Margaret Tudor a Romance of Old St. Augustine by Annie T. Colcock

Author:Annie T. Colcock [Colcock, Annie T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783849196257
Google: iYxhlgEACAAJ
Amazon: 3849196259
Publisher: TREDITION CLASSICS
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I'll kilt my claes and don my shoon

And cross the sea's dry bed.

"Oh in thine heart, my love, my lord,

Mak' room, mak' room for me;

Or at thy feet, by my true word,

Thy lady's grave sall be!"

"A melancholy air, yet with somewhat of a pleasing sadness in its minor cadences," commented Doña Orosia when I had ceased. "Translate me the words, an your Spanish is sufficient."

"That it is not, I fear," was my reply, "and the task is beyond me for the further reason that the song is not even English, but in a dialect of the Scots. 'Tis only the plaint of a poor lady whose mind seems to have gone astray in her long waiting for a faithless lover"—and I gave her the sense of the verses as best I could.

"Nay," said the Spanish woman, with a singular smile. "She hath more wit than you credit her with. You mark me, the flood of a woman's tears will bear a man further than a mighty river, and her sighs waft him away more speedily than the strongest gale. And once he has gone, taking with him such a memory of her, 'twould be far easier for her to drink the ocean dry than to wile him home. For let a man but suspect that a woman could break her heart for him, and he——is more than content to let her do it!"

She paused; but I made no answer, having none upon my tongue. Presently she added: "When once a woman has the folly to plead for herself, in that moment she murders Love; and every tear she sheds thereafter becomes another clod upon his grave. There remains but one thing for her to do——"

"Herself to die!" I murmured.

"Nay, child! To live and be revenged!" She turned a flushed face toward me; and, though the water stood in her eyes, they were hard and angry. "To be revenged! To plot and to scheme; to bide her time patiently; to study his heart's desire, and to foster it; and then——"

"And then?" I questioned softly, with little shivers of repulsion chilling me from head to foot.

"To rob him of it."

The words were spoken deliberately, in a voice that was resonant and slow. 'Twas not like the outburst of a moment's impulse—the sudden jangling of a harpstring rudely touched; it was rather with the fateful emphasis of a clock striking the hour, heralded by a premonitory quiver—a gathering together of inward forces that had waited through long moments for this final utterance.

What manner of woman was this? I caught my breath with a little shuddering cry.

Doña Orosia turned quickly.

"Go! Leave me!" she cried. "Do you linger? Can I never be rid of you? Out of my sight! I would have a moment's respite from your great eyes and your white face. Go!"

And I obeyed her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.