Chapter 13

“Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!” chuckled Sir John, and leaned back rheumatically in his chair and mumbled over the jest.

“Yet it was not all a lie,” he confided, as if in perplexity, to the fire; “but what a coil over a youthful greensickness ’twixt a lad and a wench more than forty years syne!

“I might have had money of her for the asking,” he presently went on; “yet I am glad I did not; which is a parlous sign and smacks of dotage.”

He nodded very gravely over this new and alarming phase of his character.

“Were it not a quaint conceit, a merry tickle-brain of Fate,” he asked of the leaping flames, after a still longer pause, “that this mountain of malmsey were once a delicate stripling with apple cheeks and a clean breath, smelling of civet, and as mad for love, I warrant you, as any Amadis of them all? For, if a man were to speak truly, I did love her.

“I had the special marks of the pestilence,” he assured a particularly incredulous⁠—and obstinate-looking coal⁠—a grim, black fellow that, lurking in a corner, scowled forbiddingly and seemed to defy both the flames and Sir John. “Not all the flagons and apples in the universe might have comforted me; I was wont to sigh like a leaky bellows; to weep like a wench that hath lost her grandam; to lard my speech with the fag-ends of ballads like a man milliner; and did, indeed, indite sonnets, canzonets, and whatnot of mine own elaboration.

“And Moll did carry them,” he continued; “plump brown-eyed Moll, that hath married Hodge the tanner, and reared her tannerkins, and died long since.”

But the coal remained incredulous, and the flames crackled merrily.

“Lord, Lord, what did I not write?” said Sir John, drawing out a paper from the packet, and deciphering by the firelight the faded writing.

Read Sir John:

“Have pity, Sylvia? Cringing at thy door

Entreats with dolorous cry and clamoring,

That mendicant who quits thee nevermore;

Now winter chills the world, and no birds sing

In any woods, yet as in wanton Spring

He follows thee; and never will have done,

Though nakedly he die, from following

Whither thou leadest.

“Canst thou look upon

His woes, and laugh to see a goddess’ son

Of wide dominion, and in strategy

“More strong than Jove, more wise than Solomon,

Inept to combat thy severity?

Have pity, Sylvia! And let Love be one

Among the folk that bear thee company.”

“Is it not the very puling speech of your true lover?” he chuckled; and the flames spluttered assent. “Among the folk that bear thee company,” he repeated, and afterward looked about him with a smack of gravity. “Faith, Adam Cupid hath forsworn my fellowship long since; he hath no score chalked up against him at the Boar’s Head Tavern; or, if he have, I doubt not the next street-beggar might discharge it.”

“And she hath commended me to her children as a very gallant gentleman and a true knight,” Sir John went on, reflectively. He cast his eyes toward the ceiling, and grinned at invisible deities. “Jove that sees all hath a goodly commodity of mirth; I doubt not his sides ache at times, as if they had conceived another wine-god.”

“Yet, by my honor,” he insisted to the fire; then added, apologetically⁠—“if I had any, which, to speak plain, I have not⁠—I am glad; it is a brave jest; and I did love her once.”

Then the time-battered, bloat rogue picked out another paper, and read:

“My dear lady⁠—That I am not with thee tonight is, indeed, no fault of mine, for Sir Thomas Mowbray hath need of me, he saith. Yet the service that I have rendered him thus far is but to cool my heels in his antechamber and dream of two great eyes and of that net of golden hair wherewith Lord Love hath lately snared my poor heart. For it comforts me⁠—”

And so on, and so on, the pen trailing most juvenal sugar, like a fly newly crept out of the honeypot. And ending with a posy, filched, I warrant you, from some ring.

“I remember when I did write her this,” he explained to the fire. “Lord, Lord, if the fire of grace were not quite out of me, now should I be moved. For I did write it; and it was sent with a sonnet, all of Hell, and Heaven, and your pagan gods, and other tricks of speech. It should be somewhere.”

He fumbled with uncertain fingers among the papers. “Ah, here it is,” he said at last, and he again began to read aloud.

Read Sir John:

“Cupid invaded Hell, and boldly drove

Before him all the hosts of Erebus,

Till he had conquered: and grim Cerberus

Sang madrigals, the Furies rhymed of love,

Old Charon sighed, and sonnets rang above

The gloomy Styx; and even as Tantalus

Was Proserpine discrowned in Tartarus,

And Cupid regnant in the place thereof.

“Thus Love is monarch throughout Hell today;

In Heaven we know his power was always great;

And Earth acclaimed Love’s mastery straightway

When Sylvia came to gladden Earth’s estate:⁠—

Thus Hell and Heaven and Earth his rule obey,

And Sylvia’s heart alone is obdurate.

“Well, well,” sighed Sir John, “it was a goodly rogue that writ it, though the verse runs but lamely! A goodly rogue!

“He might,” Sir John suggested, tentatively, “have lived cleanly, and forsworn sack; he might have been a gallant gentleman, and begotten grandchildren, and had a quiet nook at the ingleside to rest his old bones: but he is dead long since. He might have writ himself armigero in many a bill, or obligation, or quittance, or whatnot; he might have left something behind him save unpaid tavern bills; he might have heard cases, harried poachers, and quoted old saws; and slept in his own family chapel through sermons yet unwrit, beneath his presentment, done in stone, and a comforting bit of Latin: but he is dead long since.”

Sir John sat meditating for a while; it had grown quite dark in the room as he muttered to himself. He rose now, rather cumbrously and uncertainly, but with a fine rousing snort of indignation.

“Zooks!” he said, “I prate like a death’s-head. A thing done hath an end, God have mercy on us all! And I will read no more of the rubbish.”

He cast the packet into the heart of the fire; the yellow papers curled at the edges, rustled a little, and blazed; he watched them burn to the last spark.

“A cup of sack to purge the brain!” cried Sir John, and filled one to the brim. “And I will go sup with Doll Tearsheet.”