The lady’s glance work’d strangely on the dead.
So liv’d the pair, like many another two
That shun the crowd, and shrink from public view.
They scorn’d the doubts by ev’ry peasant shewn,
And ask’d but one thing — to be let alone!
’Twas Candlemas, the dreariest time of year,
With fall long gone, and spring too far to cheer,
When little Jean, the bailiff’s son and heir,
Fell sick and threw the doctors in despair.
A child so stout and strong that few would think
An hour might carry him to death’s dark brink,
Yet pale he lay, tho’ hidden was the cause,
And Galens search’d in vain thro’ Nature’s laws.
But stricken sadness could not quite suppress
The roving thought, or wrinkled grandam’s guess:
Tho’ spoke by stealth, ’twas known to half a score
That Dame De Blois rode by the day before;
She had (they said) with glances weird and wild
Paus’d by the gate to view the prattling child,
Nor did they like the smile which seem’d to trace
New lines of evil on her proud, dark face.
These things they whisper’d, when the mother’s cry
Told of the end — the gentle soul gone by;
In genuine grief the kindly watcher wept,
Whilst the lov’d babe with saints and angels slept.
The village priest his simple rites went thro’,
And good Michel nail’d up the box of yew;
Around the corpse the holy candles burn’d,
The mourners sighed, the parents dumbly yearn’d.
Then one by one each sought his humble bed,
And left the lonely mother with her dead.
Late in the night it was, when o’er the vale
The storm-king swept with pandemoniac gale;
Deep pil’d the cruel snow, yet strange to tell,
The lightning sputter’d while the white flakes fell;
A hideous presence seem’d abroad to steal,
And terror sounded in the thunder’s peal.
Within the house of grief the tapers glow’d
Whilst the poor mother bow’d beneath her load;
Her salty eyes too tired now to weep,
Too pain’d to see, too sad to close in sleep.
The clock struck three, above the tempest heard,
When something near the lifeless infant stirr’d;
Some slipp’ry thing, that flopp’d in awkward way,
And climb’d the table where the coffin lay;
With scaly convolutions strove to find
The cold, still clay that death had left behind.
The nodding mother hears — starts broad awake —
Empower’d to reason, yet too stunn’d to shake;
The pois’nous thing she sees, and nimbly foils
The ghoulish purpose of the quiv’ring coils:
With ready axe the serpent’s head she cleaves,
And thrills with savage triumph whilst she grieves.
The injur’d reptile hissing glides from sight,
And hides its cloven carcass in the night.
The weeks slipp’d by, and gossip’s tongue began
To call the Sieur De Blois an alter’d man;
With curious mien he oft would pace along
The village street, and eye the gaping throng.
Yet whilst he shew’d himself as ne’er before,
His wild-eyed lady was observ’d no more.
In course of time, ’twas scarce thought odd or ill
That he his ears with village lore should fill;
Nor was the town with special rumour rife
When he sought out the bailiff and his wife:
Their tale of sorrow, with its ghastly end,
Was told, indeed, by ev’ry wond’ring friend.
The Sieur heard all, and low’ring rode away,
Nor was he seen again for many a day.
When vernal sunshine shed its cheering glow,
And genial zephyrs blew away the snow,
To frighten’d swains a horror was reveal’d
In the damp herbage of a melting field.
There (half preserv’d by winter’s frigid bed)
Lay the dark Dame De Blois, untimely dead;
By some assassin’s stroke most foully slain,
Her shapely brow and temples cleft in twain.
Reluctant hands the dismal burden bore
To the stone arches of the husband’s door,
Where silent serfs the ghastly thing receiv’d,
Trembling with fright, but less amaz’d than griev’d;
The Sieur his dame beheld with blazing eyes,
And shook with anger, more than with surprise.
(At least ’tis thus the stupid peasants told
Their wide-mouth’d wives when they the tale unroll’d.)
The village wonder’d why De Blois had kept
His spouse’s loss unmention’d and unwept,
Nor were there lacking sland’rous tongues to claim
That the dark master was himself to blame.
But village talk could scarcely hope to solve
A crime so deep, and thus the months revolve:
The rural train repeat the gruesome tale,
And gape and marvel more than they bewail.
Swift flew the sun, and winter once again