his childhood, talked on of it with an artless zeal, his eyes a nest of singing-birds. How contrite he was for spirit lost, and daring withheld, and hope discomfited! How simple and urbane concerning his present lowly demands on life, on love, and on futurity! All this, too, with such packed winks and mirth and mourning, that I truly said good-night for the second time to him with a rather melancholy warmth, since to-morrow ... who can face unmoved that viewless sphinx? Moreover, the sea is wide, has fishes in plenty, but never too many coraled grottoes once poor mariners.