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Nurse Crumpet Tells The Story
by
He answered, “Thou canst not truly mean to shut me here to bring dishonor upon me, who have loved thee better than man ever loved woman” (for so do all men say, and truly think).
She said, “Thy life is more to me than thy honor.”
And he groaned aloud, crying, “Oh God! that I have lived to hear thee say it!” and again there fell a silence, save for the whispering of the night in the trees above us and the creeping of small creatures through the dry grass. ‘Twas almost curfew-time, and there was one star in the black front o’ th’ night, like the star on the forehead of a black stallion.
When he spake again his voice was very fierce, and he saith, “Patience, I do command thee to release me.”
But she spake never a word.
And again he said, “Better let me out to love thee, than keep me here until I hate thee.”
She shivered, leaning against the door, until the big bolt rattled in its braces.
And he said yet again, “By the Lord God, an thou dost keep me here to sully my good name, and that of thy father and mother, who have been to me even as my own flesh and blood, I will never live with thee again as man with wife, but will go forth into the New World to live and to die with thy handmaid dishonor!”
And she was silent.
Again he spoke, and lifted up his voice in a cry exceeding sorrowful and bitter, so that my heart froze to hear it.
“Woman! woman! was it for this I gave thee my fair fame to cherish? Or was it for this that I put my name into thy keeping? Oh, child, listen while there is yet time! Wilt thou with thy own hands take his manhood from thy husband to drag it through the mire? Patience, as I have shared thy childhood, as I have loved and cherished thy girlhood, as I have held thee in my arms as bride and wife, give me back my honor while there is yet time. Oh, my wife! my darling!” And I heard him sobbing like a little lad.
At that sound she put both hands over her ears, and started to her feet, looking from right to left like a hunted thing, and I could bear it no longer, but leaped forward and fell on my knees before her, and grasped her kirtle with both hands. I could scarce speak for tears, but with all the strength that was in me did I plead with her to draw back the bolt, but she would not. Now to this day when I do think of the fool that I was, not to run without her knowledge and bring the old lord, thy grandfather, or bide my time and unbar the door when she had gone, it seems as though I must hate myself for evermore. But as I pleaded with her, all at once there was something cold against my throat, and I seemed to know that ’twas a dagger, and the steel cowed me, as it doth sometimes cow strong men, and I stirred not, neither spoke I a word more. Her face was over me, like a white flower in the purple dusk, but her eyes bright and terrible. And when she spoke, ’twas not my little lady’s voice, but rather the voice o’ a fiend. And she said,
“Swear that thou sayest nothing of all this to man, or to woman, or to child, else will I kill thee as thou kneelest.”
And I knew that for the time she was mad, and would kill me even as she had said, did I not swear. So I did take that fearful oath, coward as I was, and to this day am I a craven when I think on ‘t. When I had sworn, she turned from me as though there were no such woman in all the earth, and went once more to the door o’ th’ cave, and called his name–“Ernle!”