Cardigan Part 114

THE END

And now that of a truth the Red Beast is slain, as all men know, follow these mellow years through which our children move, watching the world like a great witch-flower unfold. Content, I sit with her I love, at dusk, tying my soft feather-flies just as I tied them for Sir William in the golden time. The trout have nothing changed, nor I, though kings already live as legends.

Bitter-sweet on porch and paling, woodbine and white-starred clematis, and the deep hum of bees; and in the sunlit garden poppies, red as the blood of martyrs. Then moonlight and my dear wife at the door.

Betty, she hath cradled our tot, Felicity, to croon some soft charm of Southern sorcery, whereby sleep settles like gray dusk-moths on tired lids.

But for the boy, William, it serves not, and he defies us with his wooden gun, declaiming that a man whose grandsire died with Wolfe will not be taken off to bed at such an hour. And so my sweetheart cradles him, unheeding my stern hint of rods a-pickle for the wilful; and, in the moonlight, joining my fish-rod, I hear her from the nursery, singing the song of blessed days departed, yet with each dawn renewed:

"For courts are full of flattery, As hath too oft been tried; The city full of wantonness, And both be full of Pride: Then care away, And wend along with me!"

"I know a trout," quoth Jack Mount, taking his cob-pipe from his teeth, "a monstrous huge one, lad, hard by the thunder-stricken hemlock where the Kennyetto turns upon itself. Shemuel did mark the fish, sleeping at noon three days since."

"Bring Cade along," said I, opening the garden gate, and gathering my rod and line lest the fly-hook catch in the rosebush; "and fetch the gaff, Jack, when you return."

But when he came again into the moonlit garden he came alone, swinging the bright steel gaff.

"Cade sleeps by the fire in the great hall," he said. "Truly, lad, we age apace, and the sly beast, Death, follows us, sniffing, as we go.

Lord! Lord! How old we grow--how old, how old! All of us, save Lady Cardigan and you! Years freshen her."

"The years are kind," I said.

So we descended through the dusk to the sweet water flowing under the cl.u.s.tered stars.