第13章

"No, it's all well enough in its way, but it swallows time,"he remarked."You see, my wife and I have our own pin at home, and when I'm a bit tired, I just draw a glass for myself, and smoke a pipe, and there's no time wasted coming and going, and drinking first with this and then with the other."A little way past the inn we came upon a notice-board whereon the lord of the manor warned all wayfarers against trespassing on the common by making encampments, lighting fires or cutting firewood thereon, and to this fortunate circumstance I owe the most interesting story my companion had to tell.

We had mentioned the lord of the manor as we crossed the common, and the notice- board brought him once more to the old man's mind.

"Poor gentleman!" he said, pointing to the board as though it was the lord of the manor himself standing there, "I shouldn't like to have had the trouble he's had on my shoulders.""Indeed?" I said interrogatively.

"Well, you see, sir," he continued, instinctively lowering his voice to a confidential impressiveness, "he married an actress;a noble lady too she was, a fine dashing merry lady as ever you saw.All went well for a time, and then it suddenly got whispered about that she and the village schoolmaster were meeting each other at nights, in the meadow-bottom at the end of her own park.It lies over that way,--I could take you to the very place.The schoolmaster was a noble-looking young man too, a devil-me-care blade of a fellow, with a turn for poetry, they said, and a merry man too, and much in request for a song at The Moonrakers of an evening.Many 's the night I've heard the windows rattling with the good company gathered round him.Yes, he was a noble-looking man, a noble-looking man," he repeated wistfully, and with an evident sympathy for the lovers which, Ineed hardly say, won my heart.

"But how, I wonder, did they come to know each other?" Iinterrupted, anxious to learn all I could, even if I had to ask stupid questions to learn it.

"Well, of course, no one can say how these things come about.

She was the lady of the manor and the patroness of his school;and then, as I say, he was a very noble-looking man, and probably took her fancy; and, sir, whenever some women set their hearts on a man there's no stopping them.Have him they will, whatever happens.They can't help it, poor things! It's just a freak of nature.""Well, and how was it found out?" I again jogged him.

"One of Sir William's keepers played the spy on them.He spread it all over the place how he had seen them on moonlight nights sitting together in the dingle, drinking champagne, and laughing and talking as merry as you please; and, of course, it came in time to Sir William--""You see that green lane there," he broke off, pointing to a romantic path winding along the heath side; "it was along there he used to go of a night to meet her after every one was in bed;and when it all came out there was a regular cartload of bottles found there.The squire had them all broken up, but the pieces are there to this day.

"Yes," he again proceeded, "it hit Sir William very hard.

He's never been the same man since."

I am afraid that my sympathies were less with Sir William than better regulated sympathies would have been.I confess that my imagination was more occupied with that picture of the two lovers making merry together in the moonlit dingle.

Is it not, indeed, a fascinating little story, with its piquant contrasts and its wild love-at-all-costs? And how many such stories are hidden about the country, lying carelessly in rustic memories, if one only knew where to find them!

At this point my companion left me, and I--well, I confess that Iretraced my steps to the common and rambled up that green lane, along which the romantic schoolmaster used to steal in the moonlight to the warm arms of his love.How eagerly he had trodden the very turf I was treading,--we never know at what moment we are treading sacred earth! But for that old man, I had passed along this path without a thrill.Had I not but an hour ago stood upon this very common, vainly, so it seemed, invoking the spirits of passion and romance, and the grim old common had never made a sign.And now I stood in the very dingle where they had so often and so wildly met; and it was all gone, quite gone away for ever.The hours that had seemed so real, the kisses that had seemed like to last for ever, the vows, the tears, all now as if they had never been, gone on the four winds, lost in the abysses of time and space.

And to think of all the thousands and thousands of lovers who had loved no less wildly and tenderly, made sweet these lanes with their vows, made green these meadows with their feet; and they, too, all gone, their bright eyes fallen to dust, their sweet voices for ever put to silence.

To which I would add, for the benefit of the profane, that Isought in vain for those broken bottles.